The Demiurge Confederacy : Machinist Privateerism (Heavy RP)

**Eleutherophobia** · 06/30/2008 01:09:56

    Her hat turns first, a worn heel, then the rest of her delicate frame, a threadbare tailcoat twisting backward before a gloved hand pulls it inward against a growing wind. She leans heavily on the raven umbrella in her left hand as she steps, her hedonistic physique balancing on its acute tip. The girl approaches a telephone booth; men and women dressed in dark suits and expensive ties walk past callously, but a handful of miscreants wearing tight leather and unnecessary sunglasses loiter near the Plexiglas cubicle.

    A man nods stoically at her, and she replies with a grin just too wide for her face, her impish nose curling upward slightly. One eye, the right, opens broadly as she extends a humble, leather hand to meet his; the left stares bored at him, its glazed over appearance granting the girl a history. She can't be over twenty. The man meets her grasp with a firm handshake, feeling each finger collide with the next, though relieved to no longer hear the subdued, wet crunch of used bandage.

    "I heard you've left your employers, Miss Yazin," he smiles, tilting his head down toward the girl. His coal black sunglasses hold double reflections of her ivory white fedora.

"It'd seem that whatever synapse obstructions our benefactors'd constructed previously've since deteriorated. It'd be foolish not t'take this opportunity, yes?" she rasps childishly, her voice a non-confrontational, bastardized Anglican English.

    He nods, inwardly doubting her psychological normalcy. "How," he pauses, puzzled, "are you broadcasting a signal? I would have expected them to have confiscated your hovercraft following your resignation."

Her sheepish grin exposes an ample amount, no, too many gleaming white teeth. "I took it," her right eye glances timidly up at him, reading how much justification she has to give. "It's my ship, after all. Th'Equinox was registered t'Fara Kerrigan Yazin, variable case three-four-one-one-oh-two," her right eye squints, taking on a manic posture, "It's my ship."

   "Be that as it may," he mutters, glancing at himself in the sunglasses of those around the two, "I don't know how wise of an idea it was to steal machine property, Miss Yazin. I'm sure that Zero One is aching for a reason to make you disappear, and you've certainly given them one in doing this." His gaze lands temporarily on the fluttering skirt of a young businesswoman walking by, placing an ungraceful interlude in the speech. "You are going to need t'find a way to make your existence up to our benefactors, a big way," he clears his throat, reestablishing visual contact with the girl's bleached hat. "Moreover, you're going to need a crew; I won't doubt your...vocational prowess, but you certainly can't expect to get anything done on your own."

   "That's why I cuh-ahntacted you," she states matter-of-factly, brushing a stray nacarat curl from her vision, "I'll need help getting this idea mobile."

   "Idea?"

   "Privateerism."

   "You're kidding, of course," he chuckles apprehensively. "You of all people should know how difficult it can be to get Zero-"

   "I've already contacted those necessary, and am doing e'rything I can t'become sanctioned." She shifts her weight off of the umbrella's painstakingly ordinary handle, smiling at the sunrise's blinding reflection in the thin stretch of water isolating Richland. "Th'Equinox'll be th'first, but it won't stop there," she walks past the man, gently resting a fragile leather hand on the chain-link of a fence. "Too many people have aligned themselves wit'his simulation's dinosaurs. They're archaic political establishments suited only for a prior generation's cold war. This is what needs t'be done."

   Her hat turns first, a worn heel, then the rest of her delicate frame, a threadbare tailcoat twisting backward before a gloved hand pulls it inward against an ebbing wind. She checks the time hastily on a broken silver wristwatch before confidently drifting into a polished sedan. In her place lies a scribbled name and telephone number.

Eleutherophobia
305-XXXX

**Eleutherophobia**

    Roman Carrington was both a man whose name trumped his consequence, and a terrible cook. His wife has been great in the kitchen, which had probably been the reason for his atrophied culinary skills, but after half a decade of divorce fallout, he didn't have much of an appetite for self-reliance. As such, Roman was known in nearly every grimy restaurant and nasty bar west of the aqueduct. Not so much as Roman Carrington, but as the lecherous old dead-beat who tipped too much, hoping to get a false phone number, a mumbled first name, or a bashful smile in return.

    He trudged his way wearily out of the poorly lit shell of a cafeteria masquerading as a casino. It had been closed early again - some issue with the custodial union. He never saw the place getting cleaned, but enough time on this earth had taught him not to complain about a full-day's pay for a half-day's work.

