"Oh, tromatosh...whisper those bittersweet nothings into my soul." It's been hours, and the standoff isn't getting resolved. Zacharine Koth sits up against a giant robot, drinking the first horn of alcohol he found on the ground. As the beverage snakes its way through the tubes in his raspirator and onto his tongue, a tinge of disappointment further darkens his mood.
"Tyling grade swill!" he chucks the horn with a huff. It hits Omega in the groin, pinging against her codpiece. She takes a knee in front of him and flips up her helmet's spangle. Smiling blue eyes meet Koth's gaze. The ghost of a smile threatens to creep into his expression and destroy his bout of grumbling.
"How you goin' mate?"
"Pethlio..." is dworf for "Shitty". It can be assumed that he feels shittier than the lobs of shit being occasionally thrown out of the besieged helspital. Omega produces a horn of tromatosh, labelled as "dworf grade" and hands it to Koth. Now a smile has completely destroyed any grumble that remained on his face. He cracks it gingerly and shoves it into his raspirator's feeding port.
"Any breakthrough yet?" Someone screams bloody murder in the distance as a sniper's boolet connects to their shoulder. The barricades made of interceptors and gyattler placements seems to be holding steadfast, but that helspital is really big, and packed to the brim with thrashers and neerogs. A raid periodically emerges out to test their blockade, as well as their patience. All it's done is litter the helspital's courtyards with still-twitching bodies.
"It's been hours." Koth reports in-between enthusiastic gulps.
"Encore!" Suddenly, dozens of corpses twitch back to life and scramble towards the barricade. Some blackjacks groan with annoyance as they unleash a hail of magentic slugs upon the neerogs. One gets all the way up to the barricades. Right before Ylva splits his skull open with her axe, he manages to fling shit directly at the nearest target: Gideon Husker.
"Grody!" Gideon wipes the shit off his eye lenses. He looks back at Koth, nodding to Omega without breaking his concentration. "Any luck with the big'un?"
When Koth doesn't answer, Gideon pulls out his pistol and aims for Koth's helmet, knowing full well that this calibre won't penetrate brazen steel. However, there is something you need to know about Gideon Husker.
BLAM
He is, without any shred of doubt, the worst marksman that has ever held ranged weaponry. Not only does he miss Koth's head, the boolet hits Omega's crotch instead. It collides harmlessly against the metal, and she hardly reacts to the sudden kinetic OOMPH against her privates, but the desired effect is achieved anyway. Koth snaps his attention to Gideon, and shouts "WHAT?"
"Break time's over, pardner. We need that robot running and gunning before-"
Half of the barricade getting bombarded by sneaky mortars situated on the roof of the helspital wasn't on this week's bingo card. The audacity has mouths agape.
"INCOMING!"
Koth struggles to regain his faculties, shaking his dizzy head back into action. Fecal bombs land and spread their shitty miasma over the barricades, causing retch and misery.
"Fix that lazy-cunt robot!" shouts some random blackjack right before getting blasted in the face with shit-stained boolets. The Coo-Ca-Labbers charge down the hill once more, screaming crap and throwing shit. Koth understands the assignment and gets to work, foggy head be damned!
"Visa dumaz..."the dworf starts the inspection. Unlike the quality fertilizer being flung by the screaming apes advancing towards the barricades, Koth works with efficiency and speed. If anyone bothered to pay attention to him, his determination would bring tears to eyes. What, are they busy or something?
BANG
BANG
RATATAT
BOOM
BANG
This damn robot is hardly working. It is, indeed, a lazy-cunt of a clanker.
"Where's your fucking motivator, dositula!?" a Can Koth save the day with his technomantic kenly, or will he croak like a crygg in a salt-smoker? Is there a way to motivate a robot without a motivator? Can this wrench mess up all plans? Is there a flower blooming on this fertilized battlefield? Why does my back hurt all the time?
All of these questions (except some of them) will be answered...right now! Koth raises his wrench that he had on his belt, and starts wailing on the robot's chassis while he wails in anguished rage.
"WORK, YOU ARCHAIC PIECE OF WHORESHIT!"
CLANK
CLANK
CLANK
PING
"Ping? Wait a fuck-mothering second... "
Koth jumps down, ignoring boolets, lazers and the occasional piece of shit flying through the air.
