Post by hermes on Mar 23, 2009 18:33:49 GMT -5
Zero, was his name. Or, the name he chose for himself. His real name was never that important to him, something else that was part of a world he distanced himself from. He had come to terms with his nature, who he was, what he wanted, and why he shouldn't have it.
But he was truely unaware, of the passion, pleasure, glory, and pride that came from wishing what he wished. It made others suffer even as it uplifted his spirit, and he wondered, but knew it was a question he'd never have to worry about. Until...today.
____
Zero had been out of school for more than two years, a drop out. Or, that was what people liked to call him. He didn't think of himself that way, just, by the time he got to tenth grade, they'd already started teaching him the same things all over again.
So he took a short cut, instead getting a GED and then upgrading it to a full highschool equivilant. It wasn't that hard, though worrying about his future was something very new to him at the time. Three years later, Zero found himself at 20 years of age, just out of a year long college course in graphic design.
It was one of the shorter programs he'd found, and he couldn't say he was unhappy with the results either. He has some martial background, so he could do everything from modeling, to motion acting. He enjoyed the ladder greatly.
He leaned back in his nice, leather chair, relaxing in his office. It was barely there, but it was there, and he had to be thankful for that. He'd ranted two floors off a skyscraper, the top two in fact, and taken out a lot of government loans to hire people. They were currently halfway done with a game project, designed to rake in enough earnings to pay his employee's, so he could get other projects out there to start paying off the loans.
He'd been under a lot of pressure lately, both as a project manager and as a modeler. He was just glad he was doing character design instead of level design. The attention to detail for landscapes as large as those in an MMORPG was absolutely grueling.
He took a deep breath, the leather chair creaking under him. The office smelled like new computer equipment, an oddly sweet smell. He would dearly have loved to know where it origionated from, but he hadn't located the source yet. Maybe it was the silicon.
He looked at the clock, and was unsurprised to discover it was well past quitting time. Nobody got paid overtime, they were allocated a set amount for their work to be done on time, and it was quite a lot of money, so they couldn't complain. Especially since very nearly half of the time you spent at work was sitting on your ass, waiting for renders to come to completion so you could see how badly you'd fucked up.
Zero leaned forwards in his seat, and shut his monitor off. He'd let his renders finish overnight, through the renderfarm. There wasn't much else he could do, besides contribute to a continuing lack of sleep.
He swiveled around, and got out of his chair, grabbing his backpack on the way out the door. Several of his employee's nodded to him on the way out, and he stopped here and there to offer a few encouraging words, or to expand on an idea they were working on. By the time he made it out the door, safely on the ground floor again, he felt wide awake, despite the late hour.
Sadly, he wasn't the type that 'knew' when to rest, rather he rested when the chance presented itself. If he was active, he was awake, and thats all there was to it.
He was on his way to grab the company car from the lot, when it exploded everywhere. He stood there numbly for a moment, frozen, as something walked out of the center of the inferno. It was larger than a man, but not by much. Around ten feet tall, it had four spiderlike legs on its lower body, its upper body that of a man crossed with a spider. Its eight eye's stared at him, fixed.
Its entire body was made of an etherial blue crystal, that Zero had no idea what to make of. All he did know, was that every fiber of his being was screaming for him to run, and yet he could not. Part of him was facinated, pulls towards it, as equally as part of him reviled it, and another piece in the center cared not at all.
It was an incarnation of all the base fears of mankind, and Zero didn't care at all. But that oneness only lasted for a split second, before its set its eye's on him, and decided that he was lunch. All calmness fled from him then, as the creature barreled towards him. He could hear gunfire, and see the muzzle flashes coming from behind it.
It was already pursued, but it didn't seem its pursuers were having any appericiable effect on it.
It caught up with Zero, even as he darted across the street at top speed. It wasn't limited by human thinking, or even the physics of reality. It knocked Zero through a wall like a rag doll, sending blood flying from his nose and mouth and arms. They were broken in several places, when Zero came to, and there was a piece of heavy concrete on top of him.
He tried vainly to shift it, as the monster advanced on him.
Well? What do you want to do?
A voice asked him.
Fight or run, die in peace or with blood on your lips? What is your choice? To be a warrior, to be a meal, what is your true nature really?
Zero coughed up a lot of blood, but didn't have anything much else to do, besides feel fear, so he thought on the matter. He...didn't really want the be a warrior. The idea had always been exiting, but it wasn't the fighting by itself that drew him. It was the actions of the warrior, of the man, the hero.
Or the villain, it didn't matter much to him. Ying and Yang, a little light in a lot of darkness, a little darkness in a lot of light. People could do amazing, selfless, selfish things. He thought for a while longer, thinking and expanding on that idea. He decided that... He was a balancer. Or thats what he wanted to be. Don't prevent the extremes from existing, just prevent them from getting out of hand.
