Young Writers Society

♦ What Breeds Hate ♦

PT 391, The Desert of Sinkholes

Hours Prior to Kitty’s capture.

Fi and Kitty took a detour from their mission. They stopped at the abandoned Joji Prefecture. The ruins didn’t bring a sense of fear or hate to Kitty. There was a gentle nostalgia looking over the lost village. An appreciation and rejection of nature.

“I wish that it was Radio who destroyed Joji. Or something I knew I could punch in the face. All there is to blame is nature.”

“You can continue. Take as much time as you want.” Kitty directed.

“Why don’t we camp here? It’s already been a lot of walking.”

They set up camp next to the abandoned Joji. Like before, they made a fire and cooked marshmallows over the open flame. The pair shared stories of their respective lands. Kitty, her stories of travels related to DRU, and Fi’s travels in and out of Joji on hunting excursions. They tried a cooked marshmallow, only to decide they liked the burnt ones better. That entire night, they skated around the question at hand. Finally, Fi blurted it out.

“How are we supposed to kill these guys?”

“We’ll find some other way, I told you Fi!”

“...Alright. Here’s a question, then. Have you ever, Y’know?” Fi asked with a slicing motion across their neck.

“I did once. Please don’t think worse of me.” Kitty continued as Fi motioned to continue on affirmatively. “We were super low-staffed because of Radio, so I was pretty much the only one left over who had the capability of running a team. We were hired to kill some people who betrayed DRU and left the cause. I don't think all glitches are bad, but these guys? They were bad. It was a group of people who escaped from the prison during the break of Point 365. I was accompanied by a group of heavy, brutish glitches. When we had them cornered, we found what they had been hiding. Some sort of fucked up, ritualistic human trafficking ring. When I locked eyes with the girl there, inside the cage, the stress I felt…washed away. The job was easier.”

“Any job would be easier if you had a reason to hate the person you had to kill.”

The pair decided that they would tackle the job in full at night. In the dead of night, accented by the smoldering fire, Kitty quietly listened to the audio log from Fi’s confrontation with Radio. She thought about what happened with Dzo.

“I don’t want to kill anybody. Simple as that.”

“You will if you stay with DRU. It’ll get easier once you get past the first.”

Fi’s words echoed in Kitty’s despondent head. The job was to kill two people who were working against DRU. They were demonized by Jackie when presented, but Kitty and Fi knew better. It was a pair of sisters who betrayed DRU many, many years ago. Since Radio was quiet for the moment, the new prerogative was to get rid of other “smaller” problems. Their directive was to kill two woman. Raiya and Diana who betrayed DRU decades ago. They have been living in the Desert of Sinkholes. The main problem with them was that the sisters traveled in and out of the desert when they felt like it, and they were pinned as traitors, so it was time for them to die. Kitty remembered Fi’s reaction when they were given the mission. They were quieter than usual, when Jackie left the room, their face burned with an intense hatred for their boss.

“Be a good leader…” A voice echoed in Kitty’s head. She was unsure if it was her own.

Kitty laid, lying on her side with her hands between her thighs to distract from the harsh breeze of the desert. Even the fire wasn’t hot enough. She narrowed her eyes so Fi barley noticed when they quietly and slowly sat up out of bed and wandered into the ruins of their old home, for the first time, picking the plague mask from their side and pulling it over their head.

Joji was ruined. As they entered through the large, dilapidated gate, Fi thought about Dzo. The many years they were bullied and harassed by him, the equal amount that nobody did anything about it. Part of them hoped that maybe he escaped, and survived his tumultuous fall into another dimension. But like the story Kitty told them about the glitch, Dzo was another type of person who’d be a thorn in the side of any world.

Everything settled into the sand, what was once a great civilization reduced to peaceful ashes. The screams they remembered were long gone. Anybody who was there, was taken by sinkholes, whether dead or alive. All that was left was the memory of what was once there, also to be taken by sinkholes, eventually.

Fi couldn’t help but think about their parents. They were gone, dead, maybe, but Fi had no way of knowing and they highly doubted DRU had any awareness of where they were physically. Knowing the inner workings of DRU, glitches, or others from the Desert weren’t allowed on other dimensions, and they’d be removed by DRU quickly. The hope still fluttered in their heart. Hoping for their old life somehow felt foolish in their head.

Inside, Fi wanted their parents to be alive, somewhere. The logical side thought; would death be more forgiving? Falling through a sinkhole meant one of two things. You are brought in by DRU, or you are left astray in a confusing world the cruel hand of nature dropped you into? As if they were dropped in and told “good luck!” Fi wondered if they would make a new life for themselves, or if they would crack under the pressure. Maybe DRU was a signifier of this, at least there was a direction given by the captains.

They stood in front of the ruins of what was once their home. When a light chittering noise cut through the silence of the air. After everything came tumbling down like a house of cards built on a tightrope, the harmony box still stood, and it worked!

“Joji Prefecture is stronger than it has ever been!” The newswoman chattered.

