"Mono/Dialogue"
'Inner thoughts'
Narration
Year: Data not found
Location: Data not found
POV: Narrator
How long has it been? Decades? Centuries? Millennia? The answer was swept away by the earth's coldest embrace. The once advanced mobile laboratory fell into the abyss, swallowed by the earth, and buried along everything that could have been, whether it was for the better or worse.
A marvel of technology turned into a silent witness of a once great civilization, a proof of scientific prowess that had been devoured by the whimsical earth as it sees fit, and perhaps a testament of irony... The place is now a rusted tomb, a tomb that is left to rot by the passage of time and the waning of an era.
The mobile laboratory was filled with holes, rust, and clear signs of rotten corpses that used to litter the hallway. Critters that can't be found in our world scurrying about to feast upon what was left of the metallic tomb.
One anomaly, however... A single room was left eerily pristine, as much as ruin can be concerned to even qualify as pristine, and untouched. Like a sign or more likely a warning that whatever is behind the proverbial gate to another dimension should not ever be disturbed. The critters within the tomb feel how their instinct screams at them to make themselves scarce.
The thing behind the closed metallic door had returned to life. With a soft hum of ancient machinery, and perhaps a miracle, something crashed against the cold metallic floor. A coughing sound and perhaps a wail of pain was heard. A small thump in all honesty but it reverberates against the tomb in its entirety, a premonition for the coming storm.
And oh did they sense, no, felt it indeed... the critters gone silent, the air grew cold, and not even the already sparse air dared to make a squeak of sound. For they all know that whatever is behind that sturdy metallic door has finally stirred awake, and it will cross that seemingly sacred boundary.
Critters with more intelligence or sapience fled the tomb in due haste, the more instinctive ones hid about with some prepared their claws and appendages to defend their paltry territory, while others cowered against the incoming storm.
The more belligerent kind welcomed the coming storm. They had always been curious about the presence and their biology also longed to consume their more superior counterpart so to speak. Fangs bared, venom drips, claws sharpened, and their very essence is ready for the storm.
Now they all wait...
POV: Narrator
"Ugh... where am I?" The being had finally awoken from his slumber. Just as his water tank burst open, while expelling the liquid contained inside, he fell over and to make matters worse he felt a sharp pain piercing his lungs.
"Urk! *cough* *cough*" He retches and coughs after his sudden crashing-against-cold-hard-metallic-fucking-floor event, it is not helping that he is soaking wet.
"ha... ha... it's... cold..." He shivers, the cold dampness that blankets him is unlike what he is accustomed to, but before the chilling sensation continues to torment his body, he heats up rapidly and stabilizes himself into a much more comfortable body temperature. "Hah..." He exhaled, his breath steadied and he finally looked around.
"Where am I?" he once again wondered aloud about the present predicament. Wondering why he suddenly woke up in this... alien... alien place, something takes his attention first and foremost immediately. "Wait... my voice?" He finally realized that his voice changed into a softer tone and more desirable rhyme, she could hear how pleasing it was.
'My voice sounds so high and alluring... does that mean th-!?' He looks down and inspects his body, 2 bountiful mounds dangling on his chest welcome his eyes. He is now a female and he feels... okay with it, deep down... just extremely confused...
Emotions and dread set in, but before she fell deeper into an abyss called existential crisis, her mind is being assailed by a multitude of even more memories that were once... locked away?
"Argh!" She grunted in pain from forceful revelation and memories that assailed her. She can see her memories breezing and lodging within her mind, uncaring that it brought her immense pain and even holding her head tightly to the point that nails dug into her scalp, drawing her blood.
Seconds turned into minutes. Minutes turned into hours. And after such an agonizing revelation, she exhaled with clarity of her situation, seemingly accept-
"WHAT THE FUCK WERE THOSE!? AM I TRIPPING!? WERE THOSE REAL!?" – Or not...
She roared in confusion and anguish. The things she had seen from her, allegedly, a collection of memories had just thrown her into a loop.
'Deep breaths, deep breaths!' She calmed herself, panicking wouldn't help in sorting her jumbled mind. 'Stay calm, shove those away for now!' After finally calming down she thought back on her most recent memories.
'So...I died from a hole punching through my armor and then I was in a white room... then there was a panel... and then I got glimpses of those memories before everything went blank... then there were those relapses...' She exhaled and then sucks in more air to breathe, thus helps steadying her confused mind and thumping heart.
'Well... I died and that's a fact.' She decided to just postpone further reflection to address her current predicament.
'I'm naked... and where the hell am- !?' She gasped when her eyes darted around. Her surrounding is accompanied by unmoving skeletons and dried blood. She's surprised but that was it. She stands up and approaches the nearest skeleton, she notices that the skeleton has bones that resemble…
“Is that a bone from a… tail? Huh? A biological weapon perhaps?
The skeleton seems to be those humanoids she saw before in the moment of drifting between lucidity and uncertainty. 'Look like a scientist too...' she curiously inspects the skeleton' uniform. She can't make out the symbol since it has been marred by the passage of time.
By the way, what is this weird feeling behind her body? It feels weighty but not heavy by all means... Just... weird... Thus she moves her gaze behind her, the thing she sees is what baffles her mind.
"...HAH!?" She cries out incredulously seeing something that surely shouldn't have been a part of human anatomy, a snake tail attached to her body. It is covered in silvery scale and glisten sharply, reflecting what little lights are available.
