Mic loomed over the capital of the Soleno empire, a titanic eagle made of guns casting its powder-smelling shadow over low-roofed houses and dirt streets. A veteran guardsman raised his gaze when something covered the sun, clicked his tongue and continued his round while ranting. “One week, one week without inflation and something ominous has to hang from the sky. I should get a divorce, oh yes, that way that witch will stop sending cultivators or monsters to ‘scare me out of an affair’, like women ever pay attention to me. In silence I forgave her for the moth, in silence I forgave her for the boob-based-magic-system-preacher. But this? This is going a step too far, Marafilda, a step too far!” He stomped on, for the potential end of their civilization wouldn’t scare outlaws, nor pay his wage.
Surrounded by black and silver cannons, immobilized in the core of the abomination, Polvorina still laughed. With a little voice, because her throat was dry and parched, but laughed all the same.
“What’s your opinion on this place, Mic?”
A metallic shrill came all form around her, a mocking of a voice that was barely intelligible. “Shootable.”
“That’s your opinion on every place.”
“On every subject. To be solid is to be a valid target.”
“Oh, you cutie pie, you are the best murderous avatar a girl could ask for.”
“You are wellholed.”
The bulletous eyes of Mic scanned the area below him and his massive wings, that sent a rain of shrapnel upon the innocent with each beat. The innocent mostly didn’t care, because sometimes it hailed upon the capital, and those things were often the size of a bull’s testicles. Some bits of metal going slightly fastest than sound wouldn’t stop the local populace from doing their outdoor activities, like trading, playing, dog walking, walking, dog trading, criming, catcalling, dogcalling, catcalling dogs, dogcalling cats, catdogging calls, and, sometimes, working.
“Come out and play, Cutbastra!” shrieked the construct of guns and gun accessories. “I want to fill all your holes…”
This made the general populace gasp in horror.
“We are still not past the 8:33 Pm watershed, heartless monster!” criticized a distressed mother, who was technically correct in all of her asseverations.
The dozen-winged gunbird blinked, killing seventy-eight infants that were in the trajectory of the shots —the eyelashes were on a hair-trigger— and considered that, yes, the worried mother had a point. “…with bullets” Mic concluded its previous sentence.
“Ah, that’s okay, children need to know about guns.” The woman slung the silvery fish she was carrying over her bleeding shoulder and continued on her way through the impoverish hood, not bothering to dodge the shrapnel.
Cutbastra was nowhere to be found.
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In another city, whose populace was slightly less used to apocalyptical events, the man and woman dressed in white suits and donning white shades looked around, confused. “Did anyone think that white-tinted shades would render us practically blind? It’s like having constant cataracts!” A blonde agent of the secret police protested.
Her partner, a thin man with a bony face, spoke in a calm tone. “Shut the fuckity fuck up, Agent See.”
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“I am agent Eich.”
“Your voices are sameish. And I cannot see shit with the glasses on.”
That fact, by the way, explained why they were looking for the alien in a thrift store. The store clerk, reclining back on his chair, kept reading his Supercommon’s magazine, a thrilling story about an office worker having to face great evil like, for example, a broken coffee machine or a looming deadline.
The agents couldn’t see the ugliness of the clothes exposited at their sides, hanging from circular structures, with their frills and patches and high necks. It was like a collective noun for wizards of wizards had come and left their whole wardrobe stashed there.
A shadow moved across the vision of Agent Eich, and she rushed in its direction, taking out her Taser and aiming among the hanging clothes. The shadow hissed. It sounded like a cornered, and very angry cat. Agent See, being a quick thinker, drew her taser gun and shooted.
The barbs hit the cat square, but the feline made use of his natural agility to bob and weave through the incoming avalanche of electrons. He had not survived five years of biting the wires of every electronic appliance in the store without learning some swift moves.
“The target is apparently immune to electricity,” Agent Eich quipped.
“What target?” asked agent Eel.
“The one there.” The blinded woman pointed at the blur of a cat, that was giving the fifty-thousand volts a run for their money.
“That sounds like an angry cat,” Agent Eel almost observed.
“That is an angry cat, glowie. Whiskers is his name and he is mine,” said the store clerk and owner. “Or rather, he owns me.
Agent Eich didn’t let go of the Taser: if there was something worse than accidentally tasing a cat, it was what the cat would do to you after the torture stopped. She sweated profusely, her hands trembled, her face prepared for the onslaught of claws and teeth.
Meanwhile, deep in the smelly, slimy, murky and wide sewage system of the city, the alien was analyzing the water and the waste in it. This subterranean river fostered a most curious biota, judging its chemical composition. Still, no signal of prostitutes. Its search had to continue.
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Lino looked up from the sea floor, towards the dancing sunlight on the surface. He had happened upon a beautiful sight. It configured as one, that much he knew. Yet it elicited nothing inside. No amazement, no wonder. “In was emptied. Why doesn’t it feel wrong? She took even that. Even my ability to get bothered. I suppose, if anything, that that’s interesting.”
Why comment on it? I am not giving you any quests to do so.
“Why would quests compel me, even? I am already eternal. I have no wish for anything else. And if I weren’t, I wouldn’t seek to become.”
And they say people never change. It only takes a few thousand lifetimes of boring existence deprived of any feeling and look at you: absolutely fossilized inside. And on your way to conquer the world!
“Stop insisting on that. I don’t feel like conquering anything. I just… have to raise my children.”
He gestured vaguely at the labradorca, who had managed to attain hip dysplasia., which, in a cetacean, given the vestigial nature of their hip bones, was nothing short of a one-of-its-kind achievement.
He pointed at the distance, up a sandy slope. “How long travelling northwards until I find a coral reef, system?”
Do I look like a reef-finder to you? Hell if I know.
“You know, I think I have a slight, dying want: and that is to get rid of you.”
I am kind of a till death do us part deal. There’s no cultivator alive capable of extricating me from your soul without killing you. Well, there’s one. His name is Chalazarian, and he is a primordial dragon. But he would never accede to help you. He does not meddle with mortals, immortals or gods. He’s more likely to crush you like an insect.
“Maybe my wife can. Wife. How odd , Lino referring to a female as his wife.” He was at it with the third person again. The Labradorca danced around him, in pursuit of her own tail. “Is it even considered heterosexual behavior if the female in question is an eldritch monstrosity from the queer dimension? Is this line of questioning worth pursuing?” He paused, stretching his chin. “Is any line of questioning worth pursuing?”
No, Lino, they aren’t. Bring in the Nihilist of the Year award, for I deserve it. But it doesn’t matter.
Why do you want to find a reef, anyway?
“If such a wondrous sight doesn’t elicit any emotion in me, then I will know for certain that the man I was is dead and Buried, and that only his memory may guide my life. A test, if you will.”
And so he marched onwards, minding not when he kicked a bivalve or caused a sole to leave hiding and swim away on its side, like the flat loser it was.