Death came to Tiab Revlo while he tilled his rice patties bordering the Seas of Reality. Tibby, as his friends called him, didn’t think ‘people’, in whatever manner you choose to use the word, would still need rice living in-between the folds of space-time, but he was quite wrong. In fact, food was hard to come by in The Folds, most sentient beings needed the organic kind, so Tibby was actually quite a well off man compared to his time as a simple farmer. Before he got tripped and ended up landing himself lost in The Folds. That's how it happened to most, he heard, or was aptly comforted by. The Folds, They just took you. Whether you were ready, wanting, or needing as much. It just happened.
Optimists like to say the Universe chooses you, deems you worthy enough to live in this place of eternity, but ol’ Tibby thought that was just a lie people like to tell themselves to help forget. Once The Folds took you, there was no going back to the point you were taken, even for Fold-Benders, and they warped the reality of this place like it was their business. Well, Tibby thought, I guess it was.
It happened to Tiab, The Slip, back when he was a rice farmer on the Moons of Warkt. Located a couple hundred thousand lightyears west of wherever it is you’re reading this. He slipped right in like he missed a step on the stairs. Accept, when he looked up he didn’t see his simple farm, but a totally different scenery that his mind could just barely comprehend.
A world that existed, between the folds of space-time.
The ground was glassy, a purple hue over an otherwise black, obsidian like ground. It resembled glass, or ice. It had a transparency to it that implied if you somehow managed to crack through, you’d fall right down into a never ending pit of darkness. The ground rose and fell like any-other planetary surface, except in this case the ground was jagged, spiked in its rising and falling. It wasn’t soil piled atop each other, rather shelves of glossy obsidian stacked in differing piles. Jagged, towering spikes, would break out the glossy seas like ice-bergs in a glossy ocean of shadow.
All in all, he would have been horrified, surely convinced he’d fallen straight down into the deepest hole in hell, had it not been for the sky. That great big, beautiful sky.
When sentient life looks to the stars in their skies above, hope and wonder is always the reward. Humility and drive is the lesson. This is true, more so, when one looks up at the skies of hundreds of thousands of worlds, all overlapping, shifting, and rearranging. The Folds of Space themselves.
Ol’ Tibby must’ve stared at that sky for what felt like hours before a sense of self-preservation managed to steer him toward the nearest settlement, The Town of Kalek. It was instinctive. A quick stumble away following a faint buzz of sound in the distance, all he heard. Just stumbling through the dark for what felt equally like hours as it did mere moments. Everything in The Folds feels a lot closer together then it is.
The people of Kalek were shocked at first, most of those who Slipped did so near Rifts, not way out in the booneys when he dropped in. Still, they were quick to find their manners and help the poor man feel a sense of sanity in all this madness.
After a couple weeks acclimatizing and getting situated, Tibby found life between The Folds to be quite similar to his own, far more comfortable even. His skill with rice made him a valuable asset to the village of Kalek, allowing him to accrue a rather hefty wealth in his twenty years of farming within The Folds.
His house was large, his fields wide and his views of the Seas were worthy of serious jealousy. He enjoyed working the fields, felt it therapeutic even, but he loved the Seas of Reality more.
A decade of labor-soaked years bought him land at the border of the Seas. He did so because he loved watching the inky black sea, waiting for the small glints of would be sunlight to peak the tops of the oceans' messy chop.
Vistas of different points in space-time that the Seas would offer, to view into ever so often. During ‘Night’ as he still called it, Tibby would sit at his favorite stone bench by the shore, and watch the Skies and the Seas intermingle amongst the horizon.
The two defining aspects of his new understanding, the converging of truth, fracturing along one perfect line in the distance. The point where chaotic realism must form to the constructs of brutal reality.
He’d look up at the dark sky of his new life, skies really when living between The Folds, and appreciate the rippling nature of the black expanse above. Each fold, each rippling line, scarring the sky. A different point in space-time. Each glint of ‘sun’ light on the water, a window to a different world. So much to appreciate. Possibly.. All there was too be appreciated. Right there, stretching out before him.
All in all, Tiab Revlo lived an incredibly unique life, full of passion and dedication to his craft… Well, that was until Death came to say hello and bestow his unconditional gift.
It happened during one of Tibby’s many breaks between bouts of tilling, watching the ‘water’ rise and fall in its constant never ending chop. Not rough enough to cause issues with the WorldHoppers, massive wooden ships that are built to slip between The Folds, but just enough to give oneself a quick glimpse into the distant oceans they represent.
Death came to Tiab in a Dingy.
Not what he had expected. The long black robe of Death draped down to the figure's feet, however, fit the bill real snug. The boat seemed to move on its own accord, gliding toward the coast.
“Anything I could do you ya for, dear traveler?” Tibby’s voice wavered. He didn’t know how he knew, but Tibby was sure, he’d just met Death right there and then.
