You are floating, there is kenly shit to be found here, in the depths of your soul a thing is happening that hasn't happened since the last time you got this fucked up!
Oh yes, rejoice!
You are completely druggedly the fuckedly uppity!
Do you remember, the 5th of whateva?!
There are depths you are yet to explore, if you only have the courage to dive in deep!
I like diving, it erects my penile pecker ᗜ⩊ᗜ
Hark! What is this?
...ruined.
Your fun is been ruined.
Here he comes, into the space time continuum that was yours and yours alone.
Help, there's a narkata coming towards me, and he's CRINGE!
Somebody once told me the world was going to shoot him.
He's not the sharpest shard in my bag.
He's looking rather dumb with his stick up his ass, and a shape of a bald on his fuck-head!
Oh, he won't stop coming, look at him coming.
He's sliding across the puke, the ground is running.
Yes it is.
Fun's over, time to pain.
Somewhere in the astrals, the Helhound glides. The sun is sleeping, and inside the strider someone should be sleeping. They're not. Dio Hasta is in a stupor, from which only extreme annoyance can rouse him.
"WAKE UP, HASTA!"
Luckily, he has Saccharine Koth as a partner. Entering the room with a panicked cry, he's appalled at the state of the messy; the place crew go to eat. They are crew, so this shouldn't be strange. However, I just said it's in a state. Indeed, the messy is...messy. Whacked. It's as if a storm passed through and took a diarrhea shit all over. No seriously, sticky substances of unknown origin litter the messy mess hall. The kitchen is in no better state. It's the Bedlam all over again, localized in the Helhound messy! FUCK!
Koth scans the room, locating his objective within 2.3 seconds: Dio Hasta, currently lying unconscious on top of a pile of equally drugged up numbskulls. The bald dworf shakes his head, as if to stave off whatever curse he believes is about to befall the two of them. Climbing up the pile of pseudo-undead corpses, Koth straddles his partner and starts the slapping. "HARK, HARK, FOCKING HARK DAMN YOU!"
No response, Hasta has REM eyes turned up to eleven. It almost seems they mean to secede from the empire of his body, so fast do they spin in his skull. The slaps do not relent, Koth is desperate.
Nice try, narkada. I'm happy here, in experience land. Where nobody can tell me what to feel, or say do thing.
To do list: Get more yummy drugs, become the yummy man.
You are so right, ermagerd.
Hasta starts convulsing for a split second; froth escapes his mouth, joining more froth on his black, unkempt beard. Actually, in the current situation, it's a little brown in tinge. Must be the sticky stuff staining the messy...and the froth. It keeps frothing, that's what the good shit does. Persistent froth. That's the X-Pee guarantee!
Yes, only good things from now on.
No more actual feelings, you're here for the long hau-
"We're out of bone marrow!"
Hasta's eyes snap open, bolting upright with the ferocity of a mouse trap. Koth flies backwards, off the pile.
THUD.
Hasta's left pupil black and large, his right pupil black and quite small. That's the normally. We're not at normally. He's so alarmed, the bigger pupil has shrunk down to a pinprick. Alert! Alert! Hasta's smaller pupil is not bigger by comparison! You are free to panic now.
"How?! We stocked up in the nethers last month!" Hasta shakes his fist as he rolls down the undead bodies, some of them now actually dead due to overdose.
"Duncan ate them all!" Koth jumps to his feet, wiping cold sweat from his bald head. Hasta cups his face with drug-stained hands, staring into his eyes with the Serious Gaze™.
"Koth, listen to me; it's very important, hark." Hasta rubs his cheeks, a sure sign he is also nervous. "Where is the she-wolf?"
"Respawning in the shub. She got-"
Hasta slaps Koth, forcing spittle out of his mouth. It lands on a dead numbskull; Hasta shakes Koth. "Pull yourself together, baldie! I SAID BE CALM!"
Both dworfs scream in each other's faces. Hasta realizes that the drugs aren't entirely out of his system. His dworfish fortitude is working overtime with the flush. Grabbing Koth by the scruff, he drags him out of the messy. Koth asks where they're going.
"I have a plan, and it's a long shot!"
It takes a few minutes, the halls of the Helhound not seeing much activity at these hours. They bump into Ruby Rin, another stormhog. Actually, it's more accurate to say that they barrel past her like a natural disaster. A few minutes later, they arrive at their first stop: Omega Stroud's quarters.