    It rains too much.

    He grabbed a worn newspaper off of the sleeping timekeeper's desk - an overturned supply crate with a handful of clipboards strewn across. Roman stepped outside with the paper above his thinning greased hair, looking up at the obnoxiously overcast sky, he decided it felt late enough in the day to get a drink; his watch was in for repairs, and he had made a habit of telling time by the lack of sun.

    A drowned, bruised, fractured cement staircase led downward between two long abandoned office suites, running into a corroded, crumbling door. The place was a prohibition-era hideout for the city's mob personae and politicians. Whatever grandeur it had held then had been lost to property taxes and salmonella lawsuits. Still, it had the old-world charm that only comes from rat-infested pool tables and the acrid smell of fissured asbestos.

    And a Kirsch that'll knock y'on your *CENSORED*.

    A tattered crimson coat stepped out of the crypt nodding a hello, leaving a chuckling, choking trail of smoke behind before making its way uncaringly down the street. The door screamed as Roman entered, alerting the basement's ghosts and roaches to his presence. Frank "Tiny" Garrison, the yeti of a bartender, nodded knowingly as the man sat down, laying a bargain windbreaker on the counter. "Tiny" clutched an unlabeled glass phial in a massive paw, dropping two tumblers next to it.

    "Long day, Roman?" smirked the bartender, glancing at his watch. He placed a glass full of the thin yellowish liquid in front of the man, the bottle standing guard next to it.

    "Lay off Tiny, if you ever settle down and lose a family ‘huv your own, you'll crawl into holes like this e'ry chance you get," ushered a raised glass and a tawny grin. Roman glanced at a framed magazine cover hanging just above Frank Garrison's shoulder - some undersold cultural rag that chronicled the few-and-far-between attractive aspects of Westview. The magazine's cover held a glossy picture of the bar's front door, the inside. It was the place's original door, a two-inch thick slab of some dry wood, apparently housing a quarter-inch ceramic sheet through the middle. Etched into the door was a multitude of passwords and pseudonyms - a frantic index written by forgetful watchmen.

    The door buckled. The action must have come before the sound, because for a moment, Roman thought to ask "Tiny" if his contact had shifted out of place. Next came the thought to settle up on a bet that there actually was no ceramic in the door. Then an piercing crash as the door splintered through the middle into hundreds of aborted toothpicks. There had always been some less-than-legal practices in the byway at the top of the stairs; it was probably the carcass of some used up fighting dog.

    To smash through a door that thick? Either one hell of a dog, or-

    "What th'ell was that?" howled Tiny," washing his hand with the former contents of a glass. The dog, a red-haired girl tripped backward across the floor, catching herself in an improvised half-kneel. A sable umbrella skidded through cigarette butts and peanut shells into the foot of Roman's stool. Lead scissors tore through the remaining scraps of door, peppering the opposite wall with dusty holes. One, four, three black suits poured in through the doorway, pistols hammering, copper jackets pummeling discarded napkins.
Roman's glass burst, along with most of his hand; more rounds raced each other toward his torso, painting a zigzag path of ruddy punctures. He yelped just before a slug fissured through his jaw, leaving him with a lopsided half-grin as he collapsed into himself.

    Ow.

    Frank Garrison through his two hundred and fifty pounds of hair, sweat, skin, fat, muscle, bone over the bar, a single barreled rifle in hand. He toppled one man over, gilding the ground with his left shoulder. The redhead franticly clawed for the handle of her umbrella, spinning the handle around her wrist, shoving herself upward on three legs. She fell forward serenely, swimming against a stream of lead. "Tiny" saw the world flash white with each bullet that ripped through his tree-trunk body. The girl maneuvered her way fluidly into the barrel of a gun, the cold steel kissing an exposed midriff.

    "Look at this, Ele. You can't even maintain yourself; how d'you think you'll ever maintain a revolution? Hell, even a hovercraft?" snarled a woman, digging the handgun agonizingly into the girl's stomach. She hesitated, glancing at her reflection in the girl's false eye for a half-moment. "If it we're up t'me, Ele, you'd be leaving here in a dozen little plastic bags. I couldn't care any less about the ship; let it go nuclear right where it sits. If the fallout doesn't wipe out whatever pirate haven you're using as camp, the resulting EMP certainly would." A man groaned, his bygone shoulder leaking thick rust-colored goo, a dead giant crushing his near-carcass. Another stood stoic, his handgun wavering silently an inch from the girl's head, brushing against her ivory hat.

