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Nightlanders :: A Cyberpunk Fairytale
>> The Zen At The Heart Of The Hurricane

>> The Zen At The Heart Of The Hurricane

>> The Zen At The Heart Of The Hurricane

My heart almost ruptures inside me as I plant one foot on the arm of 'Mister Deadybear', and kick myself upward. Rocketing higher. Higher. Too high to be real. The POWER and FORCE of that single move almost ripping me apart.

For the next handful of minutes, limits mean nothing.

And in that instant, I hang in the air like a god of dark retribution. My senses roaring. My mind almost exploding. My head hammering with pain as blood-pressure spikes beyond all safe limits.

Everything looks.... so different.

As if painted in colours that don't really exist.

It's almost calm.

The arm of the bear impacts the floor, and I begin to sink. So slowly. As if through marshmallow fluff. My legs twisting as I angle myself.

Steering with my tail, to plummet directly onto Princess herself.

Foot meets shocked face, and I pound her head directly into the concrete. Something cracking inside me, as I flip off her slamming back in to punch my claws directly through her chest.

Ripping vital components, like bloodless organs.

Her hand snaps toward my throat, but I punch it aside. Slamming that foot right back in her face, and twisting hard. "WHERE YOU BELONG-!!"

A glittery fist impacts my shin. Cracking armour as it freaking spins me right off my pads. I turn the twist into a flip, and land again. A wild darkness consuming me. Blood a hammer in my ears as I dodge the snap of those evil, glaring, scissors.

My eyes fixate on them. My hatred a river of annihilation, screaming for release.

How DARE she threaten Tufty with the thing he most fears?

Reality flickers and stutters.

One instant she's snipping at my tail. The next, I'm beating those scissors right through her Goddamned eye with my fist. Nailing that smug face directly into the shattering surface.

Did time skip? Did my brain break?

Don't care.

The rage is more than I have ever known. An apocalypse chewing its way free of my chest, as I plant my foot on her belly and tear off a stabbing arm. Beating her into the ground with it. Ripping off the other.

A mere sideshow from this carnival of Rage.

Yet, even in its height, my mind is somehow stillness. A gnat of light riding a nightmare tsunami that cannot be stopped.

As if the carnage was but dreams in the cinema of my mind.

It's not real.

But the fight is bigger than two.

"....Woods.... sure of a big surprise...."

I twist, on one toe, and I batter aside an incoming fist of bubblegum blue. My 'clubs' shattering against inner metal. My body flicking into a leap as another spikes down into the floor.

My heart is going to rupture.

I hurl myself at the bear. The weight of fury pulling me forward with a gravity all of its own.

There is nothing but the enemy. The target.

THE KILL.

My vision is closing.

I hit its big, fat, stupid head like a hydraulic crusher built for tanks. Pummelling my way through its shell of blinding light, into the distorted mess of angles built upon angles within. Cracks and damage beyond all repair. My world a jumbled chaos of glitches and light.

Bare claws rip cables and cool, cold, metal. Digging the shitty projectors from the robot underneath. Already scarred and burnt, from some kind of explosion.

They make good rocks to beat the damn thing to death.

With manic laughter screaming from my chest as the true monster is revealed to me.

A clown. A tiny, crude, copy of Mister Tickles with stupid little bear ears welded on.

Must be Princess's final, sad, attempt at originality.

I wreak my wrath upon it. The apocalypse inside me rending all I touch.

I slam fingers into the gap of its neck, and TEAR. A terrible whine erupting from the knockoff Plaything as tubes and wires begin to snap. The head itself ripping away in jolts and cracks and snaps.

Along with all the muscles in my arms.

But I roar absolute gibberish, and pull with all my might. Unfeeling. Uncaring.

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Straining. Screaming.

The bear reels on its stubby legs, and I flip the pummelled lid off its neck and punch my SMG into the hole to empty the entire mag. My vision a tunnel of darkness into the void as the thing begins to stagger.

A single thought screaming for all my attention.

KILL.

I obey. I dive my arms into its insides, and shred the junk until blood runs from my claws. The smell like nothing of mine. I leap into the air, and the THRUM of my heart sings with malevolence and wrath.

I tear a cable from inside, and howl. Ripping at it with my teeth until my own blood streaks my chin.

And-

The moment freezes, like a photograph. Stiffening, and stilled. As if the whole world were suddenly shut off. Leaving only terror. And silence. And darkness. And an end to the rage so final, so intense, and so utterly instant that I simply....

Stop.

Stood astride a metal island, in the void.

My heart stilled to a snapping halt.

Unable to breathe. Or move.

One arm frozen above me. One tearing the cable from my lips.

I take in the darkness. My eyes shifting across the field bellow. Demon and Gremlin playing tag team against a tin soldier. Zipper hosing a spread of raggedy dolls with his SMG and pistol. A hundred bullets frozen upon their spinning trails of smoke and spark.

Tufty bolting across the hash-marked floor bellow.

Where is he goin-?

A spike of alien awareness crawls up my left side, like a finger in the ink when you're just drifting asleep. Or a bloodied knife of sudden, and unspeakable, delicacy.

It slips its silvery point up my cheek, settling on the side of my head.

Focusing.

Twisting.

Burning into me.

As if some ravening nightmare, long dormant and waiting, had suddenly flicked open open a single titanic eye.

IT.

IS.

LOOKING.

AT.

ME.

I do not dare to look. I do not DARE.

But yet my head twists, by some awful force, on my unwilling neck. So slowly. A ache of pain building in my neck as I fight the Nightmare thing not to look.

