[NPC Log Start!]

[Log Holder: Lucky Paine]

[Level: 1, Sub-Level: N/A]

Lucky Paine was real.

They were a real person. She had thoughts and feelings and her own agency and motivations and thought processes.

She was not a mannequin to be puppeted by the whims of a capitalistic dictator. The more they thought it over, the angrier they became. How dare he. How dare.

Her rage was immeasurable. Burning straight through her soul and making itself known even on the outside. Except it was also cold, fuzzy. Making it hard to think and stay in their body.

For all their peacocking and glee, she had never felt such an acute sense of hatred before. Or had she? And she had simply been forced to forget. Did these nefarious people had as much control over her body as they did over her mind? She did not want to test that theory.

Or, maybe she did. To hell with it! These people would go into God’s territory like this and not expect some repercussions? Let her forgo the boundaries they had set up for her and see what happened. Stomp over all their little games of money and oxygen and wait for them to stop her.

That was the razor-sharp gusto that propelled them forward for the next few days after they had created their first fully charged cylinder of electricity. She was running wild from the mania of victory, and the next thing she knew…

They had busted into the control room of a ramshackle house near the rails. Chased out most of the people, and then messed the hydraulic pipe system. Pumped it so full of pressure and then sucked it all out into a vacuum so strong that the pipes all folded into themselves, taking the entire structure down with it.

She finally came to standing outside the ruined remains of the house, her chest struggling to keep breathing through the oxygen tank she had to lug around everywhere. A small hand, slick with oil, was tugging at her own.

“Hey, Ms.” A tumblethorn kid whispered from beside them. He was wearing a sparse rebreather instead of her heavy-duty tanks. His accent was the spitting replica of the one those three children from another of God’s kingdoms had. She wondered if she had had they same accent when she had tried to slip in amongst their ranks.

“Ms.” The child repeated plaintively.

“What?” She asked, feeling strangely empty and off-kilter. Who was this person, trying to talk to her? She wasn’t really here. Her spirit was somewhere else, afloat. She needed… she needed something that helped bring her back to Earth. She had something for that. But she couldn’t remember what.

“What are you doing?” He asked, “Why’d you do that? We needed the space.”

Just like that, the anger was rearing its head again, bringing along with it that queer fuzziness.

“That space was cursed.” She snapped, “You are better off stripping off the useful bits and building something somewhere else. Untainted by this rot.”

“Okay, lady, chill.” He backed away, hands raised defensively. Lucky was not fool enough to miss the spring-loaded knife under the cuff of his arm. Constant vigilance was the tumblethorns’ motto.

“You would not want it anyway.” They added, a soft justification of their freakout, “Even if I just kicked the people out, more would have come to bring it back under Gunnerson territory. It was not a very good place to seek refuge in.”

“…You got a point.” The kid agreed, turning around to instead wave over to some companions crouched nearby, “Hey, guys! She says we can mooch off the remains.”

Lucky had never said that, but she allowed them to swarm over the crash site like little rodents anyway, “Do not linger enough for the pigs to pick you up.” She warned, “I will not stand up for you, because I will not be here.”

These kids didn’t know them, she didn’t know why she felt like she owed them an explanation. They didn’t seem too concerned over her fate either, too busy pulling out all the wiring and tubing easily reachable from the twisted-up pile of wood scraps.

“Where ya going?” The first kid she met asked, more out of social convention than anything.

She straightened up, stretching out her back from the slump it was so prone of falling into, “I will head back to work.” They confided. A private joke.

“Going to burn it down.” They added, trying to bring this random boy in on the joke.

The boy twisted his mouth into an uncomfortable smile, “Good on ya, mate, but… there’s a lotta smoke in the air already, innit?” He asked.

He was right. She’d spent a lot of time seething over the smoke being spewed into their world. And here she was, contributing to it all, just the same.

“There’s just something so satisfying about fire, you know?” She mourned, “Inflicts the same pain you felt onto everyone who wronged you. Wrath incarnate.”

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

But she couldn’t do that. Now that her mania was fading away, reason was flooding right back in. She needed to sit down, retreat to a calmer state of mind. Without even bidding the tumblethorns goodbye, she turned and made her escape. Her flying equipment, useful at the time, had failed again. They hadn’t expected much better from such a rushed job, but it was still a disappointing.

Featureless muggy landscape melted around them into a haze as her chair scrambled through at double pace, her hair thrown back and the few patches of exposed skin stinging from the wind. It was hard to navigate when everything zipped by so fast. You simply had to carefully calibrate your compass and trust your own gut instinct. And she’d been walking around this place even before the smoke had completely invaded, so she put a lot of stake into her gut instinct.

A journey that took an hour by train tracks was halved by her shortcuts and speedy transportation.

When she was young, she had caught the most terrible fever. Doctors did not know what the illness was, or maybe they did and no one had thought to tell the ailing ten-year-old what exactly was sitting in her chest. The fever didn’t take her legs, no matter what people might say. Those were nonfunctional even before the illness struck them. It did, however, weaken her lungs to the point that when the smoke levels started impeding vision, she should have died.

