Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for violence.
♦ Second Chance, Part 1 ♦
PT 350, Dimension Y-062
On an Earth-like dimension, the rain turned from short whimpers to a downpour of tears. Letting out shrieks of lightning. Every strike louder, like beating a steel drum. A woman’s eyes watch the drops spatter in the river. Coating her body and washing away the blood spewing out from her stomach. Three golden bullets were engraved in her stomach. Each deeper than the last. She turned her head to the sky. Letting the rain beat down. Her hair is short, silky and reddish-purple. Not of this world.
“The rain…Was never this beautiful before.”
As the blackness of the light approached, ready to forget the woman in a peaceful sleep, the wheat surrounding her was disrupted by a rush of footsteps and the rain, once invisible, was now made light by flashlights mounted on top of automatic rifles. Held by two women in masks. One of them held up a yellow, glowing stone.
“Want the legs?
“Dammit, fine.”
The soldier picked the woman up by the arms. She shook the stone above the woman’s eyes. Blinding her with a flash of light.
In the darkness and uncertainty of what she felt might be death, she thought about her father. A man as greedy as he was aggressive. The three bullets in her stomach were delivered by him. For betraying him as she did. He claimed a lawless land that only capitalized on its randomness.
The Desert of Sinkholes. An interdimensional “limbo” of desert that could be considered most people’s hell. If one was brought to the desert, or born on it, there was always the looming chance of falling into an inconceivable dimension with no way back home at any moment. Leaving home was almost asking for death, and being caught outside of a sandstorm could spell doom. So when she left her father’s home to bring down his empire, she always ran the risk of falling to her doom at any second. Mirages of the last few people she cared about floated in her mind, a blooming couple and a wolf came to mind. They had been her comrades for the last months. They helped her stop her father. But they could not prevent her death. The only other person that came to mind was her sister and two brothers. Her brothers were dead to her. The bullying nevermind the utter subservience to their father was enough to drive her away. But her sister, even if they didn’t agree on things, accepted her. Even when she betrayed her family.
“Raiya!” A feminine voice called.
“Sis?” Raiya mumbled.
“Raiya…Yoo hoo, wake up!” The same voice called.
“Diana?” She called.
Smack!
Raiya was awoken on an operating table by a woman with long, pink hair and an eyepatch. She had a sinister smile that immediately disillusioned Raiya to the notion that she may have saved her life out of the “kindness of her heart”.
“You’ve been mumbling like that for the past week. Get up. Get your uniform on.”
“Where are my clothes?”
“Uniform. On.” She sneered.
Raiya stood up, seeing her body in the mirror. The three holes in her stomach had been sewn up. Forming one large scar across. She found her footing and got dressed as she looked at her tormenter in the mirror.
“Could you atleast tell me your name?”
“Jackie. I save my words around people like you. Here’s the drill. You are now part of the Dimension Regulation Unit. We’re an interdimensional force dedicated to keeping dimensions under Master N’s directive safe. You are a glitch. You’ve got no home dimension, no signature. If you were to bleed out, you sure as hell weren’t going to in dimension Y-062. Your father’s been a problem for us for years, but now he’s finally dead. There’s supposed to be nobody else with the power to create dimensions. Every world your father created should not exist. So…We need you and your team to destroy them.”
“...What? You want me to destroy dimensions?”
“They are barely dimensions. They are like weeds in a flower garden. Not many people live on them, and they have all been marked as glitches. If you don’t destroy them, you die. If you try to run, we will find you, and you will die. Glitches have to be kept on a tight leash. Follow our directives, and things will be cake.”
“I’m not doing your dirty work for you. It’s the reason I left my father. I’d rather die than do work for you.” Raiya asserted.
“Your sister didn’t want to die. She wanted to meet you.”
Diana creeped into the room, poking her head around the corner before being pushed out by a DRU officer. They had matching green eyes and hair. The only difference being that they were darker. Diana's skin was lighter than Raiya’s.
Raiya laid her hands on her arms, checking to see if her sister was even real. She gave a shriveled up face back to her. Like she was more disgruntled to see Raiya than excited she was still alive.
“Not much time for reunions. Let’s get moving.” Jackie demanded.
They wandered through the featureless halls of DRU HQ. The walls were an impossibly shimmering white with signs in a foreign language that pointed to where locations were. At a fork in the road, there were multiple signs. The one they went down must’ve said “cafeteria”, because that was where they were practically pushed by Jackie.
