In another time, in another future, on another Earth, like many other stories would begin, there was an experiment. An experiment that would cause the smallest repercussions in the world it was in, and would soon cause even greater ones in the worlds beyond. On some other Earth, in a year unmarked within the 21st century, mankind finally reached its limit, and initiated the nuclear apocalypse. The Human Holocaust. But not all of humanity had been wiped out within its own rage and violence. Life would always spring anew.
For whatever reason, the remains of man would survive and rebuild. And yet, where mankind saw a chance to rebuild, one unknown group saw a chance to resculpt. 2102 AD/CE, the year of the Circe Project. An experimental process, shrouded in mystery to almost religious levels of faith, as the day the world became occupied with anthropomorphic creatures. Every creature imaginable that wasn't a bird, rodent or fish, was born anew to spread across the world. Even some ancient creatures had been reborn, bizarrely so.
But of course, wars would happen. Tribes would be formed, cities would be rebuilt as a new racial conflict emerged. Whereas man had finally managed to embrace their own species, they would find themselves conflicted towards every other. Some were loved, others reviled, nations reformed from the old world's history and technology was regathered to create a new era, a schizophrenic technological realm that was both old and new.
But all this is just backstory for the main course of this chronicle. The experiment. The experiment that would change worlds in the smallest of ways, worlds that most of his time would never even know of or imagine, as far as he knew at least. This experiment was known as James Campbell.
A young anthro velociraptor, 22 years old, hurrying through the streets of Chicago, in the year 3513 AD/CE of his world. Brown scaled skin covered only by jeans, green fierce eyes upon a snout that sneered with rage and frustration. His body was only blemished by the strange purple horizontal marks, two on the nose, and the rest down his back to his tail. Despite his attempts to run, he was caught by his assailants, members of a paramilitary organisation known as the Advanced Research Military Enterprises. Chicago residents knew when you said "the A.R.M.E" that trouble was afoot.
He was captured for reasons unknown, and experimented for even less. A project he knew not the name of, beneath two humans he had never seen before. A tall blonde short-haired general of utmost perfection and a green suit, and a wiry trembling anxious scientist with long brown hair. Both of them looked down upon James Campbell, after a lengthly agonising operation that involved refitting his entire body with a whole new set of veins, built to carry nanobots throughout his entire system. Even his brain wasn't the same anymore with a CPU emulator now straddling both hemispheres.
A perfect fighting machine, was the idea. A military masterpiece capable of creating any weapon, and any ammunition required, from its bare hands by the power of nanos. With millions of little machines able to construct something with the right schematic and energy process, there would never be need for one single soldier again, a literal walking armoury full on its own, complete with geosynchronous teleportational abilities for the most brutal of guerilla tactics. But like all wild schemes, something was bound to go wrong.
And here was the point where things went wrong.
With one flick of a switch, they had overlooked a crucial flaw in the experimental plan. The wires connecting to the raptor's head, plugged into his brain, were not linked up to the military computer that held every single blueprint and schematic of every weapon currently available. Instead, it was linked up to a nearby computer, a colourful little emulator that laid tucked into the corner of the neuroscientist's lab.
The scientist regretted the fact he was sleep-deprived by staying up all night, thereby causing the wire mixup. The general regretted the fact that his top scientist was a fanatical gamer. To the point of having an entire computer full of them from far back in the old world of humanity. James Campbell's mind exploded into a galaxy of pixels, none of which he understood or recognised. Madness that grew from bit to bit, strange blue blurs and rusted monsters wielding blades of judgement.
Naturally it was all a blur for young James the moment he found some wild psychotic strength from whatever the nanos gave him, not that he ever knew there were any inside of him. The scientists he slaughtered on the way out of a 30-story window didn't have time to tell him. His last week on his Earth, was to be spent with Sarah King, an anthro dolphin bartender who had adopted him unofficially back when James was 14. She wasn't the best mother, considering she was the leader of a shadow criminal organisation known as The Fishnet in Chicago, operating out of a bar in Canaryville.
But he loved her dearly, and she loved him in turn like a son, even in her old age somewhere around her mid-40s. She knew that James was now a fugitive, and did everything she could to hide him away from the A.R.M.E now hunting down for him. They didn't want to lose their chance to offer the next big contract to get in good with the US Army...no matter what the cost. Yet despite everything Sarah could do, even as the leader of an organisation that not even the Chicago Police knew of, James was soon found.
He hid himself in a room, forced away by his foster mother as she made what he felt was her last stand. The secret room she had made for hiding fugitives worked like a charm. But when James heard gunshots and screams from both intruders and protector, before the rushing of feet and horrendous beatings, he feared the worst.
All he knew then, was that he was trapped in this room, with the Army ruining his life slowly and coming ever closer to break him into little pieces of experiment. James sat with his head in his knees weeping, clutching the few pieces of his childhood, or rather his attempt to build one in his later years, within his hands as his strange new mind went on its own little railways of thought, thinking about the little toys he held, small models of dragons and space pirates. Maybe it was trying to comfort him, despite mentally telling himself to stop fucking around and let him cry. But it refused to do so as it kept going on linking the pictures together, connecting dots up with words he didn't recognise but chose to ignore. He began to wish he wasn't here.
James wished to be somewhere else, far far away. He knew it never worked, not even on those films about true lives of domestic abuse that somehow you want to watch to feel better about yourself, and yet for him he tried, he was desperate for anything, he begged for something good to happen in his life, he needed this, he almost prayed with all of his heart.
It started as a tingling in his body, which he thought was him shaking with grief. But it felt...not so much muscular but rather...electrical. Like little pinpricks of sparks riding up his arms, not painful but just...tingling. His eyes dried a little as he was distracted by the light that was starting to appear.
A calm blue light that seemed to beseech to James to come towards it, almost heavenly, accompanied by a strange cool wind around his body like an invisible snake, solid and soothing, covering him within aerial coils as a rushing sound came, a sense of displacement following afterwards as the light turned brighter and brighter, soon reaching his eyes and daring to fill them with its unnatural essence as he saw nothing but light, the tingling turning more stronger as he felt his body was being pulled into a powerful darkness that suddenly swallowed the light.
THE CHRONICLES OF FINALGAMER
A Metroid On The Brain Is Worth Two In The Tube
"Metroids are NOT pets."
Space Pirate log, Metroid Prime
A planet can only endure so much extra-terrestrial disturbance, that it will eventually suffer and deteriorate from its unexpected visitors. One particular planet would suffer more than most others would as a result of this. Two ships were on their way, one chasing the other on a mission. A bounty mission, one of pride and resolution at any cost. But on the other side of the planet, something else appeared. A swirling light beckoning from another dimension began to open unto the planet, depositing a passenger unconscious upon soft plant-ridden ground.
To the velociraptor, sleep had not been nice to him. It felt like a forced cold sleep, a clinical necessity against his will. He had no idea why he had slept during his hiding from the Armee invading his home, but now he had found himself temporarily distracted by the strange world before him.
He opened his eyes to find himself underground, though he only knew this by the rocky ceiling above him. The floor underneath him did not help matters, hard like stone yet covered in spongy moss, a carved out room with nothing but a single statue and a creature near it.
A monkey-like body with a triangular head, ears like a rabbit and ending in a pointed white snout. It was coloured like green and white rhubarb. Hoping it wasn't hostile, James spoke gently to the little creature.
"Hello?"
It leapt back behind the statue in hesitation like a squirrel.
"No, wait, please! It's okay, I won't hurt you. I just...don't know where I am."
As if it understood this honest admittance, the creature crawled from the shadow of the statue with two others of its species, gently hopping towards him like rabbits. He made no attempt to move in case he frightened them, splayed out on his belly, the stone underneath him cool and refreshing.
"Where am I?"
He asked the creatures, hoping they could reply. They couldn't say anything and instead they began to look him over curiously, sniffing at his jeans, his bare scaled chest, a braver one attempting to sniff his snout to which the raptor stayed still for as it started to lick off the makeup revealing his purple snout marks before shaking its head and shuddering at the bad taste.
As soon as they were done investigating him, he moved gently up into a sitting position, wiping his snout clean of makeup and getting a better look of the place. He didn't know any place that had rooms like this. Making sure he wasn't hurt at all, he stood up and felt the ground firmly on his bare feet, claws gently scraping the rock sharply, the statue before him in a sitting stance, knees up, bird-like and bronze. This was definitely not anything by the Army.
Looking at the small creatures, he waved carefully to them as a matter of thanks, and walked down one way. The creatures he had met just now looked nothing like any creature he knew back home. Even the wind that breezed through the caves felt strange, different somehow. He was starting to doubt if he was even on Earth, but he thought not to jump to conclusions until he encountered more life, if any others were around. Eventually after a small walk, he encountered a door.
A strange looking door that looked like a sky-blue shield. Not wanting to risk being electrocuted by its shield, he searched around for a rock nearby to pick up and throw at it. It bounced harmlessly off the door, which replied by opening with a "Vwwwoooop" sound. He ran through the door before it closed to find himself in another area of the cave that led upwards.
Maybe I can find a way outside, pondered James. That might give me a good idea on where the hell I am.
He also noticed more creatures around the shaft. One was a large flying beetle that merely flew back and forth from rock to rock. Another was some sort of heavily spiked crab that crawled around a rock with unending balance, even managing to scrabble upside down. Avoiding these two, the raptor climbed upwards with agile leaps, kicking off of the cave walls to either land or hang onto stone platforms jutting from the walls. Soon he reached the ceiling, and another passage.
His inherent raptor-like agility that he honed on the streets to alleviate boredom was useful in exploring new areas or escaping from enemies. However the walls were less smooth than the city ones which made climbing a little difficult, so he occasionally played safer and just climbed with all four limbs. Taking his time, the raptor continued along his way to the surface when he met another creature, one that was visibly hostile. A bat-like insectoid, nested on the ceiling. As soon as James passed underneath, it shrieked and tried to dive towards him.
The raptor was too fast to be hit, but only just avoided its pincer-like wings due to not being prepared for it. What he didn't expect was for it to blow up before him, smacking him with a hard piece of chitoned flesh that bruised his muzzle hard. Running from its carcass, he avoided two more of the bats with better luck as he found another blue door. Seeing as the last one didn't zap the rock, he decided to gingerly tap this one. Nothing seemed to happen. He punched the door instead and then it opened for him.
"Now what's wrong with just a door handle or something?"
He asked this to nobody as he walked through and felt the outside air embrace him. He felt relieved to taste it, as if he had been underground for a year or so. But then again, he had no idea of how long he had slept. Hoping to meet someone to talk to about this place, he kept walking.
Rain poured from above, the sky grey and cloud-ridden with thunder and lightning striking in the distance. A volatile place with weather like this made him think where he could possibly be. It was too alive a place to be Tornado Alley in the USA. Maybe he was in Europe? He had never visited the continent itself, maybe he was just clueless on the plants that grew there. As he pondered on these ideas, he saw a large rocky mountain before him. Seeing as he had no reason not to climb it and see the other side, the raptor began his ascent.
He managed to keep himself gripped to the rock face and eventually reach the top, feeling...free. He felt like an explorer in a whole new world, his mind going off a tangent and thinking of any explorers who must have felt the same as him now. Not that he knew any others at all as he went and climbed down the mountain, scaling the rocks easily with his claws.
The only thing of interest to the raptor was a large yellow spaceship, a bulky looking beast but a sign of intelligence. At last someone to ask about where he was! He wanted to head straight for it, but then considered the fact of whether the intelligence was kind or cruel. Should he risk finding out where he was at the risk of getting lasered, or keep himself safe and wander cluelessly across the land? He thought the latter would work more as he would still be wandering cluelessly across the land even if he knew where he was.
Heading back the way he came, he noticed a hole in the wall on the other side of the cavern he had climbed, as if it had been blown apart by a small bomb.
"Was that there before?"
His curiosity was intrigued when he saw the same radiant blue of the doors from before, as he jumped across the gap and headed through the hole to find an easy-going sloped pathway. It was full of large pink mushrooms and more crawling spiked bugs, with the occasional flying insect that reminded him of a tiny space fighter, wings like solid stone unmoving in its gliding up and down to go back and forth. Avoiding all of them as best he could despite a few whacks across the head, he headed through another door to find something less natural.
A winding downward stone path made out of several ledges, carved out of the stone itself, as if he was in a temple of some sort. The stones felt oddly not that cold to the touch, and little dust was around. Either creatures were quite active here, or something else. He carefully went down each ledge, down to the bottom where he found two doors on either side of him.
"Now which way to go?"
He opened each door to have a curious look at either. One was similar to the sloping path he had just navigated, and still rubbing the bump on his head from that, he decided to try the other one which was more like a laboratory entrance, a metallic hallway of several red lights leading to another door.
"...yeah let's go with this one."
He ran towards the other end quick as he could. What he found on the other side disturbed him.
Within a natural cavern, sitting in a large puddle, was a golden statue of four horrifying beasts melded into one abomination. Each one of them glowed a different colour from their eye sockets. One looked like a fat lizard with spikes from its belly, another some sort of toothy squid, with a third looking like a vicious scaly seahorse with its snout replaced by a snarling crescent jaw. The last one was some sort of skeletal dragon mounted on top of them all.
"Wh...what the fuck is this? Some kinda ancient god?"
They looked horrifying to him, nightmarish even, and he decided to leave as quickly as possible to not suffer any mental effects it might exhude. Hurrying back to the other door, he navigated along the natural path, between mushrooms and avoiding more spiky bugs, noticing some oddly pulsing globs of tiny crawling things inside them that didn't seem to bother him so he left alone. He reached a dead end soon after, nothing but pipes running across the room and a single glowing pad in the middle of the room, above a hole.
Curious, the raptor stepped onto the pad with both feet and waited, doing so for only a few seconds when the pad moved down the hole, surprising him as the hole turned less rocky and more full of plants and vines twisting through the rock. Soon, he was in a completely different area, a place very different from the caverns above. It didn't feel like a cave here, it was a thriving paradise of pure green everywhere he looked, flowers and creatures blooming and flitting about, strange chirrups filling the air with rustling and water trickling, it was like an underground rainforest.
"Woah...how does this even work?"
Wishing he'd learnt how plants work all of a sudden, he stepped off of the elevator pad and climbing downwards investigate the various doors. A few of them were of a pink colour and tapping or hitting them didn't work.
"Must be a higher security level I guess."
Clambering ever downwards, he saw one door open up and a flash of someone just entering it, something orange at the bottom of the shaft. Following immediately, he found a much different area. A pinkish tunnel of plants, the air full of spores lazily floating from the various flowers which he hoped weren't poisonous.
But he was more worried of what was standing before him. A living being. Similar height to himself, probably human, lean and looking mean in a metallic red and yellow suit. Some sort of space age knight in shining armour, a red helmet with a glowing green visor staring at the raptor, piercing into his mind. The left arm was in a finely fingered gauntlet as part of the suit, while the other had a large green cannon-like appendage at the end of it. The raptor gently asked:
"Um...hello?"
An immediate aim of the cannon towards his face made him tense up and raise his arms in the surrender position.
"WAI-WAI-WAIT, I just wanna know where I am okay!? See I kinda...well, fell asleep and woke up here for some reason, I've no idea where I am...can you help me at all?" The suited one kept the cannon aimed at him, but a few seconds later after identifying no threat from him, let the arm drop. "Thank you...all I ask is where I am, seriously...any way you can help me on that?"
It did not speak but merely beckoned a finger closer, the raptor doing so out of trust on the grounds he hadn't received a face full of laser yet. As there was about to be an explanation, something rustled nearby in the bushes. The arm cannon aimed at the direction of the noise, and was rewarded with an ambush of strange reptilian insectoid creatures, who aimed their weapons at both of them.
Feeling endangered and siding with the human by an instinct of trust, he watched the metallic warrior dodge blasts with tremendous acrobatic agility, strafing and blasting the arm cannon with rapid fire shots. Sometimes there was the occasional charged shot, a growing golden sphere of energy that slammed into the ambushers before dispersing. Not making himself too distracted, he kept an eye out for any of them who tried to catch him or the human off-guard, seeing one of them try to sneak up behind the human.
He launched himself forwards and made a flying kick to its face, a shuddering grunt rewarding him as he pummelled into the enemy's snout, raining clawed fists upon it. Making sure it wouldn't get up again, he turned around just in time to see the human escape through a door nearby.
He had been left completely alone with several bodies scorched by energy blasts, as well as the one he had just beaten to either unconsciousness or death.
"Oh...well don't bother picking me up then, for fuck's sake!"
He got up and went over to the other enemies the human had dealt with, not quite sure what to make of the strange person who seemed to be in a real hurry to be somewhere else. On closer investigation of the enemies' faces, he noted they were quite reptilian with insect-like anatomy. They had bladed arms of a praying mantis, yet the faces were reptilian certainly.
"Maybe he didn't like reptiles? Huh, racist are ya?! WELL SORRY I'M NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO EVEN FIGHT ALONGSIDE YA, FUCKING HUMAN!"
He felt rather insulted to not even get one reply from it, as he sat down on the ground confused and dejected, not paying attention to the creature he had beaten up in a panicked frenzy, who quietly fiddled with his equipment and sent out a distress signal.
"I mean it's not much to ask is it? 'hey thanks for stopping that guy from slicing my spine open, I owe ya one.' I know I'm a stranger but you can't be THAT suspicious, no matter who you are. I mean really, didn't even give me the time of day, tell me where I was...well at least a human means some civilisation.
"...maybe this IS Earth, like one of those apocalyptic movies full of Australian bikers, or those comics where you can't even have a cake without it being illegal...oh God I don't wanna be in some mutant outskirts of that kind of world, I gotta get ou-GAH!"
He was cut abruptly short in mid-sentence as he was knocked in the back of the head hard, hearing someone murmur in an alien language before fully passing out.