OOC: Remember, if you want to hear the minotaur, your finger just won't cut it. Mouse it up!


1A: The World, The Girl, The Hand, The Gang

(Select an image below to go to the corresponding story. Any order will do.)








(Or if you’re done with that, click below to start sewing it all together.)

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1A.i: The World

(The following is an alternate account of being presented with the Freestyle Championship on February 13.)



Vinnie Lane: “Blah blah blah introduction blah blah.”

...

Vinnie Lane: “Let’s get those two out here, we don’t have all night after all… introducing first, from who knows where… the X-Treme Champion… the Federweight Champion… ALIAS!”

He steps out onto the stage, standing in the limelight for all to see. It’s a feeling he has still yet to fully become comfortable with. An ice rink full of people egg him on, and for a moment he allows himself to be swept up in their adulation. The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur steps out next to him, and his presence alone brings the champion back to unreality. With two championships thrown over his shoulders, he meanders down the ramp, distracted by the low grumblings of his companion. Upon reaching the ring, he trudges up the steps and climbs through the ropes. Vinnie Lane offers a damp hand and he feels obliged to shake it.

The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur never steps through the ropes. He is in the ring nonetheless.

Vinnie Lane: “You really need an entrance song, dude… have you considered something by Faster Pussycat or maybe Saigon Kick?”

The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur asks what those things are, but a shrug shows the depth of the champion’s own understanding. The crowd laughs. Apparently that’s funny.

Vinnie Lane: “And introducing next… from Steubenville, Ohio, the birthplace of Traci Lords… he is your XWF Television Champion as well as the HeavyMetalweight Champion… you used to call him Charlie, now you can call him out to the ring! Here is… DEMOS!”

The man called Demos walks to the ring. With theatrics. As he stops upon the ramp and mutteringly pulls in his outstretched arms, The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur now chuckles. Apparently to him, whatever Demos just said was funny. When he gets into the ring, he continues talking to… someone. Demos’s competitor turns to The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur, and sees him standing there with a cocked head. His eyes are pointed in the same direction as Demos’s.

Vinnie Lane: “Thanks for coming out, dude! You’ve had a heck of a run since you joined up this last Summer. Same to you, Alias, ever since you popped up at the end of October, you’ve been on a tear! You both had huge matches at Snow Job, both walked away with gold, and now you’re both here to be a part of the next stage of XWF history along with ME! How rad, right!?”

The tone of the man in makeup catches the champion’s attention. He nods, though he doesn’t know what he’s nodding about.

Vinnie Lane: “Cool. Hey, Chuck, I’m over here, man. You gotta stay in front of the hard cam so the people at home can see you, you know? Don’t worry I’m an old pro at this TV thing. Even though you’re the TV Champion, you’ve got a lot to learn about broadcasting!”

The main with the hair keeps droning on. The champion has zoned out again. His attention is instead drawn to Demos’s ramblings, though he struggles to decipher it. This feels peculiar to him - languages have never been an issue before. Not even that time with the donkey in Mexico!

The audience is laughing. Wait… can they hear him?

Oh… it’s just the class clown dancing for his food.

Vinnie Lane: “Okay, okay… let’s cut the man some slack… he’s earned it… yadda yadda yadda… Alias, if you don’t mind, please hand over that beautiful Federweight gold!”

He looks at the championship one more time, and hears The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur reassure him. This championship is meaningless now. It was only ever a message to begin with. He took it from Tula Keali’i as a response to her brief dalliance with The Left Hand, just as he had taken the HeavyMetalWeight, now in Demos’s possession, from Marf. He remembered the message that he sent and how he had promised Tula that he’d take her Anarchy championship too. She did that all on her own though. Just as he predicted.

He hands the championship over and Vinnie… hugs him? He freezes in shock. His mind races. He repeatedly asks himself, ‘What do I do? What do I do?’. When was the last time anybody had hugged him? Had they ever? It lasts a mere second, but his struggle to regain composure lasts a lot longer.

Vinnie Lane: “Something something…”

The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur tenses; a twitch of a muscle being enough to bring the man back into the moment. As Demos consults with… something… The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur is getting ready to strike. The man squints. Is that… a shadow?

The air ripples next to Demos. The shape is almost human, though its size would suggest otherwise. It’s there that The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur is focused towards. The man wonders what his fellow sees that he cannot.

