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[Senn Typhos]

(('Lo again. I've finally fleshed out Senn's background to a satisfying extent, and finalized his background story and personality. This is the first part of what I consider the transitional point in his life, the event that changed him from a meek gang member into a lone survivalist. Hope you enjoy it. :3

Usual warnings for content and strong language apply. ))

Pt. 1 - Collection


One of Zuku’s favorite duties was known simply as “collection” in the criminal vernacular. Inevitably, someone dipping their fingers into the seedy waters of the State’s underbelly would miss a payment, fail to account for interest, or simply refuse to settle a debt. When that happened, Zuku was the man to call. He enjoyed sending his boys to take care of the collection, almost as much as doing the work himself. Today, it was Senn’s turn.

Zuku’s pattern was the same; gather his crew to his PV in the early hours, and drive to the site of the job, with the volume on his sound system cranked to full. The newest trend was a type of electronic music, developed in underground parties to be the epitome of anti-traditionalist sound. Deep basses assaulted one’s eardrums, droning middle tones wobbled and growled in the foreground, and puncturing highs faded into the distance after appearing in sudden cacophony; to listen was to have one’s auditory cortex abused. The lyrics, if they were ever included, were the strongest anti-Federation and anti-State messages ever heard, compressed into three or four repeating lines. In a classic counteraction of critics that accused this music of being mind control directed at wayward teenagers, the unwashed masses had dubbed it “Brainwash.” Zuku loved it.

The leader of the pack stopped his car a block away from the victim’s domicile, turning down the brutal music and twisting his gaunt figure to face the two men in the back, specifically Senn. Black hair was stuck to one half of Zuku’s face, a result of his habit of boosting before jobs; at this point, he probably didn’t feel the strands against his skin, or anything else for that matter.

“You know how this works,” he said with a saw-toothed grin. “He should be alone. Get inside, make him pay. Blood or money, doesn’t matter. Can you handle that for me?”

Senn nodded once, slowly. With that, Zuku reached forward to pat Senn’s shoulder. For a moment, his collar hung low and revealed the ever-present reminder of his efficiency as a gang member, the jawless skull and crossbones tattooed on his chest, the bones replaced with the outlines of pistols, and a pair of comical hare’s ears rising from the skull’s peak. Senn opened his door and slid onto the street, and a second later the PV peeled off into the night. The enforcer started walking at a mild pace.

The street was dead silent, which made this all the easier. Only the periodic wells of bluish light trickling down from streetlights illuminated the desolate stretch of concrete, littered with refuse that scampered about in the wind like vermin. Senn approached the target location, a square complex of apartments built for those with the lowest of incomes. The empty space between identical halves of the building served to house the open-air stairwell, and on the third floor, Senn turned to read through the apartment numbers.

Three-Zero-Five, Three-Zero-Six, Three-Zero-Seven, he counted in his head as he went. When he found Three-Zero-Eight, he stopped. He stood before the door, eyeing the chipped white paint around its corners that exposed rusted metal beneath, and centered himself with a slow, silent breath. He knocked twice, and waited.

Half a minute passed, and then the door creaked open. The man within, a lean Civire with a shock of red hair atop his skull, took a groggy step forward as he rubbed sleep from his eyes with the back of his free hand. He was dressed in a loose shirt and pants, probably having just woken from a peaceful sleep. When his eyes settled on Senn, they widened instantly and he leapt back from the door jamb, throwing the door towards Senn and scrambling back into the apartment. Senn slammed his heel against the door’s edge an instant before it closed, and stormed inside reticently, slamming the door behind him.

Inside, the debtor had grabbed something from a nearby table, and in the dim light of the disheveled living space Senn recognized the shape of a small folding knife. Sleep made the Civire’s movements lazy; he barely managed a wild stab, which Senn deflected easily. He grasped the debtor’s wrist and wrenched it aside, and in a swift shove of his opposite palm hyper extended his opponent’s elbow, causing the Civire to yelp and drop his weapon. From there, Senn delivered a hard punch to the jaw, a knee to the stomach, before throwing the victim against the wall by his limp arm. Several hard throws against various surfaces later, Senn had the man’s face pressed against a dirty kitchen counter, empty beer bottles clattering to the floor as they were swept aside by the struggle.

“You shouldn’t be drinking so much, suulo,” Senn said, speaking over the struggling man’s growls and winces. “It makes your muscles soft.”

“Fuck off!” answered the defeated man, twisting his head to stare back at Senn with a wild, bloodshot eye. “I don’t have the money yet, I told Zuku I needed another week!”

“Your money isn’t due in a week,” Senn explained calmly, giving that injured arm another twist and effecting another pained sound. “It was due five days ago. You’ve been spending your time boosting and drinking, when you had more pressing matters at hand.”

“You tell Zuku I’m fucking busy,” the man retorted, his words slurred by pain, lack of sleep, and leftover alcohol in his blood. “I’ll have his damn money in a week!”

Senn went silent for a few seconds, then reached for one of the nearby draws and yanked it open, digging through its contents with his free hand. When the shuffling stopped, he produced a pair of stainless steel tongs, a typical utensil for Caldari cuisine, and placed their toothed edges within the debtor’s line of vision, letting him stare at them for a few seconds and consider what terrible ends Senn might use them for if he didn’t speak carefully.

“Alright, fuck!” the man shouted in a panicked tone, shying away from the tongs.  “Check the damn locker in my room!”

Senn kept an arm around his hostage’s throat while he backpedaled into the next room over, kicking aside empty cans and overly ripe clothing in his path. He found the locker in question, and upon opening it found a wallet among a collection of personal effects. Digging through its main pocket, he withdrew the currency he needed and finally released the Civire, who got as much distance as possible while trying to catch his breath. Senn counted through the bills, tucking them in his pocket and pointing sternly to the glaring victim as he spoke a warning.

