It was dark. He had no concept of darkness, but he could not see, only feel the rough rock and stone that surrounded him. The rough, craggy surface felt so hostile to his weak, soft body. It infuriated him, almost. He hated being trapped in such a tiny, tight space, squeezed into submission. Instinctually, he began to tunnel through the minerals that kept him contained, slowly dissolving his stony prison in a bid for his freedom.
After a long, long while, there was nothing else to dig. He had reached some kind of void, where there was nothing to hold on to. Clinging to the surface of his former home, he tried to sense his surroundings, curious as to where he was. Only then did he consider that he did not know who he was. He contorted his body, squishing and squeezing and pulling himself in anxiety, suddenly realizing that he knew nothing.
Was the ground pulling away from under him? He flexed his body, morphing into a shape better suited for gripping the terrain. Soft-bodied claws hooked into grooves freshly carved, trying to keep himself from falling. There was a strange, melting warmth across his body now. What was that? It hurt to try to sense the world around him; he was constrained in some way, unable to even know where he stood, or the universe in which he inhabited.
He overdrew every part of himself trying to see, though he had no eyes. Some kind of soreness spread throughout himself as he reached the limits of the labor his body could handle, but he struggled and toiled away until he grasped that which he did not even know existed. Flesh knit together, coalescing into a single eye from which he could see. And he could see EVERYTHING.
He saw a million pinpricks of light, blanketing an endless black sky. He saw the rustic brown rock that he clung to, afraid of drifting away. He saw an incredibly bright orb in the distance, one that almost blinded him with its brightness. He turned his eye downward, and then he saw himself.
A blue gelatinous mass was what he could see. Gooey tendrils dug into the asteroid from which he had been born, and he pulsated with the breath of life that had been given to him, and only him. Out here, on this little space rock, there was nothing else. He circled the boulder he lived on, once, twice, four times. Eventually he grew hungry, his instincts driving him to dissolve the stone into himself to sate his urges. He did not know for what, or why he existed, drifting through the cosmos. It did not matter, for soon the answer revealed itself.
He saw the moon first, a little gray ball pockmarked with craters and scars of bygone comets. Then he swung past it, watching it fly by. He wondered if there were other things like him there, on that thing he did not know was the Moon. He turned to see the Earth, the magnificent blue-green pebble orbiting the Sun, and he felt it call to him, as if it were the reason he had opened his eye for the first time. It grew larger and larger in his vision, encompassing his whole field of view as he felt what it was like to fall.
Terrifying. Gravity dragged him down, an inescapable force that wanted to tear him apart. He slithered into the center of his asteroid home, compressing himself into a corner to escape the hot and heavy wrath of air resistance and friction, as the heat scorched the surface of the meteorite. The moments became minutes and hours, and when he thought it would never end, it did: explosively.
On the wall of Sunside City, a guard pointed to the comet falling down to Earth, gesturing to his partner.
“Oh, go on, make a wish!”
“You know we’re too old for that.”
“But it might come true…”
He had a point. The other guard felt a little mischievous, wishing in his heart for things to get interesting, as being a guard was a very monotonous job. He did not know it yet, but it would come true. Just not in the way he expected.
Marc ran, and ran, until he could run no more. His legs burned with a terrible fatigue, a creeping shroud of burning aches slowly constricting his lungs. His torn shirt stuck to his chest, dried blood gluing cloth to skin. Only when he cleared the boundary between plain and forest did he collapse against a tree, panting. He was already on the ropes, and his recent assignment had gone awry. If only he’d known exactly how tolerant his employers had been of failure.
The snap of a branch. Were they coming to finish him off? He clutched a pen in one hand, scuttling away into the underbrush. They would certainly seek to silence someone who’d gotten a good look into the real gears and cogs that kept the cold, clinical company running. The sky grew dark as dusk settled over the land, and he cursed his own morality. A scriptwriter should never ask questions, and he’d poked a little too deep, peeked through the wrong door.
Eventually the dense woods became a little more sparse, giving way to grass and a clearing. In his tired haze, he barely noticed the gaping pit that marred the center of the empty space. The trees that used to stand here, so proudly, were now burnt rotting logs lying at the edge of the cavity. Half eaten bones lay in little piles here and there, surrounding the centerpiece of this strange intrusion of the natural woodlands.