The Dingy drifted idly to the shores with no answer given. The figure stepped off and onto the paddy field soil. It removed its hood, looking down in disgust at the dirt. It grabbed a handful with boney hands, staring at it like one would a rat in their kitchen. His face was pale, gaunt, like it was lacking in substance.
Black hair balding into an aggressive widow’s peak. Eyes, low-tinted with a reddish brown, sitting above a hooked nose. He looked up from his hatred of dirt to stare daggers into Ol’ Tibby’s soul. “By what right,” it said, “Do you taint this realm?” The voice of Death was soft and airy, but the boiling anger it hid was unavoidable.
“Ex.. ex.. Excuse me?” Tibby inched backward, readying to book-it.
“No,” the man cocked his head with casual malice, “ run… and you’ll be dead by your second step.” He pointed toward the small bench Tibby used to watch the Seas. “Sit, I would question you, before your end.” Tibby remained frozen in place, shaking in his proverbial boots.
“Must you, sir, take me?” Tibby searched for some sign of mercy in the killer's eyes, all he found were two small stones.
“Afraid so, young man.” Death motioned to the bench as he walked over to it. His robe moved oddly as he stepped. It seemed thicker than a robe would usually be. It appeared to tossel, shift every so often, like a slumbering dragon.
Tibby followed, what else could he do? He took his seat as Death took his own, side-by-side. “An answer to my question, young man.” silence followed, and Death sighed, “ by what right do you taint this realm?’ He let the dirt fall between his fingers as he said the words, motioning with his chin toward the surrounding rice stalks. For whatever reason, he kept one arm hidden, enveloped in that strange cloak.
“Do you mean… the farm?” Death merely nodded slowly in response. “Uhm, I bought this land from the HQ… the-they run pretty much everything around here,” Tibby trembled, he could barely speak. Death listened barely a hint of emotion, “but I guess… the Consulate of Kalek, if you wanted a person, he gave me the right to till and sell my harvest in the markets.. I bought the dirt from him too.” Death raised an eyebrow at that. Tibbby continued, “they ship it from The Andromeda Cleft, closest Rift, but if you don’t mind me asking, sir, why would a person such as yourself care about something so trivial?”
Death looked out to the Seas before answering. He seemed to look beyond them, to the folds that made up the skyline above the horizon. The line of horizon where the many Folds of space-time met the ever shifting Sea of Reality. “Do you have any idea.. just how big our universe truly is?”
“Does anyone?” To Tibby’s shock, Death grunted at that, something Tibs took a full few seconds to realize was a laugh.
“I have travelled.. Perhaps farther, deeper into these Folds then any other.” He grunted.“Perhaps, Aegeus could rival me, but at this point I am sure he is long dead, stupid, arrogant man.” To Tibby’s utter befuddlement, Death laughed again.
“I didn’t realize Death could laugh.” he said in a whisper, mostly to himself. The figure beside Tibby turned back to face him.
“Oh, I'm not Death.” he chuckled lightly again. “Only a man, same as you.” The man presumed to be Death lightly bucked his shoulder. The figure's cloak suddenly began to move and shift, uncoiling around the man before flapping off and flying into the sky.
The thing really was alive. It circled the two like a flying manta ray, jet black with a pale belly,
Without his cloak, the man was remarkably skinny. His fine linen suit of black and grey, matched with a purple ascot pinned by a tiny golden needle shaped like a hummingbird, was eclipsed by the strange cast he wore over his once covered-arm. A thick metal tube totally encased his right arm, keeping it locked at an odd angle. Thick screws ran along the cast. Some kept the two halves that made up the tube screwed together, but most were just twisted directly into the metal, presumably into the man’s arm. “But… I might just serve it, him, Death in its truest known sense.” Horror crept into the corners of his once empty eyes. “.. Possibly, I truly don’t know.” the flying creature screeched, Tibby whimpered as wonder glazed over the cold eyes of Death’s Servant. “Even after all these years, all my traveling, all I’ve seen.. I still am no closer to finding an answer.” The man looked to the sky above, then sighed heavily, “And now I may never know, enslaved by something I don’t really understand, but most certainly fear,” the creature screeched again, “ as you should as well.”
Tibby would have been shocked, horrified by these words, were it not for his total fixation on what was hidden under the massive cloak that was not a cloak.
All the screws of the thick metal cast began to hiss and smoke. They slowly, then violently dislodged. Not unscrewed, but vibrated before blasting from their sockets like the inside of a submarine diving too deep.
“I fear, my master hungers, and when he calls I am beckoned,” the screws shoot off the caste more frequently now, veering in all directions. The steam from within hissed a piercing screech as it escaped. Tibby cowered as the man rose. “I am sorry, young farmer, that you are he who must be next fed upon, but, by the very nature of the thing you thought I was, and I may well yet still serve, the gift I give you now comes for us all, regardless of when we may so choose.”
