pugbutter

E:\cyberpunk\the_deadliest_question.exe

The kiss tingled at his cheek in the manner of a malaise, rather like the strange tickling in the cartilage of one's nose just before the surging-forth of a violent sneeze. By pressing his arms firmly and awkwardly to his sides after he reciprocated the hug, he suppressed the urge to reach at his cheek, to catch the kiss there, to bottle it and poke airholes in the jar lid, and place it on the mantel. He knew it was a cordial, "polite" kiss, like the kisses barons placed on their kings' ring fingers, but nonetheless, even that degree of intimacy, from the lips of the aloof and frigid Ona, sent him aback.

"Leave it to me. See ya, Ona," he said, though whether he meant work, planning that next visit, or cleaning up the paltry mess she had made of his glass and countertop, he did not say; perhaps any of them or all at once. Waving, he stood around and watched her go until she was out of sight. That was the politest thing he could do without chasing the car like an untrained dog.

When Jules took the lift back to his floor, and turned the doorknob, he realized he'd forgotten his keycard on the counter. So much for salvaging a peaceful evening. "Shit. Shi-it!" He slapped his forehead hard against the shimmering door, and just stood leaning into it for several long moments, his arms limp. He'd have to climb the fire escape.

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The next morning...

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ᚠᚨᚱᛋᛁᚷᛚᛁᛝᛋᚨᚷᚨ

Though he gave her a queer, sidelong glance, hurriedly Hrífa searched elsewhere for his answer, away in the distant clouds. If he was honest, he was searching for birds again. "Once my head has been cut, I probably won't much mind what happens to my body," he confessed in a hushed whisper, as though Hralding was on the other side of the ship, at the aft, steering the rudder, the witch saw no cause to disrupt his lessons. "If I do, I'd like to see it eaten."

"By animals," he added clumsily, as if that was in doubt. But why not? Every tree-nut he ever ground to flour may have belonged to a mouse, who fancied the gaunt intruder rather like a towering thief likewise! Then all his life he had breathed air which belonged to terns and gulls, and gulped water which was the house of many fish. He was remorseless and really rather selfish in his taking of those things which his physiology demanded—unapologetic—but this came too with the stipulation of debt. Some day he hoped to return to the earth what he had borrowed, and rotting in a tomb, this was not possible; hanging from a king's gate, he was out of reach for all things but the ravens. He did not fancy that fate fair and just to the other critters who held him in their debt, the others he owed a pound of his flesh.

What he loved about this place he called nature, and all its inhabitants, was that it obeyed its own laws, and these laws cared not for the whimsies of men, as men were encapsulated within these laws, and they too obeyed this code, even when they thought they rebelled against nature by erecting walls and hiding behind them, building keeps high into the sky to escape the floods, and pits deep in the earth to avoid the winds. Men's laws were just different. Hrífa obeyed them (most times) despite disagreeing with them; he knew well why Håkon deserved death at the hands of Þormóðr Karkr, and why the slave in turn was deemed a traitor: the dishonor of his treachery outweighed the heroics of his vigilantism. But who was a man to declare who "deserved" what? Who owned that infallible right to deliver his fellows to the afterlife?

The world claimed its dues without fretting for these highfalutin abstracts, often enough. Supposedly wicked men lived and supposedly good ones fell like birch limbs to wicked axes. But eventually all men paid the same debt, and the witch, while not anticipating his day with any enthusiasm, also did not fear the time when his caught up with him. He would pay it gladly.

Cyaиide Suиs

@redbaron1234 Yep. Before @Fyre Unholy's prototype character was a photographer, he was an ecologist. You can probably think of something without my help, but if in doubt, shoot me a PM.

Cyaиide Suиs

@TemplarKnight07 hey man don't try to kill his dreams

Cyaиide Suиs

@SilverFallen The minimum? You mean radiation poisoning? You can choose anything from nausea and peeling rashes to full-blown mounds of flesh sloughing off your bones, bro. It's up to you.

Cyaиide Suиs

And now you do what they told ya.

And now you do what they told ya.

And now you do what they told ya.

And now you do what they told ya.

AND NOW YOU DO WHAT THEY TOLD YA.

AND NOW YOU DO WHAT THEY TOLD YA.

AND NOW YOU DO WHAT THEY TOLD YA.

