Greetings my friends, you are seeing my idea of a good story.
I own nothing but my idea, I don't own any of the characters used here.
the person who guesses the dark souls reference gets a mighty big cookie.
The wind rushed across the abandoned highway, the cars left a brutal impression of the plague that had leapt across the united states of america, few indentations of civilisation remained in the lands which had before been ruled by a single government but long since reduced to being owned by local raider groups.
One guard, a man in his fifties with graying hair looked out over the land and sighed with a bittersweet happiness, his group owned the land and scavenged for food in the ruins and while it might not be glamorous exactly, it still gave them large stores of food and that was the most important resource in the world to most people.
His gaze went to his gun, it had kept him alive for a long time now, hell without it he wouldn't be on guard shift right now having a good time with some alcohol the pathfinders of they're group had found!
He looked at the expanse of gray light that had creeped out of the cloud cover overhead, his vision flicked from one place to the next ever wary of the potential danger in the are- there! He swore he saw a flash of purple dash across his sight!
His hand flew to his gun and he stood at the ready in but a few seconds.
He approached the car that he was sure concealed the origin of whatever had flashed across his vision, he was on edge but reminded himself of the importance of trigger discipline, after all no one wished to be shot to death because the found a purple badge or something.
he recoiled as a object went flying skyward from the hunk of junk wreckage that lied in front of him, he saw that it was a simple canteen only to gasp as he jerked his gaze downwards to the knife blade protruding from his chest, he sluggishly turned around as his vision swam and was greeted by the sight of a brown mutt dressed in black clothing.
The expression on its face was truly comedic, even while he fell, first to one knee then to the cold sand and dirt floor he laughed in a muted and bloody way.
he felt the world swimming around him and wished desperately to wake from this nightmare world and find his family waiting for him in the land of the awake, safe as ever and happy too.
His last thoughts would never be heard as he let out a rasping gasp and fell silent and still.
Peanut for what it's worth, retrieved the knife and after cleaning it on the mans clothes shoved it back in the sheath before turning with the man and running forward to the supply shed with the similarly dressed grape. when they had gotten to the door peanut risked looking around the corners of the building while grape piked the lock, there were maybe twenty or twentyfive people gathered in the circle, the majority of which happened to be sleeping in the center next to a low fire.
peanut was satisfied with the sight and went back to grape, he saw with quite a bit of delight that she was done and breathed out
"that couldn't have been more than twenty seconds, you're getting faster"
grape looked at him with a half smile and whispered back
"thank you, i'll keep watch, you grab what you can and peanut, be careful of the noise"
with that she silently ran back to the car to keep watch of the group and the building.
The name "storage shed" it self was a bit of a misnomer, it was a armoured house that had been crammed full of what ever the raiders could find, this included all the guns, food and medical supply's a doctor could ever want.
Peanut breathed deeply and slowly pulled the door open, He thanked whatever deity was left to watch over him as the door slid open silently.
Inside the building there was large crates full of things, unfortunately peanut would make quite the racket if he tried to open those so he walked straight forward to the open crates on the near the wall, to his shock he found two handguns, each had been beautifully and painstakingly engraved both having had added on suppressors.
the handgun on the left had a large P on it while the pistol on the left had a uppercase G inscribed upon it.
peanut was infinitely relieved to find the note underneath it, the note read
"to Patrick and Grace! My favorite customers and personal friends, you two have kept me going and to show you two lucky people my appreciation I have made you guys a gift!
your friend andre the gunsmith."
peanut would have laughed if he wasn't in a situation that was quite dangerous.
he suddenly heard noise outside and realized with no small amount of terror that it was the animal coos that served as they're warning system.
He grabbed the guns and dashed into a closet. much to his horror a rotund man slowly clambered over to a food crate and began rummaging around the inside, perhaps hoping to find a candy apple.
peanut subconsciously raised the gun and pointed it at the mans skull, he slowly pulled the trigger and was treated to the sight of the mans head seeming to fall in the crate.
Peanut only just remembered to grab the man and slowly lower him to the ground, peanut hurried around, being sure to grab all he could.
peanut nudged the door open and closed it as quietly as he could, he felt quite terrified but understood that they had to move quickly before any of the raiders got suspicious of the mans absence.
Peanut got to grape and was nearly beaming as they left, he was glad that the raid went off without a hitch but couldn't help but feel that he had forgotten something, he thought for a bit before reaching into his bag and handing grape the pistol she smiled and thanked him before falling silent.
The rest of their trek was a short and silent one, the route had never been a particularly dangerous one, they had just grown to like the silence.
Peanut laid down to sleep, grape always took first watch as she had both better eyesight and the habit of staying up late when she tried to sleep.
As always peanuts dreams were filled with dreams of his friends, thoughts about their deaths and what may have happened to the others.
Peanut arose to grape standing over him, she had been awaking him for his watch he relized.
