My collection of stories, both original and fanfiction. With a side of personal diary where I'll talk about everything I want to talk about within the rules of our magnanimous Overlords above.
Pandora's Box. A collection of Snippets, Thoughts and Ideas. By Travesty.
- Thread starter Travesty
- Start date
- Created
- Status
- Ongoing
- Watchers
- 9
- Recent readers
- 0
- Threadmarks
- 6
-
Statistics (4 threadmarks, 15k words)
User Total Travesty 4 -
Loading…
-
Loading…
And then there was light.
I like writing, I really do. If I could draw, I would only do that, because my ideas come out way better in a visual form. But then I decided to seriously post one of my ideas, it was more of a test than anything else.
I wanted to see if I could do it with a stake, with you people who would wait and read my chapters. Maybe it was because I do not have a plan for the stories I create, I just type on my keyboard until something not looking like an abomination comes out.
I admit that it is quite difficult, maybe because English isn't my main language, or it is just my typing, because I tend to spend something like 5 hours just to write somewhere alongside 3K words.
The heart of the matter is that I burned out in just four chapters, 15k words in total because I wanted to spit out 3-4k chapters every 2 days and it isn't possible for me to do so, because my mind always wanders somewhere, and I really can't keep the muse going for the same story for long.
So here it came this idea, a snippet thread, where I put everything that I liked, but I don't have the patience to keep writing. Alongside these chapters (There could even be more than one for each story!) I will keep a Diary in the Sidestory Section, something where I will talk about everything I want, and put it outside so that people can insult me for my ideas.
I don't even know If I could do it, so Mods, don't wait to inform me to cease my ramblings in there. There won't be politics nor religion, as those are matters I do not know enough about. I will mainly talk about things like games and such, arguments I do not have anyone else to talk about. Feel free to ignore everything in the Sidestory section!
Thanks for the support, Travesty out!
I wanted to see if I could do it with a stake, with you people who would wait and read my chapters. Maybe it was because I do not have a plan for the stories I create, I just type on my keyboard until something not looking like an abomination comes out.
I admit that it is quite difficult, maybe because English isn't my main language, or it is just my typing, because I tend to spend something like 5 hours just to write somewhere alongside 3K words.
The heart of the matter is that I burned out in just four chapters, 15k words in total because I wanted to spit out 3-4k chapters every 2 days and it isn't possible for me to do so, because my mind always wanders somewhere, and I really can't keep the muse going for the same story for long.
So here it came this idea, a snippet thread, where I put everything that I liked, but I don't have the patience to keep writing. Alongside these chapters (There could even be more than one for each story!) I will keep a Diary in the Sidestory Section, something where I will talk about everything I want, and put it outside so that people can insult me for my ideas.
I don't even know If I could do it, so Mods, don't wait to inform me to cease my ramblings in there. There won't be politics nor religion, as those are matters I do not know enough about. I will mainly talk about things like games and such, arguments I do not have anyone else to talk about. Feel free to ignore everything in the Sidestory section!
Thanks for the support, Travesty out!
Last edited:
I'm gonna make him a Spider he can't refuse -AU/Spiderman SI #1
Life never goes according to plan. Dying? Being reincarnated? Not even in my top 100 list of events that could have happened in my life. How did I die? Well, I failed to balance a ladder on only one side.
OSHA what? The pokemon?
Jokes apart, it had been a stupid idea. I needed to paint a wall over a set of stairs going down, I didn't have a taller ladder so I tried using the concrete handrest opposite the wall in question. As I'm currently in the body of a newborn, it didn't go as I envisioned.
My head weighed a ton, I couldn't move my arms like a normal human being, and worse of all, I was utterly incapable of holding a shit. It felt so embarrassing the first five times I took a crap in my diaper; it got old really fast though.
As weeks passed, I started noticing many different things in this new life of mine. The first and easiest to discover was the language that my parents spoke. English wasn't my first one but at least it meant I was still on Earth. Then I started listening to the TV over the thin walls and it was exceptionally depressive.
Mafia families, bank robberies, drug busts, it was the only argument that the channel talked about. This city was a cesspool of organized crime and whatever the fuck people did outside the law. What was the name of the city I was born in? Good old New York.
So not only I died, but I was reincarnated in America too. Or at least a version of it, because even if I wasn't that informed about the Big Apple, I still knew enough to realize that I didn't remember all of this crime in the city. More than three Mafia families waging war against each other? It would have appeared in the international news section almost everywhere.
And I was sure that we weren't in the roaring twenties, mostly thanks to the flat-screen television in the other room. Talking about something else, like the constant screams that echoed inside my new home, even if calling it home was an exaggeration.
I knew that prices in NY were on the rise, but this? I lived inside a three-room apartment, or at least what remained of it. From what I saw from the times my new mother cradled me around the house, it was something outside those hoarder TV series. The walls were practically torn open, showing the internal insulation; piles of boxes towered over my new parents and the list went on.
"I told you I don't give a fuck! Mike's waiting, so get the fuck out of my face."
Right, the screams. I told you about those right? Dear old papa wasn't very right in the head, that or he was just the noisiest piece of shit I ever had the pleasure to listen to. He went on and on with his grating voice, 'Valeria go there, why didn't you prepare something to eat? Mike's here, Mike, Mike, Mike'. If I didn't know better, I would have thought that Mike was his real spouse.
Jacob Winters was my new father, mostly American but with an Italian great-grandfather, my new mother being Valeria Winters nee Ramos, with half Puerto Rican origins. It felt strange, going from a European state with mostly a single line of ethnicity to a three-way and probably more line. Who would have thought that in my next life I would have been a quarter Puerto Rican and of Italian descent? Certainly not me!
Going back to the screams and if it wasn't already obvious, my family wasn't really in a good place. Financially, emotionally, in every way that counted towards being a functional household.
And I was able to understand all of this in the span of only a couple of weeks, by being inside a different room altogether.
So life got into a monotonous loop. Wake up, shit, eat, sleep, eat, shit sleep, rinse and repeat every day for six months. I felt like going nuts by the third day, but I adapted nonetheless. Then after those months, I finally had a face to assign to my father's alleged secret lover, Micheal Mazzuola, also called Long Mike.
And long he was, as the motherfucker towered over everyone in the room, he even needed to bend over while going through the doors.
"Jackie! The underboss is waiting for all of us, we need to go, now!" The giant spoke, his voice as low as I had imagined but with a distinctive Italian accent. So yes, I was reborn as the son of a criminal, how creative.
It didn't take long for the news to start talking about what they were going to do, as not even half an hour later, they only talked about the most recent skirmish between the Giordanos and the Macalusos.
Only a couple of dead from both sides but mostly general damage to the city.
Dear father returned the same night, a bottle of scotch in hand and his left shoulder bandaged. But he was smiling, and it meant that something happened, something good enough to turn such a man into a chuckling kid.
Two weeks to discover what happened on that day. Well, two weeks and a new house to be more precise. We were now in Queens, not the best part but better than where we were before. I had now a room to myself, with one of those iconic fire escapes that went to the terrace and all that.
The guests that came and went from our new house talked a lot. Mostly of how my father saved the Don's grandson, taking a bullet in his place. So the mystery was solved, he went up in ranks so now we were in a better economic position. Not that my mother cared, as I personally assisted at her breaking down day after day.
I couldn't do anything of impact, to maybe let her think of something else. I could only say 'Googoogaagaa' a handful of times before it got old. At one year old I was already walking, by two I was both speaking and shitting like a somewhat normal human being.
The situation didn't change much, my father went to work whenever they called, it could be four times a week or once a month. If he got restless, he hit Valeria; If he wasn't good enough during a job, he hit her; if he was upset, he hit her.
Every time I heard that damn sound of his hand, I felt like screaming. But what could a two and a half year old kid do? What I could do to stop him? Nothing. If I really tried screaming, he started hitting her harder. The first time I tried doing it he almost hit me too, it was only thanks to her that I didn't get my face caved in.
I still attempted to do whatever I could, even only trying to break something to distract him. I did get hit in the end, two months before my fifth birthday.
We had some guests of honor at our house. Long Mike, who had become one of the Capos of the Giordano Family. Manuel "Willy Pete" Caruso and last but most important of all, Alex Giordano, the grandson of the Don.
They were celebrating something that I didn't care about, while Mom was cooking something and I was beside her trying to help. 'Trying' being written in big bold letters, as five years old hands weren't the best for motor control, but it was the thought that counted.
We finished what we had to do, before going inside the living room where the quartet was playing a game of poker, the smoke choked me a little but I trudged on right behind my mom.
"And so I said 'I don't give a fuck if your son doesn't have the money, we protect, he pays'. The son of a bitch even tried to shank me, well, now he doesn't have kneecaps anymore!" The thunderous laughters echoed inside the room, as my father recounted one of his most recent outings.
I stayed behind as my mom approached the table. She held a couple of food trays that she gently put down on the side of the table.
"Finally! Let's take a...what's this?" I felt sweat slip down the nape of my neck, my heart rate spiked at the tone of my father's voice.
"I told you that for today I wanted the casserole! I told you multiple times, and you didn't listen, like fucking always!" His voice increased and I started moving.
My little feet weren't fast enough and I heard the sound before seeing the blow. It was a nauseating crack, my father's ring glinting under the room light. Valeria was sprawled on the floor, hands towards her lips as they bled all over the carpet.
My father started moving towards her but I was at least fast enough this time, positioning right in front of both of them. I kept my eyes forward, looking right into his eyes. My heart was pounding and I was scared shitless.
I was an adult? Yes, but the motherfucker towered over me, everyone was taller than me, even the fucking rats could bench-press my little body. His hand was the size of my torso and I could hear how they started calling him 'Heavy hands Jackie' and he had a good reason to be called that, believe me on that.
"Man! The kid got balls Jackie, we gonna make a man out of him soon enough!" Alex's voice was the last thing I heard before blanking out.
Didn't even feel a thing, it probably was because I expected to be slapped, right? It wasn't because I shut down the moment my brain was scrambled like an egg, right? Thankfully, I did wake up in the end, thanks to whatever entity made me reincarnate, with the worst headache I ever had in both this and my previous life.
It hurt like a bitch and it's coming from someone who broke his head once. My vision was blurry and I could feel something soft touching my eyebrow. The moment I tried to speak it felt like swallowing sandpaper and coffing only worsened the feeling.
"Ssssh mijo, everything's going to be alright." Mom's voice pounded in my ears as I slowly fell asleep again.
It was morning when my eyes opened for a second time, head still pounding but my vision was less blurry. I could hear Mom's breath behind me and I tried to slowly move towards her. It wasn't a good sight, half of her lower face was purple and swollen, and I could clearly see the lip being split open.
I wasn't even there to help her and I dreaded the thought of her being alone trying to treat both her and her son's injuries. It was a shitty life, couldn't I be reborn into a normal family? At least somewhere where my father didn't hit like an eighteen-wheeler.
I felt her waking up but I didn't even have the time to talk, as she suddenly started lightly prodding my aching face.
"Sweetie, why are you awake? Go back to sleep." She said, hands already crawling through my hair.
"I'm not sleepy" I tried to say, but it came out slurred. Everything felt as if I was immersed in molasses.
"I know mi amor, but you need to sleep. In a couple of months you're going to start school. You're going to make so many friends and have some much fun, but you need to sleep before that." My eyelids started weighing a ton, and before even noticing, I was asleep again.
My fifth birthday passed without serious problems. My face returned somewhat to normal if I didn't focus on the deep cut on my right eyebrow. Valeria got the same fate, her left lip being the victim in this case; her face was still fairly swollen but far better than the first days.
Then school started and things became...complicated. For the past years, I had so many things on my mind that starting school again didn't pop up in my head until my mom reminded me.
And I didn't know if I could do it. I was an adult in the body of a child, I could fake well enough being childish to a degree, but playing with them? As one of them? Practically impossible.
Kids weren't famous for being rational or having any sense whatsoever. They could play one moment and scream while project-vomiting the next. They were a force of chaos without a way to control them. Me? I liked silence, blissful, gorgeous silence.
I liked fantasy books and building figures made up of a ton of tiny little pieces. I liked martial arts and watching rugby with my father. Well, at least these were the things I liked doing in the before, now? I mostly spent the time helping my mom do whatever she needed to do.
We were technically still piss poor. Technically because it was my father who kept all the money gained by illegal means. He gave my mom enough to buy groceries and some secondhand clothes. She still bought me things, trying her best to save some money here and there.
The fairy tale books she bought me for my birthday were the best gifts I had in a lot of time. My mind was dulled from all the years without a creative output. She read them to me, before going to bed or during the worst days, sometimes alternating between English and Spanish.
I think she did it to have a way to talk only between us, even if it wasn't the best language to use with someone who spoke Italian, or what remained of the language after being the third generation of an immigrant. I knew it better than my father, probably even better than the Don himself as I was a fucking Italian in my previous life.
Could I have been born in another of the stereotypical mafia organizations? Why not Irish or Chinese or even Russian? Why Italian again? So cliche.
So school started and I hated every moment of it. Doing the ABC? Maddening. Playing with other children? Impossible. Sleeping during the afternoon? Best part of the experience. A kid did project-vomited the first day of school, as if I had some precog powers.
As the months passed, the desire to bang my little head on my little school desk increased exponentially. Some kids started prodding me about my eyebrow, some saying that it made me cool, others that it was scary. Even the teachers asked me about it and my house stairs were the scapegoat for this time.
My family situation didn't change much, my father spent most time outside, as the clashes between families got worse year after year. He got a better car, tinted windows and all that jazz. He even gave more money to my mom, mostly because he started inviting more people over to our house.
Don't let all of this fool you, he still hit us like a son of a bitch, thank god he stopped using that damn ring after that first time. The stairs excuse worked only a couple of times more and my mother mostly told them that I was a very energetic child. I knew it wasn't going to last much longer, as the same excuses couldn't work for her too.
It did come to a fairly expected conclusion. During the first year of school, the teachers started asking more questions, then they started prodding too much. So much so that I ended up being picked up by a couple of guys who worked for my father. And they had a nice and respectable conversation with my teachers. It consisted mostly of very descriptive outcomes if they kept asking those questions.
At the start of the second year, those same teachers didn't even watch me in the eyes, one of them even transferred to a different school. But all things weren't bad, my mom still loved me very much, she still tried teaching me Spanish with a very successful result as I picked up the language as if it was another part of me.
It felt strange, my memory was never this good in my previous life, things didn't come as easy as this time around. I had only elementary subjects to compare myself but still, it would probably help me study better in the future.
Another development was the new kid in class.
"Welcome back everyone! We have a new friend with us today, her name is Maya, and she is six years old. Maya is a little different from us in one way, she is deaf, which means she can't hear like most of us!" The teacher talked some more, showing even a couple of hand gestures for basic greetings.
"Now, let's give Maya a warm welcome as she joins our class, and remember! We're all friends here!" The room exploded in a cacophony of screams, laughters and applauses.
I didn't think much about it, it was another kid who just had something different from the others, I could only hope she wasn't going to project vomiting too. She moved slowly, her red hair swinging from side to side as her green eyes took all the class around her.
The only free seats were the ones next to me. Free since the time I was outed as the son of a criminal, a little gift in these hard times as I wasn't in the blast radius of the other kids. She scuttled over, her tiny shoes glowing in a rhythmic pattern...god I loved those shoes, I wanted a pair of those too.
The first period passed without problems, some kids tried to talk to her before recalling she couldn't hear nor respond, they got bored really fast. Then she surprised me, pulling out a book that wasn't of this year or for the following years. It was a middle school science book. It meant that in my class there was a very intelligent kid, or a very bored one.
I remained silent, observing what she was reading about. Physical and chemical properties of matter, not the hardest argument to understand but it was probably one of the most fun to learn about. Melting point, electrical conductivity, color, all things that were very important to comprehend.
I got lost so much in my mind that I didn't notice three kids approaching the little genius.
Kids that had the habit of being little shit to others. Naturally, it was mostly harmless jokes, like name-calling, obnoxious sounds, and everything else that a normal six years old was capable of doing to annoy another kid.
"What's this? It's a picture book? I wanna see the pictures!" One of the kids screamed, picking up the book without even asking.
"P-phy-si-cal? What's a 'propert-ies'?" He kept butchering the words, trying his best to understand what was written in the book.
"Wait! Lemme see it too!" Another component of the trio screeched, one hand pulling the cover.
"Me too!" The final member joined, another hand to the tangle.
They screamed and each one of them pulled the book in their own direction. Maya's eyes were going from one child to the other while her face had a bewildered expression. It continued for a couple of seconds before the sound that I expected since the start happened, the terrible sound of torn paper. Everyone stopped suddenly, eyes going to the ripped book on the ground.
"Whatever, it was boring anyways." And like that everything ended, the trio moving towards someone else.
I slowly watched tears forming in Maya's eyes, and at that moment I felt guilty. I knew what probably was going to happen, and I didn't do anything to stop it, mostly because the teachers would have reacted badly, like every other time regarding my behavior since that friendly conversation.
So I stood up, slowly walked towards the ripped book and somewhat put back together the pages, they would still fall but at least they were back in order now. I placed it in front of her and walked back to my desk.
I tried my best to ignore her, I didn't want her to be the kid who was friends with the son of a criminal. But it wasn't meant to be, as I felt a finger poking my shoulder. I turned around and saw her green eyes looking right into my ember ones, before her hands started moving in one of the motions that the teacher showed us before.
