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

[Morrowlark]

Spoiler: Losses

There was a fragment of potential in you, and it is now gone. You have two Gifts remaining.

Your good health has downgraded to okay health, from blood loss.

Life isn't a videogame...

"What if it was a videogame?" you rasp. Is this just your voice now? No, focus on that later, maybe your throat just needs more time to heal. You stand, quickly, gesturing to shush Jill's reflexive response. "I have an idea. If it doesn't work, we'll just leave. But if it does work...maybe we have...flexibility, in our plans. You heard the recordings. High walls were the opposite of what the world needed..." You shake your head. "Stay right here."

First things first: you need a backpack. After you grab the biggest one you can find, a beast of a thing with a metal frame (brought to you by Mountainview Hiking & Camping), you go tearing through the garden section, grabbing a little of every kind of seed you can find, along with some starter plants (tomatoes and strawberries, mainly), some tools, and a shitload of gardening books and magazines. These you bring to Jill and leave with her ("Find the ones native to this climate okay bye don't die -") before you look for a way onto the roof. There's some extremely long ladders that collapse into a more portable state, and you bring a pair of those out, but you're going to need soil, and steel, and glass, and -

- You go into the storage area in the back and spot a forklift and a cherrypicker. It is here that you learn something vitally important which sends a little thrill of pride through you for reasons you do not understand: you are forklift certified. When did that happen? Why? Hell if you know, but this body understands how forklifts work and fucking loves driving them. You're not going to waste ethanol doing doughnuts...

...Okay one doughnut....

And instead you get the back doors open, load an empty pallet onto the forklift, and stack it with soil, followed by a bucket of shattered glass that you sweep from the parking lot. After some thought, you grab a fire axe from the shelves and hack metal scraps from some of the cars in the parking lot, which you also add to the bucket. You work like something has possessed you, scurrying to and fro, often running past Jill with an absent greeting. The look on its face goes from confused, to bemused, to fascinated as an hour crawls by, hour and a half or so...

A bit of your precious firewood will be necessary, to make the planter boxes with. Not much, but you don't have much. Say, three days' worth.

A little less than two hours later, with multiple trips up via cherrypicker, you are up on the roof. Cigarette butts are everywhere, and only an unexplained need to not look...desperate...in front of Jill keeps you from trying to smoke some. Instead the two of you sweep a space clear, and hastily assemble about five planter boxes, which you then fill in with rich soil that you mix with the shattered glass and shredded metal. The largest receives a variety of tree seeds, while the others are dedicated to smaller fruits and vegetables, here very much to include a staggering number of beans. Jill is insistent there; without knowing when or where you'll find meat next, you're going to need protein, and you're going to need a lot of it.

"So," Jill drawls, a faint note of awe in its voice, "what next?"

"I'm not sure," you admit in a quiet, scratchy tone. You reach for that warmth over your heart, and are shocked when it turns searing nearly immediately. You cough, and slap your chest through your coat, which - oh, shit, your clothes, can't have those lighting on fire. You start peeling them away very quickly, and when Jill realizes what you're intending it turns around real fast.

"I don't do that tantric stuff," Jill protests.

"This isn't that," you answer, almost absently. Your eyes are on the boxes you've built. There, okay. Stripped to the waist. You take a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "Please pay attention, I'm...please keep me safe."

You wait.

And you wait.

Jill finally turns around, bright red in the face, trying to keep eye contact. This fails, but when it sees the window to your heart it gasps. "Orchid, what -"

"It's fine," you murmur.

Okay. You need these to be like a videogame, an absurd bounty in the living world. Trees that bear fruit every day, plants that can be harvested every couple of days, something that still needs to be cared for, certainly, but without subjecting you or Jill to the knife of Time, which has neither pity nor mercy. Is this a big change? It feels like a big change, but when it comes to dreams your opinion is almost a kind of objective fact, isn't it?

No time to fix that, though. You need to know if you're right.

You touch the window over your heart and concentrate on that warmth. You focus, the way you were told to during the refraction, on what you want, what you need, and you become aware that you are surrounded by something that cannot be seen, cannot be felt, something that is not tangible and yet has shaped the influence of Domus since before humans discovered fire. The dreamscape...though if it's a medium, like seawater the voice that isn't like yours said, maybe the Dreaming Sea is a better name...

There is an image in your mind of the beauty and bounty of your garden. There is something hot trickling out of your nose and eyes. There is an illusion made of wishes and light, a reflection of maybe and kind-of and wouldn't-it-be-nice. There is a tremor in your body. Jill is bouncing towards you, crying out in concern, and it says a name that is a hidden and beautiful flower with shock and concern in its voice.

You take the reflection.

And you cast the object.

* * * *

When you wake up, the stars are out. It's been hours. You're down near the fire, bundled up in a sleeping bag, and you feel Jill's hand gently resting in your hair, smoothing it, almost...petting you? Jill's humming something that you eventually recognize as the fight song of the Salt Bay Pirates, the local lacrosse team. Fucksake. You remember that but got nothing on why Jill didn't wanna look at you undressed? No? Nothing?

"Fuck," you rasp, thickly. Your head is pounding. The lancing pain behind your eyes is entirely too familiar. Jill turns its head and favors you with a smile. "Diddit fuggin' work?" you slur, around this feeling in your throat like you've done nothing but swallow jelly for three days.

In answer, Jill helps you sit up (you're still bundled in the sleeping bag, so the end effect is like a weird cartoon caterpillar), and points up at the roof, where trees of glass and aluminum, heavy with fruits, are swaying in the breeze.

You have cashed in a Gift and received the Glass Thumb. You are forty-seven hours old.

"You're insane," Jill murmurs, fondly.

"How would I tell if I wasn't?" you blearily reply, but you can't keep the smile off your face. That's one immediate problem solved; if you can do this again, then all you and Jill need are some bug-out bags and you could make a new home anywhere, any time, even if you're trying to hold on to this one.

