pos fanfic

From a nearby embankment, an unlikely crew witnessed the nigh-deadly fracas that had led to Tabitha's inglorious dunking into the river by one amongst the bestial hordes, inducing her inconstant crew to full retreat. Emily Jane, 16, nodded at the Haymans Ben, 15 and 21 respectively, as if to say, "This woman's at the far edge of peril. If there's a time for us to be heroes, now is most certainly it!" Anti-Hero, a sullen youth barely pushing 14, stood apart from his compatriots, thinking dark thoughts, thinking bloody thoughts.

The cruel melee they'd just watched would send most witnesses hollering into the hills for their mommies, but it just so happened that there was nowhere this crew felt more comfortable or at ease, than in Melee.

The witch, who had only recently breathed feeling into this latest batch of eidolons, observed these proceedings with anxiety. Her eidolons had life, heart and mind all their own, but they were still little more than crude ghosts, gasps of dying memory. Emily Jane was almost a complete fabrication, romanticized and demonized and projected over blocked-out memories, the younger Hayman resembled nothing so much as one of Jigglysama's early-period scrawlings, and Anti-Hero... well... Anti-Hero was sort of a emo dick, with none of the complexities of his real-life historical counterpart.

This was a second trial-run of her powers. She had become quite nervous after the last one, which had gone horribly due to her erroneous supposition that weak memories would make good eidolons, since they were disposable. It had taken her nearly being torn apart by a pack of shadow-maddened marauders after the evisceration of her Yaoi Bunny and her 2005-era GimeChronoBreak for her to realize that weak memories wouldn't cut it against this caliber of threat.

Now these, these were powerful memories... but the witch's mind was so weak, and her memories so irretrievably soiled with sugarcoating and bittering agent. She fretted to consider that she was sending these treasured memories to their doom. As if to give an answer to her fears, Emily Jane turned, and for a moment fixed her arresting gaze upon her. Even though it was a memory borne along her own breath, that expression and the young woman who wore it was an unknowable mystery, and whether it held concern, pity, or sorrow, Vivian could not tell.

In the next instant, the older Ben leapt into the water unhesitatingly. It was only a trifle for this swaggering man, this selfless uplifter of people, in his jaunty makeshift Prinzhorn Dance School t-shirt and festooned with his many ascots, to scoop up the swooned Tabitha and bring her ashore opposite from her assailants. The black-eyed giant bellowed and made for the water with his gang following along like grade-schoolers. Their advance was halted at swordpoint by Ben the younger, with his Phrygian cap and his eye tattooed with a gleaming yellow star. During the standoff, Ben lashed with his blade at any stray limb that approached, intimidating the giant and exsanguinating a couple of lesser mooks. However, this strategy proved to have a critical error. The very second that the giant's blood was first shed, it howled in agony and began to rampage at the sight of its own ichors leaking from its wound. Ben attempted then to dodge the giant's blows, weaving askance of the danger in an intricate, frenzied safety dance, but one clean blow was all it took to leave Ben sprawled out in the riverside clay.

No sooner had Ben fallen than a pair of blood-red eyes appeared just off to the giant's side. From the direction of the eyes, a cold, pitiless voice:

"yougan cleaver."

Instantly a massive molten blade came crashing down onto the giant's skull, splitting it and searing it through. The giant's shriek was piercing. Unthinkably, the giant moved after Anti's gruesome killing tool had buried itself into its skull. It swiveled around and snatched Anti up in its massive hands. Even as the giant stared into his eyes, and screamed its foul breath into Anti's face, Anti was unmoved, and seemed to have not the slightest inkling of a fear of death. And this was why it was that the one who saved Anti's life would go unthanked.

But saved his life would be regardless, for Emily Jane had stayed above the fray, eyes shut, mentally unpresent. She tapped into the flow, and gathered her power. And with the time bought by Ben and Anti's frankly ridiculous risktaking, Emily Jane reached apotheosis.

Apotheosis, in this case, meant doing a magical-girl transformation sequence in which she came to inhabit a full Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar cosplay that was accurate but also had her personal spin on it.

Then she attacked.

The bodies of the madmen withered in the light of glory that Emily Jane shed upon them. It was kind of like in Illusion of Gaia, where that celestial light comes down and turns people into horrible, tragic ghosts, but it was also different.

Freed from his assailant's grip, Anti tumbled a few yards away from his crumbling foes, watched as the light bled the life out of them... watched as the shadow leaked out of them... watched as the shadows amalgamated once more and, becoming a hand, swatted at Emily Jane, who seemed to make no attempt to dodge the blow that sent her careening to the ground.