As Demos hands the title over to Vinnie, The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur eases up, and the man lets out a notable exhale, masked by Vinnie’s continuous patter.

Vinnie Lane: “Had me worried for a sec there, Chuck! Thought you were gonna mess up my screen time! Thanks for being cool though, dude… ”

The man’s attention goes to the bag that Vinnie begins to untie. The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur’s stays locked elsewhere.

Vinnie Lane: “Now… you two have been making your cases all week long. You’ve both laid it all out there, let it all on the line. We’ve all seen you both, and you both have definitely put on a spectacle to behold! You’ve both embodied what it means to be a 24/7, Alive 365, 7 out of 7 CHAMPION in this company! And that’s why it is my HONOR, to deliver THIS…”

The spinning championship finally draws The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur’s eye away, and he chuckles again. Of all the trinkets he has seen mankind covet, this might be the most ridiculous.

Vinnie Lane: “... to present THIS gorgeous new championship belt… to the NEW FREESTYLE CHAMPION… ALIAS!”

Being handed the new championship, he tries to juggle it alongside his second one, the weight of the spinning feature making it awkward to hold. Pinning the X-Treme Championship between his chin and his shoulder, he opts to fasten it around his waist. He half-clasps it before being interrupted by Demos standing face-to-face with him. From his pocket, he withdraws a clump of Geri Vayden’s hair.

Vinnie Lane: “Ew! Dude!”

Demos grins, and pulls Vinnie’s mic over to his mouth. The champion stares on.

Demos: “Eat… the Left Hand.”

The two shake hands - that’s two more handshakes today than he had over the entirety of his return to-date. Something must be in the water. Or the ice.

The champion leaves the ring, unphased by Demos and his friend’s further interactions with Vinnie Lane. As he walks up the ramp, he hoists the championship into the air under the direction of The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur. He listens intently as he is warned of the hordes that are to come for both of the prizes: doctors, goddesses, thugs, warriors young and old, big and small. With the championship on display thus, he beckons them: Come for the baubles and ornaments, if you can.

Man versus world.

As they slip through the entranceway and disappear into the dark, The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur makes his champion promise one last thing: if the mortals wish for a hunt, let them now be the hunted.

The champion nods as he thinks of Reggie Estrada.

End.


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1A.ii: The Girl

(The following takes place after Betsy Granger’s The Candy Land Conundrum.)



THUMP.

A crumpled body falls to the floor. Face down, its limbs sprawl in unnatural angles. Crouching over it, The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur is loathe to make contact. Through the air, he senses something off about it. It feels… wrong. That irregularity brings forth an uncommon emotion for him. Is this fear?

Willing courage - if that’s the right word - to fruition, he reaches out an ever-maturing paw to the body and scoops a typically large forearm under his fingers and raises the body’s arm into the air. It bends backwards at the shoulder with only the slightest bit of resistance. His broad nostrils take a deep sniff of the body’s hand. He scrunches up his muzzle - the putrid otherworldly odour soaked into the skin repulses him. He drops the arm without a care.

THUMP.

It hits the ground. He rises, towering over the carcass. With his foot, he haphazardly flips the body over onto its back. A low growl rumbles from his diaphragm. With the toe of his hoof, he prods the body as if expecting some movement. Nothing happens. Again he growls, gentle and quiet.

He squints his wide eyes, studying the body further. At first glance, the replicate is a near-perfect match. The dirty blonde hair; the dimpled chin; the jaded brow. But skin is not identity. This much The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur knows. Conscious or not, it’s telling that the body’s eyes are closed. He thinks of prying them open. He decides against it. He has not lived for eons to ignore his base instincts. He is part animal after all.

He huffs. In spite of the evidence, he trusts his intuition. Though it had been several weeks since he last saw his ward, he knew that this was not he. In truth, his suspicions were aroused from the moment he became aware of whatever lay before him. He had observed the saccharine disturbance from a distance and throughout it, something hadn’t made sense.

“Hello!” a voice calls from the background. Simultaneously, The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur tenses and feels relief. The voice belongs to the real. But how will he explain this? “Where are you, bud?”