Hasta knocks, punching his fist into the metal door. When that fails to rouse the heaviest sleeper on the Helhound, he initiates plan B: Slamming Koth's head into the door over and over again.
"Oi, it's past midnight! You scags!" comes a sleepy, mildly annoyed voice from behind the metal. Hasta throws Koth aside and gets on his knees; hands on the metal.
"Ohm, we need you to promise us something. It's important, just humor me, balance me out, pretty you are and please!"
Slowly, the doors to the quarters open. Omega's dark hair is messier than usual, blue eyes pregnant with sleep. Seeing the impatience radiating from the busty woman's aura, he gets right down to the brass tax. "Your puppy is in the shub, right?"
"I don't have a dog."
Hasta looks into Ohm's eyes, trying to find a joke in her expression. His gut sinks into his pants, she's dead serious.
"No, I mean your princess!"
Omega scratches her head with one hand, fans a yawn with the other. "I'm not a prince. Don't have the parts for it."
Hasta rises to his feet, trying his damned best to be diplomatic in the face of a half-conscious Omega Stroud.
"Listen..." his voice is measured, down to the milly-metron. "...I need you to placate your fffffOCKing girlfriend when she respawns. Okay?"
Omega leans against he doorframe. "What'd you guys do this time?"
"It was Duncan! He ate all the bone marrow, then fucked off into the astrals!"
A slight note of concern enters Omega's expression.
"Can you do that for us?"
"Look, she loves me and all...but I'm no miracle worker."
Hasta sighs, the drugs adding another layer to his despair. "Good luck." is the last thing Omega says before closing the door and going back to sleep.
Koth is about to waste time with despair. Hasta is not of the same mind, dragging him to their next stop. Next comrade in bronze to pester: Tally.
While the fay is not nearly as heavy of a sleeper as Omega is, Hasta chooses Koth's head as the knocking tool immediately this time, adding another crack to his skull before Tally manages to answer the door. "What?!" she demands, shoving the barrel of a blaster in Hasta's face.
"We come to you in a time of great need. Friend fay, please accept my humble apolog-" Tally pistol whips Hasta and spits in his face.
"Out with it!" Tally's snarl and itchy trigger finger informs Hasta that she is not bluffing. Not even the first time she's shot someone in the head for interrupting literally anything she does. Though, when you share the strider with the likes of Slam Duncan and Krow, can you really blame her?
"Creatures with the best bone marrow in this area."
"Meltarak."
"What does it look like?"
Tally groans, but supplies them with the answer. Very quickly, eager to get back to sleep: "Mammal, four leathery wings; two legs, two hands; bipedal with glowing stomachs, found in platforms rich in halo-stems; it's breeding season, so they're bound to be violent; they have acid spit, now fuck off and die!" she slams the door, causing tremors across the ship.
Hasta cups Koth's face in his hands again, so tight his skull might implode. "We have our path to salvation. A path that will lead us away from the she-wolf's wroth. Now come, fellow dworf who is bald! We hunt meltarak bone marrow!"
And away they go, towards the hangarage, where their aircraft interceptors await.
"Shove your maddafakky ass in der, NAOW!"
Hasta, being the helpful partner he is, kicks Koth into the rear seat of the cackpit. He doesn't fit, the seat hasn't been adjusted for subterranean creatures like dworfs. No time to lose, only pain; Hasta jumps on Koth until he MAKES him fit. He takes his place in the front seat, adjusts it so it fits him, the windshield pod-glass close, and away they fly!
"I can't see!" Koth's muffled cries are barely audible; the astrocraft launches out of the hangarage like a rocket, breaking the outside astrals hyper-sensitive sound barriers. The sonic boom punctuates their desperation to find one thing and one thing only: Meltaraks.
"Get our ass planted, junker! Use your technomancy; track down some those creatures before the she-wolf respawns!"
Koth adjusts the seat while upside down. Once he can finally move properly, he becomes downside UP. On the front-seat's backside, there is a tulva and a radome. Both connected together in symmetry made possible by big brains. Koth has one of those, sometimes you can see it through his pale-ass scalp. In this world, hair recovery products have some interesting side-effects.
Anyway, Koth activates the smart mechanisms and starts scanning the surrounding astrals for any sign of meltaraks. Anything at all they can get their grubby hands on, will be the goodness that saves them from a fate worse than Ragnalon.