Anti's Yougan Cleaver had left him temporarily bereft of energy. Ben was unconscious and the older Ben was more of a merrymaker and confidante than a fighter, and now Emily Jane had been half-martyred. Inside, Anti seethed at his own helplessness, and felt an intense desire to rebel against the very confines of his existence.

Vivian, who used to be known as Wendy and had many forbidden names besides, similarly felt helpless as she watched the shadows on the verge of destroying her memories entirely. Was this it? Physical reality, and mental inner space, would they continue their ceaseless disintegration til shadow swallowed all?

Then a powerful memory struck her.

Memories... memories of...

Of Rick.

To be certain, her head was filled with Ricks, many Ricks, most of whom were consistent among each other, and all of whom she loved in her way. But there was only one Rick in her mind who was not an old man, not yet a gruff, gentlehearted old gunslinging sleuthfella. A Rick who, in his singular embodiment of the concept of righteous violent punishment, was unparalleled, a Rick with the heart of a hellbent avenger, a fervent conqueror, a ruler pledged to thousand-fold steel.

The King Rick.

Vivian pulled out a poppet from her purse and with great immediacy breathed her every last molecule of air into the face of the limp little doll. The doll warped and shuddered as it was rent asunder and made anew in the image of a memory of singular magnitude.

Thirty feet tall he stood, with his cocksure, brotherly grin, his cascading tresses and his flowing trenchcoat. No shorter was the endlessly lengthy katana he produced from the ether. The only short thing anywhere present was his terse declaration of purpose.

"Violaters shall be met swiftly with the BANKATANA
~KingRick"

In a single stroke, he cleft the shadow in twain, the darkness dissipated, and sunlight poured down once more upon the riverbed.

Vivian wept. How powerful her memories were! What incredible strength they possessed within her! To show up decades later at her side and overwhelm the encroaching darkness, to stow alongside her so that she might never be alone!

Then she inhaled hard, like she was hitting the world's most massive bong of weed, bigger than any toke mankind has ever seen. The memories became vaporous once more and trailed their way to Vivian's windpipe. They waved at Vivian as they went back into her lungs to pass once more through her blood-brain barrier. She picked up her poppets, not noticing that one was missing, and plopped herself alongside the insensate Mrs. Duckboot. Although her memories of first-aid instruction were hazy at best, and the world was still being swallowed by bleakest shade of unknown origin, Vivian now had a feeling that everything was going to be just ducky. It was the moral of the story.

*****

Meanwhile, in the old capitol, the real Rick Spade sneezed as if he were being talked about. Then he opened the door in front of him and stepped beyond the threshold. The real Soap Roman poured anxiously over printouts of forum posts outlining rumors of the strange shadowy threat and regarded Rick only with a grunt. And, after pulling her head away from her work to regard the third and penultimate attendant to their meeting, the real Mia Kris peered over the top of her frames to get a better look at Rick. This was actually a very bad idea, because you actually see better if you just look at stuff through your glasses.

***

MIA: Um, hey, so, thanks for joining us, we're going to start the game in just a couple of minutes!
RICK: Yeah, I see we've got... wow, 25 people in here?
SOAP: I think this might officially beat our record for most people longed into the new forums at once.
MIA: This is it. Weeee've, hit the big time. We're now peers among the ranks of "Marcus Plier" himself.
SOAP: Soon we'll be doing bounty streams. Maybe we can make a dent in the municipal hosting costs. And you get to enjoy "Call of Duty: Black Ops 9: Modern Warfare 10: Shooting Gunfare".
RICK: Haha, yeah. Ooookay, so, today we'll be playing a, uh, much-requested game, Kingdom Mushroom Tensei 3: Cacturne.
SOAP: Funky Kong edition.
MIA: Yes, featuring "Meta Knight" from "Kirby: Hey, Guy!".
RICK: And, while we do that, we'll have some important things to talk to you all about!
SOAP: Everyone can't wait for us to tell them about all the horrible things they already know.

Soap gazed out his office window. Already the sky was setting the POS capitol ablaze, like so much molten metal, or a coin, gyrating in the air, tossed there by the uncaring hand of an imaginary god that doesn't exist. The sky was the color of a television tuned to a dead channel that was orange. Damn, he, Soap thought. We thought we were opening a new beginning with our mad dreams of time travel. but ironically. the only time now, is the time of which we’re out of. It’s almost humorous. Yeah, I could almost laugh, if I hadn't cried that part away from me when I watched the trolls of Jebzig sweep over the face of our fair land like a prairie fire so many years ago. And now with the shadow beasts that threaten to collapse our very reality that we live in...

Rick put a hand on Soap's shoulder. Old men they were, gruff old Rick and old jovial Soap, but the bond they shared was real and time-tested and Rick would not abandon Soap to his lonely thoughts even in this hour of direness.