1 - I Am Become Death...
prinCZess
Warrior, Writer, Performer, Perv
Author's Note: My second actual-factual attempt at fanfiction, and the one where I indulge in what I believe every internet-writer is required to indulge in--self-insert. This is more of an experiment in first-person narration than anything else, and since I've read first-person a lot less, and always bore something of a dislike for it, may well have rough bits where I just don't know what the hell I'm doing. Anyone pointing those out would be much appreciated! Forewarned-is-forearmed: This will be updating very slowly--I'm tentatively telling myself to have the next bit done by November. Trying to update Mondays in shorter bits...We'll see how long I can manage that.
Transfer to thread has apparently eaten paragraphing as well, so if anyone notices stray blocks of text together which shouldn't be, I'd appreciate heads-up.
As air continues to whistle past my ears and the sensation drags on and on for longer than it ever possibly could, I grow certain that I’m dreaming. I also grow certain that I really, really want the dream to end. I’ve never actually had one of these ‘falling to your death’ dreams before. I’ve heard it said you never actually hit bottom, but dropping constantly downward seems like the worse fate to me. When you hit bottom it shocks you awake and you can get up, get out of bed, and get something done. There isn’t much you can do when you’re just falling like a fricken’ idiot.
In that detached, only half-aware way you do in dreams, I think I hear my sister saying something. She’s beside me for a moment, or maybe above me? It’s a dream still so it’s very confusing, but she’s there.
Then she’s somewhere else—someone else—entirely.
‘Maria Morgraine’? I don’t get it…
Then she’s gone. Not gone gone, I know. Just…distant? It doesn’t make much sense. None of the mostly-asleep smatters of half-formed thoughts and images in my head make any sense. I’m remembering things that have never happened to me. The faces of people I’ve never met. Things I’ve never done.
Things I’ve definitely never done! This had gone from dream to nightmare in an instant!
I try to force myself away from that. I manage to distance myself from the blood-infested hellscape of fake memories I’d been in a moment before. I’ve never had nightmares quite that vivid before. I try not to think about it.
Maybe my sister was trying to wake me up because I’d slept late? It had been years since she’d last had to do that. I was a big girl now, dammit, I always remembered to set a dozen alarms for myself!
Maybe she’d come over to make breakfast? It wouldn’t be the first time one of us had raided the other’s fridge because we’d forgotten something on our grocery list and had a craving for syrupy, calorie-laden French toast…
That had to be it.
Looking forward to cinnamon-y, horrible-for-me deliciousness that just might be getting cooked, I fight myself out of my sleep and throw an arm out, not feeling the blankets I undoubtedly knock aside in the process. If I don’t physically pull myself out of bed with some kind of motion, I have a bad habit of lazing about even with motivations bigger than pre-cooked breakfast. If I let myself start to laze about in the small fortress of sheets, comforters, pillows, and clean laundry that I’ve built atop my bed, I won’t leave until the call of nature forces me out from my nest of comfiness.
I open my eyes not to my room, but to another idle fantasy from my brain that nonetheless feels familiar. Like something out of a movie I’ve seen too many times.
I’m standing in a courtyard of sand that always seems to be shifting and sinking under my feet, forcing me to awkwardly balance my weight. Around me, a crowd of ragged bastards are pumping their fists, screaming incoherently, and generally making as if it’s a party and I’m the entertainment. Based on the slurred cheers and catcalls, they might be right.
The people on the second floor looking over the courtyard I’m in are slightly better-dressed, but only a few of them seem to be any better-behaved. Even if it’s a dream I have a suspicion that the tips aren’t going to be very good and feel myself deflating at the prospect. They’re all worse-looking than the Friday-night, cliché, college-asshole crowd I’ve dealt with before, and somehow even more pathetically dressed. Utility pants and leather jackets broken-up by bandoliers and bits and pieces of overalls or jumpsuits seemed to be a common theme. What in the world am I dreaming of, a post-apocalyptic hobo convention?
Apparently my brain jumped to a mix of Motorhead and Mad Max for inspiration on filling in the blanks of the hobo crowds’ post-apocalyptic fashion. Which was disappointingly typical. Why couldn’t post-apocalypse fashion ever be a mix of Madonna and Mad Max? Splash up the dreary apocalypse with some color instead of painting it in black! Or at least wrap it in a bustier and make it that extra bit of ridiculous.
My thoughts of Mel Gibson circa 1980 and Tom Hardy in cone-bra corsets are interrupted by a harsh, throat-burning breath of booze and body-odor tinged air that surprises me with its…reality. My surprise compounds a moment later as I notice the feeling of sweat gathering on my forehead and at my hairline. I don’t recall ever being able to really smell or feel anything that specific in my dreams.
The weight in my hands—a sword, I realize—shocks me again. My eyes travel up the blade until they, along with the tip, connect with the chest of the man in front of me. A chest incredibly detailed in hair, muscles, and no small amount of blood that is leaking from where my blade now rests and a trio of other punctures only slightly less serious-looking than the stab I’ve just completed.
I am not dreaming!
From that simple realization, I come to a series of others.
First, I am not in my bed. Obviously.
Second, I have another set of memories in my head that radically clash with the ones I am familiar with.
Third, I just stabbed a man dead!
Fourth, and most disappointing, I‘m not getting French toast anytime soon.
“You bitch!” The man—Captain Gronley—screams, pulling away and bringing his free hand up to clutch at the latest wound I’ve given him to slow the bleeding.
Correction! I had not just stabbed a man dead. I had pulled my thrust at the last moment in my ‘what the shit where am I?’ spasms. Paula, the post-apocalyptic me from here who was, thankfully, not wearing a cone-bra corset but a somewhat-reasonable black blouse, had been aiming for him and was a moderately-accomplished swordswoman, so it should have run right through his heart. Or at least a lung. Instead, thanks to the wild flailing I’d engaged in when I showed up, it had stabbed into his shoulder.
Underneath my panic and confusion I have a sense that the tingle of excitement I feel at the thought of stabbing someone should bother me more than it does. That feeling slams me smack-dab into new and yet wholly-familiar 31st-century memories of previous instances where future-me had been more than happy to slit throats. If anything, Gronley would be one of my more justified killings. Gronley was a pirate. Most of those before him had been considerably more innocent.
Holy shit. I’m a murderer!
‘Murderer’? They deserved it for getting in my way!
I freeze, not quite sure how to think past the peculiar duality in my mind. Future-me is me, and I’m right. But past-me is me as well, and I don’t think I’m wrong.
Gronley, the resilient bastard, roars something indecipherable. He throws himself forwards across the sand chest first, blade coming forward as he charges. I swear his blade is so visibly sharp it’s shining, and even if it’s just a trick of the light it’s scary as hell.
Future-me? Past-me?
I want to dance out of the way. Get out of danger with some fast footwork and put some distance between me and the threat. Run away from the problem and it can’t catch me!
I want to take the chance to run him through. End the danger with a twist of my wrists and ensure I was never threatened again. Kill the problem and it would quit being a problem!
In stuttered inability to resolve the two impulses I vaguely try to accomplish both. Cross-stepping to the side and out of the immediate path of Gronley’s stab, I keep myself balanced on the balls of my feet. After a moment’s hesitation as half of me grapples with the absurdity that I’m swinging a sword in what is supposed to be the year 3012, I awkwardly push off with my rear foot and thrust my blade towards Gronley’s now-exposed neck.
By trying to do both, I succeed at neither. It doesn’t help that I, in contrast to myself, don’t even know how to hold a sword, much less swing one. There’s only so much my tranquility and memories of sword-practice can do to direct me when I’m panicking like a schoolgirl and flailing about with no knowledge of how to handle a sword.
In a flowing, single-instant movement I can’t even process, my blade is batted out of its path by Gronley’s as he returns his own to his side, and he twists forward to slam the elbow of his free arm into my uncovered abdomen. The force sends me reeling back onto my heels and the contents of my stomach pushing halfway up my esophagus. Arms pin-wheeling, I desperately try to keep my balance.
That and enough luck to get me kicked out of a Solaris or Vegas casino for cheating are the only things that save me. Gronley keeps his composure and presses his attack, bringing his sword back around into another crossways-chop. But my thrashing arms bring my own blade up and I manage to catch his blade and redirect it to the side before I even notice it coming towards me, both blades skittering against each other as they clash.
On that ad-libbing, runners-high style adrenaline you can get after you accomplish something you didn’t think was possible, I listen to future-me and clench my empty hand into the best fist I can manage, punching it into the side of Gronley’s head with all the power I‘ve got. Since I’m still similar in size and muscle to past-me from the 21st century—maybe even a little weaker, really—‘all the power I’ve got’ for the punch is an unfortunately small amount. Since I have all the technical knowledge of how to properly throw a punch that watching it in movies and reading about it in fiction novels can give you, I don’t make up for its weakness with anything like skilled performance or execution.
Gronley barely even flinches when my fist hits him, despite it landing just to the rear of his eye. It’s like punching a concrete wall. My nails dig into my skin, coming dangerously close to penetrating.
By the screams and yells of the crowd, it all must have at least looked good. Maybe, dare I hope, even like it had been deliberate? Let it never be said I don’t know how to put on a show! Properly punch someone? No. Swing a sword around? God no. But put on a show? That was right up my alley! Making myself look good is one of the few things I’m really good at, honestly. On that both of me could agree.
Another moment and I realize the crowd’s cheering-on Gronley for taking the punch so calmly, not me for throwing it.
Despite being in the middle of a fight, I can’t help but mentally pout a little at that realization. That’s a blow to the ol’ ego. Who do these assholes think they are?
There’s an impulse in my mind to open my fist and dig into Gronley’s cheeks with my nails. I made regular habit of coating the carbon-fiber reinforced nails in scorpion venom for exactly this kind of opportunity! That would shut up the crowd and get them chanting my name like they should be rather than his. A minute—maybe less—and Gronley would be convulsing and spitting green foam out of his mouth, his nervous system shutting down as he spasmed and shook in a beautiful death that made me want to—
Nope.