'Thank you' she signed, and I answered in the same way 'You're welcome'.
They were fairly easy motions, the first being bringing a flat hand to your lips and then moving it forward and slightly downward in a sweeping motion, and the second being even easier to remember, a vertical open hand with the thumb touching my chest.
She smiled brightly before going back to her seat and the remains of her book. Watching her reaction to me answering her, it felt like no one ever tried to learn at least the basic words, or probably not enough ones to have a basic conversation.
The school day finished without any other problem. I was picked up and when I walked toward the door of my apartment, I was surprised to see Maya standing in front of the next door. I knew we had a new neighbor, but what a coincidence that she was my new classmate too.
Next to her was probably her mother, mostly because of the same red hair. I saw Maya getting her mother's attention before she began signing so fast that I felt my eyes starting to cross. That or she was trying to reanimate the old Kages.
"Hey there! Are you one of Maya's classmates?" The woman spoke after finishing the conversation with her daughter.
"Yes ma'am, my name is Arthur Winters, pleased to meet you." Did I sound too much like a kid trying to be a grown-up? Was she going to laugh at me? Have I become too paranoid?
"What a gentleman! What do you say if I prepare some cookies while you and Maya play together? She told me something about a book?"
I felt my breath itching for a second. Could I do it or it was too dangerous for them? My father returned home fairly late since the start of the year, but I couldn't count on that chance alone, what would happen if I wasn't there?
"I'm going to ask my mom first." I didn't even let her answer as I bolted inside my house, walking towards the kitchen, where my mom was mindlessly chopping something on the kitchen counter.
"Mom? Can I-" I stopped talking as I found my face cupped by her hands.
"Yes! Don't look at me like that mijo, I heard everything from inside. Give me a second to prepare and we can go together to say hello to the new neighbors".
And that's how I found myself inside my new classmate's bedroom, sitting on the floor with a plate of steaming cookies in front of us. Her room was and wasn't what I expected for a six years old girl. She liked green, in all tones and forms; she liked science, something I could easily tell from all the posters and objects around.
Then there were the plushies, them being the reason why we were sitting on the floor. Her bed was full of them, dogs, dolphins, lions, every type of beast was present. On the corner beside her desk, there was a small library bereft of kid books. Chemistry, astronomy, history, all books for children far older than her.
She must have noticed me staring at her books, because while still munching on a cookie she walked towards the bookshelf, pulling out another version of the same book she had during school. She answered the question forming in my mind the moment she handed me a note she had quickly written.
'It wasn't the first time it happened. Mom bought copies of the books I like the most.' I snorted, before making some space for her.
We spent the rest of the time reading the book and writing to each other, mostly about our favorite parts of the small book. I tended more towards the physical part while she toward the chemical. I could see a glint in her eyes when we went through the part about flammability.
Something else I noticed was her window, with a very familiar fire escape. Before I had the time to see for myself, mom called us into the living room because we needed to go back home. We were almost outside when I felt something slightly pulling my sleeve back; turning around, I saw a flash of red hair giving me a book before running back to her room.
"Thank you for coming to play with her, it means a lot for the both of us." Maya's mom aka Amelia Joyce spoke with a big smile plastered on her face.
We walked towards our house and I could see my mom smiling brightly the whole time. It had been so long since I saw her doing a real one that made me smile too. Mine became even larger when I noticed the title of the book Maya gave me, 'Handsign for Beginners'.
The good mood vanished as we entered the house, where we saw Jacob sitting on the sofa, a furious expression on his face.
It was something about a robbery that ended badly. For the error of a stupid wannabe gangster, Jacob returned early and we paid the price for it. He didn't care that we went to the neighbor, but he still hit us as if his life depended on it.
Fortunately for us, it was Saturday. It meant that I had at least a day to somewhat heal. The black eye was still present on Monday, but it was better than nothing.
It only happened a couple of times more before Amelia started asking questions as I continued to spend evenings at her house. Not only she was a mother, but she was also a nurse who knew too much about wounds for me or my mom to lie convincingly. Quoting the woman 'Falling from the stairs doesn't cause only a black eye and a swollen face'.
"Please Miss Joyce, please don't bring all of this up again. I don't want you or Maya to get into trouble because of my dad." I pleaded with everything I could muster, I really didn't want a repetition of what happened at school; that or even something worse.
"You know that I can't do it, Arthur. I can't sleep soundly at night knowing that my daughter's only friend and his mother are abused almost daily." Her eyes were almost on fire, I could feel her intent from where I sat in front of her.
I could only think about one way to stop her definitely, something that I didn't like doing one bit.
"Then...then I will stop being her friend." Our eyes met and I didn't stop staring.
I needed her to stop, and if it meant losing the only kid I could be friends with, I would happily do so. She kept looking at me, her hands clenched on the chair handrails. It lasted more than ten seconds before she closed her eyes and exhaled deeply.
"Fine, fine! Have it your way...but the moment something happens, both you and your mom come running to me, am I understood?" Her voice expressed no rejection.
"Ma'am yes ma'am!" My voice cracked before I ran toward Maya's room. I was both happy and remorseful; I had probably saved an innocent family from getting into unnecessary trouble, but I had to blackmail her to do that, it left me with a bitter aftertaste.
So life went on, now with someone who knew how to actually heal the evergrowing number of scars both me and mom had. The school year finished without problems and I memorized the book Maya gave me in only three days, something that made her extremely happy.
Something did happen only six months after that conversation with Amelia. I was helping Mom clean the house, the TV blaring in the background. The news was going on about the recent increase in criminal organization activities until the channel changed to an interview.
They talked with someone called Theodore 'Tony' Starling, a man who looked fairly similar to another man from my previous life. I froze in front of the TV, eyes staring at the man who was almost the exact copy of Robert Downey Jr. when he did Iron Man.
He had some differences, like the bright brown eyes tending toward green, or the fact that he missed half of his right arm. They talked some more before the whole room of interviewers quieted down. The man briefly coughed in his hand before an immense sense of deja vu struck me.
"The truth is...I'm Titanium Man" And everything exploded in a cacophony of voices.
OSHA what? The pokemon?
Jokes apart, it had been a stupid idea. I needed to paint a wall over a set of stairs going down, I didn't have a taller ladder so I tried using the concrete handrest opposite the wall in question. As I'm currently in the body of a newborn, it didn't go as I envisioned.
My head weighed a ton, I couldn't move my arms like a normal human being, and worse of all, I was utterly incapable of holding a shit. It felt so embarrassing the first five times I took a crap in my diaper; it got old really fast though.
As weeks passed, I started noticing many different things in this new life of mine. The first and easiest to discover was the language that my parents spoke. English wasn't my first one but at least it meant I was still on Earth. Then I started listening to the TV over the thin walls and it was exceptionally depressive.
Mafia families, bank robberies, drug busts, it was the only argument that the channel talked about. This city was a cesspool of organized crime and whatever the fuck people did outside the law. What was the name of the city I was born in? Good old New York.
So not only I died, but I was reincarnated in America too. Or at least a version of it, because even if I wasn't that informed about the Big Apple, I still knew enough to realize that I didn't remember all of this crime in the city. More than three Mafia families waging war against each other? It would have appeared in the international news section almost everywhere.
And I was sure that we weren't in the roaring twenties, mostly thanks to the flat-screen television in the other room. Talking about something else, like the constant screams that echoed inside my new home, even if calling it home was an exaggeration.
I knew that prices in NY were on the rise, but this? I lived inside a three-room apartment, or at least what remained of it. From what I saw from the times my new mother cradled me around the house, it was something outside those hoarder TV series. The walls were practically torn open, showing the internal insulation; piles of boxes towered over my new parents and the list went on.
"I told you I don't give a fuck! Mike's waiting, so get the fuck out of my face."
Right, the screams. I told you about those right? Dear old papa wasn't very right in the head, that or he was just the noisiest piece of shit I ever had the pleasure to listen to. He went on and on with his grating voice, 'Valeria go there, why didn't you prepare something to eat? Mike's here, Mike, Mike, Mike'. If I didn't know better, I would have thought that Mike was his real spouse.
Jacob Winters was my new father, mostly American but with an Italian great-grandfather, my new mother being Valeria Winters nee Ramos, with half Puerto Rican origins. It felt strange, going from a European state with mostly a single line of ethnicity to a three-way and probably more line. Who would have thought that in my next life I would have been a quarter Puerto Rican and of Italian descent? Certainly not me!
Going back to the screams and if it wasn't already obvious, my family wasn't really in a good place. Financially, emotionally, in every way that counted towards being a functional household.
And I was able to understand all of this in the span of only a couple of weeks, by being inside a different room altogether.
So life got into a monotonous loop. Wake up, shit, eat, sleep, eat, shit sleep, rinse and repeat every day for six months. I felt like going nuts by the third day, but I adapted nonetheless. Then after those months, I finally had a face to assign to my father's alleged secret lover, Micheal Mazzuola, also called Long Mike.
And long he was, as the motherfucker towered over everyone in the room, he even needed to bend over while going through the doors.
"Jackie! The underboss is waiting for all of us, we need to go, now!" The giant spoke, his voice as low as I had imagined but with a distinctive Italian accent. So yes, I was reborn as the son of a criminal, how creative.
It didn't take long for the news to start talking about what they were going to do, as not even half an hour later, they only talked about the most recent skirmish between the Giordanos and the Macalusos.
Only a couple of dead from both sides but mostly general damage to the city.
Dear father returned the same night, a bottle of scotch in hand and his left shoulder bandaged. But he was smiling, and it meant that something happened, something good enough to turn such a man into a chuckling kid.
Two weeks to discover what happened on that day. Well, two weeks and a new house to be more precise. We were now in Queens, not the best part but better than where we were before. I had now a room to myself, with one of those iconic fire escapes that went to the terrace and all that.
The guests that came and went from our new house talked a lot. Mostly of how my father saved the Don's grandson, taking a bullet in his place. So the mystery was solved, he went up in ranks so now we were in a better economic position. Not that my mother cared, as I personally assisted at her breaking down day after day.
I couldn't do anything of impact, to maybe let her think of something else. I could only say 'Googoogaagaa' a handful of times before it got old. At one year old I was already walking, by two I was both speaking and shitting like a somewhat normal human being.
The situation didn't change much, my father went to work whenever they called, it could be four times a week or once a month. If he got restless, he hit Valeria; If he wasn't good enough during a job, he hit her; if he was upset, he hit her.
Every time I heard that damn sound of his hand, I felt like screaming. But what could a two and a half year old kid do? What I could do to stop him? Nothing. If I really tried screaming, he started hitting her harder. The first time I tried doing it he almost hit me too, it was only thanks to her that I didn't get my face caved in.
I still attempted to do whatever I could, even only trying to break something to distract him. I did get hit in the end, two months before my fifth birthday.
We had some guests of honor at our house. Long Mike, who had become one of the Capos of the Giordano Family. Manuel "Willy Pete" Caruso and last but most important of all, Alex Giordano, the grandson of the Don.
They were celebrating something that I didn't care about, while Mom was cooking something and I was beside her trying to help. 'Trying' being written in big bold letters, as five years old hands weren't the best for motor control, but it was the thought that counted.
We finished what we had to do, before going inside the living room where the quartet was playing a game of poker, the smoke choked me a little but I trudged on right behind my mom.
"And so I said 'I don't give a fuck if your son doesn't have the money, we protect, he pays'. The son of a bitch even tried to shank me, well, now he doesn't have kneecaps anymore!" The thunderous laughters echoed inside the room, as my father recounted one of his most recent outings.
I stayed behind as my mom approached the table. She held a couple of food trays that she gently put down on the side of the table.
"Finally! Let's take a...what's this?" I felt sweat slip down the nape of my neck, my heart rate spiked at the tone of my father's voice.
"I told you that for today I wanted the casserole! I told you multiple times, and you didn't listen, like fucking always!" His voice increased and I started moving.
My little feet weren't fast enough and I heard the sound before seeing the blow. It was a nauseating crack, my father's ring glinting under the room light. Valeria was sprawled on the floor, hands towards her lips as they bled all over the carpet.
My father started moving towards her but I was at least fast enough this time, positioning right in front of both of them. I kept my eyes forward, looking right into his eyes. My heart was pounding and I was scared shitless.
I was an adult? Yes, but the motherfucker towered over me, everyone was taller than me, even the fucking rats could bench-press my little body. His hand was the size of my torso and I could hear how they started calling him 'Heavy hands Jackie' and he had a good reason to be called that, believe me on that.
"Man! The kid got balls Jackie, we gonna make a man out of him soon enough!" Alex's voice was the last thing I heard before blanking out.
Didn't even feel a thing, it probably was because I expected to be slapped, right? It wasn't because I shut down the moment my brain was scrambled like an egg, right? Thankfully, I did wake up in the end, thanks to whatever entity made me reincarnate, with the worst headache I ever had in both this and my previous life.
It hurt like a bitch and it's coming from someone who broke his head once. My vision was blurry and I could feel something soft touching my eyebrow. The moment I tried to speak it felt like swallowing sandpaper and coffing only worsened the feeling.
"Ssssh mijo, everything's going to be alright." Mom's voice pounded in my ears as I slowly fell asleep again.
It was morning when my eyes opened for a second time, head still pounding but my vision was less blurry. I could hear Mom's breath behind me and I tried to slowly move towards her. It wasn't a good sight, half of her lower face was purple and swollen, and I could clearly see the lip being split open.
I wasn't even there to help her and I dreaded the thought of her being alone trying to treat both her and her son's injuries. It was a shitty life, couldn't I be reborn into a normal family? At least somewhere where my father didn't hit like an eighteen-wheeler.
I felt her waking up but I didn't even have the time to talk, as she suddenly started lightly prodding my aching face.
"Sweetie, why are you awake? Go back to sleep." She said, hands already crawling through my hair.
"I'm not sleepy" I tried to say, but it came out slurred. Everything felt as if I was immersed in molasses.
"I know mi amor, but you need to sleep. In a couple of months you're going to start school. You're going to make so many friends and have some much fun, but you need to sleep before that." My eyelids started weighing a ton, and before even noticing, I was asleep again.
My fifth birthday passed without serious problems. My face returned somewhat to normal if I didn't focus on the deep cut on my right eyebrow. Valeria got the same fate, her left lip being the victim in this case; her face was still fairly swollen but far better than the first days.
Then school started and things became...complicated. For the past years, I had so many things on my mind that starting school again didn't pop up in my head until my mom reminded me.
And I didn't know if I could do it. I was an adult in the body of a child, I could fake well enough being childish to a degree, but playing with them? As one of them? Practically impossible.
Kids weren't famous for being rational or having any sense whatsoever. They could play one moment and scream while project-vomiting the next. They were a force of chaos without a way to control them. Me? I liked silence, blissful, gorgeous silence.
I liked fantasy books and building figures made up of a ton of tiny little pieces. I liked martial arts and watching rugby with my father. Well, at least these were the things I liked doing in the before, now? I mostly spent the time helping my mom do whatever she needed to do.
We were technically still piss poor. Technically because it was my father who kept all the money gained by illegal means. He gave my mom enough to buy groceries and some secondhand clothes. She still bought me things, trying her best to save some money here and there.
The fairy tale books she bought me for my birthday were the best gifts I had in a lot of time. My mind was dulled from all the years without a creative output. She read them to me, before going to bed or during the worst days, sometimes alternating between English and Spanish.
I think she did it to have a way to talk only between us, even if it wasn't the best language to use with someone who spoke Italian, or what remained of the language after being the third generation of an immigrant. I knew it better than my father, probably even better than the Don himself as I was a fucking Italian in my previous life.
Could I have been born in another of the stereotypical mafia organizations? Why not Irish or Chinese or even Russian? Why Italian again? So cliche.
So school started and I hated every moment of it. Doing the ABC? Maddening. Playing with other children? Impossible. Sleeping during the afternoon? Best part of the experience. A kid did project-vomited the first day of school, as if I had some precog powers.
As the months passed, the desire to bang my little head on my little school desk increased exponentially. Some kids started prodding me about my eyebrow, some saying that it made me cool, others that it was scary. Even the teachers asked me about it and my house stairs were the scapegoat for this time.
My family situation didn't change much, my father spent most time outside, as the clashes between families got worse year after year. He got a better car, tinted windows and all that jazz. He even gave more money to my mom, mostly because he started inviting more people over to our house.
Don't let all of this fool you, he still hit us like a son of a bitch, thank god he stopped using that damn ring after that first time. The stairs excuse worked only a couple of times more and my mother mostly told them that I was a very energetic child. I knew it wasn't going to last much longer, as the same excuses couldn't work for her too.
It did come to a fairly expected conclusion. During the first year of school, the teachers started asking more questions, then they started prodding too much. So much so that I ended up being picked up by a couple of guys who worked for my father. And they had a nice and respectable conversation with my teachers. It consisted mostly of very descriptive outcomes if they kept asking those questions.
At the start of the second year, those same teachers didn't even watch me in the eyes, one of them even transferred to a different school. But all things weren't bad, my mom still loved me very much, she still tried teaching me Spanish with a very successful result as I picked up the language as if it was another part of me.
It felt strange, my memory was never this good in my previous life, things didn't come as easy as this time around. I had only elementary subjects to compare myself but still, it would probably help me study better in the future.
Another development was the new kid in class.
"Welcome back everyone! We have a new friend with us today, her name is Maya, and she is six years old. Maya is a little different from us in one way, she is deaf, which means she can't hear like most of us!" The teacher talked some more, showing even a couple of hand gestures for basic greetings.