Life would be a terrible thing to live without them, but to much, and it can be terribly restricting, not to mention downright dangerous. He looked at the monster, shrugging off bullets and explosions like it was nothing.
"I would never kill, but I would send things back where they belonged." He said carefully, spitting up some of the blood in his mouth.
Thats nice, but what are you?
"Etherial." Zero answered, "A jester of fate, a warrior with a blunted blade. Why am I being poetic dammit? I'm irony, I'd smack things so they don't smack things that can't smack back, ok!?"
The monsters first came barreling towards him.
OK.
A mirror appeared in front of him. He looked at himself in it, a little bloodied and beaten up though he was. He had dark red, almost black, hair. Grey eyes peering out from a harsh features face that sat on the uncertain edge of rugged. He had a heavy build, thick bones and skin, covered and intertwined with respectable deposites of muscle.
He grinned at the mirror, and it grinned back. "What now?" He asked, and was surprised when the reflection in the mirror stepped forwards. "Boom." It said.
The explosion rocked the whole building, sending the monster sprawling. The man behind it dived their fire between it and the building, wondering what in the hell had knocked the monstrosity over.
Zero walked out of the smoke, the bullets stopping an inch away from his skin, leaving him untouched. He still looked...solid, but different. Instead of blood and a pulse under his skin, blue and white energy writhed around inside him.
He held a sword in his hand, it had two blades, side by side, connected to the same guard and hilt. One blade was blue, the other was white, and two differently colored mists swirled from both. Blue and white mist writhing and mixed, glowing brightly against the backdrop of reality.
He was wearing new clothing it, a blue, etherial cloak, over a blue blazer, and trousers of the same color. They all glowed faintly, and let off subtle amounts of mist. Zero sighed, and looked over at the men shooting at him. His eye's were no longer gray, put filled with shining, bright blue energy.
They all took a step back, from the unnatural mixture of utter peace, and unbridled ferocity within those eye's.
Zero turned his eye's back to the monster, pulling itself up out of the rubble its skidding had created. He pointed his sword at it.
"Hell Pulse." Zero said, energy building up between the two blades in a sudden, concentrated singularity. "Burst." A lance of blue and white energy stabbed out, skewering the beast on its length, and tearing it to pieces from the inside.
_____
Zero didn't yet know it, but the men standing beside him, were part of a much larger task force, hellbent on destroying anything with unnatural power. Their boots were already kicking down doors, signaling the beginning of their crusade.
Pure Sphere once again rose its ugly head, and looked at half the world with Gorgons Eyes.
But he was truely unaware, of the passion, pleasure, glory, and pride that came from wishing what he wished. It made others suffer even as it uplifted his spirit, and he wondered, but knew it was a question he'd never have to worry about. Until...today.
____
Zero had been out of school for more than two years, a drop out. Or, that was what people liked to call him. He didn't think of himself that way, just, by the time he got to tenth grade, they'd already started teaching him the same things all over again.
So he took a short cut, instead getting a GED and then upgrading it to a full highschool equivilant. It wasn't that hard, though worrying about his future was something very new to him at the time. Three years later, Zero found himself at 20 years of age, just out of a year long college course in graphic design.
It was one of the shorter programs he'd found, and he couldn't say he was unhappy with the results either. He has some martial background, so he could do everything from modeling, to motion acting. He enjoyed the ladder greatly.
He leaned back in his nice, leather chair, relaxing in his office. It was barely there, but it was there, and he had to be thankful for that. He'd ranted two floors off a skyscraper, the top two in fact, and taken out a lot of government loans to hire people. They were currently halfway done with a game project, designed to rake in enough earnings to pay his employee's, so he could get other projects out there to start paying off the loans.
He'd been under a lot of pressure lately, both as a project manager and as a modeler. He was just glad he was doing character design instead of level design. The attention to detail for landscapes as large as those in an MMORPG was absolutely grueling.
He took a deep breath, the leather chair creaking under him. The office smelled like new computer equipment, an oddly sweet smell. He would dearly have loved to know where it origionated from, but he hadn't located the source yet. Maybe it was the silicon.
He looked at the clock, and was unsurprised to discover it was well past quitting time. Nobody got paid overtime, they were allocated a set amount for their work to be done on time, and it was quite a lot of money, so they couldn't complain. Especially since very nearly half of the time you spent at work was sitting on your ass, waiting for renders to come to completion so you could see how badly you'd fucked up.
Zero leaned forwards in his seat, and shut his monitor off. He'd let his renders finish overnight, through the renderfarm. There wasn't much else he could do, besides contribute to a continuing lack of sleep.
He swiveled around, and got out of his chair, grabbing his backpack on the way out the door. Several of his employee's nodded to him on the way out, and he stopped here and there to offer a few encouraging words, or to expand on an idea they were working on. By the time he made it out the door, safely on the ground floor again, he felt wide awake, despite the late hour.
