Void met opened eyes, Viscus staring out with the blankest of expressions. Gone was the fire in his eyes, cloudiness like ash taking place. In the midst of the deep dark floated a blue box, digital in nature, but hiding a hellish responsibility.
The blond's mind spoke no words, no feelings, no thoughts or pictures. Like a corpse, but the frequent if slow blinking broke the illusion. His hands spread wide open, no energy to even clench his own hands. He barely remembered how he returned to this place, but all he knew was that he was done. Viscus was tired.
The box's vividness decreased by time, hours passing and its edges vibrating, pixelating. The "Yes" button looked to be protruding out of the 2D screen, egging him to tap it, to give up whatever semblance of humanity was left in him. He knew what came next, a festival of blood and souls, all dancing in tune to a battle, a battle inevitable.
But even if it wasn't. Even if this world was one made of ones and zeroes, would he still strive? Would he fight regardless of the moral consequences? The blond's mind recalled his sessions, his experiences of playing games such as his life, where nothing held him back, where death was a norm. Souls were used to power himself and his weapons, merely upgrades and numbers yet made of life.
Virtual lives, a part of his mind corrected, and he shook his head, the sand blowing softly as his head rubbed against it. It was always there, a part of him that never gave up, a part that burned with a flame undying, a phoenix in a barren wasteland, a string that resisted all that could cut, his attachment to life itself.
Would Viscus listen to it? Would it be that his mind broke that he would even listen to such thoughts? Or would it be the nature of life speaking to him, instinct warring for survival. "Fight." It said, "Fight." It raised its voice. "Live." Softly, firmly.
But for who? For himself? Does his life equal that of many? He already took lives, a trade, but would it be disrespectful to give up now, to squander the lives of the bandits he murdered? Or would it be retribution.
"Viscus." A voice rumbled through the world, as if coming from everywhere at once. "Viscus." It repeated, becoming clearer, smaller, and more focused.
"Over here."
His head against all resistance moved, and his eyes landed on a shadowy figure, a humanoid figure made of black unlike that of the void, like a shadow instead of the vacuum of space. "Look at me."
The blond looked closer, his dilated eyes constricting, features becoming clearer, yet no less dark. Tattered clothes shook against the wind, a wind that Viscus never felt, not once, but briefly gave life to the world. "Awake now?"
Viscus closed his eyes, wishing the voice, the man away, to leave him be and let it end, but the man staunchly stood. He reopened his eyes, and the man had the audacity to even sit over one of the large pieces of rubble, crossing his arms and waiting patiently.
"Leave." Hoarsely, weakly, and nearly unhearable, he spoke, but the words echoed in the barren desert, and it was met with not a laugh or scoff, but a worried reply.
"But you need help." Truth, the shadowy man spoke, "And I'm not seeing anyone coming to help you, I can at least say that."
The previously flat palm wrinkled as the hand collapsed on itself, the hoarse voice gaining anger, "So What!" The words boomed like a shockwave, powerlessness replaced by frustration, "So what if no one helps me, what's that point?"
The figure sighed, and he pointed upward, brown eyes following, "Look at this." The box, now stable but it seemed to be more ghostly, more transparent. "Do you think this is your enemy?"
No reply came, and the figure asked again, "Do you really believe it wants to harm you?"
"Yes." A short yet strong reply, Viscus glared at the floating screen, "If it wanted what's best for me," He coughed, "It wouldn't have brought me here in the first place."
The man thought for a moment, "Okay, I think you have a point here, but let me ask another question." He cleared his throat, "Do you really want to let it end like that?"
Viscus relaxed his hand and closed his eyes, "No.. I really don't, but what else can I do?"
"Live. Fight. Survive." Each word was spoken with pressure, "These people you are rolling over and letting them cage you, those don't deserve an ounce of respect, not even a single thought."
"What about their souls? Their lives?" Viscus cleared his hoarse throat, but it still came out nowhere better than before.
"Nothing. That isn't your responsibility, that's theirs." He scratched his head, "Like, you didn't tell them to pick a life of crime and murder, did you? And you didn't pick to come here, so I'd honestly say you are the victim here, the underdog."
Viscus shook his head, his muscles creaking, "But.."