"What in the world?" She doesn't understand how she has a tail. So like every sane person in the middle of a confusing predicament, she decides to... ignore it and let her future self deal with it, that’s the most logical choice at the moment.
"Starting to get sick of these, if those memories were real then I'll just roll with it for now..." She then strips the uniform of the skeleton with a surprising level of nonchalance, unfazed by the fact that she practically wears a dead person’s last wardrobe.
"You won't be needing it." then using the sleeve of said uniform to clean herself up. The liquid is thankfully not a sticky one, she is half-tempted to make a lame and crass joke about it but such an act is moot without an audience.
Alone she might be, but decency is of utmost priority, especially by the feeling that her figure might incite something unwise. With the uniform to cover herself up, she starts rummaging through her surroundings for anything useful.
"Now what to do..." She looked around the thrashed but still somewhat orderly room. Trying to find any clue about where or why she is here, she is honestly too worn out to even argue that somehow other worlds exist and she is now living on one of them.
Spotting a tablet-like device on the floor, she quickly grabs it, and to no one surprise, the device is unusable. This thing looks advanced... but I guess even that won't help from the amount of damage it suffered. She returned it, or rather let it fall off her hand, back on the cold hard floor.
After rummaging for a good 30 minutes, nothing appears to be working.
"Wait... nothing is turned on around here... how could I see in the dar- you know what, no. I'll just find a way out first." Too weary to question her peculiarities she head towards the tightly shut metal door.
"Now how should I open it" After inspecting it and notices that the door itself has been unlocked, the only thing aside from her now dead water tank that is still powered. Then she gently open the doo-
'I felt something' Her senses, now sharper than before, register the presence of a living creature. She decides to look around for anything that can be used for self-defense. She finds a broken metal and picks it up, it's better than nothing after all.
'Here goes nothing!' She opened the door and found herself in an enormous hallway... there are more skeletons sure but there are also corpses of something resembling slimes and giant insects...
"Great..." She muttered in an annoyed manner seeing that she is hardly the weirdest thing around here.
"..." Keeping her guard up, she trudged along the quiet hallway. She glances around and sees some signs that indicate she is somewhere in an area called Research Area B4.
'... I sense... something like emotions ... Is this new, carried or surfaced from those memories!?' Before she could adjust her mind to soak up more of her surfacing peculiarities and memories, a shadowy creature lunged at her with clear intent to kill.
She's always ready however and merely steps aside, a simple pivot of her left leg, and a swift diagonal swing to swat the assailant away. The jarring cracking sound of a creature being crushed rang and reverberated along this quiet hallway.
Her multiple incarnations and respective lifetime worth of combat experience had been molded and integrated into one. Robust plus decisive yet unorthodox and chaotic, that's what her current combat form had become. Flexible, deadly, precise, solid, and unique.
She presses onward swatting creatures, albeit familiar looking, never seen before with mechanical eeriness and efficiency. Each swing of her metal stick filled her with... euphoria? She decided to ignore it for now but...
She doesn't notice it, but her adversaries do. Her once precise strikes which are efficient and swift turn brutal and seem to maximize potential pain. The once robust stance of her footwork turns no different than gliding on top of ice and blood with revelry oozing her very being. Her blank, straight, and shut lips turn feral with her teeth bared.
'...Why do I feel so good?' a fleeting passage inside her mind wondered, seemingly uncaring of her predicament. Her body is pulsing, her psyche starts to get clouded, and she feels something that had been pushed deep inside her for a long, long time... hunger.
More creatures are pouring out from the rotting cracks of this metallic tomb. Looking behind her, she realizes that she has been unconsciously led away from an advantageous position. She is trapped in the middle of the crossroad that adjoins the hallways.
As if on cue, multiple beasts leap from the shadow and some stick along the wall. Clearly understand that this humanoid creature in front of them can swat them as easily all the same. So they all decided to rush her all at once. She is now outnumbered and encircled.
Such a situation should have caused anyone to be stupefied if not frozen with fear altogether, not for her though. Her gaze is now dimming, her mind is hazy... she bared her venom-coated fangs, eager to sink them upon her would-be prey...
"Hahahaha!" Like a switch suddenly being flipped, she laughs from the streams of intoxicating pleasure that are being pumped along with the overpowering feeling of adrenaline on an overdrive. She grinned like a wild beast, leering at her bountiful array of prey.
A creature tried to tear her neck open, and she answered such an impudent display with a pointed strike against the creature's head. The metal bar cracked it open with a satisfying clanging sound, a clear testament of force.
Another tried to strike her abdomen, only to meet the brunt of her boot, and kicked away with a force that should've been impossible for a mere human, crashing against the cold wall of this cramped intersection.
Several sneaky ones circle her flanks, only to be crushed by her tail instinctively. The force of such a sudden strike is equal to that of a crashing bull head-on. Eliciting, albeit with a hazy mind, an excited whimper from her, she might have a thing with using her tail now.
Several creatures that latched onto the wall spit some sort of substance that melted a part of her clothing along with her skin. But the pain seems to stoke her aggression. She threw the metal bar at one of them, resulting in it turning into fresh paint on the wall.
Before these ranged attackers manage to unleash another volley, she breaks through the encirclement while trampling her prey and strewing their corpses along the way. She yanks a nearby critter and throws it upon one another, again and again, and... again.
At this point, her eyes are filled with a primal urge to murder and hunt. She is still outnumbered but her bloodstained and dirty figure seems to get the point across. These creatures realize that this adversary is something that they can't handle... they start fleeing in terror and desperation...
