Fetzen
Circ18-8-2039
Mathématique, Free State of the Congo
An enormous chandelier bobbed in the lazy, midnight breeze that swept through the caravansary’s open corridors. A tangle of wires kept the light fixture suspended high above Plunderstäd’s central plaza, where the regular slaps of fists against flesh were punctuated by the raucous cheers of a captivated audience. Within a gap in the throng of mercenaries, thieves, and poachers were two of Verdoven’s men. Blow by blow, they’d settle their dispute over divvied loot.
Older mutengesi’s going to feint with his left, then slip the right cross. Flurry to the murume mukuru’s exposed ribs. Oldy’s experienced.
From an overlooking balcony Najwa watched on in detached scrutiny as her prediction came to pass. She took a few solid swigs from the opaque bottle of waragi she gripped tightly. Her gaze traveled beyond the bloodied combatants to the colorful marketplace that catered to the more ruthless and despicable individuals of the Free Territories.
A heavy-handed man in a gore-splattered apron butchered the corpse of a yearling Mbayafisi. The air around him is thick with buzzing utsu. He reached into its exposed innards and removed a massive liver he admired beneath a string of incandescent bulbs.
Nearby, a group of armed youths surrounded a small table as they played a spirited game of bao in a dense cloud of periwinkle. Neon-lined hoses passed between eager lips that greedily inhaled vapor from an ornate hookah. A fat Durbaan grub thrashed violently inside the device’s bubbling glass base.
Directly across from Najwa, on the adjacent balcony, an aged woman dressed in a gaudy post-war plastic dress with canary-dyed fur accents handed a small child over to a younger sex worker (who traded high-end couture for a floral imibhaco and simple silver looped earrings) before breaking off to solicit potential customers.
Through hyper-heightened senses Najwa perceived the entirety of the bustling scene in vivid detail. Another mighty gulp and the bottle was empty. Her nostrils flared and stomach grumbled as somewhere beneath the pungent miasma of body odor, vice, and viscera, came the aroma of cooking meat.
Najwa turned away from the balcony. Her feet carried her mechanically towards the bar. Surrounded by a very confused collection of looted artwork and graffiti-laden walls, Najwa paid for a third bottle and a kudu burger beneath a buzzing sign that read WASHINGTON’S. Under the guise of admiring a stunning, ivory pendant mask of a long-dead queen, she made constant assessments of her surroundings. After exactly two minutes and thirty two seconds of open glances from the guerrillas at the bar, she took her meal over to a row of seats near a separate series of balconies that overlooked the Congo River.
Leaning against the balustrade, she took an uninspired bite of the burger. In the past, she would have savored the moment; the Congo’s steady flow interrupting the vivid rose-gold of Plunderstäd’s neon accents and creating a dazzling effect upon the water while a chill breeze dances along her flesh and whispers in her ear that a storm was raging hundreds of miles to the South. But now, hyper-awareness just made Najwa that much more cognizant of how numb she felt.
Despite mythic feats of strength, Najwa never knew a burden quite like the empty, leather rucksack she carried. The mission was over; the journal was destroyed. And yet, she could not bring herself to release the age-worn straps and set the pack aside. The waragi bottle’s neck exploded with a flick of her thumb and skid along the Congo as she sank under the weight of memory.
Najwa emptied the bottle’s contents, shards of glass scraping minute channels down her throat. Just like the waragi, the discomfort was fleeting. The liquor stung the wounds that healed before she’d taken her final gulp. She could almost hear Assad now, with that disappointed tone she’d often heard him adopt when Naguib or Eshe earned themselves a lecture and extra duties.
You know it won’t do any good.
Tears welled in the bottomless viridescence of her eyes. Najwa’s surroundings dimmed to a dissociative void. Instead, she found herself tormented by the cacophonic smashing of telekinetic rage against stone while the graphic recollection of atrocities threatened to consume her. Flashes of blood-tinged haze coming from luminous stalks caked with entrails. The dying cries of comrades, shattered by the dozen beneath a malice-fueled mind. Semret’s petite frame, anchored to the splintered dolomite floor by Mshale’s spear through her throat.