A man emerges from the fireplace. Dirty blonde hair falls around a jaded brow, its longest strands stroking a dimpled chin. He joins The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur in the nexus, two metallic cumberbunds draped over his shoulders. The man flares an awkward smile at his mythological compatriot. Slowly, the smile fades as the man’s eyes lower upon the cadaver on the middle of the cabin floor. Oddly, his eyes seem to understand. A barely audible exhale exudes from The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur.

“Where’d you find it?” the man asks, with no confusion as to what he was looking at. The shell of a form is already deteriorating before their eyes. “Was it her?”

The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur scoffs. He raises a rugged hoof and stamps it down upon the fraudulent face. The entire body turns to dust.


“It was, wasn’t it?” the man knows. “Let me guess, I manifested as some allegorical being in her fantastically fabulous fables giving her some sort of guiding truth?”

The growl becomes a snarl.

“So that’s a yes,” he confidently proclaims. He turns to face The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur, craning his neck to look 11 feet high. Just a second ago, the two stood eye-to-eye, but something about this realm is influencing The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur’s size. It’s inconsistent. He continues to grow larger and larger but at other times, the size difference is not as pronounced. “With all due respect, I think you know more than you’re letting on.”

A silence hangs in the air. Smoke seeps from The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur’s nose. He decides. With a coarse voice, he regales the man with the tales of The Candy Land Conundrum. The man listens intently, his face free from judgement. Though he knows nothing of how this copy was created, he nonlinearly hears how his analogue floated in a tube; and before that, how it was renamed after he was remade; how it led the girl through the unknown under a pseudonym. Worst of all, he heard a name.

“I… AM… Alias.”

“I’ve heard enough,” the man interrupts, fighting back the nausea that those final words brought forth. “A name…”

The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur grunts. The man ponders upon it.

“My name is mine,” he affirms. “It belongs to me and only me.”

He is preaching to the converted. The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur drapes a meaty arm around the man’s shoulders, reassuring him of his reality. The man nuzzles into The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur’s chest.

“Why does she keep doing this to me?” he asks. “Why does she want to own me so badly?”

The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur lets out a solemn, guttural sound. The man looks up at him with a raised eyebrow. He breaks free from the embrace and staggers out into the nexus.

The Salmon-Coloured Minotaur fades away, and he stands alone in the cabin.

He looks through the fireplace.

He sees her.

He hears her song.

He smiles.

End.


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1A.iii: The Hand

(I’m not really sure whether the following actually takes place at all...)



“Raise the left hand…”

A voice calls through the fog.

In the dark, he stumbles as he steps over vines and roots. The ground squelches beneath his bare feet, mud bubbling over his unkempt toes. This land is unfamiliar.


A brimstone odour hangs in the air. With each swipe against twigs and reeds, he tries to cut through it. He succeeds, but…

He falls.

Into the swamp.

He always falls.

Always.

Fall.


Fall.


What’s left?

He pushes forward.




In the middle of the jungle (How is he in a jungle? This is stupid, right?) he finds an altar. Stone fauns encircle it. Candles litter the ground before a goat-faced effigy that… isn’t there?



The image projects on a screen that similarly isn’t there. And is. Fog swirls around the outer edge of the sculptures. It dances and prances, but when it blows just right… just Left… a jagged, bull-headed rock peers through it. A stalker in the mist. It watches; it observes.


“Raise the left hand…”

The altar calls.

His hand burns.

His right hand.

Fuck!


“No,” he affirms.

“Raise the left hand…”


He’s not fucking crazy,


The figure draws him in. As he steps in towards the centre of the goat-faced busts, they close in behind him, entrapping him.

The circle spins.

Everything dies.

This is the end.

The end of all.

“Raise the left hand…”

“Raise the left hand…”

“Raise the left hand…”

She calls to him from all directions.

But there is nothing.

There is no jungle. There are no sculptures.

There is just a man.

And another…



The other raises his left hand.

“Raise the left hand…”

“Never!”

The Baphomet looms over all.

“Get fucked.”

A right-handed middle finger defies. The Baphomet’s laughter echoes off the walls of the universe.




It’s different.


He picks it up and throws it.

The Baphomet shatters into clumped strands of black and silver hair. The man catches it; a gift from the Demos.


As he unravels blue strands from his own fingers - pulled straight from Lycana’s head - and ties them to Geri Vayden’s hair, he agrees.

“Eat The Left Hand.”