"But nothing, you need to live. And by living, you will be doing good. Remember your mission? The reason you were brought here?"
"..To end the war?" The words were spoken with uncertainty, as if forgotten and barely remembered.
"Yes, and can you imagine what that would do? Thousands, if not millions of people will survive, and how can you do that?" The man's words gained heat.
"By.. fighting?"
"Yes!" The shadowy figure stood up, "By fighting, by living, by surviving and ending it all! No more war between two immortal beings, no more death due to a game of chess unending, and all of that can end by your hands."
"But why fight for the system?" Viscus spoke with powerlessness in his voice, and the man shook his head.
"Not for the system, but yourself." He stepped down off the rubble and began walking toward the blond, "You are more important than them. Never forget that."
"But why are you saying that? Why are you putting more importance on me than them?" Confused, Viscus stared into the black holes in place of eyes, feeling comfort rather than unease.
"Because I know you, and I don't know them. Give me the trolley problem with you on one side and them on the other, and I'll choose to save you every time." Passion leaked from his voice, "And you should too."
No more words were spoken between them as he approached Viscus, and he stood directly above him, his head on one side and the floating box on the other. "Press yes, and live."
Viscus didn't move.
"Press yes, and fight for no one but yourself."
Viscus shut his eyes.
"Press yes, and remember how people treated you here. Robbed you of all you own, threatened you in a place of weakness, and nearly killed you because you were just.. Here."
The figure's hand stretched forward toward Viscus, and just above his chest. "I promise you, this world isn't worth agonizing over. Take my hand."
Viscus's arm shook, trembling up and down hesitantly.
"I want you to live, man, all those you know back home, and you are just throwing them away for some dumb bandits you killed a while ago? Really?" The man snapped and Viscus shook, surprised by the sudden change in attitude. "Please, just please, don't just roll over and die for some thugs' lives. Live, for me, for your family, for yourself! Come on!"
Taking deep breaths, Viscus began to raise his hand, this time trembling more due to the heaviness. "Put more strength to it, don't let them hold you back!"
Ghostly arms appeared from the ground and held Viscus back. The grips that always made it harder to do anything. His body creaked, and he groaned as he resisted the pull, resisted the idea of giving up, resisted letting go and letting them win, and he inched closer to the outstretched hand, to the hand that promised him support, the one that reminded him why he should fight.
And he took it.
The hand felt soft and warm, and it directed his own toward the box, assisting him to the button he was so averse to. "Easy does it, you can do it." Slowly, softly, his finger came closer to the screen, to the words, but stopped at the final moment.
"At the end of the day, I'm not here to force you to do anything. Will you fight? Or will you not?" The man stared Viscus in the eye, and the blond didn't respond.
Instead, he weakly shook his hand out of the shadowy man's, and with a goal, with a newfound desire. His own hand, without the support of the man's, without the shackles of the past, reached up and out.
And tapped the button.
"That's my man. Don't forget, I'll always be here for you. Not like I have anywhere else I need to be." He chuckled as his body began disappearing, tearing like pieces of fabric to the vastness of the void, but with a smile on his face. "I won't be gone, so stay strong, and what will you do?"
Viscus pushed his hands on the ground, strength filling his entire body, "I will fight, and survive this blasted world." A green glow surrounded him, and the flame in his heart reignited, and it reflected in his eyes.
"That you will. I'll see you later." The man grinned as his head was the final part to disappear, and Viscus spotted a familiar creature standing behind him. The Jackalope.
His right arm flared, prepared for the inevitable bite, the dreaded chomp, and he grimaced. The blond won't let it do it, he would fight it, and it would respond in kind. With one leap it entered within arm's reach, and he reciprocated with a haymaker to its wide maw.
Its cheeks nearly tore from the blow, and the Grimm flew to the left, smashing into one of the larger pieces of debris. Viscus shook his arm from the recoil and stared at it resolutely, and began approaching it rather than waiting.
It stood up as if untouched and ran at the blond with renewed madness. Its glowing red eyes broadcasted nothing but bloodthirst, and Viscus was its victim. It jumped up rather than forward, aiming to crush him with its limbs rather than through eating, but Viscus met it head on.