Just as a hulking, winged frame came into her mind’s eye, Najwa was roused from her despair when an oleander hawk-moth fluttered against the smoked glass of a nearby oil lamp. The flame swelled in the dusty wake of gossamer wings, flashing a brilliant shade of emerald. A wave of calm swept over Najwa, soothing the wound her augmented healing factor could not assuage. She observed traces of moonlight shimmering along the jade fringes of its thorax and expressed her gratitude to Nkosiyabo and his winged herald.
“Wazviita, Nko. Tell Ayanda I’ll be home soon.”
The moth hovered near Najwa for a moment then whizzed into the night. Her eyes tracked it across the river before she became acutely aware of treetops thrashing. Narrowing her focus to a razor’s edge, Najwa’s pupils widened in a predatory manner true to her callsign. Too far removed from the storm. Something’s not right.
The Lioness ran along the ivy-clad balustrade to the confused outbursts of patrons inside. She leapt, graceful as any jungle cat, and landed silently in the middle of the battle-torn intersection dominated by Plunderstäd neon-presence. By the time the crowd had gathered at the balustrade to see where she had landed, Najwa sprinted across the Tshopo Bridge towards the flashing mass of black clouds to the South.
Xanathan Security Forces F.O.B Epsilon-16
Free State of the Congo
A slithering colony of carnivorous slime molds oozed along the shadowed edge of the base’s perimeter lights. Half-digested husks of fat grubs slowly rotated within their viscous tomb. The mass was on its way towards the underbrush when it sizzled in the headlights of a rapidly approaching hover-truck. The base’s main gate swung open as the dour-faced commander of XSF 11th Company, affectionately known as Cataclysm Company amongst its soldiers, began to yell as she jumped down from the APC’s bustle rack before the vehicle had come to a warbling stop.
“Listen up! We’re moving out to back up the 12th Hornet Team at 0500. That’s one hour, gentlemen! Make it count!”
Beneath a towering Okoumé tree, the steady stream of Corporal Dlamini’s urine now flowed with urgency at the sudden arrival of First Lieutenant Coetzee and her mobilization orders. He cursed at his misfortune as piss trickled down his boots. Composing himself, the Corporal turned back towards the base. He ignored the distorted facsimile of his voice emanating from bellflowers suspended by sprawling branches; perse petals vibrated in crude mimicry as ichor dripped from curled pistils.
“Units 6 and 7, status report on those crew-serves!”
“Your magazines topped up?”
“Aanjaag, Kataklismes! Get those Bloedhonde operational!
“Verskoon my, Korporaal.”
With an approving nod, Corporal Dlamini stepped out of the way of a mousey Private as he guided a hover-lift loaded with 100mm shells towards the vehicle bay. Epsilon-16 had come to life. Dlamini always marveled at the efficiency the mechanics and technicians operated with at a moment’s notice. This feeling would be quickly replaced with confusion as sporadic gunfire erupted along the base’s perimeter.
The Corporal advanced towards the nearest watchtower, the rifle slung at his side jostling against the composite armor plates of his gear. High above, two gunners were engaged with an unknown force. Blooms of saffron illuminate the gloom in flashes. Crimson tracer rounds scream through the pre-dawn fog. Corporal Dlamini clambered up the watchtower’s ladder. The gunners grew silent as he pulled himself up to the platform. His eyes peeled at the carnage.
What appeared to be a group of emaciated and horribly burnt children had wedged themselves through the tower’s embrasures and into the gunner’s nest. Like nightmarish mantids, they used their crescent forelimbs to eviscerate the decapitated gunners. Dlamini raised his rifle and opened fire on the children as they ravaged his comrades' bodies. In the height of terror, the Corporal forgot he was 40 feet above the ground and stepped backwards, off the platform. Falling, he had just enough time to come to terms with his likely death when the wind was knocked clear from him. A lithe form crashed through the perimeter wall and caught Dlamini a moment before impact. Just before he lost consciousness, the Corporal swore he heard a woman’s voice comfort him and saw the flash of an insignia he did not recognize; a hammer clenched in an upright fist.
“Ek het jou, soldaat.”
Like a blur, Najwa moved between the overrun XSF company and the attacking force of aberrations. Vaporous heat trails spiraled down to nothingness before her eyes as The Lioness wove through a barrage of gunfire. She scanned the warzone and noticed a mob of arachno-humanoids crowded around a quonset longhouse. Mechanical pleas of mercy bubbled up twisted vocal chords. Elongated blades protruded from exposed tissue along their forearms and slashed deep channels into the galvanized steel. Beneath the din of the battlefield she could hear the panicked cries of a mechanic team trapped inside as they desperately dragged what they could to bar the doors and windows.