"Now, let's give Maya a warm welcome as she joins our class, and remember! We're all friends here!" The room exploded in a cacophony of screams, laughters and applauses.
I didn't think much about it, it was another kid who just had something different from the others, I could only hope she wasn't going to project vomiting too. She moved slowly, her red hair swinging from side to side as her green eyes took all the class around her.
The only free seats were the ones next to me. Free since the time I was outed as the son of a criminal, a little gift in these hard times as I wasn't in the blast radius of the other kids. She scuttled over, her tiny shoes glowing in a rhythmic pattern...god I loved those shoes, I wanted a pair of those too.
The first period passed without problems, some kids tried to talk to her before recalling she couldn't hear nor respond, they got bored really fast. Then she surprised me, pulling out a book that wasn't of this year or for the following years. It was a middle school science book. It meant that in my class there was a very intelligent kid, or a very bored one.
I remained silent, observing what she was reading about. Physical and chemical properties of matter, not the hardest argument to understand but it was probably one of the most fun to learn about. Melting point, electrical conductivity, color, all things that were very important to comprehend.
I got lost so much in my mind that I didn't notice three kids approaching the little genius.
Kids that had the habit of being little shit to others. Naturally, it was mostly harmless jokes, like name-calling, obnoxious sounds, and everything else that a normal six years old was capable of doing to annoy another kid.
"What's this? It's a picture book? I wanna see the pictures!" One of the kids screamed, picking up the book without even asking.
"P-phy-si-cal? What's a 'propert-ies'?" He kept butchering the words, trying his best to understand what was written in the book.
"Wait! Lemme see it too!" Another component of the trio screeched, one hand pulling the cover.
"Me too!" The final member joined, another hand to the tangle.
They screamed and each one of them pulled the book in their own direction. Maya's eyes were going from one child to the other while her face had a bewildered expression. It continued for a couple of seconds before the sound that I expected since the start happened, the terrible sound of torn paper. Everyone stopped suddenly, eyes going to the ripped book on the ground.
"Whatever, it was boring anyways." And like that everything ended, the trio moving towards someone else.
I slowly watched tears forming in Maya's eyes, and at that moment I felt guilty. I knew what probably was going to happen, and I didn't do anything to stop it, mostly because the teachers would have reacted badly, like every other time regarding my behavior since that friendly conversation.
So I stood up, slowly walked towards the ripped book and somewhat put back together the pages, they would still fall but at least they were back in order now. I placed it in front of her and walked back to my desk.
I tried my best to ignore her, I didn't want her to be the kid who was friends with the son of a criminal. But it wasn't meant to be, as I felt a finger poking my shoulder. I turned around and saw her green eyes looking right into my ember ones, before her hands started moving in one of the motions that the teacher showed us before.
'Thank you' she signed, and I answered in the same way 'You're welcome'.
They were fairly easy motions, the first being bringing a flat hand to your lips and then moving it forward and slightly downward in a sweeping motion, and the second being even easier to remember, a vertical open hand with the thumb touching my chest.
She smiled brightly before going back to her seat and the remains of her book. Watching her reaction to me answering her, it felt like no one ever tried to learn at least the basic words, or probably not enough ones to have a basic conversation.
The school day finished without any other problem. I was picked up and when I walked toward the door of my apartment, I was surprised to see Maya standing in front of the next door. I knew we had a new neighbor, but what a coincidence that she was my new classmate too.
Next to her was probably her mother, mostly because of the same red hair. I saw Maya getting her mother's attention before she began signing so fast that I felt my eyes starting to cross. That or she was trying to reanimate the old Kages.
"Hey there! Are you one of Maya's classmates?" The woman spoke after finishing the conversation with her daughter.
"Yes ma'am, my name is Arthur Winters, pleased to meet you." Did I sound too much like a kid trying to be a grown-up? Was she going to laugh at me? Have I become too paranoid?
"What a gentleman! What do you say if I prepare some cookies while you and Maya play together? She told me something about a book?"
I felt my breath itching for a second. Could I do it or it was too dangerous for them? My father returned home fairly late since the start of the year, but I couldn't count on that chance alone, what would happen if I wasn't there?
"I'm going to ask my mom first." I didn't even let her answer as I bolted inside my house, walking towards the kitchen, where my mom was mindlessly chopping something on the kitchen counter.
"Mom? Can I-" I stopped talking as I found my face cupped by her hands.
"Yes! Don't look at me like that mijo, I heard everything from inside. Give me a second to prepare and we can go together to say hello to the new neighbors".
And that's how I found myself inside my new classmate's bedroom, sitting on the floor with a plate of steaming cookies in front of us. Her room was and wasn't what I expected for a six years old girl. She liked green, in all tones and forms; she liked science, something I could easily tell from all the posters and objects around.
Then there were the plushies, them being the reason why we were sitting on the floor. Her bed was full of them, dogs, dolphins, lions, every type of beast was present. On the corner beside her desk, there was a small library bereft of kid books. Chemistry, astronomy, history, all books for children far older than her.
She must have noticed me staring at her books, because while still munching on a cookie she walked towards the bookshelf, pulling out another version of the same book she had during school. She answered the question forming in my mind the moment she handed me a note she had quickly written.
'It wasn't the first time it happened. Mom bought copies of the books I like the most.' I snorted, before making some space for her.
We spent the rest of the time reading the book and writing to each other, mostly about our favorite parts of the small book. I tended more towards the physical part while she toward the chemical. I could see a glint in her eyes when we went through the part about flammability.
Something else I noticed was her window, with a very familiar fire escape. Before I had the time to see for myself, mom called us into the living room because we needed to go back home. We were almost outside when I felt something slightly pulling my sleeve back; turning around, I saw a flash of red hair giving me a book before running back to her room.
"Thank you for coming to play with her, it means a lot for the both of us." Maya's mom aka Amelia Joyce spoke with a big smile plastered on her face.
We walked towards our house and I could see my mom smiling brightly the whole time. It had been so long since I saw her doing a real one that made me smile too. Mine became even larger when I noticed the title of the book Maya gave me, 'Handsign for Beginners'.
The good mood vanished as we entered the house, where we saw Jacob sitting on the sofa, a furious expression on his face.
It was something about a robbery that ended badly. For the error of a stupid wannabe gangster, Jacob returned early and we paid the price for it. He didn't care that we went to the neighbor, but he still hit us as if his life depended on it.
Fortunately for us, it was Saturday. It meant that I had at least a day to somewhat heal. The black eye was still present on Monday, but it was better than nothing.
It only happened a couple of times more before Amelia started asking questions as I continued to spend evenings at her house. Not only she was a mother, but she was also a nurse who knew too much about wounds for me or my mom to lie convincingly. Quoting the woman 'Falling from the stairs doesn't cause only a black eye and a swollen face'.
"Please Miss Joyce, please don't bring all of this up again. I don't want you or Maya to get into trouble because of my dad." I pleaded with everything I could muster, I really didn't want a repetition of what happened at school; that or even something worse.
"You know that I can't do it, Arthur. I can't sleep soundly at night knowing that my daughter's only friend and his mother are abused almost daily." Her eyes were almost on fire, I could feel her intent from where I sat in front of her.
I could only think about one way to stop her definitely, something that I didn't like doing one bit.
"Then...then I will stop being her friend." Our eyes met and I didn't stop staring.
I needed her to stop, and if it meant losing the only kid I could be friends with, I would happily do so. She kept looking at me, her hands clenched on the chair handrails. It lasted more than ten seconds before she closed her eyes and exhaled deeply.
"Fine, fine! Have it your way...but the moment something happens, both you and your mom come running to me, am I understood?" Her voice expressed no rejection.
"Ma'am yes ma'am!" My voice cracked before I ran toward Maya's room. I was both happy and remorseful; I had probably saved an innocent family from getting into unnecessary trouble, but I had to blackmail her to do that, it left me with a bitter aftertaste.
So life went on, now with someone who knew how to actually heal the evergrowing number of scars both me and mom had. The school year finished without problems and I memorized the book Maya gave me in only three days, something that made her extremely happy.
Something did happen only six months after that conversation with Amelia. I was helping Mom clean the house, the TV blaring in the background. The news was going on about the recent increase in criminal organization activities until the channel changed to an interview.
They talked with someone called Theodore 'Tony' Starling, a man who looked fairly similar to another man from my previous life. I froze in front of the TV, eyes staring at the man who was almost the exact copy of Robert Downey Jr. when he did Iron Man.
He had some differences, like the bright brown eyes tending toward green, or the fact that he missed half of his right arm. They talked some more before the whole room of interviewers quieted down. The man briefly coughed in his hand before an immense sense of deja vu struck me.
"The truth is...I'm Titanium Man" And everything exploded in a cacophony of voices.
Logbook #1 -The art of games and their souls within.
Most forms of Art are subjective. I can like something that someone else despises with all their being. It is in the very nature of Art itself in its rawest form.
I like games, I love them with all myself. They are one of the only two forms of art that can bring out emotions from within myself. The other one being music, something I will talk about in another entry.
Not all games are created equal, same as statues, songs, paintings, etc.
I'll be honest and admit one thing. All thoughts I will write here are personal, of things I experienced myself. I do not find sports games funny, same as fighting games, strategy games, and a plethora of many more genres.
So, if someone had a life-changing experience playing Fifa, StreetFigther, or something along those lines, please, let me know with enough anger to rattle my bones.
MediEvil 1 is one of the first games I ever played. I was a kid, probably four or five years of age. It impacted my everyday life to the point that the teachers from the daycare called my parents, because most of my drawings were about undead and tombstones.
It even terrified me, so much so that to this day, at 24 years old, I still get shivers when I see the 'Stained Glass Demon' boss battle. But I loved everything else, the hub with all the hero statues, the interactive map where you could choose the next level, but most of all, I loved the protagonist.
Sir Daniel Fortesque is a shining soul inside an even shinier game. It is a personal thought of mine that Games have souls. Not in a religious way, but more in an abstract sense, in which Protagonists have them, Npcs, even the maps themselves. Fortesque, in this case, shined a low and warm blue light.
This too is subjective. I could think of an NPC with one, while someone else could say otherwise. A game doesn't need one to be good, some of my favorite games are without souls within the game itself or the NPCs inside of it.
There weren't games that impacted me as much as MediEvil did until I played Assassin's Creed 2 for the first time. I was probably ten or eleven at the time and again, it impacted my life. I didn't go around jumping everywhere, but it was more of something inside me.
I loved the story, the setting, as it was the first time I saw my country inside a game. But most of all, I loved the protagonist, Ezio Auditore, whose soul shone with a bright white color with splashes of red.
Then came the third Far Cry in the game series. The scenery was good, the story was something different, but everything was overshadowed by the secondary antagonist, Vaas Montenegro, whose soul shone darkly with crimson red and barkwood brown.
Still with me? Because now comes one of my favorite games of all time and it didn't have a single soul inside of it for years, until I first played it again with the DLCs on a PC.
I'm talking about Skyrim. It was the first Elder Scrolls game I ever played, and to this day, the only one alongside the MMORPG. The NPCs are empty husks, soulless beings that are just there to give quests. Not a single one was of impact for me. The world was cool, but still, it wasn't enough.
I first played Skyrim in 2012, and only in 2015, I found the first and only soul inside the game while playing the DLCs for the first time, Serana. The colours being a blood red and black.
Another game with a single soul is Bioshock Infinite, the first game in the series I played. I loved the story, Columbia was cool to navigate and Elizabeth, for some people Anna, shone of a bright white and sky blue.
I suppose that Bethesda games in particular have a problem with their souls. Both the Elder Scrolls and Fallout series suffer from this problem. The games are usually loved, I myself love them, but they are empty husks, bereft of emotions, the NPCs more than anything else. I never played Starfield, but I suppose it suffers from the same thing.
Cyberpunk 2077 is the exception that proves how it can be possible to have a game that shines in a thousand colors. It is in the world itself, in the NPCs that you interact with, in the protagonist whose life is on the brink of collapse.
I first played it in the months following its release. It didn't do much, it was bugged and overall a disappointing experience after all the promises they told us. Then I played it again after the anime came out. I still haven't seen it, I do not have the courage, because only listening to the main song for a bunch of seconds, makes me cry as if I were a newborn baby.
The second time around, Jackie Wells became one of the Npcs deaths I suffered the most. It broke me in a metaphorical sense. I got lost in the world, in all the bad and good things it had, of the problems that are present inside that alternative universe. In a few words, I love the universe and its inhabitants.
There are probably many more games like this, games that I never played or simply didn't like. This is the final game I will talk about, the one that impacted me the most to this day and my top favorite experience ever.
'What Remains of Edith Finch' is what people call a walking simulator, a genre of games where you can only walk, or at the very least, play a few minigames.
You're Edith Finch, a girl who returns to his old family home to understand her family history and the curse that was cast upon them. Everyone in Edith's family died for one reason or another. From infants to grandmothers, everyone died.
The house itself shines the brightest. Walking inside every room, living the story of every member to understand how they died. It is an experience I cannot explain with words alone. To this day, I get goosebumps every time I find myself listening to the Waltz of the Flowers, composed by Tchaikovsky.
It is a silly concept, right? Games having souls and all that jazz. But enough of this and my thoughts, this is the end of this first Logbook. If you're still here, still reading my words written at the moment, I hope you have a good day.
Ending Logbook #1 _ 19:00
I like games, I love them with all myself. They are one of the only two forms of art that can bring out emotions from within myself. The other one being music, something I will talk about in another entry.
Not all games are created equal, same as statues, songs, paintings, etc.
I'll be honest and admit one thing. All thoughts I will write here are personal, of things I experienced myself. I do not find sports games funny, same as fighting games, strategy games, and a plethora of many more genres.
So, if someone had a life-changing experience playing Fifa, StreetFigther, or something along those lines, please, let me know with enough anger to rattle my bones.
MediEvil 1 is one of the first games I ever played. I was a kid, probably four or five years of age. It impacted my everyday life to the point that the teachers from the daycare called my parents, because most of my drawings were about undead and tombstones.
It even terrified me, so much so that to this day, at 24 years old, I still get shivers when I see the 'Stained Glass Demon' boss battle. But I loved everything else, the hub with all the hero statues, the interactive map where you could choose the next level, but most of all, I loved the protagonist.
Sir Daniel Fortesque is a shining soul inside an even shinier game. It is a personal thought of mine that Games have souls. Not in a religious way, but more in an abstract sense, in which Protagonists have them, Npcs, even the maps themselves. Fortesque, in this case, shined a low and warm blue light.
This too is subjective. I could think of an NPC with one, while someone else could say otherwise. A game doesn't need one to be good, some of my favorite games are without souls within the game itself or the NPCs inside of it.
There weren't games that impacted me as much as MediEvil did until I played Assassin's Creed 2 for the first time. I was probably ten or eleven at the time and again, it impacted my life. I didn't go around jumping everywhere, but it was more of something inside me.
I loved the story, the setting, as it was the first time I saw my country inside a game. But most of all, I loved the protagonist, Ezio Auditore, whose soul shone with a bright white color with splashes of red.
Then came the third Far Cry in the game series. The scenery was good, the story was something different, but everything was overshadowed by the secondary antagonist, Vaas Montenegro, whose soul shone darkly with crimson red and barkwood brown.
Still with me? Because now comes one of my favorite games of all time and it didn't have a single soul inside of it for years, until I first played it again with the DLCs on a PC.
I'm talking about Skyrim. It was the first Elder Scrolls game I ever played, and to this day, the only one alongside the MMORPG. The NPCs are empty husks, soulless beings that are just there to give quests. Not a single one was of impact for me. The world was cool, but still, it wasn't enough.
I first played Skyrim in 2012, and only in 2015, I found the first and only soul inside the game while playing the DLCs for the first time, Serana. The colours being a blood red and black.
Another game with a single soul is Bioshock Infinite, the first game in the series I played. I loved the story, Columbia was cool to navigate and Elizabeth, for some people Anna, shone of a bright white and sky blue.
I suppose that Bethesda games in particular have a problem with their souls. Both the Elder Scrolls and Fallout series suffer from this problem. The games are usually loved, I myself love them, but they are empty husks, bereft of emotions, the NPCs more than anything else. I never played Starfield, but I suppose it suffers from the same thing.
Cyberpunk 2077 is the exception that proves how it can be possible to have a game that shines in a thousand colors. It is in the world itself, in the NPCs that you interact with, in the protagonist whose life is on the brink of collapse.
I first played it in the months following its release. It didn't do much, it was bugged and overall a disappointing experience after all the promises they told us. Then I played it again after the anime came out. I still haven't seen it, I do not have the courage, because only listening to the main song for a bunch of seconds, makes me cry as if I were a newborn baby.
The second time around, Jackie Wells became one of the Npcs deaths I suffered the most. It broke me in a metaphorical sense. I got lost in the world, in all the bad and good things it had, of the problems that are present inside that alternative universe. In a few words, I love the universe and its inhabitants.
There are probably many more games like this, games that I never played or simply didn't like. This is the final game I will talk about, the one that impacted me the most to this day and my top favorite experience ever.
'What Remains of Edith Finch' is what people call a walking simulator, a genre of games where you can only walk, or at the very least, play a few minigames.
You're Edith Finch, a girl who returns to his old family home to understand her family history and the curse that was cast upon them. Everyone in Edith's family died for one reason or another. From infants to grandmothers, everyone died.