She is having none of that, she is angry, and she feels insulted even! With a bellowing roar that rivaled thunder itself, Nyx started her wild hunt.
Jaw, filled with sharp and robust teeth, to chew and devour her victim.
Tail that can crush bone and thick layers of skin.
Dexterity of inhuman level.
Senses that are one of a kind.
Blood boiled with excitement.
Expectedly, she is entering a ravenous trance. Her so-called awakening had indeed forced her body from hibernation into active beyond what should have been possible. She merely substituted what was expended with an efficient, almost mechanical, solution.
Rabid laughter of delight and pleasure filled the dark hallway.
Crunching noises and stampede rang true, a hallmark of utmost tyranny.
The perpetrator sat atop torn limbs, spilled blood, broken bones, and a pile of carcasses... such a monster is now feasting upon its victim with deranged merriment and utter delight.
Several ??? after her ??? receded.
"*groan*... Uh... I smell like shit... what happened..." She feels light and energetic, and her senses are boosted and grow ever sharper. Shifting around, her makeshift bed chamber shocks her the most, all this time Nyx has been sleeping atop a mattress of corpses and torn limbs.
"Urk!" She belches out her stomach off of her dinner. Taking in the sight around her, the sight of nothing more than crushed bones, torn limbs, flayed skins, maggot-ridden innards, and piles upon piles of corpses... What fragments she had managed to recall sobered herself up with an unsettling revelation.
She feels like waking up in the pit of hell itself. Memories of what overcame her resurface, she can vividly recall every ounce of blood spilled and every single sound that heralded numerous fibers of bones being reduced into shards.
Unconsciously, her body shivered, her eyes widened in shock, and... morbid curiosity sprang up, much to her dismay and disgust... She looks down at her corpse-made bed, a high level of meticulous savagery can be discerned clearly. She is appalled and impressed with how creative she was during her trance, to be a perfect mirror of a wild beast.
"What had taken over me?" a whisper of mirthless enthusiasm. She tries to comprehend her primal display that surely was recorded within her memories.
"No... no... Calm down... calm down..." There is a cold comfort in this incident, namely not being around civilians and the reality of the situation that what's done can't be taken back after all.
'How long has it been since then?' Her mind is turning to piece together whatever clues might provide clarity and reasonings for her untimely savagery, probable cause, and so forth… Still, where is she exactly?
"...*sigh* More and more, but life keeps on going..." After dusting herself off and then restarting her aimless search for clues. The dark and dreary hallway is neither too imposing nor comforting on her mind, her only wish is to see the light and leave this place since it doesn’t provide much of a positive impression.
Tracing back upon the thread of carnage that had been caused by yours truly, she manages to memorize the path taken much better and would want nothing more than to leave this area. Mentally noting how quieter it is than what her recollection of the place recorded.
Keeping her eyes on the wall for more signs, she concludes that her current position is somewhere on the 2nd level. Based upon the broken staircase that signifies "Section B-3 -> Section A-3". She's half-tempted to keep looking around, but her yearning for sunlight grows ever stronger.
She is also thankful that the language is one she can understand, re-learning language would be a daunting task without proper guidance or clue after all.
Steadying her breathing, she climbs the broken bits of the staircase smoothly, even latching her robust tail upon a hard-to-reach ledge. She is now standing in front of a doorway, strangely also an ordinary one.
'Guess the people here love punctuality...' Bemused and horrified by such a lax and carefree treatment of this place, she strides along the empty, albeit littered with carcasses and skeletons, hallway.
Her eyes glint seeing something wedged into the floor. With quiet but rapid steps, Nyx then pulls up the item, it is a pistol that needs a little bit of cleaning (the gun looked like P226 but more futuristic). "*whistle*... looks antique... Wait, where is the magazine?" Fiddling with the gun and then inspecting the immediate surroundings, she finds nothing around her that resembles a magazine or even an expended bullet casing.
Nyx continues her lonely walk, while also bemoaning the fact that the gun also seems to be working with a different set of mechanisms unlike what she used to worked with, according to her memories of course.
On the left side of the hallway, she spots what appears to be a comparatively spacious motor pool. She marvels at seeing several broken down vehicles, even managing to find a badly damaged helicopter of which neither the rotor nor its hover engine lookalike is absent or broken. None of the vehicles appears to be armed, further strengthening her suspicion that the place was a primarily non-military installation.
She tries to scavenge for supplies that might still be usable. After a few rounds around the motor pool, she manages to get herself a type of light protective vest with a bandolier and 3 sets of grey uniform, much more welcome than her torn lab coat. A bunch of inflatable bags and a backpack were also found along some forgotten corners.
Mirrors are also stored inside the motor pool storage area, some broken of course. Nyx is now marveling at her pleasing and pristine face, seemingly crafted with care in mind, even the dried blood and dirt barely diminish her appeal. Bright silver hair akin to silk accompanied by dull grey, reminiscent of iron, strands crowned themselves atop her head.
Eyes shine in pinkish light that appears to be cold yet alluring all the same. Her lips are smooth and her pale, with a slight pink, skin tone enveloped her body like the finest quality of silken fabrics. Standing ramrod straight at more or less 172cm tall, and a pair of healthy bosoms to boot, she looks fairly enticing. She no longer cared about her sudden change of gender, since she had been tracing back her embedded memories and alleged past lives.
While also being weirdly thrilled to be knowledgeable with multiple experiences and point-of-views about several things that don't need to be explicitly elaborated in detail.