A boulder. Just from its general appearance, he could tell it was more like a meteor. A dark, lustrous surface, almost reflective, shone through the twilight hours that drew into night. A large crack ran down the surface, pockmark holes decorating the gift from space. It was so magical he nearly reached out to place his hands on the cold stone, wondering where it could have come from. This lost comet from another place, another land, another time, it churned his writer’s instincts in a way that scriptwriting never had. But a man had to eat, and to risk his life to put food on the table was a part of his life he had come to begrudgingly accept.
A noise, particularly slimy, came to his ears. It sounded viscous, gooey. By itself, that was no strange thing. Slimes had become somewhat commonplace ever since The Dust became a regular occurrence, perhaps as a consequence of some unknown Empowered. But the one that slithered forth from the asteroid was far different. Most slimes were either puddles, flattened against the ground, or rigid orbs that always popped back into shape post-deformation. This one was both, elastically bending and squeezing its way through tiny gaps, simultaneously stretching out tendrils of slime to grasp hardpoints on the surface of its rocky home.
The color of its slime was evershifting, between the dark blues of the deep ocean, to the inky black of space, dotted with little luminous specks reminiscent of the stars in the sky. In its very center was some kind of pearl, opaque and alluring. As soon as Marc spotted it, it spotted him. A couple of eyeballs of various kinds buried in the slime turned to stare at him. Some of the slime molded into a tail, laden with a scorpion’s venom. Slime grew into legs, paws with claws and a thick fur coating to protect it.
Marc moved not a single muscle, gripped by fear in this standoff between human and chimera. No, he couldn’t just freeze! He had to move, to do something, anything! He’d nearly died to his former patrons, he couldn’t give up the ghost now!. So he…
[COMMUNICATES]
[FLEES]
>[FIGHTS]<
He gripped his ballpoint pen in his left hand, stance low. They both sized each other up, one in hunger, the other in desperation. When the nighttime breeze sighed and disappeared, and his hands grew slick with sweat… he pounced. The relatively slow slime did not bother to move, letting Marc sink his pen and his hand into its gelatinous body. The goo grew firm, a quagmire for his wrist and fingers, which quickly began to burn as they were slowly digested.
He panicked, ripping his arm free and stumbling away, eating dirt as it slid down the side of its meteor, eager to add another creature to its array of mimicked abilities. When it had first landed, it was hunted, so small it could scarcely see above the leaves and tall grass. Plants were satiating, so much more than rock and stone, but it wasn’t enough to grow. Still small, and defenseless, he turned to devouring slower bugs that crawled along the forest floor. This was the key to his evolution. The meat allowed him to expand, ever so slightly, as well as giving him the tools he needed to defend himself from initial threats.
Spiders and beetles were easy enough. Ants were a little scarier, but in time they too fell prey to his ravenous hunger. But a carapace, a stinging bite, and a little bit of formic acid weren’t enough. Soon he turned his gaze to bigger prey. Voles, moles, mice and other such critters of the forests began to thin, knowing of the hidden threat that lurked among the trees. Eventually, even the wolves of the woodlands knew to stay away when he came near, fearful of the all-mouth-no-flesh beast that roamed the area.
So, understandably, he was excited to gorge on another creature, one that might give him some unknown power or ability. Marc, exhausted from his flight, could do little but crawl away. Soon the slime began to creep up his leg, dissolving the fabric of his pants and shoes, and eating through the skin on his feet and ankles. Then his other leg became captured as well. It felt like being torched, blood and muscles bubbling as they were reduced to little more than glistening gore, to be absorbed into this relentless predator.
“Fuck off!”
Marc tried, futilely, to punch it, or tear it off, or do anything to slow his impending doom, but every time it bounced back from his attacks unharmed. That was when he knew there really was no other choice. There would be no savior, no deus ex machina to drag him from his final failure. With trembling hands he pulled a crumpled sketchbook from his coat, putting slimy pen to paper as he tried to form words with bloody, skinless fingers. The letters grew more ragged by the second, as pain gripped his nerves and his body frayed at the molecular level. At his wits end, his whole lower body swallowed with bone beginning to show, he tore the messy paper from his notebook and pointed it straight at the murderous predator.
[FIRST TO VIEW THIS CONTRACT]
[FOREVER SOULBOUND]
[I AGREE]
The letters on the page began to glow, even through the blood that seeped into the paper. The light bathed everything, in the same way it did in his youth when he had written them down in a flash of inspiration so many years ago. Back then he had torn it up, feeling the power of the words he had inscribed. There was a cold certainty that he would only ever be able to use this power he had discovered once, and he had definitely never considered he would be forced to test it here, in such dire straits.
