Shimmer, Glimmer, & Gleam - A Quest of Loss & Gain

Nine Days After Impact

The tribe's caravans came to Bob's "cabin" as fast as they could safely manage. The great change had killed a few horses and destroyed a few motorcycles, and altered many more, along with each member of the tribe, but there were duties to see to in this emergency, and foremost amongst them was family, however distant it may be. Thus they trundled up Mount Kallis, grateful that the spring floods were over months ago, in a clattering of hooves and wooden wagons and the rumbling hum of bikes burning ethanol. It was decided, given the situation, that Red Feather and Flint would be the one to make contact with Bob, whose home had seen better days. A trapper and mountain man by profession and inclination, Bob had, in his past, married into the Sea's Children in the manner of the Imperials and their own traditions both, and though - to both of their sorrow - his wife Morning Call had proven barren, he had been a good friend, a good husband, and a shockingly competent uncle to the children of her brother in the years before her passing. Now the world lurched and bled, and the Sea's Children would not forget.

Still, with every window shattered and the doors off their hinges, Red Feather and Flint entered Bob's lonely home with an axe in one hand and a pistol in the other. Scant minutes later, they emerged with an unconscious Bob, his wild beard made all of glass, cloaked in furs made from woven and tarnished silver such as he would have never worn before, and though both had long experience on hunts and on farm work that made them strong, Bob weighed as much as both of them together stark raving naked, nevermind now. Their kinsmen raced to help carry the unconscious man.

"He must be changing deeply," Chief Long Road mused.

Bob's former sister-in-law, who had taken Shortcut as her deed-name and was currently fused from the waist down with her motorcycle, spat a stream of saliva and tobacco and responded in the manner of the Imperial city-folk: "No fucking shit, Dad."

* * * *

11 Days After Impact

Bob woke slowly. This was because everything hurt. His body hurt. His shoulders hurt. His back hurt. Somehow his beard hurt. His heart hurt, but that'd been hurting for awhile; Morning Call was taken from him nine years ago now, passing from a surgical complication. Air in her bloodstream, nothing anyone could have done. That pain was an old friend. It meant, as his father-in-law had said, that Morning Call had been worth loving.

Hold up, was the world moving?

Bob blinked blearily, and tried to sit up. A firm hand pressed on his chest (ow Merciful Mara please no) and pushed him back down. "You will want to be still," Long Road said, kind but firm. "We are blessed in that our doctors survived, and they were quite clear that if you leave this bed they will kill both of us."

"Y'all always had just the shittest doctors," Bob grumbled, through the pain. "...I'm on a caravan?"

"I'm afraid the story you're so sick of me telling after a few cups has finally come true. The Empire is fallen, its cities are broken, and once more the land belongs to those who treasure it." Long Road sighs. "...It could have waited awhile, and been more gentle. But we have been to the peaks and seen...seen such things, Bob."

"Please, Bob is my father. Call me Bobert." That got a laugh out of Long Road, and a weak grin from Bob. "...World ended, huh?"

"As I always tell you, the world is fine. It is its people who have changed, and must change further. We are traveling towards the outskirts of Salt Bay City. There is good to be done there."

Bob arched his eyebrows, and then realization hit slowly. "...The farmers. We're heading out to make sure they live it through planting season, get in another harvest...ha, Clever Jossil really gonna torque all our balls after His priests spent so long bitching about cash crops. Good on 'em."

Long Road patted Bob's shoulder. "The time of your long isolation is, I think, ended. Though I should warn you..."

"...Of?"

"You recall your words to my daughter?"

Bob wracked his - "Do you mean the bit where I'd only remarry if the world ended?"

"Shortcut rather takes your view about the end of the world."

"Fuck me..."

"That seems to be her plan, yes."

You are distantly aware that your two rescues are slowly becoming (mostly) flesh again. The process doesn't seem to be painful, but they're making very distressed noises. Jill attends to you without a second thought, however, holding your hair away from your face. When you're done hacking and retching, she takes a clean rag from her pocket and starts to gently wipe the blood from your face. The two of you are absolutely soaked in it, and there's not a lot to be done about that.

The source of the distressed noises becomes quite clear once the two former employees (no capital letter, no capital letter, NO -) can move at least an arm apiece, as they start scratching at just about every inch of exposed flesh and rubbing their clothes otherwise; the twink (what the fuck is a twink...) peppers its relieved noises with 'ah fuck yeah' every now and again.