AND NOW YOU DO WHAT THEY TOLD YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Cyaиide Suиs

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It was incredible, really, what just a few years of neglect did to a place. People took for granted often enough that when a hooligan throws a stone through a window, a week later the glass will have regenerated, like a brittle, translucent leaf on a wounded plant. Here the windows broke and stayed broken eternally, and the state of a townspeople's mind was measured by the material used to patch it up: a square of tarp cut out and duct-taped over. A sheet of plywood. The particularly forsaken places, then, the homes of lepers and pariahs, wore no semblance of repair, simply letting the bitter breeze ride through. Paint, when it was not torn away to reveal naked concrete, had lost its vibrancy, pale, sun-bleached; iron acquired inimitable shades of flaky orange. Like the heart of a lonely child, here it all just crumbled, faded, and fell.

Yet the colors of spring carried no concerns for men's poetic woes. Between the cracks of the concrete, and through the overgrown grasses, tulips bloomed. Cherry trees showered petals of blushing silk upon the ruins. Where life dwindles and withers it too blossoms anew. Where one empire dies another from the fecund ashes may rise. Such it was in the courtyard of this biergarten, with gates rusted shut and sidewalks rotting, but a resplendent garden rich with more humble forms of life, flourishing far away from hedge clippers, pesticides, and clumsy footsteps. Still, the proprietor knew people didn't come here for the scenery. They came here for warmth, and even with the chilly nip outside, even with all his customers gathered in the beer cellars instead of the lush courtyard, cowering away from the grey skies and bitter breaths on the wind, still they were too sparse.

So where the hell were they? Why did his beer go undrunk and his information unbought? Why this mere smattering of rookies at his tables, which he took such pains to protect from scratches and varnish with a rich, fine coat? As he pinched and tugged at the tendrils of his dark Teutonic beard, his eyes, profoundly blue, scanned the darkness of the cellar which his money paid to illuminate, to stock well with big endless barrels, to uphold as a reputable place of charity, safety, and if he could deign to the arrogance, a little slice of home.

He poured himself a finger of something ice-clear, but stiff and pungent all the same, the vapors stinging at those blue eyes. "Damn it," he groaned, tipping it back through his burning esophagus. Then he went back to halfheartedly watching a game of blackjack being played across the room. Maybe better weather would lure them out after all.

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Meanwhile...

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The ammo factory had shut down after World War Two, but that didn't stop some stalkers from dreaming big. Never mind that only one crazy bastard in the whole Zone carried a Luger (though a stylish one he was!), or that they'd stopped making Karabiners half a damn century ago; no, every second or third genius to breach the Circle figured he was the first stricken by this epiphany, when really he was just the next victim of a boring plague: the brilliant notion that he would go there and he would be rich, in bullets and in the money he would make from selling them. Never again would he fret frugally over a "last magazine" or an "almost-empty clip."

But that's what the people who'd set camp there, inside the ruinous old factory, had come to expect. At first they too were scavenging hopefuls, like all the other naïve green-gills. Then they realized they could be one step ahead of these green-gills; they could demand a toll for access to the rich stores of ammo which most certainly didn't exist, and better, they could rob the people who showed up. Although it didn't have the same reputation as Stuttgart Castle as a venomous death-trap, it was a death-trap all the same, and perhaps more so, with how well-hidden it was in the shadows of those more foreboding places. After all this was one abandoned old factory of dozens; hundreds. Not everyone got to claim a castle as his base of operations. Some people have all the luck, really.

Even so, this day was different. The highwaymen were requesting assistance for once; they were even coughing up cash for the parcel. But that didn't mean they weren't careful. The two snipers on the roof could be spotted five hundred meters away and further.

Cyaиide Suиs

@Xandrya FUCK YOU I WON'T DO WHAT YA TELL ME
FUCK YOU I WON'T DO WHAT YA TELL ME
FUCK YOU I WON'T DO WHAT YA TELL ME
FUCK YOU I WON'T DO WHAT YA TELL ME
MOTHERFUCKERRRRRRRrrrr

_{(actually i'm working on it right now please don't hurt me)}

Cyaиide Suиs

Back after a long absence, and looking for some good 1x1s

Too busy to pick up another 1x1 project right now, but I'm subscribing to this thread in the hopes that when I'm not, you won't be either.

You quoted my favorite Bill Murray movie, and in addition, when you say you "like grammar," I can tell that you sincerely mean it. There are self-proclaimed pedants around here who don't know the difference between "it's" and "its," and who don't know when or when not to place the question mark inside the quotations.

So I guess at the moment this is just a free bump for a totally wonderful IntChk.

Disgraceful self-promotion

Edit: although if you like Apocalyptic crap that much, would I be crass to advertise my new game? Cyaиide Suиs