BANG
RATATATATATATATATA
BANG
RATATRTRTATRATRTAR
BOOM
POW
BANG
RATATATATATATATTATATATATATATA
PEW
PEW
How's that sound, dear reader?
Are your senses titillated?
Is the action making you moist?
Koth opens the robot's backside. Also known by many as its "bum" or "asshole". Koth opens the rectal hatch, and removes some of the go-juice inside the anal tank. What once glowed with a proud gold, is now a sad tinge of grey. I'm getting depressed just looking at this boring tar.
"Shove a light up my bommy and call me the Crack of Dawn, his juice is desaturated!" Koth shouts to Gideon Husker, who's busy requesting backup. Here's that whole conversation summarized:
"WE NEED BACKUP!"
+++ On a scale of one to ten, how badly do you need it? +++
"WE'RE UP SHIT'S CREEK, AND THERE'S NO PADDLE IN SIGHT!"
+++ ...fine. I'll riff up some backup. +++
"How long-"
The rest of the feedback is replaced with thrashing horncore as the baelors go to work securing that backup. Things being as they are, they have to dip their power cording hands into Ragnalon directly. No easy feat, this will require some borderline mathematicaltechniques.
Gideon gets shot. It glances off of his armor. He doesn't flinch, looking at Koth. The dworf's fingers are stained with grey...sludge.
"Koth, how much longer do we-OW!" Gideon has to fend off a thrasher with his knife real quick, then it's right back to lighting a fire under Koth's ass. "ETA?!"
That's a good question.
How the hel are we going to-
We improvise!
You don't mean-
No time!
Ikh Ny...
Koth takes out a feeder horn, and unzips his pants. It's time for a friendly reminder that the barricades are being bombarded and shot at. Granted, the mortar-men are horribly bad at aiming, but the big booms are going off in the general area. Besides, spray and pray is much more unpredictable when the attacker has no fucking idea what they're doing.
"Koth, what the fuck-"
"Shut up!" Koth summons reservoirs of concentration from the depths of his brain, the likes of which would make my ADHD brain twitch into a stroke. The piss flows like a waterfall, some of it spilling outside the lip of the horn. Once his bladder runs dry, Koth zips his pants back up, and looks at the see-through feeder horn. His groan isn't very reassuring.
Wrong shade of yellow...
There's no time!
Koth pours the dark yellow liquid into the robot's tank, and uses his technomantic know-how to fiddle with the settings. It's a jury-rig to end all jury rigs, the techno-Runes inside the robot don't like being deceived.
The robot comes back online with a triumphant whirr of its gears. The many barrels of its gyattler start spinning, clockwise then anti-clockwise. Satisfied that its "fingers" aren't stiff, the robot fires at the hill, a murderous hail of boolets peppering the incline. Daemoniacs fall by the dozens. One gets ripped in half, his backed up entrails releasing excrement in frustrated spurts.
The tide turns. Up on the hill, a mutated monstrosity keeps bulging, trying to churn out more creatures to defend it. An impromptu shub laden with fecaloid nightmares. It’s being seasoned with desperation. A harsh reality snakes its way into Koth's mind...
Not enough ammo to hold them off until backup arrives...
...the robot will realize that it's fueled by piss in mere minutes...
...we're still bald.
Koth looks to his leader in this situation, hoping to find a plan developing in his body language. All he finds is anxiety, as Gideon Husker reaches for his knife, vaults over the barricade while going "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"and he charges up the hill with speed that shouldn't be possible considering his weight and the incline. We're talking some turbo shit, dear reader! The remaining blackjacks follow suit as quickly as their reflexes allow, Koth following behind the robot, a torrent of boolets spraying the helspital with every thudding step.
The daemoniacs see this display of reckless, decide "Fuck it!", draw their weapons and jump out of cover to charge down the hill, armed with their best shit-eating grins. Some get blasted by stray boolets, either from the blackjacks or the robot. The robot keeps advancing, though much more slowly.
You know what they say about chunky boys and big guns?
...they're made of metal?
Like this robot.
I get it.
Koth is right behind him, firing his own blaster whenever he can get a clear shot. Hard to do when everything upwards is just allies charging.
"COO-CUR-Y-BALA!"