The makeshift scroll burnt up, its power used and consumed. Marc held nothing but the memory of the energy that had flowed through him all his life, until he had been forced to expend it. And yet…
It worked.
The slime shivered, practically zipping off his half-eaten legs. The horrible pain Marc had endured now applied to it as well, and it hated this terrible feeling of agony it had never experienced up to this point. Marc watched it writhe in relief as adrenaline tried to stabilize his body. Then he spoke.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“You… you’re… with me now. I think.”
It stopped moving. Despite not being able to speak, it understood what Marc meant. In turn, Marc understood him. He could feel the cold vastness of space wrapping around his body, and the terror of being alone in a foreign world.
“We’re gonna… be together now. Soulbound.”
What an enchanting word. He’d really done it now. The trajectory of his life had shifted forever, and he would never be free of the one who tried to kill him. Though, maybe the cold would take him first, as his vision faded, and he collapsed to the ground unconscious. The pain quelled, and the slime could think to itself again, uninterrupted by agony. Now it felt a pull, a desire to keep this man alive, along with the uncertain feeling that should Marc pass away, nothing good would follow for him. The mass of gelatin trembled as Marc had minutes ago, working to surround his body. Hopefully its regeneration could be applied to his new soulbuddy as well, or else.
When he came to, he was drowning on land.
He could scarcely breathe, a mask of slime covering his face and invading his throat. The viscous texture felt like a sheen of mucus coating his mouth and lungs. Marc scrabbled at his face, tearing at the liquid that sucked the breath from his chest and blurred his vision. It slid off his face with a sickening plop, letting him gasp for air. He shot up from his prone position, coughing and blearily looking around.
Then he remembered what had happened to him, and he tried not to grimace at the wounds that marred his arm and legs. But to his surprise, they were gone. His skin appeared perfectly healthy, no trace of the fatigue or wounds that adorned his body before presenting themselves. Guiltily, the slime slid off of him, flattening itself against the sparse grass and dirt in the clearing. Strangely, the slime was very clearly much smaller than it had been before.
Marc felt kind of full, actually. Standing up felt uncomfortable, as if a significant amount of liquid was sloshing around in his stomach. Did the slime feed him with itself? It did appear to be a lot more sluggish as well. The breeze caressed him, and he realized his coat and shirt was gone. Likely both were eaten while he was knocked out from the battle.
“Can I have my shirt back? Please?”
With a bubbling noise the slime appeared to shift from its typical translucent goopy form into a brownish fluid, before slithering up his legs to adhere itself to his torso, swiftly transforming into the clothes he had before they’d been dissolved. It was imperfect, as the weight and the texture were off. If it tore or anyone happened to look too closely, it probably wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny. But it was good enough.
“Can you stay like this? The contract binds us… is all I know. I don’t think we can be far from each other.”
The slime squealed, despite having no mouth, and bit him, causing Marc to stumble backwards from the sudden pain. His “shirt” and “coat”, which were melded together, writhed in unison, forgetting that pain transferred between them. Hopefully he wouldn’t be forced to take his coat off at all, or else the jig would be up. He could kind of sense how the slime was feeling, due to their bond of uncertain origin. It was hard to tell, but he felt feelings of unhappiness and anger coming from his newly acquired bosom buddy.
Why him, Marc wondered. Out of all the Empowerments he could have gotten, he received a contract he could only apply once. Now he was stuck with this horrible thing that had tried to eat him the night before. He felt only the warmth of the morning sun on his skin, and none of the inner wellspring of energy that had grown familiar to him ever since he first wrote down the words of the contract on paper for the first time.
“I don’t like it as much as YOU do, okay? You just tried to eat me!”
They did not understand each other’s words, but Marc could still feel the waves of indignation emanating from his unfortunate companion.
“Like it or not, I don’t care. I’ve got work.”
A soft whirring filled his ears. He had only a moment to turn around before the red spotlight of a scout drone cast its antagonizing gaze over the clearing, passing over the dead brush and the giant meteor to center on the target of its ire. Small speakers clearly broadcasted the cold and clinical voice of an artificial intelligence, addressing him as an asset, not a human.
[MARCCENARY LOCATED. APOLOGIES, EMPLOYEE. YOU ARE BEING LET GO. BEGIN TERMINATION.]