His arms were raised up and blocking the mass of the Grimm, and he groaned yet never gave up. He pushed it away and it was sent flying once more, this time unbalanced and falling back first. It dropped into the sand and a loud crack sounded as Viscus jumped on top of it and punched with all his might toward the bony mask, forming a fissure where his hand met it. It rolled over and he jumped back, its eyes glowing with even more hatred than before.
It rushed him with its horns, and Viscus widely dodged to one side, barely avoiding the stab, but it circled in for another try. Again, Viscus dodged, but this time grasping on the horns and being taken for a ride. He found himself on the Jackalope's back, and he began hammering on its head.
Whatever its skull was made of, it cracked loudly with each blow, each time preventing it from making any move, until an idea came to his head. He tried attacking one side of the horns with a knife strike, painfully breaking off the horns on one side. He hurriedly slid off the creature as it flipped back and he scrambled toward the fallen horns, then he waited for it to get up.
Enraged, it dashed to him with the intent to barrel him over, but Viscus took a sturdy stance and held the horns in front of him, and it was too late for the creature to take any evasive actions, its own horns scraping off its skull until one of branches found a hold inside the creature's eye cavity, causing it to roar in pain.
This action, however, had Viscus flying backward as he took the full brunt of the headbutt, dust scraping against his body yet his Aura protected him. He rolled up and eyed the roaring creature of the dark, and took the opportunity to approach it slowly, making sure he wouldn't get hit by its flailing head and the broken horns.
Once he was in range, he pulled the horns out and dark ichor flowed out of the cavity, its mouth wide and about to bite. However, he used the horns once more to pierce, this time from the large opening it gave him. The horns were large, and nearly too large to fit through its mouth, but the smaller branches were able to stab right from the inside, and he lifted the Grimm up with a blue outline shining off him.
The creature croaked, dangling up in the air like a head on a pike, ichor dripping onto the blond and the sand below. Viscus grunted and crouched, the blue shine mixing with the lime green Aura even more obviously, with the golden sand taking on a different,darker hue.
Then, he jumped. The horns dug deeper into the monster, piercing where its brain would have sat, and even finding an out from the other side of the skull, from the weak points that came to be from his attacks.
Finally, it disappeared, the creature disappearing into the mist, the ichor evaporating off the blond and the ground, the taint gone. Huffing, Viscus found himself falling to the ground, this time of his own volition. Gone is the creature, his arm unharmed and the System..
The system had to stay if he was to keep going.
He defeated the Jackalope, but his fight wouldn't end just with that, no. He still had to deal with the world outside, but this time his mind wouldn't falter. He knew what he had to do, and he wouldn't hesitate doing it.
Viscus had enough.
-CEM-
A loud hum was the first thing Viscus heard as he woke up, then chatter from his left. His eyes blinked, and his mind recalled how he came to be. He was in a van, taken out of the dingy prison to go to the unknown place where they moved all their prisoners. Next to and in front of him were 3 other prisoners, their blue bands taken off just before entering the vehicle.
He tried moving his hands but found them ziptied, and he remembered why he was unconscious. Viscus felt a bounding pain from his head, but it was thankfully easing off due to his Aura. Unlike him, the men around held downtrodden faces, their eyes reflecting a certain look that he was too familiar with.
Given the rumbling of the van, he assumed they were on the move, but he couldn't see anything from where he sat, no windows meant nothing to see, but his ears picked up on the sound of other vehicles, especially the ones that kept their hands on the car horn.
'A traffic jam?' He thought, and he realized the opportunity. Without hesitation, he pulled his hands apart and the zipties snapped with ease, alerting the Blues. Viscus put his finger in front of his mouth, shushing the men out of any exclamation.
More likely than not, the door was locked, so in order to exit the van, either he could smash it open, or..
His vision landed on the barrier between him and the driver seat, and an idea popped in his head. The blond took deep breaths, then did something that no normal human could do. Balling his fist, he rocketed it toward the driver side, and his hand blasted through the metal barrier with nary a resistance, a loud creak, smash, and window break followed.
Viscus spotted the driver slumping after the hit, the backrest meeting an unfortunate end, along with his companion yelling his name and scrambling to pull out his gun. The blond cared not for his response, and tore through the remaining metal to grasp the thug's head from the back and slam it into the glove compartment, his nose crunching and the plastic crumbling. The car horn was blaring as there was a head laying on it, but Viscus resolutely ignored that and looked for the unlocking button, one that he found very quickly.
