No Rest for the Wicked
All right, this was inevitable, so let's just get this over with.
Chapter 1
Spoiler!
It's not like I knew I was going to become the Wicked Witch. When I was a little girl, I had perfectly normal and reasonable dreams. I wanted to live in a castle, ride horses everyday and be waited on hand and foot by a charming prince. But somehow, that little girl turned into one of the most reviled villains of the Oracle fleet and the Arks that guard it. I'm not saying I don't deserve it; I'm an angry bitch. I'm just saying, I was normal too, once upon a time.
But I'm starting this story off by rambling. Let me try talking about something that actually happened. It all started one morning, or at close to morning as you can get on a spaceship, aboard the Themis. I had a simple, but oh so vital, routine for my mornings the lynchpin of which was a cinnamon crunch muffin. With just the right mix of sweet and mealy with a bit of crunch from the sugar, it was my breakfast every day come hell or high water.
“Sorry, there must be something wrong with my freakishly large elf ears,” I said while placing both my hands on the counter of the little bakery booth. “I thought I heard you say you were sold out, but that can't be right. After all, you know I come here every day, and you know I buy one every day.” To be fair, I'd never actually bought one in the traditional sense, with money and stuff. It was more of a barter arrangement: one muffin for one day of breathing. Win-win for both of us, if you ask me.
The man who ran the bakery booth was a pudgy shrimp of a human. Considering I had a standing threat on his life going, he was nice, always handing me my muffin with a smile. I had to be a bitch to him anyway naturally; what the hell would I do if word got out that being nice to me would get me to be nice in return? Utter chaos, that's what. That day though, he was pants crappingly terrified, and with damn good reason. “I s-sold the last one by accident,” he sputtered.
I started rapping my fingernails on the counter. I liked the sound they made; that, coupled with the tiniest hint of a scowl on my face never failed to bleed a few pints of sweat out of even the bravest of civilians. “I thought we had an understanding. Every day, you give me a muffin and every day, I resist the oh so powerful urge to squash you like the ugly little bug you are. Are you trying to tell me that my tireless effort isn't worth one little muffin?” I said.
“It was an accident, I swear! Please, the next batch is already baking! It'll just be ten minutes!” he said, struggling to hold eye contact with me.
“Oh, just ten minutes? Well gosh, why didn't you say so?” I asked as I clapped my hands together and forced my lips into a wide grin. Stupidly, the man didn't see the sarcasm, and breathed a sigh of relief. “Like hell.” I thrust one finger into the air and with it, a font of wind tore the booth from the floor and scooped it up into the air. Maybe he survived the landing, maybe he had insurance, who knows, who cares.
That set off a panic in the line behind me. I heard all the usual cries: “oh hell, it's the Wicked Witch!” “Why god, why?!” “Run away!” Stuff like that. It's weird that they didn't notice me standing in line from the beginning. My long red hair wasn't that common and where the hell else could you find a six foot tall newman woman? Maybe I wasn't as recognizable when I wasn't wreaking havoc?
Anyway, I was used enough to it so I just stood thinking about what I was going to do about breakfast while the ants scurried away, screaming about whatever. Honestly, I was feeling a little gassy that morning so I don't think I would have finished the muffin anyway, but it's the principle of the matter. Just as I decided that it was as good time as any to try that juice cleanse I'd been reading about, I heard the approaching pitter patter of boots.
It was another thing I'd gotten used to; I would send some Oracle civilians running in a blind panic and the ship security would come running toward my location, with their useless bean shooters in hand. There were a few of them that time. Five, maybe? ...Look, do you count ants when you see them come out from their hill? Same principle.
“Hands on your head!” one of them yelled. The others just held up their rifles and leveled their aim at me. Just another Tuesday, really.
“Whatever for, officer?” I asked, cradling one arm under my tits while the other cradled my cheek.
“Do it now!” he screamed. Might have almost been intimidating if his voice hadn't cracked. I slipped my arm out from under my chest and they all breathed a sigh of relief, stupidly believing that I was complying. Those sighs turned into alarmed gasps when uncurled my middle finger in their direction. “Open fire!” he yelled.
I didn't raise my finger at them just to tell them what I thought of them. A wreath of flames sprung up around me just as they opened up with a hail of bullets. They all melted before they got anywhere near me, naturally. “What a warm welcome,” I said as I gathered up my gifoie's flames and drew them into a foie on my fingernail. “Let me return the gesture.”
“She's a monster!” one of them yelled.