Not to SEE The Thing That Looks At Me.

But I can almost-

I can almost-

Everything snaps back into motion, like a video unpaused. Lights flickering back into life, as Deadybear's holo-face partly reforms. Grinning up at me with childish evil.

Uh oh.

I flip to one side as a monstrous limb of metal-bound cable impacts the it's neck like a gunned-down ship into a tower. Carving down through the entire top of the monster. Ending Teddy's last-ditch attempt to acquaint me with my ancestors.

For an instant it sways. And then the wreck thunders against the floor as I roll. My head snapping upward to the stumbling mass of Mister Tickles above. Thudding almost quickly around the edge of the factory, like it did when it ambushed us. As if hunding for something small.

One of us.

"You're next!" I scream at the horrorshow. "YOU'RE NEXT!"

The half-made head ratchets around to stare me down. A single, cheery, eye in a blown-out face - lit by flashes of sparking light from within. Huge hands rising to touch both of its cheeks.

'Who? Me?'

And, for the damndest instant, I swear it looks curious.

Wait. Is Princess really controlling.....?

But the thought is instantly torn apart by the caustic cocktail of madness speeding through my veins. By my need to not simply KILL and DEVOUR, but to BRING DOWN UTTER ANNIHILATION ON EVERYTHING I SEE.

Only there's something horribly wrong with me.

My arms aren't working quite like they should. I feel too numb, My body breaking around me as I howl with rage and violence. My team a rage of violence around me. Demon fighting. Gremlin a flashing red blur. Zipper screaming toward me, as Tufty freezes in his charge toward Badger.

Raising his hands, and shaking. Falling to his knees.

As if obeying a voice from above I can't possibly hear.

But I just don't care.

KILL.

They would be easy prey.

KILL!

No. No I-

My head HURTS so much. My breathing shallow. Hard. I stagger. I stumble.

Numbness. Creeping.....

Creeping through me.

My heart is a star of fire in my chest. Tail lashing for balance as the floor bucks and rolls. Seemingly, only for me.

But all of it goes still when I let my eyes drift past Tufty. To the thing he stares at. Seeing, at last, the child's body lying crumpled where it fell. Neck twisted at a terrible angle.

Eyes so empty. So cold. So wide, and stark, and staring into me.

I stumble towards it. Brushing tufty away.

I drop.

"Badger......?"

I saw him thrown. But..... No. No this isn't-

"Don't you want a yummy bite?" Princess sneers, offering him up like a cake. "That's what your kind do. Isn't it? Animal? You rip people apart and eat them."

My claws slam into the machine by her face. Ripping downward. "En-ough of your LIES. Prin-CESS-!"

My tone stops her cold. Thick tears of actual blood burning red-hot trails of fire down my breather. Impacting the toes stood directly inside the illusionary corpse.

The spite of Princess has no limits.

I stand up.

And, for half an instant, I feel that EYE on me once more. A single dot of violent, screaming, AWARENESS that burns directly into my soul. Terrifying, and wild, and....

....familiar.

"Where." I kick through the 'corpse', and it blinks to dust. "IS. MY. BADGER!?!"

"Given up pretending, have we?" A dainty finger feeding glittered lip to spiteful teeth. "So glad I could bring you back to-"

"WHERE!?!?"

"Now. Why would I tell you that?" She scoffs "You do keep breaking all my best toys." A little hum as she states at the ceiling. "You know, maybe I should break one of yours? Yes! That sounds fair!"

Her eyes flip to mine. Shining bright as scissors.

And I repress a flickered memory of my fist plunging one into the other.

"WHERE?"

Her smile. It's wrong, in all the worst ways. "Oh! We're having a little Tea Party! And you aren't invited!" She bends toward me. Tongue out. One eye winking open onto hollow, fleshy, darkness. "Murdering people isn't Nice! You know! But it is a lot of fun!"

My whole body chills. My tail a rigid loop, stuck in midair.

She led Badger away to kill him. Out of pure spite.

"But I'm a sport!" Princess lies, with just the slightest sneer. "So lets make it a little game, shall we? If you can, oh, sniff him out before I 'serve the tea'-"

"Y'mean burn him alive-"

"-then maybe you can have some too?" She pops up and down on her toes. "Isn't that fun! It's like a little race!"

"What.... Have.... you-" I shake it off. "POLYBIUS!"

"Spook." The real Polybius echoes from my gun. "I have lost connection to Badger. Kami is detecting-"

I tear off my breather, and the smells of the factory hit me like a wall. Sweat. Blood. Oil. Metal. Rocket smoke, and chaos. And maybe something fainter. Something sticky and sickly.

But there, roaring above it all, is the strident scent of my team.

Zipper's bubblegum-blue deodorant, masking inhuman breath.

Demon's hard and heavy sweat-musk.

Tufty's light, and gentle, perfume. All flowery and feline.

All of it buried by the weird funk of explosives and salt that can only be Badger.

I draw it in, and twist on all fours. Hunting, now. Focused beyond anything I've ever been on that one note of life in the dead, dusty, metal of the factory.

A note that must keep singing.

I stalk it away to the left. Shifting from jog to all out run. To gallop. To something faster that almost defies physics. Kicking off machines as I streak toward my target.

"You know. You never did ask what my Secret Surprise was!" Princess trills behind me.

Laughing her absolute ass off.

Because somewhere inside that single, rational, spark of Zen at the heart of my own personal hurricane.....

I know that the real target was me.

And that it's already too late.

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