The sisters were met with a buffet of faces that were alien to even Raiya, who had traveled between dimensions even before she fell into Y-062. Every single person inside was a glitch, they could tell by the jail-like clothes they wore, accompanied by DRU’s logo. An infinity symbol with jail bars concealing it.
There were large, hulking monsters that looked and felt lovecraftian to Diana and Raiya. Some had long spanning tentacles, some spikes instead of arms. The ones that bewildered Raiya the most were the glitches that looked human just like Her and Diana, with one or two features out-of-this-world. Demon arms, razor-sharp teeth with a smile end to end that tore the skin open around the cheeks.
There was an equal amount of human glitches as there were monsters, many of them sat together, peacefully eating lunch and having conversations. When you had a label like “glitch” slapped on you, that made you the minority. Nobody seemed to feel the need to go further than that.
Raiya realized that many of the glitches had discovered her and Diana had entered, they were met with piercing stares and side-eye that shot through them, to Jackie standing behind them.
“The hell are you waiting for? Go get something to eat. You’ll meet your third team member at lunch table thirty-four. She’s been instructed to wait for you. We will retrieve you after you are finished.”
“What if we never finish?” Diana prodded.
“Funny. We have to feed three Korblock’s everyday. You get a level two ration. Take this card and give it to the machine, it’ll dispense your food.”
The sisters weren’t ready to sit down and meet their new team member just yet. Diana pulled Raiya into a stuffy corner. Close enough to whisper even through the battlefield of conversations constantly overlapping.
The last thing Raiya remembered was her sister being shot in a scuffle with her. She had begun to take killing her father seriously then, it inevitably meant a confrontation with her siblings, but when she met her sister with the plan of poisoning her, she backed out. Only for Diana to find out. Raiya’s comrade shot Diana when her life was threatened.
“I don’t want to work with you anymore than you do with me.” Diana insisted. “But we have to find a way out of here. I get you hate Dad, but we have to get home.”
“Father is dead.”
“What…?”
“I’m sorry, Diana. Father’s dead.”
“Did…you do it?”
“No. He shot me three times before I was able to do anything. It’s…our job to destroy the dimensions he created. It’s not easy work, but they’ll kill us if we don’t listen!”
“Is it that easy for you to give up on his life’s work?”
“His life’s work should’ve been his kids!”
“He might not’ve been the best, but he was good to us.”
“Pff, yeah. Good to you.”
A nosy voice cut through the air. “Are you two gonna come sit down?”
Raiya looked down. “Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m your new teammate, my name’s Asta.”
A girl with purple pigtails tied up with pink bows smiled up with bright green eyes.
“All right, Asta. Let’s go sit down.” Diana invited.
They sat down at a small table after Asta directed them to the food dispensers. The food was made from inconspicuous materials and tightly wrapped in cling-wrap. It was a normal sandwich. What looked like wheat bread and what looked like ham, smelled like neither of the two.
Raiya sat quietly across from Diana and Asta, who conversed loud enough for her to hear. Asta explained to Diana that she was born in the Desert of Sinkholes. She was brought in when she fell through a portal to an alternate dimension.
“...Like all the rest of us.” Raiya jeered.
“Got somethin’ to say, sis? You’ve been pretty quiet.”
“Yeah! You two should tell me about yourselves.”
“We’re sisters from the Desert of Sinkholes. Guess how we got here.” Raiya said.
“There’s more to it. We are daughters of the-”
One of the soldiers who had picked Raiya up came over to their table. She had light hair and glasses, along with formal DRU attire. She was decked head-to toe in specialized equipment, guns, explosives, swords, and a mysterious suitcase she held close to her side.
She beckoned the group into a briefing room lined with featureless, white chairs and a futuristic-looking projector at the head of the room. Asta sat between the sisters, looking back and forth between them with wonder in her eyes.
Images appeared on screen of Raiya, Asta and Diana, which Violet slid to the top right as a picture of their father was generated. He looked like he was right out of a wild-west movie. With a handlebar mustache and a golden pistol.
“This is The Lord. He’s an interdimensional tyrant who decided that The Desert of Sinkholes was a good home for himself. Through unknown circumstances, he managed to create many small dimensions able to house life. Wrapping them into the Desert of Sinkholes’ network. This is a class A offense, one of the worst crimes one can commit.”
“How do we get to decide whether a dimension is real or not?” Asta asked innocently.