Sadly, he wasn't the type that 'knew' when to rest, rather he rested when the chance presented itself. If he was active, he was awake, and thats all there was to it.
He was on his way to grab the company car from the lot, when it exploded everywhere. He stood there numbly for a moment, frozen, as something walked out of the center of the inferno. It was larger than a man, but not by much. Around ten feet tall, it had four spiderlike legs on its lower body, its upper body that of a man crossed with a spider. Its eight eye's stared at him, fixed.
Its entire body was made of an etherial blue crystal, that Zero had no idea what to make of. All he did know, was that every fiber of his being was screaming for him to run, and yet he could not. Part of him was facinated, pulls towards it, as equally as part of him reviled it, and another piece in the center cared not at all.
It was an incarnation of all the base fears of mankind, and Zero didn't care at all. But that oneness only lasted for a split second, before its set its eye's on him, and decided that he was lunch. All calmness fled from him then, as the creature barreled towards him. He could hear gunfire, and see the muzzle flashes coming from behind it.
It was already pursued, but it didn't seem its pursuers were having any appericiable effect on it.
It caught up with Zero, even as he darted across the street at top speed. It wasn't limited by human thinking, or even the physics of reality. It knocked Zero through a wall like a rag doll, sending blood flying from his nose and mouth and arms. They were broken in several places, when Zero came to, and there was a piece of heavy concrete on top of him.
He tried vainly to shift it, as the monster advanced on him.
Well? What do you want to do?
A voice asked him.
Fight or run, die in peace or with blood on your lips? What is your choice? To be a warrior, to be a meal, what is your true nature really?
Zero coughed up a lot of blood, but didn't have anything much else to do, besides feel fear, so he thought on the matter. He...didn't really want the be a warrior. The idea had always been exiting, but it wasn't the fighting by itself that drew him. It was the actions of the warrior, of the man, the hero.
Or the villain, it didn't matter much to him. Ying and Yang, a little light in a lot of darkness, a little darkness in a lot of light. People could do amazing, selfless, selfish things. He thought for a while longer, thinking and expanding on that idea. He decided that... He was a balancer. Or thats what he wanted to be. Don't prevent the extremes from existing, just prevent them from getting out of hand.
Life would be a terrible thing to live without them, but to much, and it can be terribly restricting, not to mention downright dangerous. He looked at the monster, shrugging off bullets and explosions like it was nothing.
"I would never kill, but I would send things back where they belonged." He said carefully, spitting up some of the blood in his mouth.
Thats nice, but what are you?
"Etherial." Zero answered, "A jester of fate, a warrior with a blunted blade. Why am I being poetic dammit? I'm irony, I'd smack things so they don't smack things that can't smack back, ok!?"
The monsters first came barreling towards him.
OK.
A mirror appeared in front of him. He looked at himself in it, a little bloodied and beaten up though he was. He had dark red, almost black, hair. Grey eyes peering out from a harsh features face that sat on the uncertain edge of rugged. He had a heavy build, thick bones and skin, covered and intertwined with respectable deposites of muscle.
He grinned at the mirror, and it grinned back. "What now?" He asked, and was surprised when the reflection in the mirror stepped forwards. "Boom." It said.
The explosion rocked the whole building, sending the monster sprawling. The man behind it dived their fire between it and the building, wondering what in the hell had knocked the monstrosity over.
Zero walked out of the smoke, the bullets stopping an inch away from his skin, leaving him untouched. He still looked...solid, but different. Instead of blood and a pulse under his skin, blue and white energy writhed around inside him.
He held a sword in his hand, it had two blades, side by side, connected to the same guard and hilt. One blade was blue, the other was white, and two differently colored mists swirled from both. Blue and white mist writhing and mixed, glowing brightly against the backdrop of reality.
He was wearing new clothing it, a blue, etherial cloak, over a blue blazer, and trousers of the same color. They all glowed faintly, and let off subtle amounts of mist. Zero sighed, and looked over at the men shooting at him. His eye's were no longer gray, put filled with shining, bright blue energy.
They all took a step back, from the unnatural mixture of utter peace, and unbridled ferocity within those eye's.
Zero turned his eye's back to the monster, pulling itself up out of the rubble its skidding had created. He pointed his sword at it.
"Hell Pulse." Zero said, energy building up between the two blades in a sudden, concentrated singularity. "Burst." A lance of blue and white energy stabbed out, skewering the beast on its length, and tearing it to pieces from the inside.
_____
Zero didn't yet know it, but the men standing beside him, were part of a much larger task force, hellbent on destroying anything with unnatural power. Their boots were already kicking down doors, signaling the beginning of their crusade.
Pure Sphere once again rose its ugly head, and looked at half the world with Gorgons Eyes.