But Jill's not wrong that there's mid-term needs to look into...

Pick a plan of action
[ ] Scavenging is going to be scarce sooner rather than later. Raid out into the city and look for useful items.
[ ] Strike while the iron is hot; continue to modify and fortify your new home.
[ ] Escape routes will be essential, and you have two fueled forklifts. Open a path out.
[ ] There might be more survivors out there. You have a phone. Someone might just pick up if you make a call.
[ ] Write-in?

Look at the scope of the other options and try to match it for any theoretical write-in.

 

[Morrowlark]

You take your shift while Jill sleeps, and find yourself watching it do so through the partly-open tent flap; it is unseasonably warm tonight, or so your hazy mind tells you, a 'mimic summer' such as you find in the belly of spring. Jill does not rest easily, but you find that it calms if you hum softly, and much of your shift awake is split between attending to the soup - it only needs stirring every half hour or so - and preparing bug-out bags with supplies of snacks, candies, seeds, gardening tools, little foil bundles of glass and metal, and soil, along with road flares, knives, spare clothes (long johns, mainly), socks, and medical supplies. Your first attempts to pack the backpacks are unbelievably sloppy, and over the six hours that Jill manages to sleep you pack, and re-pack, and re-pack, and swear at yourself, and desperately hum to soothe Jill back to sleep, and re-pack, and re-pack, and vainly pray to Clever Jossil (who watches over they who labor) for divine assistance in packing, and re-pack, and re-pack, and finally the backpacks are packed. Gods above. How is this a skill a person can be bad at?

The sky is greying towards dawn when Jill stirs; you get it a bowl of soup without having to be asked, and show it something you managed to work out in the time period between finishing the packing and now; the huge pot you're using for the Eternal Soup can also be used as a sort of double boiler, and you've lashed a smaller pot of water to the rim, into which you have placed coffee bundled into a filter. Which means, in turn, that it's the coffee that woke Jill up, not that it is complaining even a little about this state of affairs. You vaguely remember that caffeine is also addictive and resolve to ask Jill what the fuck makes coffee acceptable if tobacco isn't. For now, the two of you drink it black and out of thick metal-and-leather cups from camping kits.

"I've been thinking," you tell it. "You're right about people picking over the ruins. I'd like to get there first, beat the rush, get some things we might need and can store for awhile. If..." you change tack rather than try to save that sentence. "I hope the farms outside the city might be okay. If they are, and we can survive the initial chaos, maybe we can get milk and stuff from them. But in the meantime we need calcium and I don't know how to get it except vitamin supplements."

Jill makes a Face. "Scams, the lot of 'em...but the do have vitamins in them. We could make it a decent distance just cutting up prenatal vitamins, honestly. So a drug store, probably, if it hasn't been picked clean by people looking for medicine."

"Are vitamins medicine?"

"...You might have a point there."

"And," you add primly, "drug stores have more candy, snacks, soap, foil, cigarettes, and -"

"Really?"

You try to give it a plaintive look. Evidently you succeed...or Jill is noticing the way your hands are trembling. Or your face is showing your need, not that you'd know. You don't even really know what you look like, outside of 'auburn hair' and 'short' and a skin tone your mind describes as 'olive' only to get confused because aren't olives green, so why is this olive -

In any event.

"I could go," Jill offers, but you shake your head. "Well why not?" More defensive now. Irritated. "You just hurt yourself, lass, I'm fine, if you hadn't noticed."

You blink, owlishly. "...What's a lass?"

"It's - answer the question!"

You hold up your gun and blink again, and you wait, patiently. It's the waiting that does it; Jill sighs with a huff and a slump of its shoulders. "Fine," Jill concedes. "But in and out fast, okay? If you can help survivors, more power to you...I won't even pretend it's partly 'cause more people can carry more things back, but fast. There's monsters out there, and...I'll be worrying." It scowls. "Worrying and having to set alarms to get up and do the soup."

"...Sorry."

"No y'ain't."

It's best to pack light. You re-use that monstrous hiking backpack, and from the metal frame you dangle the fire axe, some road flares, and three speedloaders, which is all three of the speedloaders that were in this building. They might be the difference between life and death. Into your many pockets go various granola bars, candies, baggies of potato chips & trail mix, and some basic medical supplies. After a moment's discussion, you reluctantly add a crowbar and binoculars to your load, and Jill points you off in the right direction. This would have been a five minute drive, so you're gonna be walking about an hour to the closest drug store. Freeways.

"Hey," you ask as you're leaving. "How do you keep the statues from spotting you?"

"Spotting...wait. You said...that this Nicole person was talking to you," Jill says slowly, like it's feeling the idea out.

"...Yes?"

"...Orchid, flower, they don't do that to me. I don't have advice to give ya."

Oh.

Well fuck you then.

The freeway is mostly quiet, thankfully. It seems that almost anyone who turned into a statue behind the wheel immediately stopped being a statue when their car crashed and their bodies were shattered. Those vehicles and the asphalt around them are portraits of dried blood and fragments of glass in chunky, sharp crystals. This in turn means the cars are safe to stick near, giving you a semblance of concealment since most of them are taller than you are. Despite your preferences, though, there is not enough shade and not enough clouds to justify keeping your hat and mask on in this heat; you stuff both into a pocket and keep going.

The irregular chatter of gunfire through the city has died down considerably. Every so often there's the bark of shots, but nothing like your first couple of nights. Still, nameless instinct encourages you to keep on the move, keep low, and try not to think about how many windows have an elevation advantage on you. A sniper doesn't have to be good to kill you, if it's feeling malevolent...

You shake your head. No one has a reason to waste ammunition on you. Right?