Unfortunately for Hasta's impatient, drug-addled mind, it takes roughly ten minutes to track down meltaraks. Fun fact: a group of meltaraks is called a WHO GIVES A SHIT!?
Hasta's erratic flight pattern becomes more focused, then erratic again, then focused, erratic. It's a good thing dworfs are physically immune to motion sickness, otherwise the cackpit would be filled with puke.
BARF
Nevermind, Hasta vomits. Not because of motion, just drugs.
So many drugs, some of them not even traditionally used for recreational reasons.
Like laxatives.
Side note, do you have any idea; even if it's a fraction, do you have an inkling of how much DRUG you need to make a dworf vomit? Quick crash course: Dworfs are so resistant to toxins that their breast milk contains methanol. So we're talking apocalyptic drug abuse.
Get on with it!
The smell of vomit fills the cackpit, but through Koth's determined instructions, and Hasta's demented flying pattern; they spot the group of meltaraks in the distance. The sun is about to wake; in the astrals, this means more danger for those not ready.
They are not ready, so haste is paramount.
"Koth, use your grappling fook-" Hasta slams his head against the dash, drawing blood. "I mean hooker, HOOK! FOCKING-"
The frazzled drug beast pushes a nice little red button that opens the pill-shaped windshield. Extreme speed means extreme wind...feed. Koth has to line his shot up perfectly!
"Stay on target."
They get closer, now able to discern the frightened details of the animals they hunt. They're about to scatter.
"Stay on target."
Fight or flight, most choose flight. They were doing that anyway, because they, you know...fly? Like, they got wings and shit.
"Stay on target."
One of the meltaraks chooses fight, however. It turns around and decides to plays a game of chicken with the astrocraft. A bold strategy, let's see how it works out for him.
"Stay on targ-FOCK!"
Hasta, at the last possible second, swerves out of the meltarak's way. Koth takes the shot with his grappling hook in a sheer panic, which by sheer dumb luck manages to latch on to the brave meltarak. He reels it in like he's fishing back in the nethers, but the animal is not remotely happy about this. Once Koth has managed to reel it into the cackpit, Hasta closes the windshield to prevent its escape...the meltarak takes exception to this, biting and clawing at Koth with the frenzy of a cornered animal.
Hasta ignores Koth's screams, and performs a razor-sharp u-turn. The sudden g-force cause both Koth and the meltarak to pass out. Hasta keeps his senses, several species of stimulants infesting his bodily system. With sonic shattering speed, Hasta flies back to the Helhound, and all but crashes the astrocraft into the hangarage.
"Wake up Koth, we have a date with SALVATION!" Hasta jumps out of the cackpit, dragging an unconscious meltarak with him. Koth regains his senses shortly after and follows after his partner, all wobbly from the recent excursion.
Dawn is near, the moonlids are opening, revealing the nuclear chaos beyond. The hateful warmth of the sun glares into the Helhound's windows, rising like an omen that Hasta doesn't like. Neither does he like how hard it is for him to form coherent steps, let alone coherent thought.
"The messy messy is just, a head?! Ahead, we're ahead of the curve, here we are, oh Koth, get the bone saw! We must-"
Words die stillborn as they enter the mess hall. It is no longer messy. It is, in fact, spotless. Clean. Pure. The sheen off the freshly arranged tables reflects Hasta's drugged face right back at him, his mismatched-in-size black pupils darting between his, himself and he.
The meltarak awakens, panics! Neither dworf notices the flying mammal clawing its way out of their grasp and into the Helhound's hallways; it runs into a half-awake Gideon Husker, who proceeds to wrestle it into the hallway.
Hasta and Koth stumble into the messy in a daze. The implication of what a clean mess hall means is driving them to suicidal thoughts.
Come here.
However, before they can finalize the easy way out, a voice penetrates both of their souls, and forces them to march into the kitchen...where a certain 'she-wolf' is busy cooking something delish. Despite the complicated culinary work she's performing, her icy lilac eyes are fixated on both dworfs simultaneously; each of them, from their personal point of view, is forced into eye contact with her. Psychic delusions borne of her powers.
"Good morning, Dio Hasta..." Ylva, daughter of Jökull delivers a pleasant greeting to the hairy drug fiend. It sounds more like a threat; as if the morning is only good because she has both of them right where she wants them to be.
