Prelude
I stared down in shock at the corpse at my feet. My blood was still dripping out of my body a bit too much for comfort, but inside I was just relieved to have survived. I had no idea how I got away with this, but that sick fuck was dead and I was not…mostly. Oh god, he was
dead. He... had taken down the others with him. The older college students, the ones who had, earlier today, pretty much decided to adopt me. They were
dead.
I wandered over to the wall and slumped down, trying to catch my breath and manage to think straight for a minute before I could break down into hysterics.
"Congratu-fucking-lations mortal, you just killed my Jumper."
A woman's voice rang out loudly and close by, followed by slow clapping which was steadily speeding up. I jumped, startled, and flailed around until I slammed my shoulder into the wall that had been behind me, tiny specks of cement grinding against an open laceration. I spied a beautiful woman bent over while kicking the dead body, smiling down at it.
"Well, I've been waiting a while for this, tried gauntlets, renegades, even Kratos, to finish you off, and you just let some noob scrub, not even in the game, not even of
legal age, end you."
The most broken, painful sound ripped out of her throat. "HAHAHAHAA!"
Her laugh was loud and a little manic. I started to edge away from the woman and hoped that she didn't see me, when all of a sudden she was right there in my face a bit away from the body and I hadn't seen her cross the intervening space.
Her face was right there in front of me, her eyes dark pools of black that didn't seem to catch the light, they just seemed to go on…like there wasn't an end to them. Her smile was worse though, it stretched too far, and somehow her teeth seemed to be getting sharper, all of them looking like they might come to a point, in a mouth that was too big.
"Heya, how're you doing?"
I responded with a sharp intake of air, hand scrambling frantically against the brick wall pressing up into my back. My eyes widened even as I hazily took in the retroactive fact that I had just killed a man with the very dagger which had earlier been skewered into my stomach. And now this strange woman who wasn't fazed in the slightest by the blood or flesh scattered around from the earlier bloodbath was cornering me, leaving me vulnerable without any way to defend myself. Not even a decently working predominant arm. None of this… it was too much.
She looked down at the growing warm red bubbling up and seeping into what remained of my shirt. Then her gaze drifted back to my face. She was… taller than me by over a head, curling over me as she cornered me against the wall. It made me feel tiny, small and helpless.
It was getting hard to think straight.
"Hmm... seems to me you might need a hand, seeing as you look to be having trouble keeping the red stuff in."
Her smile never left, and her words sounded… off, different, a thousand voices of a thousand ages ringing from a single too-wide grin. I must have been beginning to have trouble hearing them because I could feel them in my head, a head that was pounding with a horrible growing migraine. The sting of knuckles pressing into an open wound reminded me of my curling fingers. The stab wound… it was big. Too big. It
hurt.
She ignored the stinging warmth prickling the corners of my eyes and beginning to drip down my face as the shock began to evaporate… to an extent. Fear, naked and squirming, closed my throat up to the point that I could only concentrate on breathing. I just wanted to go
home.
"You did me a big favor, you know? I've been having problems with this one for quite a while." She nodded her head, looking pleased. " Yep, couldn't cancel the contract, you see, no take-backs, only losses. And this one! He just won't, or should I say
wouldn't go down. Kept causing me all types of trouble."
The woman's face twisted into a mockery of concern. "You know trouble, don't you? In fact, you seem to be in a spot of it right now."
I couldn't choke out any words, a cross between a whine and a sob bursting free before I covered my mouth with my free hand, shrinking back from the stranger who was managing to barricade any chance I had to escape.
"Well, maybe I can help. I am quite grateful to you for taking care of this for me, so I feel I owe you something."
She took a step back from me, one of her hands tapping her chin as she appeared to be in deep thought. The other hand rests on her hip.
I responded with a shake of my head, the thought of recompensation making my stomach roil in protest. Taking my time slow, I stood up shakely, from where at some point I had shrunk down with weak knees, just wanting to get out of this place and rest. To clear my head and get stitched up. God, what I wouldn't do to just be able to curl up against my mother's side and cry my ugly little heart out. My parents were probably worried sick by now.