Thankfully the drug store is right off the exit, along with many other businesses; this is a "freeway drag", Jill had said, a chunk of the city that preys on people who try to drive through but need to pull off in order to get food or groceries or supplies or medicine. Other businesses, like optometrists and therapists (there's no less than four proud psych clinics in eyeline from here) or phone repairmen, they cluster there because locals are already going in for groceries and such, and thus the false prophecy of a business district is fulfilled. The thought quirks a little smile to your lips; they, too, took a reflection and cast the object. Just, you know, by hand.

The supermarket is a half-mile east, and rejoices in the name Bayview. Jill had cautioned that the risk of running into other scavengers there would be higher, and those folks might be going a little mad with greed or desperation or both, so maybe avoid it. Your selected destination is Sorrow & Sons Medicine, an international chain that hasn't belonged to the Sorrows in, oh, ninety years. You approach, noticing with some confusion that the place has stained glass windows, the fuck -

The doors are locked. And also filled with stained glass. That's very much not correct. No business like this would cut off the view from the outside, or prevent people from seeing other customers on their way in or out so as to prevent accidents. You thumb the fire axe...

Lose 1
[ ] Your silence
[ ] Your access to this store specifically
[ ] Some time
[ ] One Gift

You have 20 .45 rounds, 15 of them in speedloaders. You are 57 hours old.

 

[Morrowlark]

Spoiler: Losses

Jill said fast, right? You can do fast. If you're fast enough, it might not matter that you've just drawn some attention.

You take your hand off the axe. Smashing through the door would be the absolute fastest, but some good sense you didn't know you had (maybe it's the coffee? It had relieved a need you didn't know you had...) says that the crowbar is also fast and relatively quiet, assuming you can break the lock. Time to find out, really. Note to self, figure out how relatively strong you are or aren't. You've sure been doing a lot of lifting and carrying and running, which bodes well.

You wedge the narrow end of the crowbar between the doors, find a good position, and push. The doors open that little quarter-inch that locked sliding doors do and then stop with a little tiny thunk! So far, so expected; you keep pushing, leaning your weight against the crowbar. The lock might be steel, and the seating for the lock is probably steel (why do you know that?), but the doors themselves are aluminum, and aluminum is, your own voice in your head informs you with the amused tones of memory, 'bitch made'.

Note to self: ask Jill what a bitch is, the referents you're getting do not make sense.

Metal groans, and then the lock snaps off. The sliding doors fly open, bounce in their tracks, and shed the stained glass. There is an eternal moment in which your panicked perceptions realize that the stained glass wasn't seated properly in the doors, and you watch it hop the grooves it wasn't quite inside of before going down in a technicolor waterfall of crashing, breaking, tinkling, and shards. You turn your head and raise your hand, and your reward for your quick thinking is being pelted by glass in your coat and clothes, which easily deflect the smaller shards without letting you get cut.

Well.

That was loud.

You hastily slip inside, gripped by a fear of potential sniper fire which, once you have the brick of the building between you and outside, you realize is a little unwarranted; there's no height around here, and the view from the tallest nearby roof - Bayview - is obstructed by signage for fast food as well as various billboards. You risk a glance outside just to clock if there's anyone watching the store, and as far as you can tell no one is. That's good. Let's take stock.

Barring necessities forced by a different building layout, every Sorrow & Sons looks exactly the same; they have the same layout, the same facilities, even mostly the same products. The front area is vaguely carpeted, and squishes under your boots; it's soaked in blood that has not had the chance to wholly dry, and the stench of it, so thick on the air, makes you choke. As you get your hat and mask back on just to have any chance to fucking breathe, you observe that, contrary to your fears, this place is untouched. At least, untouched by human(?) hands; the two registers that flank the carpet on the way to the exit stand unpowered, with convenience and impulse buys all around them. Toilet paper, candy, candy again, candy a third time, magazines, candy, cigarettes -

- Cigarettes cigarettes cigarettes you sweep behind the register and start stuffing your coat pockets with packs of cigarettes that have been sealed with wax paper before you sweep a pair of rolling machines, two boxes of papers, and three bags of tobacco into your backpack, there's gotta be there is in fact chewing tobacco, which you open with indecent haste. The taste is too sharp, too minty, too harsh, the clear sign of cheap menthol made for the average broke-ass citizen, and it's perfect, gods above it's perfection itself and the mint is even blocking out the scent of blood -

- stuffed animals, children's toys, and electronics. Leftwards from the door is a photo center. Twenty, thirty years ago this place would have developed film; now it's just a bank of cold computers people use, poorly, to get photos off their phones and turned into something physical. Why do you know that? Blown if you know, but as you take in the lack of power you realize with a pang that getting milk or dairy here is a fool's errand. The fridges are dark too. Maybe the soda pop (bop she bop she bop - DAMNIT) is still good, energy drinks and such, but that's a luxury for later, probably.

As you hook the crowbar onto the metal frame of your backpack again, you gently bop your head to both the earworm now stuck in it and to the gentle chiming of the store's soundtrack, like someone left windchime music on loop. The sight looking down the aisles is...odd. Here and there, where you're guessing outlets are installed at the bottom of the shelves given the presence of severed power cords on the floors, there are great glass flames, some "licking" up nearly as high as your head. You approach the closest; it gives off no heat, and you gingerly touch it. The color is astounding, as if someone had managed to freeze a true inferno all in glass, and you think back to that brief view you had of Salt Bay City burning. Maybe that's exactly what happened, the refraction sparing this place and maybe even many others...

Mysteries are for later. Some of the glass flames have shattered, probably from falling to the floor due to not being quite balanced, and you route your way around them while trying to stay as quiet as reasonably possible. A glance in the anti-theft mirrors at the ends of the aisles tells you there's no other people or statues in here, at least ones who have reflections, but it pays to be cautious when you only live once. Vitamins first, followed by pain pills, cold medicines, and other medical miscellanea that your new home simply doesn't stock because it can't also be repurposed for animals. After a moment's thought, you also scoop up a bottle of all-in-one body wash & shampoo and some dish soap, both of which might be useful to have, and take a second to repack your backpack so you can maximize its space.