“Simple enough, Master N can create or destroy us. Others with his powers are marked as danger level 4 on our scale of danger to the dimensional fabric of existence. Little girl, do you know what god is?” Violet asked.
“Yeah. I read about him once.”
“God created us. Others who mimic this power are simply fakers that need to be destroyed. We live to protect. Playing with the fabric of existence our god has created for us is punishable by death. We are here to put it right.” She explained lazily, as if it was a factual statement that she didn’t quite agree with.
“...Okay. How do we do that?”
“Our job has been made easier by Raiya and her former compatriots. They were able to kill The Lord. But that doesn’t change the fact that the marks he made on the desert are still there. It is your directive to destroy all dimensions created by The Lord. Your equipment contains a dimensional locator and a list of the dimensions he created. All of it is extremely destructive, so be careful with it, or you’ll probably die. The most important are P-bombs. They will cause the dimension to implode on itself. Drop it inside of the dimension, and it will detonate in ten seconds. Teleport in, teleport out.”
“Will any of the people in there feel anything?” Raiya asked.
“None of the glitches will feel anything. It is painless.”
“You just expect us to live with killing billions of living things?” Diana exclaimed. “I’m not doing this for you.”
“If it isn’t done by you, it will just be done by others.”
Raiya’s vision blurred. She disassociated from the conversation that Diana was having with Violet. Trying to imagine for just a second how it would feel to be existing one moment, then with the snap of a fingers for everything to be gone. Is it better or worse that way? She pushed the idea out of her head before she began to feel more existential. Her life was forfeit at this point, she completed her goal. Killing her father. However, when she looked next to her at her sister, she felt her heart swell. The chance of redemption was dangling in front of her. To have a normal relationship with her sister after this was over. As long as DRU was out of her way.
“How about this? If we do your job for you, You let us go. You don’t care who roams the desert, right? So if we do this, you let us go. How’s that sound?”
A smile crept across Violet’s face. The look she gave Raiya was like an absent parent’s disinterested grin when you asked to play with them. A smile to acknowledge their existence, and a furrowed eyebrow to show you had other things to do. Better things to do than play with children.
“Let me think about it…No.”
“Throw em’ a bone, V!” Jackie’s voice thundered through the room. “They’ve been ripped from their land, and asked to destroy a dimension. Bottled infinity! These guys have no idea what they are doing, so why not? They do our dirty work, and we never have to see or deal with em’ again. That sounds like a deal from Master N himself! One condition, you destroy that dimensional locator once you are done. Don’t think you can pull a fast one, either. We have eyes everywhere. Do this job, and you never have to see my face ever again. Sounds like a deal you can’t refuse, huh?”
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
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125,029 Literary Works • 672,781 Reviews
Hello there, human! I'm reviewing using the YWS S'more Method today!
Shalt we commence with the unlucky S’more?
Top Graham Cracker - Raiya is running away from her home after killing her father. She wants to be free and not destroy any dimensions, but…she gets kidnapped by DRU and forced to do exactly that. But hey, at least Diana is there, right?
Slightly Burnt Marshmallow - I have no recommendations to make as of right now, but if you would like to edit this, you may.
Chocolate Bar - I love the way you described Raiya’s inner turmoil with wanting to reconnect with Diana but also not wanting to destroy dimensions for DRU. This shows how painful the idea is to her, but also how much she wants things to be normal. And the way Violet talks, like she doesn’t care at all…this is all old news to her and it doesn’t mean anything else to her at all, the way she smiles really shows how much this doesn’t matter to her!
Closing Graham Cracker - Overall, a fabulous chapter on the bonds of sisters and how one may escape one form of trouble but find themselves in yet many others. I wonder if I’ll learn more about Raiya and Diana’s father, as he certainly must be a character and…
I wish you a fantastic day/night! ^v^
Hello Again, My Friend!
I am here to continue my review of this great story today! Let's dive in, shall we? Heh heh heh...
What The Black Eyes See...
This was a great chapter to introduce Raiya, her family, and how she was picked up by the notorious DRU and Jackie! And man, does her first mission sound like a hard one...Let's get into the details though.
Where The Dagger Points...
Once again, nothing much to say for recommendations! I really enjoyed this piece! There were only two things I noticed along the way, that I thought I would put here in good faith:
I feel like it was a very contrary sentence, reading the "blackness of the light." Perhaps there was a typo for "night" here?
Since "Lovecraftian" is derived from a proper noun, I think it should be capitalized. That's all!
