“Some men fear death, and they are right to do so. Some women fear death, and they should be fearing candidiasis instead. But no more, because now with Cleancunt, you can exile all the undesirable fungi — But not the desirable fun guys-” The commercial’s presenter got sent to the dimension of irrelevance by Samari, who had in her hand the best of weapons against lunchtime propaganda: A loaded TV remote.
“Tabbyas, why are commercials on this TV always about hemorrhoids, vaginal yeast, diarrhea, constipation, or pimples only while I am eating my lunch?”
Samari addressed the cat, who was lying piecemeal over a round plastic table next to hers. They were hanging around in the dinner of the Archives, an old place with wrought wood —don’t ask— furniture, walls plagued by pictures of famous Arcagnostics, and stagnant air impregnated by the scent of fried eggs, sandal (Sunny-side up), and labender.
“Big pharma wants you to vomit daily so your G.I. tract —Not to be confused with the Joes— gets fucked up and you have to rely on antiemetics and antacids for life.” The Golden… Golden C… the Felix aureous feat silver tangleferrets said.
“That makes no fucking sense. People get ill on their own, Tabbyas. Look.”
She turned the TV back on, and zapped some channels, until she landed on The Speedrun Channel. In it, a woman in her thirties was meditating deeply, her eyes closed, shoulders relaxed, and hands joined in front of her belly button. The presenters’ unwarranted excitement and their annoying voice created the kind of atmosphere that’s perfect to nurture schizophrenia.
“Look out, Isaac, she is trying to do the Neural Crest Migration Skip! Karina Nummula is the absolute madlass if she thinks she can pull off this TAS only trick,” one of them shouted a bit too close to the mic.
“If she fails she will be set back several hours, and possibly lose the world record, Sam! Pregnancy birth% is one of the most competitive runs worldwide, and most successful runners are arcagnostics!”
“It must be noted that this isn’t the same as the Healthy baby%, which takes about seven and half months, as the baby has to survive one week outside of the womb. In birth%, as long as there is no miscarriage, the run is valid!” Isaac eagerly informed the public. Karina kept on concentrating.
“She is pulling it off without pause buffering, Zack! Frame-perfect execution of targeted deleterious mutations!”
The presenters began hollering like monkeys on LSD while the video feed still showed the woman sitting like a statue. “Holy fucking shit Sam! Holy fucking shit! She is doing it! the first ever Neural Crest Migration Skip ever done on a non-TAS pregnancy speedrun!”
“This skip could save her several weeks of pregnancy, Zack! But if she fails, the run ends here, with a catastrophic miscarriage that would make her lose…” The presenter made a pause, because, obviously, the public needed the suspense. “Four weeks of effort!”
“And after that flawless sex skip she executed earlier, it would be a shame for such a run to end here. She isn’t simply going for the world record, she is going to crush it and make sure no-one can dethrone her!”
“Last input…and… She did it, Zack!” The men started then behaving like subhuman creatures incapable of shutting up. “A freaking-ass NCM skip done live, with no pause buffering! That baby is going to be so fucked up they won’t even know what hit them!”
“His heart is irreversibly fucked up, his nerves are obliterated, his melanosomes and meninges are fucked up, too. There’s no part of that baby not worth throwing out with the bath water. None! Zilch! Zero!”
Samari decided she had had enough and turned off the TV. She had expected to see unhealthy day long runs that make people lose sleep and consume a bit too much caffeine. Suffice to say, this added another trauma to the extended family of them that nested inside Samari’s mind.
“Tabbyas, would you mind if I destroy the world one day?” she said,her gaze lost on the drywall.
“After what just perspired, not at all,” the cat deadpanned. “Not at all, Samari.”
“Good.”
----------------------------------------
Inside Aunara’s Vault, there were many appliances prepared to serve her clone. Among them, a training dojo. And in the middle of the training dojo stood Aunara’s statue. Her marble feet rested over stormcloud tiles, little sparks frolicking all around the room and jumping beneath the tatamis. Samari was preparing a scaffold of spirit tendrils to support her arms, her legs, her hips, her tongue, and even her eyelids. A veritable system of coiled series of interlocked spirit channels, shining with the color of her soul (That was currently tuned to a light blue, but not because her spirit was depressed, which I would be if I were Samari’s spirit, but hers, not being me, wasn’t.) ready to spring into action with the slightest push of her will.