"Good morning, Saccharine Koth." the latter greeting is similar, but the undercurrent of menace is even more prevalent; like she's fighting to keep her icy exterior calm, so as to not betray the hatred within; a maelstrom of malice churning beneath a glacier.
"It was Duncan! He ate the marrow, it was-" Koth's frantic plea is cut short by his mouth slamming shut by some unseen psychic force. Her way of silencing incessant chatter.
"I know. I saw it in my dreams before we left the nethers last month. Of course, I made contingencys."
She points to the pile of bones right behind her. Hasta cannot comprehend where she could've hidden them from Duncan's supernatural senses. "All of that is forgiven."
Both dworfs sigh with relief, and are about to leave the kitchen...
...the doors slam shut on their own. Ylva's icy glare never left, even when her task demands precision cuts. She stops working on the bones and just...stares at the dworfs, waiting for them to turn around and face her again. They do so hesitantly, and when they do...despair reigns.
"There's just one more thing..." she plays with her knife, twirling it with dexterity that'd make a fay acrobat jealous. "...when I respawned and got my things back from Roadkill, I came to the messy to cook us all breakfast. What I found was a bunch of dead numbskulls, and shortly after I arrived, the kurator entered to witness the same thing; she saw me as the culprit, and demanded I 'clean up after myself'."
The glare radiating out of those lilac eyes cuts deeper than obsidian through jelly. Hasta is already thinking of an escape plan, but Koth is frozen. Not just in terror, but by Ylva's psychic might. "While I was cleaning up, I felt your distinct aura...Dio Hasta."
Hasta's drugs haven't worn off enough, and he asks a stupid question: "What're going to do, send us to Ragnalon?"
In response, Ylva beckons Koth over to the cutting table with her psychic powers; he climbs the table obediently, though Hasta can see the abject fear in his darting eyeballs. He lies on his back, the bloodied table offering no comfort. Ylva doesn't allow him to complain.
"I know you're going to run, Dio Hasta...or at least you'll try. But perhaps you'll humor me this demonstration."
Hasta gulps. Koth silently fights to release himself from her control, but the effort is futile and unseen. "Demonstration of what?"
Ylva opens one of the drawers, and pulls out a bone marrow needle-drill. Hasta recognizes the sheen of the metal; adamantium, more than strong enough to penetrate dense dworf bones. Honestly, a bit overkill.
"Of your fate." Ylva's smile is seasoned with sadistic malice. She activates the drill, and picks the thickest bone in Koth's body to drill into. She releases her psychic hold on his vocals, her official permission for him to scream.
And oh, how he screams. Koth is for the next agonizing moments a pain-shrieking wretch. His body does not convulse in response to the torment. Ylva only allows verbal signs of pain, and through her necromantic arts, she doesn't permit shock death. She is the goddess of the kitchen, and until she is done with him, shock death is illegal.
The flight part of Hasta'a brain takes over after only a minute of watching the horror unfold. The door may be locked, but he slams it anyway. Then tries to lockpick it, all while his partner cries out in agony, his bone marrow meticulously harvested by Ylva. When she's finally done, she releases his body from the necromantic energies, allowing him to peace out to Ragnalon at long last.
Ylva releases her telekinetic hold on the doors, right as Hasta charges it in another desperate attempt to force it. His body flies out into the messy and slams against the wall.
"Howdy Hasty! How's it goin?" Gideon walks in, shirtless and carrying a dead meltarak on his shoulders. Hasta crawls between his legs and into the hallways, fear-induced laughter echoing through the Helhound's hallways. Ylva casually walks past Gideon, who doesn't care about what's happening in the slightest.
In his blind panic (not helped by the excessive drugs flowing through his veins) Hasta doesn't remember why he slammed into a suddenly opened door, but a slight spark of hope ignites when he sees the tall, busty form of Omega Stroud peer from behind the that very same now-open door! He crawls behind her, like a child hiding behind a mother figure and points at the slowly advancing Ylva; who, upon noticing Omega, hides the bone marrow drill behind her, her eye wide with surprise and embarrassment.
"She took Koth's marrow, and now she wants mine!" he cries, tears welling up. Omega beckons Ylva over with a finger. While the white-haired woman obeys, she keeps hiding the drill behind her back sheepisly.
"Oi. What's all this?"