Corporate is not the only source of the glass statues. It can't be. But it did learn that from somewhere, and uses it to 'rehabilitate lost assets'. You can feel the disgusting memories in your mind still, clinging in a way your broken knowledge of the world won't. The hive-mind is, if you understand the terms right, a refracted collective nightmare; it is Corporate, the idea. As in, "I'm sorry sir, Corporate policy says I can't." As in, "Corporate policy unfortunately denies you coverage for pre-existing conditions." As in, "Corporate evaluations have determined that you aren't a good fit for our company." As in, "Corporate is coming in for a surprise inspection." You're not sure if each drone of the hive used to be an individual person, or if they manifested whole-cloth during the Impact, solidifying a collective nightmare that had been seething beneath the surface of Imperial society, but either way...

...Either way, they're Corporate. A beast with ten thousand mouths, that takes and takes and takes and expands and invades and suborns and devours and owns and lusts and takes and feeds and takes and takes and takes -

You spit a line of bile and saliva and accept Jill's help in standing up straight. She gently offers you the water bottle that's wedged into the frame of your backpack, and you take cautious, gentle sips. The first couple are dedicated just to swishing your mouth out, to get the acrid taste of vomit out of it, and then you carefully pace the next few. You don't need to provoke your stomach further.

Your rescues still have some glass parts of their bodies; notably, they both have glass eyes now. The grandma flexes an arm of stained glass, decorated with images of needles and thread, yarn, crochet hooks, and more. The other one - Charles, you can't keep thinking of it as 'the twink' - is staring at a glass leg that looks like someone froze a cross-section of rave lights.

"You okay?" you rasp at them.

"...Bitch are we okay?" Charles asks incredulously. "What the fuck was that action movie shit?"

"I wouldn't know. It's normal to me." You cough, and gently disentangle yourself from Jill. "...C'mon. We have some things to pick up while this place is clear, and then I'm gonna point you two to a safe place. Thanks for...if you hadn't called out, we wouldn't have known about Corporate. Or you."

The grandma gently pats your shoulder. "It's quite alright, dear. Thank you for your bravery."

Was that brave?

No, focus.

You pop the cylinder from your revolver and shake the casings out of it, leaving them to fall on the concrete floor of backstock. Charles surprises you by scooping them up, giving you a weird look, but you don't have the emotional energy to ask what the fuck the deal is there; you slot in a speedloader, twist it, and pull it back. The empty loader goes into your skirt pocket. The full cylinder goes into your revolver. This done, you lead the way back into Vivi's Yarn Barn proper, weapon up and taking gentle sips from your water. Here in a minute you'll need to snack on something, sit down for a second, but right now there's shit to do. You and Jill pillage paper bags from the cash registers and stuff them with a frankly unreasonable amount of sewing kits, spools of thread, fabric scissors, and books on sewing and tailoring, which you push into the arms of Charles and the grandma.

When the four of you emerge into the daylight, blinking against its harshness despite barely being inside the building for a few minutes, you point vaguely at the freeway exit. "Follow that to Exit 39, get off for Jillian's Farm and Fleet. Tell the people there that Orchid sent you, there's food and water and new clothes."

"Dear, are you going to be alright -"

"Now, please," you say softly. "So I know you're safe. Just stick to cover and you should be fine."

"Orchid," Jill chides softly. "...It's right though. Jack and Sasha will see you taken care of, and Orchid and I will be back shortly."

A deep breath from the grandma. She nods, just once. "It's been a pleasure meeting you so far, Orchid. Let it never be said the end of the world was an excuse for bad manners on my part - my name is Andrea Stillman, and this is my great-nephew, Charles Stillman."

"Charmed," Charles says, with a weak grin. The four of you have an awkward moment of 'well who the fuck is going to leave first', and eventually you break the spell by ripping open a chocolate bar and starting to eat it. This encourages Charles to tug its great-aunt's sleeve, and the two of them set off. You watch them go until they're out of sight, and then you collapse heavily onto your ass, breathing hard between bites of whatever food your hands find first in your pockets.

Jill half-crouches, using the head and handle of her axe as a prop to rest against, and sighs. "We still on, flower? We can go back home."

You chew. Swallow. Exhale through your nose. "...Those things are parasites clamped around the throat of the new world. They have to die, starting with the one in Bayview. If they don't, more people are going to get hurt, or die, or worse."

"...Worse than dying?"