“Rude.” Tch, they called me a monster, they called me a bitch, they called me a slut, and that one didn't even make sense. Did anyone ever bother to appreciate the fact that I always set the flames hot enough to incinerate instantly? No, of course not. You kill five people instantaneously, and everyone always focuses on the “kill five people” part and never on the “instantaneously” part. People don't appreciate a kindness, that's the problem with being nice. “Idiots,” I muttered as I brushed my nails off on my collar. What few rubberneckers hadn't already ran off were nearly tripping over themselves to get out of my sight.
“Now, where can I get a juicer...?” Right then, the ship alarm went off. It was the most irritating sound devised by the human mind. It was what you'd get if you mixed a rappy's chirp, a cat's snarl and a pinch of the sound a virgin makes the first time she tries the backdoor. It was definitely not the sound I wanted to hear that early in the morning; if it were a person responsible for that sound, I'd have speared them with a shower of icicles without a second thought. The screens that dotted the ship's walls switched from the usual advertisements to the red glare of the emergency broadcast system.
After a few seconds, the sound quieted a little, if only to allow the voice on the loudspeaker to issue some instructions. “Attention, Darkers have breached the ship. All civilians, please report to the nearest shelter immediately. All Arks personnel, please prepare for efforts to repel the Darkers.” Of course, the message was repeated a few times for the slower people out there.
“Oh good, I can set some bugs on fire! That'll make some lovely stress relief,” I said, clapping my hands together. What was better, no one ever bitched at me for slaughtering Darkers en masse. Burn them, freeze them, electrocute them, all in the most creative and sadistic ways and no one ever batted an eye. Spit in the general direction of the wrong Arks big shot and everyone lost their minds. What a weird world.
While I'm sure the Council of Six would have loved to have thrown me in a box and bury me somewhere on Naberius, I was an Arks member and had access to the navigator bulletins just like any other Arks member. So, it didn't take me long to get to the staging area for the counteroffensive. I got some stares as I walked through the quarantine gates, but everyone knows that you don't shoot at Godzilla when she shows up to fight Mothra. Still, there were the usual whispers: “what's that bitch doing here?” “Quiet, she'll hear you!” “More like the Wicked Bitch.” Yeah, so clever: witch rhymes with bitch, what do we even need with photons when we have that kind of razor sharp wit in our ranks?
The Darkers put up as much of a fight as would be expected. They popped in out of thin air, I set a rafoie off under their conveniently provided glowing weakpoints and they shriveled up into a smoking mess. Repeat times a thousand. There were other Arks working, sure, but if you were to open up a mini map, you would think that my dot was radioactive; everyone always gave me a wide berth. Smart move really. Most forces make some distinction between friend and foe when their casting techniques. Me? Eh, that's just so much effort.
Weakling Darkers aside, I was having a good time. There's just something oh so...stimulating about watching a creature's death throes. The way its body thrashes unnaturally, the unmistakably pained screeches...I could watch it for hours. Hey, I said right from the start that I'm an awful person. My therapist agrees...well, she probably would, but she said something about me having narcissistic tendencies and I might have shocked her into a vegetative state in response. Can't ask a drooling husk for her opinion, now can you?
My morning carried on like that; it was unremarkable, as far as fighting off Darkers from a breached ship goes. Could have been an unremarkable day altogether if it hadn't been the day I met that little bastard. Argh, before we met, my life was a non-stop hedonistic thrill ride. Yeah, yeah, I was a terrible person, but it was easy and it was simple. I'd talk shit about him all day if I let myself though, so let me get on with it.
“Hey! Hey, you there!” someone's voice called. I thought it was weird at the time because people didn't usually call to me like that without following it with, 'hands in the air' or 'don't move' or 'you didn't pay for that!' There was no one else around though, so whoever it was had to be talking to me. So, I looked over in the direction the voice was coming from and I saw someone running toward me from a good distance away. Also weird, since people usually ran away from me, not to me.
“Glad you're here! I need some help!” he said as he came close enough to speak at a normal volume. He was cute, in a charmingly boyish kind of way. Mocha brown skin that reminded me of my evening latte, the beginnings of a patchy stubble, big brown eyes...it was all I could do to keep myself from roasting him with a foie on the spot. “There are some civillians behind a containment gate over there. I already took out the Darkers, but it's still shut. I think it's jammed,” he said.
“So?” I asked with a sneer.
“So, come help me get it open,” he said, completely missing the venom in my voice. At the time, I wasn't sure if he was brave or just oblivious. I'd later come to find out it was half and half.