The two sides clash and fighting becomes medieval quicker than you can say "Chivalry is dead". Gideon runs a three-armed poop-slinger through with his knife, cuts the throat of another, then crushes one's skull as he writhes around in the dirty incline. The brutal melee consumes the hill, and it's anyone's game. That is, until the Coo-Ca-Labbers pull a sneaky ace out of their shitty asshole.
Behind the robot, inside a pile of poo, a twitching mess of a thrasher emerges with the widest, shittiest-eating grin You'll ever see until a few paragraphs from now. Strapped to his chest is more explosives than I can count. I keep losing count when I go beyond my fingers. He sneaks up, under the robot’s feet, and shouts "EAT SHIT!"
BOOM
The carnage left by the mech's destruction left little in the way of survivors. Yet Koth still lives, lying in a puddle of dirt and gore...oh, and shit. Hard to tell that apart from the regular dirt.
Up on the helspital, the mutated monstrosity groans with exertion, the sound of constipation mixed with bird song. Wet, sloppy sounds flood Koth's ears, as something gets shat out of an orifice and is now on its way towards the battlefield outside. When it emerges, Koth half-expects it to be a sentient string of shit. One of those poops that snakes out of your bum like a serpentine horror made of fecal regrets. Instead, he sees a man, his silhouette blurred due to the recent explosion. The newborn man spreads his hands out in a gesture of good will towards his crappy army of shit-heads.
"Coo-Ca-Labbers, we have won against the tyrannical constipation! Let the dreams of Arda Rehi flow true!" The remaining daemoniacs celebrate their victory, shit-stained tears running down their cheeks...no, their facial cheeks!
Koth notices...something dangling between their leader's legs. It took him a few seconds to register that not only is he naked, his skin isn't naturally brown to begin with.
He's covered in shit. From head to toe.
It undulates.
Does poop undulate?
It does not.
More to the point, what is that dangling between his legs?
Are those...?
That's when everything goes from strange to downright absurd. The cheering suddenly stops. The vibe hasn't changed. Nothing has changed, nor will it ever again until the flow of time is released from...her grip. Koth cannot move, neither can the daemoniacs surrounding him. Only the horned figure approaching him. He registers her features. A tyling woman with coppery auburn hair, copper wires flowing like silk against nothing. There is no air, no time flow. Where is that dramatic billow coming from? She only wears a white bra on her fair-skinned torso. Right tit says "EET" and the left says "FUK". She wears a skirt (which also somehow billows dramatically) that is fully exposed at the front, revealing torn shorts made of denim. Her boots have a steel toes fully exposed and nailed on, yet they don't get stained by the surrounding shit when she walks upon the incline.
"Hey Baldie!" As she crouches over Koth's paralyzed form, she flips her wavy orange hair to one side. It brushes Koth's raspirator. His nose starts itching, despite it being covered by a fucking raspirator. He can't move to scratch it, but he CAN grumble.
"Who's a grumbly little guy?" The chromatic chaos unfolding in her eyes pierces into Koth's soul in ways he cannot fathom. She lives in a world where rules are guidelines, physics are a punchline, and music is the only power that matters.
"Got that backup for us, Kithy?"
She smiles, nodding her head to the daemoniac leader. You know, the one covered in poo? Hard to miss him, such a strong aura! "Having trouble with mister pooman?"
Koth tries to nod. His brain queues up the action for when time resumes. Kithy giggles, a melodic sound that thrashes all around.
I cannot move, yet I must writhe.
Isn't that a mood and a half, Baldie?
GET OUT OF MY SOUL, KERDA!
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
What the fuck do you want?
See those things dangling betwixt the pooman's legs?
Yeah?
Brace yourself, Zacharine Koth.
You are not prepared.
Try me, baelora.
Those are beads, but not of the anal variety.
Visuals beg to differ.
Well...not their original purpose
Wait...
...you don't mean-
I do mean.
No way!
Way.
(˶°ㅁ°) !!
Indeed, these are the beads of Geega-Troff.
The very beads, thought lost by Milly Boo-Boo when she jumped into the Crack of Dawn in pursuit of her sister-husband, Sim Sala Bim?!
The same.
Malakha!
You know what has to be done, Zacharine Koth.
Wha-
You still have that grappling hook.
It's in your hand cute little hand.
Koth suddenly feels a very familiar, gun-like object in his hand. He didn't see her hand move, only vague fluctuations in her silvery eyes. Man, those things are burning a hole in his immortal soul!