I made sure that I didn't look at the four other bodies left behind which hadn't belonged to our assailant. Just the stench was making me want to wretch. It was a miracle that the bile that rose up hadn't led to me puking my guts out by now. Thank god that Dad needed my little sisters to help out in previous engagements. Thank god for the fact that my other friends had been sick, or needed to finish homework, or otherwise had been too busy. If they had also been here…
"No, no, no I think I have something to give, let's see…" She started to circle me as she somehow managed to make space distort enough so that I was trapped, surrounded entirely by cobblestone walls with no way out. Her black eyes seemed larger now compared to her face. Her smile was still etched into her jaw, shadows making it appear to stretch impossibly wide. With more teeth there then I was sure that there should have been.
Unbidden the image of a great white flashed through my mind, of it circling me slowly, seeing which part of me it wants to take first. It was followed by a xenomorph watching its prey with its non-existing eyes, or some other sort of eldritch horror movie monster stalking its prey from afar. I trembled a bit, growing colder by the second. Stickiness coated my fist even as I continued to apply pressure. Was it blood loss that was affecting me, or the woman?
The possible answer terrified me.
"Front load… no, a bit slim for this, creative mode, hmmm, no, that shows gratitude but it's not personal enough."
She snapped her fingers. "Got it."
"Youngin' here," she gestured carelessly at the cooling body of my would-be murderer that space twisted to include now, the scent of piss and excrement almost overpowering even from where we stood, "has been a thorn in my side for a while now and one thing that chafed a bit was him having an account that he were saving, for something big." She had stopped by this point, standing just to my left where my wound was most severe. It was on that side where it gaped wide enough to almost poke a few fingertips into it if I wasn't careful.
A hand landed on my shoulder. Having been hurt there, a thin yet long slice into my shoulder blade, I expected to feel a flash of pain, flinching, but oddly enough, her hand seemed to cause the opposite effect, my shoulder feeling colder, numbing the pain. Her grip on me was beginning to tighten.
"Since the asshole here wanted to save his points , he had a lot of them stored up. You know what? I'll just give them to you to use. No need for them to go to waste or anything, and I'm sure that this will really get his goat."
"HAHAHAHA."
Again, her laugh was loud and maddening, coming from everywhere, echoing across the rough stones into the cement pavement, and I couldn't seem to escape her grip to move away. Her laugh began to resemble a hyena's cackle; I struggled to stay standing, to move, to get
away, but my body betrayed me with its petrified state.
I shivered, tv static beginning to creep into the edges of my vision. If it weren't for her hand keeping me upright, I probably would have fallen and bled out then and there. When my voice finally managed to work, it was tiny, weak,
pathetic. "Please, I just want to go
home." My vision blurred as a fresh wave shoved its way through my tearducts. My lips were covered in an unholy mix of salt, copper and iron. The taste coated even the inside of my mouth.
"Oh, come on, don't be like that, it's free to you, you just have to let me give it to you, won't you let me thank you?"
"It-it's alright, I just need to get myself stitched up before I bleed to death,
please." That last word fell from my lips, begging to be allowed to leave. A plea she ignored.
"You have to say it, say you'll take the prize." Her hand stretched forward to you, in order for you to shake.
I was wobbling a bit on my weak legs trying to focus; I just wanted this to be done with, to leave all of this behind, so I reached forward and, foolishly, naively, took her hand, nearly collapsing in the process.
The room started spinning, the tv static beginning to take over everything, but before I could fall to a panic-inducing oblivion, I heard one last thing…
A croon, like that from a mother bird to her chick. Her hand stroked my cheek as she caught me mid-fall.
"I have such sights I want to show you."
XxXxX
When my awareness swam through the oceans of unconsciousness up to lucidity, I ended up on my hands and knees as I coughed up blood into a convenient red bucket beside me. My whole body felt sore, as if I had just pushed my body through a lengthy exercise routine which it hadn't yet been ready to handle, which had happened before. Had that happened again? Dammit, I thought that I had learnt my lesson after the last few times.
But over-exercise brought sore, painful muscles, not puked up blood. My hand rose shakily as I wiped the thick yet watery scarlet liquid off my chin and mouth. When I twisted, my body
screamed, and I bit off a choked out wail as I haphazardly collapsed onto the slippery-smooth black floor. Looking down revealed…
Why in heavens' name was I
naked?
The nasty surprise wore off quickly enough after seeing the twisty, nasty looking pale scar tissue that rolled over my hip from what must have been a huge gash. A comparatively thin line trailed down from my shoulder blade, ending just over my armpit, and a long since healed stab wound sat over my belly button. Another, more minor surprise was that all other skin blemishes and body hair was completely gone, other than a familiar small slash over my right knee. No more acne, no more scabs… a hand reached up to touch my cheek. It wandered over my forehead, into the space between my eyes and my ears, over my nose.