Nope nope nope.
I’m going to think of something else. Some other thing to do. Any other thing to do.
My pistol!
I do not have my pistol. It’s a millennium in the past with the rest of the shit in my room, and future-me’s had been taken for the fight. Something about ‘fairness’ and ‘a proper challenge for the position’ or something, I don’t really care about whatever the stupid explanation was at the moment.
I don’t know how to punch or kick, and I have even less idea of how to use a sword. I’m pretty much out of ideas besides wishing for my pistol. Punching Gronley again obviously wasn’t going to get me anywhere.
I punch Gronley again.
It’s just as ineffective as the first one was. Maybe even more-so. This time I can’t keep myself from wincing at the way my knuckles hurt from the impact. Punching sucks! Why would anybody do it?
I try pushing against Gronley’s blade with my own. Maybe if I use the right leverage or something I could do…something? I don’t know, if I could stab him again it’d help! The guy’s bleeding from three different places on his chest, surely I can overpower him! Right?
The man doesn’t even budge, and his sword stays exactly where it is locked tightly against mine as I shove my weight into the contest with all the energy I can. Other than a slow tilt to his head, he barely even seems to notice my efforts.
Okay, dumb move. It didn’t work. Something else, then?
I really wish I had a pistol. I know how to use a pistol. This would be much easier if I had my fucking pistol. Either one of them, it didn’t matter! The laser would be just as effective as my old-fashioned, 21st-century slugthrower! Squeeze squeeze, job done!
But I don’t have either one! So I was going to have to think of something else!
…
Something else besides a pistol.
…
I could kick him in the crotch? Gouge at his eyes? Bite him?
Why did it take me so long to come up with obvious shit like that?
The thought crosses my mind in the same instant that, snorting like some sort of cartoon bull, Gronley rears back. It takes every bit of strength I have to keep his sword at arm’s-length from my body, and I can see him grin just before he comes forward and smashes his right shoulder through my hastily-raised guard and into me, throwing me back and igniting a brushfire of pain across my chest that crescendos just below my right tit where his previous shoulder-jab had caught me.
I try, but I can’t keep myself on my feet this time. Landing on the sand cushions me from most of the pain that might have come from that alone. Nothing cushions me from the pain of two-hundred fifty pounds of asshole coming down on top of me a moment later though, and I struggle to gasp, breathe in, cough out, and puke up all in the same moment.
Before my body can decide which of those four is the most important, Gronley shifts atop me, dropping a knee onto my right elbow to hold down my sword-hand while his bloody hand latches onto my left wrist and holds it down just over my shoulder. His other hand makes its way, with one brief, squeezing, detour, up my chest to circle around my throat.
The tiny part of me that actually recognizes what the hell is going on and can keep cool takes note of that as something that could be taken advantage of. The rest of me is too consumed in raw, unthinking terror to do much other than thrash about underneath the man as his hand squeezes down on my throat and makes it a lot more difficult to breathe.
He weighs so much more than me that I can’t lift my hands. He’s so much bigger that my knees can just barely bump against his back if I bring them up to hit him, and they do nothing. I can’t reach his forearm with my teeth while he’s holding me down by the neck.
This kind of shit is why a pistol would be nice. Because biology is fucking unfair! But apparently, whatever mystic quantum bullshit or whoever-the-hell-knows that brought me into a crappy, dystopian future decided it had to go all ‘Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court’ and throw me into a fricken’ anachronistic swordfight for shits and giggles without any advantages.
This. Is. Bullshit! These kinds of stories are supposed to give you superpowers or badass skills. Not drop you into the middle of a fight with someone twice your size!
“You know what?” Gronley says, leaning inwards to speak as I tried to choke air down into my lungs past his hand, “You stabbed me. Couple times, too. Been a long time since any have managed that. So I think, instead of killing you right now, it’s only fair and proper I stab you back and then pass you around so those of my men who aren’t traitorous cunts can do the same. Give the Council and our fine crowd here some proper entertainment for the evening. Consider it your severance package to our packages, eh? Does that sound like a deal?”
I don’t like the sound of it even before I puzzle out the actual words from the syrup-thick accent Gronley has, and I like it less when I finally figure out what the hell he means. It’s probably evidence of just how oxygen-starved I am that it takes my brain a series of false-starts and stops before I manage to put together the blatant shit that passes for subtext to the asshole. Usually I’m pretty good at double entendres and that sort of thing, but Gronley’s references don’t really hit me for whole seconds.
It’s probably the slowly-building oxygen-deprivation. As science class taught me, brainy do thinky ungood when air no get.
Gronley, real charmer that he is, manages to live down to the reputation of a pirate from both the 21st and 31st centuries in making blatant passes. It’s almost embarrassing to remember the reason for our preexisting partnership is because he’s one of the only ones on Tortuga scummy enough to put up with me.
Once again with the thought, I have to put up with a short mental parade of screwed-up shit I’d done in the 31st century, and this time I feel like there’s a connection I’m missing. A connection that falls into place almost immediately as I recall piloting a 95-ton robotic war-machine into battle with other lumbering machines—and using it to step on people. Swordfights aren’t typical. A lot of combat involves multi-ton weapons of war called BattleMechs, piloted by MechWarriors.
Wonderful. It’s not just any crappy, dystopian future I’ve found myself in. It’s Battletech—and I’m not a Lord of one of the warring states the universe is split into, a planetary duke, or a mercenary. I’m some Periphery-planet pirate-bitch who’s in a fight outside the giant stompy robots and losing.
Great.
Since the memories of squashing people in a giant, walking machine of war and stealing shit are followed by snatches of less absolutely-immoral things I’ve done back on Earth, I realize this flash of memory is less ‘random memories of a new life’ being dredged up and more ‘life flashing before your eyes’. My attention thus stays on that rather than being distracted by the million-and-one calling-of-bullshits there are to be made about the simple impossibility of finding myself in a fictional universe.
Because that ‘life flashing before your eyes’ thing supposedly happens before you die, it takes some of the focus from what I firmly decide is the less important train of thought.
Why? Because I really don’t want to die. Like, on my personal list of shit I don’t want to do? That’s probably right up there at number one. It’s mostly selfish—I like being alive. Living? I’m a big fan of it. I’m a slutty groupie for breathing and air supply is a band I would follow anywhere!
Beyond that, I like the stuff that comes with being alive. I don’t want it to stop!
There’s an element of dread and fear to it as well. In the 31st century I’ve murdered and mutilated a decent share of innocent people. More worrisome than that, my sister would kill me if I died on her. Especially since I have a firm suspicion she’d been dragged into the same hellhole-future, fictional-universe I’m in. If I die, she would find a way to track down my ghost and use some kind of bullshit-future technology to proton-pack the shit out of that ghost Ghostbusters-style until I get trapped in some spirit-cage and have to endure a lifetime of her lecturing me on shit! I know, I’d do the same thing if the positions were reversed!
Also, if I die, I’ll have to explain myself to the Big Juju that ran the universe—Or should that be ‘the Big JewJew’ since at least one-third and/or the entirety of him is supposed to be Jewish and all?—In any case, if I die and go up in front of the Big Juju of the universe I might have to answer for some of the heinous shit I’ve done.
There’s a lengthy conversation I’m not looking forward to. All the sacrilegious or borderline-sacrilegious jokes probably aren’t going to help, either. But, on the bright side, it would at least get me an answer for this bullshit situation I found myself in. Was there a way to ask God to his face ‘What the hell is wrong with you letting this happen to me you big ol’ asshole?’ without it being blasphemous? It applied just as well for past-me as for future-me!
I blink. Wanting to live? Wanting to bitch-out God? Past-me and future-me have that in common at least.
I might come up with better phrasing for the question I intend to ask El Supremo later. I won’t need it in the near future. Because I’m not going to let the man on top of me win.
Something, adrenaline or fear or something, sweeps aside the darkness that is beginning to dance at the edge of my vision. It quiets my lungs demand for air, and throws away the useless thinking. I’m still panicking, after what’s happened I don’t know if I’m ever going to not be panicking ever again, but with some focused effort I manage to stop my useless thrashing.
I am a shitty person—31st century or 21st. I spend entirely too much time, money, and makeup on my appearance. I’m money-grubbing and materialistic, a combination that really sucks because as much as it curbs my spending whenever I go shopping, it also reinforces itself. More than once when I was younger and more of an asshole I just took the five-finger discount on things I wanted to solve the conundrum of wanting things as much as I wanted the money to buy them. Worst of all I break that ‘rule of three’ thing a lot and add unnecessary fourth examples just to keep things going because I love to feel like I come off as eloquent or amusing. I really love the idea of my own eloquence.
How shitty a person am I? About as much as just wanting to live right now, I want Gronley’s stuff. One of the few things I’ve managed to catch-onto during the fight from the new set of memories bouncing around inside my new red head is that Gronley’s ship, the Ravager, would go to whoever won this fight. The crew had voted in favor of ME Captaining them. All I have to do is remove Gronley, and it will be mine! With that, I could get the hell out of Dodge, get off of Tortuga, and get away from all this BS to find my sister. I could be wealthy and free—which is probably about as good as things got in Battletech. Or anywhere else, for that matter.
Instead of thrashing about or trying to fight back against the hand still clamped around my throat, I slide one leg up and use my knee to encourage Gronley to rub against me. Still fighting for every bit of air I can get, I perform a very deliberate circuit of my lips with my tongue and give the man a wink. It’s stupid, of course. The kind of play-act, over-the-top and obviously fake stuff that has always kind of baffled me for why it’s ever shown to work. Streetwalkers probably use more subtle and sexy messaging. Blowing it over-the-top like this just makes it silly and more like a parody than anything.
But choked-out sluttiness like that apparently does it for Gronley, because while his grip doesn’t loosen, he does shift positions atop me. I don’t know for sure if it’s actually his lizard-brain getting excited, blood loss—either from losing it or it going to somewhere beside his brain—forcing him to adjust, or if it’s simple confusion by my sudden compliance, but whatever it is, it gets the job done. His movement is just enough to give me some control over my right hand and I quickly twist my wrist to direct my sword towards his side.
The black in my vision is getting hard to see through.
I want to say ‘No deal’ in late answer to his question. Seems funny. Appropriate.
I croak like a frog. Can’t speak past the man’s choke-hold on my neck.
I’m not going to get any points for witty, pre-kill one-liners then.
Barely aware of what I’m even doing, I use every bit of strength I have left to shove my right hand upwards. The noise of the blade tearing into flesh, somehow audible even over the cheers and taunts of the crowd, is sickening, satisfying and pleasurable to me in a combination I’d much rather it isn’t.
I shudder from all three.
I could have gone for somewhere else. Experience tells me there are a few different targets on the human body that could provide a cleaner solution to my predicament. There are some arteries you can stab into and a person bled out pretty quick while most of the viscera would drop into the chest-cavity or fill the lungs instead of spilling out. But I want air—want Gronley’s stuff—want him off of me—want to win—want to live, and trying to think past ‘stab’ is too much work.
It isn’t like I want to murder the guy, after all! I just want to stab him until he quits choking me and can never do it again and I win this duel-to-the-death!
I’m pretty sure it works, because after a few moments his hand loosens to the point I manage to get a real breath down.
Gronley’s strength still takes a long time to fade. Or maybe it just felt that way. I’m not sure if I stay conscious. He certainly doesn’t. Prick passes out right on top of me—bleeding all over my clothes!—and he’s too heavy to push off. He weighs too much, my arms are too sore, and it feels so damn good to just be able to breathe again I lose track of just about everything else. Everything else except the throbbing pain that spikes on my torso with each heartbeat, that I only wish I could lose track of. I was going to have a bruise the size of my head and enough swelling I’d probably be able to pretend it was a third breast.
It actually kind of pisses me off when a trio of slaves heave Gronley’s body off of me. It means I don’t have any excuse and have to get up to keep up appearances.
Keeping up my appearance is a specialty, though. Holding my legs together for leverage and looks both, I throw myself onto my feet, coming up in a long, chest-emphasizing movement that is easier to do here than it ever had been under Terra’s gravity but that I’m also painfully aware isn’t going to be possible for me in a short while when the bruise really develops. Even now it hurts. But the look it gives me matters more than the pain.
Tossing strands of curly red hair that have escaped my ponytail back, I fight down the impulse to sway as I straighten, not sure if it’s from giddiness or because my vision is still swimming a bit and the sudden realignment did horrible things to my balance.
It could be a rush of adrenaline. It could be the lighter gravity. It could be I’d just won!
My eyes, damn them, track down to Gronley as he’s dragged away. He’s lost a lot of blood. A lot of it onto my right arm and shoulder, something I try not to notice because it’s still so pleasurably warm and ewwwwww.
But limp and unmoving as he is, he’s not dead. He can’t be dead. Because that’d mean I’d killed him. So he’s just passed-out. I’d only stabbed him in the underarm into the heart and this was 3012, the fricken’ future, so there was probably some bullshit medical help waiting after he got dragged away even if we were on some backwater Periphery hellhole and it wasn’t-like-what-I’d-done-wasgoingtobefataland—
I force my attention away from the body and to the crowd. They’ve somehow become even more rambunctious and loud now than they had been when I’d arrived. I couldn’t pick out any individual words among the ear-pounding din, but I could tell not many of them were complimentary. ‘Sir Black’, as Gronley had styled himself, had been the favorite to win before the fight. I’d probably screwed-up a bunch of bets.
I’m reminded that I have won a not-insubstantial amount betting on myself…In addition to all of Gronley’s stuff. The jumpship. His private residence outside Raider’s Roost. His dropship and all the supplies in it. His slaves.
Mine! All mine.
I’d won!
I want to puke. I want to cry. I want to close my eyes and wake up underneath my Mount Everest of comfortable sheets and pillows back on Earth, bundle up in my lazy-day clothes and walk over to my sister’s to vent about this weird-ass dream over entirely too much coffee and a too-big breakfast. French toast sounds good.
A few hopeful blinks and some surreptitious clicking of my heels together is enough to prove the last one isn’t happening. While I wish it were my stoic demeanor and general badass attitude that prevents me from indulging in a nice cry right there, in reality I’m too pants-pissingly terrified to let myself. It’s very simple self-preservation that anyone learns if they ever live in a bad neighborhood long enough. Look like a bitch, you’re going to be treated like a bitch. On the other hand, if you posture and play-act the shit out of yourself…Well, you still might be treated like a bitch, depending. The rules are kind of arbitrary. The best way to get by is to keep yourself nice and unnoticed.
Since I’m already on a makeshift stage surrounded by the refuse of humanity booing me and had just stabbed a man to d—unconsciousness, keeping myself unnoticed isn’t exactly an option. So I’m left with the much riskier ‘posture and play-act’ option. At least until I can get the hell out of here and go curl up in a private room to have my breakdown.
I bend over and pick up both the blade Gronley had been using and the sheath that the slaves had left behind when they’d dragged away his corp—unmoving body. The blade has a stylized ‘9’ engraved into its hilt that my thumb runs over automatically, and from somewhere deep inside me I feel the strangest, most inappropriate urge to laugh.
The blade is a symbol of command on Tortuga. The unmarked one I still hold in my other hand had identified me as one of Gronley’s lieutenants. This one identifies me as a full Captain in the Jolly Roger Fleet, and a member of Tortuga’s Council of the Damned. Something I’ve wanted this entire second life of mine. It still doesn’t quite sound right though. Something about ‘Captain Paula Trevaline’ doesn’t sound quite grand enough for—
It’s then that my brain stops working entirely as I finally realize why the name that had been floating in the back of my head sounded vaguely familiar. Why the memories had tickled at something more than just ‘Battletech’. It’s amazing how your focus tunnel-visions on the immediate when there’s a man twice your size trying to kill you. But when there’s not…
Oh.
I look up towards where the other Captains are gathered. From the balcony of Tortuga’s ‘Governor’s House’ Kalvin Bar-Dyness, the current Lord of the Pirates of Tortuga, meets my eyes and frowns. Around him, the twelve other Captains of the Black Fifteen vary in response from a matching disgust and disdain to a very few who looked amused or even curious. Any upset in Tortuga’s leadership made for dangers to the status quo, and opportunities to those burdened by it…Not to mention they’d all likely have to hold votes of their ship crews to maintain their power.
Lord Bar-Dyness quiets the screams and shouts of the assembly with a slow clap of his hands. When he speaks it’s with that same lilting, bouncing up-and-down accent Gronley had, albeit slightly more intelligible. He hides his displeasure pretty well, but I can hear it in the back of his words.
I have to hide my amusement at just how much he sounds like a stereotypical French pirate.
“Very well done, mademoiselle Trevaline! Very well done, indeed! Ladies and Gentlemen of fortune? By popular acclaim of the crew of the ninth jumpship of the fleet and by victory in single combat against its previous Captain, I present you Paula Trevaline, now a Mate on the Council of the Damned, and a Captain in my Jolly Roger Fleet!”
The cheers are restrained, but they do come. It takes most of my concentration to stop the orchestra of things I want to do as my brain slowly catches-up to what is happening. I hold back tears, keep down an urge to cough that insistently rises, fight off an urge to turn and run, and freeze my knees in place after they start to spasm and shake wildly underneath my pants. Despite the relatively high temperature, I’m freezing, and goose-bumps rise along my arms—there’s nothing I can do to keep those down.
“Miss Trevaline?” Bar-Dyness continues, gesturing the limited cheers back into silence, “You have slain and replaced Captain Gronley, a knight in service of the Jolly Roger Fleet who styled himself as ‘Sir Black’. Before you take his seat at the next Council of the Damned, how would you like to be known to us, your comrades, and most importantly, yer coming kills?”
The last thing I am going to do is freeze or hesitate. I have a reputation to uphold! Just going with the first motions that cross my mind, I hold Gronley’s blade up, the motion inspiring a series of reminders from my chest that it was bruising, and give a small turn so that all the scum and villainy around me get a good view of both the sword and my blood-soaked right side.
I extend the same lack of thought to my words, instead letting myself enjoy the recognition and the blood. Before I’d gotten here I had been thinking about it for a long time, and I was too busy trying to stay coherent and fight down a looming existential crisis to really come up with anything better than what I had prepared before I suddenly had the memories of some floozy from Earth as well as my own.
“I am Lady Death, Scourge of the Successor States, and I take the title Dame Murderess Extraordinaire.”
I’m not sure what strikes me more. The ridiculousness of the words, or the fact I manage to say them completely deadpan.
The other members of the brotherhood on my level think the overdramatic ridiculousness is hilarious and erupt into a small sea of laughter at me. They will be the first ones against the wall, but I guess I can’t really blame them. Even if they didn’t like it, and even if it was silly bullshit, it still felt like appropriate bullshit to me…A stage-name for what would come next.
All the worlds a stage, right?
The ‘joke’ is bad and barely works in my thoughts. It’s entirely dependent on the lack of a fricken’ possessive apostrophe or whatever-the-hell an English major would call it. But I still think it’s somehow hilarious and have to bite down a laugh that I know would have been half-deranged. Or maybe wholly-deranged. I am currently insane enough to think I’m in a fictional universe as someone of relative insignificance, after all.
If this were the fantasy of a deluded mind, you’d think I’d have the confidence to make myself someone more important, like an actual ruler or a bastard noble who inherited a mercenary company. Or even some thing much more cool like a Battleship or, hell, a Sailor Scout!