Something is wrong in here. There's a prickling at the back of your neck, but at least that soothing, if somewhat irregular, windchime soundtrack is there to keep you calm. You move your chew to the other cheek and keep moving, scooping up variety packs of candy, pickles, and then hit the jackpot in the form of the jerky display. Protein, Jill said. Well, here it is!

Who mixed this soundtrack? The volume is so fucking irregular -

...

The building has no power.

You close your backpack slowly, tie it shut, and sling it over your shoulders before looking directly up. Swarming along the ceiling, supporting themselves with the struts that would normally be concealed by the cheap plyboard tiles all around the lights, are nearly a dozen...

...People? Long, pointed limbs of gleaming metal reflect the light and hold them up; their fingers have become segmented claws of mirrored glass which they use to scratch at themselves. As you take the sight in, watching clothing and flesh flake away to reveal a bloodless chrome skeleton beneath, one of them opens its jaws a full hundred eighty degrees. Its voice is more like the person from the data splinter than like yours, though not pained and lacking that voice's comforting rasp; however, despite the person(?) being a good fifteen, eighteen feet from you, you hear its voice as if it was standing right next to you.

Can we interest you in a Sorrow and Sons credit card, valued customer?

"...Nnnnoooo," you say, slowly, "no thank you."

Wrong answer. Every last one of them shrieks and drops to land, heavily, onto the tops of shelves; the impact sends items scattering into the aisles.

Lose 2
[ ] All pretense of stealth & some ammunition
[ ] Any chance to loot this store again
[ ] The blood in your body
[ ] Your cover from any threats outside
[ ] One Gift

 

[Morrowlark]

Spoiler: Losses

You have at least some of what you need, and access to more is known to you. What you can't afford to lose is your good health, and maybe calling on that odd power over your heart would cost even more of that. Let this place finish burning.

No time to think. The shelf before you wobbles when two creatures impact it, and you give it a high stomp kick, clean and beautiful and just at the moment when it's wobbling backwards. The part of your mind that never shuts up thinks, huh, okay, turns out I'm pretty strong. This is just as the shelf topples backwards, impacting the next, and the next, and the -

Unfortunately the store's layout means you can't get every shelf, so it's time to run. You sprint towards the back of the store, where the pharmacy would be, only to be cut off by one of these people(?) landing in front of you. Your quickdraw shot from the hip is like a thing out of a dream, a fluke of chance that you recognize instantly as you getting fucking lucky when it shatters the metal skull of your would-be attacker.

Ow your fucking wrist ow ow ow -

Do you have a membership? a creature asks, its voice inexplicably next to your ear. You snap your attention to the right and bring the revolver up, but it's already on top of you; you whirl left past a slash of its pointed limb, transfer the gun to your left hand -

- Duck on instinct, letting a third's swipe hit its compatriot in the neck. Something electrical inside of it sparks and lances through both bodies, leaving them smoking and jerking, caught in an overload -

You scramble under the two of them, completely undignified, and rip your axe from its place on your hiking backpack's frame.

Ask about our deals!

Ten for ten dollars until the end of Secunda!

Can we interest you in a Sorrow and Sons credit card?

Are they...they're begging. Pleading. It's there, just under the professional tone, lurking at the edges of forced smiles...

Motion, high right. You turn and kick a tiny propane tank, a little green thing meant for camping, right into the arms of a person(?) that is scrambling over the fallen shelves. It catches the tank, and your moment of 'oh shit' soon becomes 'wait, what?' as it turns immediately, desperately trying to right the shelf so that it can...restock...the item...?

Do they all do that?

You turn as another tank is rolling past and hit it with a one-handed golf swing using the axe's hammer head. It dents, releasing gas into the air, but goes flying straight and true, and sure enough the creature it's sailing in the vague direction of dives to catch it, cradling the item close before scrabbling towards the shelf.

You need some distance.

You scoop up a book of matches from the floor and tuck it into your pocket, kicking anything near you at the creatures. Bags of candy go spilling and flying, little metal tins of black pepper, boxes of dry pasta, a set of 'copper-powered' wrist braces whose box promises to treat arthritis. The people(?) are working together now, trying to lift and right the shelves, but each one is so obsessed with its own item to be restocked that they're working at cross-purposes, and only one could never lift a shelf in the first place. You walk backwards, towards the back of the store where the breakrooms and storage must, surely, be. Can they leave the store?

Can you take that risk?

You lean the axe against one of the unfallen shelves back here, right next to a selection of electric razors, and take a two-handed stance with your revolver. Your right wrist throbs and aches and complains, but it obeys as you let out a steadying breath, cock the hammer.

Squeeze the trigger.

The muffled thump! of the unbroken propane tank exploding makes your world go white for a moment; when your vision swims back into place, the front half of the store is ablaze. Fire licks along the ceiling, consuming the cheap plyboard of the tiles just as it consumes the cheap wood of the shelves. Shattered bottles of liquor burn hot enough to warp the glass shards of themselves, and many of the creatures run around, shrieking in pain, as their dried clothes and dried flesh burn like paper. Electrical fires join the gas ones as things inside of these people(?) short out and burn.

Not all of them are dead, but the survivors are running not for safety, but for the phones at the registers, in the photo center, in the beauty department. You can hear them mashing buttons and picking up the receiver, only to hang it up and then try again. And again. And again. And again.

There is a fire! We must inform Corporate! There is a fire! Keep dialing! Keep dialing!

As you scoop up your axe and slink back towards a door marked Employees Only, one of them spots you. It does not stop dialing. It does not stop chanting about Corporate. But it does mouth 'thank you', with tears streaming down its cheeks while the fires race towards it.

You run into the back, away from the inferno you've created.

You have 18 .45 rounds, 15 of them in speedloaders. You are 48 hours old.