Thunk. Thunk. To accent his statement, the two halves of his metal caste fell to the ground revealing an arm… completely encased in shadow. Black tendrils of inky darkness swung around the limb.. And that was all Ol’ Tibby saw, before his brain was spaghettified and absorbed into the void with a thick meaty clap.
Four Temporal Days Later…
- The Cube
In a dimly lit, dirty bar, in some lost corner within The Folds, a young man enjoyed a dark beer while sitting on the ceiling. His short cropped black hair hung lazily from his head. Sunglasses, miraculously, still hanging from his sharp, angular tanned face. The “floor” below was a couple hundred feet down, but those around him seemed generally unperturbed. They chatted quietly and enjoyed exotic, colorful cocktails while sucking on cigarettes that burned smoke in an array of rainbow colors.
Axil Cross held his stomach, less casual to the drop then others, scanning faces around him through tinted lenses, much darker on the outside than what he looked through. They could even be adjusted to zoom in if required, like if two-way glass had a baby with binoculars and became wearable sunglasses.
It's still douchey to wear sunglasses in-doors, even within the folds of reality, in case you were wondering. Ax wasn’t in the mood to have his eyes watched, so he bore the scrutiny as best he could. His atrocious fashion sense was an immutable offense. It worsened by the day in tandem with a quickly growing ego. It whispered lies, his ego, telling him it looked cool and Avant-garde. It didn’t.
The ego was a real character fault if you’d ask his friends, but he had less and less of those after taking up his most recent profession. He didn’t mind the job, it was better than his last. He always hated farming. Nebraska, unless born there, really is quite dull.
What silently nagged at him was that he didn’t even have much of a choice on the profession, though he guessed most of his peers never really did either…. Whatever, back to the grindstone.
He took a small photo from his thin black leather jacket, lined with red satin, (told you he had bad taste) and held the image tightly to his side. It depicted a truly absurd figure, one that stunned Axil the first he’d seen it, and Axil wasn’t easily stunned. He checked it again now, usually against his personal protocol in the field, but did so anyway. This was ‘cause in all of Cross’s hunts throughout The Folds, he’d never seen a stranger target, and he’d seen some wild shit.
The photo depicted a hazy image of a walking shadow. A human figure, but totally made of… darkness. Shadows bent to human form. That was the best way to describe… it. The image haunted Cross in his sleep, making it the perfect target. Sadly, not the one he was after tonight, but definitely the end goal in Cross’s mind for this specific Hunt. Looking at it now fueled him, even if his boss, and his boss's boss, technically thought ‘the shadow was above his pay-grade. Axil finished his drink at the thought of his superiors, nasty buggers they were. He set his glass down with a heavy thud.
A seductive feminine tickled Cross’s ear, “Mr Cross, would you care for another?” Delighted, he turned to face its owner. Unfortunately his “waitress” was a floating metal ball, about twice the size of a basketball. It hovered with some unknown science. Cross had seen so much crazy tech the past few months, things like this just couldn’t phase him anymore, as much as he secretly still wished it did. Instead of fainting like he did the first time, he just rolled his eyes.
The human brain was terrifying in how fast it could adapt to the awful. I guess that’s what makes us strong, Hm….strong. Axil turned to the floating ball masquerading as a seductive woman.
“Yea, an’ make it a doubt, nice and strong, if you would.”
“Of Course, Mr Cross.” the ball floated off through the disco neon landscape of cachoney that surrounded him. The perfect cover for a hunter like himself. Dense like a jungle. No wide-leaf vegetation and poisonous insects, flailing drunken bodies and blinding neon light did most of the hard labor. The club did share one similarity to a jungle, a thick mist that permeated the space, allowing the flashing neon to tint the surrounding air an array of rainbow colors. The mist was a distinctive feature of the club, it helped newcomers acclimate their senses to the distortion of gravity.
“The Cube” was a massive club located within The Folds, shaped like an actual massive cube. All interior “walls” were capable of being trod upon. A lot could be done thanks to the fact that the ‘night’club existed between time and space, - within The Folds.
Axil stood, deciding to prowl for clues and moved toward the “wall” nearest him. He stopped when he saw it, nearly barfed, then decided to sit back down and case the scene some more from what he rationalized as a “seated, hidden position of great strategic value.”
The problem was when someone reached a corner they would simply put a foot up to the “wall” and then that would become the floor for them. The effect sizzles the mind when you look up to see figures walking along the ceiling and walls around you, no matter how much the mist attempts to obscure one's vision and make the scene feel illusory. To prevent barfing, Axil mostly kept his head in his glass. Not a great strategy for a bounty hunter on the job, but Axil decided vomiting publicly would probably be worse.
Axil had been a Fold-Bender for about six months now, longer on the job then some last, and yet still gravitational tinkering played with his brain. How could it not? He grew up a farm-boy twenty miles south of the nearest town in Nebraska. His life was corn. Miles upon miles of it. There, down was down and nothing else.