“You’ve still got interest to pay off. Don’t let this happen again.”

-

The troop ended their night by regrouping at a local dive. Zuku thumbed through the acquisitioned funds, grinning to himself in his calculating manner.

“You did good,” he said, glancing up at Senn through the haze of cigarette smoke the four of them were producing constantly throughout the night. Senn simply nodded in a silent reply. This only made Zuku grin broader still.

“That’s what I like about you, suulo,” the wild-eyed overseer mused. “You get results and you don’t talk my ear off.”

Now he turned to the others, swinging that abyssal gaze on the entire assembled party. He took in a long drag of smoke, still sweating from his boosting, eyes sunken behind darkened circles that bore testament to how many hours a man could go without sleeping when chemically stimulated, and then spoke in a low, cautioning voice.

“The boys upstairs are planning something,” he said. “Something big. Lots of blood, lots of bullets, lots of money in the end. Something that’ll take more than scrub work ethic and goon mentality. I’m talking apocalypse. Fucking Armageddon falling on the unwashed masses. You in?”

The other three looked between each other questioningly. Senn never got used to the way Zuku blindfolded the team this way; enlisting them to their next job before they had all the details, so that if anyone backed out after the plan was explained, they were fair game on grounds of treason to the gang. But there would be no objections, as always. They nodded, and the leader kept on grinning.

“Good,” he said. “The boss sent us this,” he continued, sliding a grainy photograph onto the table. Senn was suddenly staring at the familiar front of a local depository bank.

[Senn Typhos]

(( Usual warnings. Language and whatnots. Hide the children.))

Pt. 2 - Double-Deal

DED TESTIMONY RECORDING - 10.2.YC88
ANONYMOUS SUSPECT #13
//BEGIN
…

Here’s how it worked; we got shipments from the higher-ups, the post-process stuff. They sent it any way they could, changed it up every few weeks so the customs agents didn’t get suspicious. PV’s with hollow compartments, soda cans filled with the stuff and re-sealed, holovid jackets with thin bags in the slides instead of the disks… you get the idea.

After that, we’d take it back to the den and cut it to a small percent. It wasn’t exactly synth, that stuff is too weak to push, and it’ll still screw you up if you take too much. But it was enough not to fry the average man’s brain instantly. That’s what you want, after all, regular customers, not dead ones. We cut it with anything that was chemically compatible, even household cleaners worked, anything cheap that could stretch profits.

We had these boys in the electric district, called themselves the Oni – you know, demons? Thought it was cool to wear those stupid masks on the sides of their heads. You probably arrested a few of them after this shit. Anyway, we worked out a deal with the Oni. We met them every week or so, and decided what the prices would be in our territories. Whoever was losing money that week, we let take some territory and sell at better prices, or one would pay the other for lost ground. The veterans got their cut from Zuku, another share went to the soldiers, and the rest went back into the production. We’d make the drops in an anonymous bank account, in one of those secure boxes they keep in the back. At the end of the day, we all won, no matter who sold what or how many.

What the Oni didn’t know is, we didn’t give a fuck how much money they made. Every time we talked business and made deals, they told us where more of their labs were, where the best territory was, where their best dealers and officers lived, got me? They drew us a map without knowing it. What the shot-callers really wanted was to turn the heat up on the Oni, push them out street-by-street when they were trusting and weak. The electronic district is six percent of the drug market, you know that?

So we called up one of the real loyals. He didn’t wear tattoos or anything, but you knew who you were talking to when Zuku had this silent commando bastard with him. He ghosted people like it was nothing, must have been former paramilitary or something. But we needed somebody to take the fall. We needed the Oni to never see the police coming. So he had to go.

Sure as shit wish we’d picked someone else.

//END


There was an eerie silence in the air, which was still filled with acrid smoke from multiple sources; the cigarettes lying burnt in ash trays, the beakers and glass dishes filled with unrefined narcotics which decorated the warehouse’s sheet metal work tables, and the barrels of the pistols firmly in the palms of Zuku, Tasvir and Senn. Their leader stalked among the bodies, dressed all in black, black military trousers tucked into black boots, a black t-shirt under a black leather coat, topped with black gloves. The only offset to his monochrome dress was the white plastic mask he wore to one side of his head, in the guise of an open-mouthed, laughing demon. They’d all worn one tonight to get past the warehouse door.

Tasvir was guarding the door as always. Senn had remained in place as he watched the boss reveling in victory, flipping one of the corpses over and delicately pulling its eyelids upright, so that the orbs beneath stared vacantly at nothing in frozen shock.

“Never stood a chance,” he murmured, looking over to Senn with a sudden spark of excitement in his eyes. “Do it.”

Senn hefted the cargo they’d brought with them for the occasion, a canister of aerosol paint, and began to decorate the opposite wall with large red letters. Zuku retrieved a small cellular device from his pocket, and spoke in a clear tone. “We’re done here,” he said. After a few words from the other line, he hung up and observed Senn’s work with a prideful grin. The wall now read, simply, “RATS”.

“Good,” Zuku stated in a sing-song tone. He motioned to Tasvir who tugged the door ajar, peering down either side of the street. Senn moved to exit with the pair out of habit, but was stopped by an extended hand from Zuku, who stopped the silent man in his tracks. He smiled for a time, leaving Senn confused as he spoke.