The house itself shines the brightest. Walking inside every room, living the story of every member to understand how they died. It is an experience I cannot explain with words alone. To this day, I get goosebumps every time I find myself listening to the Waltz of the Flowers, composed by Tchaikovsky.
It is a silly concept, right? Games having souls and all that jazz. But enough of this and my thoughts, this is the end of this first Logbook. If you're still here, still reading my words written at the moment, I hope you have a good day.
Ending Logbook #1 _ 19:00
Dragonborn's extravaganza! -Dovahkiin SI/Multicross #1
It was a mighty beast the one I was fighting right now. Its size? Incalculable. Its power? Overwhelming. Its appearance? As if a nightmare crawled out of the mind of a madman.
It tried to pull me inside his realm of death and despair but I resisted. My muscles bulged as I fought back with all my might. They strained against the beast's mighty viciousness, but alas, my victory was already written in the book of fate.
The fishing line tugged for one last time before I yanked it back with all my force. I could finally see my nemesis face to face, its beady eyes gazing right into my soul.
"You're a big fucker ain't ya? Serana! Look at this mighty beast! Could have chopped Alduin's dick right off!" I shouted back to my companion, who was currently reading some book under an umbrella I had crafted.
"Ah! It could have spared you a lot of trouble along the way. Now come here you big oaf and let's continue our day off. I shudder at the mere thought of further errands, why can't people keep their belongings in order?"
The mighty fish flopped around in my hands as I brought him toward the campfire. Cooking was something I found an inkling of passion along the years I found myself in the lands of Skyrim, that and a plethora of other useful skills.
The first weeks weren't the best. I found myself without a thing in my name, in a land not my own alongside people that could slit my throat while I was asleep. I was only nineteen at the time and everything felt so much bigger than it really was.
I did find some kind people that helped me understand the basics of how to survive. Archery, tracking, one-handed combat and other useful ones. Old man Ragnar was a veteran and spent his retirement with his wife Ylva. They said it was because I reminded them of their son, who was stationed near Windhelm.
Mirrors were fairly rare among the majority of families, so it was only after almost two months that I noticed my different looks while walking alongside a river. Go easy on me, I had too many thoughts in my head to notice the dark red hair and heterochromatic eyes.
I was shellshocked the moment I noticed the two different colors, well, mostly one with some of the other. It was called something like sectoral heterochromia; my eyes were of a light blue color, with the exception of the left one, where three-quarters of it were of a somewhat deep tone of brown, almost like the bark of a tree.
I felt a shiver going down my spine the moment I noticed them, a voice in the back of my mind constantly repeating "Hi my name is Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way". I tried not to think much about it while traveling around Skyrim to further increase my chances of survival.
You were mostly safe traveling along the official roads, it was the moment you started to deviate from them that the chances of encountering something that could kill you in under five seconds increased exponentially.
So I traveled, I learned and I traveled some more. Skyrim was far larger than the game, it took me more than two weeks to journey from Riften to Windhelm and the cities were far larger than before, everything felt so more alive.
The first time I reached Solitude, the city took my breath away, figuratively and literally, as a horse kicked me in the stomach the moment I stepped down the carriage. Along my travels, I learned a large variety of knacks, but none of them had the same effect as the first time I casted a spell.
My stay at the College of Winterhold lasted almost three years, a period of my life I remember fondly to this day. It was the dream of every kid, going to a magic school where you could learn the arcane arts. It wasn't Hogwarts, but I did learn magic in the end.
I was mediocre in both illusion and conjuration and somewhat proficient in restoration. Destruction and Alteration? I was a master in both schools, I even wrote a thesis on various uses for the spell 'Telekinesis', I was befuddled the moment my fellow students started shitting on the spell.
'It doesn't do anything other than pick up small objects' 'Just blast the damn thing with a fireball' and many other stupid excuses. I spent months doing nothing other than studying the spell, learning everything from top to bottom.
When the time of my presentation arrived, I savored their shocked face as I used the spell to crush complete sets of heavy armor as if they were made of paper. It wasn't invincible, as the impossibility of using the spell against a living being made it difficult to employ for most people and it could be resisted with a simple ward. I still found delight in throwing swords against unsuspecting Thalmors. I just needed a lightsaber and my childhood dream was complete.
Taking a step back, the first time I killed a man was five months since I was transported inside Tamriel. A thief tried to rob me, screaming like a ravenous beast to give him everything I had on me. I did exactly what he asked since I was almost to the point of shitting in my pants.
But these situations don't usually end well. He got cocky over my meekness. I was a child, not even twenty, trying to survive however I could. I still remember his breath, heavy with cheap wine and his ember eyes, sickly and ravenous, I could feel myself drown inside them.
I didn't see the knife coming but I felt the result of it. I was blinded in my right eye as the blood from the cut flowed all over that side of my face. To this day, I'm still insecure about how I dodged that slash, if it was divine intervention, a daedric one, or simply the adrenaline.
The moments after were a tangle of limbs as I shoulder-checked the drunk bastard and we fell to the ground, punches flying between us before he remembered how to use the knife he had. It didn't last much longer, as the moment I overpowered him, I heard a loud squelch sound and the murmurs of a dying man as the knife bit deep into his throat.
I threw up almost the entire remaining part of the day, nightmares plaguing my dreams during the weeks after the event. Then it happened again, and again, and again. Over and over people tried to extort me, rob me, sacrifice me, and whatever else the rejects of this land did in their spare time.
I got used to it in the end, chopping off bandit's heads became something of a relaxing hobby, hearing them screaming as they burned alive. Was it cruel? Yes, but the crying face of a son who lost his mother to that scum made me go on.
Seven years after I found myself in the frigid lands of Skyrim, I decided to cross the border to Cyrodill as I wanted to see the Imperial City, maybe even get imprisoned just to see if I could find that same cell where the Hero of Kvatch escaped centuries ago.
In retrospect, I should have known. The different eye colors, the numerous hardships and as numerous lucky moments, the way I learned things faster than most people I knew. Even the way people almost threw errands in my general direction.
"Hey, you. You're finally awake."
And in that moment I laughed, harder than I had in years. Tears flew down my eyes as I kept laughing at the situation. The other three occupants watched me in silence, even if I could see the concern in their eyes, probably towards the general situation and not toward the laughing madman beside them.
I was the Dragonborn, I had a destiny that was already written in stone. So I did my best to accomplish what I had to do. There was no doubt that my old life was truly over, I had nothing to return to and even if I could, I would have still decided to remain here.
At the end of my journey, five years since Alduin returned to Skyrim, I had many more titles to my name. Dovahkiin, Archmage, Harbinger, Nightingale and so many more that I would need a full page just to list them all. I wasn't the listener, as I decided to chop the head of the laughing fool and dump the creepy mummy inside a lake.
I did that favor to the Aretino boy, I always did that. Poor Gralod the Kind found herself with a severe case of food poisoning that caused her death. Then Astrid somewhat kidnapped me and I stuffed her body six meters underground. The rest of the brotherhood was taken care of with the help of the Penitus Oculatus.
After that it was almost a blur, this wasn't a game and I couldn't waste time doing all the secondary quests, Alduin's plan would still need time, going around Skyrim resurrecting Dragons wasn't an easy task. It took months before our final encounter in the halls of Sovengarde occurred.
Then the mad vampire lord came and I had another foe to slay in a short amount of time before his plan to obscure the sun took place. Meeting the last Snow Elf was as exciting as the first time I played the DLC, but he was much more real.
I liked to work alone, not in an 'I'm an alpha and so I'm better than all the others' way but more in 'Spending so much time with another person? What would we even talk about all that time?' way. I was scared to do small talk, sue me.
Serana smashed through that barrier, with her witty banter and knowledge of topics that were lost for thousands of years. So she tagged along for the rest of my journey, the various guilds, then Morrowind and my crazy brother and his pact with the walking tentacle-hentai trope that was Hermaeus Mora.
It was a sad moment the one where I impaled Miirak with my sword, my left hand crashing the section of armor around his neck. He was probably one of the coolest individuals I ever met, he was extremely charismatic and had the power to back up his continuous shit talk towards me and my accomplishments. It still didn't do him much good in the end.
If maybe dear old Daddy Akatosh had spanked him a couple of times more during his first days, we wouldn't have needed to go inside the tentacles monster den to put an end to the foolish plan of my older brother, but alas, it happened they way it did.
So here I was, eating the biggest fucking fish I ever saw in both my lives with the most beautiful undead woman I saw in only one of them, mind completely blank trying not to spit out the disgusting beast I had cooked, it tasted like rotted onions.
"What are you looking at Arthur? Do I have something on my face?" Her voice brought me back from my trauma-induced vacant stare, I was almost to the point of answering her when I smelt something faintly familiar.
It was the stench of ozone mixed with a pinch of sulfur and an abundance of cheese. My skin tingled, goosebumps forming all over it. My breath itched as a long-forgotten memory resurfaced at the front of my mind.
"I see you didn't forget my beautiful form darling." The embodiment of madness spoke from beside me, long white hair falling messily down her back...wait, her?
"Look at you Dovahkin! Your face is exquisitely hilarious right now ehehahahAhAHAHA!" Sheogorath laughs made the dirt tremble as cracks appeared all around me.
"Eheheh...but now let's stop talking about old beautiful me. I'm bored you know? The overgrown lizard is gone, the overambitious leech is no more and Akatosh spawn has been slain. What I'm going to watch from now on? You and your little friend boring adventures?" The madman visage returned to the one I was familiar with, and I took advantage of the moment to steal a look at Serana, who was petrified on the spot.
I wasn't surprised, she wasn't there on those particular occasions, so her reaction was more than normal. But for me? I had a period of my life where I encountered the bastards once a week.
" 'No! Says the mad Daedra' 'Yes! Says the boring vampire!' 'Fuck off, says the pissed Dovahkin who's trying to woo an undead lady!' But I have a different plan, something funnier, something I spent a bit of time working on. But first, you must know that I hate Dragons.
Those overgrown lizards are good just for a quick meal. But I give them this, their language? It is a work of art, the ability to bend reality with just words? Ingenious. I could do the same thing with a snap of my fingers, but where's the fun in that? So here me out!" I blinked, and the madman was now standing right in front of me, eyes blazing as an enormous smirk formed on his face.
"Sil Vaaz Slen" Soul torn from the body.
"Fustir Neh Daal" Banished to never return.
And I knew pain. Endless, excruciating pain. It felt as if something was being stripped from my very body, and from the thu'um shouted at me it was doing exactly that. I felt fire in my vein and I could feel the blood pouring from my eyes. Serana was screaming right next to my writhing body, the shout had affected her too.
"Did you get it? 'Hear me out!' As I shout at you! I'm fucking hilarious I say!" I could still hear his voice over the excruciating pain.
It was only after an incalculable amount of time that I found a sliver of respite in passing out from the pain. Then it started again only to abate soon after. Then again, and again, and again. It was maddening, I wanted to bite my tongue off just to stop the endless torture.
I knew that it was truly over only when the seconds passed and I kept feeling nothing other than a cold floor under my cheeks. I was too tired to do anything, I couldn't feel my limbs and the only sound I could hear were the droplets of water hitting the hard floor with a resounding splash.
I woke up and passed away soon after, this series of events repeated a couple of times more before I was jostled completely awake by a body falling down right next to my own. My bleary eyes caught a figure up on the roof of the room I was in before it vanished.
I grunted and used what force I could muster to get off the ground and see wherever the fuck I was. The moment my eyes finally cleared up, I felt a sense of deja vu the moment I saw the room around me. Dirty with piles of straw around, a bucket and some other objects were haphazardly scattered around.
Seconds passed and I could hear heavy steps in the distance, heavy enough to make dust fall from the roof. I didn't know why, but there was something telling me to check the body at the end of the room.
There were some general rules in Skyrim, the ones you followed if you wanted to survive.
Do not follow strange men inside dark caves. Do not disturb the peaceful yet extremely deadly Giants. Do not, under any circumstance, listen to strange voices inside your head. These, among others, were very easy rules to follow.
Not everyone did it, because stupid people always existed, like the ones on the board inside Whiterun, where they hang posters of all the people who died by being launched into orbit by Giants. Still, people knew about these rules.
I didn't follow them, I liked following strange people inside dark corners, I liked Giants, and most important of all, I loved listening to strange voices in my head, the more unhinged they were, the faster I would hang the cursed item in my trophy room. So follow I did, reaching towards the body, and pulling out a key from one of its pockets.
Naturally, there was only one door where the key fitted as if it was made for it, uh, what a coincidence right? The moment I walked outside the room, that sense of deja vu returned, and seeing the green demon walking in front of me, that sense came crashing down on me, memories from another life coming alive yet again.
That motherfucker sent me inside Dark Souls! Looking down at me, I noticed things I didn't before, like the fact that I looked like a desiccated corp, the Dark Mark glowing ominously inside my abdomen. I was a Draugr. A pale ass, red-eyed and mostly naked Draugr. I wasn't even a Nord gods dammit.
I had lost something about myself, I could feel it inside my soul, the lack of power inside it. That shout, 'Sil Vaaz Slen', had literally torn all the dragon souls I had accumulated over the years, I could feel the emptiness inside me. I tried shouting, over and over again but I came short. My fist impacted one of the iron bars of the cells, bending the metal and shattering the wall. At least I still had what made me a warrior.
The trek towards the first bonfire was an easy one, the broken blade was enough for the walking corpses that infested the Asylum. My hand hovered over the bonfire, and I felt the dark mark resonating in my abdomen.
Death, was one of the things I needed to look out for in the lands of Skyrim. It was always there, a scythe hovering over my head at every moment. Now it was different, a neverending cycle of resurrection until I would rekindle the first flame.
Because I knew it, the cheesemonger bastard wouldn't have sent me here just to survive, I needed to be the chosen undead, for better or for worse. Serana wasn't here with me, was she somewhere else or just unconscious back in Tamriel?
I knew the room in front of the bonfire, it was the tutorial boss. Almost impossible to beat with only a broken sword but I was angry, hungry and that damn whisper at the back of my mind didn't go away after picking up the key.
The demon fucker fell down from where he was perched and I ran towards it, he? She!? Jumping towards one of its legs, using the broken sword to climb the beast. The bone fragments and the fat were fairly good foot supports, which gave me the chance to stab the fucker all the way up until I reached its head.
The beast screamed and trashed its hammer, trying to toss me away. But the beast didn't know how much experience I had in this exact tactic, tens of dragons perished the same way, as I dangled from their head, stabbing everything that looked soft enough.
I reached its face, using both hands to do as much damage as I could, one with the dagger, the other just trying to tear off one of its eyes. I did it in the end, a wet squelch announced my victory over one of its eyes and I took advantage of the moment to stick the broken sword inside the empty eyesocket.
The beast screamed again trying his best to grab me but I jumped over while still holding one of its horns. It was enough to be in front of his face, where I kicked the sword I had previously stuck inside his missing eye.
The demon fell down like a sack of flour, hitting the ground hard enough to raise a wall of dust all around its body.
Seconds after that moment, the beast exploded in a flash of white particles, leaving behind its giant hammer. The weapon dematerialized the moment I tried touching it, going to a space in the back of my mind. It was hard to explain, I knew it was my inventory, but I couldn't really see the window, I knew it was there, I knew that I could bring objects back and forth, but only that.
I slumped on the spot, breathing roughly to regain my force. I was weaker than before, that short fight wasn't hard, but it was extremely straining. I needed to reach the firekeeper and learn if I could increase my physical attributes like in the game.
After a couple of minutes, I went back to following the doors towards exiting the Asylum. I reached the stairs and killed the undead on top while dodging the giant metal ball that impacted the wall behind me.
It was at that moment that I remembered something. I wasn't inside a game, the events weren't predetermined anymore and I could easily change so many things, like freeing the firekeeper, maybe even trying to chat with the bosses, like Queelag or Priscilla. She was like, half a dragon or something right? We were basically cousins.
I walked inside the hole, where Oscar was living his final moments.
"...Oh, you... You're no Hollow, eh?" The Knight spoke with a raspy voice.
"Thank goodness... I'm done for, I'm afraid... I'll die soo-" But I didn't let the man finish his tale.
"Just shut up, you honorable fool." My voice came out rough, my undead body not giving me any help in the matter.
I walked towards his body, picking up the Estus flask from his trembling hands and I used my hands to forcibly open his helmet, where he looked back at me with a stunned face. I emptied the flash in his open mouth and put the helmet back on.
"We're getting out of here, and there's no one or anything that can say otherwise!" I screamed to no one in particular.
I picked him up in a fireman's carry and went back out, walking towards the end of the Asylum.
"Please! Unhand me!" The knight spoke but I didn't listen, I just kept going forward.
The remaining undead were almost a joke, I took a couple of arrows that didn't do much, but I couldn't say the same for them, as my foot crashed down on their chest, killing them instantly.
We finally reached the empty garden, where on the precipice the giant raven finally appeared. One talon for each one of us, and with the ease that only a giant bird could muster, he flew up in the sky, going toward our next destination, Firelink Shrine.
It tried to pull me inside his realm of death and despair but I resisted. My muscles bulged as I fought back with all my might. They strained against the beast's mighty viciousness, but alas, my victory was already written in the book of fate.
The fishing line tugged for one last time before I yanked it back with all my force. I could finally see my nemesis face to face, its beady eyes gazing right into my soul.