By God, if I were having a break with reality my mind was screwy enough it would damn-well have the decency to make it a break that went to eleven with its crap, not this pussy-footing around the edges garbage!
…It’s probably not a good sign that the thought is one of the more convincing reasons I can come up with for this being really real.
I slowly let the blade I’m holding drop to my side as the laughter and catcalls end. Bar-Dyness looks like he’s trying to crush concrete in his jaw thanks to the words ‘Lady Death’, clearly taking them as an implicit challenge to himself. I can’t hold it against him, his reticence gives me time to crush down my own urge to laugh like a madwoman at the universe. After a few seconds of grinding, Bar-Dyness rolls his eyes so dramatically I can tell he’s doing it from an entire floor below.
“Bienvenue, then, ‘Dame Murderess Extraordinare’, to the Council of the Damned.” He proclaims, grabbing a stein from behind him somewhere and extending it over the balcony.
If he were as positive as he’s trying to sound, he would pour a small bit of the drink out onto the sand below. Waste it to show his approval of the new Captain who’d joined his service. The stein remains vertical until he brings it back to take a drink from it. The crowd cheers and drinks themselves, most of them blissfully unaware or uncaring about the insult.
I do. As I march out of the sand-garden arena I let myself imagine for a moment that it had been Bar-Dyness I had run-through, not Gronley. It's a nice, idle fantasy to indulge in for a moment before I drop into a mental review bordering on insanity I don’t even have the luxury to let show.
I am Paula Trevaline, ‘Lady Death’, pirate and cold-hearted killer. Soon enough I’m supposed to kill Bar-Dyness and a large portion of the Council of the Damned and establish myself as ruler of Tortuga, and then go on to be a stereotypical pirate-bitch for a long-ass time. In a much less Disneyified ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’, hijinks, shenanigans and Johnny Depp way and a much more fun, true-to-actual-pirates, rape, pillage and murder way. I'm looking forward to it!
I also remember someone else entirely. Depending on who you talk to I might have qualified as a bitch, but way out from anything that might be considered a cold-hearted killer. I am a dancer and a layabout. I’m no pirate! I’m pretty sure I’ve never even pirated music! I'm terrified!
Seeing as I’ve already killed someone and taken their stuff, I’m making a good start at playing a swashbuckler, though. Presumably all I have to do now is chant ‘Yo-ho-ho’ and track down a bottle of rum to fulfill all the requirements.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry as I push my way through the first few lines of the crowd and accept my pistol-belt and a flat-white overcoat back from Arthur, my quartermaster, second in command, and quasi-bodyguard. I secure the belt around my waist and settle Gronley’s scabbard on the opposite side as my previous one, throwing the coat over one shoulder. Hopefully I don't look too ridiculous as I stalk back to a corner of the mansion that’s partially filled with my men, still half-covered in Gronley’s blood and trying very hard not to spasm and shake.
“A fine show, boss-lady. Especially that bit in the end where you toyed with him and let him bring you down. Really helped swing the late-match betting in our favor. Lot of shit-for-brains thought you were down-and-out and threw money down on Gronley.” Arthur says, his regular voice loud enough to overpower most of the conversations going on around us.
I almost laugh. I restrain myself to a blink that he hopefully doesn’t notice as I try to come up with something good as a response. Memories provide me with something to say, but I’m not sure it qualifies as ‘good’.
“Their mistake. Death always wins in the end.” I say flatly, caught between wanting to groan at the statement and simultaneously kind of awkwardly proud of it. At least I still have my sense of humor!
Arthur throws back his head and roars out a laugh, so at least it accomplished the goal there. After a few more steps, I take a seat at a moderately-ornate wooden chair and Arthur takes up a position standing just a bit in front of me. One of my other men, either less drunk or more of an ass-kisser than others, snatches a glass from a passing slave’s platter of drinks and hands it off to me with a half-sarcastic, half-serious bow.
I resist the urge to slam back the entire drink. I haven’t been one for that kind of thing since I was too young to legally do it, but just like then the temptation is there and it is strong. It always is when you want to forget where you are and what’s going on around you. I give the man a raised salute of the glass in silent thanks and he turns around.
My indomitable will and everlasting resolve lasts another whole second. Just long enough to bring the glass of brown fluid to my lips before I tip it back and empty it. Something that tastes vaguely like furniture polish that’s been mixed with paint-thinner and at some point might have spoken with a man who brewed rum greets me. It’s still better than the Old Crow my teenage self had dropped back on Terra—Earth—though, and taste is the last thing on my mind as I swallow.
—Get your mind out of the gutter.—
It doesn’t take long for another drink to come my way. I settle back in the chair before chugging this one, and watch the mass of pirates shift and move in front of me. In the arena I was in moments before, a few of them start dancing, feet tossing sand around until the bloodstains Gronley had made are invisible. I stare at them through the hazy glass in my hand, my eyes focusing in on my reflection so I don’t have to face my feelings on killing a man. Or the ones I remember from previous instances doing the same thing…Or worse. Those are too positive for me to want to confront.
The soulless, freckled, redheaded monster I confront instead in the distorted reflection from the glass doesn’t strike me as wrongly as I know it should. I still even recognize her as me, somehow. But I do still miss the other me from the 21st-century with her naturally-straight black hair and darker skin. I think I would have preferred getting a penis over becoming this carrot-top with mottles and a jawline the size of the Mississippi. At least with the penis I would’ve gotten to write my name in the snow and there would have been some novelty about the thing!
What did resting bitch-face, a skin-condition, and foofy hair do for my looks? Nothing, that was what. All I got was a wicked frown, a terrible risk for sunburn, and looking like I’d just stuck a finger into an electrical socket. The scorpion tattoo around my right eye certainly doesn’t help, either. Its pincers are curled over my cheek and the bridge of my nose and its stinger poised just over my eyelid, with my eye itself taking the place of its face. Combined with the jawline and cheeks that are already at the verge of being sunken despite my young age, the overall effect is to make me look like a harsh schoolmarm turned villain from a bad 80s action flick.
Which I guess makes sense considering where I am. But still doesn’t seem fair, and doesn’t mean I have to like it, either. Why couldn’t this bullshit have mixed me with someone else? Natasha Kerensky, literally one of the baddest-asses in the setting, would’ve had the pull to get something useful done and been smoking-hot in the process. Katrina Steiner, the leader of one of the five warring state of the Inner Sphere, was supposed to be MILFing it up for almost thirty more years, and I’d always kind of wanted to be able to pull off blonde hair. If I were her on top of being hot enough to draw some looks I’d have enough power to do a hell of a lot more than run away from the shithole planet I’m on, too!
But no. I can’t have nice things. Instead…I’m an unattractive, redheaded Periphery-bandit with a lady-boner for murder.
On the other hand, it means I get the opportunity for murder!
I shake the thought aside. All this is enough to make me wonder if who I am now wasn’t intentional by whatever had brought me here. What would it say about me if ‘Lady Death’ the psychotic, self-interested, glorious pirate-bitch was the person in Battletech I had the most in common with in terms of personality? What if there’d been the chance for me to ‘become’ anyone like this…and I was the best fit?
I fight down a gag at the taste to drain the second glass of its contents. But only because I’m thirsty. Definitely not so I can quit looking at my new-but-familiar reflection.
On the bright side, I don’t think I’m alone in the grand scheme of things. With everything else that’s happened, ‘Maria Morgraine’ stands out in my mind as another Battletech character, and something tells me that’s now my sister. The downside is that I base that assumption on dreamy mumbo-jumbo and vague feelings I have absolutely no basis for that could well be bullshit.
Even if they’re not, I’m also still very much alone on Tortuga, because Maria Morgraine is a very large stretch of space away on the opposite side of the Inner Sphere. Though, back to the bright side again, I’d just won myself the rights to a jumpship that I could use to cover that large stretch of space. There was a problem, and a solution had just been dropped in my lap with no price but killing some asshole. Who said fate was fickle? Besides looking like a meth-addled Irish schoolmarm, things are working out great for me so far!
Yeah. That’s it. If I just keep telling myself that I’d eventually believe it.
Really the path ahead of me is simple. All I have to do is put my faith in the accuracy of some dream-feeling mystical woo that I feel, survive long enough to get to my newly-acquired jumpship and travel across the known universe in it, not get mutinied against by the pirates I’m in charge of and not get arrested and subsequently hung for piracy in the process of making the trip, and, if it wasn’t too much trouble, not cause some chain-reaction of events that results in a bunch of innocent people getting killed. Oh, and I should probably come to grips with not just looking like but also having some really screwed-up memories of acting like a cliché 80s-movie villain for the last decade.
I’m very confident in my wiggledy-fingers dream-feelings being accurate, irrational and silly as that might be. As for the rest?
Well I’ve always told people if I wasn’t a dancer I’d be something else equally useless like an actor, and they say there’s no better way to learn than by doing. So until I can make it to my sister and flip a big ol’ bird to the rest of this dumbass universe I’ll just have to depend on myself to act my way through things.
So I’m going to die. My acting skills are mediocre at best.
But I can’t just admit that! Not even to myself! Because negative waves are the enemy. I have to stay positive! Visualize success and then bring it into being. Think happy thoughts so I can fly!
I’m only probably going to die.
…It’s a start.
I shouldn’t worry about it so much. I’m Death incarnate!
I don’t quite laugh at the thought, but it does amuse me. Probably a defense mechanism. If I focus on stupid wordplay I don’t have to focus on the batshit insanity that is now my life.
I accept a third drink from one of my loyalists and try not to giggle as I start to feel the first pair’s effects. This batshit insanity has already been the Death of me. So, really, what could possibly make things any worse?
Transfer to thread has apparently eaten paragraphing as well, so if anyone notices stray blocks of text together which shouldn't be, I'd appreciate heads-up.
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The bloud that is spilt, Sir, hath gain'd all the gilt, Sir,
Thus have you seen me run the Sword up to the hilt, Sir.
-The Power (or Dominion) of the Sword, ballad from the English Civil War
I’m falling, dropping forwards face-first in that endless, ear-whistling, moment-before-hitting-the-ground that comes whenever I screw up mid-routine because I lost track of my footwork. I twist to the side, forcing my muscles to loosen-up for the coming impact with the floor. Despite how often I need to do exactly that, my breath still hitches in my throat. It’s never really fun to screw up.The bloud that is spilt, Sir, hath gain'd all the gilt, Sir,
Thus have you seen me run the Sword up to the hilt, Sir.
-The Power (or Dominion) of the Sword, ballad from the English Civil War
As air continues to whistle past my ears and the sensation drags on and on for longer than it ever possibly could, I grow certain that I’m dreaming. I also grow certain that I really, really want the dream to end. I’ve never actually had one of these ‘falling to your death’ dreams before. I’ve heard it said you never actually hit bottom, but dropping constantly downward seems like the worse fate to me. When you hit bottom it shocks you awake and you can get up, get out of bed, and get something done. There isn’t much you can do when you’re just falling like a fricken’ idiot.
In that detached, only half-aware way you do in dreams, I think I hear my sister saying something. She’s beside me for a moment, or maybe above me? It’s a dream still so it’s very confusing, but she’s there.
Then she’s somewhere else—someone else—entirely.
‘Maria Morgraine’? I don’t get it…
Then she’s gone. Not gone gone, I know. Just…distant? It doesn’t make much sense. None of the mostly-asleep smatters of half-formed thoughts and images in my head make any sense. I’m remembering things that have never happened to me. The faces of people I’ve never met. Things I’ve never done.
Things I’ve definitely never done! This had gone from dream to nightmare in an instant!
I try to force myself away from that. I manage to distance myself from the blood-infested hellscape of fake memories I’d been in a moment before. I’ve never had nightmares quite that vivid before. I try not to think about it.
Maybe my sister was trying to wake me up because I’d slept late? It had been years since she’d last had to do that. I was a big girl now, dammit, I always remembered to set a dozen alarms for myself!
Maybe she’d come over to make breakfast? It wouldn’t be the first time one of us had raided the other’s fridge because we’d forgotten something on our grocery list and had a craving for syrupy, calorie-laden French toast…
That had to be it.
Looking forward to cinnamon-y, horrible-for-me deliciousness that just might be getting cooked, I fight myself out of my sleep and throw an arm out, not feeling the blankets I undoubtedly knock aside in the process. If I don’t physically pull myself out of bed with some kind of motion, I have a bad habit of lazing about even with motivations bigger than pre-cooked breakfast. If I let myself start to laze about in the small fortress of sheets, comforters, pillows, and clean laundry that I’ve built atop my bed, I won’t leave until the call of nature forces me out from my nest of comfiness.
I open my eyes not to my room, but to another idle fantasy from my brain that nonetheless feels familiar. Like something out of a movie I’ve seen too many times.
I’m standing in a courtyard of sand that always seems to be shifting and sinking under my feet, forcing me to awkwardly balance my weight. Around me, a crowd of ragged bastards are pumping their fists, screaming incoherently, and generally making as if it’s a party and I’m the entertainment. Based on the slurred cheers and catcalls, they might be right.
The people on the second floor looking over the courtyard I’m in are slightly better-dressed, but only a few of them seem to be any better-behaved. Even if it’s a dream I have a suspicion that the tips aren’t going to be very good and feel myself deflating at the prospect. They’re all worse-looking than the Friday-night, cliché, college-asshole crowd I’ve dealt with before, and somehow even more pathetically dressed. Utility pants and leather jackets broken-up by bandoliers and bits and pieces of overalls or jumpsuits seemed to be a common theme. What in the world am I dreaming of, a post-apocalyptic hobo convention?
Apparently my brain jumped to a mix of Motorhead and Mad Max for inspiration on filling in the blanks of the hobo crowds’ post-apocalyptic fashion. Which was disappointingly typical. Why couldn’t post-apocalypse fashion ever be a mix of Madonna and Mad Max? Splash up the dreary apocalypse with some color instead of painting it in black! Or at least wrap it in a bustier and make it that extra bit of ridiculous.
My thoughts of Mel Gibson circa 1980 and Tom Hardy in cone-bra corsets are interrupted by a harsh, throat-burning breath of booze and body-odor tinged air that surprises me with its…reality. My surprise compounds a moment later as I notice the feeling of sweat gathering on my forehead and at my hairline. I don’t recall ever being able to really smell or feel anything that specific in my dreams.
The weight in my hands—a sword, I realize—shocks me again. My eyes travel up the blade until they, along with the tip, connect with the chest of the man in front of me. A chest incredibly detailed in hair, muscles, and no small amount of blood that is leaking from where my blade now rests and a trio of other punctures only slightly less serious-looking than the stab I’ve just completed.
I am not dreaming!
From that simple realization, I come to a series of others.
First, I am not in my bed. Obviously.
Second, I have another set of memories in my head that radically clash with the ones I am familiar with.
Third, I just stabbed a man dead!
Fourth, and most disappointing, I‘m not getting French toast anytime soon.
“You bitch!” The man—Captain Gronley—screams, pulling away and bringing his free hand up to clutch at the latest wound I’ve given him to slow the bleeding.
Correction! I had not just stabbed a man dead. I had pulled my thrust at the last moment in my ‘what the shit where am I?’ spasms. Paula, the post-apocalyptic me from here who was, thankfully, not wearing a cone-bra corset but a somewhat-reasonable black blouse, had been aiming for him and was a moderately-accomplished swordswoman, so it should have run right through his heart. Or at least a lung. Instead, thanks to the wild flailing I’d engaged in when I showed up, it had stabbed into his shoulder.
Underneath my panic and confusion I have a sense that the tingle of excitement I feel at the thought of stabbing someone should bother me more than it does. That feeling slams me smack-dab into new and yet wholly-familiar 31st-century memories of previous instances where future-me had been more than happy to slit throats. If anything, Gronley would be one of my more justified killings. Gronley was a pirate. Most of those before him had been considerably more innocent.
Holy shit. I’m a murderer!
‘Murderer’? They deserved it for getting in my way!
I freeze, not quite sure how to think past the peculiar duality in my mind. Future-me is me, and I’m right. But past-me is me as well, and I don’t think I’m wrong.
Gronley, the resilient bastard, roars something indecipherable. He throws himself forwards across the sand chest first, blade coming forward as he charges. I swear his blade is so visibly sharp it’s shining, and even if it’s just a trick of the light it’s scary as hell.
Future-me? Past-me?
I want to dance out of the way. Get out of danger with some fast footwork and put some distance between me and the threat. Run away from the problem and it can’t catch me!
I want to take the chance to run him through. End the danger with a twist of my wrists and ensure I was never threatened again. Kill the problem and it would quit being a problem!
In stuttered inability to resolve the two impulses I vaguely try to accomplish both. Cross-stepping to the side and out of the immediate path of Gronley’s stab, I keep myself balanced on the balls of my feet. After a moment’s hesitation as half of me grapples with the absurdity that I’m swinging a sword in what is supposed to be the year 3012, I awkwardly push off with my rear foot and thrust my blade towards Gronley’s now-exposed neck.
By trying to do both, I succeed at neither. It doesn’t help that I, in contrast to myself, don’t even know how to hold a sword, much less swing one. There’s only so much my tranquility and memories of sword-practice can do to direct me when I’m panicking like a schoolgirl and flailing about with no knowledge of how to handle a sword.
In a flowing, single-instant movement I can’t even process, my blade is batted out of its path by Gronley’s as he returns his own to his side, and he twists forward to slam the elbow of his free arm into my uncovered abdomen. The force sends me reeling back onto my heels and the contents of my stomach pushing halfway up my esophagus. Arms pin-wheeling, I desperately try to keep my balance.
That and enough luck to get me kicked out of a Solaris or Vegas casino for cheating are the only things that save me. Gronley keeps his composure and presses his attack, bringing his sword back around into another crossways-chop. But my thrashing arms bring my own blade up and I manage to catch his blade and redirect it to the side before I even notice it coming towards me, both blades skittering against each other as they clash.
On that ad-libbing, runners-high style adrenaline you can get after you accomplish something you didn’t think was possible, I listen to future-me and clench my empty hand into the best fist I can manage, punching it into the side of Gronley’s head with all the power I‘ve got. Since I’m still similar in size and muscle to past-me from the 21st century—maybe even a little weaker, really—‘all the power I’ve got’ for the punch is an unfortunately small amount. Since I have all the technical knowledge of how to properly throw a punch that watching it in movies and reading about it in fiction novels can give you, I don’t make up for its weakness with anything like skilled performance or execution.
Gronley barely even flinches when my fist hits him, despite it landing just to the rear of his eye. It’s like punching a concrete wall. My nails dig into my skin, coming dangerously close to penetrating.
By the screams and yells of the crowd, it all must have at least looked good. Maybe, dare I hope, even like it had been deliberate? Let it never be said I don’t know how to put on a show! Properly punch someone? No. Swing a sword around? God no. But put on a show? That was right up my alley! Making myself look good is one of the few things I’m really good at, honestly. On that both of me could agree.
Another moment and I realize the crowd’s cheering-on Gronley for taking the punch so calmly, not me for throwing it.
Despite being in the middle of a fight, I can’t help but mentally pout a little at that realization. That’s a blow to the ol’ ego. Who do these assholes think they are?
There’s an impulse in my mind to open my fist and dig into Gronley’s cheeks with my nails. I made regular habit of coating the carbon-fiber reinforced nails in scorpion venom for exactly this kind of opportunity! That would shut up the crowd and get them chanting my name like they should be rather than his. A minute—maybe less—and Gronley would be convulsing and spitting green foam out of his mouth, his nervous system shutting down as he spasmed and shook in a beautiful death that made me want to—
Nope.
Nope nope nope.
I’m going to think of something else. Some other thing to do. Any other thing to do.
My pistol!
I do not have my pistol. It’s a millennium in the past with the rest of the shit in my room, and future-me’s had been taken for the fight. Something about ‘fairness’ and ‘a proper challenge for the position’ or something, I don’t really care about whatever the stupid explanation was at the moment.
I don’t know how to punch or kick, and I have even less idea of how to use a sword. I’m pretty much out of ideas besides wishing for my pistol. Punching Gronley again obviously wasn’t going to get me anywhere.
I punch Gronley again.
It’s just as ineffective as the first one was. Maybe even more-so. This time I can’t keep myself from wincing at the way my knuckles hurt from the impact. Punching sucks! Why would anybody do it?
I try pushing against Gronley’s blade with my own. Maybe if I use the right leverage or something I could do…something? I don’t know, if I could stab him again it’d help! The guy’s bleeding from three different places on his chest, surely I can overpower him! Right?
The man doesn’t even budge, and his sword stays exactly where it is locked tightly against mine as I shove my weight into the contest with all the energy I can. Other than a slow tilt to his head, he barely even seems to notice my efforts.
Okay, dumb move. It didn’t work. Something else, then?
I really wish I had a pistol. I know how to use a pistol. This would be much easier if I had my fucking pistol. Either one of them, it didn’t matter! The laser would be just as effective as my old-fashioned, 21st-century slugthrower! Squeeze squeeze, job done!
But I don’t have either one! So I was going to have to think of something else!
…
Something else besides a pistol.
…
I could kick him in the crotch? Gouge at his eyes? Bite him?
Why did it take me so long to come up with obvious shit like that?
The thought crosses my mind in the same instant that, snorting like some sort of cartoon bull, Gronley rears back. It takes every bit of strength I have to keep his sword at arm’s-length from my body, and I can see him grin just before he comes forward and smashes his right shoulder through my hastily-raised guard and into me, throwing me back and igniting a brushfire of pain across my chest that crescendos just below my right tit where his previous shoulder-jab had caught me.
I try, but I can’t keep myself on my feet this time. Landing on the sand cushions me from most of the pain that might have come from that alone. Nothing cushions me from the pain of two-hundred fifty pounds of asshole coming down on top of me a moment later though, and I struggle to gasp, breathe in, cough out, and puke up all in the same moment.
Before my body can decide which of those four is the most important, Gronley shifts atop me, dropping a knee onto my right elbow to hold down my sword-hand while his bloody hand latches onto my left wrist and holds it down just over my shoulder. His other hand makes its way, with one brief, squeezing, detour, up my chest to circle around my throat.
The tiny part of me that actually recognizes what the hell is going on and can keep cool takes note of that as something that could be taken advantage of. The rest of me is too consumed in raw, unthinking terror to do much other than thrash about underneath the man as his hand squeezes down on my throat and makes it a lot more difficult to breathe.
He weighs so much more than me that I can’t lift my hands. He’s so much bigger that my knees can just barely bump against his back if I bring them up to hit him, and they do nothing. I can’t reach his forearm with my teeth while he’s holding me down by the neck.
This kind of shit is why a pistol would be nice. Because biology is fucking unfair! But apparently, whatever mystic quantum bullshit or whoever-the-hell-knows that brought me into a crappy, dystopian future decided it had to go all ‘Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court’ and throw me into a fricken’ anachronistic swordfight for shits and giggles without any advantages.
This. Is. Bullshit! These kinds of stories are supposed to give you superpowers or badass skills. Not drop you into the middle of a fight with someone twice your size!
“You know what?” Gronley says, leaning inwards to speak as I tried to choke air down into my lungs past his hand, “You stabbed me. Couple times, too. Been a long time since any have managed that. So I think, instead of killing you right now, it’s only fair and proper I stab you back and then pass you around so those of my men who aren’t traitorous cunts can do the same. Give the Council and our fine crowd here some proper entertainment for the evening. Consider it your severance package to our packages, eh? Does that sound like a deal?”
I don’t like the sound of it even before I puzzle out the actual words from the syrup-thick accent Gronley has, and I like it less when I finally figure out what the hell he means. It’s probably evidence of just how oxygen-starved I am that it takes my brain a series of false-starts and stops before I manage to put together the blatant shit that passes for subtext to the asshole. Usually I’m pretty good at double entendres and that sort of thing, but Gronley’s references don’t really hit me for whole seconds.
It’s probably the slowly-building oxygen-deprivation. As science class taught me, brainy do thinky ungood when air no get.
Gronley, real charmer that he is, manages to live down to the reputation of a pirate from both the 21st and 31st centuries in making blatant passes. It’s almost embarrassing to remember the reason for our preexisting partnership is because he’s one of the only ones on Tortuga scummy enough to put up with me.
Once again with the thought, I have to put up with a short mental parade of screwed-up shit I’d done in the 31st century, and this time I feel like there’s a connection I’m missing. A connection that falls into place almost immediately as I recall piloting a 95-ton robotic war-machine into battle with other lumbering machines—and using it to step on people. Swordfights aren’t typical. A lot of combat involves multi-ton weapons of war called BattleMechs, piloted by MechWarriors.
Wonderful. It’s not just any crappy, dystopian future I’ve found myself in. It’s Battletech—and I’m not a Lord of one of the warring states the universe is split into, a planetary duke, or a mercenary. I’m some Periphery-planet pirate-bitch who’s in a fight outside the giant stompy robots and losing.
Great.
Since the memories of squashing people in a giant, walking machine of war and stealing shit are followed by snatches of less absolutely-immoral things I’ve done back on Earth, I realize this flash of memory is less ‘random memories of a new life’ being dredged up and more ‘life flashing before your eyes’. My attention thus stays on that rather than being distracted by the million-and-one calling-of-bullshits there are to be made about the simple impossibility of finding myself in a fictional universe.
Because that ‘life flashing before your eyes’ thing supposedly happens before you die, it takes some of the focus from what I firmly decide is the less important train of thought.
Why? Because I really don’t want to die. Like, on my personal list of shit I don’t want to do? That’s probably right up there at number one. It’s mostly selfish—I like being alive. Living? I’m a big fan of it. I’m a slutty groupie for breathing and air supply is a band I would follow anywhere!
Beyond that, I like the stuff that comes with being alive. I don’t want it to stop!
There’s an element of dread and fear to it as well. In the 31st century I’ve murdered and mutilated a decent share of innocent people. More worrisome than that, my sister would kill me if I died on her. Especially since I have a firm suspicion she’d been dragged into the same hellhole-future, fictional-universe I’m in. If I die, she would find a way to track down my ghost and use some kind of bullshit-future technology to proton-pack the shit out of that ghost Ghostbusters-style until I get trapped in some spirit-cage and have to endure a lifetime of her lecturing me on shit! I know, I’d do the same thing if the positions were reversed!
Also, if I die, I’ll have to explain myself to the Big Juju that ran the universe—Or should that be ‘the Big JewJew’ since at least one-third and/or the entirety of him is supposed to be Jewish and all?—In any case, if I die and go up in front of the Big Juju of the universe I might have to answer for some of the heinous shit I’ve done.
There’s a lengthy conversation I’m not looking forward to. All the sacrilegious or borderline-sacrilegious jokes probably aren’t going to help, either. But, on the bright side, it would at least get me an answer for this bullshit situation I found myself in. Was there a way to ask God to his face ‘What the hell is wrong with you letting this happen to me you big ol’ asshole?’ without it being blasphemous? It applied just as well for past-me as for future-me!
I blink. Wanting to live? Wanting to bitch-out God? Past-me and future-me have that in common at least.
I might come up with better phrasing for the question I intend to ask El Supremo later. I won’t need it in the near future. Because I’m not going to let the man on top of me win.
Something, adrenaline or fear or something, sweeps aside the darkness that is beginning to dance at the edge of my vision. It quiets my lungs demand for air, and throws away the useless thinking. I’m still panicking, after what’s happened I don’t know if I’m ever going to not be panicking ever again, but with some focused effort I manage to stop my useless thrashing.
I am a shitty person—31st century or 21st. I spend entirely too much time, money, and makeup on my appearance. I’m money-grubbing and materialistic, a combination that really sucks because as much as it curbs my spending whenever I go shopping, it also reinforces itself. More than once when I was younger and more of an asshole I just took the five-finger discount on things I wanted to solve the conundrum of wanting things as much as I wanted the money to buy them. Worst of all I break that ‘rule of three’ thing a lot and add unnecessary fourth examples just to keep things going because I love to feel like I come off as eloquent or amusing. I really love the idea of my own eloquence.
How shitty a person am I? About as much as just wanting to live right now, I want Gronley’s stuff. One of the few things I’ve managed to catch-onto during the fight from the new set of memories bouncing around inside my new red head is that Gronley’s ship, the Ravager, would go to whoever won this fight. The crew had voted in favor of ME Captaining them. All I have to do is remove Gronley, and it will be mine! With that, I could get the hell out of Dodge, get off of Tortuga, and get away from all this BS to find my sister. I could be wealthy and free—which is probably about as good as things got in Battletech. Or anywhere else, for that matter.
Instead of thrashing about or trying to fight back against the hand still clamped around my throat, I slide one leg up and use my knee to encourage Gronley to rub against me. Still fighting for every bit of air I can get, I perform a very deliberate circuit of my lips with my tongue and give the man a wink. It’s stupid, of course. The kind of play-act, over-the-top and obviously fake stuff that has always kind of baffled me for why it’s ever shown to work. Streetwalkers probably use more subtle and sexy messaging. Blowing it over-the-top like this just makes it silly and more like a parody than anything.
But choked-out sluttiness like that apparently does it for Gronley, because while his grip doesn’t loosen, he does shift positions atop me. I don’t know for sure if it’s actually his lizard-brain getting excited, blood loss—either from losing it or it going to somewhere beside his brain—forcing him to adjust, or if it’s simple confusion by my sudden compliance, but whatever it is, it gets the job done. His movement is just enough to give me some control over my right hand and I quickly twist my wrist to direct my sword towards his side.
The black in my vision is getting hard to see through.
I want to say ‘No deal’ in late answer to his question. Seems funny. Appropriate.
I croak like a frog. Can’t speak past the man’s choke-hold on my neck.
I’m not going to get any points for witty, pre-kill one-liners then.
Barely aware of what I’m even doing, I use every bit of strength I have left to shove my right hand upwards. The noise of the blade tearing into flesh, somehow audible even over the cheers and taunts of the crowd, is sickening, satisfying and pleasurable to me in a combination I’d much rather it isn’t.
I shudder from all three.
I could have gone for somewhere else. Experience tells me there are a few different targets on the human body that could provide a cleaner solution to my predicament. There are some arteries you can stab into and a person bled out pretty quick while most of the viscera would drop into the chest-cavity or fill the lungs instead of spilling out. But I want air—want Gronley’s stuff—want him off of me—want to win—want to live, and trying to think past ‘stab’ is too much work.
It isn’t like I want to murder the guy, after all! I just want to stab him until he quits choking me and can never do it again and I win this duel-to-the-death!
I’m pretty sure it works, because after a few moments his hand loosens to the point I manage to get a real breath down.
Gronley’s strength still takes a long time to fade. Or maybe it just felt that way. I’m not sure if I stay conscious. He certainly doesn’t. Prick passes out right on top of me—bleeding all over my clothes!—and he’s too heavy to push off. He weighs too much, my arms are too sore, and it feels so damn good to just be able to breathe again I lose track of just about everything else. Everything else except the throbbing pain that spikes on my torso with each heartbeat, that I only wish I could lose track of. I was going to have a bruise the size of my head and enough swelling I’d probably be able to pretend it was a third breast.
It actually kind of pisses me off when a trio of slaves heave Gronley’s body off of me. It means I don’t have any excuse and have to get up to keep up appearances.
Keeping up my appearance is a specialty, though. Holding my legs together for leverage and looks both, I throw myself onto my feet, coming up in a long, chest-emphasizing movement that is easier to do here than it ever had been under Terra’s gravity but that I’m also painfully aware isn’t going to be possible for me in a short while when the bruise really develops. Even now it hurts. But the look it gives me matters more than the pain.
Tossing strands of curly red hair that have escaped my ponytail back, I fight down the impulse to sway as I straighten, not sure if it’s from giddiness or because my vision is still swimming a bit and the sudden realignment did horrible things to my balance.
It could be a rush of adrenaline. It could be the lighter gravity. It could be I’d just won!
My eyes, damn them, track down to Gronley as he’s dragged away. He’s lost a lot of blood. A lot of it onto my right arm and shoulder, something I try not to notice because it’s still so pleasurably warm and ewwwwww.
But limp and unmoving as he is, he’s not dead. He can’t be dead. Because that’d mean I’d killed him. So he’s just passed-out. I’d only stabbed him in the underarm into the heart and this was 3012, the fricken’ future, so there was probably some bullshit medical help waiting after he got dragged away even if we were on some backwater Periphery hellhole and it wasn’t-like-what-I’d-done-wasgoingtobefataland—
I force my attention away from the body and to the crowd. They’ve somehow become even more rambunctious and loud now than they had been when I’d arrived. I couldn’t pick out any individual words among the ear-pounding din, but I could tell not many of them were complimentary. ‘Sir Black’, as Gronley had styled himself, had been the favorite to win before the fight. I’d probably screwed-up a bunch of bets.
I’m reminded that I have won a not-insubstantial amount betting on myself…In addition to all of Gronley’s stuff. The jumpship. His private residence outside Raider’s Roost. His dropship and all the supplies in it. His slaves.
Mine! All mine.
I’d won!
I want to puke. I want to cry. I want to close my eyes and wake up underneath my Mount Everest of comfortable sheets and pillows back on Earth, bundle up in my lazy-day clothes and walk over to my sister’s to vent about this weird-ass dream over entirely too much coffee and a too-big breakfast. French toast sounds good.
A few hopeful blinks and some surreptitious clicking of my heels together is enough to prove the last one isn’t happening. While I wish it were my stoic demeanor and general badass attitude that prevents me from indulging in a nice cry right there, in reality I’m too pants-pissingly terrified to let myself. It’s very simple self-preservation that anyone learns if they ever live in a bad neighborhood long enough. Look like a bitch, you’re going to be treated like a bitch. On the other hand, if you posture and play-act the shit out of yourself…Well, you still might be treated like a bitch, depending. The rules are kind of arbitrary. The best way to get by is to keep yourself nice and unnoticed.
Since I’m already on a makeshift stage surrounded by the refuse of humanity booing me and had just stabbed a man to d—unconsciousness, keeping myself unnoticed isn’t exactly an option. So I’m left with the much riskier ‘posture and play-act’ option. At least until I can get the hell out of here and go curl up in a private room to have my breakdown.
I bend over and pick up both the blade Gronley had been using and the sheath that the slaves had left behind when they’d dragged away his corp—unmoving body. The blade has a stylized ‘9’ engraved into its hilt that my thumb runs over automatically, and from somewhere deep inside me I feel the strangest, most inappropriate urge to laugh.
The blade is a symbol of command on Tortuga. The unmarked one I still hold in my other hand had identified me as one of Gronley’s lieutenants. This one identifies me as a full Captain in the Jolly Roger Fleet, and a member of Tortuga’s Council of the Damned. Something I’ve wanted this entire second life of mine. It still doesn’t quite sound right though. Something about ‘Captain Paula Trevaline’ doesn’t sound quite grand enough for—
It’s then that my brain stops working entirely as I finally realize why the name that had been floating in the back of my head sounded vaguely familiar. Why the memories had tickled at something more than just ‘Battletech’. It’s amazing how your focus tunnel-visions on the immediate when there’s a man twice your size trying to kill you. But when there’s not…
Oh.
I look up towards where the other Captains are gathered. From the balcony of Tortuga’s ‘Governor’s House’ Kalvin Bar-Dyness, the current Lord of the Pirates of Tortuga, meets my eyes and frowns. Around him, the twelve other Captains of the Black Fifteen vary in response from a matching disgust and disdain to a very few who looked amused or even curious. Any upset in Tortuga’s leadership made for dangers to the status quo, and opportunities to those burdened by it…Not to mention they’d all likely have to hold votes of their ship crews to maintain their power.
Lord Bar-Dyness quiets the screams and shouts of the assembly with a slow clap of his hands. When he speaks it’s with that same lilting, bouncing up-and-down accent Gronley had, albeit slightly more intelligible. He hides his displeasure pretty well, but I can hear it in the back of his words.
I have to hide my amusement at just how much he sounds like a stereotypical French pirate.
“Very well done, mademoiselle Trevaline! Very well done, indeed! Ladies and Gentlemen of fortune? By popular acclaim of the crew of the ninth jumpship of the fleet and by victory in single combat against its previous Captain, I present you Paula Trevaline, now a Mate on the Council of the Damned, and a Captain in my Jolly Roger Fleet!”
The cheers are restrained, but they do come. It takes most of my concentration to stop the orchestra of things I want to do as my brain slowly catches-up to what is happening. I hold back tears, keep down an urge to cough that insistently rises, fight off an urge to turn and run, and freeze my knees in place after they start to spasm and shake wildly underneath my pants. Despite the relatively high temperature, I’m freezing, and goose-bumps rise along my arms—there’s nothing I can do to keep those down.
“Miss Trevaline?” Bar-Dyness continues, gesturing the limited cheers back into silence, “You have slain and replaced Captain Gronley, a knight in service of the Jolly Roger Fleet who styled himself as ‘Sir Black’. Before you take his seat at the next Council of the Damned, how would you like to be known to us, your comrades, and most importantly, yer coming kills?”
The last thing I am going to do is freeze or hesitate. I have a reputation to uphold! Just going with the first motions that cross my mind, I hold Gronley’s blade up, the motion inspiring a series of reminders from my chest that it was bruising, and give a small turn so that all the scum and villainy around me get a good view of both the sword and my blood-soaked right side.
I extend the same lack of thought to my words, instead letting myself enjoy the recognition and the blood. Before I’d gotten here I had been thinking about it for a long time, and I was too busy trying to stay coherent and fight down a looming existential crisis to really come up with anything better than what I had prepared before I suddenly had the memories of some floozy from Earth as well as my own.
“I am Lady Death, Scourge of the Successor States, and I take the title Dame Murderess Extraordinaire.”
I’m not sure what strikes me more. The ridiculousness of the words, or the fact I manage to say them completely deadpan.
The other members of the brotherhood on my level think the overdramatic ridiculousness is hilarious and erupt into a small sea of laughter at me. They will be the first ones against the wall, but I guess I can’t really blame them. Even if they didn’t like it, and even if it was silly bullshit, it still felt like appropriate bullshit to me…A stage-name for what would come next.
All the worlds a stage, right?
The ‘joke’ is bad and barely works in my thoughts. It’s entirely dependent on the lack of a fricken’ possessive apostrophe or whatever-the-hell an English major would call it. But I still think it’s somehow hilarious and have to bite down a laugh that I know would have been half-deranged. Or maybe wholly-deranged. I am currently insane enough to think I’m in a fictional universe as someone of relative insignificance, after all.
If this were the fantasy of a deluded mind, you’d think I’d have the confidence to make myself someone more important, like an actual ruler or a bastard noble who inherited a mercenary company. Or even some thing much more cool like a Battleship or, hell, a Sailor Scout!
By God, if I were having a break with reality my mind was screwy enough it would damn-well have the decency to make it a break that went to eleven with its crap, not this pussy-footing around the edges garbage!
…It’s probably not a good sign that the thought is one of the more convincing reasons I can come up with for this being really real.
I slowly let the blade I’m holding drop to my side as the laughter and catcalls end. Bar-Dyness looks like he’s trying to crush concrete in his jaw thanks to the words ‘Lady Death’, clearly taking them as an implicit challenge to himself. I can’t hold it against him, his reticence gives me time to crush down my own urge to laugh like a madwoman at the universe. After a few seconds of grinding, Bar-Dyness rolls his eyes so dramatically I can tell he’s doing it from an entire floor below.
“Bienvenue, then, ‘Dame Murderess Extraordinare’, to the Council of the Damned.” He proclaims, grabbing a stein from behind him somewhere and extending it over the balcony.
If he were as positive as he’s trying to sound, he would pour a small bit of the drink out onto the sand below. Waste it to show his approval of the new Captain who’d joined his service. The stein remains vertical until he brings it back to take a drink from it. The crowd cheers and drinks themselves, most of them blissfully unaware or uncaring about the insult.
I do. As I march out of the sand-garden arena I let myself imagine for a moment that it had been Bar-Dyness I had run-through, not Gronley. It's a nice, idle fantasy to indulge in for a moment before I drop into a mental review bordering on insanity I don’t even have the luxury to let show.
I am Paula Trevaline, ‘Lady Death’, pirate and cold-hearted killer. Soon enough I’m supposed to kill Bar-Dyness and a large portion of the Council of the Damned and establish myself as ruler of Tortuga, and then go on to be a stereotypical pirate-bitch for a long-ass time. In a much less Disneyified ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’, hijinks, shenanigans and Johnny Depp way and a much more fun, true-to-actual-pirates, rape, pillage and murder way. I'm looking forward to it!
I also remember someone else entirely. Depending on who you talk to I might have qualified as a bitch, but way out from anything that might be considered a cold-hearted killer. I am a dancer and a layabout. I’m no pirate! I’m pretty sure I’ve never even pirated music! I'm terrified!
Seeing as I’ve already killed someone and taken their stuff, I’m making a good start at playing a swashbuckler, though. Presumably all I have to do now is chant ‘Yo-ho-ho’ and track down a bottle of rum to fulfill all the requirements.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry as I push my way through the first few lines of the crowd and accept my pistol-belt and a flat-white overcoat back from Arthur, my quartermaster, second in command, and quasi-bodyguard. I secure the belt around my waist and settle Gronley’s scabbard on the opposite side as my previous one, throwing the coat over one shoulder. Hopefully I don't look too ridiculous as I stalk back to a corner of the mansion that’s partially filled with my men, still half-covered in Gronley’s blood and trying very hard not to spasm and shake.
“A fine show, boss-lady. Especially that bit in the end where you toyed with him and let him bring you down. Really helped swing the late-match betting in our favor. Lot of shit-for-brains thought you were down-and-out and threw money down on Gronley.” Arthur says, his regular voice loud enough to overpower most of the conversations going on around us.
I almost laugh. I restrain myself to a blink that he hopefully doesn’t notice as I try to come up with something good as a response. Memories provide me with something to say, but I’m not sure it qualifies as ‘good’.
“Their mistake. Death always wins in the end.” I say flatly, caught between wanting to groan at the statement and simultaneously kind of awkwardly proud of it. At least I still have my sense of humor!
Arthur throws back his head and roars out a laugh, so at least it accomplished the goal there. After a few more steps, I take a seat at a moderately-ornate wooden chair and Arthur takes up a position standing just a bit in front of me. One of my other men, either less drunk or more of an ass-kisser than others, snatches a glass from a passing slave’s platter of drinks and hands it off to me with a half-sarcastic, half-serious bow.
I resist the urge to slam back the entire drink. I haven’t been one for that kind of thing since I was too young to legally do it, but just like then the temptation is there and it is strong. It always is when you want to forget where you are and what’s going on around you. I give the man a raised salute of the glass in silent thanks and he turns around.
My indomitable will and everlasting resolve lasts another whole second. Just long enough to bring the glass of brown fluid to my lips before I tip it back and empty it. Something that tastes vaguely like furniture polish that’s been mixed with paint-thinner and at some point might have spoken with a man who brewed rum greets me. It’s still better than the Old Crow my teenage self had dropped back on Terra—Earth—though, and taste is the last thing on my mind as I swallow.
—Get your mind out of the gutter.—
It doesn’t take long for another drink to come my way. I settle back in the chair before chugging this one, and watch the mass of pirates shift and move in front of me. In the arena I was in moments before, a few of them start dancing, feet tossing sand around until the bloodstains Gronley had made are invisible. I stare at them through the hazy glass in my hand, my eyes focusing in on my reflection so I don’t have to face my feelings on killing a man. Or the ones I remember from previous instances doing the same thing…Or worse. Those are too positive for me to want to confront.
The soulless, freckled, redheaded monster I confront instead in the distorted reflection from the glass doesn’t strike me as wrongly as I know it should. I still even recognize her as me, somehow. But I do still miss the other me from the 21st-century with her naturally-straight black hair and darker skin. I think I would have preferred getting a penis over becoming this carrot-top with mottles and a jawline the size of the Mississippi. At least with the penis I would’ve gotten to write my name in the snow and there would have been some novelty about the thing!
What did resting bitch-face, a skin-condition, and foofy hair do for my looks? Nothing, that was what. All I got was a wicked frown, a terrible risk for sunburn, and looking like I’d just stuck a finger into an electrical socket. The scorpion tattoo around my right eye certainly doesn’t help, either. Its pincers are curled over my cheek and the bridge of my nose and its stinger poised just over my eyelid, with my eye itself taking the place of its face. Combined with the jawline and cheeks that are already at the verge of being sunken despite my young age, the overall effect is to make me look like a harsh schoolmarm turned villain from a bad 80s action flick.
Which I guess makes sense considering where I am. But still doesn’t seem fair, and doesn’t mean I have to like it, either. Why couldn’t this bullshit have mixed me with someone else? Natasha Kerensky, literally one of the baddest-asses in the setting, would’ve had the pull to get something useful done and been smoking-hot in the process. Katrina Steiner, the leader of one of the five warring state of the Inner Sphere, was supposed to be MILFing it up for almost thirty more years, and I’d always kind of wanted to be able to pull off blonde hair. If I were her on top of being hot enough to draw some looks I’d have enough power to do a hell of a lot more than run away from the shithole planet I’m on, too!
But no. I can’t have nice things. Instead…I’m an unattractive, redheaded Periphery-bandit with a lady-boner for murder.
On the other hand, it means I get the opportunity for murder!
I shake the thought aside. All this is enough to make me wonder if who I am now wasn’t intentional by whatever had brought me here. What would it say about me if ‘Lady Death’ the psychotic, self-interested, glorious pirate-bitch was the person in Battletech I had the most in common with in terms of personality? What if there’d been the chance for me to ‘become’ anyone like this…and I was the best fit?
I fight down a gag at the taste to drain the second glass of its contents. But only because I’m thirsty. Definitely not so I can quit looking at my new-but-familiar reflection.
On the bright side, I don’t think I’m alone in the grand scheme of things. With everything else that’s happened, ‘Maria Morgraine’ stands out in my mind as another Battletech character, and something tells me that’s now my sister. The downside is that I base that assumption on dreamy mumbo-jumbo and vague feelings I have absolutely no basis for that could well be bullshit.
Even if they’re not, I’m also still very much alone on Tortuga, because Maria Morgraine is a very large stretch of space away on the opposite side of the Inner Sphere. Though, back to the bright side again, I’d just won myself the rights to a jumpship that I could use to cover that large stretch of space. There was a problem, and a solution had just been dropped in my lap with no price but killing some asshole. Who said fate was fickle? Besides looking like a meth-addled Irish schoolmarm, things are working out great for me so far!
Yeah. That’s it. If I just keep telling myself that I’d eventually believe it.
Really the path ahead of me is simple. All I have to do is put my faith in the accuracy of some dream-feeling mystical woo that I feel, survive long enough to get to my newly-acquired jumpship and travel across the known universe in it, not get mutinied against by the pirates I’m in charge of and not get arrested and subsequently hung for piracy in the process of making the trip, and, if it wasn’t too much trouble, not cause some chain-reaction of events that results in a bunch of innocent people getting killed. Oh, and I should probably come to grips with not just looking like but also having some really screwed-up memories of acting like a cliché 80s-movie villain for the last decade.
I’m very confident in my wiggledy-fingers dream-feelings being accurate, irrational and silly as that might be. As for the rest?
Well I’ve always told people if I wasn’t a dancer I’d be something else equally useless like an actor, and they say there’s no better way to learn than by doing. So until I can make it to my sister and flip a big ol’ bird to the rest of this dumbass universe I’ll just have to depend on myself to act my way through things.
So I’m going to die. My acting skills are mediocre at best.
But I can’t just admit that! Not even to myself! Because negative waves are the enemy. I have to stay positive! Visualize success and then bring it into being. Think happy thoughts so I can fly!
I’m only probably going to die.
…It’s a start.
I shouldn’t worry about it so much. I’m Death incarnate!
I don’t quite laugh at the thought, but it does amuse me. Probably a defense mechanism. If I focus on stupid wordplay I don’t have to focus on the batshit insanity that is now my life.
I accept a third drink from one of my loyalists and try not to giggle as I start to feel the first pair’s effects. This batshit insanity has already been the Death of me. So, really, what could possibly make things any worse?
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Author's Note of the End: Innocent question that is definitely only meant for discussion and not as potential fuel for how to plot out the future of this mess (this is a blatant lie): If you find yourself in Battletech as a two-bit Periphery bandit, what's your course of action for how to best not get yourself killed and trying to do something useful/fun?
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