Mike was angry. He was usually in a bad mood but this time he’d had enough. The fact that he was arguing with a woman who was dead but still talking didn’t do anything to help his own mood. The fact that she had died protecting him had been an even worse sensation.
Sherry and Chas had disagreed with his choices but they had shut up and he’d entered the room which formed of the core of his Driftwood Enclave. This was his decision, his burden to take as the leader of their group. He would listen to advice when offered but make final choices when he had learnt enough.
‘You made a bad choice Mark 1.’ said the woman as she repeatedly smashed into a training bag hung in the middle of the room. Her fists increased in speed as she spun backwards and with a kick sent the heavy bag swinging in the air. When it slowed down, she launched into a series of strikes in mid-air which sent it swinging backwards and forwards with increasing force.
Mike examined the room. It wasn’t his preferred choice for an afterlife but he supposed that a training room designed for combat and fitness improvement matched the temperament of the woman he was speaking to. The room was covered with padded flooring and red painted wooden walls along with a decent amount of exercise and training equipment.
She was dark haired and slim with a tight muscular build wearing a pair of fight shorts and a training bra with compression top. Her feet were bare and both hands were covered in hand wraps.
The other robed woman inside the room was leaning against a wall with her hood down but both of her sleeves were rolled back revealing tattoos that ran across her arms from the outside of her palms and flickered with electricity.
When she raised her hands together a bright blue ball began to spin before she slammed her hands shut and put them into a prayer position, muttering under her breath so lightly that Mike with his enhanced senses was unable to make it out. The woman in the robe had made adjustments to the air around her to disrupt sound.
‘Shut up Veronica. Firstly, you know that was my slave’s name. Secondly, I came here to fight and talk and you keep ignoring me. Thirdly, I don’t know what the hell fish robe is doing here but she’s dangerous. If the other gods found out about her intentions, then...well I’d be hanging out in the afterlife as well.’ said Mike as he examined a set of weights stacked up on the floor.
He casually lifted one before letting it drop with a heavy thud on the floor. The smell of the room was exactly was it was in his memory before they had dismantled the original room and thrown the contents into the ocean depths.
‘She’s the one who is going to give me a new form apparently. I told you Mike, I’m not going to take over the body of a Player-Candidate. I died. You, Chas and Sherry wanted to go and fight a demi-god and we did and I died. Mostly. You used your chance to try and bring me back, if you went all the way you would have killed it and absorbed its power.’ said Veronica as she brought back her leg for another roundhouse kick on the heavy bag.
‘Sherry misses you. Chas blames me as usual when he’s not pulling his cryptic priest act, like that woman over there. I can notice your little tricks Miss G. Not impressed, that much electricity isn’t enough to put me down before my hands are around your tattooed neck.’ said Mike.
Veronica stopped her kick mid-air before she flipped backwards and aiming a punch in the direction of Mike. He dodged immediately and reached towards his belt for a wooden club that was no longer there before Veronica danced back into his field of vision and slapped him on the side of his face.
‘That hurt.’ said Mike as he rubbed the injury with a calloused hand.
He glanced at the robed woman against the opposite wall as she twirled around his wooden club in her hands as small sparks of electricity ran across it.
‘Fine. I’m impressed. You’re not human are you. Nothing genetic or I’d smell you out, a survivor of the old world then? Locked up inside a hidden underwater vault who decided to turn herself into a cyborg and hide herself from the grave of the ones who thought flooding your world would be a fun idea for a game of find a friend? Don’t make me laugh.’ said Mike as he carried on rubbing his face.
‘He told you. You thought that you could carry on with your usual ways and ignore the changes in the world and he told you. They plan to leave and try again. With or without him but he told you and all you did was send a novice to protect her? Tell Veronica how well you trained her when I know how much effort you put into Direk and Bonnie. You tell her stories, cast her away and then give her a single item to protect her? She is the Blessed One. She will win the contest, the game of gods. She will kill them.’ said Glauglau.
Mike shook his head in response.
‘Your god entrusted me with a madwoman. She’s clearly not stable and she was damned lucky to arrive in this place. Her genetics were a complete mess, given a little time she would have begun breaking down. I don’t know about her technological mount though, never was good at that stuff back in the tank when information was dumped into our minds during the rapid growth stage. You know what she was good at? Not being killed and dumped in the ocean by me. I will grant she was a survivor though, at least she can live for a bit longer as long as she gets through her first set of trials.’ said Mike.
Walking over to the set of weights he lifted up several before throwing and catching them in a routine. When the training bag was smashed off its ceiling attachment and hit the side of the training room, he ignored the sound and carried on throwing the weights in the air before he caught them all in two hands and placed them back on the ground.
‘Mike. You need to give her a better chance than that. Chas and Sherry came in here before you did and gave me their opinion. The gods are in the process of making a decision. They’re going to leave this world, drain the waters and abandon us all to try again. You need to listen to Glauglau. She’s special.’ said Veronica.
Her forehead was covered in sweat and as she held out an open hand in the air in front of her a fresh towel appeared which she wiped herself with before dropping it onto the floor. It promptly vanished into nothingness.
‘No. I was the team leader of Ocean Dawn. They need to follow my lead, not go off and talk with a memory construct of a dead woman. We’re done here. Glau, get out of here and go back to your city or sunken scientific bunker. I don’t care for this. We’re talking about killing off the gods and that isn’t going to happen. At the least we can live in the now, not on the promise of a being so weak that he barely qualifies as a divine being. His reliance on you as a priestess shows it. The rest of the gods might be difficult to approach but all we have to do is make a deal with one of them and the three are us...sorry Veronica, the four of us are out of this place. Maybe they can throw you in a bottle like a genie.’ said Mike.
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A sudden movement caused him to duck as a blue pale skinned hand flickering with an electrical current and covered in various tattoos which glowed flew past where his head had been. The woman had removed her fish scaled robe and thrown it on the floor at her feet when he hadn’t been looking.
Grabbing two weights off the floor with each hand Mike hefted them up and blocked another strike which came this time towards his chest. As one of the electric covered blue skinned hands made contact with the metal of the weight a current ran through it and into the calloused skin covering his hand. The smell of burned flesh entered his nostrils as his body resisted the electrical discharge and new fresh skin grew.
‘Veronica. Remove her. As the Leader of Ocean Dawn that isn’t a request.’ said Mike as he threw both weights in the direction of the Priestess Glauglau causing her to duck in turn.
‘Mark 1. Show us what you got. I’m not real remember? I died. When you decided that Ocean Dawn was prepared to take on a demi-god and I died. One was plenty but another decided to join in. I’m enjoying the show, I died and deserve it. Mark 1. K dash Z.’ said Veronica as she did a double flip in the air and landed on top of a piece of training equipment.
Mike took a deep breath before he planted his feet on the floor and swirled his hands in a circle before he burst forward in a rush of energy, pushing down and grabbed several more weights as he threw each one in the direction of Glauglau.
Biting into his own cheek he drew blood before he reached his hand inside his mouth and spread the blood across the bare skin of his calloused hands.
‘Cyborg en-pee-cee or not I reached a higher-level than a construct like you. The Ocean Gods may have created you as forms for use in their games but I’ve fought against demi-gods, tricks aren’t going to win against raw power.’ said Mike.
The training room equipment proved a minor obstacle to Mike when he threw it out of his way, letting it crash behind him when he grabbed hold of the blue skin outstretched arm of Glauglau. As the electrical current began to run along his hand, the blood on his skin evaporated and a mist filled the air between them causing her to cough violently.
‘Mike. Stop it. She’s not a construct. Not an artificial. She’s real.’ said Veronica.
Running his fingernails across the surface of his arms while holding onto Glauglau's arms Mike drew blood across the skin as the electrical current flowing through his skin continued to evaporate the blue-reddish liquid into a finer mist filling the room.
‘You think electricity scares me? You think setting my skin on fire scares me? Weakness doesn’t survive. I do. They locked away the strong ones, the ones who didn’t listen. They couldn’t lock my up and my team, too much potential even after Veronica died.
‘Mike. Calm down.’ said Veronica from her perched position on the exercise equipment.
‘Time to die little construct, go back to be reclaimed by the oceans of dead until the gods rebuild you again. Sweaty gods I truly hate en-pee-cees. The Ocean Gateway System built a population from the drowned and their memories. Makes me sick.’ said Mike.
Through the mist a figure leaped towards him feet first landing directly on his chest and sending him flying backwards from Glauglau as he lost his grip on her arm. As he moved backwards a wad of spit flew from his mouth directly towards the priestess fizzling through the misty air.
The movement was blocked by Veronica as she put out both hands and slapped the acid before it touched her skin sending it spinning towards the training bag which she had knocked off the ceiling earlier. The surface material melted almost instantly as the acid began to break down the structure of the bag as it collapsed steaming to the floor.
Taking in her own deep breath Veronica began to blow harder and the mist cleared enough that she could see Mike crouched down on the floor, his eyes reddened and blood covering both arms. Her slim, tight muscular form held out an arm keeping him from advancing on Glauglau.
‘Mike, she isn’t a construct. She’s an original. Alive and still among us. She never died. This is her planet; she came from here. You hurt her and I hurt you. And remember I have all of Veronica’s thoughts and memories. Effectively I am her. I know you, Mike. Do you remember the coastline? Your true freedom was near. Bubbles of blood from your lungs and a bullet riddled hand reachin-’ Veronica stopped as a calloused hand held her throat tightly and restricted her last words.
‘Words told in confidence do not get shared with those not of Ocean Dawn. If you were the women who lived, who I loved as a daughter then you would not that. You do not talk about me in front of her. Not in front of any god or demi-god. I earned your respect young woman and you will give it to me. Glauglau, be clear with me on this. Are you an original? For all my time here, I’ve dealt with Players, Candidates, gods, demi-gods and constructs. The originals died; the water gods made sure of that. And those they didn’t kill died when they joined in the first tutorials. I’ve searched for one and you just happen to turn up?’ said Mike.
He spat a glob of acid from his mouth onto the padded floor beneath his feet. The liquid melting through before evaporating and mixing with the mist.
‘Lies. And you almost had me going for a second there, your little god was responsible for building and maintaining this memory construct from his own divine power and then his cyborg, original inhabitant priest turns up with a story about how a blessed one...a blessed…. wait. No. He did it. Don’t tell me he...no. When I first met your god, he called himself the god of technology. Which didn’t make any sense when he turned up with a pantheon of ocean gods who hated the stuff with a passion or decided it was too dangerous to leave lying around. He did it. Glauglau, how confident about you about Carissa? What she represents? I need assurances from him. Oannes has to talk to me in person.’ said Mike as he wafted away the remaining portions of mist and haze that filled his vision.
Glauglau had covered her body back into her robes, they shimmered with an unknown light source within and multicoloured scales formed on the surface of the material.
‘Mark 1. Were you a slave in your own world before you came here? If so I’m sorry but my parents were scientists. Do you know that term? We survived for a time hidden deep away before cultists broke in and...my world ended. Both my personal one and the rest of the planet was forced to join in an insane game as the waters continued to rise. Everyone else died and I lived. The Blessed One will bring peace to this world. She will kill the gods and free us from their tyranny. This construct is about to end. We need to leave; they noticed his name being spoken. He will make contact with you Mark 1. But for now, we all need to wake up and your daughter Veronica needs to go back to sleep.’ said Glauglau.
With a wave she faded away and Mike was left inside the damaged remains of the training room, equipment, flooring and weights lay around in various states of destruction.
‘Veronica?’ said Mike as he gazed at the spot where Glauglau had been standing.
‘Ocean Dawn is being reborn. We have demi-gods to hunt. Time to find you a suitable form to inhabit. Oh, and sorry for the mess.’ said Mike as he gave his own wave to the slim, muscular woman as he too vanished in turn.
A voice came from behind Veronica as she turned and saw a girl, in her mid-teens at most.
‘Carissa needs to live. She hurts so much inside. Are you sure this will help her?’ as she gestured a tanned hand over the mess of the room.
‘Laci. Get the ten hells out of my training dojo and back to your precious beach. We’re dead memory constructs. Unless you want to begin training and make a real difference. I’ve got a mess to clean up for when Sherry and Chas turn up.’ said Veronica as she began fixing the room back into its original configuration.