Why The Grin Widened...
Loved the opening, with its gloomy feelings and pretty visuals. And the way you worded the storm was creative:
I was fascinated to see what transpired with this new mystery woman -first of all, cool design, big props for that. Secondly, I was immediately surprised and curious why there were soldiers(?), or militia women, after her. Likewise, why she didn't fight back was a mystery. But this line...
Ooo, this immediately gave us a glimpse into the type of realm she inhabits, and where her connections lie. It reminds me a bit of Panda, a free-minded spirit with a corrupt leader for a father, but perhaps on a smaller scale -and the Leo Sector was more noble, whereas the way this is worded, it sounds like a spin on that grand old-west lawless town. Very cool way to mix things up ~ I also love how you described the Desert Of Sinkholes.
Woah! Jackie picks up a new recruit, and Raiya is a glitch? Cool! We find yet another member of this organization. I like how Jackie is so blunt and straightforward, like she doesn't want to waste time being all chummy with the newcomers. Definitely fits her position and gives her a unique personality. Also...
What the heck?! Raiya's father is not only dead, but he's over here making worlds?! I wonder where this is leading, because I can see Jackie's point, but at the same time 'destroy worlds' is usually an antagonistic goal...
This tone and method of describing the worlds sure didn't help, the way Jackie so callously talks about glitches, and the inhabitants of these unwarranted worlds being "weeds" and all. Between being their captive, and Diana joining the group moments later, it's hard not to think that Raiya soon won't have a choice, just as Jackie said.
Getting a more in-depth look at DRU's headquarters, they seem a lot more antihero-esque than I remember. Like they may have good motives, maintaining stability among the dimensions, but between the whole destroying worlds thing and treating glitches like prisoners, it's clear that they may have some pretty brutal ways of achieving this.
Ooo, learning more about the conflict between Raiya and Diana, I feel like this creates some very interesting staging for their characters. Siblings who've recently turned on each other, now forced to work with each other under a large and powerful entity -and a third member to stir things up even more. I also love the argument about their father; it sounds like Diana really tried to empathize with both sides, recognizing her father's life work, whereas Raiya refused to compromise and holds a grudge, especially over the favoritism she described from him.
I like Asta's character! She sounds like an innocent and generally oblivious type, and her corresponding behaviors are adorable, haha.
Fascinating basis for the crime and looming hunt, and as with many things about the DRU and antihero-esque things in general, I can see how this could be a good rule to have, to keep people from playing god and all, and of course why it could cause problems. Especially when they directly mention the intentional killing of potentially billions, because they live in an "illegitimate" dimension. And that makes me even more eager to find out where this mission leads, and what Raiya's final choice will be in the matter.
Ooo, Jackie's deal...do a terrible mission and be done with everything, reclaiming your freedom with your sister, at the cost of so many lives. No way out or around -at least, as far as I can see for now. Perhaps that will change, or perhaps there's a hard choice to be made. I can't wait to see what happens!
Our
MadThoughts...Overall, that was an awesome chapter to introduce a new perspective in the story and show off the DRU once more, nicely done!
I find it pretty funny that you make the Panda comparison with Raiya. She%u2019s originally from a story I wrote in 2021 where the events with her father transpire. The story is much too old for me to want to do a rewrite, but it is the first story that I used the Desert of Sinkholes in! Perhaps the same idea with Panda lay dormant in my mind until I made him%u2026
Also, DRU takes a backseat in Kitty%u2019s story (by nature, I would say), and Fi%u2019s is where I bring them into the limelight a lot more. Glad you enjoyed!
Interesting! They're both great characters!
Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! I'm Kate and I'm here to leave a quick review!!
First Impression
Well looks like quite the fun little dimension there to stumble, very different vibes to the opening two chapters but I'm sure it won't be long before we understand the full connection between the two groups.
Anyway let's get right to: Kate's Line by Line Reactions;
Oh well this is quite the opening to this chapter. From the warm and comforting familiar scene of the earlier one just right into someone being shot and left on the ground. Wildly different vibes to be sure.
Oh well that's quite the bit of revenge, by one's own father no less. The fact she can clearly identify this so easily certainly speaks volumes to the kind of relationship that the two of them must share. Well this is taking some interesting turns here.
Oooh well this is quite the moment here. Love the smooth integration there of all the little details surrounding this, really helps explain quite a bit about why we've ended in this position and well it only really makes this day sadder to start with.