End.


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1A.iv: The Gang

(The following takes place relatively recently. The exact date isn’t all that important.)



“Hey man, it’s Corey. Sorry I missed your call. I kind of… well… I had no idea you even had a cellphone, to be honest. I’ll save it for the future. About the house though, I won’t be there on that day, but feel free to drop in. I’m not sure if you’ll find what you’re looking for, but I meant what I said when I told you it’s always open for you. Dolly should be around, I’ll let her know to expect you. I uh… I guess you haven’t met her. Please don’t be murdery with her…”

A nervous chuckle follows out the message before an abrupt BEEP cuts it off. Let’s be honest here, it was getting a bit long to be believable anyway.

The listener leans back against the vomit-yellow wall of the flea motel he called home tonight - he was splashing out. As his back rubbed the wall, small specks of yellow paint flake to the ground like vaguely familiar breadcrumbs leading… somewhere. Where was that again? It felt so long ago to him. Time had begun to lose its meaning to him recently.

With his back in puke, he reflected. Corey Smith had offered to open his home to him. He had never really had a home before, and didn’t really see the point of one. Anything can be a bed if you sleep on it. He assumed that’s why Corey had set up his home the way that he had: a place for the wayward ones to feel like they belonged. So thy always had something to sleep upon.

He shut his eyes and tried to think of a different world. A world full of people like Corey who helped and healed. For a fleeting second, the image was reality; and oh how there was peace! It was as if he willed it to be so. That chilled him to the core. Who could have such power over truth and reality?

His other friend would know. Not Corey. The other one.

The image of utopia in his mind shatters.

Another face replaces it.



The old man held a special place in the bottom of the dreamer who listens’ heart.

He was an active obstacle.




The old man interfered from the outset. Almost like it was… deliberate. There was a method to it. The dreamer had gone in with one major target in mind. The boy. The old man protected the boy, even at the cost of his own success. That would be admirable in any other context. Now… now the dreamer would do the same for Corey. In that sense he gets it. But nothing is ever as it seems with the old man. That much he has learned. First hand, now. The doctor has joined the hunt. Other forces are at work.

The dreamer sees more than most; he sees all of the threads that are already woven.


But he can’t see the lines that are not yet drawn.

Not yet.


But the old man’s preoccupation with the boy is still unseen. The seer who dreams is disturbed by it. And by how it affects Corey.

The friendship of Thaddeus Duke and Corey Smith always seemed more than what either of them was willing to admit to. Corey was blind to it. He never saw it coming, even if everyone else did. But to the seer it was worse.

He knows that Thaddeus Duke is not who he appears to be.

The seer called it. He said it the moment he first saw the boy.

He was labelled a lunatic for doing so.

Crawling to his feet, he takes four plodding steps along the thick, tacky carpet towards a window that cannot open. He pushes his face against the dusty, cold glass. He no longer needs a star chart. He knows the time; he knows the place. Immediately he spots Coreytopia - his Valentine’s gift to Corey - in the sky. It illuminates the night for anyone who is looking for it. The seer purses his mouth together in a stressed contemplation. That light will lead him. He is sure. Somewhere in the world it beams upon a fragment of himself.

But he’s not there.

Not yet.

He’s not at the end of this journey.

He wonders, is that where Thad fits in? The monster? The fiend?

Is he just trying to find his light too?

Maybe he deserves more consideration. Or maybe he doesn’t. Not with the blue woman sniffing around.

That opportunity to decide might need to happen sooner rather than later now that the conditions of the seer’s first perk have been met…

End.


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1B: The Thread

(The following is happening right about… wait for it… wait for it… wait for it… now.)



"It’s been relentless.

And I love it.

Day after day after day, I raise my shield and swing my sword. I fall. I rise. Rinse and repeat.

I survive.

And when one perseveres for as long as I have, it gets… hard…” (hi Corey) “to not get lost in ego. It's safe to say I've lost that battle several times. I've let my emotion cloud my truth. I am not perfect. I own that. But even when I err, I’ll keep swinging. Day in and day out. What other choice do I have?

I am The Hunted after all.

I am not complaining though. Not one little bit. I asked for this. I stood atop a mountain and screamed ‘Come one, come all, show me what you’ve fucking got! Forge me anew in the strongest fucking flames that you can muster!’

And so you have.