The girl had left the whistles hanging from the nearby leather wall, ready to retrieve them and torture her mother’s statue if she decided to step out of line. She… Samari was granting a gender to a thing. An ostensibly inanimate object. Would it get to her head? Would it matter if it did, given the inside of the head of a statue was the same of the inside of its butt? No, it wouldn’t: it was her Dear Mother’s statue, pride and boasting came to it as naturally as weathering.
She tried to test the scaffolding by pumping her fists into thin air, and the air moaned, making her stop and raise an eyebrow. “What?”
“That parcel of air is masochistic, little Aunara.” The statue interlaced her finger as if she were explaining something obvious to a little child.
“Somehow, it doesn’t surprise me.”
Samari slowly slipped away from the masochistic air. She felt light on her feet, because she was nine. Soon enough, had she been dabbling into cultivation, she would face a midlife crisis, because she was nine. Yes, even if you state all characters in your “‘fan’art” are over eighteen! Actually, screw you all: I canonically grant Samari the power to be considered a minor in every piece of media she appears in. No ten-thousand-year-loli clause or age-up delusion can work in this place. Come, lay down your e-pencils. It’s now too late to soil Mercy.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
Aunara’s statue pursed her lip as she watched her maker’s clone saunter around. For the glory of Aunara Stradeajo she would help “Samari” realize her potential as an Arcagnostic. But the girl didn’t command herself with the pride and class proper of their maker. She behaved more like an uneducated boy in how she moved, a child of the wild as cultivators were. Unladylike. A tree that broke the stakes, that refused to grow straight.
“Do you think the heavens would accept making newfangled deals with someone that boasts such sloppy manners?”
Samari’s tongue found its way out of her mouth for a second, and then it got pulled back in, happy with the taste of freedom. “For the record, I do.”
Samari relaxed the left side of her body. Let the tranquil, non-masochistic air enter her nostrils and exit it with the tranquility that reigned in the room, whose chimes weren’t used to tintinnabulating. Then she closed her eyes, and her mind called for the universe to make a deal with it.
“Yo, universe!”
“Sup, lil girl?” The universe, who’s totally not me (ergo, not Ryan Gosling) answered.
“I want to strike a covenant.”
“Does it include horses?” The universe asked, raising a few galaxies, causing innumerable mass extinctions, breaking some laws, local and of physics both.
Samari’s mental image, that stood in a little platform amidst the void of the cosmos, the sides of which where lined with robotic equines floating inside cylindrical cloning vats, shook her mental head.
“Good. I am listening.”
“I want to, at will, be able to paralyze half my body for a little while, in exchange for increasing the strength and resistance of the other half substantially. With all required secondary effects to not kill or further cripple myself while doing so.” She counted on her fingers as she enumerated her demands.
The universe answered with a loud hmmmm. “Retarded child of creation that you are. Do you think your feeble spirit will be able to command a half-disabled body?”
“Nope.” Samari told the truth and only the truth. “I could command a wholly paralyzed self with my command of my spirit net.”
“Then this is my offer: one minute of strength for every two of humiliating weakness.”
Samari smiled, showing her assortment of perfectly brushed little teeth, and making her fingertips meet in front of her face. “I accept your offer, allow me to invoke this new covenant. Hurry hurry!” She bounced in place, like a little bird using a jackhammer. And a helmet, for safety. My metaphors comply with OSHA regulations.
(Sometimes)
“I haven’t seen someone so eager to become a cripple since I binged the last season of Jackass. Very well, how shall this covenant be called?”
Samari’s avatar of the self scratched her chin pensively, and then snapped her fingers resolutely. “Buttstuffingduckpounder covenant.”
“No. I refuse,” the universe exclaimed, stars flying in every direction, colliding with random planets full of intelligent life (mostly, horselike), obliterating them like I obliterate common sense.