An armored hovercraft hurtled through the base’s revetment when it discharged its 100mm cannon. She observed her warped reflection in hyper-detail along the spent shell’s casing as she slid under the Bloedhond. Tucking in tight, Najwa felt herself enveloped by immense amounts of force that battered her relentlessly while she passed between the vehicle’s dual anti-grav repulsors. Blood trickled from her inner ear. Her exposed forearms swell and fall as bruises healed instantaneously. The Lioness emerged on the other side, no worse for wear, to discover a new terror attacking the quonset.
In the epicenter of the flensed horde loomed a creature unlike any Najwa had crossed paths with. Her thoughts flashed to the monstrous Popobawa she’d slain. This abomination was just as foul, and appeared to be crafted by a perverse mind; an amalgam of several arachno-humanoids fused to what may have once been an elephant's body. A mass of bone-tipped innards writhed along the behemoth’s hunched torso and lashed at the longhouse’s exterior. Malformed skulls from across the animal kingdom protruded from sagging, gray teeth-pocked flesh. Najwa heard the groan of steel with each horrendous blow of its dozen-odd arms beneath the mob’s garbled wailing.
Where are these monsters coming from? How many more lurk in the darkness? Ayanda, we need you... But first, these people need me. Not even these Xanathan dogs deserve to become a monster’s meal.
In eerie similarity to that terrible night at Marange, Najwa charged into the throng. Only now, she would not restrain her ferocity. These were not friends, tainted by the wicked presence of a shetani; she did not know what they were. But their corruption was palpable. As was their stench of decay.
No clear state of mind came to Najwa. She did not feel the usual wave of calm and freedom as she came into melee range. At this moment she felt something else entirely. Slipping between a coordinated attack of diagonal slashes, Najwa spun into a series of roundhouse kicks that turned her attackers into mist. With a savagery she’d unleashed only once before, the Lioness tore through the crowd of arachno-humanoids with ease. Her fists crashed through chitinous skulls, splattering the tarmac. With each strike, a polychromatic sheen spread from the telekill knuckles of her reinforced gloves.
The quonset’s front end collapsed beneath the atrocity’s bulk as it threw itself upon the longhouse. Najwa turned her attention to the isolated colossus, breaking into a powerful sprint. Pavement fractured beneath her feet. With a mighty thrust, the Lioness leapt onto its haunches, shattering the behemoth’s rearmost leg in the process. Its tendrils lashed and whipped at her flesh while its many arms futilely attempted to bend backwards and seize her.
Najwa reared back, throwing all of the force she could muster behind one ultimate blow. Her fist impacted against the goliath’s gnarled spine in an explosion of kaleidoscopic brilliance. The telekill alloy released its potential energy in a devastating psychic onslaught that overpowered their hivemind. The behemoth roared in its final throes; convulsions twisted its malignant form. Paralyzed by shared trauma, the remaining aberrations were easily picked apart by the regrouped XSF operatives.
Najwa raised her arms in a sign of surrender as she stepped away from the downed colossus. Soldiers rushed to surround the woman, weapons trained and ready to fire. Silence gripped the grisly scene until a woman’s voice spoke up from behind the circle of troops.
“That was a ballsy rescue. You know, I like a woman with style. Stand down.” A pair of black-clad operatives in full gear parted as a tall redhead in a basic Xanathan uniform entered the circle. Looking Najwa over with an icy stare, First Lieutenant Coetzee chewed on the end of a thin cigar. Upon seeing the insignia on this strange woman’s fatigues, the company commander began to draw her own conclusions. With a sudden shift in demeanor, her words turned frigid. “Who are you? Why are you here?”
The Lioness stood there for a moment, strong and silent, when she felt a familiar vibration against her bosom. Its source was the crystal pendant Ayanda had given her on her 15th birthday. A solace she so desperately sought had finally arrived and directed her response. An awkward grin curled the corners of her mouth as she responded.
“I am known to my enemies as The Lioness, and to my comrades as Najwa.” Oh man oh man I’ve always wanted to say this. “I’m here because I want you to… Take me to your leader.”