Then, one day, in the corners of his mental perspective, the corn began to ripple. As if someone had pulled on the image his eyes were showing him. Making it rumple with loopy folds, like the comforter of a messy bed. The lines ran mostly parallel, multiplying and thinning the closer they got to the corners of his vision. He focused on the folds in the corners of his eyes, the distortion of vision - reality really - cause how could he not? He was nineteen and afraid of going blind.
Next thing Axil Cross knew, he focused a little too hard on those folds in his minds-eye and slipped right in-between them. Fell straight through a rift in space-time and ended up in a boat idly floating along the Sea of Reality, but again, it was hard to think about, still made his mind bend. Doctors would call it traumatic even, but Cross wasn’t a fan of those folk, so we’ll just get back to it later, pack it away in his brain - the healthy choice.
For now what Axil needed to do was find a man named “Graves.” About six two, white and balding while sporting a thick scar across the corner of his upper lip. That’s all he really knew about the guy, other than the fact he was another Fold-Bender of course. One could always tell another nearby, like sharks in the water - sharks can do that, right?
Whatever the case, Axil felt the man’s ‘Presence’ beading down on him. The man obviously wasn’t just any old Folder, he was a powerful one, very. His Presence was so strong it actually became an obstacle in this confined space. If he was a weaker Fold-bender, any old Hunter with a few years on the job would be able to pick him out in a crowd, distinguish his Presence amongst the throng of partiers. Hell, Axil had his Awareness-Presense, AP, down on his first job. Axil’s peers always joked how his perception of Vibrational-Frequency-Distortions - VFDs for short, was abnormally strong, but he knew there was jealousy for his natural gifts under the jokes. VFDs were the heart and soul of Fold-bending, so being accurately aware of their nature was a huge advantage when learning to master the art..
Axil was so acutely aware of VFDs, his first ride-along as a Hunter, he knew what floor the target was on before he and his mentor, Kriss, had even entered the building. The Hunters of HQ have code named him ‘BloodHound’ ever since. Logged it into the damned official records and everything. Dutch, his occasional partner when he needed the muscle, said it was badass, a term of endearment, but Axil always found it a tad insulting to be compared to a dog. To be fair, Axil was the first natural-born Fold-bender in decades, centuries maybe, a dog felt a lesser creature for a man of his specific gifts. Most Fold-Benders felt VFDs like pinpricks on their skin. Little, mostly painless, needles poking at their bodies. The closer they get to the source, the more intense these pinpricks become. Allegedly the experience is not the most comfortable. Axil wouldn’t know, for him, they felt like the sun’s warmth. Like he lay on a beach, warm sun sizzling against his skin. The closer he got, the hotter it got, but the sensation was never uncomfortable and he had stood next to an uncovered World-Hopper engine before. (I know you don’t know what that means, but I promise, it's a mighty impressive feat for a Fold-Bender)
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
The current issue was that Graves was so powerful, his ‘Presence’, the VFDs his abilities naturally let off, eminented throughout the entire room, reverberating around the walls and becoming entangled in the gravitational distortions. It gave Cross a nasty headache, despite his gifts.
The problem was Fold-Bending had a lot to do with the specific vibrations and corresponding frequencies of one’s atoms. Fold-bending specifically involved the manipulation of those vibrations of the atoms in one' s own corporal body. Fold-Benders use VFDs to manipulate their atoms in such a way they can transport their physical body throughout time and space. One essentially distorts their natural vibrations to become more Fluid, in a quantum-sense, blending with the bonds of the universe, allowing a Fold-Bender to be affected by things like tachyons and high emittances of radiation still reverberating from the Big Bang, clinging to the waves of Entropy. This allows one to either flow back or forth through time, riding the opposing channels as sea turtles ride the great currents of Earth’s oceans. Tachyons backward, radiation forward.
They match this ability with a distortion of one’s atom’s vibrations, using either a supernatural sense of the natural vibrations of the atoms through space for some cases, or for most, pre-progamed known frequencies for general, commercial travel, allowing for the slipping of great distances between space. Smaller jumps, Folds, could be performed based on the bender's eyeline and is essentially a slow teleportation. In as much a sense that’s possible.
In total, it amounted to a ‘Folding’ of space accompanied by a ‘Bending’ of time, but again, it was all quite complicated, so people generally just called it Fold-Bending.
Hazel always tries to explain this stuff to Axil back at HQ, but damn is it boring. One thing Ax did remember though, other then all that other gobbilty-gook, is that the VFD’s a Hunter feels naturally emitting from another Fold-Bender can become distorted when interacting with gravitational manipulations rays; the devices that allow the wall-walking currently inducing a growing sense of nasua withing Axil. Also making this nightclub a microwave for VFDs. His headache grew.