Well that's a rude wake up call there but it looks like she actually managed to survive her injuries. Well that tells you a lot about either what she was wearing, the medical technology of the time or how bad the person doing the shooting actually was.
Well that's one thing to wake up to there. Just finding out you're a glitch of some ort and then having a random order to just have to go about and take out other worlds that your father happens to have created. Definitely a very powerful moment there.
Oooh interesting. So this is some sort of potentially evil agency out there trying to destroy these places that they consider to be weeds as it were and they probably want someone that's untraceable in some way to do the dirty work. And looks like they thought ahead about the person not actually wanting to said dirty work too. They're quite prepared.
Well that's an interesting little reunion, its clear she does care for her sister but then at the same time the sister doesn't seem to care too much either. Interesting relationship there for sure.
Well that's not the most subtle logo out there, that's for sure. Makes for a very interesting moment at any rate. I wonder what's going to come of all of these people. Definitely seems like a very interesting community to be part of. And naturally we can see what this DRU thinks of people like them through this.
Hmm well it looks like these places that create glitches are very varied in their biology even when they are human adjacent, that does make for a few interesting thoughts here.
Well that's an interesting question to ask. Looks like Diana's try to measure a little bit about how dedicated they are to this whole situation, which does make for a fun moment here, although I don't think they'll be too amused given how they've acted up to now.
Well that's quite the little series of events for the two siblings. But the mutual dislike is starting to make a little more sense, and it looks like this whispered little conversation will tell us even more about why their relationship is the way that it currently is.
Well that explains a couple of things, but well looks like they're a far cry from being willing to understand each other's perspective here and look quite a bit more ready to be at each other's throats for quite some time as they're forced to work together.
Oooh Asta sounds lovely already there. Looks like maybe she could be the one to stop these two from spending the entire time arguing and have them actually get some work done. Its clear they weren't anywhere close to understanding each other at all.
Oooh well looks like they are getting along fairly well from the look of thing and getting those first meeting kind of talks out of the way. Looking fairly decent all things considered.
Okay well that was a rude interruption, also I'm sorry but that is potentially the most hilarious get up I have seen there. I'm sure all of that equipment is required for one reason or the other when dealing with multiple dimensions with creatures of all sizes and shapes but visualizing someone wearing that many different weapons is just really funny especially if they're also trying to look serious.
Well that looks like a pretty normal thing to be able to do. I have a feeling that this agency is just dedicated some one idiot that can do this and anyone else who figures out a way is immediately branded a criminal. Would not surprise me at all.
Well it looks like that prediction was pretty much exactly what's going on in here. Oh well, I suppose we have to pretend like this is going to be a noble mission then although I'm sure most of the people in the team are definitely not going to buy that.
Well looks like even the agent there isn't exactly fully in on the whole idea but is just going along with this job for whatever reason she had to end up in a world like this. Definitely makes for an interesting detail when the whole job here is to just go about killing billions of people.
Hmm well she didn't exactly say they would have to do it, that's an interesting choice of reply. If they're not exactly going to be completely forced into doing the thing but rather it just so happens that them refusing to do it won't actually stop anything.
Hmm well that's an interesting decision, looks like she maybe went with that slightly selfish option there knowing that this thing was just a bit too big for them to be messing with by themselves but at least they could gain something out of it.
Hmm well the way Violet seems to treat everyone is definitely interesting, especially the detail you went to in order to specify it. Seems she thinks of herself as above a lot of these people. I wonder if that's genuinely earned and we need to respect her or if she's just playing with a little bit of power that she happened to gain randomly. I'm sure we'll find out.
Aaand that's it for this oneee!!!
Overall
Overall I think its a lovely addition, a different POV to think about and quite a fun one at that. I think it makes for a neat little introduction to what looks like more of a behind the scenes look almost since I'm sure the earlier chapters took place in this dessert they keep talking about. Looking forward to seeing where this goes from here.
As always remember to: Take what you think was helpful and forget the rest!
Kate
Thank you for the wonderful review! DRU is a recurring figure in most of my stories, so I am happy their inclusion made sense for the most part, lol.
Since the lingo of "glitch" is thrown around, to be profiled as a glitch means you have been misplaced from your home dimension by any means. Dimension destroyed? Glitch. Born in the Desert? Glitch. Accidentally misplaced from your home dimension? Glitch. Since the Desert of Sinkholes is a %u201Climbo%u201D between dimensions, even those who are born in the desert are marked as glitches, hope the clarification helps!