That explains the blindfold...
Well, time for me to get front row seats!
She steps on a disc, and starts floating away. She raises horned fingers to the sky. Silvery, heavy metal lightning delivers her geetar directly into her waiting hand. Right before she strums the riff that will unfreeze time, she gives Koth a final, distant wink.
Dekh...
The brutal riff screams harsh across the air, forcing the tides of time to start moving again like a turbo propeller shoved violently into a tank filled with water. Once again, Koth hears the cheers of triumph. He aims his grappling hook at the dangling beads in the distance. The pooman notices too late the small motions of the dworf. It's only when the hook has latched on to the beads firm and taut that he realizes what is about to happen.
Don't question your dumb luck and CHAINSAW THAT SHIT!
Koth cannot hesitate. To do so would mean being mowed further down into the ground by many boolets. He pushes the "retract" button on the grappling hook. The Go-juice powered gizmo shows no mercy, pulling...no, rather: RIPPING fifty-eight beads out of the pooman's asshole in two seconds.
"My doo doo!" Where the beads once lay snug and secure, there is now a gaping hole raring for an exodus of primordial proportions. The anal evacuation that takes place covers the surrounding wasteland in a sea of shit kilometres in radius.
Naturally, Koth drowns in the fecal atrocity, as does everyone else. A wandering tribe gets caught in the mighty tide of poo. Truly, the definition of a shitty day for all involved.
Let it end here. I am ready.
Bad news, baldie.
No...
Oh yes. You're still alive.
How?
You know how, don't be denial.
But I suffered enough! I need to die!
Too bad, horns demand your life.
Nooo!
Here we go again, baldie!
ಥ﹏ಥ
One more squeeze, and a nasty squelch. Zacharine Koth emerges naked and wet out of the shub, a hairy, adult baby. He plops down on the hard metal floor with the grace of rotten lead, disappointment weighing him down. There he lies, face first on the cold ground, unmoving, uninspired, unmotivated. Like a sack of shit yearning to be fossilised.
Too much to hope that the Gulf would finally claim me?
He groans, a rumble that vibrates the metal beneath his flesh. Ragnalon does not care, why should he? There is no love here, only the cold, unyielding surface of brazen steel.
Suddenly, the shub next to him shudders with activity. The green, milky liquid drips, and out come another one! This time, it's a tyling woman. Koth knows her well. Unlike him, she doesn't face plant on the floor, but rather lands on her butt with a sleepy expression on her face. Her wet, black hair sticks to her face, and she yawns. When she notices the grumbling mess nearby, her expression brightens.
"How you goin' Grumbly?"
Koth grumbles harder, the metal vibrates again. Omega feels a pleasant tingle in her bum. "I usually gotta bung some dosh for that kind of massage, mate." She stands up, her naked body dripping with green wetness. Walking over to Koth, she flips him over on his back with one foot. An impressive feat of strength, considering how dense dworfs can be.
There is a pause between them, before Koth says anything. He doesn't want to admit it, but he melts under her gaze. There is a conflict inside of him raging like a petty inferno. He's determined to sulk, to vibrate with doomy gloom until even the Nuclear Chaos has enough and goes to check on him. In the end, his insecurity gets the better of him.
"Am I still bald, matara?"
Omega kneels down, and starts rubbing his moist scalp.
SQUEEK
SQUEEK
SQUEEK
"Yeh." Like windshield wipers moving against dry-ass glass, Omega confirms that he is, indeed; still bald. Koth grumbles yet again, metal floor, you know the drill by now. He refuses to stand up, deciding that it is better to sulk than admit you are still alive. Omega pays him no mind. She's got places to be in the real world, armor to put on.
I feel worthless.
I'll stay here, and be worthless.
Knock knock.
Who's there?
You.
You who?
Hello!
(¬_¬)
Also, you should probably get off your arse and move.
Why?
It's getting cold, and everyone that's respawning can see your cute little dong.
Koth gasps, snapping upright and covering his groin. His desaturated face blooms crimson from embarrassment, as he frantically runs towards the armoury. When he's done suiting back up in a frenzy, he finds his way into a debriefing room. It looks more like a concert hall, but since the baelors are there waiting for his squad, it has to be the one. Kithy lights up when she sees him, waving him over, glee radiating from her blindfolded eyes.