The effect of Grave’s presence bouncing off every surface in the room was making him nearly impossible to spot for any normal Fold-Bender, and even extremely difficult for highly trained ones. That's why he was hiding here, with whatever loot he had stolen after his most recent heist. That was usually his M.O. He’d rob a joint, and wait out the heat in a club that abused gravity like The Cube. There were several within The Folds, allowing for him to oscillate randomly between them after each heist, infuriating HQ, who have been relentless in their hunt for him. Especially after his most recent slew of hits, for whatever reason he’d been robbing Federal Archives, and that pissed HQ off something fierce.
Unfortunately for Graves, who thought his hiding spots full-proof, that’s exactly why HQ sent Axil Cross, as previously mentioned, he was no ordinary Fold-Bender, far from it. When HQ needed a dirty job done quick, it found no better sword than the new recruit straight out of rural Nebraska, Axil Cross. Most Fold-Benders, even experienced Hunters, had an oddly strong desire for their own self-preservation, creating a vast overestimation of their opponents' capabilities. Not Axil.
Thanks to Axil’s abnormal AP, anyone on the HQ’s hit list essentially has a target on their head and as far as his concern toward self-preservation, he’s a pretty damned good shot; no matter how powerfully one can bend the fabric of space-time, a bullet to the brain does the same job all the same.
That’s partially why Axil decided to become a Hunter, rather than just traverse the universe, galaxy really, like most of his peers. The job was concrete, simple. Shoot the baddies. Collect the reward. Drink booze as if it were ordered by your doctor while waiting for the next gig. Maybe meet a lady, but, if the floating metal ball was any indication, that department has been far more difficult for Axil as he’s grown accustomed to his new life. His job though, becoming a Hunter, dedicating himself to HQ and its vision, that part came easy for him. It had too. It kept him tethered.
Unlike a surprisingly large group of his peers, Axil didn’t like the freedom of being able to go, whenever and wherever across… existence. It was daunting. Not to mention it was a mind-scrapingly, brain burningly, instant-panic-attack-inducingly INSANE concept to wrap one’s head around. Like a fish living in a tiny reef all its life only to suddenly be swept up into a gigantic ocean.
Like Nemo!
Axil felt like Nemo, and so to deal with it, he killed multiversal criminals. Well, at the very least, he brought them to justice. Most of the time though, he ended up killing them.
Problem was once someone was granted the powers of near comparative god-hood to how they presumably previously lived, it tended to go to one’s head and convince them they’re actions are legit; no matter how insane, so most of those Axil hunts don’t go down easily.
Like our good friend Graves, who has been making quite a mess for quite a while and just so coincidentally, was spotted with ‘Shadow' last week. The moniker was flashy but it was the best Axil could come up with for his latest obsession, making Graves the perfect Hunt for one on contract like Axil. A man who needs a purpose, a hunt, so as to not feel lost in this big ol’ see he’s been dropped in.
And yes, unfortunately, contracts still exist within the folds of space-time. It would unfortunately seem, bureaucracy truly does seep into all aspects of li-
There he is!
Axil was torn from his reverie, feeling the focal point of the near boundless Presence filling the room shift slightly, following a dot in the upper right corner of The Cube. This technique was how he sensed powerful Fold-Benders in distorted gravity fields.
To him, another ‘Presence’ in a room with distorted gravity moved like someone rolling a heavy ball across that same comforter described earlier. In this case, the blanket is Graves’s Presence, the VFD’s his power gives off, now thrown array by the gravity tampering. The heavy ball is Graves himself. Regardless of how irrelevant the VFD’s are from their originating point all mixed up in The Cube’s distortion, whenever that point moves, it still has a strong effect on how the surrounding VFDs react. They shift in a corresponding manner to Graves’, the focal point, and through careful monitoring of the way they shift, Axil can identify a target’s position. It was easy to him, insane to others.
In this case, it appeared the target was going to get a lap dance. Axil could feel Graves' presence pulling toward the ‘private rooms’ section on the upper right corner. He had to act fast if he was going to catch the man before going in. All who pay for a private room in The Cube have to pass security. Axil didn’t want to pay, but he certainly didn’t wanna make a scene earlier.
Speaking of making a scene, as Axil quickly rose and abandoned the drink that had just been set for him before clenching his stomach in preparation for the gravity switch. To make it easier, he decided a quick hop would be kinder on the gut then walking the switch. He promptly leapt a foot and a half from the wall, hoping bystanders would simply be drunk and in search of the dance quadrant.
In fact, a few did as..
WHOOSH!
Axil leapt from the floor to the wall and felt his stomach jerk sideways then, suddenly, down as his body violently rotated mid-air. Why Axil thought this would be less nauseating, he could not tell you. Ego gets the better of the boy often, especially when on the job.
WHAM!
Despite the nausea and mentally confounding mid-air pivot, Axil landed feet down, his thick boots making a satisfying whack as they hit the dirty metal floor; which only moments ago, was the wall he faced.
His new view was of a massive congested ball of dancers, near wall to wall on this face of The Cube. The bodies were tightly packed, banging into each other like an overpacked pinball machine. Together they formed a sweaty, impenetrable looking wall.