Samari’s plan was working like a charm. Now the universe, primed to expect something extremely stupid, would accept a far less absurd name. “Well, plan b… Bilaterial abjuration covenant. And I can choose the side I paralyze and the one I enhance, capisce?”
“Don’t Italian the universe, wonderful speck of stardust. Yes, these terms are acceptable. Call upon the power with your mind, and it will be granted, and the price will be paid, and the tariffs and taxes will be applied.”
One could see disgust settle in Samari’s delicate face. “I thought the universe was libertarian.”
“Freedom for me, not for thee! Back to your world with you.”
Samari opened her and forwarded her left hand and leg, getting in position to charge against the statue.
“You think about attacking me? I have the material advantage: I am made of stone.”
“And I am partially made of hydroxyapatite.” Determination burned inside Samari’s eyes like evidence of money laundering burns inside your favorite oven.
The little girl proffered a warcry and launched herself forward, Feet thundering against the cloudtiles. Her mother’s statue quickly reacted, raising her hands in a defensive position, ready to react to Samari’s obvious attack as the girl pulled her right palm backwards.
And as Samari approached, the statue felt time slow down. Every movement of the little girl seemed to take an eternity, and every vibration in the air resulting foreboding. Guitar riffs. Why was she hearing electric guitars?
“Boss music?” She thought. “No… J-pop… opening music. Protagonist music.” She greeted her stone teeth and braced for the impact, as Samari was about to launch her attack.
“Bilaterial Abjuration Covenant, Left for Right!” Were Samari’s last words before, spining on her right foot on a clumsy way, she extended her palm, impacting into the cross formed by the statue’s arm, a guard that would be impenetrable for most untrained people.
Samari wasn’t an untrained person. She was merely untrained.
Instantly after the impact, a thousand shards of marble flew, the right forearm of the statue becoming undone as the little girl’s arm continued her inexorable advance. Dead eyes open wide, the statue quickly ducked and turned her body sideways, getting out of the way of the attack, saving her left arm as Samari’s hit scrapped by.
Samari’s pants, however, weren’t as lucky, and soon enough the found themselves victims of a deluge. And their wearer, victim of a trip, consequence of half of her body being useless, and her spirit management not as finer as she thought it would while in such a state. Keeping a relaxed leg supporting her weight, puppeting a limp arm or raising a reluctant eyelid was easy. Doing it all at once, a micromanaging nightmare.
So she fell, flailing with her right half against the floor in some useless manner, like a paralytic fish out of public healthcare waters. Not a lunged fish but one deeply nested inside the teleostei. You know, a physoclist? No duct leading to the swim bladder?
Messiah, people, learn your fish.
Back to the sarcopterygian we kind of care about, Se quickly managed to use the functioning half of her body to drag herself away from the statue, leaving a trail of waste, a snail emerged from the dirtiest of sewers.
And while the horrible tingling and the wetness and the smell was bad enough, the worst part about it was that Samari blamed herself for forgetting toprepare her spirit to manage her sphincters too.
The left hand of the statue grasped her useless wrist tightly, and hoisted her up until they were face to face. Only half of the girl’s face had any expression.
“Little Aunara, count,” The statue, not minding her lost appendage, ordered with a motherly tone.
Samari found it impossible to articulate a mere word, given half of her tongue was as stiff as a plank, so she raised her working fist and started extending its fingers, one by one.
“Did you cause yourself a stroke?”
Samari wiggled her index from side to side.
“So this is temporal?”
The pained girl wiggled her finger back and forth this time.
The statue suddenly undid her grasp, letting Samari drop like a pathetic lump into the floor, eliciting a pained whistle form the girl. “Don’t choke yourself, I’ll go prepare you a bath. I may take a while to do so due to…” She raised her fragmented stump pointing at the place where her hand would have been, were it not spread all over the room. “And then prepare some study material for you, so you can learn how to repair my arm. Because you will repair my arm, child.” And the “will” was said with an emphasis that would have sent chills up Samari’s spine, had it been working properly and not going absolutely haywire due to the unexpected free day at work.
She wanted to protest, but couldn’t, so she just gurgled a complaining moan and basked in her filth. “Good job, Samari, you are rising up the ranks of the porcine hierarchy,” she thought.