Slowly, hissing underneath my breath from the sharp burn of movement, I shifted into a seated position just in time for more blood to well up behind my lips. The bucket from earlier came back into use as I coughed up more of the now sickeningly familiar iron and copper fluid. My throat was scratched dry as I heaved out what felt like my stomach lining and the thin lining inside my throat. Good lord, was it uncomfortable. Smaller thick yet gooey lumps of folded blood skins found themselves inside the soup of internal fluids which sould have never seen the sun. It almost looked like- nah, they were bigger than what came out during that time of the month.
What had happened, anyway? I wracked my memories for the most recent events. It- I had been out late at night, a group of students at the college which I had just been accepted to had invited me out to introduce me around the town, and then-
The man.
He had just been… standing there. He was tall, at over what had to be seven feet, clad in a partially shredded trench coat made out some sort of scaly green hide, like someone had skinned a giant snake to make it. His shoes had been missing, and blood was dripping down from what I would later realise to be his hand. But… it looked his his very flesh had been carved from shadows and obsidian, with the shimmer of an oil spill, dark hair wild to reflect the later revealed eight crazed glowing white eyes. A silver ring was cutting into his right middle finger to the point that droplets of red were beading out. Wicked claws flexed as he stood, stock-still, facing away from us with his back facing me and the four older students.
Amelia… she had been majoring in psychology, working towards a minor in criminal law. She was the first person who I had ever met with actual, visible dimples, which were always present. Fearless as ever, she had been the first to try to approach him. Her top half had been completely incinterated in a powerful blast of a what looked at first glance like an old-fashioned revolver. The smell of burning hair and cooked meat mixing with melted plastic… I puked right then and there to the point of dry heaving.
Brenden, her boyfriend, had screamed bloody murder, as Jaime had grabbed me by my shoulders and dragged me out of the alley- or at least he tried to. The walls
moved, slamming shut in front of us into a dead end. A pale imitation of the Symplegades. He had jerked me back, reaching out as he faced away to keep us from colliding with the bricks. It had ended up crushing his hand, snapping it off by the wrist.
He had been an avid musician, a violinist who could tease out the sweetest melodies from the strings of his well-worn instrument with his eyes closed. I witnessed one such display of ability myself in the auditorium. His hands were as precious to him as they were to any artist. And now- now, one of them was gone. His
playing hand was gone.
There was a dull thud from behind us as I bound my handkerchief around his open flesh in an attempt to keep the stump from bleeding out. It was Brenden. He was- he was missing his
head. The stranger threw his gun to the side after that kill, and he had bent over as if in pain before
growing to over twice my own height, which put him at over ten feet tall An extra pair of arms sprouted beneath his main pair as he bulked up to a veritable juggernaut. There was a small piece of metal embeded in his top left eye, with a trail of blood flowing down from the tiny injury. I recognised it. It was the pocketknife which Brendan had been carrying earlier. He had used it to cut an apple up before letting Amelia bite off a slice from where it had been skewered on the blade just an hour ago.
Two down, three left. It was just Jaime, the musician missing a hand, Chantry, the novice programmer, and me, the scared shitless high school student, versus the stranger, a veritable monster of flesh brimming with weapons of all kinds, who had already killed two of our number. Three adolescents versus someone very clearly well-blooded in combat.
It was a massacre.
I… it had killed the other two before me. Jaime had managed to tear off his trenchcoat, stealing a dagger on the titan's person before being smashed into the wall to leave only a paste of blood and charred flesh against the bricks. We had managed to use the coat as a shield for a while, until Chantry had managed to grab the gun and shot off one of our adversary's arms and made a sizable hole in the torso of once was a man, almost taking off the being's head before being grabbed and having his head literally squashed between two oversized fingers. The gun had exploded from the rough impact. That coat was probably the only reason I was still alive.
Then he went after me with his
knives.
I bit my bottom lip hard enough for my teeth to cut through the skin as it all rushed back to me. Gods, he was just
playing with me at that point. It was like he wanted to see how long it would take before I would die from bloodloss and the wounds he could inflict with those damn blades of his. One of those blades, a short twisted dagger with a skull on the hilt, landed in my stomach after he threw it at me. It
burned.