“I don’t have a soldier as loyal as you,” Zuku said in an assuring tone. He pulled Senn into a sudden embrace with that one arm, and for a moment Senn felt his skin bristle in instinctual suspicion. What fulfilled it was the instantaneous, searing pain that arrived as Zuku buried his switchblade into his loyal soldier’s ribs, halfway up the blade. Senn’s eyes snapped open as he felt adrenaline-fueled blood rush to his skull, his extremities tingling and turning numb.

“That’s why I know you’ll understand,” Zuku added in a sinister whisper, hugging Senn to his chest tightly and glaring into empty space with a grim determination. After a few seconds he pulled away and took the blade with him, and Senn felt his legs give out underneath him. He collapsed and watched a rush of blood spill onto the dirty tile floor the instant his jaw opened to take in a gasping breath. His eyes swam to focus on the image of his betrayers stepping into the street outside, turning just once to observe him in unison. When they left, Senn felt himself losing consciousness, and fought in vain to stay awake.

He could hear sirens whining in the distance, as the local police closed in one his filthy tile tomb.

[Senn Typhos]

((Kind of a lengthy segment, wanted to get it on paper while my brain was full of good ideas, trimmed it down as best I could. Usual warnings. Also, spoiler alert: Senn lives. :trollface:))

Pt. 3 - Instinct


Her name was Nutsu. She was one of the CDS’s in the orphanage. Those were the two things Senn knew about her. Although they were in charge of overseeing, correcting, and ensuring a child’s development, they functioned as at-a-time parents. The children learned their CDS’s name, their face, their voice, and could guess their age. But beyond that, they were anonymous, amorphous, and without detail. Faceless.

But Nutsu took special interest at times. She was a storyteller, a natural mother, which sadly put her in the wrong occupation. Senn didn’t understand her kindness, or indeed what it was he was trying to name when he considered the gentle care she took of the children.

One day, a day he remembered from then on, Senn returned to his dormitory when the night hours came, and the intercom system’s soft bell told the children it was time to sleep. He set aside the sky-blue jumpsuit he had worn since his suit size had raised a level last year, and crept into bed to rest. But when his hands slid beneath his pillow, they found something they didn’t expect, something like a rag filled with tiny beads.

He pulled the strange parcel from its hiding place, turned it over in his hands. It didn’t make sense to him; it appeared to be a humanoid figure, loose, rounded limbs hanging off of a tubular body. The head bore pointed ears, a triangle nose, button eyes, a looping smile and whiskers on its cheeks; he recognized the symbols of a cat, at least. The body was white; a material like terrycloth, filled with what his nose confirmed was dry rice.

Senn held the tiny figure for a few minutes, idly staring at its alien shape. Despite his best efforts, the thing was aimless to his eyes. The word he finally dredged from his head was “toy,” which brought to mind only the thought of demerits for possession of an item not issued by the orphanage. But a strange intuition made him look for a place to rest the little figure. He found the grate of the nearby air duct, hid the object in its curved vent, and went to sleep.

Two months later Nutsu was fired for giving toys out to the children in secret. Senn continued to ponder what she was trying to tell him when she glanced at him momentarily on her way out of the orphanage. Her eyes were pleading, urgent, but he was left to remember her face for years after, until the hidden message simply faded away, and only the smuggled toy remained.



Senn forced his eyes to open, letting out an animalistic growl of effort. Blood bubbled around his lips and under his tongue, making him spit to gather breath. Whether it was blood loss or panic, the lights shone with a sudden brightness, and the sirens in the distance sounded with brilliant clarity.

He had to get to his feet. He crawled forward on all fours, until he found the corpse of the nearest victim of his own gun. His mind was working on its own, making him simply watch as his body functioned autonomously. His hands dug into the pockets of the dead man’s jacket, numb fingertips seeking out his chance of survival.

There it was; a wallet. He tugged it free and tore open its sides, and retrieved one of the plastic cards inside. From there, he guided his body upright with the help of a counter, grasping its edge desperately. His eyes were losing focus, but were able to make out the contents of the grimy, cluttered drug lab. He located a roll of industrial tape and wrenched a length of it free, tearing it to long shreds with his teeth.

Unbuttoning his jacket and rolling his shirt out of the way, he sought the wound. The slit was situated dead center in his ribs, and by his best guess the short knife had only penetrated one side of his lung. He set his tools aside, pouring a close-by bottle of rubbing alcohol onto the wound. He hissed as it burned away the bacteria, and he did the same for the plastic card before pressing it up to the wound. The tape, he set around three sides of the card, leaving the fourth free, using the rest of the tape to secure it to his chest. This was an old army trick he’d learned from the academy. The three closed sides would keep debris clear of his lung, but the fourth would allow blood to drain and air to enter.

He finished his work just in time to hear boots pounding out a rhythm on the street outside, as police closed in around the warehouse. He summoned his strength again to push himself to the empty lockers on the wall adjacent the counters, sealing himself inside. Closing his eyes, he willed his implants into work, the cybernetics slowing his heart rate and reducing the amount of blood filling the wound, giving it a chance to begin clotting. It was a chance affair, but it was his only chance.

The door burst ajar with a heavy kick. Four men stormed in immediately, armed with submachine railguns equipped with attached flashlights. Their armor identified them as medium-threat response units. They would be armed well, Senn knew, but on even ground if he needed to fight them hand-to-hand, if it came to that.

One of them stopped to observe the bodies, looking at Senn’s discarded mask.

“Oni,” he stated flatly to the others. “Bastards probably turned on their own producers. Shipments coming up light or some shit.”

“Quiet,” another ordered, motioning to the men with his free hand to direct them into a searching formation. Senn opened his eyes and watched them through the slit in the locker, careful not to press his face too close. One of them swung within a foot of the locker, and Senn held his breath for all he was worth. He could see a flight of stairs not far from him – if he could just reach them.