"You're a big fucker ain't ya? Serana! Look at this mighty beast! Could have chopped Alduin's dick right off!" I shouted back to my companion, who was currently reading some book under an umbrella I had crafted.
"Ah! It could have spared you a lot of trouble along the way. Now come here you big oaf and let's continue our day off. I shudder at the mere thought of further errands, why can't people keep their belongings in order?"
The mighty fish flopped around in my hands as I brought him toward the campfire. Cooking was something I found an inkling of passion along the years I found myself in the lands of Skyrim, that and a plethora of other useful skills.
The first weeks weren't the best. I found myself without a thing in my name, in a land not my own alongside people that could slit my throat while I was asleep. I was only nineteen at the time and everything felt so much bigger than it really was.
I did find some kind people that helped me understand the basics of how to survive. Archery, tracking, one-handed combat and other useful ones. Old man Ragnar was a veteran and spent his retirement with his wife Ylva. They said it was because I reminded them of their son, who was stationed near Windhelm.
Mirrors were fairly rare among the majority of families, so it was only after almost two months that I noticed my different looks while walking alongside a river. Go easy on me, I had too many thoughts in my head to notice the dark red hair and heterochromatic eyes.
I was shellshocked the moment I noticed the two different colors, well, mostly one with some of the other. It was called something like sectoral heterochromia; my eyes were of a light blue color, with the exception of the left one, where three-quarters of it were of a somewhat deep tone of brown, almost like the bark of a tree.
I felt a shiver going down my spine the moment I noticed them, a voice in the back of my mind constantly repeating "Hi my name is Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way". I tried not to think much about it while traveling around Skyrim to further increase my chances of survival.
You were mostly safe traveling along the official roads, it was the moment you started to deviate from them that the chances of encountering something that could kill you in under five seconds increased exponentially.
So I traveled, I learned and I traveled some more. Skyrim was far larger than the game, it took me more than two weeks to journey from Riften to Windhelm and the cities were far larger than before, everything felt so more alive.
The first time I reached Solitude, the city took my breath away, figuratively and literally, as a horse kicked me in the stomach the moment I stepped down the carriage. Along my travels, I learned a large variety of knacks, but none of them had the same effect as the first time I casted a spell.
My stay at the College of Winterhold lasted almost three years, a period of my life I remember fondly to this day. It was the dream of every kid, going to a magic school where you could learn the arcane arts. It wasn't Hogwarts, but I did learn magic in the end.
I was mediocre in both illusion and conjuration and somewhat proficient in restoration. Destruction and Alteration? I was a master in both schools, I even wrote a thesis on various uses for the spell 'Telekinesis', I was befuddled the moment my fellow students started shitting on the spell.
'It doesn't do anything other than pick up small objects' 'Just blast the damn thing with a fireball' and many other stupid excuses. I spent months doing nothing other than studying the spell, learning everything from top to bottom.
When the time of my presentation arrived, I savored their shocked face as I used the spell to crush complete sets of heavy armor as if they were made of paper. It wasn't invincible, as the impossibility of using the spell against a living being made it difficult to employ for most people and it could be resisted with a simple ward. I still found delight in throwing swords against unsuspecting Thalmors. I just needed a lightsaber and my childhood dream was complete.
Taking a step back, the first time I killed a man was five months since I was transported inside Tamriel. A thief tried to rob me, screaming like a ravenous beast to give him everything I had on me. I did exactly what he asked since I was almost to the point of shitting in my pants.
But these situations don't usually end well. He got cocky over my meekness. I was a child, not even twenty, trying to survive however I could. I still remember his breath, heavy with cheap wine and his ember eyes, sickly and ravenous, I could feel myself drown inside them.
I didn't see the knife coming but I felt the result of it. I was blinded in my right eye as the blood from the cut flowed all over that side of my face. To this day, I'm still insecure about how I dodged that slash, if it was divine intervention, a daedric one, or simply the adrenaline.
The moments after were a tangle of limbs as I shoulder-checked the drunk bastard and we fell to the ground, punches flying between us before he remembered how to use the knife he had. It didn't last much longer, as the moment I overpowered him, I heard a loud squelch sound and the murmurs of a dying man as the knife bit deep into his throat.
I threw up almost the entire remaining part of the day, nightmares plaguing my dreams during the weeks after the event. Then it happened again, and again, and again. Over and over people tried to extort me, rob me, sacrifice me, and whatever else the rejects of this land did in their spare time.
I got used to it in the end, chopping off bandit's heads became something of a relaxing hobby, hearing them screaming as they burned alive. Was it cruel? Yes, but the crying face of a son who lost his mother to that scum made me go on.
Seven years after I found myself in the frigid lands of Skyrim, I decided to cross the border to Cyrodill as I wanted to see the Imperial City, maybe even get imprisoned just to see if I could find that same cell where the Hero of Kvatch escaped centuries ago.
In retrospect, I should have known. The different eye colors, the numerous hardships and as numerous lucky moments, the way I learned things faster than most people I knew. Even the way people almost threw errands in my general direction.
"Hey, you. You're finally awake."
And in that moment I laughed, harder than I had in years. Tears flew down my eyes as I kept laughing at the situation. The other three occupants watched me in silence, even if I could see the concern in their eyes, probably towards the general situation and not toward the laughing madman beside them.
I was the Dragonborn, I had a destiny that was already written in stone. So I did my best to accomplish what I had to do. There was no doubt that my old life was truly over, I had nothing to return to and even if I could, I would have still decided to remain here.
At the end of my journey, five years since Alduin returned to Skyrim, I had many more titles to my name. Dovahkiin, Archmage, Harbinger, Nightingale and so many more that I would need a full page just to list them all. I wasn't the listener, as I decided to chop the head of the laughing fool and dump the creepy mummy inside a lake.
I did that favor to the Aretino boy, I always did that. Poor Gralod the Kind found herself with a severe case of food poisoning that caused her death. Then Astrid somewhat kidnapped me and I stuffed her body six meters underground. The rest of the brotherhood was taken care of with the help of the Penitus Oculatus.
After that it was almost a blur, this wasn't a game and I couldn't waste time doing all the secondary quests, Alduin's plan would still need time, going around Skyrim resurrecting Dragons wasn't an easy task. It took months before our final encounter in the halls of Sovengarde occurred.
Then the mad vampire lord came and I had another foe to slay in a short amount of time before his plan to obscure the sun took place. Meeting the last Snow Elf was as exciting as the first time I played the DLC, but he was much more real.
I liked to work alone, not in an 'I'm an alpha and so I'm better than all the others' way but more in 'Spending so much time with another person? What would we even talk about all that time?' way. I was scared to do small talk, sue me.
Serana smashed through that barrier, with her witty banter and knowledge of topics that were lost for thousands of years. So she tagged along for the rest of my journey, the various guilds, then Morrowind and my crazy brother and his pact with the walking tentacle-hentai trope that was Hermaeus Mora.
It was a sad moment the one where I impaled Miirak with my sword, my left hand crashing the section of armor around his neck. He was probably one of the coolest individuals I ever met, he was extremely charismatic and had the power to back up his continuous shit talk towards me and my accomplishments. It still didn't do him much good in the end.
If maybe dear old Daddy Akatosh had spanked him a couple of times more during his first days, we wouldn't have needed to go inside the tentacles monster den to put an end to the foolish plan of my older brother, but alas, it happened they way it did.
So here I was, eating the biggest fucking fish I ever saw in both my lives with the most beautiful undead woman I saw in only one of them, mind completely blank trying not to spit out the disgusting beast I had cooked, it tasted like rotted onions.
"What are you looking at Arthur? Do I have something on my face?" Her voice brought me back from my trauma-induced vacant stare, I was almost to the point of answering her when I smelt something faintly familiar.
It was the stench of ozone mixed with a pinch of sulfur and an abundance of cheese. My skin tingled, goosebumps forming all over it. My breath itched as a long-forgotten memory resurfaced at the front of my mind.
"I see you didn't forget my beautiful form darling." The embodiment of madness spoke from beside me, long white hair falling messily down her back...wait, her?
"Look at you Dovahkin! Your face is exquisitely hilarious right now ehehahahAhAHAHA!" Sheogorath laughs made the dirt tremble as cracks appeared all around me.
"Eheheh...but now let's stop talking about old beautiful me. I'm bored you know? The overgrown lizard is gone, the overambitious leech is no more and Akatosh spawn has been slain. What I'm going to watch from now on? You and your little friend boring adventures?" The madman visage returned to the one I was familiar with, and I took advantage of the moment to steal a look at Serana, who was petrified on the spot.
I wasn't surprised, she wasn't there on those particular occasions, so her reaction was more than normal. But for me? I had a period of my life where I encountered the bastards once a week.
" 'No! Says the mad Daedra' 'Yes! Says the boring vampire!' 'Fuck off, says the pissed Dovahkin who's trying to woo an undead lady!' But I have a different plan, something funnier, something I spent a bit of time working on. But first, you must know that I hate Dragons.
Those overgrown lizards are good just for a quick meal. But I give them this, their language? It is a work of art, the ability to bend reality with just words? Ingenious. I could do the same thing with a snap of my fingers, but where's the fun in that? So here me out!" I blinked, and the madman was now standing right in front of me, eyes blazing as an enormous smirk formed on his face.
"Sil Vaaz Slen" Soul torn from the body.
"Fustir Neh Daal" Banished to never return.
And I knew pain. Endless, excruciating pain. It felt as if something was being stripped from my very body, and from the thu'um shouted at me it was doing exactly that. I felt fire in my vein and I could feel the blood pouring from my eyes. Serana was screaming right next to my writhing body, the shout had affected her too.
"Did you get it? 'Hear me out!' As I shout at you! I'm fucking hilarious I say!" I could still hear his voice over the excruciating pain.
It was only after an incalculable amount of time that I found a sliver of respite in passing out from the pain. Then it started again only to abate soon after. Then again, and again, and again. It was maddening, I wanted to bite my tongue off just to stop the endless torture.
I knew that it was truly over only when the seconds passed and I kept feeling nothing other than a cold floor under my cheeks. I was too tired to do anything, I couldn't feel my limbs and the only sound I could hear were the droplets of water hitting the hard floor with a resounding splash.
I woke up and passed away soon after, this series of events repeated a couple of times more before I was jostled completely awake by a body falling down right next to my own. My bleary eyes caught a figure up on the roof of the room I was in before it vanished.
I grunted and used what force I could muster to get off the ground and see wherever the fuck I was. The moment my eyes finally cleared up, I felt a sense of deja vu the moment I saw the room around me. Dirty with piles of straw around, a bucket and some other objects were haphazardly scattered around.
Seconds passed and I could hear heavy steps in the distance, heavy enough to make dust fall from the roof. I didn't know why, but there was something telling me to check the body at the end of the room.
There were some general rules in Skyrim, the ones you followed if you wanted to survive.
Do not follow strange men inside dark caves. Do not disturb the peaceful yet extremely deadly Giants. Do not, under any circumstance, listen to strange voices inside your head. These, among others, were very easy rules to follow.
Not everyone did it, because stupid people always existed, like the ones on the board inside Whiterun, where they hang posters of all the people who died by being launched into orbit by Giants. Still, people knew about these rules.
I didn't follow them, I liked following strange people inside dark corners, I liked Giants, and most important of all, I loved listening to strange voices in my head, the more unhinged they were, the faster I would hang the cursed item in my trophy room. So follow I did, reaching towards the body, and pulling out a key from one of its pockets.
Naturally, there was only one door where the key fitted as if it was made for it, uh, what a coincidence right? The moment I walked outside the room, that sense of deja vu returned, and seeing the green demon walking in front of me, that sense came crashing down on me, memories from another life coming alive yet again.
That motherfucker sent me inside Dark Souls! Looking down at me, I noticed things I didn't before, like the fact that I looked like a desiccated corp, the Dark Mark glowing ominously inside my abdomen. I was a Draugr. A pale ass, red-eyed and mostly naked Draugr. I wasn't even a Nord gods dammit.
I had lost something about myself, I could feel it inside my soul, the lack of power inside it. That shout, 'Sil Vaaz Slen', had literally torn all the dragon souls I had accumulated over the years, I could feel the emptiness inside me. I tried shouting, over and over again but I came short. My fist impacted one of the iron bars of the cells, bending the metal and shattering the wall. At least I still had what made me a warrior.
The trek towards the first bonfire was an easy one, the broken blade was enough for the walking corpses that infested the Asylum. My hand hovered over the bonfire, and I felt the dark mark resonating in my abdomen.
Death, was one of the things I needed to look out for in the lands of Skyrim. It was always there, a scythe hovering over my head at every moment. Now it was different, a neverending cycle of resurrection until I would rekindle the first flame.
Because I knew it, the cheesemonger bastard wouldn't have sent me here just to survive, I needed to be the chosen undead, for better or for worse. Serana wasn't here with me, was she somewhere else or just unconscious back in Tamriel?
I knew the room in front of the bonfire, it was the tutorial boss. Almost impossible to beat with only a broken sword but I was angry, hungry and that damn whisper at the back of my mind didn't go away after picking up the key.
The demon fucker fell down from where he was perched and I ran towards it, he? She!? Jumping towards one of its legs, using the broken sword to climb the beast. The bone fragments and the fat were fairly good foot supports, which gave me the chance to stab the fucker all the way up until I reached its head.
The beast screamed and trashed its hammer, trying to toss me away. But the beast didn't know how much experience I had in this exact tactic, tens of dragons perished the same way, as I dangled from their head, stabbing everything that looked soft enough.
I reached its face, using both hands to do as much damage as I could, one with the dagger, the other just trying to tear off one of its eyes. I did it in the end, a wet squelch announced my victory over one of its eyes and I took advantage of the moment to stick the broken sword inside the empty eyesocket.
The beast screamed again trying his best to grab me but I jumped over while still holding one of its horns. It was enough to be in front of his face, where I kicked the sword I had previously stuck inside his missing eye.
The demon fell down like a sack of flour, hitting the ground hard enough to raise a wall of dust all around its body.
Seconds after that moment, the beast exploded in a flash of white particles, leaving behind its giant hammer. The weapon dematerialized the moment I tried touching it, going to a space in the back of my mind. It was hard to explain, I knew it was my inventory, but I couldn't really see the window, I knew it was there, I knew that I could bring objects back and forth, but only that.
I slumped on the spot, breathing roughly to regain my force. I was weaker than before, that short fight wasn't hard, but it was extremely straining. I needed to reach the firekeeper and learn if I could increase my physical attributes like in the game.
After a couple of minutes, I went back to following the doors towards exiting the Asylum. I reached the stairs and killed the undead on top while dodging the giant metal ball that impacted the wall behind me.
It was at that moment that I remembered something. I wasn't inside a game, the events weren't predetermined anymore and I could easily change so many things, like freeing the firekeeper, maybe even trying to chat with the bosses, like Queelag or Priscilla. She was like, half a dragon or something right? We were basically cousins.
I walked inside the hole, where Oscar was living his final moments.
"...Oh, you... You're no Hollow, eh?" The Knight spoke with a raspy voice.
"Thank goodness... I'm done for, I'm afraid... I'll die soo-" But I didn't let the man finish his tale.
"Just shut up, you honorable fool." My voice came out rough, my undead body not giving me any help in the matter.
I walked towards his body, picking up the Estus flask from his trembling hands and I used my hands to forcibly open his helmet, where he looked back at me with a stunned face. I emptied the flash in his open mouth and put the helmet back on.
"We're getting out of here, and there's no one or anything that can say otherwise!" I screamed to no one in particular.
I picked him up in a fireman's carry and went back out, walking towards the end of the Asylum.
"Please! Unhand me!" The knight spoke but I didn't listen, I just kept going forward.
The remaining undead were almost a joke, I took a couple of arrows that didn't do much, but I couldn't say the same for them, as my foot crashed down on their chest, killing them instantly.
We finally reached the empty garden, where on the precipice the giant raven finally appeared. One talon for each one of us, and with the ease that only a giant bird could muster, he flew up in the sky, going toward our next destination, Firelink Shrine.
Of falling stars and curious bats. -Warframe/Batman OC #1
Three days. Three days of silence, of darkness, of being stranded on a planet so familiar yet so unrecognizable. The polluted sky revealed fewer stars than he was comfortable with, but the most significant distinction was the moon. It had been his home for hundreds of years, dreaming with his brothers and sisters.
Here, it was whole, unblemished by wars that didn't happen, by empires that didn't exist. Here, the countless years spent fighting a neverending war were pointless, the deaths of his siblings were meaningless, the sacrifice of his mother was purposeless. All the people he met, killed, made friends with, were just a memory of a time long past, in a place he couldn't reach anymore.
Everything started with an emergency mission on Lua, then the biggest void storm Valric traveled through since the Zariman. It tore through the ship as if it was made out of plastic. First, it was the Landing Craft, then the Helminth Infirmary, and finally his own room, everything was lost as the storm ripped the Orbiter apart.
He woke up in darkness, with only the hum of the Somatic Link accompanying the silence. Valric stood on shaky legs, eyes darting around the empty room. Everything was normal, the pod seemed functional from the sound, but the lights were off.
He walked haphazardly towards the open door, noticing how it had been torn apart, the remains now resting where the teleporter to the Railjack once stood. Walking outside, both the rooms at his sides were absent, with only mounds of debris taking their place.
He kept wobbling forward until he reached the main open space and he froze. Everything was still there, the arsenal, the foundry, even the little bubble head he had once left up on the incubator, head still bobbing up and down.