But Lucky Paine did not take things lying down. They chose their name to be ‘Lucky’, it is true, but all that had gotten them here was hard work and God’s grace. Very little chance was put into it. They built their own chair with mechanical legs and found a way to create their own oxygen tanks, complete with a method to create her own oxygen. These were all feats they were intensely proud of.

Those were all for themself, though. This was something new. For a greater good, and not in the weird missionary way. In an actual, tangible, stopping the world from collapsing in on itself. Not to sound conceited, but she found herself in the unique position to be able to stop the majority of carbon emissions from one of this world’s biggest polluters. Had it been her destiny? Or had the higher power noticed her place in the world, and nudged her in the right direction for her to realize what she needed to do?

She didn’t dare speculate on that front. Simply had to finish their job.

They broke into the factory. Or, well, she used the key they had to open the gate. But, they wouldn’t have a job after this, so they liked to think they were breaking in. Had a certain air of exciting rebellion to it in implying that it was illegal.

Once inside, the first thing she did was march towards the failsafe switchboard set up next to the conveyer belt and pulled the emergency shutdown to freeze production in place. Now, to stop it all permanently.

Breaking the production line wouldn’t be hard, but it would take a lot of time. And result in a lot of fire, which she was trying really really hard not to do. She could have stolen the vital parts, but they were unimaginably heavy and she wasn’t confident enough in her chair for it to deal with the weight. They needed to conserve the carrying space for tools and gear that she would need later on. Besides, there was a much simpler solution to it all.

She simply needed to take the keys that ran most of the automated factory. Clockwork mechanisms played a major role in her work, much more than it did for any other engineer of this caliber. If she took the special keys used to wind up those mechanisms… game over, if you’d pardon the pun.

The control deck was humid and thick with the scent of oil, but the door hinges screeched when she tried to breach into it. Giant keys the size of dinnerplates were fixed into equally gaping ports that chugged along with mechanical beauty. There was no time for her to marvel at the wonder of her own handiwork. This called for speed, something she wasn’t well versed in on the best of days.

Her legs extended out, plucking keys left and right and shoving them into the storage compartments of her chair. While the chair busied itself with that, they switched their attention to the tools scattered all around them, picking and choosing carefully to place them back into the toolbox she had brought with her. A couple clock springs more, she figured, as she took stock of what she had on her. There were more down on the mechanic’s floor, so she should hit that up after they cleaned this up.

“What are you doing?” Genevieve’s sharp voice cut in, razor sharp with vitriol. Never mind, guess she would not be able to stop by the mechanic’s floor.

“Um… Ma’am.” They stuttered, trying to think of a reasonable explanation for all of this. Even after all the rage that had overtaken her before, she found herself faltering under her bright eyes and head tilt of disappointment. As if Lucky was just a petulant child who needed to be talked down from her drastic course of action.

They put the last of the keys securely away, and Genevieve followed the movement intently.

“Leaving.” They managed to force out, “Consider this a resignation letter. No two weeks’ notice, though.”

“You… can’t do that.” She replied, though she didn’t sound all too sure. Genevieve coughed, and put on a much more confident voice, “Put down the keys, and sit down. Because you’re not quitting.”

Lucky flinched, waiting for the hypnotic lull of the Compulsion to wash over her. But nothing came. She remained alert and aware of what was going on. Still intent on getting away from Genevieve and the twisted ideals of the Gunnersons she ran.

Burks, the Player Harbinger with Compulsion, must be missing. There was no power left with Genevieve.

“Yeah, no, you can’t keep me.” She lifted up her front legs, pushing her away easily with the power of sharp metal mechanisms. They jammed the controls forward, sending them rocketing past the doors, and making a break for the still open door, which was leaking black smoke everywhere.

She managed to grab one of the low-weight fuel canisters she’d developed for flight in the middle of her escape, and jumped over the last remaining stretch of land before she ended up back outside the factory, onto arid sand.

No one came after her. No guards, no automatons, no security measures whatsoever. They must have never foreseen someone breaking through the programming set up by Burks.

Still, there was no point in taking unnecessary risks. She sequestered herself behind a sand dune and straightened out the wings she had made for herself. Clipped on the lighter fuel as well, set up the thrusters all over again, and then pulled the joystick forward. If she was going to be stuck outside, might as well grab more electricity from the sunlight.

Except when she breached the cloud cover, no forget-me-not blue graced her eyes. Simply black. She frowned, looking around her. Had she not gone high enough? But no, there was no cloud around her. Just inky dark in every direction. But that can’t be right, it wasn’t night yet. There was light. Where was it coming from?

They turned around in the direction of the light source. A grey sun, almost black, looked back, looming high over her like a sign of Judgement Day.

The sun changed color. It had been yellow just a few hours ago! It wasn’t supposed to go this way. The suns of all the other worlds had changed color. And now… and now…

The End of the World had truly come.

[Player Log End!]