This place is done for, but there's time; the back is mostly concrete, it seems, concrete and tile, and you might be able to slice open some of these pallets...

Prioritize 2
[ ] Your safety
[ ] More medicines
[ ] Protein
[ ] Maps, books, papers

You. You just killed a lot of...people, right? Those were. Those were people...?

Lose 1
[ ] Your doubts; it was them or you, and that's an easy choice every time
[ ] Your belief that those were people; they were monsters, pure and simple
[ ] Your stability. You've done something wrong. Something terribly wrong...

 

[Morrowlark]

Five days since Impact

While a certain someone is having its first experience at a pharmacy, four other someones are having a meeting - excuse me, five, Clara just hauled herself through what would be a submersible port, if THEY STILL HAD A -

"Seashell bras do not work," Clara bitches, resting her chest against the floor. "But the good news is, while fish dream, they mostly seem to dream about food, sharks, and sharks made of food."

"How do you get a shark made of food?" Jalex asks, quirking a glass eyebrow.

In answer, Clara points out the glass walls of Station 104; the other four turn their attention to it, and watch a massive, terrifying shark made completely of kelp swim past, ignoring the schools of fish that are nibbling at it. Bits of glass beads fall off when leaves get too torn to hold them.

"Gods above," Millie sighs. "Okay. So no massive beasts from beyond the stars, no unsettlingly sexual tentacles, nothing of that nature. I'll chalk that up." And they suit deed to word by standing and going to a chalkboard that currently has two columns, W and L, before chalking a cherished third tally under W. The L column is looking pretty fucking crowded. "Strict rationing means we've got maybe two months down here. Only having one person who can fucking leave but not go on land -"

Clara flips Millie the middle finger.

"- is a problem. Rupert, how's your patient?"

"In my medical opinion? I'd rather have the tentacles." Doctor Rupert pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. Brianna, his patient, has been unconscious since the world changed; even now, as everyone is watching, more of her vitiligo fills in with glass. "She's not losing any blood, and she's not getting worse physically, but..."

"But," the others say in unison, sighing. Clara hauls herself up and out, well past the point of caring about what is essentially her now-obligate nudity; a long tail, all of glass and scaled in stained glass, has replaced her legs. The newly-crowned mermaid wrings saltwater from her long brown hair. "Who fuckin' knows what she'll be like mentally," Clara finishes. "Jalex fuckin' turned into the fish whisperer but only for glass fish, I'm godsdamned this, which, thanks, never knew turning into my fursona would suck this much fucking cock, Millie...Millie, have you fuckin' figured out what you do yet?"

In answer, Millie returns Clara's previous gift by slowly cranking one hand as if to lift her rising middle finger with a jack.

"And Rupert's a fuckin' horror monster."

Oh, did I forget to mention that? Excuse me. The good doctor has large spider legs made of glass growing out of his back. Please carry on.

"I...have a suspicion about that, actually," Rupert muses. "But I'm loathe to test it until my patient is on the mend. I've been looking through some of the books..."

"And?" the others ask, leaning in.

"...And I believe these legs match the profile of the West Coast Sea Spider. The one that traps air bubbles in its webs. I've been able to weave strands of silk-like glass -"

"Kinky," Millie and Clara say at the same time.

"You two are going to be the death of me," Rupert shoots back, with a resigned sigh. "We have time. Give it another week, and then we can see about someone with legs perhaps making landfall. In the meantime, keep trying to communicate with the surface. Someone has to be alive up there, and as Clara so often reminds us, the death of perhaps eight furries takes down global telecommunications for an indefinite period of time."

"And given that I'm one of them," Clara intones, grimly, "the clock is fucking ticking."

 

[Morrowlark]

Spoiler: Losses

You fucked up. Maybe peace could have been an option? But you fucked up, you panicked, you didn't know what you were doing. These are rational explanations, to be sure, but you're not feeling rational and in any event what the fuck even is 'reason'. You killed those people. People like you, victims of Impact...

You better make it worth it.

You pull your mask down and spit your chew onto the concrete floor of storage (a faint memory, barely heeded, corrects your thought: this is backstock). The adrenaline leaving your body has nothing to replace it, and your limbs feel hollow and worn. Your heart hurts. Your wrist aches. Those poor people....

One had thanked you. Maybe...

...No, ask Jill about that. Jill knows how to be a person. Jill can...

You breathe, hard, and try to ignore the way it wheezes past your throat. There's still work to do. Still. Okay. You can do this. Stand up straight.

Stand up straight.

Stand up straight gods fucking take it -

Your self-directed fury resolves into a lunge at a shelf, growling under your breath, and this gives you the chance to examine it. A cursory examination with your eyes reveals that it's wrapped tight in thick wax paper that prevents you from seeing a godsdamned thing, so you cut a slit with your fire axe and peel the paper aside. Beneath the paper is a thinner layer of nearly-translucent parchment paper, and through it you spot the telltale signs of a large amount of stuffed animals. Fuck this pallet.

You walk away and go looking for things that might actually be relevant, taking your time. You tell yourself that this is so your body can recover, but honestly you might just not have a choice; the post-adrenaline drop is fucking real. It takes a few pointless examinations (revealing adult diapers & related supplies, a MASSIVE quantity of toilet paper, yet another pallet of toilet paper, a third pallet of toilet paper, shaving supplies, hair care supplies...) before you walk back to the stuffed animal pallet, tear open the paper with your hands, and pick up a very huggable grey wolf with big blue eyes that you hold close to your chest with one arm. Its name will be Barkley.

Belatedly, the thought occurs to you that this place must be sorted somehow. You look around and are rewarded; one end of backstock becomes a thin hallway behind the freezers, and this is where the overstock of the food is kept, already pulled from its pallets and sorted in a manner convenient to the human(?) eye. Motivated primarily by spite you fill some of your many, many pockets with snack-sized packs of jerky, but precious backpack space is for the glass jars of peanut butter, somehow untouched by Impact. This place has some kinda odd paper, not waxed (dunning, your mind says, and when you search for a specific definition all you get is that dunning is This Paper, Which Is For Packing Things), and this proves very useful in wrapping jar after jar after jar after jar. After some thought, you also similarly wrap and pack in a couple fuckin' huge cans of beef stock, only to immediately regret this when you find bouillon cubes.