The more memories uncovered, the more her eagerness to understand and utilize them increases. Her curiosity completely overtakes her sense of caution for these memories, on a related note she can manage her vigilance just fine.
These memories also help her body to reacclimatize and readapt everything she had learned, both from the past and the scant present she had already gone through. Her reasoning ran along the idea of "what's wrong about being more curious?" whether or not that's a wise move remains to be seen.
Miraculously enough, a working bike in decent condition greets her upon further searching, it got toppled over but that's it. What powered it still eludes her understanding, it is certainly not oil or a mini-reactor of some variation, allowing her to cross potential radiation out for the time being.
Sadly there wasn't any food, all she could find were torn packages, empty bottles, and broken cans. Courtesy of critters skulking about, surely.
Seeing nothing more, or at least usable, of value can be found around the motor pool, she starts up her bike and speeds away. The hallway is wide enough to fit a car, something to be grateful for because walking around takes too much time and is honestly irritating.
After all, hallways for your personal use are way too enticing to pass up. Thus she would utilize everything she can with utmost gratitude and eagerness.
Smaller critters unlucky enough to show themselves and being spotted by her immediately fled in terror. She chuckles at the fact that she is undeniably the apex of this place, but she is not interested in lording over these creatures.
There is a thing that disturbs her, however, namely something called originium that keeps coming up from torn documents that she had managed to piece together. Thus further search is required, it might be useful for the future after all.
Several Hours Later.
After such a mind-numbingly boring series of explorations and pest controls, she finds several more documents about this thing called originium. The most impressive aspect is the fact that it is a renewable source of energy, even better in terms of efficiency and cost compared to oil, arguably with sunlight, and radiation but fell short against antimatter and vastly outclassed by dark matter.
The bad news is that it acted like some sort of malignant tumor, a blight upon the living and the land that keeps on spreading if left unchecked. A seemingly sentient type of mineral, but Nyx is unsure about her conjecture.
Thankfully the degree of infection from it seems to be on the lower end as long as you don't let too much seeping inside your body, such as through wounds or orifices. So thick clothing and specialized fabrics are recommended to at least minimize unwanted accidents.
She had also managed to find documents concerning something called "Arts"... her summary on this thing called "Arts" is that of something akin to magic and that it does vary in potency between people... Originium can enhance said arts too...
If the documents were even accurate anyway...
'Hopefully, the outside world can give more answers...' She tries to maintain a positive outlook, especially when her memories are all so bleak.
After cross-referencing the torn documents some more, she manages to piece together an inkling about what kind of material is currently powering her bike. Feeling somewhat conflicted because, on one hand, it is extremely energy efficient and renewable. On the other hand, she is risking herself with something like cancer but is worse and highly volatile, both in a good way and a bad way.
She just hopes that nothing like excessive discrimination happened about the usage of originium. Nyx frankly has enough of such inconvenience from her, past lives and embedded memories, multiple unpleasant life experiences...
'Is this some kind of warship turned into a laboratory?' Another piece of surprising information during her exploration, namely that this place is not a building but instead a wholly functioning mobile base. The engine rooms, broken factories, and several dormitories she found along the way are enough for conclusive and eligible evidence. The room thrashed like any other she had encountered, which made her untouched water chamber even more anomalous in comparison by a large margin.
While she is still pondering the nature of the Originium, she finally finds an exit point after several trips around the lowest section called D-7, and once again thrilled at how efficient her current ride is regarding fuel which eases her reluctance a bit more.
Taking a peek outside, darkness envelopes the scenery, thankfully these eyes of hers negated that… Which is not in any way a consolation prize for this disappointing situation.
Annoyance bubbles within due to seeing the sky are nothing but dirt, and the walls around are also dirt, needless to say about the ground... She appears to be somewhere deep within the earth. Looking over the opening a bit further, she sees that an abyss is merely a few meters from the facility.
'Did I piss off someone to wake up here?' Her eyes twitch and her head throbs from incoming migraine if she just stands there dumbly. No matter where she looks through the opening, there is nothing but dirt, damp air, and a deadly abyss. The perfect place to be buried and forgotten.
'Meh, could have been worse...' She starts scavenging the storage area attached to the exit and is delighted to find 3 sticks of magazine. Nyx then immediately pulls her sidearm and inserts the magazine, while inserting the rest on her bandolier. Thankfully those fit in nicely.
Nyx also finds a combat knife of sorts, found beneath a broken desk and such. She tries checking its edge "Ouch!" A little yelp of pain, she is shocked by how sharp the knife is.
She also took note of her previously cut-open flesh closing at a visible rate, which might be why she woke up with little to no wound back then.
Spending more time on scavenging doesn't net much other than some pointless documents and a ruined inventory list. There wasn't anything else than the opening inside the unloading ramp, her exit point for leaving this place. Probably the courtesy of time or even the creatures around here, not that she cares anyway.
"Well... guess this is time for me to leave. Goodbye... whatever the hell this place is." With a small bow of her head, she leave the place that might be dubbed her birthplace.
Eager to finally leave the dreary place. Steeping onto the ride that had faithfully proved itself to be reliable. Her bike engine hums and not long after roars into life, speeding through the opening and away from this depressing place.
[END OF CHAPTER]
Author Note:
Hello again. This is me, myself, and I, your dear author of this story...-ish thing.
Just a reminder that anything not too drastic will be marked with [E] for having been edited, [U] for small alterations and updates, and [R] for complete rewrites.
Update as usual
Ciao.