    "And what'd that do f'er you?" queried the girl, her lower lip quivering in childish fear, but her voice remaining callous and calculating. "You've seen the public relays, yes? Y'ave bigger issues than a group of bandits, don'chu?" Time grew liquid as she dropped to a side, one gunshot skinning her abdomen, the other tearing at her fedora. She let the umbrella slip through her hands, re-tightening her grip on it as she reached the dull aluminum end; a practiced spin brought her eye level with the man's knee as she drove a rounded handle into his chin, his teeth colliding with train wreck force as she shifted the umbrella to his throat, cutting his breath short and knocking him to the blackened ground.

    The woman had regained herself, realigning her aim toward the girl's impish nose. A clock's tattoo flared back to life as the two engaged in a bastardized sword fight. Rounds escaped the gun's barrel haphazardly as the umbrella repeatedly batted it away from its target. Finally, the two met, the umbrella's tip lodged in the beretta's barrel. The woman grinned, pulling the gun's trigger. With a click and a crash, the ersatz shield shattered, brass confetti streaming backward. The girl frenetically grabbed for a shard of the sword's flimsy metal frame, a leather hand found one and clamped down. Instinctively, she limply wove behind the woman, holding the mock-knife to her neck.

    "The cold war is over," she said with a feigned blunt tone of finality. With those words, she dropped the weapon and bolted into the claustrophobic freedom of a crowded street and fat, bored rain. At a safe distance, she reached tensely for her telephone, checking her SMS messages.

LordInqubus

Excellent work, as always, El.
Best of luck in this most ambitious undertakin'.

*shoots a nod of farewell, leaving a chuckling, choking trail of smoke behind before making his way out the thread*

heh heh

**Eleutherophobia**

He's got himself a homemade special.
You know his glass is full of sand.
And it feels just like a jaybird the way it fits into his hand.
He rolled a blade up in his trick towel.
They slap their hands against the wall.
You never trip, you never stumble.
Hes walking Spanish down the hall.
Tom Waits - "Walking Spanish"

**Eleutherophobia**

    She hesitated for a moment, glancing backward, breaking a double-handful of self-important lawyers’, brokers’, prostitutes’ strides while silently catching her breath. Insincerely apologizing, the girl inched her way out of the crowd at an intersection, ducking past the missing gate of a private alcove. An embarrassing gash in the seam of her ivory hat gave the girl an ethereal, otherworldly aura; a loosely feathered halo atop her fiery hair. Though, a more apparent rip in her stomach was making itself more known with each step. Her cleaved shirt allowed the apathetic world to view a weeping cleft just below Fara Yazin’s navel. The combined scars painted an one-eyed grin across her abdomen: a poetic caricature.

    A random patter of water on cement slowly grew to the rhythmic drumming of a thousand simultaneous droplets saturating every surface available; the girl’s thoughts dwelled sodden on the corpse of her umbrella as every inch of clothing began to cling to her pallid, taut skin. She gingerly plunged a leather hand into the ashen pocket of her soggy coat, resurfacing with a gleaming telephone. There were still two messages; the uncaring black text scrolled lustrously across a dulled white screen.

    Sender: Private/[Unknown]
    “I'm being traced. Where are you?”

    Sender: XElite/[Alias]
    “Hey Fara, it’s X. I heard what happened at the bar. Are you okay?”

    The first elicited a childish frown from the girl, as she wondered where private caller got the audacity to ask her location on an unsecured line. The second deepened the expression, as her intensely recent escapade had already reached the ears of a colleague. Both, however, received the same collected, emotionless response. Her glistening black fingers skipped carelessly across the small keys as Fara’s right eye stared needles into the mobile’s tiny screen.

    Reply: Inbox/[Recent]
    “The Demiurge Private Commissioning Agency was unable to process your message, please feel free to speak with an associate at our newest location on the boardwalk of Ikebukuro.”