That was the dagger I had used to dig out his heart.
Oh, god, what had gotten
into me?
"Ah, you're awake!"
That thousand-toned voice shot through my unwilling travels down memory lane like a bullet from a pistol. I shot back, legs clamping shut as I scooted away until I slammed into the legs of a chair. It was the woman again. She wore a high waisted maxi skirt made from some sort of glimmering blue fabric from where she sat, leaning forwards against the back of a chair with her legs spread to each side of it, and nothing else. Only now could I decipher the milky alabaster sheen to her skin and the harsh beauty of her body, as if she were a statue given breath, like Galatea from legend. Beautiful, but cold, unyielding. Hard stone given a facsimile of life. But, looking into those quasar eyes, I knew deep in my gut that she was all too real.
What had I agreed to?
She snorted at my attempt to cover myself and my averted eyes, then flicked her wrist. A shawl of the same fabric as her skirt draped itself over her shoulders, which she adjusted to hide her breasts. I flailed awkwardly as a white sheet dropped over me completely. A snigger followed from her as I managed to free myself from the cloth, rearranging it to cover my body like a blanket would, face burning It was still drafty, but at least it protected my decency. "I should probably explain what the deal is, huh?" I nodded, feeling oddly sheepish.
"So, do you know what Jumpchain is?" Huh? What did- wait- oh, fuck me. "From the look on your face, I'd say that you do." She was grinning like a loon. I bristled, shoulders hunching as I tugged the sheet further around me. "Oh calm down kid, I really don't mean to tease. Much." Then her grin faded. She leaned back as she continued. "Unfortunately, I still have a quota to fulfill, and while that Jumper sure as hell would be a huge threat to the omniverse if he ever was allowed to Spark, I managed to crash him here for a while with most of his abilities on fritz by hacking into that little Ring of Restriction number of his and having his Warehouse locked down with only a few of his items on hand. You're lucky that you and your friends were some of the first to find him. One of his main ways to get more powerful was by killing others, then sometimes consuming them for good measure."
Then she leaned back in, eyes locked onto my face. I made a makeshift hood with the white fabric and hid underneath it, uncomfortable underneath her scrutiny. Why wasn't I freaking out about this? "What I
wasn't expecting was for a teenager who rarely did any other sort of exercise than walking to manage to kill a Jumper with more than five hundred Jumps underneath his belt." Then her face split into a grin. "Which is how I knew that you were the
perfect replacement! Your youth and luck, your fear, your
grief, it's all more real than anything my Jumper had felt for millenia now. He had pretty much just become a wandering berserker. All he occupied himself with was fighting, killing, fucking, collecting shinies, yada yada." She snorted. "It got old after the first few destroyed villages and broken bodies."
"So… you want a change in pace?"
She nodded, pleased. "Yep! I'm your Benefactor now, kiddo!" She threw her arms out wide, nearly toppling over. "Just don't call me Jump-Chan. That started to get annoying after the first hundred or so Jumpers."
I curled up further. "What's your name then?"
My new Benefactor blinked, then looked out into the distance, resting her head against the headrest. "...You know, it's been so long since someone's asked me for my actual name. I don't even remember what name I was given back when I was first born as a mortal myself anymore." Before that depressing tidbit could sink in, she turned to me with a smile. "Call me Lachesis, the Apportioner."
Before I could get out a word, she barrelled through. "Now, you've got 7000CP from that old asshole's account. Now, you can't add to it on itself, but you can bank drawback CP. That drawback CP needs to be used before you touch the seven thousand though. That starting amount can also be used for any of the outside-Jump Supplements, like the Body Mod, or the Warehouse, and so on. When you run out of specifically the
bonus CP, then your Chain ends. You get one last Jump, the Jump which you spent the last of that CP on, and then you get booted off. Either you go home or you stay at that specific universe, your choice."
"Does travel to alternate universes still work if I get the right perk?"
She tilted her head to the side, then shrugged. "You know what? Fine. I won't give you a Spark, but if you get an ability like that, then you can use it like you would… say, a New Spark at best. That good?"
I nodded.
She smiled, widely. "Alright then. Good luck."
Yep, I'm... probably not going to finish this one, but it's taking up ten, eleven pages in my docs so I might as well let it out.
Here's the Challenge;
Thank You, Here's A Present