Before it finished speaking, he could already hear the telltale snapping of twigs and vines, shrubbery crushed under metal and wires. It burst into the open space with both arms at the ready, shaped into long blades meant to easily bisect any creature it came across. Marc eyed it as the robot took a moment to size up the target of its next hit. Overhead, the scout kept careful watch of him, feeding information back to its corporate owners.
He definitely could not fight it on his own. Even a rank and file zerg-type bot was enough to slaughter unarmed civilians like himself. But if he leveraged his unlikely soulbound partner…
…then maybe he could run away even faster than before! His legs pumping, heart pounding, he fled through the trees, trying to put distance between him and his surefire end. The machine came after him, felling trees and scattering underbrush in a bid to take his life. The mechanical stomping reverberated through the forest, the morning’s animals leaping out of the way of this manufactured disaster cutting a path through the woods.
The canopy blocked out much of the daybreak, but in between branches and leaves Marc caught flashes of light reflecting off the surface of the drone chasing him. Its optical sensors pierced through the chaotic, messy terrain. No matter how fast he ran it always kept its beady little receptors focused on its prey.
[CORPORATE ORDERS YOU TO COMPLY WITH TERMINATION. CEASE RUNNING.]
The thumping grew louder. The only reason the robot could not catch up any faster was due to how it chased Marc through all sorts of random obstacles, barreling through without a care in the world. Perhaps budget cuts or a lack of spare computational power was to blame for the relative lack of intelligence of this combat model, as it chose to hack and slash its way through all manner of bark, branch, and rock.
All kinds of ideas raced through his head. Could he double back to town and seek help from the police? No, he was too far by now. Plead his case and beg for mercy? Unlikely. They already decided to dispose of him. Find a hole to hide in? Ridiculous. The flying observer would not let him find any reprieve. His head ran at a mile a minute, and combined with his hasty flight, he was already feeling the effects of fatigue.
With a sudden leap, the bladedancer bot struck at his back with a clean slice, carving through air to meet his flesh even as it fell with a crash from overextending. And yet, Marc still lived, the thick slime of his false coat and shirt hardening reflexively on impact, reforming from nearly being pierced. For a moment, the motley brown color of his coat had become a darker exoskeleton, designed to resist impact. It piqued the interest of the drone tailing him from above.
[ANOMALOUS PROPERTIES DETECTED. POSSIBLE UNKNOWN EMPOWERMENT. HASTEN TERMINATION.]
The terminator assigned to killing Marc began to grow hot, as its servos kicked into overdrive, and its body sprang up from where it had hit the ground. Whatever minor impact damage it had sustained from the fall meant little, as every motor and circuit in its body strained against the rapidly heating metal shell. At this rate, it would quickly fall inoperable, every segment of its body overstressed to the point of failure. But it was a single robot among many, and killing Marc was of the utmost importance. No loose ends was the company’s unofficial mantra.
It tore through everything in its way. Even the thickest tree trunks barely slowed it down. They fell by the dozens, threatening to flatten the robot or Marc as each swayed and brought down a lethal fury upon the earth. With deft slashes, the bladedancer could simply slice anything that dared to fall upon it in two. Marc was not so fortunate, scrambling over all kinds of debris. His raw palms ached, and his legs were sore from exhaustion. Not even a minute had passed before it had drawn up close to him.
He could feel the heat from this distance, or maybe he was just imagining it. Every stroke of the metallic blades left a current of air that brushed his hair. Each step scraped against soil, throwing forward the storm of steel mere inches away from finding final purchase in Marc’s neck, or his heart. In his despair, he could only attempt one final gambit. The slime, sensing the familiar feeling of death creeping up on them both, hardened one final time, a futile effort to stave off the cold grip of the long dark.
Marc swerved around, a fist raised. A red hot blade descended from above, spearing through the morning light as it came down upon him like a Damocles sword finally dropping. Even if his flesh stood no chance against this monster, he couldn’t bear to die with his back to his killer, forever a coward in the face of the end. The robot brought down its hand, and with one fatal chop-
BANG!
A single clean shot blew its arm, head, and half of its torso off. The remainder of its body, along with the molten slag that formerly connected its intact parts and its now-missing upper body, careened over Marc from the sudden force. The whole pile of scrap slammed directly into a particularly massive tree, embedded a few inches into the wood.
In front of Marc stood a tall, cloaked figure, a large floppy hat keeping their face cast in darkness. A thick, tough trench coat surrounded their whole body, preventing him from gleaning any details on their appearance. It was so long it nearly touched the ground, giving them the appearance of some brown monolith, standing watch amongst the old oak trees. In their right hand, they held Marc’s savior; a single smoking revolver glimmered with the telltale energy of an Empowered.