"I'm starting to suspect I used to know a lot of things worse than dying." You discard your packaging onto the street and try to stand; Jill has to help. "...C'mon. I've got a plan, and if it's not workable we'll just get the stuff and leave."

* * * *

You'd said 'c'mon' like you were gonna get moving immediately, but the two of you absolutely do not, instead using the dispensary's restroom to clean up as best you can and relieve yourselves while you're at it. Jill is shaky and pale, and you rest your hand on her shoulder as the two of you approach Bayview, squeezing softly. "It's okay," you murmur. "...I'll protect you. I've got four friends in all the world right now, you know."

She chuckles weakly, but it seems to do her some good.

The parking lot is huge - you could fit your entire new home in the lot alone - and riddled with ruined cars. You're prepared to walk resolutely past sobbing statues, but you don't have to; someone or something has opened these up too, leading to another, far vaster circle of blood with no obvious trail leading away from it. You frown at it, but Jill seems to think it's a good sign. Maybe her optimism will be proven correct.

Like Sorrow & Sons, the sliding doors here have been replaced by stained glass. Unlike Sorrow & Sons, they're unlocked and operative, revealing an entranceway festooned with glass statues that sob and cry. 'It hurts' is a repeated refrain, and it wrenches your heart, just beneath the still-warm glass in your breast. There is, however, an actual person in a red-and-blue vest just before you reach the store; it snaps to attention as you approach, shaking in its clompy knee-high boots.

"W-welcome to Bayview! Can I-I, can I see your, um, madams your..."

Jill nudges you with an elbow, and the two of you produce membership cards that definitely don't have your names on them, but the person is so relieved they don't even care. "Just here to do some shopping," you murmur, as calmly as you can.

"G-good," the trembling person whispers. "M-My name is Mikayla, i-if you want to mention it on the survey..." It looks left, then right, and leans in, whispering harshly: "Don't s-steal anything. Okay?"

You nod, and Mikayla waves you through, pointing at where the two of you can get shopping carts. The wheels on yours rattle and squeak, but it bears your backpack just fine as you sling it off your back and into the basket.

The entrance you chose was near the so-called Fresh Department. The produce section is a ghost town, with only the statues available; crude signs apologize for the lack of product, promising shipments 'soon'. In place of the fruits and vegetables that should be on the empty displays are corpses, most still wearing backpacks or clutching guns or both, who have been impaled to the shelving with long lances of glass and steel; each has SHOPLIFTER daubed in blood on the floor in front of them. The deli and the meat department, however, seem to still be stocked, with their freezers and fridges full.

Terrified Employees - no, employees, get out of your fucking head Corporate, get out get out get out - watch you from behind the counters as you and Jill stroll past the bakery and into the dairy section. The store is remarkably clean, and as you look around you start counting cameras. There is a worrying amount of coverage.

Striding through the aisles at a slow pace are nearly-"normal" people, their heads bound in sharp helmets of glass and black silver that cover their eyes. As you watch, one of them simply walks through a shelf as if it's not there, but when you bump experimentally into one it's solid enough that -

* * * *

Asset Protection, status?

Normal, sir. Two new customers. No sign of shoplifting.

We see them. Stay on alert.

* * * *

These used to be people. Maybe still are. The helmets are assimilating them somehow, making them part of the Corporate hive-mind; you shudder as understanding of another layer of the collective nightmare seeps into you, flashes of mercenary death squads, guns for hire, and thugs that answer to no law but that of the Almighty Dollar. The hive is not particularly creative. Corporate would have made these drones-to-be out of their existing asset protection employees, but those are barely even rent-a-cops, they're basically just professional snitches. Bastards, maybe, but to go through this...

"What's the play?" Jill whispers.

You're going to need to draw Corporate out. Asking about applications might get you the local node of the hivemind, and worse comes to worst you can maybe escalate a customer service complaint. That part is easy. But there's a lot of people around, even some other 'customers' who try not to look directly at you, hustling through the aisles with fear in their eyes...

Pick 1
[ ] Asset Protection is expendable
[ ] Try to spare Asset Protection as much as possible

The Plan Is...
[ ] Get close and go loud
[ ] Break into employee-only areas and try to take Corporate out quietly
[ ] Cut the power; it'll kill the perishable goods, which sucks, but it'll also kill the cameras and force an evacuation if Sorrow & Sons is anything to go by.
[ ] Write-in? (We are not expending things at this time; that'll be part of the execution of the plan)