Mathématique, Free State of the Congo
An enormous chandelier bobbed in the lazy, midnight breeze that swept through the caravansary’s open corridors. A tangle of wires kept the light fixture suspended high above Plunderstäd’s central plaza, where the regular slaps of fists against flesh were punctuated by the raucous cheers of a captivated audience. Within a gap in the throng of mercenaries, thieves, and poachers were two of Verdoven’s men. Blow by blow, they’d settle their dispute over divvied loot.
Older mutengesi’s going to feint with his left, then slip the right cross. Flurry to the murume mukuru’s exposed ribs. Oldy’s experienced.
From an overlooking balcony Najwa watched on in detached scrutiny as her prediction came to pass. She took a few solid swigs from the opaque bottle of waragi she gripped tightly. Her gaze traveled beyond the bloodied combatants to the colorful marketplace that catered to the more ruthless and despicable individuals of the Free Territories.
A heavy-handed man in a gore-splattered apron butchered the corpse of a yearling Mbayafisi. The air around him is thick with buzzing utsu. He reached into its exposed innards and removed a massive liver he admired beneath a string of incandescent bulbs.
Nearby, a group of armed youths surrounded a small table as they played a spirited game of bao in a dense cloud of periwinkle. Neon-lined hoses passed between eager lips that greedily inhaled vapor from an ornate hookah. A fat Durbaan grub thrashed violently inside the device’s bubbling glass base.
Directly across from Najwa, on the adjacent balcony, an aged woman dressed in a gaudy post-war plastic dress with canary-dyed fur accents handed a small child over to a younger sex worker (who traded high-end couture for a floral imibhaco and simple silver looped earrings) before breaking off to solicit potential customers.
Through hyper-heightened senses Najwa perceived the entirety of the bustling scene in vivid detail. Another mighty gulp and the bottle was empty. Her nostrils flared and stomach grumbled as somewhere beneath the pungent miasma of body odor, vice, and viscera, came the aroma of cooking meat.
Najwa turned away from the balcony. Her feet carried her mechanically towards the bar. Surrounded by a very confused collection of looted artwork and graffiti-laden walls, Najwa paid for a third bottle and a kudu burger beneath a buzzing sign that read WASHINGTON’S. Under the guise of admiring a stunning, ivory pendant mask of a long-dead queen, she made constant assessments of her surroundings. After exactly two minutes and thirty two seconds of open glances from the guerrillas at the bar, she took her meal over to a row of seats near a separate series of balconies that overlooked the Congo River.
Leaning against the balustrade, she took an uninspired bite of the burger. In the past, she would have savored the moment; the Congo’s steady flow interrupting the vivid rose-gold of Plunderstäd’s neon accents and creating a dazzling effect upon the water while a chill breeze dances along her flesh and whispers in her ear that a storm was raging hundreds of miles to the South. But now, hyper-awareness just made Najwa that much more cognizant of how numb she felt.
Despite mythic feats of strength, Najwa never knew a burden quite like the empty, leather rucksack she carried. The mission was over; the journal was destroyed. And yet, she could not bring herself to release the age-worn straps and set the pack aside. The waragi bottle’s neck exploded with a flick of her thumb and skid along the Congo as she sank under the weight of memory.
Najwa emptied the bottle’s contents, shards of glass scraping minute channels down her throat. Just like the waragi, the discomfort was fleeting. The liquor stung the wounds that healed before she’d taken her final gulp. She could almost hear Assad now, with that disappointed tone she’d often heard him adopt when Naguib or Eshe earned themselves a lecture and extra duties.
You know it won’t do any good.
Tears welled in the bottomless viridescence of her eyes. Najwa’s surroundings dimmed to a dissociative void. Instead, she found herself tormented by the cacophonic smashing of telekinetic rage against stone while the graphic recollection of atrocities threatened to consume her. Flashes of blood-tinged haze coming from luminous stalks caked with entrails. The dying cries of comrades, shattered by the dozen beneath a malice-fueled mind. Semret’s petite frame, anchored to the splintered dolomite floor by Mshale’s spear through her throat.