"You saw nothing," you murmur to Barkley, before the tiny jars of cubes vanish into your Infinite Fucking Pockets. You shake, rattle, and roll, then repack your pockets until that stops making noise. Good. Now to -

- Holy shit the back-deliveries of magazines and shit are here too -

You snatch up a local atlas (Western Reformed Imperial Atlas), open it, and are both pleased and annoyed to learn that 'atlas' is the wrong term, this is a fucking roadmap, for making car trips. Once upon a time the branded advertisements on the maps telling people exactly where to go to meet the people willing to pay the publisher must have been super fucking annoying, but right now they're a blessing. Into the backpack it goes. Three cookbooks, selected basically at random. Your hand hovers over a self-proclaimed nutrition guide, and you hesitate. There's a feeling here, a familiarity tinged with revulsion, even stronger than the familiar annoyance the damn prepper magazines gave you.

No nutrition magazine. Instead you sweep up a variety of word games, a small selection of romance novels (Everlasting Lady why does every single one of them have people with their chests out on the cover and why do the people with no breasts get to have their entire chest out? What the fuckin' fuckity -), and one crime mystery stamped with Local Author! on the cover. After a moment's thought, you also take one of the odd clipboards - wooden things that are sorta like boxes, hinged so you can open them and put papers inside - and steal every scrap of shipping information you can find and then some. Might be useful, might not be, but at least you've got a clipboard.

...

You also steal as many pens as will fit inside the clipboard on top of the papers, then put it, too, in the backpack.

Okay. That's your job done. That's good. You get the backpack back on, gently tuck Barkley into the metal frame, and plod towards the loading door. The chain that raises and lowers it is locked with a cheap padlock, which does not survive the hammer of your fire axe. You raise the door and zip outside, eyes up and everywhere. You lost some time, but this drag seems - seems - as abandoned now as when you arrived.

Something hitches in your chest as you blink in the sunlight. Tears well in your eyes, and you double over with a primal scream, raw and harsh and full of emotions you don't know how to name. It ends in a pathetic sob, and you spit blood from your poor throat, breathing hard. Those people. Those poor people...

Get it together and pick 1
[ ] Return immediately; you have information and some supplies, and you need...you need a friend...
[ ] Raid the dedicated hardware store in the nearby strip mall for specialty tools
[ ] This phone might need to be convinced that you're current on your payment plan. Hit the electronics store.
[ ] Fuck your day. Fuck your life. Fuck everything. There's a burger joint across the street and its sign is still flashing; make yourself real food.
[ ] Bayview might be worth scouting out Jill said no. You already got jumped in a 'safe' store. Don't. Fuck. With Bayview.
[ ] Hit somewhere else?

As far as the write-in option goes, think about these kinds of freeway drags and strip malls in America. I'm not gonna stop you from hitting like, a nail care place or a hair salon, but I will veto options that seem unfitting or absurd.

And remember, you gave up prioritizing your safety. That doesn't necessarily mean there's new dangers, but, well...that scream was loud.

 

[Morrowlark]

You wipe at your mouth with the back of a gloved hand and take a deep breath that saws at your throat. A smaller sob escapes your lips, but you need to focus. This trip needs to be worth it. If this trip is worth it, Jill will be less upset, and if Jill is less upset then maybe it will still be your friend. That's a sane sentence, right? You go over the logic, find no flaws, and pull yourself up straight. Okay. One more store. If there's still employees there, maybe you can give peace a chance. Not take any more lives...

The back of Sorrow & Sons connects to a side road just off the main drag, undeniably part of it but not quite the real estate that catches the eye of a passing traveler, and behold, for there is a strip mall on it. You plod towards it in a vague daze, still trying to get your shit together, and discard a few locations immediately; Hilda's Nails can't have anything you need right now (...well...acetone maybe...), GRILLS GRILLS GRILLS! is redundant and also entirely too enthusiastic (...charcoal maybe...?), Salt Bay Tax Assistance manages to get a laugh out of you because it still has one of those whacky inflatable tube people go-going in front of it in the spring breeze; someone, at some point, managed to put googly eyes on it, and they are going wild.

Then your eyes alight on Imperial Satellite. You search your ravaged mind and come up with some shockingly complete memories; Imperial Satellite is a telecommunications company that formed back in '56, offering the then-not-yet-Reformed Jaklan Empire its very first portable phones, followed by quickly monopolizing the same until trust-busting action in '88 splintered it into fifteen different corporations. Their collective lobbying killed the competing technology of cellular phones in its crib, something the public had been revisiting in recent years...

...Which means that store, or, well, "store", more like bill pay site that sells things, could very well keep your phone on, could very well get you access to a phone for Jill, and might have other communication devices too. That's got to be worth the risk. Energized by this thought, you do your best to scramble from cover to cover and head in that direction. No one seems to be on any of the roofs, though you keep checking, and honestly being careful might still be good. Maybe a theoretical stalker or monster will head towards the pharmacy, find the inferno, and assume you died. Maybe.

You are oddly reassured to find that the glass windows and glass front door of Imperial Satellite are completely shattered from the inside out. You cautiously crunch your way across them, fire axe over your shoulder, and find the lights on. The good news keeps piling up. It piles up again when you spot some walkie-talkies, which you take immediately (three pairs, just to be safe) and stuff into your backpack. A protective case for your phone, another one for a theoretical Jill Phone(tm), okay, that's good. You go to swipe a payment card when your mind informs you, hey, these need to be activated when they're sold, they're literally worthless right now. And, your amnesiac mind continues, the phones also have to be activated.