    The message sent, and she reburied her telephone with one hand, hailing a taxi with the other as she stepped back into the congested traffic of a crumbling square of sidewalk. The coughing yellow coupe pulled halfway onto the splintered curb before coming to a stop, its leather-faced driver cranking a window down an immeasurable sliver to ensure his upcoming income. The girl placed her war-torn fedora onto the imprint of an overweight man’s wet trousers as she climbed into the cab’s back seat. Rasping directions in a pseudo-pubescent cough, she gazed haggard at the faceless heads of dark suits ducking between canopies.

    “Y’new in town, kidd-o?” choked the driver, his smoke-ravaged voce the grating whine of an ill-tuned saxophone. He stole a drooling look at the girl in an adjusted rearview mirror, thanking the rain for its unreserved effect on her clothing.

    “Always,” she quipped bitingly, catching her own reflection in that of his eyes. Her unlikely frame leaned itself toward the window, ducking behind a passenger seat.

    “I’d say get out while ya’ can,” he advised her, switching seamlessly from suitor to mentor. “This town…it’s like a big ship, and the water’s on fire. You know what I mean?” The man laughed inwardly at his poor excuse for wisdom, not expecting a reply, as he scarcely knew what he was saying. The rest of the ride to an address in Ikebukuro was silent, but she knew what the saxophone meant.

**Eleutherophobia** · 08/21/2007 20:08:46

Between the idea
            And the reality
Between the motion
            And the act

                                ~~Falls the Shadow~~

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response

~~Falls the Shadow~~

L   i   f   e    i   s    v   e   r   y    l   o   n   g
            Between the desire
                            And the spasm
Between the potency
                                                                                                                                            And the existence
                                                Between the essence
                                                                                                            And the descent

~~Falls the Shadow~~
For Thine is the
Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends

N o t w i t h a b a n g b u t a w h i m p e r

**Dephect** · 08/23/2007 11:20:15

Picture by Pyraci.

As the light emerged and warmed Paola’s face, the sound of screams and sirens filled her memory. She remembered her ears ringing, and the smell of burnt rubber and seared asphalt. But not just what she saw, heard, or smelled, but what she felt as well. The pain and the burning sensation of the shrapnel as it pierced her arm. The isolation. The confusion. The anger. She knew what terrorism felt like, especially being on the receiving end of it.

As she stood and gazed out the window in a catatonic stare, a hand covered in shiny black leather rested softly on her shoulder. In an instant, she reached for her pistol and paused just as she heard her captain’s voice. “Easy…easy… I’m not here t’urt you. We should get going.” Without moving her head, she glanced over her shoulder, stumbling over her English in reply. “E… excuse me, Miss Yazin. I was… I was in my own little world…” Eleutherophobia patted her on the shoulder and whispered “It’s alright, Miss Giovanni. We need t’get moving. We’ve got a lot ’huv work t’do.”

PJMXO

FaraRose wrote:

What settings you got your graphics on?

**Pylat**

((*CENSORED*, those pics are incredible!))

**Eleutherophobia** · 08/25/2007 12:50:41

pjpecw wrote:

What settings you got your graphics on?

(Those were taken on pretty standard 'high' settings with no different useropts before I bought my new video card; I can't say the same for Syst3mic's. I'm glad you like them.

)

**Eleutherophobia**

-Express Yourself-

**Eleutherophobia**

"Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone's got to take care of all your details."
-Andy Warhol

**Eleutherophobia**

Four commuters are riding in a train car. One gets up to use the restroom. Upon his return he finds another passenger has taken his seat. The woman next to the passenger that took the first passenger's seat is wearing a red overcoat. The man across from the woman wearing the red overcoat is not the passenger carrying the briefcase. The man with the briefcase was there from the beginning and has not moved. Seconds later they were all killed when the train derailed.

"Logic" - Jon Newby

**Eleutherophobia** · 09/10/2007 20:38:46

    The telephone rang once, its monotone warble bouncing energetically off of each warm drop of rain. With a resigned stumble, she melted into the alley, drawn like a gnat to the buzzing orange light of a restaurant’s fire door. A practiced glance found only the vacuous shell of a drunk collapsed under a tabloid timeline of the past week. She brought the receiver to her ear, a light, tinny sound like scraping silverware against a plate climbed through her head, beat at the back of her eyes. Her projected self-image methodically fissured, replaced for a moment with millions of tiny white-green fireflies, then nothing.