Axil could just barely make out the pink and purple cloth door to the private rooms across the hall between the many half naked bodies of drunken fiends and all other manner of sapient to semi-sapient species that made Axil’s head spin and now made up his day-to-day life.
“Shit.”
Then, he spotted Graves, more than halfway across the room. Slipping through the crowd with superhuman ease. He’d get to the private rooms way before Cross.
“Fuck.
Axil took off at once, shoulding through the crowd, elbows flying. Partiers toppled over and fell as he muscled past them, earning some insults he couldn’t understand. Axil knew he should feel bad disrespecting the… people, but it was just hard for his brain to comprehend that the walking bear man wearing bright red slacks may actually have a family that loves it and fears death and shit. To Ax, the guy, he could unfortunately tell quite obviously, was not just some cartoon bullshit made real. “He” as far as his planet of origin saw fit to assign whatever his gender, was real. As real as Axil. They all were, and thus deserved protection… from pricks like Graves.
After squeezing half-way through the crowd he was promptly stopped with a green palm the size of his chest. Axil looked up to face the slobbering green maw of a Vorxaian Orc. Real dirty fuckers, not one’s to mess with. It looked Axil up and down.
“Not.. polite.” Its voice felt like he spoke with a mouth full of cigarette smoke and actual gravel. His beady red eyes bore into Cross’s soul.
“Very sorry sir, that man, he ah, owes me money!” Cross pointed, but Graves was already walking into the private room, and the Orc was slow to turn. Damn.
“What man?” The Orc followed Cross’s finger, but by the time he turned Graves was gone. He turned back and cocked his neck, “You lie?” his grip tightened on Axil’s chest.
Axil cursed under his breath. So much for not making a scene. “Sorry buddy,” Ax exhaled before Folding space, “.. try not to vomit.”
One second he was at the mercy of the Orc, trapped in the middle of a sweaty dance floor. Next they were in the hallway of the private rooms.
The Voraxian Orc promptly puked on the floor and collapsed to his knees. “Yea, I hear that can be uncomfortable for non-benders,” Axil patted his the Orcs head as he strutted past, “the nausea should dissipate in an hour or two.” The sounds of splattering puke echoed behind Axil as he made his way through the ‘private rooms’. Really just a long dark hallway with the occasional set of pink drapes to cordon off the ‘private’ rooms.
He had succeeded in Folding deep enough into the main hallway; the man guarding from outside only managed to spot the puking Orc after Axil had slipped behind a curtain into a random room. The ‘rooms’ were not so much rooms but semi-circle inlets, rimmed with blush coaches, cut into the main hallway that made up the space. Axil peaked between the heavy pink drapes that separated the alcove from the main room as he watched security escort the Orc out. As they were leaving Axil thought he heard whispers of ‘A Hunter’. Dammit. He had to work fast before word spread, caused pandemonium and alerted Graves. If the man got wind a Hunter was in the building he’d decide to just Fold on out of the place, no question.
Axil closed his eyes and began breathing in deeply through the nose. He mentally canceled out the noise outside. Distracted his nose from the ungodly smells. He even willed himself not to taste the saliva in his mouth or feel the clothing against his skin. He focused his total mentality on detecting AP nearby, that alien warmth against his skin, and… there. Four rooms down, opposite side.
With a flamboyant flourish Cross threw back the curtain to his room and Folded down the hall, now facing a room clearly emanating with VFDs, but they felt… odd, channeled. Axil pulled back the curtain to discover Graves sitting on the couch, huddled over a small black box, about the size of a lunch box. Small wires ran from the box, connecting to his temples. He mumbled quietly under his breath, eyes pulled up like he was trying to see the back of his skull. Axil was distracted by the man’s state of being.
He was a wreck. Clothing torn and splattered with ash and blood. Stingy, poorly cut hair, grey and white, down to his shoulders. Bald spot now conquering the top of his head. He looked like he hadn’t eaten much in weeks.
Cross reached down toward his holster as he slowly approached the man. He could feel Graves channeling his Fold-Bending into the box. It was unlike anything he’d seen, felt. Well this.. And Shadow.
When Axil was about halfway, Graves sucked in air quickly, rolling his eyes back in place. The visual was deeply unnerving. “Hello Hunter.” His voice had a calm, barely contained manic energy to it, thick with condescension. He took the wires from his head and stood, back surprisingly straight, to face Axil. “HQ send you here to put me, a mad-dog, down?”
“That about sums it up.” Axil pulled back his jacket to reveal his holstered pistol.. as well as a pair of Quantum-Cuffs dangling to their side, “unless you’d rather be brought in for detainment.” Graves scoffed angrily at that.
“Detainment, a clipping of our wings. I’d rather die.”
“That’s getting more and more likely." Axil went to pull his weapon.
“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.” The man’s calm demeanor was deeply unnerving. To make matters worse, the VFDs the box was giving off began to rise dramatically. It vibrated, furious.