What made him stop breathing was the open space in front, where the cockpit should have been. Now there wasn't anything anymore, the entire wall was missing, cables and pipes hanging around, giving a view to the outside. Then he heard a soft click, and the Foundry shone brightly for a single second, before leaving behind a small light, blinking intermittently. Valric walked towards the station, clicking the only illuminated spot on the surface.
"Operator! If you're listening to this message, it means I've -Died- set the ship into emergency mode. Before doing so, Ordis initiated a worldwide scan of the undiscovered planet below. Preliminary analysis indicates that-We've already been here- the location has been identified as the already discovered planet Earth, but the initial readings are perplexing, indicating deviations from our own reality. The flora and fauna exhibit unfamiliar properties, and the atmospheric composition is notably distinct.
All the remaining power has been rerouted solely to the Somatic Link, as you-Look so strange, they're going to shoot you on sight. May the stars guide your path, Operator, and may you return triumphant, as you always have. Ordis eagerly awaits your return, ready to assist in any way possible. Together, we shall -Sterminate all these inferior life forms, and we shall conquer the galaxy-."
It felt strange, crying, something Valric stopped doing many years prior. But he knew that Ordis wasn't really dead, he only powered down alongside the whole ship. He just needed to find a way to bring everything up, he just didn't know where to find an energy source big enough to do so. His look wasn't that strange if people didn't take into consideration the horns on his face and the strange colors he tended to use. It wasn't his fault if all his brothers and sister took it as a game, being able to easily change sex and appearance.
Everyone was unique, using hundreds of different colors and cosmetics. It was a way to ease the mind, to not notice how nobody had grown up, even after years outside the pods. Now he found himself empty, as if he had just come out of the pod all those years ago, his Frame arms around his body as he carried himself out of danger. Now, his hair was of a plain black color, not too long or short. Soft blue eyes bordering on gray adorned his face, void of ornaments or various decorations.
The scars still remained, on his face, on his arms, all over his body. The Tenno were one with the void, but it didn't mean they were immortals. Bullets and swords healed without problems, but Orokin technology and Sentient weapons left permanent marks.
His scars told a story, of the times he was foolish, of people he decided to protect, of instances in which he was betrayed. Every single mark on his body was a tale of his life outside the Zariman, and since the moment Lotus brought him back, alongside all his brothers and sisters.
Some of them decided to do something about the worst wounds, to decorate them with colors and symbols, tattoos they called them, like the tribes of Earth used to do.
Similar to sigils but permanent and made out of the void itself. Drawings, symbols, names, of thousands of different colors and intensities. Not everyone liked them, but all the Tenno decided to have at least one, the same for everybody. The Lotus symbol was delicately placed behind the ear, it shone with a soft purple color.
Valric had several of them, along his forearms and upper arm, on his shoulders and along his spine, on his ribs and down to his flanks. He loved them, they told other stories, of the comrades he lost along the way, of the void that changed everyone so deeply, of the galaxy he was a son of.
Three days had passed since he was stranded on this alternate version of his Earth. The moon was whole, it shone brightly in the sky even as the city around him polluted everything else. The buildings were tall, light shining everywhere around him.
The technology was both more and less advanced than the Ostrons but there was one thing he loved, one he only had a little counterpart in his Orbiter. The internet was something magical, being able to connect a whole world so that everyone could communicate and share their thoughts, their art and their dreams. He could send messages back home, creating groups to take the mission Lotus gave them, but not to a level similar to the internet.
The people in this world were almost identical to his own Earth, with no accent like the Ostrons except if they came from a different continent. That was another thing, the entire planet wasn't made of a single group of people with the same habits.
No, it was made up of thousands of different groups, each with distinct traditions. He spent the first day finding something to answer his questions, it was called a library and he loved that too, he knew what books were, he had a more advanced version of them. A lot of his siblings even dabbled in writing stories for the kids in both Cetus and Fortuna.
On the second day, Valric spent fifteen hours inside the library, curled up on an armchair in the most hidden section of the building. He read about the most important subjects he needed the most. Strangely, he could even read the language, even if it wasn't his own.
The void changed him, for better or for worse, it changed his memory, his senses, every void child could control his warframe to the maximum of its capabilities, and that meant being able to analyze information five times faster than a normal human.
It translated into receiving almost an eidetic memory, even if mostly centered towards fighting. But it helped in reading and memorizing too, as he finished more than thirteen books on the second day. Electronics, engineering, chemistry, science and many more.
Those were all elementary books, but still, he needed those pieces of information. A source of power strong enough for his purpose was basically unheard of in the civilian world, and stealing from those people who called themself heroes and villains was almost impossible.
Yes, because this world didn't have just normal people, but even aliens and humans capable of destroying entire cities in an afternoon. Superman, Wonderwoman and Batman were the founders of the more prominent groups of superpowered individuals that spent their time saving people.
There were even others at the other end of the spectrum, nemesis to the more famous of the heroes. The Joker, Luthor, Circe and many more. They fought, for their convictions, for their morals, everyone fought for a purpose, be it selfish or selfless, they all fought nonetheless.
The days melted together becoming weeks, and after a month, Valric was still stumbling, trying to find a way to power back his home. The world didn't have the necessary materials, gold and platinum could be good alternatives for some parts of it, but he needed to find counterparts for both Argon Crystals and Orokin cells, he didn't even know where to start, maybe going to the alien superhero in blu and red and asking how he got on the planet was a good first step.
He did find some information staying almost daily at the library. The city was called Gotham, and was the territory of one of the founders of the Justice League. The man in question, if he was a man at all, had very harsh opinions of people coming inside his domain.
Other heroes of the JL could enter only with his permission; there were other individuals with special powers, but they weren't aliens nor gods, they had simply a genetic mutation that caused that surge of different abilities, they were called metahumans and they were hunted from Batman if they did anything suspicious.
Maybe hunting was an exaggeration, the available pieces of information explained that they were relocated inside secure facilities, where they were trained to control their abilities so that they couldn't needlessly harm other people.
Valric was doubtful, the Orokin promised the same thing and what they did, in the end, was just treat the Tenno like rabid animals, prodding and experimenting until they broke. His musings were stopped when something fell from the roof, hitting the trash bin inside an alley to his right.
He tried to not be out during the night, to not meet the Bat or the other individuals that tended to cause chaos inside Gotham. But he had found some useful information regarding Organic polymorph-based alloys for regulating energy emission, so he stayed inside more than usual, until the librarian almost threatened him to get out.
The moon was already out, the air was frigid but Valric just kept walking towards his house. Heat and cold didn't do much to him anymore, maybe if he was on a volcanic planet he could feel the warmness of the lava, but the void felt just like a tepid torpor.
He did steal some clothes after the first days, because people started eyeing him strangely with his black skintight suit. Nothing fancy, just a pair of pants, shoes, and a black shirt. If only he could understand why his feet felt sweaty inside the shoes, did they need something too? And why he felt too much air passing through his privates.
His head moved towards the sound, where a black figure was sprawled on the side of a trash bin. It wasn't Batman, too thin and small; the suit was different too, with white bands all over the forearms but it had the same sigil, a yellow bat on the torso.
Valric stood motionless, did they know about him? Were they after the void like the Orokin before them? Then he heard the grunting noise of a pained individual, and he snapped back to reality the moment someone else appeared.
"You will come back with me Cassandra. Stop this foolish plan of yours, Batman will not give you what you need, I will." The standing woman spoke. From where he was, Valric could see some shallow cuts on her face.
"I...will not...go back...mother" The other girl grunted, voice soft.
The Tenno fought, it was what they were trained for. They fought for freedom, they fought against the oppressors, they fought for those who couldn't do as much. They protected too, the children, the elderly, their history and their home.
So Valric moved, without thoughts nor reason. He was scared of using his abilities, the Somatic Link kept the nightmares and visions at bay, but he didn't try using his power not even once since the first day he found himself stranded on this alternative version of his Earth. So the moment he called upon the void, it answered with open arms, like old friends meeting after a long time.
One moment he was outside the alley, the other he was next to the young girl picking her up in his arms under the widening eyes of the woman who called herself a mother. Their eyes met before he void jumped again, and again, and again, straining like never before.
He arrived on the roof next to the warehouse he called home, the girl in his arms had blacked out two jumps back, probably from the blood loss as it sure wasn't his the one he had all over his body. He jumped again, heart pounding as his veins bulged, he felt the air living his lungs as the void screamed in his ears and he crushed over a pile of wood boxes he used as a table.
He grunted, before dragging himself over the bleeding girl, trying to find her heartbeat. One second, then five, but he couldn't feel anything. He tried again, this time placing his head on her chest. When he still didn't hear anything, he called the void once again.
It was a last resort, a technique developed by one of his sisters during the years under the Orokin's thumb. He placed a hand over her heart, the other going towards his own and he followed the rhythm. He started slowly, releasing void pulses every second beat.
Then he sped up, his heart thundering inside his body. It was a last resort for a single reason, the technique linked two hearts with the void, using only one of them for two bodies until the second one would start again.
Double the strain meant the possibility of an organ failure for the Tenno that was administering the heart link.
Valric breathed roughly as he slowly detached the link the moment he could hear the other hearth beating unassisted. It took a total of five seconds for the mysterious Bat-person to open her eyes, locking hers with her savior.
"You were dead for more than ten seconds, why you're already awake eludes me." The man spoke.
"I do not care for your story, why you were there and what you did before that moment, I'm going to see if you'll survive the next five minutes, then I'm going to give you a glass of water and hope you do not talk to me again, in fact, I hope I'll never see one of you bat people again."
Valric did exactly that, both of them staring at each other without exchanging a single word. Five minutes passed and he looked away first, going towards the section of the warehouse where he kept all the food and whatever else he needed to survive.
When he turned around, the woman was already gone, leaving a puddle of blood all over what he called his living room. On the pile of wood he once called a table, there was a little device that he didn't remember ever owning, with a little yellow note attached to the side
'I will be in touch' it read, and Valric snorted, not knowing what he just did, and what his life was going to become. There was one detail he wasn't aware of, because the moment he chose his appearance, he just went with what he thought was right at the moment.
But for the woman he had just saved? Saying that it was an experience was diminishing the reality of the facts, because how could she explain to her family that she had just met a kid that was eerily similar to Bruce? A kid that as far as she knew, was homeless, and had saved her from Lady Shiva alone.
Here, it was whole, unblemished by wars that didn't happen, by empires that didn't exist. Here, the countless years spent fighting a neverending war were pointless, the deaths of his siblings were meaningless, the sacrifice of his mother was purposeless. All the people he met, killed, made friends with, were just a memory of a time long past, in a place he couldn't reach anymore.
Everything started with an emergency mission on Lua, then the biggest void storm Valric traveled through since the Zariman. It tore through the ship as if it was made out of plastic. First, it was the Landing Craft, then the Helminth Infirmary, and finally his own room, everything was lost as the storm ripped the Orbiter apart.
He woke up in darkness, with only the hum of the Somatic Link accompanying the silence. Valric stood on shaky legs, eyes darting around the empty room. Everything was normal, the pod seemed functional from the sound, but the lights were off.
He walked haphazardly towards the open door, noticing how it had been torn apart, the remains now resting where the teleporter to the Railjack once stood. Walking outside, both the rooms at his sides were absent, with only mounds of debris taking their place.
He kept wobbling forward until he reached the main open space and he froze. Everything was still there, the arsenal, the foundry, even the little bubble head he had once left up on the incubator, head still bobbing up and down.
What made him stop breathing was the open space in front, where the cockpit should have been. Now there wasn't anything anymore, the entire wall was missing, cables and pipes hanging around, giving a view to the outside. Then he heard a soft click, and the Foundry shone brightly for a single second, before leaving behind a small light, blinking intermittently. Valric walked towards the station, clicking the only illuminated spot on the surface.
"Operator! If you're listening to this message, it means I've -Died- set the ship into emergency mode. Before doing so, Ordis initiated a worldwide scan of the undiscovered planet below. Preliminary analysis indicates that-We've already been here- the location has been identified as the already discovered planet Earth, but the initial readings are perplexing, indicating deviations from our own reality. The flora and fauna exhibit unfamiliar properties, and the atmospheric composition is notably distinct.
All the remaining power has been rerouted solely to the Somatic Link, as you-Look so strange, they're going to shoot you on sight. May the stars guide your path, Operator, and may you return triumphant, as you always have. Ordis eagerly awaits your return, ready to assist in any way possible. Together, we shall -Sterminate all these inferior life forms, and we shall conquer the galaxy-."
It felt strange, crying, something Valric stopped doing many years prior. But he knew that Ordis wasn't really dead, he only powered down alongside the whole ship. He just needed to find a way to bring everything up, he just didn't know where to find an energy source big enough to do so. His look wasn't that strange if people didn't take into consideration the horns on his face and the strange colors he tended to use. It wasn't his fault if all his brothers and sister took it as a game, being able to easily change sex and appearance.
Everyone was unique, using hundreds of different colors and cosmetics. It was a way to ease the mind, to not notice how nobody had grown up, even after years outside the pods. Now he found himself empty, as if he had just come out of the pod all those years ago, his Frame arms around his body as he carried himself out of danger. Now, his hair was of a plain black color, not too long or short. Soft blue eyes bordering on gray adorned his face, void of ornaments or various decorations.
The scars still remained, on his face, on his arms, all over his body. The Tenno were one with the void, but it didn't mean they were immortals. Bullets and swords healed without problems, but Orokin technology and Sentient weapons left permanent marks.
His scars told a story, of the times he was foolish, of people he decided to protect, of instances in which he was betrayed. Every single mark on his body was a tale of his life outside the Zariman, and since the moment Lotus brought him back, alongside all his brothers and sisters.
Some of them decided to do something about the worst wounds, to decorate them with colors and symbols, tattoos they called them, like the tribes of Earth used to do.
Similar to sigils but permanent and made out of the void itself. Drawings, symbols, names, of thousands of different colors and intensities. Not everyone liked them, but all the Tenno decided to have at least one, the same for everybody. The Lotus symbol was delicately placed behind the ear, it shone with a soft purple color.
Valric had several of them, along his forearms and upper arm, on his shoulders and along his spine, on his ribs and down to his flanks. He loved them, they told other stories, of the comrades he lost along the way, of the void that changed everyone so deeply, of the galaxy he was a son of.
Three days had passed since he was stranded on this alternate version of his Earth. The moon was whole, it shone brightly in the sky even as the city around him polluted everything else. The buildings were tall, light shining everywhere around him.
The technology was both more and less advanced than the Ostrons but there was one thing he loved, one he only had a little counterpart in his Orbiter. The internet was something magical, being able to connect a whole world so that everyone could communicate and share their thoughts, their art and their dreams. He could send messages back home, creating groups to take the mission Lotus gave them, but not to a level similar to the internet.
The people in this world were almost identical to his own Earth, with no accent like the Ostrons except if they came from a different continent. That was another thing, the entire planet wasn't made of a single group of people with the same habits.
No, it was made up of thousands of different groups, each with distinct traditions. He spent the first day finding something to answer his questions, it was called a library and he loved that too, he knew what books were, he had a more advanced version of them. A lot of his siblings even dabbled in writing stories for the kids in both Cetus and Fortuna.
On the second day, Valric spent fifteen hours inside the library, curled up on an armchair in the most hidden section of the building. He read about the most important subjects he needed the most. Strangely, he could even read the language, even if it wasn't his own.
The void changed him, for better or for worse, it changed his memory, his senses, every void child could control his warframe to the maximum of its capabilities, and that meant being able to analyze information five times faster than a normal human.
It translated into receiving almost an eidetic memory, even if mostly centered towards fighting. But it helped in reading and memorizing too, as he finished more than thirteen books on the second day. Electronics, engineering, chemistry, science and many more.
Those were all elementary books, but still, he needed those pieces of information. A source of power strong enough for his purpose was basically unheard of in the civilian world, and stealing from those people who called themself heroes and villains was almost impossible.
Yes, because this world didn't have just normal people, but even aliens and humans capable of destroying entire cities in an afternoon. Superman, Wonderwoman and Batman were the founders of the more prominent groups of superpowered individuals that spent their time saving people.
There were even others at the other end of the spectrum, nemesis to the more famous of the heroes. The Joker, Luthor, Circe and many more. They fought, for their convictions, for their morals, everyone fought for a purpose, be it selfish or selfless, they all fought nonetheless.
The days melted together becoming weeks, and after a month, Valric was still stumbling, trying to find a way to power back his home. The world didn't have the necessary materials, gold and platinum could be good alternatives for some parts of it, but he needed to find counterparts for both Argon Crystals and Orokin cells, he didn't even know where to start, maybe going to the alien superhero in blu and red and asking how he got on the planet was a good first step.
He did find some information staying almost daily at the library. The city was called Gotham, and was the territory of one of the founders of the Justice League. The man in question, if he was a man at all, had very harsh opinions of people coming inside his domain.
Other heroes of the JL could enter only with his permission; there were other individuals with special powers, but they weren't aliens nor gods, they had simply a genetic mutation that caused that surge of different abilities, they were called metahumans and they were hunted from Batman if they did anything suspicious.
Maybe hunting was an exaggeration, the available pieces of information explained that they were relocated inside secure facilities, where they were trained to control their abilities so that they couldn't needlessly harm other people.
Valric was doubtful, the Orokin promised the same thing and what they did, in the end, was just treat the Tenno like rabid animals, prodding and experimenting until they broke. His musings were stopped when something fell from the roof, hitting the trash bin inside an alley to his right.