    Waking up always felt like your whole head was vomiting. The Italian woman, Systemic, firmly twisted the panic clamps folded around Fara’s neural jack and pulled the impressive spike from her head. Thin blood dripped from the girl’s ear, got lost in her ratty tangerine hair. Systemic rested a ginger hand on the girl’s clammy, off-white forehead, pushing a knotted lock from her clamped, fluttering eyes.

    “She scares m’half t’uh de-huff when’uvver she does this,” barked the thickset operator, Ooidal, watching the girl’s neural spike shoot her heart rate over two hundred beats-per-minute. Nervous sweat pooled over her upper lip as Ooidal’s nostrils flared. “*poop*if we wait any longer, th’bit-chuh won’evver get outta’ that seat,” he croaked to the woman, expecting a frantic nod of endorsement. Instead, she held open a bronze palm, staring serenely into her salty reflection on the man’s quivering, fat forehead. That chick must bleed steel, he thought to himself for a half-moment.

    “Do it,” she commanded firmly, not a trace of panicked urgency in her voice. The operator’s pudgy fingers danced over a double-handful of keys; the mechanical bleat of a depressed hypodermic plunger was drowned out by a shrill wet cry, powerful narcotics flooding out from an intravenous cuff.

    Fara felt as if a scab had ripped from the front of her brain as her eyes opened to Systemic’s gentle smile. Her half-vision sharpened as the girl lifted herself from the chair – landing silently – the rough cloth of her thick socks letting in the aggressive cold of a steel-mesh floor.

    -And without missing a beat-

    “If we get ‘uh heading now, we could theoretically reach Bah-bylon in seventy hours, sixty-five, if we duh-n’t care about getting there in one piece,” chirped the girl, swallowing in wet hiccups between cadence.

    “Iesce sole! Are you alrigh-“

    “Don’ bot-hurr. Th’brat’d jus’ ignore it anyway-“

    “Where did you get that disk, captain?”

    “Ignore what?”

    “Nun sputa n’ciele ca n’faccia te torn,” muttered the woman, ducking between two large piped that halved the height of most of the catwalk.

    “I’m not ignoring anything; I’ve tod’ju before, I don’t speak Italian.”

    “See wh-ut I mean? And what did’juh give t’uh that guy?”

    “I’m not a brat,” grinned Fara, brown outlining her teeth. The improvised space took on the illusion of late evening, as powerful illumination gave way tosubtle, discreet operation bulbs. Four of the ship’s six keel-mounted hoverpads spindled into position and began to purr, tiny servo beacons whirring in excitement.

    Shayel’s spectre landed lightly in the pilot’s seat, not pressing any buttons as Vinia neglected to crawl through the gangway, rubbing her forearms off with an oily rag. Even Jouzu failed to appear as he always had – his dark, immense figure blocking the hatchway, an impressive hunk of filthy machinery tuck under each arm. That was another lifetime. In rude contrast to the nostalgic non-reunion, Systemic reappeared, matter-of-factly asking who was supposed to pilot the ship.

    -And without discussion-

    Fara measured her own ability for a moment, and graciously stepped aside. The ship whined pathetically as it fell back into fluorescent dormancy. Ooidal’s seat groaned as he got up, lumbering entertainingly toward his quarters – everyone’s quarters – returning a moment later stretching the seams of a tent-sized sweater. Though deep enough underground, the New Antigone encampment was a straight drop down a former Arctic mine. Fara pulled on an itchy woolen facemask and bubbly glass goggles with deep imperfections that made her look like a restless fruit fly.

    Over a threadbare sweater she pulled the now-grey coat she had received after the great big battle of Paradise. It was grey because she had worn it on every operation since the great big battle of Paradise. She had gotten it just after the great big battle of Paradise because of her undying, albeit unwilling, loyalty to whatever cause for which the battle had been fought. Since then, wearing it on every operation since then had conveniently torn the pressed white insignia of the Tetragrammaton from its sleeve; at some point, she had scribbled the Equinox’s three rings onto the shoulders.

    Ooidal grunted and kicked at the corroded metal hinges of the ship’s small escape hatch – now the only door now locked shut by thick frost. With one impossible heave, he pulled himself through the rotary opening, Fara clambering nimbly out behind him, slipping on her elbow. The duo admired their surroundings as they had each time since their former crew had politely stolen themselves and left for greener pastures. A ragged scar of sky tore across the wide canyon they found themselves in, sporadic, spidery lightning pulsing through the wound.

