Nina was sprinting down the dark streets, jumping in places, tracking down the mystery smell. I might as well track the smell while I scout the town at the same time, that was her thought pattern, anyways. It'd been about an hour since she silently left her house, and her work was paying off, the smell was getting more intense to her science lab senses.
Currently perched on a roof, wearing the lightest summer dress known to mankind and nothing underneath.
Underneath was nothing, she had no prominent breasts nor nipples, her body shape had only the slightest of curves, and there were no genitals to speak of, she was perfectly smooth where you might expect something.
Sexless, and without gender.
A doll, created not born.
Whatever Nina was, it certainly wasn’t a girl. She just decided on that because she liked the clothes, then people called her a girl, so she was. The fact that her voice had no telling of her gender helped. And Nina had no use spliting hairs about it, ‘sex’ was something foreign to her, made up by her creators, just like sleep.
Since her creation, a group project of sorts, she’s been this same age and strength. Nothing’s changed over seventeen years, not for a doll, nor will it ever. The more interesting thing to note is indeed the parts she’s made of.
Not even Nina knew the answer to that. But she was about to get some hints—
Something slammed into her on that roof she was investigating from.
No, more precisely, it was someone.
“Well, it seems I caught a kindred soul, peeping into my business,” a woman's voice said to her. She was being held by her shoulders to the ground, before it suddenly let off and grabbed her by the foot, dragging her.
“You’re coming with me.”
“Yumiko?” Nina said, being dragged off a lawn and into a nearby house.
“The same. Be a nice girl and listen to an old woman, would you?”
“...”
She was dragged up a ramp, into the lit house, and thrown with some force into a loveseat. There she could clearly see Yumiko, wearing a red shirt and short denim shorts, no shoes.
“Kindred soul?”
“Yes, you and I are a lot alike. Before you ask, I know because I can understand all things, you could say my comprehension is divine. You were once human, and so was I. We were just programmed to do different things. You muddle with mortals, while I was made to tower before them.”
“Tell me more about our similarities…” She sat up right in the loveseat.
“I can’t, they about end there.” She spoke with a high and mighty voice, pompous. “I’m an android, and you’re a homunculus. I suppose we’re both filled full of preservatives, but the similarities decrease from there.”
“An android yet a God? So you completed your ‘self.’ How?”
“They hooked me up to their servers, downloaded everything into an AI in my brain, and called it a day. I was fed a steady stream of data from the AI until my conscious matched my unconscious. A god was born, tada.”
“Am I… a god, too? I was told I was by my creators.”
“You're like a demi-god, those are the people that’re born of a human and a god. Except created. From your core, specifically. A very neat design, you are… They started with a test tube homunculus, cursed it all to hell, and then connected it to something that should be temporary relief from it, an artifact from… somewhere. But it feeds into each other, a constant looping of curses and blessings. I know all this by looking, I see all the steel plates that hold you together. Because I understand everything.”
“...”
“Would you like to be mortal? I could tell you how… at a price.”
A lull in the conversation. Nina crossed her arms, thinking.
“Gambling, that’s what you're doing right now. You might have comprehension of the divine being fed to you by an all-knowing AI, but you're gambling.”
“That’s what god’s do best.”
“Well, it’s not gonna work. That would be too easy. Maybe on an older doll, but not me. I’m in the springtime of my youth, I’ve got to take care of my sis and get to the bottom of this. What is going on in this town?”
“That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? Because I can’t see it all yet, I can’t understand it all either. What I do know will cost you, and it will be paid in blood.” Yumiko extended her hand. “A drop of your blood, specifically.”
Nina reached her hand into hers. She bit the tip of her finger with her canines and sucked the finger for a moment before spitting it out and grimacing.
“You’ve got enough curses running through your veins to poison an entire herd of elephants! Why’d you even let me do that?”
“No, far much more than that. If you killed me, a new deadly illness would plague the world. And you already said you have to see to believe, so I let you taste for yourself.”
“You’re a biohazard!”
“Speak for yourself, you’re the walking talking blight, masquerading as a God.”
“I am a God! Just a very unorthodox one. Yes, and I’ll make you one, too. You see, those other two bastards are up to something, and someone’s got to stop them. But to kill a god comes with consequences, and only you can do that.”
“What’re they up to?”