The picture was tattered, it was overexposed, cracked. Colors bled into each other. It had turned into a new, broken form separate from any Joji resident. The audio was distorted, like the film had been ripped out and cut into pieces, and stuffed back into the box.

The words repeated “Joji Prefecture is stronger than it has ever been!”

The light of the harmony box fluttered off of Fi’s plague mask. They turned away from the house, facing the town that had made Fi their pariah. They looked with a silent pride. The plague outfit their mom had given them was finally shown to the village.

Again. “Joji Prefecture is stronger than it has ever been!”

Nobody was there to see it. Fi waited for the laughing, the stones to get thrown, for anything. Their newfound strength was on display for the looming eyes of only the tumbleweeds that floated by.

“Joji Prefecture is stronger than it has ever-”

Fi plunged their fist through the harmony box’s screen with a shocking crash that echoed through the desert. They collapsed onto the rubble of their own home. Crying for their parents to come back.

In light of this, when Fi returned to the campsite, only to find that Kitty had left, they found what they were looking for in golden lights.

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The plague mask covered most of Fi’s face except the back. Their black hair floated weightlessly as they followed the footsteps of Kitty until a lavish house built out of assorted machine parts came into view. The further they traveled, the more the anxiety grew in their chest. They felt a small protrusion from the ground spring a trap. A bubble was created around Fi’s body, trapping them in midair. It zapped the air out around them, making it difficult for any counterattacks to be made. Their hair turned into a full fiery blonde, allowing them to harness the strength to burst the bubble.

A figure opened the door and stood on the doorstep. Before Fi could process who she was, they fumbled with the handgun from the inside of their coat. As they lifted, the woman standing at the door brought her arm to the ground. A spark of ice began to grow from mere snowflakes to a giant spiky glacier that spiraled upwards towards Fi.

“See? You hold it like this. Shoot straight. If the time ever comes that you have to fire this on an opponent, use one arm to aim, other arm for support. Let your eye guide the bullet. The more support, the better the shot.” Kitty’s words echoed.

The bullet released out of its chamber, making a pigeonhole through the ice. It floated through the nothingness that was the desert, using the ice to only increase its velocity. When the bullet exited, it forced open the jugular of the old woman who stood at the doorstep. She fell to her knees, blood pooling around the entrance to the house. Her tattered body fell into the sinkhole the house was built over. Into the abyss of space.

Fi walked past where the body once was, bursting through the door.

Bam!

A smash followed by a zap of electricity flowed into Fi’s body. Their distorted vision quickly came back to life when they realized who was standing before them. It was another old woman. Her eyes were once bright green, now they were a deep, emotionless green.

“You were supposed to leave us alone, and yet, here you are.”

Behind the woman, was Kitty. Her hands were tied behind her back. Her face was now adorned with bruises and scratches, assumedly from the two sisters.

“Jackie was right. They're insane.” Fi thought.

The two of them circled each other like two sharks. Raiya looked into Fi’s eyes, she could only see two decades of confusion and pain behind them. Her sister was dead, and everything is worse now. All that was left was to fight. Like she always had. She wondered if her father was getting a kick out of the thoughts going through her head.

Fi ripped their mask off, like they were trying to threaten Raiya with the idea of killing someone she could see the face of. Deep down, they knew judging someone based on their own personal biases meant nothing.

Raiya threw the first punch. She had gauntlets on each hand. One ignited with a fiery red and the other with a thundering blue. Fi let all of their hair be engulfed in blonde, and they threw one last punch. Colliding with Raiya’s. While all the power was there, Raiya’s ability to hold the power held behind her gauntlets was long past. Her arm shattered like glass and Fi punched through her. Past her arm and into her face. Coating their mom’s poncho in a new crimson red. They turned in an instant and picked Kitty up.

“Fi…I didn’t want you to have to…” Kitty cried silently into Fi’s chest.

“Do you mind if I tell you something?”

“...No…”

“Since I was a kid, I always thought that I was a burden to my parents, and anybody else for that matter. Mom and Dad were high-ranking in their fields, when I was born, I was a permanent stain on their record, the unluckiest kid born to a fortunate family. I had everything growing up. They loved me, they did what they could to spread that love. I’m a fool for ever questioning the sacrifices they made. I won’t make the same mistake with you, Kitty. I don’t care what happens going forward, because I have something to fight for.”

________________________________________________________________________

END

Creds:

Writer & Story:

goodolnoah

Original Writing Period:

December 10th 2023 - January 16th 2024

Inspiration:

-OLD Fi story, Plague: None of The Pressure

-An old story I wrote called Nightwolf for Raiya and Diana

-Nier Replicant, especially Kaine and the desert place of Facade

-My GF for the idea of GOING TO SPACE

-Songs? Lots of older, throwback music from my 2018 days. But also some rock like godsmack, tom petty? Maidcore, yakuza, Persona 3 Reload, Super Smash bros. Music, Mother 3 music.

Story gets a 0/10 cuz Maga wasn’t there. Oh...On that note...

🛠⋆⭒˚.⋆In construction...⋆⭒˚.⋆🛠