Shocked beyond belief, Marc struggled to say…
“I had it under control, dude. No need to kill-steal.”
The mysterious figure was unreadable, the shadows cast by their overgrowth of cloth enshrining the worn gunslinger even as morning’s light began to draw back the dark curtain that wrapped around their silent form. The revolver moved to point at the sky, a crack piercing the awkward silence. The metal slag that fell from above, what remained of the aerial drone, punctuated the gunslinger’s response.
“Kill? With what?”
The voice was deep and gravelly, though mostly tired and worn. Some grizzled war veteran, perhaps? The man gestured with his weapon at Marc, who sported no weapons at all.
“You think I'm just gonna believe you would beat it to death with your bare fists?”
“Well…”
Marc reflexively clenched his fists. His new bond with the extraterrestrial wrapped around him meant the slime hardened too, abandoning all pretenses of being clothing as it collected together and grew a firm beetle shell over its slippery exterior. It seemed to creep out the gunslinger, who brought his revolver to bear on the shapeshifting imposter.
“STAND STILL. I don’t mean to alarm you… but that damn thing is on you right now. Don’t move and I’ll blast it to bits.”
“Hey, hey, wait, don’t! It’s… mine. Now. Not dangerous.”
He kept a bead on the shimmering slime of outer space, a dangerous glimmer enchanting the palms of his hands.
“I ain’t naive as you, buddy. I’ve lived long enough to know that any pretense of friendship or loyalty from predators like that is just to get your guard down. No way anyone could tame a creature like THAT.”
Marc’s reaction bled into the mind of the ooze that was latched onto his skin, causing it to cycle through a few dark colors as if it were offended on Marc’s behalf.
“No, it’s true! It’s just my power.”
Marc reached out with his senses, trying to show the man what he meant. But try as he might, his hands writhed and stretched trying to channel the energy he’d once possessed, only to find nothing. Instead he just looked really stupid and possibly insane. On the bright side, it did disarm the gunman a little bit. He did give off vibes of general amusement at how hard he was trying.
“Look, kid, you don’t have to try that hard to fool— what the hell?”
Miraculously, before their very eyes, blue flames coalesced around them in a spectacular light show that encompassed most of the area. They danced in the air, settling on trees and shrubbery alike, though never setting it on fire. An invisible wind swept it all up, the flames burning away to reveal little bits of parchment that wove together into one coherent page that lit up with the words scrawled by its owner not even a day before.
“You really are Empowered… you can do this with all animals?”
“No… I think it was a one time thing. I almost died, so I had to use it on this guy on me right now. I can’t feel my power anymore.”
He conveniently left out the part where he almost died because of the slime. Some things were better left unsaid.
“Shame. Summoner-type empowerments aren’t common, and being able to tame a bunch of monsters instead would’ve been useful. This contract doesn’t look particularly good, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“Didn’t you write the contract? You should know.”
Marc didn’t, of course, for he only knew how to create the contract, not how to dictate the terms of agreement. He had gone into it blind, and only now paying the consequences.
“Um…”
“Alright, fine. I’ll read it out for you.”
With a flick of the wrist the glowing revolver vanished. The hidden man snagged the paper with his right hand and peered at the tiny glowing words as he began to read.
“Let’s see. [Intertwined Life] binds you together on a ‘fundamental level’, or so it says. You can sense each other at all times vaguely, which manifests as telepathy. And it mentions ‘until death do you part’.”
“What? I’m bound to this guy FOREVER?”
“Well, until death. Oh, never mind, it says both of you die simultaneously. Yeah, I guess you’re stuck with that thing.”
Damn.
“Shit, shit, now what the hell am I supposed to do…”
“I’ve got a shack in the woods. Sit down and tell me why you’re out here and maybe I can help you with one of your problems. The slime thing you’re gonna have to deal with yourself.”
Marc watched as the dude did a 180 and immediately began strolling away without even bothering to ask him if he wanted to come with or not. How forceful. He decided to come anyway. It’s rude to leave your savior waiting, isn’t it?
“It’s a little complicated. If I’m gonna visit your house, what’s your name?”
“...people call me the Tracker.”
He refused to elaborate any further, simply opting instead to let Marc scramble after him before he was left behind. Privately, Marc filed him into the mental folder labeled “minor assholes”.