Peanut sat for a second or two to catch his breath.
He had been thinking of asking grape to be his girlfriend for quite the long time now but he never had the nerve to do it, he laughed a bit as he realized that he had the courage to stab a man in the back but not enough to ask the girl he loved to be his.
he slowly gathered his nerve and looked at grape before slowly asking
"grape? I have been thinking for a while and I wanted to ask if you would like to.." peanut cursed his shyness and wished he could force the words out.
grape was now staring at him, she clearly expected him to say something.
"grape, do you want to get together?" peanut nearly cringed as he said the words.
grape looked at him as she thought it over, she had after all never closed the door on the chance of them having a relationship, and now that the world had ended peanut had nothing to fear from social exclusion, after thinking about it for possibly thirty seconds grape agreed, it couldn't hurt to try to have a relationship after all.
grape told peanut her answer and he truly beamed at her, a full blown grin on his face that would have put the smiles of his younger days to shame.
"So what happens now?" peanut asked, the blindingly happy smile on his face never once leaving.
grape looked at him and smiled back before informing him that now he should take his turn at watching the camp, peanut gave her a fake frown and turned from her only to feel her hand on his shoulder, he turned and was about to open his mouth only for grape to say
"but first.." with that she kissed him with as much passion as she could.
peanut was in complete shock for a few seconds before slowly kissing back.
As grape pulled away she saw that peanut had gone from bursting with happiness to floating on cloud nine. he walked away with a look of pure bliss on his face, grape laughed a little bit at the sight before she lied down for a good nights rest.
peanut walked to the second floor of the building they had taken for themselves, he kept awake by thinking of whatever he could, but like always his thoughts drifted to the fate of his friends, him and grape were the last of their group.
he remembered when they had gotten together, the group had been made of bino, sasha, fido, king and fox as well as him and grape of course, slowly one by one the group fell.
bino and sasha had been the first, sasha had heard the sound of a baby crying and had taken bino with her to investigate it, they had not returned and when the rest of the group searched for them they found the blown apart wreckage of a baby stroller and the two bodies of their friends, peanut had never seen a dead body before and it had numbed him to the core but fido had managed to hold the group together, he was the glue keeping them a group, as such the real blow had been when fido himself had died, it had been in securing the very building that they currently sat and slept in, they had encountered a band of three raiders who wished nothing more than to kill the whole group of them, thanks to the training fido had received at the police academy he had been able to disable them all, he had even found a women he assumed to be a captive, unfortunately for him the women had been a fourth raider, and as he bent a knee to help her, she had begun to pull her gun out fido had only time to pull his gun out and pull the trigger before her round hit him in the heart. the good news was that fido's gun had fired as well, the bad news was that fido had died.
king and fox had busied themselves with making a proper grave for fido while grape and peanut scavenged what they could for a few dinners. they had indeed had a funeral for their leader and mourned the loss for quite sometime as was to be expected.
it had been a few weeks afterward that king and fox took off, king had insisted that he and fox were going to try to "reset the world", grape meanwhile had been quite insistent that king was insane, whatever the case had been, king and fox had both left with the goal of asking the demigods to fix the world while peanut and grape had been left to survive.
though peanut would never admit this he hoped that king and fox had succeeded, he hoped everytime he woke up that he would wake up in his room.
peanut looked at the horizon, he didn't think that the sun would rise that quickly.
It was quite the shock for him to see a very quick white line racing across the horizon at breakneck pace, he realized that they couldn't escape, it was simply too fast for escape to be possible, as far as he could see the world simply became stark white space when the line passed over it.
peanut walked down the stairs with some speed, he didn't intend to tell grape of it, after all, what could they do?
Peanut entered the room they slept in and softly called out
"Grape?"
Grape slowly yawned as she woke up and was curious of why he would wake her up
"could I...could I have one more kiss?" He asked.
Grape looked at him with confusion.
"It couldn't wait till morning?" She asked back.
"No, not really" he said with some apprehension in his voice.
"Alright then, come here" Grape wrapped her arms around his shoulders and leaned in, peanut lidded his eyes and leaned in too, and-
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXscene(time?)breakXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
-And peanut cheered as he pulled ahead in the race, his car in the game had pulled ahead of joey's and he had nearly secured his first place position.
Peanut faltered suddenly, he was completely sure that he had been doing something much more important then playing a game.
This lapse in concentration lead to joey speeding ahead across the finish line and winning.
Joeys voice came through the microphone
"hey peanut, you could have won right there but you stopped, did something happen?" joeys voice had the slightest hint of concern
"No no...nothing happened, hey joey I will play later ok?"
"yeah sure, see you peanut" peanut shut the console down and leaned back, he felt like he had completely forgotten something that was obvious, it felt like he had forgotten his own birthday but it was even worse.
Peanut sighed, he would try to remember it later, for now he might as well read.
after all...its not like the world ended or nothing.