“What's with the box?” Axil nudged his head toward the shaking device.
Graves barked a cruel laugh. “So little you understand about your own, our own, gifts.” He spoke with finality, and pity. It made Axil think this box was what he thought it was. A bomb.
Graves continued before Ax could question him on it. “ You have been given the opportunity to bear the very power that threads our universe together, to fight in a war you could only barely possibly comprehend the scale of, and yet you play the beat-cop bounty hunter for a bullshit excuse of a police department.”
“I find HQ generally knows what it's doin-” Cross was cut off as Graves somehow vibrated his body, Bending time in such a way he was instantly inches from Cross, readying to punch.
It wasn’t like Folding in a confined space, which had a physical component and was not true instantaneous teleportation. Folding was like jumping into a hole you had just suddenly created in the air before you. This Bending was as if, because it probably was Graves speeding up time for just himself, while everyone else was forced in the flow of QST, Quantum-Standard-Time.
To Axil’s perception, he was a few feet away one second, the next, he was inches, pulling back his arm. Bending time, Graves landed three super-quick punches to Cross's gut, who doubled over in pain, feeling ribs crack.
“Ugh, What was that?!” Cross threw his head up, trying to reverse head-butt his attacker, but the madman side-stepped, Bended time once more to land a super-quick kick to Cross’s side. Big mistake. Cross took the kick, grunting as he grabbed the man’s leg and spun with the momentum to throw Graves into the wall. Unfortunately with a quick Bend, Graves flipped and had his back to the wall with the momentum killed.
Cross took a step to meet him, shifting to land a backhand across Graves' jaw but again the man was gone in a flash, instantly behind Cross. He landed a heavy elbow into Cross’s exposed spin. Once again, Cross took the hit, falling with the momentum. As he was hitting the ground he pivoted to land on his back, grabbed Graves, who had fallen atop him after being confused by the momentum shift, and then Folded the both of them to the ceiling of the room.
The difference was, he had reoriented them during the Fold so now it was Graves falling to the floor below Cross. Gotcha, Axil goaded.
Then, as they began to fall, Graves Bended, mid-air. and was suddenly on the ground, fist up.
WHACK.
Cross fell gut first right into Graves’s fist. Air ran from his lungs. He slumped as Graves lowered him to the ground, helping him remain standing. “Neet trick kid, but knowledge through experience always beats young instinct.” Graves then sucker punched Cross in the face, sending him floundering into the wall, where he unceremoniously collapsed onto the couch. “And in a fight, Bending always beats a good Fold.”
“Fuck you,” Axil mumbled through bloodied lips.
“You’ll learn.” Graves then grabbed the gun from Cross’s hostler, tossed it, and gave him another punch to the gut for good measure. He then turned to grab his box, now vibrating a violent amount. It blinked red and the VFDs travelling from his head to the box were now so intense they were visible to the naked eye. Graves gawked when he realized that and rushed over to quickly finish whatever he had started with the device. It appeared, from his frantic movement, he needed to finish it, whatever it was he was doing, or it might finish him.
As he began to merge back with the box, CRACK! A gunshot echoed through the room. Graves vibrated for a moment, the bullet falling through his shifting body to his feet, but not fast enough. Graves turned back with a red flower, blood blooming from his chest to face the slumped Cross. Smoke wafted from Axil’s coat jacket, now ripped, as he revealed a second, puny-sized gun, a one-shot by the look of it. He apparently kept sewn it into one of the jacket's many folds.
“Not my only trick.” Cross rose in pain as it was Graves' turn to slump down onto the couch, hands clawing toward the box. “Oh calm down, you’ll be fine.” Cross flipped Graves’ body, identified the bullet wound, then took a small, thin metal disk from his back pocket, a Patch, and put it over the wound. It held to the body, then melted into the wound. After another second it flashed green. “See, nice and stable.” Cross went to call in the catch, but before he could he heard Graves begin to mumble.
“...you…fools, you… have damned us…all.” The Patch was supposed to apply a sedative to put a target under. Graves fought through with a horrific intensity. Frothing at the mouth, eyes bulging from his head. “A-Aegeus..must know… In Kalek….,” Cross leaned in, the man was fading, but it didn’t look like the sedative. His eyes were growing red and blood began to seep from his ears and rose. His veins fought to break the skin of his face. He took in one final breath, summoning all remaining strength, and grabbed Cross by the shoulders, bringing him inches from his face. “...a Void-Warper walks The Folds once more, and death follows.” His head promptly exploded, painting the room, and Axil Cross’s face, with bloody viscera.
- The Oculus
Axil limped down one of the many metal walk-ways that lead toward The Oculus, HQ of the Fold-Benders. His ego, hurting more than his side. His head, so stuffed with questions it pressed against the sides of his skull. What in the hell was a Void-Walker, and what was that Bending Graves had done. Cross may have won the fight, but only technically. Despite all of his bragging about abnormal Awareness Perception, AP, he had gotten seriously schooled in this fight. Which was odd for him. A quick Fold and a fast trigger got the job so far - it had, until an old man Bended Time to kick the fuck out me.
