♦ Plague of the Desert - Part 12 ♦

♦ Memories From Before ♦

PT 391, DRU Headquarters

Fi was haunted by dreams of their parents again. Since they heard what Radio had said, the dreams turned into faithless mirages of who their parents were behind their back. Kai-So and Xo-Shi made fun of them behind their back. They sat back as the king ridiculed the slightest idea of their existence. A voice rang in their head, over and over again. It was a tangle of their voice and Dzo’s voice.

“We torment this society by being unfit for it. You are a constant reminder that your parents are unworthy. They should just get rid of you.”

Kitty walked into the glitch cafeteria. She had gone days without seeing Fi since what happened with Radio. She was just recovering from a cough that was caused by her head reattaching to her body. While she was used to limbs being severed from her body, the exceedingly complicated organs being severed caused a plethora of problems upon being reattached. Being an outsider without a home made Kitty feel like a glitch when she wasn’t on missions, while she had personal sleeping quarters, they weren’t very improved from the glitches.

She slept in a stuffy room with other outcasts who lacked homes. Like a homeless shelter, they slept in their own beds all lined in one room, Kitty would play in the roulette wheel when it came time to choose what to watch. There were DVDs from every known universe in stock. Even her own. So when the rare opportunity came up that she won, she’d always pick her comfort show from her universe. About a little girl who becomes obsessed with a virtual reality world.

She shyly skulked over to Fi’s jail cell, staying out of the view of other glitches, who already didn’t like her due to her outcast nature. Kitty knocked on the wall next to the jail bars, causing a long clang to ring across Fi’s room. They were pretending to sleep, they wiped away tears, pretending they were wiping their eyes of morning mucus.

“What’s up?” They beamed, trying not to make it obvious.

“Do you want to come and get some food?” She asked.

Fi and Kitty quietly served themselves some food. There was a small amount of glitches in the cafeteria, most were on missions or asleep. So it was quiet. They ate quietly and across from each other. Eventually, Kitty decided to get to the point.

“Jackie assigned you to me for this next mission. But I keep my word. I can partner you with someone else for your next mission if you’d like.”

“Oh-There’s no need for that. I like being your partner. What makes you say that?”

“I made a promise to you. Remember? If you didn’t like the mission with me, I’d assign you to someone else. I want you to be comfortable here, whether or not it’s with me. The greatest thing about DRU is that you get to recreate yourself. You can be whoever you want to be regardless of what happened in the world before. I wasn’t a good person in my last life, and I’m willing to bet that some of my negative tendencies from my last life carried over.”

Fi couldn’t imagine Kitty being some sort of horrible person in a past life. To them, this explained why Kitty was so subservient to DRU. Someone who tore themselves down can’t build themselves up with the shitty foundation built by DRU.

“If this is because Jackie suggested I follow you, it’s not for that. I hated you. You uprooted my society with DRU’s tech. What can I say? I don’t like change. This new normal is going to take a long time to get used to, but I wouldn’t mind having someone to help me out along the way, if you don’t mind.”

“Ha! I knew you had a heart.”

“Don’t push it.” Fi jeered. “What’s the next mission?”

______________________________________________________________________________

The howling wind kissed the cheeks of two old women. Buried in sand, the sisters pressed forward one step at a time. They had just traded with a nice young lady. A girl in the desert who was seemingly raised by wolves. When they happened upon her, she attempted to skewer the two of them with a spear.

“Berries?” Diana asked, pointing at the pile of berries she had secured from a tree. “Give us berries, and we give you meat! Meat!”

“M…Meat?” She stuttered.

Diana touched her young hands with her wrinkled hands.

“Berries, for meat!” Diana declared.

“She’s not going to understand you.”

The girl looked into Diana’s eyes, confused. Diana looked back caringly, besides, her old bones would do nothing to stop the beastly essence of the young lady. The girl gently dropped the berries into Diana’s hands. Holding her spear tightly. As promised, Diana handed over a large slab of cooked meat. The sisters slowly walked away, for the little girl to run away, thrilled to share the food with her wolf comrades.

“Why would you give meat for berries? That’s a totally unfair trade.” Raiya croaked.

“Don’t be such a downer. I want at least one youngling to remember me when I go.”

The siblings trekked through the Desert of sinkholes. The only thing that remained from the days of DRU were the badges that protected the sisters from falling into sinkholes. Their home was made out of a collection of machine parts that seemed to come from all types of different dimensions. It sat firmly over a sinkhole that had already existed. Some holes would open for years. They could stay for hundreds, even thousands of years if they were big enough. Inside was a shrine to the people they had lost throughout their lives. One of which was the long departed Asta. Worn biosphere stones sat in protective containers along the wall. Documenting a long history of exploration. They sat down at a tiny dinner table made for two and enjoyed some leftovers and berries.

“Want to hear something funny?” Diana asked. “I’ve been thinking of Father a lot. He’s been in my dreams. Memories of him and I.”

“Sounds like a nightmare.” Raiya jested. “Outlasting him is what I always dreamed of.”

“Raiya. We’ve had long lives. Cool adventures, great friends. But do you ever feel like you’re missing something?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve hoped that one day I’d have something other than stubbornness or spite to motivate me to go forward. I want to feel like I’m living. I hate to say it, but that feeling, it was there with Father. I was living, because I had something to fight for.”

Raiya smiled. All she could do was snicker and laugh. Diana looked back at her with puzzlement. This is serious! How can she laugh? Diana knew she hated her father, did it really go this deep?

“You lived in fear of that asshole so long that you’re still having dreams when you’re an old lady. It ain’t nothing different. You had nothing to “fight” for. You survived. I did too, for a while. Once it was over, it took a long time for the scars to fade. I had nightmares about him, y’know. Half the time he shot me in a different place. Sometimes my head. Then I would wake up. No kid deserves that from a father.”

“Kid? You don’t seem to care very much for the little girl. Why don’t we take her in?”

“She seems pretty happy with the wolves.”

“Come on, Raiya! It’d give us a new project!”

“Yeah. My favorite, raising a wolf-child.”

An alarm began blaring loudly. A sign like this meant that one of the sister’s traps had caught something. The two of them jumped up in anticipation. It had been years since one of their alarms went off successfully. They peeked out the door to see a woman trapped in the bubble-like containment field. She had an oversized DRU jacket on and a long ponytail. She struggled as she floated over to Raiya and Diana, who stood on the front porch of their house. Upon her arrival, the bubble popped and sending her floundering onto the ground.

“A thirty-something year old DRU agent? You’ve lasted a long time.” Raiya gloated.

Childishly, she closed her eyes and looked away as she cut off her arm and sent it rocketing towards the two of them. The necklace around Diana’s neck lit up as her arm was coated in a black, demon-like dragon arm. She picked the flying arm out of the air.

Despite being disembodied from her arm, she felt the rancorous ice that poured out of the dragon arm coat the outside and inside of her blood. It’s veins were turned into a tangle of frozen tundra, and then smashed into pieces when Diana crushed her arm.

“What’s your name?” Raiya asked, calmer than Diana.

“My name’s Kitty Alua! Please don’t kill me! I’m sorry!”

“Figures DRU sends a rookie.”