“Meshing worlds together in some sort of twisted osmosis. Accelerating something natural, although it’s anyone’s guess how far ahead of schedule they are. Do you know what kind of God I am? I’m a God of Balance, and that’s what we’ll do. Balance the scales.”
- - - -
Avery had his back turned as Rowan dressed in an alley they had run into, a single street lamp offering illumination for them.
“Well, I guess this is as good as it gets… You can turn around now, but please try not to stare…”
He turned and looked. He regretted not picking up more clothes. More than the leather jacket and lacy pink panties that she was wearing, scarcely hiding anything.
“You’re gawking, sir.”
“Sorry, I was mostly looking at your tattoos. Do you want to borrow my pants?”
The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“...Nah. They wouldn’t fit. It’s warm tonight, anyway. Coincidentally, we’re not too far from my house. But what the hell happened back there?” Rowan started walking northwards down the alley.
“They called it raw magic when I was being taught. It has random effects, like turning people into potted plants, apparently… I was told it reacts to my emotions, but I don’t know much else about it.”
“Does it have any downsides?”
“It makes me feel… weird, afterwards. I was told not to use it much.”
“Weird? How so?”
“My thoughts get scattered, my body tingles. It’s just a weird feeling… I don’t quite know how to describe it, but it’s not a good sensation.”
“Best to keep it as an ace, for sure.”
“Yeah. Tell me what I missed out on when we were climbing up to the city in the sky. What happened before we got there?”
Rowan told him about the bleeding eyes man and the encounter with the statue. She left out her familiarity with cities and skies, but this didn’t get past Avery.
“You don’t seem surprised by any of this,” Avery said.
“You could say I’m familiar with the supernatural.”
“What do you know about what’s happening right now?”
“That they should never interact, the real world and the moonlit city, but somehow they are. It’s supposed to be a natural phenomenon, but this is definitely orchestrated by something, or more likely someone.”
“What’s it mean when they do ‘interact?’”
“Usually it’s small, like curing an illness in a person... Oftentimes the moonlit city will give a prophecy of some kind, or bestow a gift like the eye that fell from the statue. But the statue fought back. The city fell from the sky. We’re in unknown territory, but I assure you it’s not good.”
They rounded a corner and saw a blazing blue outline of a small person, running down the road… “A spirit!” Rowan yelled, “Let’s follow it!” Even barefoot, she started sprinting. “Wait! We mean no harm!” She tried to call out.
The spirit seemed to hear and looked around, and they got a good look at it, or him. A young boy, it seemed. One could see it’s lips move, but the language was incomprehensible.
Rowan got on her knees and clapped her hands together.
A prayer.
She knelt there on the asphalt for a moment, before she unclasped her hands and stuck them out to the boy. His speech began to make more and more sense.
“Help me,” he said. “Please, help me…” he sobbed. Rowan went to grab his hand, but it went right through his opaque body.
“What happened?” She spoke in a soft, caring voice.
“There’s a monster… eating people.”
- - - -
“What does being a god mean to you, Yumiko?”
“Are you speaking in practical terms? Power, knowledge, in my case extreme comprehension. Practically, it means to be immortal, something ethereal and intangible.”
“I’m speaking more philosophically here. Yes, immortality and planes of being above human reach are a part of the package. But isn’t this a conundrum? When you understand everything, isn’t there something to be said?”
“Are you familiar with entropy, dear Nina?”
“You’re referring to the inherent chaos of the world as time goes on, I take it?”
“Yes, exactly. At my level, a God, entropy becomes you. That’s what separates us, and that’s the conundrum you speak of. How can I understand anything in this body, a vortex of entropy?”
They cancel each other out, or should… She understands, comprehends, everything. Yet she is entropy.
One thing is certain, with so many vortexes in one place, nothing is stable. In a vortex of uncertainty, her role is understanding.
“Tell me about our enemies, then. Have they reached some sort of ‘self,’ like you?”
“We have two targets, of course. One, the towering axe wielder with bleeding eyes. His is a power of curses. Something nefarious is pulling strings with him, he’s not from this world or realm. I’m not entirely sure what he’s doing here, out of place and time, but I understand he’s searching for something. He shouldn’t be killed, but restrained and questioned, perhaps sent to where he belongs.”
“So you could call him a wandering immortal, not quite a God?”
Yumiko rested with chin in her hand, bent over. “You know quite a lot. For all intents and purposes, he’s raised to God status. I believe it has to do with his birth. I can understand that, but you can’t understand where someone came from.”