Just as a hulking, winged frame came into her mind’s eye, Najwa was roused from her despair when an oleander hawk-moth fluttered against the smoked glass of a nearby oil lamp. The flame swelled in the dusty wake of gossamer wings, flashing a brilliant shade of emerald. A wave of calm swept over Najwa, soothing the wound her augmented healing factor could not assuage. She observed traces of moonlight shimmering along the jade fringes of its thorax and expressed her gratitude to Nkosiyabo and his winged herald.
“Wazviita, Nko. Tell Ayanda I’ll be home soon.”
The moth hovered near Najwa for a moment then whizzed into the night. Her eyes tracked it across the river before she became acutely aware of treetops thrashing. Narrowing her focus to a razor’s edge, Najwa’s pupils widened in a predatory manner true to her callsign. Too far removed from the storm. Something’s not right.
The Lioness ran along the ivy-clad balustrade to the confused outbursts of patrons inside. She leapt, graceful as any jungle cat, and landed silently in the middle of the battle-torn intersection dominated by Plunderstäd neon-presence. By the time the crowd had gathered at the balustrade to see where she had landed, Najwa sprinted across the Tshopo Bridge towards the flashing mass of black clouds to the South.
Xanathan Security Forces F.O.B Epsilon-16
Free State of the Congo
A slithering colony of carnivorous slime molds oozed along the shadowed edge of the base’s perimeter lights. Half-digested husks of fat grubs slowly rotated within their viscous tomb. The mass was on its way towards the underbrush when it sizzled in the headlights of a rapidly approaching hover-truck. The base’s main gate swung open as the dour-faced commander of XSF 11th Company, affectionately known as Cataclysm Company amongst its soldiers, began to yell as she jumped down from the APC’s bustle rack before the vehicle had come to a warbling stop.
“Listen up! We’re moving out to back up the 12th Hornet Team at 0500. That’s one hour, gentlemen! Make it count!”
Beneath a towering Okoumé tree, the steady stream of Corporal Dlamini’s urine now flowed with urgency at the sudden arrival of First Lieutenant Coetzee and her mobilization orders. He cursed at his misfortune as piss trickled down his boots. Composing himself, the Corporal turned back towards the base. He ignored the distorted facsimile of his voice emanating from bellflowers suspended by sprawling branches; perse petals vibrated in crude mimicry as ichor dripped from curled pistils.
“Units 6 and 7, status report on those crew-serves!”
“Your magazines topped up?”
“Aanjaag, Kataklismes! Get those Bloedhonde operational!
“Verskoon my, Korporaal.”
With an approving nod, Corporal Dlamini stepped out of the way of a mousey Private as he guided a hover-lift loaded with 100mm shells towards the vehicle bay. Epsilon-16 had come to life. Dlamini always marveled at the efficiency the mechanics and technicians operated with at a moment’s notice. This feeling would be quickly replaced with confusion as sporadic gunfire erupted along the base’s perimeter.
The Corporal advanced towards the nearest watchtower, the rifle slung at his side jostling against the composite armor plates of his gear. High above, two gunners were engaged with an unknown force. Blooms of saffron illuminate the gloom in flashes. Crimson tracer rounds scream through the pre-dawn fog. Corporal Dlamini clambered up the watchtower’s ladder. The gunners grew silent as he pulled himself up to the platform. His eyes peeled at the carnage.
What appeared to be a group of emaciated and horribly burnt children had wedged themselves through the tower’s embrasures and into the gunner’s nest. Like nightmarish mantids, they used their crescent forelimbs to eviscerate the decapitated gunners. Dlamini raised his rifle and opened fire on the children as they ravaged his comrades' bodies. In the height of terror, the Corporal forgot he was 40 feet above the ground and stepped backwards, off the platform. Falling, he had just enough time to come to terms with his likely death when the wind was knocked clear from him. A lithe form crashed through the perimeter wall and caught Dlamini a moment before impact. Just before he lost consciousness, the Corporal swore he heard a woman’s voice comfort him and saw the flash of an insignia he did not recognize; a hammer clenched in an upright fist.
“Ek het jou, soldaat.”
***
Like a blur, Najwa moved between the overrun XSF company and the attacking force of aberrations. Vaporous heat trails spiraled down to nothingness before her eyes as The Lioness wove through a barrage of gunfire. She scanned the warzone and noticed a mob of arachno-humanoids crowded around a quonset longhouse. Mechanical pleas of mercy bubbled up twisted vocal chords. Elongated blades protruded from exposed tissue along their forearms and slashed deep channels into the galvanized steel. Beneath the din of the battlefield she could hear the panicked cries of a mechanic team trapped inside as they desperately dragged what they could to bar the doors and windows.