For a tense couple of seconds, the officers moved into the recesses of the first floor. When he saw his chance, Senn let the door swing open on loose hinges, and when there was room for his frame he slid into the open, walking on the outside edges of his boots in a crouch.

The stairs were solid enough to make no sound as he crept to the upper floor, never letting his weight shift too abruptly. Finally, he reached the upper story and searched for his escape route. But as he moved, he once again felt his limbs lose sensation, and lost his balance for an instant. The bang of his boot against the roof effected a rattle of equipment from the men downstairs.

“He’s up there!” one exclaimed, starting a charge of boots to the stairwell. Senn stumbled and gripped the sill of one of the second floor’s windows, sliding it open and swinging himself into the open air.

Outside, the temperature had fallen to its low point. Senn felt the beads of sweat clinging to his skin freeze, filling him with a sudden chill that only worsened the sensation of numbness and ache. His legs didn’t get him far before he stumbled onto the corrugated roof, making him scramble to regain footing. The roof was one of a dozen lined up between him and the brightly lit city before him, wind kicking up as he took off in a trot towards the lip of the first roof. It was a decent leap between each one. He made it to the third before he heard a crackling gunshot and the pop of a bullet passing close to his head, followed by others that tumbled across the metal rooftops.

He swung his running pattern to either side randomly, hoping to throw off the officers’ reticules enough to avoid being struck. He reached the fifth and sixth rooftops as the police crossed the second, raising their guns to fire further bursts of fire. Senn’s brain raced impossibly fast; he needed to get out of the open.

At the ninth rooftop he turned to the right, leaping from its edge and following the next bundle of rooftops before him, a small enclave of residential buildings. As he moved, he put ledges, antennae, power lines, dishes, and all manner of other urban cover between him and the pursuers. He could only register fractions of images as he sprinted; a couple staring at him from their window as he passed, a pane of glass shattering as an errant bullet struck it, an antenna jutting from his path, a domesticated dog barking at him as a perceived intruder.

For a third time, he felt himself lose control of his limbs. This time, he tumbled from his platform towards the alley below, cables whipping him as he broke them under his weight.  His training told him to aim his shoulder to the ground, but he managed only to do so halfway, yelping in pain as the bones therein were jarred by the force of impact. Whether it was strained or dislocated, he couldn’t tell, but when his feet were moving again, it was in the desperate running motion of a wounded animal.

Further and further into the city he moved, trying not to be corralled by the police who were not far behind. He could swear he heard others closing in around him, other sirens blaring in the night air. He vaulted over a PV that came too close for comfort, sliding over its hood and continuing into the alley as another burst of gunfire cracked around him.

A culvert; a chance to escape. He slid down the embankment of a water drainage channel, rolling backwards into the recess and scurrying to its furthest point, trying to enshroud himself in the dank darkness and litter, thankful the water had dried in the summer months.

Above him, he could hear the clatter of footsteps. The four bodies passed overheard via a metal grate bridge joining the sides of the channel. They kept moving without pause, and in the seconds that passed, their footsteps faded into the background.

Senn let himself collapse against the cold concrete, keeping his torso upright. During the chase, he’d tried to keep the plastic card in place, and now rested one hand over its closed edges. It was impossible to breathe out the fire in his lungs, to calm the shaking and stinging sensation in his legs, to cease the ache in his shoulder, or to turn off the rushing sound in his head. His whole body was destroying itself in the effort to keep alive.

Time became abstract to him. At some point he fell asleep, with the thought that if he wasn’t strong enough, his eyes might never open again.

[Senn Typhos]

Pt. 4 - Stray



What he remembered about the streets of Obe was hunger; a stomach so empty, no food could fill it, let alone the scraps one was likely to find.

The day he landed, with little but the clothes on his back and a data chit, he expected to become a part of the security team for the Home Guard, to be outfitted and employed by Kaalakiota. What he found instead was a representative with no record of a “Senn Typhos” being born, registered to AnimaSys or Kaalakiota, or any government orphanage.

For a while, he couldn’t do anything more than stand in the middle of the Interbus Terminal and stare at the chit in his hand. It was supposed to contain his worth, a symbolic token of his genetic purity, his exceptional testing scores and a record unspoiled by demerits. He’d never questioned how it would work, and now it was a hollow thing with no value to anyone. Finally, he tucked the chit back into his pocket and began to wander.

That wandering taught him how little he understood. In the original master plan, he would only have endured planetary limbo for a few days at the most before a representative contacted him. Now, that purgatory was real, and permanent.

In a standard-issue military casual outfit, he was already out of place. Though they were rugged and comfortable clothes, they bore the sponsorship symbols of AnimaSys and the state like badges. He’d stopped at the edge of a walkway in the Oduka Colony, and stared out over the stacked layers comprising the heart of the city. Below him, PVs buzzed to and fro and bodies swarmed the catwalks, huge advertisement projectors and neon lights burning his eyes, and far too many sounds cutting his ears. Ethereal voices called him to worldly things he didn’t understand, imploring him to visit a night club or try a new flavor of soft drink.

What he managed to build from this wreckage was a life of poverty. The few businesses willing to accept an employee with no citizenship data were by and large insults to his personal honor. Instead, he became accustomed to the chill of night air, sleep spent among junked containers in the corners of the colony, and the bitterness of nutrient paste. He learned the language of the street, the feel of receiving and inflicting injury on another living body, the reason for certain women’s interest in his company, and what parts of the slums belonged to someone else. He lived by instinct.

