Chapter 1:

Morning Mood

“I left you bound and tied with suicidal memories,

Selfish beneath the skin,

But deep inside I'm not insane.”

– Almost Easy, Avenged Sevenfold <1>

– ***** –

For many people, mornings were hell.

Others particularly loved mornings, for some reasons.

Two clans, which through the ages had tacitly agree to disagree, recognisable by their respective way of greeting the new day, “Good Morning!” versus “G’ed m’nigngnpff… f’kingasshole godie howthefuck’resoenergetic soearly.” One shouted with uncompromising cheerfulness, the other answered – the Hellmornician never spoke first before ten o’clock – in a muttered grumpy tone usually further muffled by the ceramic of a half-empty – never “half-full”, for the Hellmornician was pessimistic before nine – cup of coffee, black, with added pure caffeine.

Then, some, like Nicolas Siegel, just didn’t really care.

Morning was neither good, nor bad. It just… was.

Not that Nicolas ever actually paused to consider the question. Or maybe he did, but he wouldn’t remember anyway, not in said morning when he was more than half-asleep. In his subconscious understanding, “morning” had a very lose definition, one that involved sudden time gap, mind fuzziness and mysterious physical recovery.

One moment, he’d be in his bed, reading whatever or browsing forums, occasionally drowsing off or resting his eyes, then the next moment he’d wake up, his abused body having decided to tell him to fuck off at some point he could never clearly recall.

Today wasn’t an exception, and the glorious mating cry of the northern Wat’fukintimehisit rose in the silent morning:

“Mmmgneeeeh?!”

Magnificent…

Trashing about atop his bed with all the grace of an epileptic earthworm in slow motion, a very groggy Nicolas fought half-heartedly against the claws Mr Sleep had sunken deep into his brain. Disquieting sounds of cracking bones punctuated his incoherent wriggling and figurative fire ants rushed through his dormant muscles as he jerked them mindlessly in all directions.

Half moaning, half groaning, Nicolas endured the successive waves of dull pain and numb relief that surged throughout his body – his foggy mind quite enjoyed the feeling in fact – then attempted to consciously assess his situation.

Today? Thursday… right. Wha… school… yeah… dunno… maybe… Stupid dream. Why would a pancake do this to me? … Uh? Ah, right… time?

Without certainty, Nicolas vaguely estimated time to be around half past six. Years of scheduled compulsory education had irremediably indoctrinated his biological clock, jumpstarting his brains every morning if his level of exhaustion wasn’t terminal enough to warrant extended shut down for survival purposes.

Nicolas’ brain apparently decided his host wasn’t in dying condition. It reactivated, quickly reaching an operational state, and promptly sent orders to all organs to switch gears from standby to waking mode. His eyelids, however, seemed in the mood for insubordination as usual.

Well… binge-reading fanslated yuri mangas <2> on the screen of his W-Player for hours last night did do a number on his eyes, so maybe those lids had emergency lockdown protocols overriding the Great Cerebrum’ orders.

The almost sensual softness that pressed against his cheek wasn’t helping either.

After all, Nicolas really liked pillows. And chocolate. And mind control porn. Though two of those were utterly irrelevant to the current situation.

General Brain eventually decided to exert his authority in a more focused way, and managed to get the unruly eye-shutters to open successively one at a time.

*Left eye* *Right eye* *Left eye*

Oookay…

Nicolas felt a bit like railroad crossing lights, but at least he could finally see something.

*Right eye*

Ma room… Haven’t been kidnapped at least… Yeah~ …I guess. Not sure… if that’s a good thing. No… I’m pretty sure it is. Kidnapping sounds painful to deal with… Yeah… Not a laughing matter either… Well, I’m not laughing… Would anyone care if I disappeared? Mmmh… Mom would surely commit suicide… or die from depression… or have a heart attack… so I guess that count as a ‘pretty fucking yes’? … I feel sooo loved right now… Would I care? …’f someone I knew disappeared, I mean… Probably I guess… Haha… Damn. I hate when I’m like this.

*Left eye*

His thoughts lacked their usual fast-paced cheerful madness, currently replaced by slow contemplative cynicism – though still completely out of control. He had his sad-ish moments like that too, and would probably question the meaning of his existence a couple times before his mind finally clicked back into its habitual happy-go-crazy pattern.

He sighed at the prospect and tentatively looked around.

*Right eye*

His room was a mess – albeit a very tidy one, but a mess still.

Contrary to the living room, kitchen and bathroom, which were theme-decorated – respectively, “kinda outdoor clearing”, “sciency lab thingy” and “submarine-ish cabin” – his own room was where he stocked all sorts of things he either found interesting or that held a particular sentimental value.

*Left eye*

As a result, the place looked akin to an antique shop, full of mismatched artefacts that together still inexplicably managed to create this very special atmosphere of “orderly mayhem” which Nicolas found extremely relaxing. The antiques, though, were replaced by stuffed toys, manga, figurines, other toys, this one plastic skull that had survived from a half-life-sized skeleton model he once had – the skull wore a rainbow wig for some no doubt profound reasons –, a medieval helmet, a bunch of phosphorescent marbles, a pair of latex swords, a straw-hat, a globe, as well as various other miscellaneous items and goodies collected throughout years of whims, passing personal crazes, and at the occasional anime convention or medieval fair.

*Right eye*

All of this bric-a-brac was neatly organised on shelves and on his desk, while posters – mainly sub-products of the Japanimation – shared the walls with weird drawings, a reproduction of a Picasso – though that probably counted as “weird drawing” –, an exclusive picture by Aapeli Bernstein <3>, and one puzzle representing a lone blue boat on the sapphire sea under a clear azure sky, which Nicolas had ragingly glued and framed after spending nearly three years putting the damn thing together – he was now working on another called “White Rabbit in a Popcorn Storm”.

*Left eye*

There was also a wardrobe in which...

*Right eye*

“…”

*Both eyes* *Double blink*

Let’s not think about the wardrobe.

He shivered, still laying on his bed.

*Left eye*

Despite there being no window, Nicolas could see everything in the room clearly. As to why that was, the reason was quite simple. Distractedly letting his body follow his train of thought, he raised his one currently open eye slightly… and then squeezed it tight shut when he stupidly ended up looking straight into the bright ceiling light. Cursing, he quickly ducked under the bedcovers.

*No eye*

F’cking Moron.

Indeed, he had spent the previous evening, and a good portion of the night, binge-reading to satiate is recently blossoming passion for yuri manga. Since his wallet had fled the country after one look from its owner’s “addict-slasher-out-of-his-meds” sparkling eyes, Nicolas had resorted to online fanslated scans to quench his intellectual thirst. And, in order to spare his eyes at least a bit, he had left the lights on as he fixedly stared for hours at the touch screen of his W-player.

At some point though, he had closed his eyes and forgot to open them again, consequently forgetting to turn off the lights which had stayed on through the night.

Undoubtedly, his precious music/internet-browsing device had fallen somewhere between the sheets after that.

“Tsh.”

In a concerto of cracking bones, Nicolas contorted himself in search of it, while distractedly remembering to spare his still slightly fragile left leg. He rapidly found the flat player under his shoulder.

He tentatively opened both his eyes again, blinked to get rid of a couple purple black smudgy afterimages, and rapidly checked the time.

Thirty-seven past six, indeed.

It left him about an hour and a half to take a rapid shower, eat breakfast, take care of McLeon, and depart for Saint Rose and a merry day of school-life.

Satisfied, he smiled, then he put down the not-smartphone on his bedside table and clumsily reached for the light switch.

The room became dark.

He went back to sleep.

– *** –

Nicolas emerged once more around half past eight. Struck by a sudden idea, he abruptly opened his eyes and jumped out of his bed.

Which was particularly stupid of him.

“AAAAAAAOUCH!!”

Acute pain shot through his leg and he immediately forgot what he had been so jumpy about.

“Aaahahahahhhouch…” he painfully laughed. “Damn you, me!”

Cursing under his breath, he grabbed his W-Player and tossed it in the pocket of his mummy-styled pyjama. The nightwear made of trompe-l’oeil bandages had been a gift from Yasmin, proof that even a muscle-head could have a twisted sense of humour – though he agreed the design did look cool.

As he hobbled his way out of the room, slaloming around his scattered schoolbooks, images of horror flashed though his minds, of a dark skinned woman with mysterious black eyes grinning widely and using him as a sandbag in the name of “training”.

Training my ass. Doesn’t training involve me doing something as well? I know my memory isn’t the most trustworthy, but I still remember taking punches and kicks very much one-sidedly...

“And since when does judo involve punching people anyway?” he mumbled angrily.

He could understand Yasmin was pissed he’d shut himself in again during the exams… and the break… and ignored any in-game message… but that kind of punishment still was going largely overboard in his humble opinion.

Though, in all honesty, she hadn’t exactly broken his leg, more like cracked the bone. It would even have been healed already if Eva hadn’t apparently possessed X-Ray vision, giving her the ability to land a hit right were the crack had been… and thus still was.

“Or, for all I know, she might have used her contacts in the mafia to bribe the hospital in giving away my radiographies in order to break me more efficiently and discourage me from stalk… befriending her.”

I should stop jokingly say I’m stalking her, or I’ll blurt it out at some point and I’ll get in trouble with her Yakuza friends… Wait, no. She isn’t Japanse. Is there a Belgian mafia anyway? What would they do? Black-market the fries?

His mind momentarily flashed with images of a shady man wearing a long coat, crouching in a dark alley and dealing little salt packets to pale costumers suffering from potato withdrawal.

“…nope.”

He shook his head to get rid of the thought, then continued to very sanely talk to himself:

“Plus, she did seem genuinely sorry when she was here the other night.”

…another statement I shall certainly not repeat out loud in front of any tall suit guy with sunglasses.

He sighed.

“What do I want with that girl anyway? Not that it really matter I guess, at least not as long as I don’t manage to get two words out of her without fearing for my life, or with a door between us. Besides, even if some weird twisted part of me… the question being which one I suppose… anyway… Even if I fancied… Nice word ‘fancy’. Should use it more. Anyway… What was I saying? Ah. Right. Like I said, even if I aspired to some kind of SM romance, it’s not like I ever made the first move in a romantic relationship… Haha… I think I recall Yasmin’s first move being a right hook to the face… My…face… *sigh* … Does she really do judo?”

His thoughts briefly went to Athena – something that oddly enough happened every time he hurt himself these days.

How does she fit in the equation?

He sighed again. Even though his mind was always going in three different directions at once, at heart he was a pretty simple guy. If a girl was nice to him, and he happened to be “free” at the time, he would at least consider a relationship, but he probably would also think acting on his assumptions was too much of a bother and thus always ended up adopting a passive approach.

“I guess I’m just a lazy wimp when it comes to girls…Which is exactly why I only attract aggressive women… Even Jenny was, not physically at least but… yeah. Pretty bossy. But… Eva? Really, me? She tried to STAB you dude. IRL. That’s not having ‘issues’, that’s being dangerous,” he reproached himself while a smile crept his way on his face.

“OH NO! Don’t you dare fucking smile! Huhuhu… And laughing isn’t better you know. *sigh* You’re sick dude. Though I agree the face is there… when she doesn’t wear her glasses… and doesn’t hide behind her bangs… and doesn’t look on the verge of a panic atta… wait, no. That frightened shrew look is pretty nice too...”

That gave him a start.

God. Did I just think that? We’re sick, me.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

He was still smiling though, then he began to frown without letting his smile fade away… An exterior observer might have found his current expression vaguely disquieting.

“In the first place, I still don’t know why she creepily ran away from the record store. No, wait… That’s because she’s androphobic or something. But why was she smiling? That’s the creepy part. And why am I? That is the creepy part. Does she really have contacts in the mafia? That might be. Then again, she…”

Continuing to ramble on nonsensically, Nicolas slowly made his way to the kitchen. He distractedly grabbed a bowl in a cupboard, waved it around accusingly while insulting his sadistic self… or maybe the masochistic one. He wasn’t paying attention to his words. His thoughts were wandering towards Athena again, comparing the two most painfully violent women he knew – Yasmin could at least restrain herself out of practice and the Mad Priestess wasn’t violent, just murderous.

Eva inspired him a profound sense of – slightly unhealthy – curiosity and he wanted to be close to her to understand her more. She was a challenge. A brain-teasing puzzle that he wanted to take apart to understand what made it tick. The difficult part was taking it apart without breaking it, or burning himself, or getting impaled, or losing a limb…

Athena, on contrary, he understood better. Their thought process was almost diametrically opposed, but maybe that was exactly why he could understand her so easily. The unfair part was that she probably couldn’t.

Nicolas, and by extension Victoria, was someone who had voluntarily strayed from the path of rationality, and still did. He was actually aware of what was the logical and sensible thing to do, but decided not to.

Oh, sure, by now, being random came as a second nature, and actually trying not to be illogical would prove challenging instead, but that didn’t mean the concepts and bases for a “normal” mind-set had been wiped clean from his mind.

That said, he was willing to admit that he only understood Athena’s surface behaviour, not the more intricate details of her personality. If her regular bursts of anger were any indication, she too had her own irrational issues to deal with. He hadn’t figure her out just yet, but compared to Eva, it was like day and night.

People are so weird.

And he was ready to bet Athena, on her side, was completely in the dark concerning the crazy oddball the Vampire Princess was.

Nicolas felt happily proud about it, though his happiness was tainted by a bitter aftertaste of guilt. After all, be it by omission or not, he was lying to her, and not in a small way. Pretending to be a girl with someone who was obviously lesbian, and probably more than a little insecure, was beyond douchebag level and stepping into the Perverse Self-Serving Asshole Realm. He was aware of it.

But he was who he was, and, for the moment, his desires were stronger than his reason. Or, more accurately, his mind reflexively banished the awaiting bad consequences from his thoughts.

Besides, he deluded himself, in the current situation, the teamwork will go more smoothly that way. Right. No need to worry about it… for now. Focus on the present and enjoy it while you can. Tomorrow will come fast enough. We’ll cross that bridge when it collapses. That kind of thing…

It had already been four days since they escaped the crumbling Bluerose Castle. Although it actually equalled to more than two weeks in game, they hadn’t played that much together. The fortress had collapsed on Sunday, today being Thursday and “Victoria” technically was supposed to be at school during the day.

Though “she” didn’t mind skipping, Athena herself was pretty serious with her daily schedule – pretty serious full stop in fact – and definitely wasn’t as much of a gamer as Nicolas. She would only connect for a few hours a day, between seven o’clock and midnight at most. The only reason she had been online long enough to complete the Bluerose Dungeon in one sitting was that it had been the week-end, and she had been in a bad – in a worse – mood and in need to vent.

The realisation of her schedule had startled Nicolas a bit. Even if Athena technically hadn’t breached the NRLT Treaty – “No Real Life Talk” – they had imposed themselves, what had transpired was enough to guess both lived in the same time zone, and that she was either a student or a young teacher.

True, this didn’t mean they would meet IRL any time soon, but he had watched too much anime for the “sudden transfer student” scenario not to nudge at the back of his mind.

He still wasn’t sure though. Guessing someone real age based on their avatar was a tad hazardous. And he definitely wasn’t an expert in figuring people out, despite it being one of his hobbies.

Nevertheless, he still believed she was somewhere between seventeen and twenty-seven.

Why? Instinct mostly, then also all the logic he could muster, and lastly a bit of wishful thinking too. After all, he would be troubled if he found out he had begun to fall for a middle-aged woman with a very youthful attitude.

Then again, I don’t think Athena can be considered “youthful”. Grumpy, straightforward and aggressive, yet schizophrenically bashful at time would probably be more accurate. Though I hop-

*tap* *tap*

A light tapping sound distracted him from his increasingly disturbing thoughts, and Nicolas stopped waving his empty bowl around. He put it down in the sink, opened a can of cat food and prepared McLeon’s meal on the feline’s own bowl. Then he picked up his and quickly gathered a milk carton, a pack of cornflakes and a spoon, before making his way out of the kitchen and through the living room to the balcony. In passing, he unloaded his cargo on the dining table, not forgetting to enact the compulsory robot-crane sound effects.

Still too distracted to start soliloquize with McLeon, he simply slid the door open and let the downsized panther/superhero rush between his legs towards the kitchen.

Cool air blew from the outside. Nicolas glanced at the balcony and stepped outside, taking in the view of the city and the river. His eyes reflexively looked down towards the pavement, five floors below, and he quickly retreated back in the safety of his apartment.

He wasn’t good with heights. Not outside of Untold Tales at least. To be more precise, it wasn’t high places in and of themselves that scared him, but his own mind that made him hugely uncomfortable.

He wanted to jump.

Though that was only a fleeting thought, really. It wasn’t like he was suicidal or anything.

Plus jumping down a building is a stupid way to kill yourself anyway. Plenty of time to regret it and a good chance of screwing up and ending paralysed instead of dead.

No, that wasn’t some subconscious despair nudging at him from the depth of his mind, but the irrational thrill-seeking part of him that was acting up.

Diving from balconies wasn’t the only thing that popped up in his mind incidentally. More often than not, when simply walking down the street, he would wonder how it would feel to throw himself in front of a bus. Crossing a bridge would inevitably made him ponder on how cold the water really was.

Would it be that difficult to reach the shore?

Did stabbing yourself with a knife really hurt that much?

How would this person react if I punched them in the face out of the blue? Am I strong enough to knock them out, or would they punch me back?

Should I throw that glass of water against the wall? I really want to hear the sound of it breaking in pieces. I bet it sounds cathartic.

All those thoughts that constantly popped up in the course of his normal reflexion annoyed him sometimes. They weren’t some psychotic burst of madness, he knew that. They weren’t urges to run amok, destroy things, and hurt himself and others. They were purely intellectual interrogations. How would he feel? What would be the consequences of doing those things that ranged from morally reprehensible to downright idiotic?

And in a sense, it freaked him out a little. What was worse? Actually wanting to do those things and reigning himself down not to? Or casually wondering if strangling someone to death would make him feel as bad as suggested the feeling of nausea and disgust this simple idea brought him?

He wasn’t too concerned over suddenly turning into a sociopath though. As much as part of his mind constantly suggested him to let loose and go nuts, an even bigger part of it felt profoundly repulsed by the idea of how much trouble that would bring on himself.

He didn’t like buying new necessities, so breaking things on a whim was out. And things that didn’t belong to him were even worse in terms of associated trouble.

Hurting his own body was idiotic on a whole other level. He didn’t like pain…

“…”

Okay. Maybe he liked it a little, otherwise how would he put up with people like Athena, Eva, or Yasmin? But not to the point of endangering his health. Plus medical treatment was annoying. And he didn’t like pills.

And, well, dying wasn’t an option either.

Hurting others? That just combined the disadvantages of the other two, so it was absolutely out of consideration.

So he was quite convinced he was not becoming dangerously insane…

Although…

The contradiction in his reasoning was that he wasn’t annoyed by the act themselves, but considered the aftermath unthinkable to deal with, and he wasn’t sure that was exactly the same thing.

He was also keenly aware that what he usually did in Untold Tales was exactly letting loose. It didn’t felt like succumbing to some driving need. It wasn’t like the desire built up if he didn’t act on it. Those were just fleeting thoughts that came and went.

However, when he was Elric, or Victoria now, he acted on those fleeting bursts of irrationality. Free from all his inhibition in a world where consequences didn’t matter, he was a danger to himself and others, and he didn’t care.

The funny thing though, was that, precisely because he cared little, ideas about hurting others more rarely came up. Probably because he never felt the need to retaliate to attacks in ways that weren’t fun, and he wasn’t so much of a psycho that he enjoyed causing excruciating pain to others.

Then again… I just thought Eva looked cute when she was scared shitless. What does that tell about me?

Okay, maybe he had a bit of a sadistic side on top of his masochistic nature. After all, both were facets of associating pain with pleasure, which he couldn’t deny he did, if his inclination towards mind control porn and enslaving hentai was any indication.

Catching the brink of his nose, Nicolas sighed and walked up to the table to eat his breakfast. It wasn’t the first time he was questioning just how crazy he was. And since his reflexions liked to go round in circles, he knew what his next thought would be even before it actually formed in his mind, if that was even possible.

For the umpteenth time, he wondered how much of the issues he thought he had were real, or if his deep desire to feel special – which was something most people felt, really – was pairing up with his proactive imagination in order to create himself a persona of slightly unstable mild sociopath, when in fact he was just a very imaginative attention-seeking person with little control over his thought process.

Then, as usual, he asked himself how much thinking of himself as a sociopath risked to turn him into one. After all, it wasn’t a secret that what one thought of himself, even mistakenly, could affect who they really were. Hell! Wasn’t he a perfect example that, more than unconsciously affecting one’s own psyche, a person could very well willingly remodel their own mind, even if the process was slow.

Finally, again as usual, he smiled, chuckled, and decided he didn’t care.

Then his thoughts went into asking if not caring that he might become a sociopath actually meant he already was becoming one.

At this point, he recalled himself he didn’t know rat’s ass about psychiatry, or psychology for that matter, and should just shut his mind the fuck up and enjoy his cornflakes.

As if to make a point, he swallowed a spoonful.

“…”

Not enough sugar.

– ***** –

<1> “Almost Easy”. I do not care neither about the meaning nor about the context, I just love the chorus.

Spoiler :

<2> I’d say, Girl Friends is a must read, and Citrus’s only real default is to be ongoing.

<3> For the record, Aapeli Berstein is Nicolas’ photograph kinda-friend who also plays a dwarf painter in game, the one nicknamed “Heaven’s Brush”.

----------------------------------------

Hello again.

I expected this one to come a little earlier, but I had to check out Stone Burners and Twisted Cogs.

SB is awesome! Who doesn’t like a seven foot tall amnesiac berserker bulletproof dragon-girl? TC is good too, though a tad depressing at time.

Anyway, here’s the first chapter of volume 1. Hope you enjoyed it, and see you next chapter.