An armored hovercraft hurtled through the base’s revetment when it discharged its 100mm cannon. She observed her warped reflection in hyper-detail along the spent shell’s casing as she slid under the Bloedhond. Tucking in tight, Najwa felt herself enveloped by immense amounts of force that battered her relentlessly while she passed between the vehicle’s dual anti-grav repulsors. Blood trickled from her inner ear. Her exposed forearms swell and fall as bruises healed instantaneously. The Lioness emerged on the other side, no worse for wear, to discover a new terror attacking the quonset.
In the epicenter of the flensed horde loomed a creature unlike any Najwa had crossed paths with. Her thoughts flashed to the monstrous Popobawa she’d slain. This abomination was just as foul, and appeared to be crafted by a perverse mind; an amalgam of several arachno-humanoids fused to what may have once been an elephant's body. A mass of bone-tipped innards writhed along the behemoth’s hunched torso and lashed at the longhouse’s exterior. Malformed skulls from across the animal kingdom protruded from sagging, gray teeth-pocked flesh. Najwa heard the groan of steel with each horrendous blow of its dozen-odd arms beneath the mob’s garbled wailing.
Where are these monsters coming from? How many more lurk in the darkness? Ayanda, we need you... But first, these people need me. Not even these Xanathan dogs deserve to become a monster’s meal.
In eerie similarity to that terrible night at Marange, Najwa charged into the throng. Only now, she would not restrain her ferocity. These were not friends, tainted by the wicked presence of a shetani; she did not know what they were. But their corruption was palpable. As was their stench of decay.
No clear state of mind came to Najwa. She did not feel the usual wave of calm and freedom as she came into melee range. At this moment she felt something else entirely. Slipping between a coordinated attack of diagonal slashes, Najwa spun into a series of roundhouse kicks that turned her attackers into mist. With a savagery she’d unleashed only once before, the Lioness tore through the crowd of arachno-humanoids with ease. Her fists crashed through chitinous skulls, splattering the tarmac. With each strike, a polychromatic sheen spread from the telekill knuckles of her reinforced gloves.
The quonset’s front end collapsed beneath the atrocity’s bulk as it threw itself upon the longhouse. Najwa turned her attention to the isolated colossus, breaking into a powerful sprint. Pavement fractured beneath her feet. With a mighty thrust, the Lioness leapt onto its haunches, shattering the behemoth’s rearmost leg in the process. Its tendrils lashed and whipped at her flesh while its many arms futilely attempted to bend backwards and seize her.
Najwa reared back, throwing all of the force she could muster behind one ultimate blow. Her fist impacted against the goliath’s gnarled spine in an explosion of kaleidoscopic brilliance. The telekill alloy released its potential energy in a devastating psychic onslaught that overpowered their hivemind. The behemoth roared in its final throes; convulsions twisted its malignant form. Paralyzed by shared trauma, the remaining aberrations were easily picked apart by the regrouped XSF operatives.
Najwa raised her arms in a sign of surrender as she stepped away from the downed colossus. Soldiers rushed to surround the woman, weapons trained and ready to fire. Silence gripped the grisly scene until a woman’s voice spoke up from behind the circle of troops.
“That was a ballsy rescue. You know, I like a woman with style. Stand down.” A pair of black-clad operatives in full gear parted as a tall redhead in a basic Xanathan uniform entered the circle. Looking Najwa over with an icy stare, First Lieutenant Coetzee chewed on the end of a thin cigar. Upon seeing the insignia on this strange woman’s fatigues, the company commander began to draw her own conclusions. With a sudden shift in demeanor, her words turned frigid. “Who are you? Why are you here?”
The Lioness stood there for a moment, strong and silent, when she felt a familiar vibration against her bosom. Its source was the crystal pendant Ayanda had given her on her 15th birthday. A solace she so desperately sought had finally arrived and directed her response. An awkward grin curled the corners of her mouth as she responded.
“I am known to my enemies as The Lioness, and to my comrades as Najwa.” Oh man oh man I’ve always wanted to say this. “I’m here because I want you to… Take me to your leader.”