"Mono/Dialogue"
'Inner thoughts'
Narration
Year: Data not found
Location: Data not found
POV: Narrator
How long has it been? Decades? Centuries? Millennia? The answer was swept away by the earth's coldest embrace. The once advanced mobile laboratory fell into the abyss, swallowed by the earth, and buried along everything that could have been, whether it was for the better or worse.
A marvel of technology turned into a silent witness of a once great civilization, a proof of scientific prowess that had been devoured by the whimsical earth as it sees fit, and perhaps a testament of irony... The place is now a rusted tomb, a tomb that is left to rot by the passage of time and the waning of an era.
The mobile laboratory was filled with holes, rust, and clear signs of rotten corpses that used to litter the hallway. Critters that can't be found in our world scurrying about to feast upon what was left of the metallic tomb.
One anomaly, however... A single room was left eerily pristine, as much as ruin can be concerned to even qualify as pristine, and untouched. Like a sign or more likely a warning that whatever is behind the proverbial gate to another dimension should not ever be disturbed. The critters within the tomb feel how their instinct screams at them to make themselves scarce.
The thing behind the closed metallic door had returned to life. With a soft hum of ancient machinery, and perhaps a miracle, something crashed against the cold metallic floor. A coughing sound and perhaps a wail of pain was heard. A small thump in all honesty but it reverberates against the tomb in its entirety, a premonition for the coming storm.
And oh did they sense, no, felt it indeed... the critters gone silent, the air grew cold, and not even the already sparse air dared to make a squeak of sound. For they all know that whatever is behind that sturdy metallic door has finally stirred awake, and it will cross that seemingly sacred boundary.
Critters with more intelligence or sapience fled the tomb in due haste, the more instinctive ones hid about with some prepared their claws and appendages to defend their paltry territory, while others cowered against the incoming storm.
The more belligerent kind welcomed the coming storm. They had always been curious about the presence and their biology also longed to consume their more superior counterpart so to speak. Fangs bared, venom drips, claws sharpened, and their very essence is ready for the storm.
Now they all wait...
POV: Narrator
"Ugh... where am I?" The being had finally awoken from his slumber. Just as his water tank burst open, while expelling the liquid contained inside, he fell over and to make matters worse he felt a sharp pain piercing his lungs.
"Urk! *cough* *cough*" He retches and coughs after his sudden crashing-against-cold-hard-metallic-fucking-floor event, it is not helping that he is soaking wet.
"ha... ha... it's... cold..." He shivers, the cold dampness that blankets him is unlike what he is accustomed to, but before the chilling sensation continues to torment his body, he heats up rapidly and stabilizes himself into a much more comfortable body temperature. "Hah..." He exhaled, his breath steadied and he finally looked around.
"Where am I?" he once again wondered aloud about the present predicament. Wondering why he suddenly woke up in this... alien... alien place, something takes his attention first and foremost immediately. "Wait... my voice?" He finally realized that his voice changed into a softer tone and more desirable rhyme, she could hear how pleasing it was.
'My voice sounds so high and alluring... does that mean th-!?' He looks down and inspects his body, 2 bountiful mounds dangling on his chest welcome his eyes. He is now a female and he feels... okay with it, deep down... just extremely confused...
Emotions and dread set in, but before she fell deeper into an abyss called existential crisis, her mind is being assailed by a multitude of even more memories that were once... locked away?
"Argh!" She grunted in pain from forceful revelation and memories that assailed her. She can see her memories breezing and lodging within her mind, uncaring that it brought her immense pain and even holding her head tightly to the point that nails dug into her scalp, drawing her blood.
Seconds turned into minutes. Minutes turned into hours. And after such an agonizing revelation, she exhaled with clarity of her situation, seemingly accept-
"WHAT THE FUCK WERE THOSE!? AM I TRIPPING!? WERE THOSE REAL!?" – Or not...
She roared in confusion and anguish. The things she had seen from her, allegedly, a collection of memories had just thrown her into a loop.
'Deep breaths, deep breaths!' She calmed herself, panicking wouldn't help in sorting her jumbled mind. 'Stay calm, shove those away for now!' After finally calming down she thought back on her most recent memories.
'So...I died from a hole punching through my armor and then I was in a white room... then there was a panel... and then I got glimpses of those memories before everything went blank... then there were those relapses...' She exhaled and then sucks in more air to breathe, thus helps steadying her confused mind and thumping heart.
'Well... I died and that's a fact.' She decided to just postpone further reflection to address her current predicament.
'I'm naked... and where the hell am- !?' She gasped when her eyes darted around. Her surrounding is accompanied by unmoving skeletons and dried blood. She's surprised but that was it. She stands up and approaches the nearest skeleton, she notices that the skeleton has bones that resemble…
“Is that a bone from a… tail? Huh? A biological weapon perhaps?
The skeleton seems to be those humanoids she saw before in the moment of drifting between lucidity and uncertainty. 'Look like a scientist too...' she curiously inspects the skeleton' uniform. She can't make out the symbol since it has been marred by the passage of time.
By the way, what is this weird feeling behind her body? It feels weighty but not heavy by all means... Just... weird... Thus she moves her gaze behind her, the thing she sees is what baffles her mind.
"...HAH!?" She cries out incredulously seeing something that surely shouldn't have been a part of human anatomy, a snake tail attached to her body. It is covered in silvery scale and glisten sharply, reflecting what little lights are available.
"What in the world?" She doesn't understand how she has a tail. So like every sane person in the middle of a confusing predicament, she decides to... ignore it and let her future self deal with it, that’s the most logical choice at the moment.
"Starting to get sick of these, if those memories were real then I'll just roll with it for now..." She then strips the uniform of the skeleton with a surprising level of nonchalance, unfazed by the fact that she practically wears a dead person’s last wardrobe.
"You won't be needing it." then using the sleeve of said uniform to clean herself up. The liquid is thankfully not a sticky one, she is half-tempted to make a lame and crass joke about it but such an act is moot without an audience.
Alone she might be, but decency is of utmost priority, especially by the feeling that her figure might incite something unwise. With the uniform to cover herself up, she starts rummaging through her surroundings for anything useful.
"Now what to do..." She looked around the thrashed but still somewhat orderly room. Trying to find any clue about where or why she is here, she is honestly too worn out to even argue that somehow other worlds exist and she is now living on one of them.
Spotting a tablet-like device on the floor, she quickly grabs it, and to no one surprise, the device is unusable. This thing looks advanced... but I guess even that won't help from the amount of damage it suffered. She returned it, or rather let it fall off her hand, back on the cold hard floor.
After rummaging for a good 30 minutes, nothing appears to be working.
"Wait... nothing is turned on around here... how could I see in the dar- you know what, no. I'll just find a way out first." Too weary to question her peculiarities she head towards the tightly shut metal door.
"Now how should I open it" After inspecting it and notices that the door itself has been unlocked, the only thing aside from her now dead water tank that is still powered. Then she gently open the doo-
'I felt something' Her senses, now sharper than before, register the presence of a living creature. She decides to look around for anything that can be used for self-defense. She finds a broken metal and picks it up, it's better than nothing after all.
'Here goes nothing!' She opened the door and found herself in an enormous hallway... there are more skeletons sure but there are also corpses of something resembling slimes and giant insects...
"Great..." She muttered in an annoyed manner seeing that she is hardly the weirdest thing around here.
"..." Keeping her guard up, she trudged along the quiet hallway. She glances around and sees some signs that indicate she is somewhere in an area called Research Area B4.
'... I sense... something like emotions ... Is this new, carried or surfaced from those memories!?' Before she could adjust her mind to soak up more of her surfacing peculiarities and memories, a shadowy creature lunged at her with clear intent to kill.
She's always ready however and merely steps aside, a simple pivot of her left leg, and a swift diagonal swing to swat the assailant away. The jarring cracking sound of a creature being crushed rang and reverberated along this quiet hallway.
Her multiple incarnations and respective lifetime worth of combat experience had been molded and integrated into one. Robust plus decisive yet unorthodox and chaotic, that's what her current combat form had become. Flexible, deadly, precise, solid, and unique.
She presses onward swatting creatures, albeit familiar looking, never seen before with mechanical eeriness and efficiency. Each swing of her metal stick filled her with... euphoria? She decided to ignore it for now but...
She doesn't notice it, but her adversaries do. Her once precise strikes which are efficient and swift turn brutal and seem to maximize potential pain. The once robust stance of her footwork turns no different than gliding on top of ice and blood with revelry oozing her very being. Her blank, straight, and shut lips turn feral with her teeth bared.
'...Why do I feel so good?' a fleeting passage inside her mind wondered, seemingly uncaring of her predicament. Her body is pulsing, her psyche starts to get clouded, and she feels something that had been pushed deep inside her for a long, long time... hunger.
More creatures are pouring out from the rotting cracks of this metallic tomb. Looking behind her, she realizes that she has been unconsciously led away from an advantageous position. She is trapped in the middle of the crossroad that adjoins the hallways.
As if on cue, multiple beasts leap from the shadow and some stick along the wall. Clearly understand that this humanoid creature in front of them can swat them as easily all the same. So they all decided to rush her all at once. She is now outnumbered and encircled.
Such a situation should have caused anyone to be stupefied if not frozen with fear altogether, not for her though. Her gaze is now dimming, her mind is hazy... she bared her venom-coated fangs, eager to sink them upon her would-be prey...
"Hahahaha!" Like a switch suddenly being flipped, she laughs from the streams of intoxicating pleasure that are being pumped along with the overpowering feeling of adrenaline on an overdrive. She grinned like a wild beast, leering at her bountiful array of prey.
A creature tried to tear her neck open, and she answered such an impudent display with a pointed strike against the creature's head. The metal bar cracked it open with a satisfying clanging sound, a clear testament of force.
Another tried to strike her abdomen, only to meet the brunt of her boot, and kicked away with a force that should've been impossible for a mere human, crashing against the cold wall of this cramped intersection.
Several sneaky ones circle her flanks, only to be crushed by her tail instinctively. The force of such a sudden strike is equal to that of a crashing bull head-on. Eliciting, albeit with a hazy mind, an excited whimper from her, she might have a thing with using her tail now.
Several creatures that latched onto the wall spit some sort of substance that melted a part of her clothing along with her skin. But the pain seems to stoke her aggression. She threw the metal bar at one of them, resulting in it turning into fresh paint on the wall.
Before these ranged attackers manage to unleash another volley, she breaks through the encirclement while trampling her prey and strewing their corpses along the way. She yanks a nearby critter and throws it upon one another, again and again, and... again.
At this point, her eyes are filled with a primal urge to murder and hunt. She is still outnumbered but her bloodstained and dirty figure seems to get the point across. These creatures realize that this adversary is something that they can't handle... they start fleeing in terror and desperation...
She is having none of that, she is angry, and she feels insulted even! With a bellowing roar that rivaled thunder itself, Nyx started her wild hunt.
Jaw, filled with sharp and robust teeth, to chew and devour her victim.
Tail that can crush bone and thick layers of skin.
Dexterity of inhuman level.
Senses that are one of a kind.
Blood boiled with excitement.
Expectedly, she is entering a ravenous trance. Her so-called awakening had indeed forced her body from hibernation into active beyond what should have been possible. She merely substituted what was expended with an efficient, almost mechanical, solution.
Rabid laughter of delight and pleasure filled the dark hallway.
Crunching noises and stampede rang true, a hallmark of utmost tyranny.
The perpetrator sat atop torn limbs, spilled blood, broken bones, and a pile of carcasses... such a monster is now feasting upon its victim with deranged merriment and utter delight.
Several ??? after her ??? receded.
"*groan*... Uh... I smell like shit... what happened..." She feels light and energetic, and her senses are boosted and grow ever sharper. Shifting around, her makeshift bed chamber shocks her the most, all this time Nyx has been sleeping atop a mattress of corpses and torn limbs.
"Urk!" She belches out her stomach off of her dinner. Taking in the sight around her, the sight of nothing more than crushed bones, torn limbs, flayed skins, maggot-ridden innards, and piles upon piles of corpses... What fragments she had managed to recall sobered herself up with an unsettling revelation.
She feels like waking up in the pit of hell itself. Memories of what overcame her resurface, she can vividly recall every ounce of blood spilled and every single sound that heralded numerous fibers of bones being reduced into shards.
Unconsciously, her body shivered, her eyes widened in shock, and... morbid curiosity sprang up, much to her dismay and disgust... She looks down at her corpse-made bed, a high level of meticulous savagery can be discerned clearly. She is appalled and impressed with how creative she was during her trance, to be a perfect mirror of a wild beast.
"What had taken over me?" a whisper of mirthless enthusiasm. She tries to comprehend her primal display that surely was recorded within her memories.
"No... no... Calm down... calm down..." There is a cold comfort in this incident, namely not being around civilians and the reality of the situation that what's done can't be taken back after all.
'How long has it been since then?' Her mind is turning to piece together whatever clues might provide clarity and reasonings for her untimely savagery, probable cause, and so forth… Still, where is she exactly?
"...*sigh* More and more, but life keeps on going..." After dusting herself off and then restarting her aimless search for clues. The dark and dreary hallway is neither too imposing nor comforting on her mind, her only wish is to see the light and leave this place since it doesn’t provide much of a positive impression.
Tracing back upon the thread of carnage that had been caused by yours truly, she manages to memorize the path taken much better and would want nothing more than to leave this area. Mentally noting how quieter it is than what her recollection of the place recorded.
Keeping her eyes on the wall for more signs, she concludes that her current position is somewhere on the 2nd level. Based upon the broken staircase that signifies "Section B-3 -> Section A-3". She's half-tempted to keep looking around, but her yearning for sunlight grows ever stronger.
She is also thankful that the language is one she can understand, re-learning language would be a daunting task without proper guidance or clue after all.
Steadying her breathing, she climbs the broken bits of the staircase smoothly, even latching her robust tail upon a hard-to-reach ledge. She is now standing in front of a doorway, strangely also an ordinary one.
'Guess the people here love punctuality...' Bemused and horrified by such a lax and carefree treatment of this place, she strides along the empty, albeit littered with carcasses and skeletons, hallway.
Her eyes glint seeing something wedged into the floor. With quiet but rapid steps, Nyx then pulls up the item, it is a pistol that needs a little bit of cleaning (the gun looked like P226 but more futuristic). "*whistle*... looks antique... Wait, where is the magazine?" Fiddling with the gun and then inspecting the immediate surroundings, she finds nothing around her that resembles a magazine or even an expended bullet casing.
Nyx continues her lonely walk, while also bemoaning the fact that the gun also seems to be working with a different set of mechanisms unlike what she used to worked with, according to her memories of course.
On the left side of the hallway, she spots what appears to be a comparatively spacious motor pool. She marvels at seeing several broken down vehicles, even managing to find a badly damaged helicopter of which neither the rotor nor its hover engine lookalike is absent or broken. None of the vehicles appears to be armed, further strengthening her suspicion that the place was a primarily non-military installation.
She tries to scavenge for supplies that might still be usable. After a few rounds around the motor pool, she manages to get herself a type of light protective vest with a bandolier and 3 sets of grey uniform, much more welcome than her torn lab coat. A bunch of inflatable bags and a backpack were also found along some forgotten corners.
Mirrors are also stored inside the motor pool storage area, some broken of course. Nyx is now marveling at her pleasing and pristine face, seemingly crafted with care in mind, even the dried blood and dirt barely diminish her appeal. Bright silver hair akin to silk accompanied by dull grey, reminiscent of iron, strands crowned themselves atop her head.
Eyes shine in pinkish light that appears to be cold yet alluring all the same. Her lips are smooth and her pale, with a slight pink, skin tone enveloped her body like the finest quality of silken fabrics. Standing ramrod straight at more or less 172cm tall, and a pair of healthy bosoms to boot, she looks fairly enticing. She no longer cared about her sudden change of gender, since she had been tracing back her embedded memories and alleged past lives.
While also being weirdly thrilled to be knowledgeable with multiple experiences and point-of-views about several things that don't need to be explicitly elaborated in detail.