And then came the day a spindly man with a rabbit skull tattoo watched Senn break the neck of one of his henchmen, and at gunpoint, with an unsettling smile on his lips, told the confused stray of the better life he could offer.



Many years later, using the poached ID numerals he’d earned for his loyalty, Senn had fallen from the vile, bloody heaven of his former master’s domain, and returned to the underworld.

As it turned out, a man raised to follow procedure and mimic patterns of behavior flawlessly under pressure excelled at mixing drinks and polishing glassware. A stocky Civire named Ikra, owner of the “Taboo Bar,” had put this skill to use when the Deteis came looking for employment.

The lighting was dim, the music was loud, the space was either crowded or practically empty, the girls were distracting, and there were few criminals; it was the safest place a man like Senn could hide, and think. While his hands poured bottles, he had plenty of time to consider, if only occasionally, how far from his original purpose he was. It was an idle through, he knew; nothing would change the course of his lifespan, and he was still alive and able to work for his living.

Over the past year his lung had healed, and by using up the last of his handful of personal funds and working at the bar, he had procured one of the shoebox apartment rooms available on the outskirts of the colony. He practiced his exercise and combat regimens each morning, subsisted on cigarettes and packaged bowls of noodles, and slept with a gun under his pillow. He’d also gained a companion; one of the stray slavers he’d befriended over a period of time, as security before he could afford ammunition for his sidearm. It was a comfortable life, one he wouldn’t have minded keeping.

That changed the day Tasvir walked into the bar. Senn barely lifted his head, though he recognized the monolith’s form instantly. Somewhere in his gut, he felt a gripping sensation, an ugly hatred he was unfamiliar with. He hadn’t contemplated vengeance against Zuku’s set, knowing it was a useless risk. But that grotesque bile rose in his throat, the taste of metal on his tongue, and a poison in his veins as he watched his former ally take a seat near one of the dancers, ordering a domestic ale for himself, which fortunately someone else was tasked with retrieving.

Senn waited and watched patiently. Eventually, he knew, that beverage would be the traitor’s undoing.

Sure enough, after the third, Tasvir got to his feet and made a b-line for the restroom. Senn followed shortly.

Inside, the behemoth was silhouetted against the tiles of men’s room by poor florescent lighting, bobbing his head to the music outside. It would drown out any noise. He used his employee keycard to lock the sliding door silently behind him, then moved forward on light footsteps, feeling his flesh roil with the adrenaline in his blood, as the Civire finished his break from drinking.

A second before he completed the ambush, Tasvir twisted his torso and extended an arm, already clutching his combat knife. Senn threw an arm up to defend himself, barely able to stop the heavy limb, and delivered a quick strike to Tasvir’s elbow to disarm him. With a yelp of pain, the giant brought his other arm around to toss Senn against the nearest stall door, trying to throttle the smaller fighter. They struggled for the advantage, before Senn broke the stalemate with a headbutt and a sharp kick to Tasvir’s midsection. The larger man reeled, only to receive a backhanded fist to his skull.

Senn didn’t waste his momentum. He gripped his foe’s scalp by the roots of its hair, bringing Tasvir’s skull to the mirror above one of the three sinks nearby. It shattered in a spray of silver fragments, and Senn had the forethought to lock Tasvir’s arm before speaking in a firm tone.

“Where is Zuku,” he demanded.

Tasvir returned Senn’s glare, a bit of blood percolating at the corner of his mouth. “Fuck you.”

“Where?” Senn repeated, raising his voice in his determination.

Tasvir used his free arm and one leg to throw himself back from the edge of the sink, slamming Senn against the opposite wall, making him snarl as the air was forced out of his lungs. The larger fighter swung his arm free of Senn’s lock, delivering an elbow to the Deteis’ cheekbone that separated the brawlers a second time. Senn, however, had the advantage of a bloodstream free of alcohol, and was fast enough to prepare a back kick as Tasvir approached.

This time, as Tasvir wheeled back, Senn forced him into the nearest stall with a pair of well-placed punches, striking the soft core of Tasvir’s throat and the edge of his kidney. When the tactical half of the battle was over, the brutality began; Senn gripped Tasvir’s skull in both hands and thrust it into the waiting metal bowl of water, leaving the larger man to thrash desperately in an attempt to escape. His arms couldn’t reach any hold on Senn’s body without risking losing the only defensive leverage he had.

When he’d been weakened enough, Senn brought the giant’s face back into clear air, repeating his demands once more.

“Where is he?”
“I don’t know!”
“You’re lying.”

Another shove from Senn’s hands and the torture began again. The Civire was a paragon of his race in terms of strength and fortitude, but no one could withstand a lack of oxygen for long, not even this behemoth. After the third round, Tasvir started talking.

“You were a necessary loss, Shoa,” he gasped, spitting putrid water and staring back at Senn with a steel eye, expressing neither the hate or fear an average man would show, nor a hint of remorse. “We do what we have to in order to survive, you know that-“

“Where,” Senn ordered again. “Where is he?”

“What are you going to gain?” Tasvir snarled back, his brow flinching in frustration. “You’re a dead man whether or not your body survived. You’re dead if you go after Zuku, you’re dead if the police find you. So fuck you.”

Senn kept his eyes on Tasvir’s as they shared an instant of silent ultimatum. The concept of honor among thieves was something that simply couldn’t be explained. Even by betraying one soldier, a man could prove his loyalty to his leader and the collective gang, proving one’s fealty through betrayal. To rescind that pledge by assisting Senn, Tasvir would be admitting the utmost weakness, something that convoluted honor would never allow.