That’s knowledge, not within her scope of comprehension. “So this bleeding eyed man is a mystery.”
“In so many words, yes. He may even be an ally of us, but that’s yet to be seen. Next, the second man. Slender, with skin of stone. This guy is dangerous, and erratic. He found a path to godhood through a path of blood, if he’s anything he’s a serial killer. You’d do good to warn everyone to keep their distance from him. He has a very powerful blessing, bestowed on him by reaching enlightenment.”
Nina raised her hand. “How’d he do that?”
“Murdering people. Any other questions?”
Nina shook her head.
“This one… you won’t be able to kill. Best to run away if you see him. That’s not going to stop us from trying, but it’ll be on my time.”
“Deicide is a grave thing to talk about lightly, Yumiko.”
“For you, maybe. Don’t forget my status is the same as theirs.”
“I never thought this would come to a partnership, but I’m happy we're not at each other’s throats.”
“That’s because I never thought I’d be making a pact with some kids and their semi-immortal doll.”
- - - -
Back on the other side of town, Avery and Rowan only had to follow the faint sounds of swords clashing. It led to the ends of the blue bricked road, where they could hear two men talking, and their eyes adjusted to the darkness.
Sparks flew off their weapons as they clashed. It was the bleeding eyed man with his metal axe, and a man with skin like granite… Many steps behind him stood an illuminated blue outline of some monstrosity with tusks like a sabertooth and tentacle like feelers protruding out of the base of its neck. It was the only thing that reacted to their arrival, turning it’s four sharp eyes in their direction.
“Why’d you do it!” The man with stone skin, wearing a flowing skirt said as he tossed his full weight behind his sword into the outstretched axe.
The axe didn’t ricochet back, like expected, it barely deviated from its position in front of the tower man. “Call me sentimental, I just thought the humans deserved a fighting chance. I’m just passing through—” He grunted, took a step back and brought his weapon down to the ground which caused the earth to shatter, creating stalactites that shot up right where the slender man had been.
They were both breathing heavily, even from 50 feet away they could hear their labored breath as they’re weapons clanged together in a fierce battle.
“We came, we saw, we ran,” Avery whispered, grabbing Rowan’s hand and turning tail back where they had come from. They silently creeped down the street for a few minutes, before Rowan spoke.
“It’s following us,” fear creeped into her voice, “that monster, it’s behind us. Don’t look—you might startle it.”
“What do we do?” He whispered.
“It’s intelligent, not like an animal. I’m not certain. If it wanted us dead, we already would have been.”
“Can it even touch us?”
“Probably, if it wants to.”
A shiver creeped up his spine. “So we’re being stalked…”
“Just follow me back to my house,” She grabbed his hand and squeezed. “Don’t make any sudden movements, just walk looking straight ahead.”
So they did. They walked for a mile, stiff as boards, hand in hand.
Finally, after a time, they turned left onto a street with a streetlight. Avery saw something in his peripherals. It was blood, a stamp of blood from Rowan’s right foot. He couldn’t help it, he looked back. The leopard-like predator following them was nowhere to be seen. He breathed a sigh of relief, and looked at Rowan, frozen stiff. He followed her gaze…
Right in front of them was the blue outline of the predator, it’s two tentacles aimed at them in a cross, hunched low as if to pounce.
Rowan got on her knees, in another prayer. “Get ready to run,” she said. From the kneeling position, all in one swift move, she rose up, took a step forward, jumped with her wounded right leg out in front of her, and kicked the freak beast low in the chest. Blood from her wounded foot sprayed across the thing, sizzling.
In the monster's face you could make out an animalist scowl of pain, you could hear it being sheared by the blood, and it howled, a horrible human-like scream, echoing through the neighborhood.
She had kicked, and had changed into a sprint right past it, Avery taking a longer route around the beast. But Rowan didn’t make it past unscathed, not before it reached out a claw and mangled her left leg.
They ran into a nearby lawn and into a house, locking the door behind them. Avery looked out the front window, it was blue hour outside, in between night and dawn. The thing hadn’t followed them further.
He looked at Rowan, sitting on the floor, clutching her leg. She had a ugly, distorted face of pain. Blood was oozing down her leg, a trail of red oxygenated blood in her wake.
“The first aid… is under the bathroom counter,” she managed to say.