Axil limped a metal rafter, six feet across, as it led him toward the massive metal ball that hung suspended in this massive Rumple within The Folds. The Oculus. A giant metal superstructure reminiscent of the Death Star. Though not nearly quite so big. It was about the size of the Empire State Building if you smushed it into a ball. It actually held roughly the same office space.
The pocket that held The Oculus --- and in fact even The Cube, The Town of Kalek and so much more -- were called Rumples. Points in the fabric of space-time where the constant rippling piles up and creates distortions, bubbles in space-time instead. This Rumple was unusually large and oddly shaped, but became the perfect housing for The Oculus. A giant metal ball of yarn, suspended in the middle of this cylindrical massive cave, Rumple, by strands of ‘yarn’ that leave the ball at random points and stretch themselves to connect to The Folds. Thousands of these “strands”, like the metal walkway Cross currently traversed, ferried Hunters of HQ to specific points in the The Folds and the Real World, and vice versa. Cross had just taken the Rift from The Cube to The Oculus.
The first time he’d seen it, Cross didn’t close his mouth for minutes. Limping down the walkway now, Cross still couldn’t help but look up, down and around at all the hundreds of other walkways all carrying Hunters to and from The Oculus with as little regard for gravity as the Cube, Less even. It made his stomach bubble. As he got closer and closer to Oculus Central, the massive metal ball all strands connected too, the walkways became so dense a Hunter from his left, a man with devil horns and a tail, was walking down, literally, as to his right a woman, with a fish tank head, used a walkway with the gravity reversed to his, giving her the appearance of walking on the ceiling. His nausea bubbled up again. God I really gotta talk to a doc about that.
“Wow! Looks like the BloodHound really earned its name today.” The voice was confident and deep, with heavy sarcasm paddled in for good measure. It came from a walkway to his upper right. Damn, I’d been in shock I hadn’t considered I was still caked in blood.
“Really not in the mood, Connelly,” said Cross to no one in particular.
WHAM! Connelly slammed right in front of Cross after jumping his walkway. “When are you!?” He roared, looping Cross into a big hug. He’d leapt from a nearby walkway and shifted several times, flowing with the powerful gravity distortion this close to HQ, before nimbly adjusting to land with flair. Where Cross hated gravitational tinkering, Connelly took to it like a fish in water… well more like a pig in shit. “Bud… You really are looking worse for wear, what happened?”
“Got my ass kicked by a geriatric. Going to Kara to get fixed up, then I’m taking a shower and passing out, I’m done.” Cross pushed Connelly aside and moved toward the massive steel archway before them. An entrance to Oculus Central. “Like I said, not in the mood.” Of course, Connelly doesn’t listen, rarely does.
“Woof, you're going to Kara? You must really be banged up.” He followed like a happy dog, nipping at a sad strays heels.
Ax touched his side, then his wrist, feeling the injuries. “Three broken ribs, maybe a fractured wrist …”
Dutch shakes his head. “So cool you can do that.”
“Perks of dating a doctor…..did you know we could Bend time?”
“It's in the name Pal.”
“No I mean like, the same way we can Fold in confined spaces, not fully through space-time, just like our smaller jumps during sparring." The massive steel archway was looming above them now, giving full view to the ant-hill like intensity inside The Oculus. All black and grey hallways filled by men and women in white. The currents of people were in constant flux as they rose and descended the many steps of the Oculus. Choosing between a hundred nondescript passages, it seemed so easy for them. Connelly and Cross had to wait a moment. So monochrome. Connelly gave a long ‘ummmmmmm’ before responding.
“You know I never really thought much about it.”
“Do you think much of anything?”
“I think much of women.” Connelly twiddled his fingers at some passing Hunters, one a woman human, two Ax couldn’t recognize but were clearly feminine, they all giggled at Connelly. Another area he soared where Cross was down in the dirt. If there was anything that could make his ego smaller after that fight, it was Connelly. “Lets ask Kara when we go to see her, she's been cozying up to all the upper-ups of HQ, trying to worm her way into some comfy-ier digs, maybe they let something up.”
“You don’t think it's weird? You're a recruit, like everyone else, why wouldn’t they tell you guys the full extent of our gifts?” Cross felt anger in his words as he asked, rage he didn’t know he had for HQ.
“Probably because our ‘gifts’ allow us to bend space-time, HQ doesn’t want a bunch of uncontrollable reality benders out there, messing stuff up.”
“But then why give you the gift at all?”
“There’s more than one way to become a Fold-Bender, boy..” Connelly's face split into a massive grin, sandy brown and blonde slightly curly hair bouncing, you’d think he was human, “I forget how peasant-like you’re people, humans, really are.” he says the words not realizing how insulting. The ‘man’ was a