Okay. Do we know how to do that?

No?

We can go fuck ourselves?

You bite your lip and look at the powered sales terminal. What...what if...you could know how to do that...

Lose 1
[ ] This opportunity to re-up your phone & get Jill a working one
[ ] One Gift

 

[Morrowlark]

Spoiler: Losses

No great loss. There will be other opportunities, surely; this is hardly the only place that does phones. Hell, technically Sorrow & Sons sold these cards, if you knew how to work the registers or if they were powered. Bayview, other Imperial Satellite "stores", an ethanol station honestly, there's time. You'll chat it over with Jill, and Jill will be engaged, and this will make you a Good Friend.

You let the idea go. You're far from help right now, and the way you can call for help is not currently operational. Which, speaking of - having abandoned the idea of activating or re-upping phones, you make sure not to forget the idea of swiping spare batteries and chargers. At some point you and Jill need to figure out a fuel run for those generators and the tractors, they might be even more useful than the forklifts and in any event don't require the specialized tanks that said forklifts use. You're not even sure where to start on sourcing those. Maybe there's a processing plant in the city...

(There almost certainly is, your unreliably memory intrudes. Most major cities process their own ethanol, even if they have to import the corn, which Salt Bay City very much does. Some political concession during the Reform. You're not sure if the lack of information there is amnesia or lack of understanding in the first place, but since the faint headache thinking about it feels kinda like when you're reading the magazines and Don't Understand you're sorta willing to bet the latter. Which is oddly. Relieving? Huh.)

Treasures secured and backpack full, you slink out of the store and dash into low cover behind a sports car whose absolutely garish, lime-green paint job says the owner either lost a bet or regularly smokes the kind of weed where if you need to ask the price, you can't afford it. You peek over the hood and -

- Those are people. Three of 'em, looking dirty and desperate. One, up front, is like a much smaller version of the bare-chested romance novel illustrations, in a flower-pattern shirt with stubble growing on its face beneath an honestly lush head of blonde hair. It's holding a lacrosse stick with nails poking out of it. Flanking that one are two a little more like you, in that they have layers on, no stubble, and the telltale little up-and-down of breasts beneath big coats. One of those two, whose sidecut is the same color as this godawful car, is shooting nervous looks everywhere which is a bad pairing with the ten millimeter pistol in its hands; the other is unarmed, and quaking.

All three have strange glass growths that have sliced through the backs of their shirts. There's something odd about the bend of them, a familiarity that tickles you, as if it's like something you know, but not correct.

They're heading...

Oh fuck. They're heading towards Bayview.

Think Fast, Then Lose 1
[ ] Your cover
[ ] Your chance to contact these people
[ ] Your determination not to fuck with Bayview
[ ] A non-confrontational approach

 

[Morrowlark]

You take a deep breath. It's okay. You've got this. You can help these people. They don't need rescuing the way Jill did, so they won't trust you straight away, and one of them has a gun fuck it has a gun -

No!

You stand up out of cover, holding both hands up (your revolver pointed straight up in your right hand), and say, "Wait," so softly that you barely hear yourself. You swallow, and then, louder: "Wait please!"

They turn in an instant, but strangely the twitchy one with the gun is the first to relax. The barechested person with that lacrosse stick starts advancing, raising its weapon, when the green-haired one puts a hand on its shoulder, making it stop.

The unarmed one, a mousy little thing, gawky and gangly like it hasn't grown into itself just yet, trembles.

"It's got a gun," the lacrosse stick one is saying, hotly.

"Yeah," green hair replies; its voice is like yours, or Jill's, only a bit huskier. "You seen one of those things use a gun, Jack?"

Oh hey, Lacrosse Stick is Jack. Good to know. You clear your throat again. "Don't go to Bayview. It's...don't go to Bayview. There might be people there."

Jack doesn't seem inclined to reply to that, but Green Hair does, first by holstering its gun. You slowly pocket yours in turn, making no sudden movements, and return to showing your hands. Don't spook them. If you spook them, they might run off, and then they'll get hurt, and something in you says that telling yourself at least they would have been hurt anyway if we'd done nothing is a cruel idea you should not have. "What kind of people?" Green Hair asks.

It is at this juncture that the remaining propane tanks inside of Sorrow & Sons, damaged by the initial explosion and being slowly pressed into by the weight of the shelf above them, explode with a muffled thump! that is followed by the stained glass windows of that altered, benighted store shattering outward, blackened and singed. All of you stare at it for a long.

Long.

Long.

Moment.

"That kind," you say, helpfully(?).

"Listen, missy," Jack cuts in; it's not...angry, you don't think, just protective. Scared. The kinda scared that does duty for angry. "Who even are you? How'd you survive unchanged?"

Who even are you...

You open your mouth to say 'I don't know' and then remember, wait, you do know. "My name's Orchid," you say, with a spot of pride. And then add, conscientiously, "for the time being. It's. It's a new name. And I didn't survive unchanged, it's just..." You gesture vaguely at the odd growths coming out of their backs, "well it's in a less polite place than that."

Green Hair snorts. "You got a glass ass or something?"

"Breast."

"...Oh." Green Hair gives you an awkward look, like it wasn't expecting a real answer to match your statement. "But. Okay, listen miss -"

"Why are you calling me that?"

The three of them share a look. It is an odd look. They seem to be trying to figure out who the first to say anything is going to be, and then as if by unspoken agreement, the answer turns out to be 'none of them', but the bizarre situation has Jack lowering its grim stick. "Nevermind, Orchid. There's food in Bayview, and medicine. We're hurt."

Are they? "You look fine," you say in confusion. "...Well no you look like you need a bath and some real food and maybe a nice lullaby...I know a few."

The small one: "Is this lady for real?"

"Marie, shh," Green Hair warns. "You tellin' me you got all that?"

"...The bath might be more like a high-pressure hose and I dunno how long it's gonna work, but..."