He tried to not be out during the night, to not meet the Bat or the other individuals that tended to cause chaos inside Gotham. But he had found some useful information regarding Organic polymorph-based alloys for regulating energy emission, so he stayed inside more than usual, until the librarian almost threatened him to get out.
The moon was already out, the air was frigid but Valric just kept walking towards his house. Heat and cold didn't do much to him anymore, maybe if he was on a volcanic planet he could feel the warmness of the lava, but the void felt just like a tepid torpor.
He did steal some clothes after the first days, because people started eyeing him strangely with his black skintight suit. Nothing fancy, just a pair of pants, shoes, and a black shirt. If only he could understand why his feet felt sweaty inside the shoes, did they need something too? And why he felt too much air passing through his privates.
His head moved towards the sound, where a black figure was sprawled on the side of a trash bin. It wasn't Batman, too thin and small; the suit was different too, with white bands all over the forearms but it had the same sigil, a yellow bat on the torso.
Valric stood motionless, did they know about him? Were they after the void like the Orokin before them? Then he heard the grunting noise of a pained individual, and he snapped back to reality the moment someone else appeared.
"You will come back with me Cassandra. Stop this foolish plan of yours, Batman will not give you what you need, I will." The standing woman spoke. From where he was, Valric could see some shallow cuts on her face.
"I...will not...go back...mother" The other girl grunted, voice soft.
The Tenno fought, it was what they were trained for. They fought for freedom, they fought against the oppressors, they fought for those who couldn't do as much. They protected too, the children, the elderly, their history and their home.
So Valric moved, without thoughts nor reason. He was scared of using his abilities, the Somatic Link kept the nightmares and visions at bay, but he didn't try using his power not even once since the first day he found himself stranded on this alternative version of his Earth. So the moment he called upon the void, it answered with open arms, like old friends meeting after a long time.
One moment he was outside the alley, the other he was next to the young girl picking her up in his arms under the widening eyes of the woman who called herself a mother. Their eyes met before he void jumped again, and again, and again, straining like never before.
He arrived on the roof next to the warehouse he called home, the girl in his arms had blacked out two jumps back, probably from the blood loss as it sure wasn't his the one he had all over his body. He jumped again, heart pounding as his veins bulged, he felt the air living his lungs as the void screamed in his ears and he crushed over a pile of wood boxes he used as a table.
He grunted, before dragging himself over the bleeding girl, trying to find her heartbeat. One second, then five, but he couldn't feel anything. He tried again, this time placing his head on her chest. When he still didn't hear anything, he called the void once again.
It was a last resort, a technique developed by one of his sisters during the years under the Orokin's thumb. He placed a hand over her heart, the other going towards his own and he followed the rhythm. He started slowly, releasing void pulses every second beat.
Then he sped up, his heart thundering inside his body. It was a last resort for a single reason, the technique linked two hearts with the void, using only one of them for two bodies until the second one would start again.
Double the strain meant the possibility of an organ failure for the Tenno that was administering the heart link.
Valric breathed roughly as he slowly detached the link the moment he could hear the other hearth beating unassisted. It took a total of five seconds for the mysterious Bat-person to open her eyes, locking hers with her savior.
"You were dead for more than ten seconds, why you're already awake eludes me." The man spoke.
"I do not care for your story, why you were there and what you did before that moment, I'm going to see if you'll survive the next five minutes, then I'm going to give you a glass of water and hope you do not talk to me again, in fact, I hope I'll never see one of you bat people again."
Valric did exactly that, both of them staring at each other without exchanging a single word. Five minutes passed and he looked away first, going towards the section of the warehouse where he kept all the food and whatever else he needed to survive.
When he turned around, the woman was already gone, leaving a puddle of blood all over what he called his living room. On the pile of wood he once called a table, there was a little device that he didn't remember ever owning, with a little yellow note attached to the side
'I will be in touch' it read, and Valric snorted, not knowing what he just did, and what his life was going to become. There was one detail he wasn't aware of, because the moment he chose his appearance, he just went with what he thought was right at the moment.
But for the woman he had just saved? Saying that it was an experience was diminishing the reality of the facts, because how could she explain to her family that she had just met a kid that was eerily similar to Bruce? A kid that as far as she knew, was homeless, and had saved her from Lady Shiva alone.
Don't let the fire burn you. -Avatar TLAB SI #1
I woke up startled by the train brakes, it was something I developeds during my college years, where any place was good enough to sleep but I didn't want to find myself on the other side of the state.
Looking around, I expected to see the chaos of rush hour, with its many quirks and noises. What I didn't expect to find was a completely different wagon, old but at the same time extremely luxurious. It reminded me of the Orient Express, with the plushy chairs, wooden tables and so on.
I noticed the other occupants of the wagon. On the left sat a man, wearing an elegant black suit and reading a newspaper, on the other side, a girl was typing furiously on her laptop. The last passengers were a couple of kids hugging each other, I could hear the younger one crying for his mom.
I never liked children, more for the noise than anything else as I always had problems with loud ones, but both the adults were ignoring them so the least I could do was search for his mom.
While walking toward them, I thought about the circumstances and how I was so relaxed. It was strange, I couldn't remember when nor how I got on the train, but something in the back of my mind told me that I was where I was supposed to be, so I marched on.
"Almost over. Only seven pages left and I'm done for tomorrow" I could hear the mumblings of the laptop girl, over and over she needed only those seven pages.
"This is absurd, I'm already late but the flight still lasts for an hour more, damn thunderstorm" The man grumbled, his eyes darting from his watch to the closed train curtains with a worried face. Flight? I was sure we were on a train.
Now I could hear the kids, the older one was a girl and she was tightly hugging a young boy.
"Mommy? I'm cold Bea, where is mommy?" Cold? What was going on? The wagon had a comfortable temperature, tending more toward the hot, and every window was closed.
"Everything is going to be alright. Leo, look at me. She's going to find us." She whispered, hugging the boy harder than before.
"Hey kids, everything ok? Need some help to search for your mom?" I said but they ignored me. I tried talking with the other two passengers but it was the same. Something was deeply wrong and I couldn't think what, every time I tried my mind became vacant, it was nervewracking.
"They're not going to hear you, it is not their time yet." Someone spoke from behind me. I swirled back from the fright and I saw someone where I first woke up. It was a man, or a woman? I couldn't pinpoint their face as every time I blinked they changed their face.
"What, what's going on? Who are you? Why can't they see me?" The sensation from before was stronger than ever, he was the cause of it.
"Calm down young Alexander, take a sit." They said, slightly pointing at the chair in front of him. He stopped changing forms, he was now an old man wearing an old three-piece suit with a little chain coming from his breast pocket. Slowly walking towards him, I sat a the other side of the table.
"Tea?" He offered a cup of the liquid, I was sure it wasn't there before but I accepted nonetheless. He smiled and I felt the warmest sensation coming from inside me, after finishing his cup, he started talking.
"It is not their stop yet, so they're still in that last moment. The one before the end. It is never easy to remember, so I try to lessen the pain. It worked so far." The man spoke and I couldn't breathe anymore, I had an idea of what he meant and the reason why I couldn't recall how I got on the train.
"Yes, I see you've answered yourself" He smiled before going on. "It was funny, you slept through all of your trip and I didn't have the courage to wake you up" He slightly laughed before his expression became serious "But now it is over, and you're stop is almost up. I have a few suggestions if it is alright with you." His eyes lightly shone but the only thing I could do was nod my head.
"You could reach the other side, no memories, but you could be happy forever. You could go back to your world but not as yourself or as a human, the cycle must be balanced" I didn't like those choices, losing my memories was the same thing as dying and I didn't want to be reborn as a mayfly only to die the next day.
"The last one is usually the most popular. Be reborn in another universe. I can see it in your eyes, I mean every single universe you could think of. But you'll not be able to choose, not where and not how. You could be born extremely poor and die days later or die of old age years in the future" It wasn't really a difficult choice considering the other alternatives
"I choose the third option...and could I ask you a question? Sir?" I wanted to know who he really was, just to be at peace with myself but he didn't even give permission, as he answered before even listening to what it was.
"It will not be a satisfying answer for you but alas, I'm just the one who leads to the other side" He stood up, before walking towards one of the train doors.
"Remember these words young Alexander. Fate is a fickle mistress whose sense of justice is exceeded only by her sense of humor, so do not despair in the face of adversities and fight for your future with your head held high. I do not know where you'll be reborn, but I hope you'll be happy." He smiled, before opening one of the train doors.
Over the exit line there was nothing else other than a white wall. It was at that moment that everything came crashing down, I made a gamble and now I had to live through the consequences. Where was I going to be reborn? Could I survive more than days somewhere like the Warhammer universe? I didn't know and now was too late.
After a final goodbye, I walked through the exit.
Being reborn is an experience I don't recommend to anyone. Not the different universe part, that was cool as hell. I'm talking about childbirth, such an horrible experience for both mother and child. One moment I was walking through a white door, the next I was wet, cold and screaming as if my life depended on it.
Worst of all, it was the time it took for everything to end. After those hands stopped pulling me away, they trapped me inside a towel and handed me around like a trophy.
I could hear three different voices, and I was surprised to understand them all. I expected to find a different language but alas, I was fortunate enough to be reincarnated where people spoke English.
"Congratulations Lady Hanako, it's a boy! And what a flaming spirit he has! We're sure he's going to be an excellent fire bender in the future." One of the women spoke aloud.
It was anticlimactic the way I found out where I really was. There were really only a couple of universes where they talked about firebenders and that was really if I wanted to differentiate the comics from the tv series as different dimensions.
The world of Avatar was in no way a peaceful land, but it was surely in the upper percentage for survivability. Now I just needed to learn if my future problems were about a world war started by the nation I was born in or a group of anti-bender terrorists.
I was now in my new mother's embrace, it was difficult to really accept the reality of it. I could do it from a technical point, but emotionally, they would never replace my real ones. I expected to be in a worse mental state, but I suppose the old man who sent me here helped in that regard. My new mother started softly cooing in my ears, whispering how my new father would be very happy.
"Little Haku, your father wanted to name you Ty Shen, a family tradition he says, bah! Then we would have ended up like his brother, I heard his wife's going to have sextuplets!" She continued to talk as if a newborn could have understood her, I could, but that was another story.
Days passed and I started to learn more things about my new family and in what period I was in. My new father was named Ty Yuen and he was a general of the Fire Nation. After the family visited, I learned that his twin was named Ty Ming and he inherited the family noble seat.
After hearing about sextuplet, nobles, and Ty as the initials of a name, it was easy to connect the dots of my relationship to Ty Lee, or my cousin in this universe. One thing I learned was my new father's personality; he was a stoic man, overly serious and passed most of the time in silence.
His brother however, was the total opposite. Ty Ming visited only one day and didn't stop talking for the whole time, it was like observing one of those golden retrievers switching from one thing to another.
One thing I didn't think about being reincarnated was the total loss of every motor function I ever had. I couldn't move anything other than my head and limbs, I couldn't talk and worst of all, I couldn't hold in my bodily needs. It was terrifying in a twisted way, not being able to control your body for months can change you deeply.
Another thing that came to my attention soon after was boredom. I passed most of the time between my mother's embrace and the housemaids. It was a mind-numbing period of my new life that thankfully I passed mostly between napping and scaring the house staff.
As time went on, trying to be a normal child became ever so difficult. Most times I forgot about it and others I couldn't dumb myself enough in time. It didn't change much in my daily life other than my mother ever growing affection and compliments and a new glint in my father's eyes.
At three years old, I was able to control my whole body and talk like a normal human being. I still tried to not sound too old, using childish terms and so on as I didn't want to look creepier than normal.
I remember one time when I was three and the housestuff found me making faces in the mirror. It was so embarassing but also the first time I saw myself in a mirror after being reincarnated. As expected, my hair was completely black unlike my eyes, wich were of an emerald green.
It was strange, as most people around me had ember eyes so I asked my mother. She only said that one of her brothers had green eyes too so it wasn't anything to worry about.
Everything changed when I was four and my father approached me out of nowhere. He wasn't an emotional man, he passed most of his time at the royal palace working on different things or around the regions to observe the militarization.
The only time we were together was during meal times or family reunions. My aunt gave birth as canon dictated to six daughters when I was five months old and they were the wildest bunch I ever met.
It was funny, really. I was out in the garden trying firebend without any idea how. It was useless as the only martial art I ever practiced was boxing in my previous life and the only moves I could remember from the show were too difficult to practice safely. So after a couple of ineffective punches, I heard footsteps approaching from behind me.
"Your footwork is atrocious boy, your fists are clumsy and your breath too heavy. Watch me" He said before starting a sort of kata.
He did it slowly, one foot after the other. It was captivating, how he moved effortlessly, how his breath distorted the air around his face. He finished the kata with the palm of his right hand going forward with a burst of flames big enough that I felt the heat from the other side of the garden.
"Now do it boy, I don't have all day." I didn't have any other choice, so I started doing what I could remember of the moves.
I spent hours practicing, I reached the point where my legs were on fire and every muscle of my body ached, but I was sure that I butchered most of the kata. Father didn't comment on anything, he just watched for most of the time until I dropped to the ground panting.
"Tomorrow at the same time, you will stretch before and after it. Now go wash yourself and don't be late boy."
I spent weeks doing it, stretching, running, everything a four years old probably didn't have enough patience for. The more I practiced the kata, the more it became natural and easy to do. Frontal low kick connecting to an upper elbow strike, double punches ending in an open front palm, I still couldn't do most of the kata but it was a start, and I liked every moment of it.
Those weeks became months but I still couldn't firebend, I didn't know if I was too little or I just wasn't born with the ability to do so, but father didn't say anything, he just increased the amount of training I did daily without causing problems for my small age.
The time I didn't train I spent trying to understand the written language. I hoped it to be English too but I wasn't lucky enough. Chinese had a completely different alphabet but my family was rich enough to pay for a tutor.
My mother was the daughter of a rich merchant family but she didn't have much time to instruct me. It took some time, as many elders didn't have the time to teach a four years old, but it worked nonetheless.
I spent two years training and studying daily, I found out how my mind was slightly different. I could remember things more clearly, think a little faster, I didn't become a genius but at the same time my mind was clearer than ever.
I spent hours every day practicing both grammar and martial arts and I could now even understand some chapters of the books in the house library.
My father kept training me. He wasn't always there but at the end of every month he made me do a demonstration. If I didn't pass, he would show me again the kata and add more hours of training and when I passed for the first time, two months after I started training, he added more exercises to my routine.
Handstands, split, and so on. It helped me with the second kata he made me learn, as it was mainly made of kicks and elbow moves.
I expected to start shooting flames after the first year, but I still couldn't do anything after the second. It was maddening, I knew deep down that even without one I could still be a formidable opponent.
Ty Lee, Mai, Sokka and many others were some of the strongest martial artists in the world, but I couldn't believe that after being reincarnated in a different world, I would still be the same.
It happened one afternoon while I was training with my father. I was doing a normal routine, a sideway elbow shot followed by a couple of upper kicks ending in an ax kick. It was easy, as it was only one part of a larger set, but he watched me with scrutinizing eyes all the same.
"Watch your breath." I did it again.
"Do not overextend the final kick" and again.
"Keep your left foot behind" and again.
"Damn it boy, the royal princess is already in training, again!"
And I went on, over and over. I expected to be more reasonable, that my real age would aid me in stressful situations, but I was reaching my breaking point and my physical age didn't help the mood swings.
My leg came down in a final axe kick, again and again I tried uselessly until something changed. I was tired, everything ached and the final kick came down wrong. It was more a stomp than anything else but the moment before it connected to the ground I felt something pulling from inside.
The sensation exploded at the same time I did. I was angry, everything hurt and the damn fire still didn't come out. I screamed stomping the ground with all the force I had left.
"Enough!" Was what came out of my mouth as the foot connected to the earth.
It was at that moment that I really felt it, what it meant to be a bender, but not a fire one. The earth exploded in front of me as a sharp columns of rock sprouted from the ground raising a cloud of dust with it.
I watched it without moving a muscle and I started laughing, was this what he meant when he told me that fate was a fickle mistress? I didn't remember anything after that point, as I passed out soon after.
I woke up in my room still dirty and with a throbbing headache. It was so disorienting that for a second I thought I was back home in my old bedroom. It didn't last long as I remembered what happened before my blacking out.
I was an earthbender, didn't know how but I suppose that was fate's gift for me.
I got up from the bed and went directly into the bathroom, even after six years I still wasn't used to servants aiding me. They heated up the tub, stripped me and did everything I could have done alone, but I was too tired to complain so I just relaxed.
The moment I was done, I started walking towards the kitchen but I stopped behind the wall, as I could hear my parents talking.
"I am...I am so sorry Ty Yuen. It was just one time believe me!" I could see both of them from where I was, my father's face was set in stone, I couldn't discern anything from it unlike my mother, who was crying next to him.
"I, I was angry, you spent most of the time outside the city. You didn't even come home a month and I knew they didn't give you any long term assignments. Then a caravan from the earth kingdom passed through and I just...he promised me that he wasn't an earthbender. Then you came back two days later and talked about the promotion and I, I'm so sorry Ty Yuen."
I didn't expect the development, my new mother was one of the nicest women I ever had the pleasure to meet and my father was a difficult man to be with but he never did anything terrible.