The more memories uncovered, the more her eagerness to understand and utilize them increases. Her curiosity completely overtakes her sense of caution for these memories, on a related note she can manage her vigilance just fine.
These memories also help her body to reacclimatize and readapt everything she had learned, both from the past and the scant present she had already gone through. Her reasoning ran along the idea of "what's wrong about being more curious?" whether or not that's a wise move remains to be seen.
Miraculously enough, a working bike in decent condition greets her upon further searching, it got toppled over but that's it. What powered it still eludes her understanding, it is certainly not oil or a mini-reactor of some variation, allowing her to cross potential radiation out for the time being.
Sadly there wasn't any food, all she could find were torn packages, empty bottles, and broken cans. Courtesy of critters skulking about, surely.
Seeing nothing more, or at least usable, of value can be found around the motor pool, she starts up her bike and speeds away. The hallway is wide enough to fit a car, something to be grateful for because walking around takes too much time and is honestly irritating.
After all, hallways for your personal use are way too enticing to pass up. Thus she would utilize everything she can with utmost gratitude and eagerness.
Smaller critters unlucky enough to show themselves and being spotted by her immediately fled in terror. She chuckles at the fact that she is undeniably the apex of this place, but she is not interested in lording over these creatures.
There is a thing that disturbs her, however, namely something called originium that keeps coming up from torn documents that she had managed to piece together. Thus further search is required, it might be useful for the future after all.
Several Hours Later.
After such a mind-numbingly boring series of explorations and pest controls, she finds several more documents about this thing called originium. The most impressive aspect is the fact that it is a renewable source of energy, even better in terms of efficiency and cost compared to oil, arguably with sunlight, and radiation but fell short against antimatter and vastly outclassed by dark matter.
The bad news is that it acted like some sort of malignant tumor, a blight upon the living and the land that keeps on spreading if left unchecked. A seemingly sentient type of mineral, but Nyx is unsure about her conjecture.
Thankfully the degree of infection from it seems to be on the lower end as long as you don't let too much seeping inside your body, such as through wounds or orifices. So thick clothing and specialized fabrics are recommended to at least minimize unwanted accidents.
She had also managed to find documents concerning something called "Arts"... her summary on this thing called "Arts" is that of something akin to magic and that it does vary in potency between people... Originium can enhance said arts too...
If the documents were even accurate anyway...
'Hopefully, the outside world can give more answers...' She tries to maintain a positive outlook, especially when her memories are all so bleak.
After cross-referencing the torn documents some more, she manages to piece together an inkling about what kind of material is currently powering her bike. Feeling somewhat conflicted because, on one hand, it is extremely energy efficient and renewable. On the other hand, she is risking herself with something like cancer but is worse and highly volatile, both in a good way and a bad way.
She just hopes that nothing like excessive discrimination happened about the usage of originium. Nyx frankly has enough of such inconvenience from her, past lives and embedded memories, multiple unpleasant life experiences...
'Is this some kind of warship turned into a laboratory?' Another piece of surprising information during her exploration, namely that this place is not a building but instead a wholly functioning mobile base. The engine rooms, broken factories, and several dormitories she found along the way are enough for conclusive and eligible evidence. The room thrashed like any other she had encountered, which made her untouched water chamber even more anomalous in comparison by a large margin.
While she is still pondering the nature of the Originium, she finally finds an exit point after several trips around the lowest section called D-7, and once again thrilled at how efficient her current ride is regarding fuel which eases her reluctance a bit more.
Taking a peek outside, darkness envelopes the scenery, thankfully these eyes of hers negated that… Which is not in any way a consolation prize for this disappointing situation.
Annoyance bubbles within due to seeing the sky are nothing but dirt, and the walls around are also dirt, needless to say about the ground... She appears to be somewhere deep within the earth. Looking over the opening a bit further, she sees that an abyss is merely a few meters from the facility.
'Did I piss off someone to wake up here?' Her eyes twitch and her head throbs from incoming migraine if she just stands there dumbly. No matter where she looks through the opening, there is nothing but dirt, damp air, and a deadly abyss. The perfect place to be buried and forgotten.
'Meh, could have been worse...' She starts scavenging the storage area attached to the exit and is delighted to find 3 sticks of magazine. Nyx then immediately pulls her sidearm and inserts the magazine, while inserting the rest on her bandolier. Thankfully those fit in nicely.
Nyx also finds a combat knife of sorts, found beneath a broken desk and such. She tries checking its edge "Ouch!" A little yelp of pain, she is shocked by how sharp the knife is.
She also took note of her previously cut-open flesh closing at a visible rate, which might be why she woke up with little to no wound back then.
Spending more time on scavenging doesn't net much other than some pointless documents and a ruined inventory list. There wasn't anything else than the opening inside the unloading ramp, her exit point for leaving this place. Probably the courtesy of time or even the creatures around here, not that she cares anyway.
"Well... guess this is time for me to leave. Goodbye... whatever the hell this place is." With a small bow of her head, she leave the place that might be dubbed her birthplace.
Eager to finally leave the dreary place. Steeping onto the ride that had faithfully proved itself to be reliable. Her bike engine hums and not long after roars into life, speeding through the opening and away from this depressing place.
[END OF CHAPTER]
Author Note:
Hello again. This is me, myself, and I, your dear author of this story...-ish thing.
Just a reminder that anything not too drastic will be marked with [E] for having been edited, [U] for small alterations and updates, and [R] for complete rewrites.
Update as usual
Ciao.