But...
[ ] Follow me
[ ] Wait here, I'll be right back

 

[Morrowlark]

"...Follow me," you finish, with more confidence than you feel. "I've got somewhere relatively safe. Ish. Not safe at all. But it'd be safer, with you there."

You can almost hear their internal monologues debating if this is a trap. You know yours would be. But they also reach the same conclusion you would have: this is the shittiest bait for a trap anyone's ever heard of in all of history. There's a faint chorus of nodding, and you start leading the way back up the freeway, moving from cover to cover. After a few cars they start following suit, albeit kinda clumsily. C'mon y'all.

"Miss," Jack says slowly while you walk. "...Did you do time in the military?"

"Dunno," you answer. "Why?"

Marie, brightly: "This is like a cover shooter! Sis, it's like a -"

Green Hair shushes Marie, and you blink owlishly back at them over your face mask, which you are Keeping On despite the heat. It is proving to be a comfort against all this 'miss' business. You do remember that 'miss' is for women and 'mister' is for men but with no idea what either 'woman' or 'man' means their seemingly arbitrary decision that you are Definitely A Woman is more confusing than informative. On what basis did they make that call? What are they perceiving that tells them, oh yeah, This Is A Woman. Is it your voice? Are voices gendered? Who decided that?

"Miss?" Jack says again, and you're jolted out of your thoughts which had stopped you moving. You keep leading the way forward.

"Orchid," you correct. "Just call me Orchid. And I don't know. I'm an amnesiac. A...really weird amnesiac. Don't ask, I dunno there either."

"Not even how long?" Green Hair asks. Does it not have a name? Is it withholding its name?

You look at the sun, look down at the shadows of the cars, look up towards the sun again. "Fifty hours."

That shuts everyone the fuck up sure enough, and the rest of this tense walk back goes without incident. You lower your face mask as you get closer to your new home, and call out with a high, sweet whistle, a few bars of the Salt Bay Pirates' fight song. By the time your motley crew has crossed the parking lot, Jill is peeking out the shattered front doors, and it gives out an impressed up-and-down kinda whistle. "You sure found more people, flower. Who're these folks?"

You point. "Jack." Point again. "Marie." Point again. "Green hair -"

"...Sasha," Green Hair corrects, amused.

"- Sasha. They're hurt, they need food and a bath, and Jill, Jill, I found, hold up, I found -" You're already unslinging the backpack, and you stop when Jill raises its hand. And you wait, expectantly, to be praised, to hear you've been a Good Friend.

"Welcome to our home," Jill says to the other three. "Uh, such as it is, but my momma didn't raise me to be a neglectful hostess an' all. Orchid, can you show them to where they can hose off and pick out new clothes, and I'll go glare at the recipes in Dirty Dick's an' see if we can't feed these people some of that crab that's gonna go bad if no one eats it anyway? Y'did good."

Yes! Yesyeyesyesyesyesyes - "On it!"

* * * *

The story comes out of the three of them while everyone, yourself included, is eating as much seafood and produce as y'all can safely manage. They're siblings, and when Impact hit they were coming home from some concert or other, and have been on the run since. They're light on details; sometimes, Jack or Sasha will start to describe something they encountered, and Marie will begin crying, and they have to stop themselves and comfort it. Marie, it turns out, is something called a 'child' or, as it insists, a 'teenager', which are words you understand but are also missing huge referents for. It is some kind of in-process human being not yet matured into its final form and the implication is that it's younger than you, evidently? You're not sure if 'child' is a gender or if whatever ripped your identity out just had a particularly brutal hand.

Or whatever put your consciousness in was rushing the job, you suppose. You're still not...decided...how you feel about whether you lost something, or whether you're a new person, whole in yourself. And that can gets to be kicked down the road for some time.

Still. There is a warmth in your chest when the three of them fall asleep together, huddled in a new tent pitched near the fire for the Eternal Soup, where Jill is gently unpacking your haul. It quietly takes your hand when the stuff is all sorted, and gives you one of those smiles you'd do anything for.

Anything.

You have saved three lives, and gained something you have no name for. You are 59 hours old.

There are things to do, to sort out, in the coming time. It's vital to be supplied and operational (huh, that's a weird word to think...) as soon as possible, and new people here at home opens up some possibilities. Jack swiftly proves to also be forklift certified, for one, and Sasha says it apprenticed as part of the Handyman's Guild and might be able to help with some things...

The next sequence will take place over about a week. Please pay attention to the options you can select for each category.

Your Major Projects (Pick 2)
[ ] Strike out with Jill to find a Bayview membership card and maybe some money, and then raid Bayview
[ ] An exit will be key if everyone has to run for their lives. Work with Jack to open the freeway.
[ ] Someone needs to learn this crossbow. See who wants to.
[ ] You have recipes, stoves, and access to at least some supplies. Thanks to your roof garden, you can preserve two weeks of fruits and vegetables, with your current jars and such.
[ ] This parking lot needs looting and you have four people.
[ ] Write-In? (Proposal Here)

What The Fuck Is Up With (Pick 1)
[ ] ...Gender?
[X] What you saw in Sorrow and Sons [Locked In; you need Jill here. You. You need...]
[ ] Those growths in the new people's backs
[ ] Cars??
[ ] The lack of airplanes, helicopters, etc

Relaxing (Pick 2)
[ ] Those romance novels. You will solve this mystery.
[ ] Word games & puzzles. Use pencil so other people can enjoy them.
[ ] Try to paint with the small selection of big-ass paint buckets
[ ] Jill knows music. Learn some.
[ ] Interrogate Marie about these videogames. The person with the voice that is not like yours talked about them too. They must be important!

A Dream (Pick 1)
[ ] ...Of a friend
[ ] ...Of a steadfast protector
[ ] ...Of a healer
[ ] ...Of nature, whose one and only law is named Wasp
[ ] ...Of nothing in particular