What came next was the inevitable in a struggle between warriors bound to the same codes; the last struggle for Tasvir to escape Senn’s clutches, the numbness of Senn’s fingers as water seeped around Tasvir’s head again, boiling with escaping breath, the clarity of the smooth metal tiles Senn stared at while the jostling under his hands subsided. He released his grasp only after a solid minute, in case the lukewarm skull in his hands decided to reanimate.

As he pulled his fingers free of soaked hair, Senn stared at the lifeless mass for a few seconds, then hastily dug through his pockets for a cigarette to light, hoping to cool the fire in his lungs. There was limited time for him to accomplish what was needed.

Tasvir’s pockets were mostly empty, save for his false identifications, which Senn took as a practice of honor. If their fakes were located, gang members were made into examples by law enforcement and biomassed unceremoniously. When he had his phone, PV keys and a datapad in hand, Senn’s brain went into a frenzy deciding how to dispose of Tasvir’s corpse. When he’d gone over conceivable options, he settled on a direct approach. Opening the door briefly, he scanned the crowd in a smooth twist of his head; the bar was mostly empty, and the few men in the audience were still fixated on the dancers. Fortunately, the restrooms were positioned opposite the stage, and Ikra was nowhere to be seen.

Senn tugged Tasvir free by his shoulders, and dead-man-dragged him through the rear service entrance. The Civire was given a final resting place in a heap of salvage, arms folded in his lap and his eyes drawn closed by Senn’s still-chilled fingers. He took a moment to eye over the bruised, cut and paled man before returning to the bar.


 That night, Senn took part in a practice he had only witnessed a handful of times in his life; he meditated.


Zuku was a collector of stories. He found it a great amusement to seek out and memorize myths and legends from the different peoples he encountered, both on Obe and the other planets he’d visited (no one truly knew where he’d come from, or how far he’d wandered before Senn was taken under his wing).

Tonight, his pack relaxed in a booster den, most of them passed out from nerve sticks, blue pills and other relaxants, combined with alcohol and the company of bought women. There was barely enough light by which to see the usually wild-eyed killer in a lucid state. He eyed Senn with lids half-closed, a lazy smirk on his lips, only the slightest reflection of the whites of his eyes visible.

“Once, when I was drifting around Taisy, I ran into this old Achuran merchant. He was selling some strong stuff I’d never heard of, said he got it from Matari space. I lit it up and I listened to him talk about his home.

He told me a story, about a superstition of sorts, from his home planet. The monks used to tell the children about this demon kind, called ururarda. Hard to say, right? Said it was derived from the sound they made while they skulked around in the dark.

Anyway. A lot of myths always involve a demon or a ghost that takes a person over. Not the Achura. Their monks spend their lives trying to understand great mysteries, they believe in human endeavor having far-reaching effects.

Ururarda were born when a person became ignorant of the balance of the universe. The story went that murderers were the most likely people to turn into an ururarda. No one, the monks said, made a greater offense than someone who unbalanced the universe by taking life force away. When someone had become greedy enough that they wanted to challenge the universe, challenge God, if you like, their soul disconnected from the universe itself, and they turned into ururarda.

Their skin turned black, empty of color. Their hair and nails grew uncontrollably, and they began walking like wild animals. Their eyes turned to empty sockets, and their teeth turned into jagged fangs. See, an ururarda is the greediest demon in the world. The world is black except for the things it wants, which they see like candle wicks burning in the dark. It crawls on all fours and destroys anything in its path, and it devours the thing it wants.

Ururarda have an empty hole in their stomachs. They’re always hungry. They don’t have an emotion besides that and rage. So they eat anything they can, as long as their eyes tell them to. But that hole in their stomach? It leads to nowhere. They can never be full, even for a second.

Now, there’s some people that did this on purpose. Apparently, a whole sect of people took the story too literally and tried to emulate the ururarda. Why would they do that? Why would you deal with all that shit, turn into an ugly son of a bitch and lose your soul? Because an ururarda is strong. It can bite through rock and metal, lift trees from their roots, and it can smell a human from the other side of the world. An ururarda is nearly immortal, and it can’t be killed by anything but a stronger demon or holy being. It doesn’t get tired, doesn’t feel cold or heat, doesn’t feel pain in the body or heart.

Only evil men can become demons. And only a demon can challenge a god.”

[Senn Typhos]

(( I know lots of problems can arise from theorycrafting, so I'll preface this by saying this is my purely personal imagination of the tube child projects. Apologist warning over. ))



Pt. 5 – Child


With the introduction of the tube child program, the State was given the opportunity to fill the gap in their population left by the Federation’s orbital bombardment and the subsequent war between the two nations. The megacorporations approached the program as would any other field of corporate expansion; each subsidiary had their own take on the same product, which meant variety was available to potential buyers of the employment contracts that came with each resulting child.

The liberal megas offered children raised from a newborn state by wet nurses and holistic education, and provided services to couples otherwise unable to bear children.

The practical faction focused on a balanced mixture of technological engineering and natural education for their children, producing a “general purpose” citizen fit for almost any role.

The patriots, however, turned their attentions to the most destructive of all pursuits; perfection. Some subsidiaries were reasonable even in their passion, but others sought to generate constant, equivalent products free from the fallibility of baseline human reproduction.

AnimaSys fell into the third category. Contrary to popular misconception, there was no “supersoldier program” in the State. However, the spirit of the State, the commanding self-reliance and determination the Deteis revered, was instilled into the children nonetheless. Though they were contracted to Kaalakiota, Lai Dai, Wiyrkomi and their protection services and subsidiaries alike, each one held the countenance and discipline of a soldier – hence, the origin of the supersoldier myth.

The company operated out of anchored structures known as “plants.” Each plant had one hundred “pods.” Each pod held one hundred “seeds.” Each seed held a child.