Shawn Warstein.

Bobby Bourbon.

Savannah Knightley.

Bearded War Pig.

Tommy Wish.

John Black.

Demos.

Ash Quinn.

Atara Themis.

Big Preesh.

Dean Rose.

...Louis…

Commodore Past.

Even fucking Taco!

Did I miss anyone else, aside from the obvious?

Whatever.

That’s fourteen names right there that have taken their shot, and you know what? I’m still standing, kids. And STILL you’re X-Treme AND Freestyle Champion.

Heh… there’s that ego again. You’ll all begrudge me that every once in a while, right? I’m only human. At least I can catch myself in the act, that’s gotta count for something to most of you. Maybe not for Reggie, though.

And look, I know people have weathered the storm of the world for longer than I have yet. I’m still only one defence down after all. But there’s something in the air, right? A feeling in your bones. You know the question isn’t ‘if’, it’s ‘when’.

You do know that, right Chris? I know Thaddeus was preparing himself - are you?

You should be. I spent the first several weeks of my return here being a victim. Sure I’d try to defend my own liberty and all that mumbo jumbo, but what good is winning matches when you’re still laid out at the end of the night? What good is removing a brand when you just replace it with an even bigger scar?

My right hand is my left.

I’m fucking done with that.

You hunt me? I hunt you. That’s the deal now.

You hear that, Marf? Lycana? Geri? Andrew? Fury?

…

…

...Prison Bitch?...

…

…

Reggie, do you fucking hear that? I’m The Hunter now!

And I know you’ll all keep coming for me as if that isn’t true; as if this was still the old world. You practically have to. Because I’m still the ‘unknown’, right? Vinnie Lane said as much himself when he tried to take from me the very championship that he gave to me to begin with. So much for Charlie, err… Demos - yeah, I think that’s who it was - so much for Demos’s theory that I’m somehow a corporate shill.

Even with how confusing Demos’s claims were, I at least don’t blame him for trying something. That’s just his fight or flight reflex kicking in, and that’s common for anybody when they’re presented with an unknown stimulus. Everyone picks their poison. Louis’s is ‘flight’ - on wrist-bound wings no less. Demos on the other hand… his is ‘fight’, and I was kind of looking forward to it, to be honest. I thought that’s what this date was going to be for - I promised him the 17th of Warfare. But I guess he saw the light or something. Maybe it’s that Charlie ‘fights’ but Demos ‘flies’.

Another time, I suppose. Another universe.

In his absence, however, I’m left with my wildest dreams being fulfilled: Reggie Estrada, on a silver platter. And Reggie’s poison? Well… he tries some strange combination of both ‘fight’ AND ‘flight’, but that fella makes less sense than even Demos does. Watch how this ends up though. Watch where this leaves Reggie. I just straight up don’t know if he’s got the guts to jump through fire to get away from me. That’s what it takes these days, friends. At a minimum.

Jesus, what a dichotomy! I’m saying there’s courage in fleeing, and you can’t even muster that correctly, Reg! Can you get anything right? What, in that dense little noggin of yours, can you get straight?

…

Too easy.

How about you come out and tell us all what you really want? And I don’t mean John Black’s cock.

Okay, so I went there anyway. Sue me!”

”Say it loud and clear, bud. Do you want to be the X-Treme Champion? You keep coming at me like you do - you even answered my challenge which I honest to God thought you were going to bitch out on - while fucking literally saying that you don’t. If you can’t answer that question, man, you don’t have a hope in hell at beating me. Maybe you already know that though. Maybe that’s why you’ve been hiding behind this whole facade of pretending not to want Lucy back. Is it just to protect yourself from your inevitable failure?

Reg, I’m going to say this again because I really want to drill this into your skull: I tried being nice to you. I gave you chance after chance, but you’ve been too wrapped up in your own insecurities to listen. It didn’t have to be this way.

But now it does.

This has nothing to do with me ‘being a star’, like you keep alluding to. That might be your game, but you severely misunderstand me if that’s what you’re thinking. This has nothing to do with me being all ‘woe is me’ in some sort of pity party, either. Let’s be clear here, you HAVE literally said that exact thing, so no take-backsies! This isn’t about any of that, though. I’m not crying over here. I’m swinging fists and dropping bombs. I’m only throwing parties after throwing your ass into a pit. That’s my pity party!” And at least one tick on the cheesy wrasslin’ line list.