    -And without an exchanged glance-

    The two started toward the thin grouping of whitish dots through the greyish limestone fog. In the tiny population of freeborn extremists, which had been mysteriously robbed of supplies just days prior, was the new pilot of the Equinox.

**Eleutherophobia**

    New Antigone had been settled twelve days after Dante was killed. The colony’s entirety was only three small craft and a labyrinth of canvas walkways. It was the nearest place to heaven.

    With Dante gone, there had been no one left to lead the group, so Noone graciously took command. When a client demanded his presence, Noone would reserve a table, taking his steak medium-rare with an 1860 Veuve Clicquot, and toast to the community’s progress. The triad of craft was traffickers of whatever needed to be trafficked. As such, Noone most often took his meals in the company of Flood, who had placed several competitive prices on his head.

    Twelve days before the settlement, Dante had been fiddling with a set of car keys when a single bullet, followed by many more, severed the equal exchange between his projected self-image and his hovercraft which was ripped to shreds by a team of sentinels moments later. Moments later, his hovercraft was ripped to shreds by a team of sentinels. The reasoning behind Noone’s cut ties with the machines was, therefore, obvious. While most of the population of New Antigone was freeborn, Dante, and his successor were both awakened, and angry; so, they found it fair to wreak havoc upon whatever world they had decided false. The ships settled in a valley of dying stars, a hollow valley, the broken jaw of lost industrial kingdoms, able to play out their role away from the interests of both their benefactors and adversaries.

    Ooidal had been trading war stories on a public channel when the opportune signal made itself known; this was when the ship still had a pilot. It was, as he described, a simple impulse function; a repetitive bit of chatter that broadcast, theoretically, to infinity. Fara was nearly immobile when the decision to follow it was made, having been rebuilt for a second time, but when they finally had found the mine, it had been her decision to bring the ship inside, because, as she had said, it looked hungry. The Tetragrammaton’s fat, pretentious flagship Archon would later have difficulty making its way out of the gaping passage with Fara’s crew on board.

    The Equinox had set down far enough away from the camp proper to make Ooidal’s bad knee ache, and Fara’s nose turn bright red, even underneath it’s thick hood. The two avoided conversation, having made the trip carrying overstuffed sacks of stolen supplies three days earlier. This time, they arrived at an improvised night, finding no one but Noone in the tented hallways between the hovercraft.

    He was beautiful. Dark, windblown hair trickled down his forehead masking two piercing, hawklike eyes. His skin was tanned, and looked like it was pulled too tight over his face, leaving him with thin, defined lines at his cheek bones. He wore a thick black scarf around his neck, hiding the messy hairs on his chin and neck. With a swift movement, he cracked an ungloved fist against Ooidal’s pudgy face, knocking him dizzily against a tarp wall.

    “Who th’ell are you?” his thick, stately drawl demanded. He snarled at his reflection, staring at the girl’s filthy goggles.

    She was sightless, until she allowed her eyes to reappear, resting the blackened bug-eyes on her cloth forehead. One silent moment allowed her to gain composure. “We apologize. There’s apparently some sur-ruff high-brow, choice guest-list ‘ere, yes? How is it that upstanding ah-n forthright individuals such as ourselves weren’t invited?”

    “You fuh-“

    “I’ll ask-“

    “-kin’ broke-“

    “-you wuh-“

    “m’nose.”

    “-ince more, before I ‘eff you garroted, and used as food, kid. We’ dah-em well need it,” he barked, nostrils flaring. A tall, thin woman with a bandage on her nose and half a left arm stepped through the chuckling opening of a zippered doorway at the noise.

    “We, being only empty men,” she began to step from side to side, “women, have come t’beg ‘huff y’er charitable and benevolent community the hope of a navigator. In return, we offer-“

    “Are you-“

    “-the supplies that-

    “-out of your-

    “-so mysteriously-“

    “My nose.”

    “-vani-“

    “-mind?”

    “-shed from your camp three days ago.”

    “You stole our supplies, you bih-“

    “Have, not stole your supplies.”

    “You’re dead.”

    “I’m probably too chewy, and he’s mostly fat,” she motioned to Ooidal, whose pathetic form was slouched over itself, blood dripping off his chins.

    His jaw set, searching for some way to beat the girl. “We’ll speak inside,” he turned before finishing, walking toward the RcCft Hestia.