“Go kick rocks, brat,” I said before I spun on my heel and started walking away. I didn't make it three steps before I felt his hand on my shoulder.
“Hey wait-”
“Fly away.” I flung my hand at him and let a zan fly from my fingernails. I was expecting the wind blades to have sliced him to little chunks by the time I turned to look, but he had ducked just in time to let them pass harmlessly above his head. The blades flew toward what looked like the containment gate he was talking about cut through it like yogurt. Obviously. I mean, it was a zan that I cast. The debris came crashing down once enough cuts had been made and the civilians came scurrying out.
“Great, thanks! But hey, next time, gimme a little warning,” he said as he stood back up, smiling. He tilted his head like something caught his attention, and then after a few seconds said, “whoops, sounds like a gunship crashed nearby. I'm gonna go give 'em some cover. Thanks again!” He raised his hand to wave and then ran off.
And just like that, he was gone, somehow not having noticed me biting my lower lip in frustration. It's just a little annoying when someone doesn't acknowledge that you tried to kill them. A girl likes to be noticed, you know? I raised my finger to shoot a foie at him, but as I was charging it, I went, “oh, whatever,” and waved it off.
I thought killing some more Darkers might put me in a better mood but that encounter left such a bad taste in my mouth that their death cries just sounded like aggravating screeches instead of sweet melodies. By noon, I was thinking about just writing off the whole day as crap and going home. Just as I was about to pull the trigger on that idea, I heard the distinct whistle of a wired lance slicing through the air. It wasn't the first time I'd ever heard it and like usual, it was flying toward my head.
“Ugh,” I groaned. The solution was always the same: snap my fingers and coat the cables in a thick case of ice, dragging them down to the floor before the lances took my head off. After glancing at the frozen lances, I followed the cables back to their owner with my eyes. “What do you want, microtits?”
'Microtits' was my nickname for a human girl by the name of...crap, what was her actual name? ...Blah, whatever, it'll come to me. She was short. Skinny. Really, whoever suggested to her that she should be a hunter was clearly joking and she took it seriously. Anyway, microtits was standing on top of one of those tacky billboards on the side of the walkway.
“My name is something something, Witch!” she yelled. She hit some button on her lances to retract the blades and jumped off the billboard. Having gotten a little closer to me, the scowl on her face darkened, as if getting a better look at me made her more angry. “Today's the day you pay for your crimes, you disgrace!” Hmm, come to think of it, I guess she was actually one of the good guys in this story. Oh well, good and evil are relative, you know.
I yawned. It was the same speech everytime, after all. Right after that, she'd usually snarl, hiss and run at me and then I'd blow her ass away with whatever technique I felt like using that day. Naturally, I could have killed her anytime I felt like it, but killing one of Covenant's members would have brought way more heat down on me than I cared to deal with.
“I brought something special for you this time,” she said with a giddy smile. That did make me bat an eyelash, but I wasn't concerned just then or even when she pulled out something that looked like a grenade. “Catch!” she yelled as she threw it to me. I caught it. Might sound stupid, but there wasn't much that could hurt me and I did so love watching the hopeless expressions on people's faces when I shrugged off their best hits.
I turned it over in my hand a couple times. “I guess this explodes, or...” Sure enough, it exploded, but not quite in the way I expected. There was a big flash and then a terribly sound slurping sound. It was enough to make me blink in surprise, but not enough to make me drop it. I really should have dropped it. I felt an awful fatigue sink into my body, like I had been chained to steel balls at all of my limbs. “Ungh, what...?” I muttered as I stumbled, trying to keep my balance.
“Great, it works!” she said. I noticed that some of the tension in her shoulders had gone, so I figured I was the unwitting guinea pig of some new invention. “Even I can take you out now!” She flung one of her lances at a column behind me and made herself an anchor. Pulling the cable taut and leaning back on it, microtits got ready to fling herself at me with Grapple Charge.
“Keep dreaming, microtits,” I muttered breathlessly. I cast a Razan as she came at me and she passed over it as my geyser of air went off. The gust hoisted her into the air, ripping the cables out of the column, and dumped her block away. It might sound impressive but, considering I was angry was was trying to slice her into puree with that Razan, I was weak as a newborn kitten. “What the hell was in that thing...” I groaned.
And that was just the beginning of what would turn out to be a miserable, aggravating, soul wrenching ordeal.
Right now, I'm floating interest. If a few people like this, I'll keep going. If not, I'll leave it as is. Even in the scenario I do keep going though, this is going to be a much, much shorter adventure than my other stories, god help me.
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Originally Posted by AIDA
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