”But you don’t get any of this, do you? Your head is fixated on painting me with the rules of your world. But we don’t live in the same world, you and I, and that’s what makes this whole thing so damn ironic. Reggie the rebel - insisting that I must have the same motivations as he.

Fuck that! We’re as different as can be. Unlike you, I don’t lament my circumstances. You’re about as ‘woe is me’ as can fucking be, but you have the gall to say I’m throwing a pity party? I’m the guy The Left Hand runs from; I’m the guy that causes Demos to backtrack on all of his smacktalk because he’d rather be friend than foe; I’m the guy that makes the ground fucking quake with every word out of my mouth. And since bouncing back from High Stakes and my run-in with the Goat-Fucker, I am exactly where I intended to be. That’s not luck, it’s sheer force of will.

YOUR WILL CANNOT TOP MINE.

NOT IN ANY UNIVERSE, REAL OR IMAGINED.

You couldn’t stop me from taking the X-Treme Championship from you. You couldn’t pull away the Freestyle Championship from me. As far as I’m concerned, when it comes down to you and me, this question has already been answered! I don’t know if you stepped up out of altruism to save your boys’ asses, but this only ends one way. The same way it did last time.

Back at Snow Job, Tommy and Johnny made sure it was just you and I out there so that you could take your shot after I put your ass down. Now that you’ve done that, what else have you got? What other tricks do you have up your sleeve other than trying to cheap shot me after the match yet again, or calling on your buddies to get involved? Nothing. That’s it Those are the only options, because the match itself is sure as fuck not finishing with your hand raised. You’ve played the fucking cards you were dealt. You lost. And you can scream until you’re blue in the face that you ‘stand alone on your own journey’ - your words. But after Snow Job, I’m not going to believe a fucking word that comes out of your face.

So bring your fucking boys after me - it’s no different to what you’ve already been doing! You had the chance to stop. They had the chance to stop. You all chose not to. Each and every day, you’ve woken up and decided to paint me as some sort of golden boy out to ruin your life. That’s all on you though, not me. I’m going to make damn sure that the two of us get to finish this though. You bring your boys? Cool, I don’t even need friends to deal with the three of you. Just a little fire to the flame. And once they’re reduced to ash, it’s just going to be you and I once again.

Bell to bell.

…And beyond…

Because, Reg… I told you I’m the hunter now. And rest assured… this thing isn’t finishing when the bell rings.

It’s finishing when you’re in the dirt.”

(Just read on friends. No clicks needed!)

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1C: The Needle

(The following is not what has happened. It is what will come to be.)



A world map is sprawled out on the ground with two entities standing over it. The smaller one - human - studies at the strange contours of the continents. The world is wrong. That much he knows.

The larger one - inhuman - reaches into a knapsack and withdraws an eerily familiar dagger. With a bowed head, he offered it to his partner on a salver made of his own hands. Taking it, the human runs a finger along the cold face of the blade. He looks at the cross on the hilt, and then the upside-down pentagram on the other side. His cheek twitches in satisfaction. It’s the one.

He tosses it in the air above the map. The inhuman looks on earnestly as time slows. The dagger leisurely rotates in the air.

The map lights up. The human’s eyes widen in awe. He sees more than he’s ever seen. A line of fire from Nazareth to Steubenville; Dagobah in orbit around in the Coreytopia system; a phonebooth at the top of the mountain…

One dagger falls.

Three daggers land.

“Wha… what does this mean?” The inhuman’s silence is telling. They both bend forward and examine the locations.

Florida.

Spain.

Italy.

“Spain means Warfare, right?” the human asks. The inhuman nods. “So what of the others? Is Italy just some sort of leftover from when we were there?”

A large mitt reaches forward and pulls the Italian dagger from its spot that overlaps with the dashed path already drawn through that country.. The inhuman yelps as the dagger grows red and disintegrates in his hand. He softly growls.

“What was it?” The human looks troubled. The inhuman shakes its head, refusing to elaborate. The human quickly reaches for the Floridian dagger - an act of mild subversion. The inhuman whines in an uncharacteristic sign of weakness. It’s too late. The dagger glows white. It floats up and away. Out of sight. Out of this world.

“It’s okay… I know where to go…”

End. For realsies.

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