I expected something from him, an outburst, screams or whatever, but he just stared at her with an expression devoid of any emotion.
"I understand" Was what came out of his mouth after seconds of silence. "I can now see my faults in our marriage and for that I'm sorry." He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and spoke again.
"I'm going to send a letter to both of our families about the divorce and as per our contract, the firstborn will stay with me." I didn't anticipate the last part, he talked about a contract so it was easy to imagine that it wasn't really his idea to keep a child that wasn't his own and couldn't even firebend.
The following days passed in a daze, a coming and going of people from both our families who talked for hours. Five days after I woke up, my mother approached me for the last time, her eyes were puffy and I could hear a shaking in her voice.
"Eih little sunshine, I'm...I'm sorry but mom needs to go back with your grandparents. Remember, remember that I love you very much" She stopped talking as the tears overwhelmed her. She hugged me soon after and sent most of the remaining seconds whispering how much she loved me and that she was sorry.
She was completely different from my previous mother. My original parents never were emotional people, they showed their love in different ways. But Hanako's love was purely physical and through praises. Sometimes it was overbearing but I still felt loved nonetheless
She went back home with my grandparents, I didn't know where but I would ask my father during the next training session. Then it came to my mind, would he still train me? I wasn't a firebender so technically most katas were useless to me. I could only hope.
I never noticed how silent the house was without mom, the servants worked silently and with mechanical precision. When before I could try to scare them or have fun in other ways, now it was different.
They whispered behind my back most of the time but close enough that I could hear everything. They talked about my mother, my eyes, the incident in the garden and many other things. They still aided me but at the same time, they started to find ways to bother my daily life.
Cold water, itchy clothes, food that I didn't like. Minor things that would not send them to prison as I was technically still the son of a General. All in all, it wasn't that bad. Most of them went back to treating me normally after a couple of weeks.
Only two weeks after the accident did I spoke with my father. I didn't see him for the whole time but he wasn't that different from the usual. His face was set in stone as always but I could feel something different from him. Every time his eyes gazed at me, I could see his demeanor change but not like before, when he noticed how intelligent I was for a four years old.
"You will not train in our katas anymore" were the first words he spoke to me. "You will start a basic nonbender martial training with different weapons. I heard about a Master who teaches an old martial art for nonbenders. One of my nieces started learning last month, you'll do the same.
Looking around, I expected to see the chaos of rush hour, with its many quirks and noises. What I didn't expect to find was a completely different wagon, old but at the same time extremely luxurious. It reminded me of the Orient Express, with the plushy chairs, wooden tables and so on.
I noticed the other occupants of the wagon. On the left sat a man, wearing an elegant black suit and reading a newspaper, on the other side, a girl was typing furiously on her laptop. The last passengers were a couple of kids hugging each other, I could hear the younger one crying for his mom.
I never liked children, more for the noise than anything else as I always had problems with loud ones, but both the adults were ignoring them so the least I could do was search for his mom.
While walking toward them, I thought about the circumstances and how I was so relaxed. It was strange, I couldn't remember when nor how I got on the train, but something in the back of my mind told me that I was where I was supposed to be, so I marched on.
"Almost over. Only seven pages left and I'm done for tomorrow" I could hear the mumblings of the laptop girl, over and over she needed only those seven pages.
"This is absurd, I'm already late but the flight still lasts for an hour more, damn thunderstorm" The man grumbled, his eyes darting from his watch to the closed train curtains with a worried face. Flight? I was sure we were on a train.
Now I could hear the kids, the older one was a girl and she was tightly hugging a young boy.
"Mommy? I'm cold Bea, where is mommy?" Cold? What was going on? The wagon had a comfortable temperature, tending more toward the hot, and every window was closed.
"Everything is going to be alright. Leo, look at me. She's going to find us." She whispered, hugging the boy harder than before.
"Hey kids, everything ok? Need some help to search for your mom?" I said but they ignored me. I tried talking with the other two passengers but it was the same. Something was deeply wrong and I couldn't think what, every time I tried my mind became vacant, it was nervewracking.
"They're not going to hear you, it is not their time yet." Someone spoke from behind me. I swirled back from the fright and I saw someone where I first woke up. It was a man, or a woman? I couldn't pinpoint their face as every time I blinked they changed their face.
"What, what's going on? Who are you? Why can't they see me?" The sensation from before was stronger than ever, he was the cause of it.
"Calm down young Alexander, take a sit." They said, slightly pointing at the chair in front of him. He stopped changing forms, he was now an old man wearing an old three-piece suit with a little chain coming from his breast pocket. Slowly walking towards him, I sat a the other side of the table.
"Tea?" He offered a cup of the liquid, I was sure it wasn't there before but I accepted nonetheless. He smiled and I felt the warmest sensation coming from inside me, after finishing his cup, he started talking.
"It is not their stop yet, so they're still in that last moment. The one before the end. It is never easy to remember, so I try to lessen the pain. It worked so far." The man spoke and I couldn't breathe anymore, I had an idea of what he meant and the reason why I couldn't recall how I got on the train.
"Yes, I see you've answered yourself" He smiled before going on. "It was funny, you slept through all of your trip and I didn't have the courage to wake you up" He slightly laughed before his expression became serious "But now it is over, and you're stop is almost up. I have a few suggestions if it is alright with you." His eyes lightly shone but the only thing I could do was nod my head.
"You could reach the other side, no memories, but you could be happy forever. You could go back to your world but not as yourself or as a human, the cycle must be balanced" I didn't like those choices, losing my memories was the same thing as dying and I didn't want to be reborn as a mayfly only to die the next day.
"The last one is usually the most popular. Be reborn in another universe. I can see it in your eyes, I mean every single universe you could think of. But you'll not be able to choose, not where and not how. You could be born extremely poor and die days later or die of old age years in the future" It wasn't really a difficult choice considering the other alternatives
"I choose the third option...and could I ask you a question? Sir?" I wanted to know who he really was, just to be at peace with myself but he didn't even give permission, as he answered before even listening to what it was.
"It will not be a satisfying answer for you but alas, I'm just the one who leads to the other side" He stood up, before walking towards one of the train doors.
"Remember these words young Alexander. Fate is a fickle mistress whose sense of justice is exceeded only by her sense of humor, so do not despair in the face of adversities and fight for your future with your head held high. I do not know where you'll be reborn, but I hope you'll be happy." He smiled, before opening one of the train doors.
Over the exit line there was nothing else other than a white wall. It was at that moment that everything came crashing down, I made a gamble and now I had to live through the consequences. Where was I going to be reborn? Could I survive more than days somewhere like the Warhammer universe? I didn't know and now was too late.
After a final goodbye, I walked through the exit.
Being reborn is an experience I don't recommend to anyone. Not the different universe part, that was cool as hell. I'm talking about childbirth, such an horrible experience for both mother and child. One moment I was walking through a white door, the next I was wet, cold and screaming as if my life depended on it.
Worst of all, it was the time it took for everything to end. After those hands stopped pulling me away, they trapped me inside a towel and handed me around like a trophy.
I could hear three different voices, and I was surprised to understand them all. I expected to find a different language but alas, I was fortunate enough to be reincarnated where people spoke English.
"Congratulations Lady Hanako, it's a boy! And what a flaming spirit he has! We're sure he's going to be an excellent fire bender in the future." One of the women spoke aloud.
It was anticlimactic the way I found out where I really was. There were really only a couple of universes where they talked about firebenders and that was really if I wanted to differentiate the comics from the tv series as different dimensions.
The world of Avatar was in no way a peaceful land, but it was surely in the upper percentage for survivability. Now I just needed to learn if my future problems were about a world war started by the nation I was born in or a group of anti-bender terrorists.
I was now in my new mother's embrace, it was difficult to really accept the reality of it. I could do it from a technical point, but emotionally, they would never replace my real ones. I expected to be in a worse mental state, but I suppose the old man who sent me here helped in that regard. My new mother started softly cooing in my ears, whispering how my new father would be very happy.
"Little Haku, your father wanted to name you Ty Shen, a family tradition he says, bah! Then we would have ended up like his brother, I heard his wife's going to have sextuplets!" She continued to talk as if a newborn could have understood her, I could, but that was another story.
Days passed and I started to learn more things about my new family and in what period I was in. My new father was named Ty Yuen and he was a general of the Fire Nation. After the family visited, I learned that his twin was named Ty Ming and he inherited the family noble seat.
After hearing about sextuplet, nobles, and Ty as the initials of a name, it was easy to connect the dots of my relationship to Ty Lee, or my cousin in this universe. One thing I learned was my new father's personality; he was a stoic man, overly serious and passed most of the time in silence.
His brother however, was the total opposite. Ty Ming visited only one day and didn't stop talking for the whole time, it was like observing one of those golden retrievers switching from one thing to another.
One thing I didn't think about being reincarnated was the total loss of every motor function I ever had. I couldn't move anything other than my head and limbs, I couldn't talk and worst of all, I couldn't hold in my bodily needs. It was terrifying in a twisted way, not being able to control your body for months can change you deeply.
Another thing that came to my attention soon after was boredom. I passed most of the time between my mother's embrace and the housemaids. It was a mind-numbing period of my new life that thankfully I passed mostly between napping and scaring the house staff.
As time went on, trying to be a normal child became ever so difficult. Most times I forgot about it and others I couldn't dumb myself enough in time. It didn't change much in my daily life other than my mother ever growing affection and compliments and a new glint in my father's eyes.
At three years old, I was able to control my whole body and talk like a normal human being. I still tried to not sound too old, using childish terms and so on as I didn't want to look creepier than normal.
I remember one time when I was three and the housestuff found me making faces in the mirror. It was so embarassing but also the first time I saw myself in a mirror after being reincarnated. As expected, my hair was completely black unlike my eyes, wich were of an emerald green.
It was strange, as most people around me had ember eyes so I asked my mother. She only said that one of her brothers had green eyes too so it wasn't anything to worry about.
Everything changed when I was four and my father approached me out of nowhere. He wasn't an emotional man, he passed most of his time at the royal palace working on different things or around the regions to observe the militarization.
The only time we were together was during meal times or family reunions. My aunt gave birth as canon dictated to six daughters when I was five months old and they were the wildest bunch I ever met.
It was funny, really. I was out in the garden trying firebend without any idea how. It was useless as the only martial art I ever practiced was boxing in my previous life and the only moves I could remember from the show were too difficult to practice safely. So after a couple of ineffective punches, I heard footsteps approaching from behind me.
"Your footwork is atrocious boy, your fists are clumsy and your breath too heavy. Watch me" He said before starting a sort of kata.
He did it slowly, one foot after the other. It was captivating, how he moved effortlessly, how his breath distorted the air around his face. He finished the kata with the palm of his right hand going forward with a burst of flames big enough that I felt the heat from the other side of the garden.
"Now do it boy, I don't have all day." I didn't have any other choice, so I started doing what I could remember of the moves.
I spent hours practicing, I reached the point where my legs were on fire and every muscle of my body ached, but I was sure that I butchered most of the kata. Father didn't comment on anything, he just watched for most of the time until I dropped to the ground panting.
"Tomorrow at the same time, you will stretch before and after it. Now go wash yourself and don't be late boy."
I spent weeks doing it, stretching, running, everything a four years old probably didn't have enough patience for. The more I practiced the kata, the more it became natural and easy to do. Frontal low kick connecting to an upper elbow strike, double punches ending in an open front palm, I still couldn't do most of the kata but it was a start, and I liked every moment of it.
Those weeks became months but I still couldn't firebend, I didn't know if I was too little or I just wasn't born with the ability to do so, but father didn't say anything, he just increased the amount of training I did daily without causing problems for my small age.
The time I didn't train I spent trying to understand the written language. I hoped it to be English too but I wasn't lucky enough. Chinese had a completely different alphabet but my family was rich enough to pay for a tutor.
My mother was the daughter of a rich merchant family but she didn't have much time to instruct me. It took some time, as many elders didn't have the time to teach a four years old, but it worked nonetheless.
I spent two years training and studying daily, I found out how my mind was slightly different. I could remember things more clearly, think a little faster, I didn't become a genius but at the same time my mind was clearer than ever.
I spent hours every day practicing both grammar and martial arts and I could now even understand some chapters of the books in the house library.
My father kept training me. He wasn't always there but at the end of every month he made me do a demonstration. If I didn't pass, he would show me again the kata and add more hours of training and when I passed for the first time, two months after I started training, he added more exercises to my routine.
Handstands, split, and so on. It helped me with the second kata he made me learn, as it was mainly made of kicks and elbow moves.
I expected to start shooting flames after the first year, but I still couldn't do anything after the second. It was maddening, I knew deep down that even without one I could still be a formidable opponent.
Ty Lee, Mai, Sokka and many others were some of the strongest martial artists in the world, but I couldn't believe that after being reincarnated in a different world, I would still be the same.
It happened one afternoon while I was training with my father. I was doing a normal routine, a sideway elbow shot followed by a couple of upper kicks ending in an ax kick. It was easy, as it was only one part of a larger set, but he watched me with scrutinizing eyes all the same.
"Watch your breath." I did it again.
"Do not overextend the final kick" and again.
"Keep your left foot behind" and again.
"Damn it boy, the royal princess is already in training, again!"
And I went on, over and over. I expected to be more reasonable, that my real age would aid me in stressful situations, but I was reaching my breaking point and my physical age didn't help the mood swings.
My leg came down in a final axe kick, again and again I tried uselessly until something changed. I was tired, everything ached and the final kick came down wrong. It was more a stomp than anything else but the moment before it connected to the ground I felt something pulling from inside.
The sensation exploded at the same time I did. I was angry, everything hurt and the damn fire still didn't come out. I screamed stomping the ground with all the force I had left.
"Enough!" Was what came out of my mouth as the foot connected to the earth.
It was at that moment that I really felt it, what it meant to be a bender, but not a fire one. The earth exploded in front of me as a sharp columns of rock sprouted from the ground raising a cloud of dust with it.
I watched it without moving a muscle and I started laughing, was this what he meant when he told me that fate was a fickle mistress? I didn't remember anything after that point, as I passed out soon after.
I woke up in my room still dirty and with a throbbing headache. It was so disorienting that for a second I thought I was back home in my old bedroom. It didn't last long as I remembered what happened before my blacking out.
I was an earthbender, didn't know how but I suppose that was fate's gift for me.
I got up from the bed and went directly into the bathroom, even after six years I still wasn't used to servants aiding me. They heated up the tub, stripped me and did everything I could have done alone, but I was too tired to complain so I just relaxed.
The moment I was done, I started walking towards the kitchen but I stopped behind the wall, as I could hear my parents talking.
"I am...I am so sorry Ty Yuen. It was just one time believe me!" I could see both of them from where I was, my father's face was set in stone, I couldn't discern anything from it unlike my mother, who was crying next to him.
"I, I was angry, you spent most of the time outside the city. You didn't even come home a month and I knew they didn't give you any long term assignments. Then a caravan from the earth kingdom passed through and I just...he promised me that he wasn't an earthbender. Then you came back two days later and talked about the promotion and I, I'm so sorry Ty Yuen."
I didn't expect the development, my new mother was one of the nicest women I ever had the pleasure to meet and my father was a difficult man to be with but he never did anything terrible.
I expected something from him, an outburst, screams or whatever, but he just stared at her with an expression devoid of any emotion.
"I understand" Was what came out of his mouth after seconds of silence. "I can now see my faults in our marriage and for that I'm sorry." He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and spoke again.
"I'm going to send a letter to both of our families about the divorce and as per our contract, the firstborn will stay with me." I didn't anticipate the last part, he talked about a contract so it was easy to imagine that it wasn't really his idea to keep a child that wasn't his own and couldn't even firebend.
The following days passed in a daze, a coming and going of people from both our families who talked for hours. Five days after I woke up, my mother approached me for the last time, her eyes were puffy and I could hear a shaking in her voice.
"Eih little sunshine, I'm...I'm sorry but mom needs to go back with your grandparents. Remember, remember that I love you very much" She stopped talking as the tears overwhelmed her. She hugged me soon after and sent most of the remaining seconds whispering how much she loved me and that she was sorry.
She was completely different from my previous mother. My original parents never were emotional people, they showed their love in different ways. But Hanako's love was purely physical and through praises. Sometimes it was overbearing but I still felt loved nonetheless
She went back home with my grandparents, I didn't know where but I would ask my father during the next training session. Then it came to my mind, would he still train me? I wasn't a firebender so technically most katas were useless to me. I could only hope.
I never noticed how silent the house was without mom, the servants worked silently and with mechanical precision. When before I could try to scare them or have fun in other ways, now it was different.
They whispered behind my back most of the time but close enough that I could hear everything. They talked about my mother, my eyes, the incident in the garden and many other things. They still aided me but at the same time, they started to find ways to bother my daily life.
Cold water, itchy clothes, food that I didn't like. Minor things that would not send them to prison as I was technically still the son of a General. All in all, it wasn't that bad. Most of them went back to treating me normally after a couple of weeks.
Only two weeks after the accident did I spoke with my father. I didn't see him for the whole time but he wasn't that different from the usual. His face was set in stone as always but I could feel something different from him. Every time his eyes gazed at me, I could see his demeanor change but not like before, when he noticed how intelligent I was for a four years old.
"You will not train in our katas anymore" were the first words he spoke to me. "You will start a basic nonbender martial training with different weapons. I heard about a Master who teaches an old martial art for nonbenders. One of my nieces started learning last month, you'll do the same.
Last edited: