Hole Punch

 

Ch.1: The mysterious stranger

 

Authors notes: I’m planning to make this story into a 3d manga, hopefully starting this summer. This will be a much more serious story then what you usually get from me, but there’ll be some comedic parts in here too.

 

End notes

 

 

            Some time in the near future

 

 

            It had started out a day like any other day. The people went about their daily business, going to work, mowing the lawn and complaining about gas prices just as they had done for as long as anyone could remember. It was a sweltering hot day, the sun hung in the sky as if it were a glaring evil eye sending bad omens down to the people of earth. And thus it seemed things would continue on like that forever. But unknown to everyone today would be when everything changed forever.

            It was around 4 PM when George Barnett, a working middle class man arrived home from work. He was a chubby man, 45 years of age, his hair graying from stress. Those darn neighbors who had just moved in next door weren’t properly weeding their lawn. They might cause his property value to go down because of that. Before he could give any more attention to his neighbor’s weeds he heard a faint humming sound. It almost sounded like the noises the alien ships made in the old 1950’s movie “War of the worlds”. Slowly the sound grew in power, George didn’t know why, but there was something ominous about that sound. It shouldn’t be there, whatever was making it had no right to intrude on his world, but for some mysterious unknown reason it was indeed here! Slowly he began to turn, sweat forming on the back of his neck, not from the sweltering heat, no this was ice cold sweat. The kind of sweat that accompanies absolute terror.

            George whirled around, and was instantly bathed in green light. For a split second he beheld a towering form in the distance, he was speechless in terror as whatever it was peered into his very soul revealing it to the world. As he raised his hands defensively his body slowly stopped moving, his joints stiffening and bones coming to a halt. Small thorny branches began to sprout all over his form as roots drilled through the bottoms of his souls and ripped through his clothes, forcing their way into the pavement causing the cement to crack and the dirt to move. George never saw exactly what it was that made the sickly green light that bathed his body in a mysterious glow. But that no longer mattered to him anymore.

 

            Elsewhere around the same time

 

            A bus drove lazily through a suburban neighborhood. It was a yellow school bus for Skevenston elementary school. There was nothing terribly special about it, for years this clunky sputtering dinosaur of a vehicle had driven kids two and fro between school and their houses. For years discarded trash, spit and parts of disregarded launches had been ground into the floor, the seats and every orifice of the vehicles interior from the children’s rough housing despite the best attempts to clean it up. And so it would seem things would continue for years to come. But unknown to everyone today would be when everything changed forever.

 In the back of the school bus a crack rang out of wood breaking against flesh. A little boy let out a cry holding onto his face.

            “You little brat! How many times have I told you never to come back here!” said a girl who looked to be about several years older then him. He began to cry as the girl who had just hit him with the ruler gazed down at him coldly with unsympathetic eyes.

            There was a reason why he liked to sit in the back of the bus. The reason was that in the back of the bus when a tire hit a large bump it would send him flying into the air. For only a moment he would be like a bird soaring through the air. Or an astronaught in space. For some reason this girl and the other kids only want these seats for themselves they didn’t want him there. Was it so wrong to soar through the skies even if only for moment?

            The little boy only grinned dopily looking back at her. In fury she raised the ruler again and cracked it across his face. This time the ruler broke, a piece of wood flying away. “Damn kids….” The bus driver muttered turning on the radio to drown out the noise. However before he could do anything else he saw something that seemed to freeze his very blood as the bus swerved colliding with a fire hydrant.

            The sound of dozens of high-pitched screams filled the bus as the little boy rubbed his face in a state of confusion. What had just happened? Some of the screams seemed to change into animalistic howls while others were completely silenced. He turned to look out the window. A fiery sickly green light shown through it bathing the entire bus in a mysterious presence, a presence of something alien to this world. He looked out the window, towering above the houses, taller then any sky scraper he had ever seen was a titanic form perhaps more then two miles tall standing across town with its back facing in his direction. He could barely make it out from the greenish aura that bathed its form, but it was definatly a creature of some sort, it almost resembled a huge dragon. Its head was adorned by several mighty horns that jutted from it like pillars of fire. On it’s back were two folded wings lashing out behind its body were two long mighty tails, each bathed in greenish light. Slowly the two huge green wings unfolded extending to their true length possibly five or six miles long. After stretching them it batted its wings several times and a number nearby cars were lifted into the air by the force of the wind along with various bits and pieces of buildings and other debris getting tossed into the sky as if they were all mere toys. A large brick building was slowly ripped apart in the force of the wind, hundreds of bricks went sailing off to the left of the monster shattering against the side of another larger building shattering apart as they went careening into its structure like hundreds of bullets before it too collapsed under the pressure. In the face of such power even the mightiest structure built by man meant less then nothing.

            He didn’t know why, but for some reason this creature which any sane man would have wet himself after seeing didn’t frighten him. In fact he was drawn to it like a moth to a candle. He forced the window open looking out at the huge beast. It folded its wings back and slowly turned to face his direction as if it could tell that someone was looking at it. He could barely make out it’s face, but three pairs of eyes burned like white balls of fire amid the aura of greenish light. He forced the window open a bit more, stretching out his tiny arm in the direction of the huge monster as if to try to grasp it.

 

 

            Among the survivors of the great cataclysm the mysterious being became known as “The Lord of Terror” as predicted by Nostradamus in his prophecy. The Lord of Terror vanished that day never to be seen again, just as mysteriously and abruptly as it arrived. As the centuries passed, what was once history soon became legend, and legend became myth. Save that is, for those who still remembered the actual event.

 

Time passed since the arrival of The Lord of Terror: Unknown

 

 

It was a clear blue day out, in the distance a number of huge rolling white clouds sailed through the sky. As far as the eye could see the greenish planes stretched to the horizon where a range of mountains stood under the watchful eye of the rolling clouds that slowly drifted across the landscape. At one time a city existed here, but it had long since rotted away with the passage of time. All that was left was the occasional relic one might find walking across the pains such as eroding bits of concrete and steel support beams that were slowly rusting away. Occasionally one might even find what was left of a car or a street lamp. But these were only the dying remnants of what had once been. The world had moved on since then, nature reclaiming the land that had been built upon it. Slowly with time, even the pyramids would erode into nothing, the same was true with everything built by human hands.

Lying atop one of the ruined buildings that still stood was a naked man who looked to be in his early twenties. He had slightly greenish tinged skin as well as ghostly white hair. On his chest was a large scar, almost as if it had once been ripped open and then welded shut. Despite not wearing any clothes he was wearing a pair of sunglasses, which covered a pair of amber colored snake like eyes. He raised one hand and stuck one finger in his nose and then pulled it out. Rolling a booger in two fingers he flicked it into a corner where it exploded in a small burst of flames. He glanced to the side lazily noticing some sort of disturbance out in the plains as a tree fell causing a crash that echoed all the way to his position.

Suddenly the tranquil atmosphere was shattered as the roar of a huge beast rung across the landscape. Dozens of things that appeared to be birds sized insects flocked into the skies flying away as the monstrous bestial head of a huge monster rose up above the bushes. This was followed by a tiny scream and some very fast tiny footsteps as something ran through the plains of grass, which grew and spiraled into the air nearly ten feet tall. Whatever was running through the grass emerged into a clearing stumbling over a few rocks on the ground. It appeared to be small teddy bear made of paper mache. Another roar followed as something huge leapt out of the grass landing in front of the paper mache teddy bear. The very earth shattered under its tremendous weight, it curled its claws turning up large chunks of the ground as it looked at its prey. It was a huge black hairy beast standing nearly twenty feet tall. Its body had a gate similar to a gorilla, but it had a longer snout like that of a wolf with several rows of fangs inside of its mouth. And like a mole it was blind with no eyes. A long rat like tail cracked like a whip behind its body as it took a few steps foreword. Panicking the teddy bear ran towards what was left of a crumbling building. Scrambling over bits of crumbling concrete, he ran between two support beams as the huge beast leapt into the air following him.

It landed on top of one of the support beams causing the already rusted piece of metal to crack and come tumbling down. The monster landed with a crash sending bits of rock into the air. The teddy bear tried to run away when a long rat like tail cracked like a whip knocking him off his feet. The beast got up shacking the dust and rocks from its body as the huge snake like tail twitched back and forth behind it. The teddy bear was paralyzed in fear, he could no longer mouth as the huge monster came closer, white foam dripping from its mouth along with a long snake like toung. It raised one taloned hand into the air prepared to strike when suddenly it stopped. A jet spray of blood issued from its back showering the area in crimson. The little bear screamed stumbling away as he found his body covered in sticky red blood which was coming down in torrents. The monster stumbled and then fell to the ground with a huge crash. It wasn’t clear what happened, whatever killed the monster had moved so fast the teddy bear hadn’t even gotten a glimpse of it.

The teddy bear looked to see a ghostly pale man with slightly greenish tinged skin, ghostly white hair and amber colored, almost snake like eyes looking down at him. Whoever this guy was, he was buck-naked. But that wasn’t important, his right hand did not look like a human hand. It grew out into four long talons like a predatory birds claws, encrusted with scales that shown like diamonds in the sun. And clutched in that hand was a huge bloody spinal cord that had been ripped from the monsters back. He gave it a squeeze and it exploded sending bits of flesh, blood and shards of bone and marrow flying through the air. He turned his gaze onto the little paper mache teddy bear. “You there. You’re an immortal like me aren’t you?” The teddy bear nodded completely speechless, probably too intimidated to say anything.

 

A bit later

 

“I’ve never met an immortal who couldn’t even defend himself against something like this. What’s your name?” he asked the teddy bear. He flexed his hand slightly, it had changed back to looking like a more human hand, and he had just gotten done washing the blood off it.

“I…I can’t remember…. it’s been so long…” the teddy bear said looking at his feet.

“Whatever…. guess I’ll call you..hmmm what’s a good name….I think I’ll call you Spud….yeah you look like a Spud to me. By the way, my name is Zero.”

“Hey, I don’t think I like that name…You can’t just go around calling people Spud.”

“Too late I named you Spud and that names gonna stick, that’s the law of the west! Nothing anyone can do about it now!” Zero said grinning like an ass.

“Law of the west my butt! You made that up!” the little bear was shaking with frustration, this man was infuriating. Zero grinned apparently amused at Spuds reaction. He then turned to where he had strung up the monsters body over a pile of logs he had collected and piled beneath its now skinned carcass dripping with blood.

He took a deep breath before letting loose a jet of white fire from his mouth setting a pile the logs ablaze almost instantly.

            “Your going to eat that?” asked the Spud a bit apprehensively as smoke and hundreds of sparks flew up colliding with the creature’s body.

“Yeah so?”

“I think that thing used to be human at some time…” the Teddy bear said looking away.

“Yeah probably. Doesn’t look like any of the usual animals you see around here. Probably was human.”

“Why are you going to eat it then?”

“Why not? It’d be a waste not to, besides I’m feeling kind of hungry, would you rather I ate you?” He said turning to look at Spud grinning slightly revealing some glistening white razor sharp fangs.

“Y-you wouldn’t do that would you?” Spud said backing away.

“HAHA!!! Had you going for a moment there. But seriously no one in his right mind would eat something that looks like paper mache. Why the hell do you look like that anyway? You supposed to be a mummy or something?”

“I’ve always looked like this…. since the Lord of Terror came.” Spuds face was unreadable, if he could make facial expressions would he look sad, nostalgic maybe? Zero had no way of knowing.

“Interesting….” Zero said smiling slightly before he went back to tending the fire. He glanced back at Spud, there was a small crack where some of the paper was slightly loose right between his eyes. He could almost see beneath it, but even his eyes could only pick up darkness “I wonder, what do you look like beneath that?”

“There’s nothing beneath there, this is my real face.”

“There’s a crack in your face. Maybe you should take better care of your complexion. Little boys hitting puberty have such filthy skin don’t they?” Zero grinned slightly his two snake like eyes seemed to be boring into Spud as if he could see what was beneath that paper. The little teddy bear shifted uneasily.

“I don’t need to take that from someone who runs around naked.” The little bear said accusingly but Zero didn’t seem to care as he continued to stare at him.

“My body can’t be hurt by the elements, wearing clothes would be meaningless. But something’s under that paper mache, let me see it. It’s the least you can do in payment to me for saving your ass from that monster.” Spud almost fell backwards in surprise, as he suddenly found Zero sitting right next to him even though just a moment ago he had been standing about ten feet away.

 He began to reach for Spuds face only to have his hand slapped away by one of his little arms. “This is my real face! So keep your dirty hands away from it!” Spud shouted causing Zero to take a few steps back.

            “Ahh…I’m so sorry oh great one, in the future I’ll know better then to try to scar the face of a beautiful young maiden!” Zero said sarcastically walking over to the fire ripping one of the legs off the now burning carcass. He opened his mouth and bit down ripping off a large chunk of flesh.

            Spud watched him as he ate, that man Zero, he didn’t trust him. He’d ripped the spine out of that monster with the power of a demon exposing its innards to the world. If given that chance he’d do the same to his face just for the sheer fun of it. He was no different then that monster who had been chasing him.

 

Flashback:

 

Spud sat in the middle of a dark room in what was left of his house. The place looked like it had just been hit by an earthquake. Furniture was scattered all over the floor toppled from where it had once been. Some of the plaster had fallen down from the wall and a gaping hole was in the ceiling. Spud looked out into the night sky, a full moon hung in the sky like a huge glowing disco ball shining down on him. He looked down to a puddle on the floor where some rainwater had collected. He looked at himself feeling his face, he had been like this for a few weeks now but he still couldn’t believe it. He noticed a small crash on his fore head.

“What is this?” He began to reach from it but was stopped by a strange sense of dread. If he peeled it away, would he come apart like a childs paper mache sculpture? What if the damage was irreparable, he couldn’t just tape himself back together. But deep in his gut he felt there was something more inside there. He looked more closely, all he could see was blackness. He began to reach for it again but stopped. Over many years he would contemplate what would happen if he did peel it away, but never had the guts to do it.

 

Present

 

“I’ll die before I let someone like you see beneath my face.” He said under his breath. Zero continued munching away at large chunks of meat he had ripped from the monsters body.

“Say, is there any particular reason you’re in these parts?” Zero asked glancing over at Spud. Spud didn’t answer and just stared back at him. “Hmmm….” Zero said suspiciously. “I bet you’re after the Shard of eternity.”

“How did…?”

“It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. We aren’t the only immortals after it, I’ve sensed several others in the area as well snooping around Uroboros city. And rumor has it, Keanu, the man who controls Uroboros city is also an immortal like us. What do you want it for anyway, want to grow taller or something? Want the power to deck a god with your puny little fist? Hmmmm?”

Spud didn’t answer and just stared at Zero with his usual unreadable expression.

“ Fine don’t tell me then. But just to give you fair warning, you should turn back now. That shard is going to be mine, and I won’t show mercy on anyone who gets in my way.” Zero said taking out his sunglasses putting them on. “The next time we meet we’ll be enemies, so if your going to be a mummy, you should stay in the ground and ferment like one. If you insist on continuing, you’ll have to do better then that if you want to win against me.” Six huge insect like wings erupted from the back of Zeros head by his ears extending about fifteen feet each. A gust of wind blew and the fluffy seeds of a gigantic seventeen-foot tall dandelion caught in the wind began to blow away on the breeze. At the same time the six wings pulsed with some strange power glowing green as Zero rose into the sky along with the dandelion seeds floating lazily off into the blue skies.

 

 

Uroboros city:

 

 

On the day the Lord of Terror descended on earth bathing its people in it’s mysterious light, not everyone was changed. Some people had been indoors at the time and never saw the light. For people who for whatever reason had stayed in their houses or were working in the sewers, a difficult task had been thrust upon their shoulders. The task of salvaging the human race in a world that had been inverted into something so strange and alien, about a third of them died in the first few weeks unable to adjust to the changes the earth underwent. But for those that did survive, life did carry on in some form. Centuries later, in isolated areas all over the globe were pocket civilizations, the distant descendents of those humans who had remained unchanged on that day so many years ago. Uroboros was one such city closed off from the rest of the world under a huge semitransparent dome.

Uroboros city was a place isolated from the rest of the world. The people of Uroboros went about their daily lives in ignorance of the outside world, for they were forbidden to ever leave the city.

It was late afternoon as the sun began to slowly move west across the sky causing some of the larger buildings in the dome to cast shadows on the smaller ones. One of these was Uroboros city high. It was a fairly average grayish building with a rectangular structure and one smaller tower like structure on each end. For the students inside the building the day was just beginning to wind down to a close. One girl with slightly shorter then shoulder length black hair, 16-year-old Kiri Midori was one such student who went here. She was a fairly small girl who wore a black tank top and shorts. 

About thirty minutes ago the teacher had started his lecture about the history of Uroboros but somewhere along the way his words stopped having any meaning to her as she looked out the window. Instead of listening to any of those noises coming out of the teacher’s mouth she was looking at Babel tower which stood at the center of Uroboros and was visible from all side of the city. Babel tower was a huge metallic structure that stretched up to the top the dome. There were no entrances or exits at ground level, the only way in and out was through some sort of hanger midway up the towers height. Occasionally a strange shuttle like aircraft would fly too and fro from the tower. All she knew about Babel tower was that it was the place where the cities ruler “Lord Keanu” resided.

Was Keanu really an immortal? And if so what were the immortals? Many of the adults regarded them as gods and demons. Kiri always thought that immediately granting divinity to something just because it was different was pretty dumb. She personally thought they were aliens, or maybe creatures from the fourth dimension. But really there was no telling what they were, it had been ages since anyone had seen an immortal and many people had stopped believing in their existence regarding them as nothing more then legend.

As Kiri stared up at the huge structure of Babel tower she noticed a small green dot seemingly pass through the side of the transparent dome. “AAAH!” She stood up and looked out the window.

“Kiri what are you doing?” the teacher asked a bit exasperated. He had long ago given up trying to cope with that girl’s short attention span and odd behavior.

“A UFO, I just saw a UFO come inside the dome. Maybe it was an immortal.” She said airily with a smile, this had been the first time she saw something like that.

“Yeah right, …hehehe” a boy sitting a few decks away from her said mockingly. Similar remarks seemed to fill the classroom as some of the other students laughed at her.

With a somewhat smug smile a blond haired boy sitting behind her said, “It’s been scientifically proven that the existence of immortals is physically and biologically impossible. All cellular matter eventually breaks down after all.” He pushed his glasses up on his nose smiling smugly.

“Scientists don’t know everything. If they don’t exist how do you explain all the sightings? Not just that, there’s actually been physical evidence surrounding their appearances. Twenty years ago that hole in the dome didn’t just melt itself!”

“All hoaxes, if they were really real we’d probably have a body or at least some more compelling physical evidence by now. In this day and age only idiots believe in things like immortals.” The boy said with a smile.

A few of the girls on the other side of the room giggled making a few remarks about how he was so cool and smart. This boys name was Robin Butler. Unlike Kiri, Robin was in the top honors of the school and was the 3rd runner up for valedictorian. Among the schools students he was among the most charismatic and popular. Robin was slightly larger then average build with blond hair and hazel colored eyes. He was slightly muscled with tanned skin wearing a white T-shirt and Jeans. However, even he had his secrets.

 

“But I really saw it, it was there! It probably made another hole…. this could be a historic day, first contact with other intelligent life forms!” She squinted trying to get a good look at the part of the dome where she saw the light. She squinted from the sun but still didn’t seem to see anything out of the ordinary. Had it managed to pass through the dome without making a hole?

“Alright Kiri, that’s enough of that, now sit down until the end of class, you can look for aliens afterwards.”

He smiled slightly as she sat back down. He took a sharpened pencil out of his box and leaned forward slightly so that the tip stuck into her back as she sat down. Kiri let out a small yipe standing back up crashing into the front of her desk knocking it over. “Ahahaha……oops” she rubbed the back of her head noticing the desk on the floor.

“Why me?” the teacher said to himself rubbing his head

 

Awhile later after school got out

 

Kiri rubbed the place in her back where she had been jabbed by the pencil, she had put a band-aid there. When she was about four blocks away from school she took a detour down a narrow alleyway jumping over several rusting shopping carts cluttering up the road and moving between several dumpsters. Finally she got to where she wanted to go. Sitting against the wall next to a used car garage was Robin. “Finally here, I had trouble getting my things together today because everything fell out of my backpack, papers were all over the place.”

“You really ought to get a binder or something, I never lose my things.” Robin said.

“Maybe…you put on a pretty good performance today in class.”

“Of course, all my performances are A+ material. You’ll be voting for me for class president tomorrow right?”

“I guess so.” Kiri said a little half-heartedly.

 “So anyway you saw a UFO right? Wanna go look for it?” asked Robin. Contrary to his actions in the classroom, the truth was the two of them were actually friends and had been since they were little kids.

“Yeah lets go look for it! It’s amazing, I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

            “Hmmmm…I wish I could’ve seen it.” Robin said a bit wistfully. Kiri itched her band-aid a bit, she had gotten all the bits of graphite out, but now area where he had stabbed her with the pencil was stained a grayish color from the pencil graphite.

“It was up there, a green light.” Kiri said pointing up to the right of the tower of Babel. The two of them made their way through another dirty alleyway. Uroboros city was full of such places full of decaying garbage, rusting vehicles and other objects people had forgotten. Aside from government buildings like the tower much of the city was like that, a place that everyone had forgotten, a place where forgotten people were destined to live their forgotten lives forever.

Climbing over a couple of wrecked cars that had been left to rust in the alleyway the two of them made their way over to a building near the end of the alley. It was nearby one of the openings to the air filtration tunnels, which constantly pumped out a clean air supply for the city, and when they got this close to it, it could almost feel like wind from the outer world was blowing down on them. Neither of them had ever experienced real wind, which just made it all the more novel the experience. The building next to it was some sort of old warehouse, neither Kiri nor Robin knew what it was for, but it was an interesting place to hang out. The two of them pulled down the old rusting ladder that led up to the roof of the building. Slowly the two of them climbed up the clattering structure as it wobbled under their combined movements. Kiri was the first to reach the top of the building climbing up onto the roof. A large gust of wind exited the air filtration pipes blowing her hair across her face as she got to her feet. Robin followed coming up behind her.

The two of them looked out at the reddening horizon clearly outside the dome. Even the clouds slowly moving like feathers across the sky were clearly visible. All that was part of a world they never knew but caught glimpses of every day. Robin looked into the sky “Aaah, I think I see another UFO!”

“No, that’s just one of the sentry guard drones, see you can tell by the shape.” Kiri said pointing to a pill shaped metallic object in the distance not to far away from where she had seen the greenish light. “But it’s not often those come out, I wonder if their looking for the thing I saw earlier.”

For a while the two of them sat there looking up at the tower of Babel and the clouds, which slowly passed over the dome when Robin lazily glanced over at her.

“Kiri, you think I could take on a werewolf? You know in a fight?”

“A werewolf?” One thing that only Kiri knew about Robin was that he was deftly afraid of werewolves, sure those creatures were force to be reckoned with, but he was scared of them to the point of irrational fear when there was no danger. “Naww, it’d probably snap your neck and crush your skull in its mouth. Those things are pretty strong you know. I heard about this one guy who was trying to hunt werewolves that had gotten into the sewer system. He disappeared, but a few months later they found him. Even his bones had been compressed down into a turd about this big.” Kiri said making an oval with her hands about twice the size of a chicken egg. Robin seemed to get a little pale as she described this but then went back to normal.

“Last night I had a dream about a werewolf, I was an immortal with a powerful mace and I killed it, smashed its brains in. I’ve always been afraid of werewolves, but maybe I don’t have to be anymore. Maybe that dream means I might have the blood of an immortal.” Robin said as a somewhat manic grin slowly spread across his face. He clenched one fist and looked down on it.

“Uhhh…somehow I doubt it…” Kiri said a bit dubiously smiling slightly.

“Who knows, I could be. Here catch!” He picked up a large stick that was lying nearby and tossed it to her.

“Huh?”

“You can be the werewolf.” He also picked up another larger stick the size of a small club. Robin never fought at school since that conflicted with his image. But when they were alone together it was a whole different game. Robin swung the stick at her and she blocked it with her own. He swung again several more times Kiri blocking each time. With the last block Robins stick almost got through her defenses scratching her across the fore head making a small cut. He raised the stick to strike once more but before he could she swung her foot in an upwards arc in a graceful snap kick knocking the stick out of his hand so it flew up in the air and came down landing on his face. Robin stumbled backwards covering his fore head.

“Ow damn it!” he said rubbing his head.

That got him to settle down a bit, the truth was even though she was a fairly small girl, she was unusually strong. Much stronger then Robin was, which was something that he was keenly aware of. If she fought Robin Seriously he would probably get hurt, but that never got him to stop trying to get her to do it. She didn’t want to hurt him though. He was her only friend after all.

Then they both heard the noise of the beating wings of a large insect.

“Hmmm…Carrots here!” Kiri said with a smile as what appeared to be a foot long orange colored cockroach descended from the sky landing on her shoulder. It’s four orange wings folded together and its antenna twitched as it made an odd squeaky noise.

“It’s good to see you too, I was worried that something might have happened.” This was Carrot, a pet insect that Kiri found a few years ago that had wandered into Uroboros from the outer world. When Kiri had found Carrot he had only been a few inches long. Humanities attitude towards cockroaches is something that had remained unchanged by the advent of the Lord of Terror, any regular person would have squashed Carrot regarding it as a pest. But Kiri instead had taken it home and raised it as a pet. Carrot sometimes flew away from home but always returned a few days later. One of the quarks about Kiri that no one ever seemed to be able to figure out was that she seemed to be able to communicate with Carrot or at least understand the insect’s feelings.

“You’ll never guess what I saw today….” She said, the cockroach’s antennae swiveled around.

“Oh….so you saw it too then…..what did it look like?”

            “Oh, it’s that bug of yours again. I bet my new pet rat could probably take him in a fight.” Robin said grinning.

            Kiri ignored him “Carrot says he saw it to, he was a bit closer then I was so he got a better look at it.”

            “I..I know that, I can understand him too you know.”

            “Really, did the immortal have red spots on his fore head?”

            “Well yeah….that is a common trait after all among supernatural creatures…”

            “You liar, I just made that up!” Kiri said a bit annoyed.

            “Damn it Kiri, you tricked me! How the hell do you understand what that things saying anyway?” Robin said with a frustrated look on his face.

            “Well it’s not really in words….more like pictures and feelings….you know?” An unusual amount of condensation began to spew out of the air filtration tunnel forming clouds of fog, which blew around the two of them as she talked.

            “Feelings of a cockroach….I’ve got to understand the feelings of cockroach to find an immortal huh…” Robin said quizzically. “That’s not going to be easy….” He said under his breath.

            “What?”

            “Nothing.” Robin said turning away.

            Suddenly Carrot made a loud screeching noise. Kiri bolted around and looked up to see something perched atop one of the long metal spires of a nearby building several stories higher then they were. Its body was partially shrouded in the fog from the air filter, but it was clearly visible. Its body was mostly humanoid but its lower legs seemed to be more reptilian with four large curving talons on each foot. Its body glistened covered in fine diamondoid scales barely visible in the fog. But despite having scales it also had some messy bleach white hair as well. And most striking of all were six huge greenish glowing insect like wings that came out the back of its head.

 “It’s…. it’s here! Robin look! It’s the immortal!” She said almost in a panic pointing up at it.

“WHAT WHERE?!?” Robin looked around anxiously but didn’t see anything.

“Are you blind its right there!” Kiri pointed to where it was perched.

“I don’t see anything….”

“But…But…no! He’s…It’s….” she said still pointing at it.

“Now whose the liar.” Robin said turning and going back to what he was doing.

It seemed to sense it was being watched and slowly turned, two amber-colored snake like eyes met Kiris gaze. At that moment she felt an indescribable terror engulf her soul as her eyes met with the creatures for the first time, it seemed to be looking right through her. Kiri’s legs went limp and she fell backwards landing on her butt, Carrot seemed to be affected too and quickly flew away. For just a moment Kiris body felt tingly like thousands of pins and needles were pricking her skin. She looked at her hand, a luminescent green glow seemed to be washing over her body. It pulled ever so slightly, at the same moment the glow around the creature’s wings also pulsed.

            “K…Kiri?” Robin said turning to look at Kiri who was frozen in terror. He couldn’t see the glow but he could see that something had just scared the shit out of Kiri.

The creature seemed to be slightly amused by this and smiled ever so slightly before vanishing in a green fireball of light. The fog swirled around where it had just been before going back to normal as if it had never been there at all. “Kiri what is it, Gyahh…” Robin noticed a large dark stain was forming on her pants. “W….wow you really did see it!” he exclaimed.

A little later

Kiri frowned holding her schoolbag in front of her so that no one would be able to see the stain on her pants. “You really saw it! Tell me what did it look like? What was it like?”

“I…don’t know why…. but that was the most terrifying experience I’ve ever had. I always wanted to meet an immortal, but when I saw him, I just wanted to run far away and never look back.”

“Yeah but…what did it look like?”

“I’ll tell you about it tomorrow, I just want to go home right now and find something dry to put on.”

“Hmmm…Ok…. maybe I’ll go back and look for it.”

“You shouldn’t, you wouldn’t be able to handle it. You’d understand if you saw it, regular humans just can’t compete with immortals.” Kiri said matter of factly as the two of them walked along.

By the time they got to Kiri’s house the sun was setting.

They both slid inside the unlocked door running upstairs before Kiris dad who was busy talking with someone in another room could notice anything. Kiri’s room was incredibly messy, it was strewn with all sorts of books and action figures. In most places people couldn’t even walk without stepping in something. The walls were all covered in posters of various movies and TV shows she liked. Kiri began to dig through her dressers pulling out another pair of shorts.

Robin had found one of her bras on the floor and was sitting on her bed trying to put it on. Of course he was much larger and it didn’t fit.

If only the other kids at school knew the truth “Don’t touch my stuff, I don’t want your groady body rubbing on my things!” at least that was what she wanted to say but instead she just clenched her hand in anger. “What are you doing give me that!”

“Heh…don’t want me touching it?” Robin said with an annoying grin on his face. He put it up to his face and blew his nose on it.

Kiri clenched her fist again but didn’t say anything. She reached over grabbing her bra out of his hands and pushing him towards the door. Robin tried to resist but wasn’t strong enough to effectively struggle against her. “Hey stop that!”

But before they got to the door it opened. A boy who appeared to be about the same age as Kiri and Robin opened the door. He had bleach white hair and slightly green tinged skin. His ears were also slightly pointed but not so much that it was too noticeable. He was wearing black with a dark shiny leather trench coat and some cool looking sunglasses perched on the top of his head. Kiri couldn’t place it but he seemed vaguely familiar.

“Oooh…. am I interrupting anything interesting?” he said smiling.

“Both of you get out I need to change.” She pushed both of them out shutting the door. “Who was that weird guy…. and who does he remind me of?” something about that guy made her uneasy, but she’d have to wait to find out who he was until after she got changed.

 

Outside the door

 

“Who the hell are you?” asked Robin, this guy seemed a little weird to him.

“I’m Zero, Kiris dad agreed to let me stay here if I help him run his cyber café.” He said with a smile. “You must be a friend of Kiris. Or are you more then that, you seemed to be awfully familiar with her bra back there.”

Robin got a horrified look on his face, this guy saw what he did! “N-no! You’d better not tell anyone about that…. no one will believe you in fact I have some money…”

“I don’t have any interest in your personal life. You could run around in your grandmas racy black panties and masturbate to educational channels for all I care.” Zero said

“Uhhhh…. I don’t do those sorts of things…”Robin said a bit more subdued, his eyes cast down looking at his feet.

“Sure I believe you, but just to warn you these eyes see everything. I’ll be downstairs, later!” Zero said with an insincere looking smile.

“That bastard what’s he trying to pull…” Robin thought to himself. He looked over at Kiris room, the door had been closed when that happened, how had Zero seen it? Was it a coincidence that he mentioned his grandma’s underwear, which he had discreetly stolen when they were out drying. No it couldn’t be that was impossible!

Kiri came out and noticed Robin looking pretty spooked “Hey where’d that other guy go?” Kiri waved her hand in front of his face. Robin didn’t respond. Kiri took out a marker and began doodling on his face.

“STOP!” Robin shouted pushing her away.

“Ok!Ok!” she said backing off a bit.

“Kiri, I don’t trust that guy, I want you to keep an eye on him and tell me about anything unusual he does.” Robin said.

“Jeez your so paranoid, he’s just some guy helping my dad with our cyber café business. But I have to admit I do get kind of a weird vibe from him, it seems kind of familiar too.” Kiri said trying to think of what he reminded her of.

“Not familiar, evil! Zero is not to be trusted! Anyway I’ll be seeing you tomorrow, we can plot how to get rid of him after school.”

“I don’t know if he seemed evil to me…. a little weird maybe but I don’t know about evil.” Kiri said a little confused by Robin’s actions as he stormed out of the house. Sometimes she could never figure that guy out, as smart as he was he could be incredibly paranoid.

Kiri walked down stairs and noticed Zero sprawled out on her couch watching TV, her dad was in the part of the house used as the cyber café checking out the work Zero did on the computers. “So my Dad hired you to help us with the cyber café?”

“Not exactly, I just needed a place to stay, I offered him my services in exchange for that. Say, earlier you had a big wet stain on your pants, see something scary?” Zero said smiling.

“You seem awfully happy about that.”

“Not at all, that’s just how I am hehehe….” For a moment Kiri thought she saw a forked toung flicker out of his grinning mouth for a split second. Did she really see that?

“You might not believe it, but I saw an immortal today.”

“Hmmm…an immortal eh? They say that if you see an immortal, you’ll lose something precious. Lost anything? Your marbles maybe? Your wallet? Or maybe you lost the keys to Tokugawas treasure? Hmmmm…. does Tokugawas treasure even have keys? I know you lost your super transforming Gekiganger action figure! That’s definatly it!” Zero pulled out a goofy looking robot action figure. Kiri didn’t recognize what it was from but it looked like it was from some ancient Japanese animation from the 1970’s. Not much of that survived though so even someone like Kiri who collected ancient films knew very little about it.

            “What the hell are talking about?”

            “Don’t worry about, it’s not important. After all, immortals are just an urban legend aren’t they?” Zero said staring at her, his eyes seeming to bore into her, for the first time she noticed Zero had the same eyes as the immortal she saw earlier. Kiri backed away turning pale white slumping against the wall.

            “Oh! What’s wrong?” Zero walked over to her. “Here I’ll help you up.” Zero took her hand and pulled Kiri back to her feet. She looked at his face again and his eyes looked like normal brown eyes. “What do I have something on my face?”

            “No, it’s…it’s nothing.”

            “Hmmm…nothing you say…” Zero smiled slightly.

            “Oh good, it’s nice to see you two getting along so well.” Kiris dad Sanjuro said as he came into the room. He was a balding lanky middle-aged man with a slight beard on his face. “Zero, I still can’t believe what you did with the computers. That program you wrote is amazing.”

            “Program?” Kiri asked.

            “The Zero Ring program, it performs all maintance tasks such as defragmenting antivirus, scan disk, etc all with one click in a matter of minutes. But that’s not all it, it’s also an over clocking program that boosts processing power by 550%.”

            “That’s impossible!” Kiri excalmed

            “Nothings impossible for me.” Zero said arrogantly putting on his sunglasses.

            “No seriously, I mean its one thing to make a program but there’s hardware limitations involved, especially with dads cheap dinosaur computers.” She walked into the room and looked around, the monitors were all there, but the computers had all vanished into thin air.

            “See isn’t it amazing?” her dad said walking over to one of the monitors and sitting down. He began typing on the keyboard and clicking with the mouse all without anything happening. He didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary though.

            “But their not turned on. They aren’t even connected to the computers…Dad what are you doing?” Kiri asked.

            “Yeah I know aren’t these great?” he said happily.

            “Did he even here what I said?” Kiri wondered to herself.

            “No he didn’t he only heard what I wanted him to hear. But I can’t fool you can I?” Zero said. Kiri turned to look at Zero who stared back with two yellow snake like eyes.

            “I knew it…. what do you want? Why are you here?” Kiri said reaching behind her grabbing a screwdriver off the table, it wasn’t much but it was better then nothing.

            “ Why am I here? No reason in particular, I was just passing through and thought it might be interesting living with humans for awhile, it does get ever so boring out in the wilderness at times.” He eyed the screwdriver in Kiris hand.

“As interesting as it would be to get penetrated by a girl, that’s unnecessary. I have no plans to hurt you. Besides, didn’t you always want to meet an immortal? Didn’t you always think we had some huge secret we could tell you, not that I’ll be spilling the beans if there are any secrets which there may or may not be.” Suddenly Zero appeared right behind her and leaned down next to her ear. “No better chance to find out about one if he’s living in your house.”

 Kiri blushed slightly, why was all this heat rushing to her face? “Keep away from me…” she said backing away a bit.

“Don’t worry about your family business, I can fool most people just like your dad, you should make quite a profit. Besides don’t you like things a bit out of the ordinary? Hmmm? My presence has got to be an improvement over anything this cardboard town has to offer.”

            “Uh…I guess…Cardboard town?” Kiri looked over at Zero who was setting up a few cardboard building on the table. He poured a little milk on one of the buildings making it rather soggy, the marker used to drawn the windows running.

            “I hate soggy things.” Zero flicked it with his finger knocking it off the table. “Good to see you decided to have me around for a little longer, when can I meet the rest of your friends? We can have lots of fun with….what ever the hell you people have fun with….hmmm maybe we can play with matches and do some bad stuff like that, could be fun…matches burn cardboard you know…” Zero said gleefully grinning.

            “I don’t really have any friends…. not besides Robin anyway.” Kiri sat down on the couch.

            Zero poked his head out from underneath the couch, how he got there in the first place was anyone’s guess. “Well…. from now on, you’ll have one more friend…. if that’s ok with you…” Zero said with a smile.

 Although he seemed a bit strange and something inside told her she shouldn’t trust him. Something else made her smile back ever so slightly to him. “O…ok…”

Zero was suddenly sitting next to her on the couch “But no one can know who I really am though…it’s our secret ok.”

“I understand that…. but could you stop appearing in weird places like that?”

 

Later that night

           

Kiri had never participated in such a bizarre dinner conversation. “But how do you keep the processors from overheating?” her dad asked.

“Well it’s pretty complex you see you just need to bla bla bla bla bla bla bla….bla bla bla bla. And that’s all there is to it.” Zero said as he ate one of the fish they cooked for dinner bones and all.

“That’s…. that’s ingenious…. we aren’t worthy to be in your presence!” Kiris dad said in awe.

“Hahaha…oh come on I’m not that great I just know a little bit about blabla bla and thought I would apply it to blablablabla. That’s all there is to it.”

“Uhhh…. what exactly are you guys talking about?” Kiri said as she absent-mindedly took another bite of fish.

“Isn’t it obvious were talking about blablablablablablabla.” Zero responded.

This conversation was making her head hurt. Zero might be able to teach humans about a lot of things, but would he ever voluntarily give out that sort of information? He could spout things out of his mouth that meant less then complete bullshit but he could somehow fool most people into thinking it was words from the divine. She really had a tough job cut out for her trying to figure him out.

Kiri lay down on her bed, it had been a long day, maybe she should go to bed early, but could she really sleep with Zero in the house. What if he did something bad in her sleep, what if he completely vanished without a trace and she was the only one who remembered him the next day. Neither of those possibilities put her at ease.

“Hmmm…. you seem to be thinking hard about something.” A voice came from under her bed.

“I thought I told you to stop doing that.” Kiri said annoyed.

“What can I say, old habits die hard, and would it kill you to clean under there sometime?” she heard Zeros voice come from much closer. Kiri gave a short scream and fell off her bed. Zero had been lying right next to her. “Well I won’t keep you up this night…don’t worry, when tomorrow comes, I’ll still be here…” Zero slowly faded away. She heard her dad still talking down stairs could Zero be in two places at once.

 

Downstairs her dad was carrying on a long-winded conversation about computers with what he thought was Zero, in reality he was talking to a lamp.

 

Kiri heard the sound of fluttering wings, she opened the window and the foot long orange cockroach squeezed through the opening. “Carrot, you ran off again to today. Yeah I guess it was pretty scary…” the cockroach looked at her, its antennae twitching slightly. “Carrot, what do you think I should do?” the insect didn’t answer and just continued to look at her. Carrot had told her a little bit about his life in the outside world and creatures he had occasionally run into, but like Kiri he had never encountered an immortal before.

Kiri hadn’t thought she would have been able to sleep under the circumstances, but oddly enough, before she even had a chance to change she was fast asleep. Zero sat on the ceiling looking down at her. “I wonder, where did I meet you before. Well it doesn’t matter, as long as you help me find what I’m looking for.”

Suddenly Zero heard something that sounded like a flowerpot crashing outside. “Hmmm…wonder what that could be?” Zero vanished.

 

Spud fell right on his head after the pot had tipped over. The little teddy bear rubbed his head as he looked over at the shattered pot on the ground. He was too short to reach the doorknob. Although now that he thought about it he didn’t have opposable thumbs. Even if it was unlocked he probably couldn’t turn the knob, what was he thinking? Suddenly the door opened to reveal Zero who looked down to see some junk piled by the side of the door and a broken flowerpot. To the left of the flowerpot Spud was getting to his feet. Spuds beady black eyes moved up to meet with Zeros yellow snake like eyes. “Uhoh!” Spud tried to run away with his short legs but Zero reached down and picked him up.

“What the hell are you doing showing your beady eyed face around here?” He said annoyed.

“Nothing at all! I’m not up to anything suspicious!” the little bear said waving his arms in the air frantically.

“Saying that just makes you more suspicious. What did I tell you would happen if you showed your face around here?” Zero brought his hand back as the fingers grew into long curving talons.

“EEEEEEEEEK!!!!” Spud screamed girlishly covering his face with his short stubby arms.

Zero looked at Spud with an unamused face “No, it’s no fun killing something that’s helpless.” Still holding Spud by the scruff of his neck he went inside the house walking over to the bathroom.

 Kiris dad heard the toilet flush and then saw Zero walk out of the bathroom. He did a double take “Wait a minute…how did you get over….you were just…” he pointed at the lamp.

“It’s not important don’t worry about it.” Zero said as he walked away.

Oddly enough with those words Kiris dad felt compelled not to worry about it because it wasn’t important. “I guess it isn’t important…. what do you think…?” he turned to the lamp, it didn’t respond this time “Why am I talking to a lamp?” Kiris dad decided he had too much to drink and went to bed.

 

That night Kiri had a strange dream. She found herself in the middle of a desolate wasteland, it looked like it had once been a town, there were remains of buildings but they all looked like they had been ripped apart by some titanic force. In the middle of this huge mess was a huge dip in the ground. All the concrete and everything else that had been in the area was completely melted and fused together. At the bottom of the dip were a number of things that resembled glowing greenish crystals. Suddenly she noticed one of the crystals twitch as if moved by an invisible force. It pointed up towards the sky and then shot up like a bullet to fast for the eye to track. To her right she heard something that sounded like some falling rocks. She turned to see a small boy with bleach white hair climbing over one of the piles of rubble. He approached the side of the pit where the crystals were. Several more crystals bolted up into the heavens. The little boy peered into the pit and began to climb down the side. Although she couldn’t see from that angle, the gigantic hole in the earth the crystals were in was actually a huge footprint.

“Don’t go in there!” Kiri called out but he didn’t listen. One by one each of the crystals shot up into the sky until only a few were left. He bent over and was about to pick one of them up before anything else could happen this weird vision began to fade away as Kiri drifted from the dream into the blackness of sleep.

 

Elsewhere

 

Inside Babel tower in a darkened room sat an intimidating man with slicked back hair and a goatee wearing a black suit. He sat next to a large window overlooking Uroboros city. On the table next to his chair was a blue lava lamp faintly illuminating his features. He looked out over the expanse of lights that stretched for miles around Babel. This was his city, and he would be damned if would let these creatures sully it with their presence. He squeezed a stress relieving sand bag in one hand causing it to burst, sand sifted through his fingers dropping onto the floor. It was then his keen senses picked up a new presence in the room.

“Lord Keanu, were here to report.” A woman’s voice said from the shadows. Keanu turned slightly and noticed four kneeling forms shrouded in darkness. One of which looked up at him with a single red eye that shown like a beacon of light in the darkness. This was the figure the woman’s voice had come from.

“So, did you find the whereabouts of the immortals? Did any of them make contact with the subject?”

“Yes unfortunately one of them did.” She said a bit hesitantly.

“That’s very disturbing, please handle this situation as soon as possible. It would be troublesome if the subject became contaminated by the likes of them.”

 

            The next day

 

            Kiri stretched her arms as her alarm clock rang. She reached over absent-mindedly knocking it off the table where it landed among the heaps of junk on her floor. “Oh shut up…” she said rubbing her eyes as it continued ringing. After getting changed she walked down stairs to see her dad with cup of coffee watching TV.

            “Where’s Zero?”

            “I don’t know, he said he was going out or something…” he said absent-mindedly drinking some more coffee.

 

 

Later Kiri walked over to the garage where she had her bike, she had slept in and it was too late to walk to school. It was a cold morning with dew forming on the grass making her shoes wet as she walked over to where it was parked. A slight fog bathed the whole area. “Something must be wrong with the climate control system.” She wondered exactly what Zero was up to. No matter how many times she asked him he simply dodged her questions about why he was there.

As usual her bike sat in the corner collecting dust in the garage with a chain looped through both wheels. Oddly enough the skateboard that had been lying nearby the bike had completely vanished. It was a black skateboard with a picture of a multiheaded dragon similar to the hydra of Greek mythology on it. However it was now gone, Kiri didn’t notice this though. It had been awhile since she road it her bike. Back in grade school she and robin used to go on bike rides through some of the seedier parts of town. A lot of weird characters hung out around those parts of town, junkies, gang members and worse. Sometimes they would chase after them when they road through those bad areas. That was kind of dangerous, but also exiting to do. With a click she unlocked her for what seemed like the first time in recent memory. Would someone weird chase after her again today like they had so many years ago? Probably not but something in her gut told her today would be different from the bland repeating days she was so used to. It was an exciting and slightly ominous feeling. Today, everything would start to change for better or worse.

She hopped on her bike and shot out of the driveway peddling away. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed someone who looked a bit out of the ordinary from the corner of her eye. It looked to be a man of a fairly large build with incredibly pale white skin clad in a tight fitting black body suit. He had a bowl haircut and oddly seemed to be wearing incredibly bright red lipstick. Was it just her imagination, or did he not have eyes. She stopped about a block away and turned to see the man standing like a statue next to a crosswalk. Slowly he turned to face her, sure enough he had a featureless white face, its skin was smooth and pale almost like that of a china doll that had no eyes! He grinned, as his red lips parted dozens of glistening white fangs shown in the sun. Then without warning he began to run towards her faster then any human.

Kiri had no idea what this guy was, but she was in no hurry to find out. She began peddling away as fast as possible, the china doll in fast pursuit. It was almost like in that ancient movie that she liked so much “Terminator 2”. But whatever this thing was, he looked much scarier then the T-1000. Kiri felt a large hand clamp down like a vice on the other side of her backpack. She let her arms slide through the straps as the creature pulled it off tossing it aside. Its other hand came around preparing to grab her when she heard a metal clang. The giant china doll stumbled hitting the back of her bike knocking her off balance as the giant china doll tumbled into the path of an oncoming car on the other side of the street with a grinding crash of breaking glass and metal.

Kiri rubbed a scrape on her knee and looked over to the China doll lying in the street. He was in one piece but didn’t seem to be moving. A fat businessman got out of the car to see what he had hit and looked around, but he didn’t seem to see the China doll sitting in front of him. “Hey over here!” Kiri heard a small voice.

She looked to see what appeared to be a teddy bear made of paper mache carrying a crowbar. “Quick! We need to get out of here before it wakes up!” it said running over to her.

“But how…?” she looked over at the large body lying next to the car, it began to twitch a bit. “Your right, this can wait until later, lets go!” Spud climbed on her back as she got back on her bike and rode away.

The man who had hit the China doll didn’t understand what happened. His car was totaled but there was nothing in front of it. The China doll sat up and got to its feet. “What did I hit?” he took a step forward when he felt an incredibly powerful force clamp around his neck. As the blood pressure in his face increased he felt his feet being lifted off the ground. The China doll gave a slight squeeze and the mans windpipe caved in, his eyes bulging from his head. With a flick of its arm it sent the mans body sailing through the window of a nearby house. Then it turned again facing in the directions Kiri had gone. It opened its mouth emitting a series of chirps that sounded almost electronic. All over town similar creatures looked in the some direction and began to emit the same chirping noise.

Kiri quickly got off her bike running up the steps into school. “What was that thing? Was it an immortal?” she said panting.

“Uhhh…I’m not really sure maybe it was…” Spud said a little unsure of himself. “We come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but I never met any like that before.”

“Wait, you’re an immortal? I didn’t think you guys looked so….meh…” she said making an odd face.

“Meh? I don’t look this way because I choose to!” Spud said accusingly.

“We should find Zero he might know what’s going on.” Kiri said as she headed over to class.

“N-no! That’s a bad idea!” the little bear waved his arms around in protest as they walked into Kiris classroom.

One of the girls in Kiris class Sedna who was a red haired girl with red hair and blond highlights dyed into her hair was the first to notice what Kiri was carrying in her arms. It looked like a teddy bear made of paper mache, not just paper mache but wet smelly paper mache. Sedna was a delinquent, her grades weren’t terribly good, but she was pretty popular, partially because of her attitude and partially because of her good looks “Ugh what the hell! Kiri do you do this on purpose? Do you purposely bring these retarded things around here just to make me vomit? First that big bug of yours and now this! Throw that thing out….gah…. the smell…” Kiri hadn’t noticed but for some reason Spud smelled like sewer gas. But more importantly she hadn’t expected anyone else to be able to see Spud or at least she was expecting him to make himself less conspicuous somehow.

She walked over to Sedna “Wait you can see Spud?”

“Are you trying to make fun of me? Get that fucking thing away from me!” Sedna said glaring at her standing up.

“Ahahaha…no really that’s not…I just didn’t think you could see him…that explanation didn’t sound too convincing…” Sedna brought her fist back ready to punch her right in the nose. On the other side of the room Robin watched the situation with a neutral expression on his face. As Sednas fist rushed forward Kiri closed her eyes wincing for the oncoming blow but it never arrived. Kiri opened her eyes to see a pale slightly green tinged hand blocking Sednas fist.

“You’re just going to stand here and let this bitch punch your nose in.” She heard Zeros voice say.

“Bitch? Who the…” Sedna noticed who it was who stopped her. Zero was decked out in his badass looking black trench coat and sunglasses. The strange skin and hair color just added to his unusual appearance. Whoever he was, he looked incredibly cool, and there was an odd feeling about him she couldn’t quite place.

“Kiri you forgot your backpack. He said handing her the backpack she dropped earlier. Kiri was going to deliver this little art project of mine. I’ll take that now.” He reached over grabbing Spud.

“Wait….how…what’s your relationship?”

“Oh? I’m Kiris secret lover, we had hot sex last night which is why she’s late and has all those cuts and bruises, pretty rough in bed you know…”

Sedna fell out of her desk, Robin’s glasses fell off his face and the whole class went into an uproar.

“HE’S LYING! DON’T BELIEVE ANYTHING HE SAYS!” Kiri shouted as her face turned completely red.

“Just kidding, the truth is Kiri got attacked by a monster and this teddy bear saved her…. that’s the real truth but you people can believe what you want. As for me I’ve got to get going, after all, some very rich people will be offering handsome sums for this piece of artwork and I need to get him to the auction.” Zero said holding up Spud.

The teacher walked over with an unamused look on his face “I’m sorry Mr.Zero or whatever your name is but I’m going to have to ask you to leave, your disrupting the class. And no matter how I look at it that thing just looks like a piece of trash to me.”

“You have no eye for art you see bla bla bla bla bla bla bla….”

 

“Oh…I didn’t know…I see this does seem to be a mixture of Dadaism and German expressionism…ingenious,” the teacher said with an astonished look on his face.

“Well I’ve got to get going…” Zero said as he began to walk out the door.

“Wait, I want to ask you something outside the classroom.” Kiri said which was followed by an uproar and whooping from some of the other students. Sedna looked pissed off, and Robin’s neutral expression looked like it was ready to crack. “Their completely misunderstanding!” Kiri thought, as she followed Zero out.

“Zero, I got attacked by something today. I think it may have been another immortal.”

“That wasn’t an immortal. The creature you saw earlier was a ghost, I have things to do so you can go back to class now.”

“A ghost?”

“Yeah, a pathetic creature that could never reach the next world. This city is full of ghosts they must have been collecting here for generations. Now I’ll be taking this!” Zero grabbed Spud.

“Don’t let him flush me down the toilet again Kiri!” Spud said waving his arms.

“You flushed him down the toilet…that explains the smell…why did you do that? He’s not bad, he helped save me from…whatever that was back there.”

“He’s trying to interfere with my plans here. He may not seem like a threat but appearances can be deceiving.”

“If you flush him I won’t cooperate in any way with whatever it is your planning.” Kiri said stubbornly.

Zero got an annoyed look on his face, if his hunch was right it would be very inconvenient if Kiri became obstinate to his plans in the future

 “Ahh…you’re sure uncooperative today. Fine then, but you’d better not try anything funny, or I’ll gouge your beady eyes out and burn your paper mache butt.” He said to Spud as he let go of him letting his body fall to the floor with a thud.

“I..I wouldn’t do that!” Spud said waving his arms.

“Good, now make yourself useful and watch Kiri. It’s a small chance, but one of those ghosts might be able to slip past me and get in here.” Zero said putting Spud down and walking away.

“Wait, there’s more of those? How many are there?” Kiri asked.

“You seem like a big ancient movie buff. Ever seen the third Matrix movie, you know when there’s all those agent Smiths? Ahh, it’s not important, go back to class you need to get an edumacation or whatever….” Zero said before vanishing.

“Wait? There couldn’t be that many? He was exaggerating right?” Kiri asked Spud.

“Uhhh…I don’t know I never saw that movie, I was too young and my parents wouldn’t let me when it came out. Is that a lot?”

Kiri didn’t respond

“We should get back to class.” The little bear said walking back towards the classroom.

 

 

Zero stood in front of the door to school he took off his sunglasses as they evaporated into thin air revealing his two yellow snake like eyes. In front of him were masses of huge black bodies with pale white faces. Many of them were standing vertically against the walls of nearby buildings since there was no room for all of them to stand on the ground. All of them seemed to sense they were up against a formidable foe. On the other end of school one of the ghosts seemed to find some bravery and took a step foreword. Suddenly a white blur shot in front of it followed by the sound of cracking bones and ripping tendons. A jet of red blood issued forth from its neck as its hulking body fell backwards hitting the ground with a thud. Zero held the severed head in one hand. He looked at it “What a lot of scum, things like you don’t deserve to exist.” He squeezed the head causing it to explode, little bits of skull and brain fell to the ground. Zero flicked his hand to get some of the fleshy goo off it. Suddenly as one all the ghosts rushed forward in a wave. Zero opened his mouth and a wave of white fire was unleashed engulfing the hordes in front of him instantly incinerating them. Zero heard the sound of something making contact with the wall above him. He looked upwards to see one of the ghosts standing against one of the school towers. Its mouth opened and a purple beam shot out blasting a large hole right through Zeros head.

“Heh…. I just love that burning smell don’t you? No wait, you don’t have a nose!” the hole in his head closed up. Zero tensed his muscles, as his clothes seemed to evaporate, long curving talons grew out of his hand. One of the ghosts made it through the fire. It brought its hand back, three long blades extending from its knuckles and threw a powerful punch at Zeros face that would have been much too fast for any regular human to block or avoid. Zero moved his head to the side as the fist whizzed past his face, his hair blowing from the shockwave caused by it, once his face was level with the creatures upper arms he opened his mouth biting down on it. The creature opened its mouth in a soundless cry of pain as he jerked his head back slicking through its tendons and sawing through the creature’s bones with his razor sharp fangs. With another jerk and the sound of ripping flesh he wrenched the arm from the monsters body and chucked it aside. Zero then slammed his elbow in the creatures side, he could feel its ribs and spine shattering under the force of the blow as it flew through the air crashing to the ground about fifty feet away. Zero licked the blood off his face with a long snake like toung “Too bad, toys always break in the end don’t they?” Zero said with a manic grin forming on his face as he began to look less and less human.

Another one took out a long metal rod, an aura of plasma fire erupted around it as it swung the rod at Zeros head. As if he were rubber he bent back at an impossible angle avoiding the swing. One of his arms snaked between his own legs grabbing the ghost by the ankle yanking him off his feet. Hopping over his arm he swung the ghost around his head effortlessly smashing its huge body against his foes like a gigantic club bludgeoning them with enough to smash their bones into the concrete and send their bodies flying through the air. He gave another mighty swing wrenching the creature’s huge body from its leg socket. Its body came crashing down into the oncoming hordes knocking more then a dozen of them off their feet. Zero tossed the leg aside as his claws grew longer. His claws glowed with a sickly green aura of energy as he leapt into the air slashing one of the monsters across the face. The ghost’s head exploded in a smoking mess showering Zero with charred bits of brain and bone. Leapt into the air ripping and slashing more of them apart with insane glee, he hadn’t had this much fun in ages “HAHAHAHAHA!!!” Zeros maniacal laughter echoed throughout the building.

 

“Oh no he’s lost it! Were going to die!” Spud said shuddering back where Kiri was.

 

The more Zero fought the more his body changed, a secondary pair of eyes formed above the ones that already existed as he began to grow larger. About eight huge snake like tentacles erupted from his back, each writhing in the air resembling huge biomechanical snakes. The end of each tendril split revealing rows of razor sharp fangs. Two more pairs of arms also erupted from Zeros body as he let out a bestial roar that seemed to shake the building like thunder.

 

Inside Kiri looked out the window anxiously as she heard the roar. No sign of Zero anywhere but he wasn’t lying, she was seeing hundreds of those things out there. “Kiri, why are you sitting on that side of the room? You know your seat is by the window.” The teacher said.

“I don’t think I want to go over there today.”

“Is something wrong your looking a little pale. It must be that bears smell, wasn’t your friend going to take it away?”

“There was a change of plans…”Kiri stopped as she saw one of those eyeless pale white faces looking in the window. It brought its hand back and thrust its fist through the window. The glass shattered causing the kids near the window to scream in surprise. None of them could see it, but the damage it was causing was real enough. It stepped into the room followed by two of its comrades. Behind them Kiri noticed something long and snakelike flailing through the air. It was some sort of black slimy tentacle or tail, which seemed to be covered in grayish black organic looking armor. The end of it opened up revealing four huge curving mandibles, inside wire several smaller fangs. It shot foreword like a missile striking the one closest to the window in the back and running the other two through as well showering the nearby children with a jet spray of blood. Sedna screamed running from the classroom as she had just been showered in red gooey liquid from some invisible source. Kiri grabbed Spud and ran out of the classroom.

Zero cracked the tendril like a whip causing the three bodies to go sailing through the air like dolls. Zero stood around 25 feet tall, his body covered in beetle black scales. He had six arms each ending with long curving talons. He now had six glowing red eyes above a mouth full with about six rows of razor sharp fangs. On each side of his head was several long whip like tentacles in addition to the ones on his back that had formed earlier. His legs had also changed to be like those of a gargoyle somewhere between the ways a human and bird’s legs might look.

Zero reared his head back and shot something that looked to be a huge greenish logy from his mouth. It came splattering down on several oncoming ghosts who were getting ready to attack before exploding into a giant blinding white fireball. Several cars in the parking lot began to melt from the heat before going up in flames and exploding themselves.

With a slash of his huge talons he smacked two of them flying into the air like rag dolls. Another one charged at Zero removing two black rods from its back charged with plasma fire. It swung the rods striking his ankle. The huge monster that was Zero glanced down in annoyance raising his foot and bringing it down with tremendous force. A few jets of blood and a few bits of flesh shot into the air as Zeros foot plowed down about four feet into the ground. Zero continued to advance on the remaining ghosts, one of them seemed to get cold feet trying to run away but one of Zeros tentacles lashed out snagging it by the ankle and pulling it into the air. A second tentacle lashed out, its mouth full of fangs opening and biting onto the ghost’s head. It’s body twitched slightly as both tentacles pulled and snapped it in two sending both pieces flying in opposite directions.

About thirty of the ghosts surrounded Zero, all of them opened their mouths, the tiny cannons inside glowing like dozens of purple beacons as they all fired on him as one letting loose a volley of purple death! At the same time something in the sky also fired. The same time the dozens of purple beams hit him a white bolt from above came raining down on him. Zeros huge body exploded in a ball of white fire raining bits and pieces of charred flesh all over the nearby ghosts and even plastering bits of his innards against the side of the school. The air was filled with a loud buzzing noise as something began to descend on the area, for a change it was something everyone could see.

“A sentry drone? Here?” Robin said picking himself off the floor. He had no idea what was going on, but whatever was happening it was serious enough to call in one of the most powerful war machines in Uroboros cities defense system. The sentry drones were what protected them from the dangerous beasts roaming around outside the city. It had only taken one of them to exterminate a colony of werewolves that had infested the sewer system about ten years ago. Something that bared a vague resemblance to a giant metallic cicada larva crossed with a scarab beetle landed causing the earth shake under several tons. Instead of the grasping arms a cicada larva usually has, the huge robot had what appeared to be two large guns. Several sensors emerged from its head scanning the area, bits of flesh were slowly crawling across the ground converging in the center of the molten crater where its cannons had struck. A third cannon emerged from where its mouth should be and it unleashed a jet of plasma fire washing over the still living pieces of flesh burning them to a crisp.

More lumps of flesh began to come together on the wall of the school forming into a more humanoid shape. It was slightly smaller then Zeros human form and oddly enough seemed to be female. “Looks like brute force isn’t the best way to go in this sort of fight, lets see how you losers hold up against some superior speed.” She said. Once she had finished forming she looked like a female version of Zeros human form with some slight hints of his monster form. She had a secondary pair of eyes and was covered in shining diamondoid scaled with long talons. She opened her mouth and reached inside digging her talons into the soft flesh at the back of her mouth. Doing this always hurt like a bitch, but she had done it so many times over the years it didn’t phase her anymore. She hooked her claws around the back of her own spinal cord and gave it a tremendous yank. Flesh tore and the taste of blood filled her mouth as she wrenched the bloody collection of vertebrae from its cavity. Her body momentarily spasmed but recovered as a new spinal cord grew almost instantly. “Hey big shot! Think your fast enough to hit me?” she called out to the sentry drone that was still trying to annihilate scraps of flesh on the ground. The huge robot whirled around to face her.

            The two dual guns began to hum as power surged into them. Then there was a loud crack like thunder as two white balls of plasma fire rocketed out ascending towards Zeros position. Zero was still sitting on the wall and appeared to be reading a book, not really paying attention to the attack. The two blasts hit the wall instantly vaporizing the brick making two overlapping ten-foot wide holes in the school.

            “Hehehe…that wasn’t to bad, I bet you really thought you’d kill me good with that one didn’t you? Hehehe!” Zero said giving the huge metal bug a playful slap on the arm. Its tiny head swiveled to meet her. The spinal cord in her hand suddenly was consumed in a greenish aura as its shape elongated into a huge curving blade almost as long as Zeros body, the handle still bore a vague resemblance to a bony spinal cord and it had a short bony spike on the end of it. “Funny thing is that I move a lot quicker in this form.” Zero said as it pointed its twin guns at her face only about five feet away.

            Zero stood in front of the weapons without fear as she felt the energy building inside them. She could feel her hairs standing on end from the static electricity that filled the air. As a crack like thunder rang out around her, two tremendous blinding white balls erupted from the guns. The two-plasmoid balls were moving too fast for the human eye to track, but to Zero they seemed to move in slow motion as she stepped out of the way. She held out both hands next to the fiery orbs. Not close enough to burn them, just far enough away to feel the warm glow as if it were a wholesome campfire. She stuck a twig into one as it passed by watching it turn to ash from the heat.

            The two balls impacted on the ground exploding in a huge white fireball that melted everything around it. She tossed what was left of the smoldering twig over her shoulder. “Nice trick you got there, can you fire those again, I got some marshmallows I wanted to roast…you know on second thought, I can always cook those later.” Zero vanished, a sonic boom rang out across the school campus causing the windows to shatter. A moment later both the sentries’ guns fell to the ground severed from its arms. Its main body also collapsed neatly sliced into two halves as if by a giant razor sharp pair of scissors. Zero looked around, most of the ghosts were either dead or were gone. She glanced back at the school and vanished in another sonic boom.

 

            Meanwhile

 

            Kiri had run down into the west wing of the building around the same area where the gym lockers were. “I don’t hear anymore noises. Do you think Zero got them all?” Kiri asked.

            “I don’t know, there were a lot of them. It may have been too much even for him. Just in case he lost we should try to find a way to sneak out of here without being seen. Kiri?” Spud asked. Kiri had gone silent.

            “Zero wouldn’t lose. He’s an immortal, immortals can’t be killed right?” she asked Spud, a few tears seemed to be going down her face even though she was doing her best to hold them back.

            “Uhh…I…” Spud searched for the right words but he couldn’t find any not knowing how to react to the situation.

            Suddenly a large fist shot through the brick wall behind Kiri grabbing her by the neck and lifting her into the air. She struggled in vain for a moment as she felt the pressure building in her face, she felt her body beginning to lose consciousness, she couldn’t do that, she needed to get free. The wall shattered apart as a ghost’s massive body forced through it still holding a struggling Kiri in the air. Spud hesitated a moment before running at the ghosts leg only to get punted like a soccer ball. He flew down the hallway building momentum until he crashed into a metal door with enough force to knock it off its hinges.

            “D…damn it all…I couldn’t help her at all…what a useless immortal…” Spud thought to himself before he passed out.

            Kiri felt the huge hand squeeze slightly tighter when she felt an odd sensation begin to go through her body. It was the same tingling sensation she felt when she had first seen Zero. Her consciousness began to slip away, she couldn’t hold on, but just as she was about to slip into unconsciousness she felt the hand release her.

 

            About fifteen minutes later Spud woke up to See Kiri lying on the floor not to far away from the hacked up remains of the ghost on the floor. “Kiri!” Spud ran over to her and shook her body slightly.

            “Well Spud, I never thought you had it in you!” an unfamiliar voice said. “Good job protecting Kiri while I was busy.” A girl who resembled Zero said appearing behind Spud.

            “Z…Zero, is that you?” Spud asked.

            “Yeah who were you expecting, the lord of terror?” she said sarcastically.

            “B..but why are you a girl?”

            “Why are pandas black and white? Do I need to explain everything to you? Lets just get Kiri out of here, I think they gave up but some still might be around.” Zero said picking Kiri up off the ground.

            “Zero…I wasn’t the one who killed that ghost….” Spud admitted looking at his feet. She turned slowly eyeing him with one of her yellow snake like eyes.

            “Is that so?” Zero glanced over at the body, something that looked like skateboard wheel tracks were visible in the puddle of blood.

 

            When Kiri woke up again she was in her room, the lights were dimmed so that she couldn’t see to well but she heard some noises. One of them sounded like a moan of passion from a girl having sex. She immediately sat bolt upright and looked up at the ceiling. Something was moving around up there. Kiri quickly reached for her lamp and turned it on illuminating the forms of two naked girls sitting on the ceiling making out with each other. Both of them looked like a female version of Zero.

            “What…how…?” Kiri was at a loss for words, one moment she was about to die and in her next waking moment something incomprehensible like this happens.

            “Oh goody your awake, want to join us? It’s lots of fun up here.” One of them said with a smile, a snake like toung flicking in and out of her mouth.

            “Jeez, the girl almost got her head popped off and you want to screw her the moment she wakes up. Aren’t I enough for you?” the other Zero asked.

            “Z…Zero? Is that you?” Kiri asked with an extremely confused look on her face. One of the two of them dropped from the ceiling landing in a crouching position in front of Kiri. She was quickly followed by the second one who landed on her shoulders noiselessly like an agile cat right before melting into her flesh as if the first Zero were a sponge soaking up water.

            “No, I’m the king of Angolmois! Who else would I be?” Zero said with a laugh.

            “But you’re a girl!”

            “Yeah, so your point is?”

            “Why?”

            “You and that bear have a lot in common, always asking me questions that should be obvious to anyone. An immortals form is a reflection of their soul, so right now I look like this. It’s just as real as my male form, I can also look like this too.” A secondary pair of eyes began to form on her fore head.

            “I already saw your monster form, you don’t need to change here! But maybe you should put on some clothes…” Kiri said noticing her naked breasts. She also noticed for the first time the large scar on Zeros chest. Kiri thought immortals instantly healed all their wounds, how did she get that scar?

            “I don’t feel like it, I don’t need clothes to survive. Clothes are just things humans use to lie to each other. I only wear them because it would be inconvenient if my enemies spotted me too easily. But I don’t have to worry about that now because I’m hiding out in your room!” Zero appeared behind Kiri wrapping her arms around her, her naked body pressed up against Kiris.

            “Eeeeeee….Zero, stop I’m not gay! Let me go!” Kiri squirmed out of her grasp turning to see the male version of Zero still naked.

            “Well if you like this form better…. although personally I think it would be more interesting if we played around while I was in my female form.”

            “I don’t want to do that sort of thing with any of your forms, now put some clothes on!” Kiri said blushing like crazy and backing away.

            “Awww…that’s no fun…” Zero said as his usual clothes appeared on his body. Zero walked over and pushed over a few cardboard boxes that were piled up in a corner and Spud tumbled out into the open. Zero picked up one box and noticed a hole in it “Hmmmm…. looks like someone was peeping on me earlier, sorry Spud no more action for you tonight.”

            “That’s not it, I just wanted to make sure you weren’t doing anything to Kiri.” Spud said defensively.

            “Yeah right…I know what you were really doing!” Zero said.

            “Who are you to criticize me? You turned yourself into a girl and then you…you…”

            “Did it with myself on the ceiling? Yeah it happens…. you know you could be a girl too underneath that paper mache.” Zero said poking at Spuds head as the little bear shoed his finger away.

            “I’m a boy, I was a boy back when I was human and I am now too!” Spud said defiantly.

            “Is that so, hehe.. I planted a seed of doubt? I’ll tell you one thing, what you were when you were human don’t mean jack. An immortals form is not limited by physical laws, only by their mind. But right now your nothing more then a mummy aren’t you? And that’s why I’ll win!” Zero reached for Spuds face but he smacked his hand away.

            “You don’t know anything about me! There’ll come a day when I’ll show you Zero! Some day I’ll be the one with power, someday, your going to find out what it’s like to be small and helpless, I’ll show you…I’ll show you all!” Spud was shaking all over.

            “I’ll be looking foreword to that day. It should be interesting.” Zero said patting the angry little bear on the head.

            All the while Kiri was watching the two of them wondering what the hell they were talking about. ”Unmmmm…what exactly are you two talking about? Does this have to do with why you guys are here?”

            “No and if it did, don’t think I would tell you.”

            “I’ll tell you Mmmmppphh!” Zero grabbed Spud and put a hand over his mouth.

            “Now listen you guys, I was almost killed today, if that has anything to do with why you’re here I think I deserve to know why that is.”

            “Fine…fine…I’ll tell you already just stop bugging me. When the Lord of Terror left earth, several pieces of its body were left behind. Each of those pieces contains some of the chaotic power that changed the face of this planet. Do you ever wonder what exactly it could be that without warning caused half the human race to change into plants and animals as if by magic? Ever wonder what it is that can give a human, the power of a demon?” Zero said with a smile as he flexed one hand, his fingers morphing into talons.

            “Wait? You mean that you and the other immortals used to be human? I always thought you were aliens, or things from another dimension or maybe time travelers…” Kiri said not bothering to hide her dissapointment.

            “Sorry to disappoint you, but I was just an ordinary human once. I wonder how long ago it was? You know sometimes I wonder, what it means being an immortal, the only way for most immortals to die is if their heart is destroyed. We don’t die from old age or disease, you can blow my head off, and it’ll just be a minor annoyance. We might end up seeing things that normal humans will never get the chance to. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll still be around when the universe ends. Billions of years from now, the universe will implode, all the planets, even the stars will be crushed as if they were nothing. I wonder if I’ll be there to see that…. but getting back to the point. Some of the power that made us like this is inside the shards of eternity. One of those shards is inside this city. Spud here can feel it too can’t you?” the little bear nodded.

            Kiri looked between the two immortals. “Why exactly do you guys want it so badly?”

            “I told you the reason why I was here, I never said I would tell you the reason behind the reason why I was here.” Kiri looked annoyed at Zero who seemed to be amused at her annoyance.

            “The reason I want the shard…” Spud spoke up for the first time. “If I get the shard of eternity I’ll be able to catch a rainbow. Right now they always move too fast and vanish before I can ever catch up to them.”

            “Why do you want to catch a rainbow?” Kiri asked. For once Zero looked almost as confused as she did.

            “I don’t remember too much about when I was a human boy. But my mother used to tell me that when people die, they go to a land over the rainbow. When I get the shard, I’m going to go there, and let out everyone who died…. then I can see my parents again…to do that, I’ll fight any monster, I’ll even defeat you Zero!”

 Zero looked at Spud with a blank expression on his face “We’ll see….”

           

            Meanwhile

 

            Keanu played back the video log of Zeros fight with the Ghosts and the sentry drone. “How interesting. Laurasia, you are aware of the only known method of killing an immortal are you not?”

            “Of course I’ve done so on numerous occasions myself, you simply must destroy their heart.” Came a woman’s voice from a dark corner of the room where a single red eye shown like a beacon in the darkness.

            “In this fight, did you notice anything out of the ordinary?” Keanu asked.

            “I’m not sure what you mean.”

            “The immortal our ghosts fought against, he was completely blown to pieces from all angles, don’t you think one of those beams should have hit his heart, or at least grazed it a bit? At the very least he should not have been able to reform as fast as he did.” Keanu said as he switched off the video feed.

 

Back at the school

 

            Sedna didn’t know how long she had been in the showers rinsing the blood off her body in the girl’s locker room. The girl’s locker room, like every other locker room in the school was a dinghy dimly lit area. It had lockers with chipped paint, most of them had things written on the inside along with ancient wads of chewing gum collecting dust. Normally Sedna would have gone home to do this sort of thing, but she couldn’t stand blood, she needed to get it all off as soon as possible! There didn’t seem to be any trace of it left now though, had she just imagined it all? No, if that were the case her clothes would be fine, they were all stained red, slowly turning brown as the blood dried. She turned off the water and walked back over to the lockers to get her towel. However in the place where she had left her towel instead was a piece of paper. It was like something a pre schooler would make, dozens of pieces of dried macaroni were glued to a piece of paper making a picture. “What’s this piece of crap?” Sedna crumpled it up without really bothering to look at it.

 Then she heard it, the sound of skateboard wheels echoing like the cry of some lost soul in the empty locker room. Normally she wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Maybe it was because it had been such a weird day, or because the girls locker room late after school hours was one of the last places she expected to hear the noise, or even because she was all alone in this big school. Whatever the reason, the sound of those wheels filled her with terror. Slowly she swallowed her fear and looked around the corner in the direction she had heard the skateboard wheels stop. She didn’t see anything there, had she just been hearing things. Whatever the case may have been, she was spooked now.  Then she heard something else, it sounded like someone sheathing a sword. Sedna quickly threw on her gym uniform since her clothes had been completely ruined from the blood. She opened the door bolting from the locker room. The lights flickered slightly dimming, taking on a reddish glow in the hallway. Sedna looked around peering into the blackness further down the hall where the lights weren’t coming on at all. A familiar noise echoed through the dark corridors as she heard the noise of rolling skate board wheels. Sedna turned and quickly ran in the opposite direction of the wheels. Once she got to the end of the hallway she ran up a flight of stairs leading to the next floor. Once she got to the top she turned around, the sound of wheels still echoed behind her slowly getting louder.

She turned and to the next hallway looking around, no one was around, all the doors were locked. Except one at the end of the hallway which was slightly ajar. It looked to be a janitor’s closet, but maybe she could hide there. Sedna wasn’t really paying attention to it, but someone had scribbled some graffiti on the side of the door in bold permanent red marker. Almost as if it were gouged into someone flesh the words on the door read, “Return to sender”

Sedna flung the door open running inside, the sound of the wheels was getting closer, whoever was chasing her must have been at the other end of the hall but she dared not turn around. After closing the door behind her she stumbled forward into the darkness, when she was expecting to be a closet actually seemed to turn into a hallway. Sedna stumbled through the darkness until she spotted some dim red light running towards it. When she ran into the light she found herself looking out on what appeared to be the school auditorium. The room echoed with clapping and cheering. Around her was a stage set of car board cut outs made to look like the inside of an Egyptian pharos tomb. The professionalism of the cutouts was fairly poor, it looked as if it had been made by grade school kids and was even colored in with crayon.

“Wha..what….” this was too much for her to take, she felt her legs giving out under her weight as she fell to the ground.

“Don’t just sit there, your going to ruin my big debut!” she recognized the voice belonging to Robin. She turned to see something that looked like a Muppet version of Robin dressed like Indiana Jones.

“BOOOO!” the audience seemed to be losing patience.

“Damn it you stink! Throw a pie or something, were dying out here!” the Muppet version of Robin said dancing around in front of her. Sedna just watched the odd spectacle speechless.

“This isn’t happening, this can’t be real!” she backed away in fright.

“Boooooooo!” echoed through the auditorium.

“Their not buying it, put more life into it! We’ll never get to Hollywood at this rate!” Muppet Robin said to her.

“BOOOOOOOO!!!!” a rotten apple flew threw the air striking Muppet Robin in the face. For the first time Sedna recognized who was in the audience, every chair had someone sitting in it. Each person had an incredibly detailed sketch of a persons face strapped onto their heads. Some of those faces Sedna even recognized. But Sedna didn’t need to see their real faces. Their bodies were all wrapped in decaying bandages. Bits of dried flesh could be seen poking through some places that weren’t wrapped as well. If she had bothered to take a closer look she would have seen thousands of squirming yellow maggots littered the floor, more of them occasionally falling from the dead bodies sitting in the chairs. She hadn’t noticed it before but the entire room smelled of death and decay! Flies were flying about in the air in small swarms occasionally landing on one of the bodies below. The entire room was filled with mummies! Horrified Sedna slowly turned to Muppet Robin paralyzed with fear and unable to move.

He got up wiping his face off “Your useless! Looks like it’ll be up to me to save the show!” he trotted over to the front of the stage controlled by an unseen puppeteer. “Spring time for Hitler in Germany!” he began to sing and dance around in a goofy puppet dance. Suddenly something metallic whizzed threw the air, Muppet Robin’s strings were cut and he fell to the floor limp and lifeless. Whatever cut his strings impacted in the wall with a metallic clang on the other side of the auditorium. Sedna looked to see what it was, it was clearly a license plate from a car, and it had been thrown with such force that it must have been six inches in the wall. She turned to look who had thrown it.

Shrouded in the shadows was a lone figure on a skateboard. Whoever it was pushed foreword a bit coming into the light. One foot was on a black skateboard with the picture of something resembling a hydra from Greek mythology. Whoever it was peered at Sedna through two holes that seemed to be ripped into a paper plate, which had been fashioned into a mask. As if this wasn’t freakish enough, despite the mask Sedna clearly recognized this person as being the spitting image of Kiri right down to the same clothes she had worn today! At the hip of the Kiri doppelganger was a very shiny black beautifully designed Japanese katana, it had a shiny black sheath with a Japanese dragon design on it. In her other hand she carried two license plates.

            Sedna backed away slightly “K…Kiri?” the doppelganger reached down placing its hand by the katana hilt, one thumb moved underneath it pushing against the gold metal of the hilt ever so slightly. The noise of the blade popping from its sheath filled the otherwise silent auditorium and the audience cheered louder then ever before, the noise from the audience seemed to be deafening causing even the stage to shake, several roses flew threw the air landing at the feet of Sedna and the doppelganger.

“They really like me! Now if only I could move my feet…” Muppet Robin said as a few tears streamed from his round plastic eyes as he was unable to move.

 Sedna dropped the crumpled up piece of paper she still had in her hand from the locker room, a few pieces of macaroni coming loose as it hit the floor. Written on the paper using the macaroni pieces were the words “Return to sender”. Sedna looked up just in time to see the glistening pure metal flying towards her face.