Ylva can't bring herself to look her in the eye, looking anywhere else. Like Hasta, for example. When she looks at him, the hatred slips into her expression once again, which Omega catches immediately.
"Look at me when I'm talking to you!" Omega snaps her fingers to grab Ylva's attention, her tone snappy and stern. The white-haired woman flinches, then locks eyes with Omega. "Ylva...is he telling the truth?"
"No..." Ylva blurts out unconvincingly. Omega gazes at her hands, which are busy hiding damning evidence out of sight.
"What's that you got there?"
"Nothing." she replies curtly, shifting uncomfortably while swinging her torso; she draws circles on the floor with the tip of her left boot.
Omega raises a single eyebrow, and lo: Ylva cracks. She reveals the bone marrow drill, still drenched in Koth's blood. Omega demands an explanation, softly but firmly. Ylva's eyes well up with tears, but she swipes them away quickly. She gives an exact account of what happened, from her respawning to the absolute state of the messy; the kurator making her clean it all up despite her innocence, and the bone marrow extraction that just happened.
"Do you think the punishment fits the crime, love?"
"No, but-"
"Já eða nei dugar, Ylva Jökulsdóttir!" Omega snapping back in Ylva's own native speech causes some psychic damage. Hasta sees his opportunity and tries to crawl away while they're distracted. His mistake was assuming that Omega was distracted at all.
"And where the FUCK do you think you're going?"
Hasta yelps in pain; two fingers firmly pinch his ear, he is lifted off the ground. "Ylva may have overreacted, but she was still punished for YOUR stuff-up. Isn't there something you'd like to say to her?" Omega maneuvers the dangling dworf towards Ylva, who's still holding the bone marrow drill. This induces a fresh episode of panic in the dworf, who struggles against Omega's two-finger pinch of his ear; which is somehow stronger than Ylva's literal psychic grasp.
"Wait, let's talk about thi-OW!"
Omega's pinch becomes sharper. "Three words, say it."
"Wha-"
Harder pinch, blue blood is drawn; as is a louder scream. "Say it!"
"GAAAAAAAAAAAAAI'M SORRYYYYY!"
"What for?"
Hasta sobers up through sheer agony, a litre of piss pouring down his legs and onto the floor. "I'M SORRY FOR WASTING A BUNCH OF NUMBSKULLS ON A DRUG FUELED BENDER, RUINING THE MESSY WITH PISS, SHIT, BLOOD AND MORE SHIT, I'M SORRY FOR BEING SUCH A LITTLE PIECE OF SHIIIIIT (˚ ˃̣̣̥⌓˂̣̣̥ )"
Omega drops him like a wet sack of lead, but she's not done. She steps on him, immobilizing his attempt to scramble away. She looks to Ylva, her expression softening as she beckons her closer. Omega wipes the tears from her cheeks, and kisses her. Hasta can do nothing but watch as they whisper to each other. Through his fear-laced delirium, he can only catch the last part: "Go inside and wait for me, yeah?"
Ylva obeys, wiping more tears from her eyes. Apparently, the conversation between them is not over. Omega waits for Ylva to enter their shared quarters, then stares daggers into Hasta.
"Don't you have something to say?"
Hasta blinks in confusion. "To who-what, huh?"
"To me."
More blinks, more confusion. Omega puts more weight on her leg, increasing pressure against Hasta's torso. "How about some thanks for saving your ass, hm?"
More pressure, and Hasta relents. There is no more pride left, only a savage desire to end this miserable episode of bad decisions. "Thank you, oh thank you greatest one there ever has been. I am infested with gratitude, down to the marrow!"
"So you'll agree to help me and Ylva with anything we need whenever we feel like it?"
"Woah, let's not be hast-AAAAAAAAAARGHUAUAUU!Uuuuuuuuu!"
That wheezy scream came as a result of Omega putting ALL of her weight on Hasta's torso, breaking a few bones. He nods as fast as his neck allows. Omega releases him and tells him to piss off. He scrambles away, nursing his chest and bleeding ear.
"Man, if only it wasn't for-"
SLAM
"Duncan?!"
"WHERE'S THE BOOZE, RAZPUTA?"
"I don't-"
"FUCK YOU!"
SLAM
SLAM
SLAM
SLAM
...
...
...
Sorry, I thought the episode was over and went to take a piss. Let's see what I missed...okay, so apparently Slam Duncan appeared and slammed Hasta's head into the wall until his skull caved in.