The door was unlocked, and all that remained were the two unconscious thugs, and the three captured Blues, the Blues that were staring at him with gaping mouths and wide eyes. He frowned but decided to help them out the vehicle, though leaving their zipties in fear of any unwanted reaction.
Any hesitation in his mind was countered with "Live. Fight. Survive.", words that he would never forget, for himself, and for his family. He won't become nobody's slave or prisoner in this world, and he would fight for it.
As the van's door slid open, Viscus exited the vehicle first, spotting people looking at the vehicle with curiosity or knowing eyes. Rather than focus on them, he walked over to the front door from the right, opening the vehicle and seeing a slumped man with a bleeding nose, and the unconscious driver behind him. Viscus grimaced, but followed through with his instinct. The men had weapons, and he needed them if he wanted to survive.
He quickly found the gun halfway through the man's pocket, two guns in total from both men, and their wallets with only around 200 lien in total. He shook his head and left the van to its fate, a desire to kill them for XP in his head, but the attraction it would bring dissuaded him from it.
A multitude of prompts filled the left side of his eye, but he opted to leave them for when he could actually look at them in peace, and instead focused on the minimap. Even when the system nearly abandoned him, it still covered the streets that the van passed through, so he would be able to rely on it to go back to his jeep. It was still night time, so he needed somewhere to rest.
The Blues men had already fled the scene, and there was nothing else in this area that he needed. His fists shook as he walked away, knowing that what he did wasn't right, but that was what he had to do. He needed to avoid hesitation, to become strong.
His mind warred itself as he mindlessly walked back to the jeep, feeling a bit of a breeze on his top reminded him that they stole his shirt. A shirt! It was barely worth any lien, yet they took it from him.
He ground his teeth as anger rose up within him, demanding in vain why had he not took the now unconscious thugs' lives. The experience points were there, waiting for him, but he had to persevere. "Not now, later." He whispered to himself, and decided to quickly go buy himself a shirt before moving on.
A couple minutes later he was out of the shop with a black shirt, and nearly half an hour later did he walk back to where he parked the jeep. Only to find a very clear lack of said vehicle, where even the dust had yet to claim where it once stood. He blinked, and then he chuckled hollowly. Vacuo yet takes more from him, it seemed.
Just to satisfy his curiosity, he walked into a shop that was facing where he parked, a laundromat. He weaved through the old ladies and stepped to the cashier, a girl minding her business while staring at her scroll. A bubble of gum popped every couple of seconds, her gaze lazy as she glanced at him.
"Need somethin'?" She drawled, playing with her scroll.
"Wasn't there a jeep just outside?" He pointed with his thumb, and she raised her brow.
"A jeep.." She closed her eyes then opened them with recognition, "Oh, yeah, that. It gone now."
"...I can see that.." He coughed, "Any idea how 'it gone now'?"
"Well," The gum popped, "Some guys came and disassembled it. Typical stuff really, you shouldn't have parked it in the middle of the road." The words froze the blond, who began spluttering.
"W-wait, disassembled!?" He was flabbergasted, and she nodded, not even bothering to look at him.
"Yup, came in with their screwdrivers and stuff," she tapped strongly against the scroll before clicking her tongue, "It was out of the streets in an hour."
Viscus stood silently, though the air around him wooshed as his head swiveled toward the window and back at her in a daze. "An.. hour.." He couldn't believe it, "With screwdrivers, you say?"
It seemed that she got bored of him and didn't bother to reply, so he thanked her with a monotonous voice and walked out of the laundromat with a blank expression, like a zombie. "In an hour.. With screwdrivers.." He stood outside for a few minutes, then came back to the land of the living.
"W-well.." He shook his head and felt a bit cold from the breeze, "I still have to find somewhere to stay."
Embarrassedly, he walked back into the store and inquired on a place to stay. She lazily gave him the info and he was soon moving toward a nearby cheap hotel. The lien he got would be of use, after all, but he didn't know how long it would last.
Regardless, as the moon shone between the buildings and softly onto him, his mind only desired two things. A shower, and a fluffy bed to rest on.
And he would get them, no matter the cost.