"What a rare spectacle...everyone from Precinct one, here in Ragnalon! It's enough to bring a gal to tears!" Kithy's blindfold gives way to glowing, rainbow tears. As they land on the metal floor, the raw Noize reacts like acid against the coppery alloy. Kithy clears her throat and starts a debrief. She goes over the events that led up to Precinct 1 being assigned to assist Precinct 99 with the Coo-Ca-Labbers, and once that's done, she gives the floor for each blackjack of 1 to report what happened to make them bounce against the Gulf, and as they do, Koth unconsciously takes in their appearance to feed his own insecurity.
"I bled out." the first to go is the reserved Jack Bolter, the oldest member of the precinct and a tyling of average height. His hair is tied up in a half up-do, and reminds Koth of Old Brass. Jack's tired, baggy eyes bring to mind those old copper coins used before the Bedlam, when currency was more than just a part of your soul's operating system. Jack's pale skin is almost ghostly, a result of him wearing his blackjack armour all the time, even when he doesn't need to.
"A poop bomb hit me directly. Onnsheryl..." next up is Taly'y Csondach, the only fay of the precinct. Her hair is short, wavy and pitch black, a result of her pragmatism. Her eyes are glowing orbs of gold that could spot an insect moving from kilometers away if they focused. Her skin is ashen grey, a rarity amongst her pointy-eared kind and the origin of her surname.
"When we charged up the hill, I...got shot in the face with a high-power blast. Not my proudest moment, for certain." next is Ylva Heljarskinn. Her surname is a reference to her skin as well, being also pale. Unlike Jack, her skin's condition is a result of genetics, not habit. Her icy-blonde hair is long and straight, tied in ribbons on the sides. A remnant of her highborn background that she will never let go of. While her outwards appearance may give off a regal air, her lilac eyes occasionally betray the snarling she-wolf that hides beneath her snobby veneer.
"HAHAHAHAA, get a healthy load of this: I slipped and broke my neck while charging up the hill! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA-" Deus Hasta goes next, his laughter amplified by the acoustics of the concert hall. The only other dworf besides Koth in Precinct one, Deus Hasta has wild black hair that stabs into the air, a black bushy beard to match, black eyes with black irises and bluish white skin that borders on grey. The only other facial feature that is notable are the pronounced laugh lines.
Gideon Husker - "The robot turned me into smithereens." Gideon Husker is freakishly tall and strong. His auburn copper hair is wavy and long, kept in check with a bandana. He sports a Lombardy style beard, where only the chin is shaved. His green-blue eyes smoulder with a savage willpower that nobody in the precinct can match, not even Jack Bolter.
"I got dysentery and died before this story even started." Hattori Karasuki, better known as Krow, is a tyling of kazanjin descent. His hair is raven black and slicked back. His beard is neat, and he has a straight moustache that doesn't touch the rest of his facial hair. His only good eye is of crimson iris. It twitches back and forth, for it has seen things you people would believe. His other eye is nothing more than a brass ball shoved into a badly scarred eye socket.
"Drowned in a deluge of poop." Omega Stroud is the last one to go before Koth has to tell all. She's a tyling woman, slightly taller than is average. Her black hair is long and messy, with bangs hanging over her eyebrows. Her blue eyes wander aimless when she's done speaking, dreaming of food, drinks and she-wolves.
"I...chainsawed the beads, causing the deluge. I also drowned, in the poop." Finally, Zacharine Koth delivers his experience on what happened. He thinks about his balding head, his long beard with no moustache, his green eyes without pupils. Insecurity plays havoc with his soul, low-self esteem gibberish that annoys me too much to write down.
Koth doesn't snap out of his self-deprecating cringe-fest until Kithy claps her hands together. It is no mere clap, but a heavy metal THUNDERclap that temporarily deafens everyone in the room, including Kithy herself.
"Right, we took a look at the aftermath, and we believe that the rags of 99 can handle the clean up. So me and my march have decided that the rest of you can have some time off to relax in Ragnalon for...let's say, a week!"
That's a long time for Koth. A long time to grumble and be miserable. Before he can fantazize about all the wonderful groaning he can do, Omega grabs him.
"Come on, grumbly! We're going to celebrate!"
The entire precinct (of eight people) runs off to the nearest ghast to get their drink on. Omega falls a little behind, having to drag the dense, protesting Koth behind her.