The seed was, in fact, a glass tube measuring roughly one-hundred thirty centimeters. At each end it was sealed with a stout metal cap, tapered slightly inward. The upper cap held a rack of mechanical arms within the sealed tube, like a graceful metal spider with slender, bent arms of black plastic holding a dozen and some different tools. These were used for a variety of purposes, including feeding and administering necessary medial treatments. Children began as fertilized eggs in much smaller incubation chambers, raised for exactly two-hundred seventy days until the individual embryos had matured into newborns – an odd word to use for the process, but a necessary one. Once implanted, the tiny bodies were held in place by a pair of the metal arms, supported by two articulate fingers on either side. The tube was filled with an ectoplasmic solution, and the child steadily coated by a synthetic vernix to protect their skin from the potential damages of their new glass womb.

Each child, at their tenth month of existence, was outfitted with what the plant operators referred to as a “gearbox.” A marvel of modern science, the device consisted of a coin of supertensile plastic, a self-contained transcranial microcontroller with enough of a battery life to fuel a small number of nanites. Implanted while the skull was still pliable, the gearbox’s nanites were programmed to build a synthetic synapse web through the infant’s brain, using their hulls as the materials. By the time the battery ran out, the child had a flexible network of filaments embedded in their brain.

While the children slumbered in their tanks for six years, the gearboxes taught them. Through the same technology used for “skill books,” the future citizens were subconsciously given the natural education their parents would have otherwise provided. As they learned to walk, speak, and the basics of environmental awareness, their bodies were built by electric impulses and a constant feed of enriched nutrient paste, made more complex over time to build up their gastric systems.

These seeds were positioned in rows of ten between catwalks, lying back like blades of grass, supported by pairs of heavy robotic arms that could raise and lower them individually at the command of the operators. The pale creations were exposed to artificial light cycles mimicking day and night. Though they remained unconscious, their eyes were opened by pincer tools now and then to adjust them to light. They were kept under constant medical surveillance, inoculated against a wide range of diseases, and those with rare genetic defects were weeded out. Very rarely did the full hundred seeds not reach fruition.

Such was Senn’s conception. At the time, he had not been granted his randomized citizen’s name and was instead designated 4-91-72 – developed in the fourth plant of AnimaSys’s facility on Osmen IV’s second moon, ninety-first pod, seventy-second seed.

Before the program was terminated, multiple scientific studies were conducted to research the effects of these extremist facilities. Though the exact reasons were ultimately unknown, many held the belief that it was companies like AnimaSys that made the State reconsider the program. More than one study reported that such sterile, uniform and unnatural growth of human beings induced a type of autism in the children, mechanizing their thought processes and stunting them emotionally. This devolved into a “nature versus nurture” argument, and ultimately never reached closure in the public sphere.

More popularly accepted was the belief that companies like AnimaSys failed because of the exorbitant costs associated with their facilities. Where the liberal and practical factions produced children at slower rates, they did so without much technological intervention. AnimaSys, conversely, threw the bulk of its resources into working against nature itself, and shareholders lost faith when their contracts became unreasonably expensive.

Whatever the reason, a strange byproduct of this method of artificial reproduction went largely unnoticed; tube children were conscious and alert during their “birth.”

Senn remembered his as clearly as any other memory in his head.

The suddenness of his awakening was impossible to describe, but he could liken it to the mixed signals of having one’s skin suddenly plunged into hot water. He felt burnt and frozen at once, and his eyes flew open suddenly, tearing the layer of waxy membrane over their lids. Light flooded his pupils, and though it was dim, it overwhelmed him for a moment. He stretched and writhed as his instincts told him to breathe, his throat still aching from the removal of his feeding tube.

The scratching sound of the tank's voice was gone from his head, replaced with a gentle beeping as steady as his heartbeat, and whirring like a creature's breath.  

He’d been restrained on a long examination table, from the feel of nylon against various parts of his skin. His eyes swam to take in their surroundings; white figures moved at either side, a mass of black, silver and white spires squirming overhead. He struggled to understand the thing, as it hadn’t been named by the tank that taught him. He named it the Sharp.

A tiny arm stretched out to meet him, and he gaped slightly as he watched it settle over his eye, soft fingertips supporting its little eye. Suddenly a flash of light and a puff of air struck his eye, and he winced in confusion, which seemed to please the thing. The Sharp extended more cold metal hands, one wrapping tightly around his bicep and constricting it slowly, another removing an exterior wire from the back of his skull, leaving only something like a shallow jack inlet to mark his gearbox’s location, now nothing more than an inert piece of plastic in his head.  

Senn let out a whimper, the first noise he’d made in his brief life, drawing the attention of one of the nearby figures. It drew close, and he suddenly calmed at the sight of a placid female face. Some part of him recognized the image, and he understood the safety it brought – unbeknownst to him, the product of his tank’s education. Her fine blonde hair was tied back in a neat bun, a classic face and plain blue eyes making the child lie still.

“This one passes,” she stated in an authoritative voice. Senn marveled at the sounds, piecing them together and shifting on the table as he came to understand their meaning.

He felt something briefly tug the corners of his mouth upward, before calmness washed over him.

[Senn Typhos]

(( Wulp, finally got around to making another one of these. Lets see if I've still got my rhythm. ))

Pt. 6 - Parable


Once, the great warrior Yosujin was challenged to a duel by a warrior from a rival caste.

The warrior, whose name was Sudakka, honorably allowed Yosujin to select the time of their duel. Yosujin said, “I will need one year to prepare for our battle.” Sudakka graciously agreed.

Sudakka returned to his caste, and commissioned a great blade to be forged for him, taller than a man and sharper than the northern ice fields. He had a spear made, strong and straight. He had a bow strung from an ancient tree and thick sinews.

Sudakka ordered a suit of armor be crafted for him, made from plates of the strongest iron, bound with the most supple leather, and sewn with the finest silks.

On the day of the duel, Sudakka arrived on the battlefield in his gleaming armor, protected by a fierce-faced helmet, with his banner displayed proudly. Seeing the figure of Yosujin in the mist, he drew his sword and called out his challenge.

“Where.”

Senn pressed the muzzle of his pistol harder against his captive’s skull. An immigrant, most likely Sebiestor, dreadlocks and a long coat; a dealer, as it had turned out, under Zuku’s ever-growing employ.

“I told you, I don’t know!” the dealer replied in a voice both frustrated and fearful. One grey eye stared at Senn through a broken sunglass lens, heavily bloodshot and wavering.

“Where,” Senn demanded a second time. The word was slowly becoming the majority of his language. He bent the dealer’s arm back further, eliciting a yelp of pain. Among the dank, rusted corridors of the lower levels, that was a worthy threat; bodies were a common sight, while law enforcement was not.

A moment of silence passed, with the dealer’s eye widening as he considered his assailant. Senn drew the barrel of the gun over the pale man’s eyeball, and it widened even further around that dark metal shape.

“Jukoti,” the dealer whispered. “He went to Jukoti.”

Senn had feared hearing two things during his hunt; one, that Zuku had left the colony. That meant that Senn would need to procure transport, and with no money, that was a challenge. Obe Prime was separated into many colonies, almost all of them as large as Oduka, and access to any colony by foot was impossible, due to the planet’s  above-average surface gravity and feeble atmospheric pressure. Surviving outside a colony was impossible without technological intervention.

Senn heard his second fear an instant later:

“He knows you’re coming.”

Yosujin turned to face Sudakka. Seeing his opponent dressed only in a simple robe and wielding a simple blade, Sudakka approached with confidence.

Sudakka drew his bow and let fly a handful of arrows. But in his haste, he had aimed poorly, and Yosujin stood still as the arrows struck the ground at his feet.

Sudakka drew his spear and charged Yosujin, intent on running the warrior through. Yosujin parried the spear and cut away its head.

Sudakka drew his blade, and struck out against his foe. But Yosujin was as swift and unrelenting as the storm winds. With fear in his heart, Sudakka parried and blocked, but could not summon the courage to attack Yosujin himself.

Yosujin disarmed Sudakka and threw him to the ground.

Senn woke with a start. Having slept little since his hunt began, his body now betrayed him with its exhaustion. Aboard an inter-colony monorail system, the hum of engines had lulled him to sleep.

He glanced around; confused faces met his gaze. The other passengers had been startled by the sudden motion of the previously statuesque stranger riding with them to Jukoti. The crumpled clothing and hood hiding his eyes probably didn’t make them feel any more comfortable with his presence.

Feeling their stare, Senn was compelled to rise and escape the confines of the carriage. Feeling staring eyes following him, he snaked through the crowd of bodies, towards the back of the train.

Once there, he rested against the riveted metal corner of the last carriage and focused his attention on the blurred texture of the tunnel surrounding him. It was an older style of construction, still relying on plasteel concrete for structural support and minimal cost. Every so often, there was a stretch of clear glass and a brief view of Obe Prime’s natural terrain. The planet’s surface was rarely seen by colonists; the surface was inhospitable to human life, kept constantly hot by an atmosphere thick with carbon dioxide. The sun, a “bright giant,” was rather distant and appeared only as a fiercely luminous blue star, hovering beyond the orange skyline. A landscape defined by thick algae fields, marsh lands and well-fed trees was populated by primordial creatures that could survive in such conditions, but a human couldn’t experience Obe Prime’s surface without specialized environmental suits. Every structure required sealed, pressurized climates and antibacterial filtration systems.

Senn stared at the distant sun during its brief time in view. Having remained in the static environment of the government orphanage for his early life, and the sterile habitat of Oduka Colony for his adult life; he wondered how sunlight or wind would feel if he were allowed to know them.

A commotion in the front of the carriage snapped Senn out of his thoughtful state. He glanced behind him, just enough for one eye to see beyond the hood of his coat; two young men, dressed darkly and mutated by tattoos and piercings, gaunt and skeletal with sharpened grins, had barged their way into the monorail at the latest stop. On one, Senn recognized a simple long-eared skull tattoo. He instantly turned away, focusing on the corner of the carriage, but listening intently to their chatter.

“Nineteen-hundred, our time?” one inquired, pushing his way to an empty space on the side of the carriage.

“Jukoti time, duh,” the other replied, sneering at his comrade. “So twenty-hundred for us.”

“We’ll get there in time,” the first one assured. “Just make sure you’re strapped.”

“And the big boss is gonna be there?”

Senn tensed at that. Feeling a surge of paranoia, he tucked his hands into the shared pocket over his gut, taking a firm hold of his pistol and twisting the safety free.

“The ojaabun himself,” answered the second voice, chuckling.

“Gonna be a crazy night,” the first answered enthusiastically.

Senn felt his hand tense around the pistol grip and cast his eyes upward, meeting the brief gaze of that viciously blue, constricted eye above him. It stared back urgently, crying for revenge, before sinking into a dusty orange haze.

Sudakka was defeated. Yosujin removed Sudakka’s helmet, and prepared his blade.

“How did you defeat me?” Sudakka asked.

Yosujin, being honorable, answered the warrior’s final words.

“You spent a year preparing to protect your body. I spent a year preparing for death.”