Good evening, my readers! I think it's been a full month since i last uploaded and that was because i had to write an essay. I will also have exams this month, so don't count on other uploads this month.
Anyway, i also fixed a continuity error along the way (imagine my embarrassment on that, but at least no one else noticed it) and adjusted stuff in chapter 2 because why not.
Now we can go to the chapter, it's not very long (it's a prequel chapter, duh), but i hope it entertains you all enough!
It was indeed a terrible day in D City, with destroyed roads proving to be very hazardous to people and vehicles alike and columns of black smoke ominously rising in the air. The weather didn't mirror the destruction happening on the land one bit. The clear blue sky was as calm as ever and there were also solitary white clouds drifting peacefully.
Meanwhile the newborn Hero Association was fighting tooth and nail with most of its heroes aganist hordes of monsters. But these weren't normal monsters in the slightest.
They were human-sized pitch black oozes which could take hits rather well and grow nimble tentacles durable enough to cleave stone.
The heroes found out about their enemies' strength a bit too late, when they couldn't run away anymore, but at least they weren't alone. The magnitude of the monster attack caused the federal army to intervene with all of their might.
One could hear, every few minutes, the roaring of heavy artillery and the explosions of incendiary rounds, whether had they found their intended targets or not. Those weren't the only noises one could hear, for the planes' engines were quite noisy too, lowering their metal bodies to launch a few well-placed missiles into the monstrous black hordes.
Those weren't the only weapons the army brought to the table, for they sent heavily-armored tanks and groups of soldiers too, in order to kill the monsters that both the artillery and the planes couldn't.
Despite the grim images of lifeless corpses of heroes and soldiers alike, if someone looked at this fight with optimism, one could see that the humans were indeed winning, albeit slowly. The monsters' numbers were dwindling and, despite their strength, these blobs were certainly lacking higher forms of intelligence.
However, none of them knew of the blobs' master. That dreadful monster was in fact viewing the entire battle under the safety of the city's sewers. The being had many ways to watch the mayhem going on the surface, either through the blobs on the battlefield (alive or otherwise) or the tiny patches of black sludge preemptively splatted on the buildings' walls in the night before.
'Hmm, these humans have quite the advanced armaments, but what interests me more are these heroes. Their biology is quite interesting, but the ones i've fought seemed to be too weak anyway...' the monster thought as he looked down to his makeshift throne, made exclusively of the dead corpses of the heroes and the soldiers who went to find the source of the uncommon monsters. The broken remains of the tanks brought by the soldiers littered the surrounding area and were attached to compounds of inky-black webs. Those weren't stimulating the monster's interest in the slightest.
'I care only for biological data, machines are completely useless to me, but i suppose I could use them to make training dummies' the monster thought as he became bored and then decided to return watching the battle unfold.
That monster's name was none other than Petrolic Wraith, eerily spider-like in shape yet completely human in intelligence.
Through the telepathic link he had with his creations the spider first took a look at the western side of D City through one of his blobs. The horde was cleaving through the human soldiers and their tanks so easily Petrolic Wraith was getting beyond bored, but before he could channel his will to something else, something peculiar happened.
A lone human, armed just with a bat, rushed through the horde, swinging the aluminum weapon wildly. Petrolic Wraith had never seen this human and expected him to just be cut apart by the blobs' tentacles.
But instead of that, the boy kept going strong, as if each strike of the tentacles empowered his swings. The bat, however, wasn't as strong and soon broke down.
This caused the young boy to momentarily stop and grab another one from his red jacket.
With a new weapon in hand, he continued his onslaught and, after mere minutes, the last blob was broken down into black goop.
'So there are humans this strong among the heroes...I wonder if they can be found elsewhere too?' Petrolic Wraith mused as he scratched the lower side of his head with a newly-grown hand, his interest now piqued 'I'll have to see if there are others like him on the battlefield'
And so the spider-like monster channeled his will into various places of D City in a fast succession and eventually found another one of those abnormal humans.
It was a man close to his mid-twenties and his skin covered in...tan oil?...yes, Petrolic Wraith saw right and didn't know exactly why would someone apply so much of that substance...
'Maybe the shine his body gives off is used to intimidate his opponents?' Petrolic Wraith thought, trying to make a sense of what he was seeing, but then shook his head. That wasn't the most important characteristic of that man.
Petrolic Wraith had analized the bodies of dozens of humans, yet this man's muscles were on another level entirely. Their size was abnormal enough, but the trait that really surprised the monster was how dense they were.
In order to give a better idea of what Petrolic Wraith was talking about, if he compressed the muscles of all his human AND monster test subjects he accumulated over the years, he still wouldn't even come close to a fourth of those muscles' level of density.
Speaking of which, that man was cleaving through the hordes like nothing: his punches destroyed the blobs with their wind-pressure alone, not to mention that he could destroy them faster just by running through them.
'Those humans are really something, I wonder what gives them that power: a special genepool, an extensive training regimen or perhaps sentience?' Petrolic Wraith mused before shaking his head yet again 'Now i regret that i don't have a computer at hand, or i would have checked the Hero Association's web page by now' Petrolic Wraith thought as he felt like he saw enough of that carnage and channeled his will into other parts of town and eventually stopped to look at a particular alley.
"What are those two up to now?" the spider-like monster said aloud as he got off his makeshift throne and scurried into a narrow pipe.
"To interrupt me now of all times with their escapades...they're going to get an extreme earful!" Petrolic Wraith said angrily as he made his way to the surface.
X X X
In the narrow alleys of D City, between the buildings and where the sound of battle was but an ominous echo, two monsters were attempting to escape.
The first one was a small, humanoid monster with one large, black reptilian eye and dark reddish skin. His name was Monoculor.
The second one was a small, snake-like monster with a dragon's head, one black reptilian eye and two small wings; his body was completely black in color and slippery to the touch. His name was Belphomet.
These two monsters are brothers, Monoculor being the smarter one while Belphomet being the more creative one.
Currently, they were trying to get out of D City and into a better life, but Belphomet was having second thoughts.
"Brother, do you think this is safe? Last time we tried to escape, Meka was really worried" the black snake spoke with concern and some fear. Monoculor looked back at him and said "but brother, don't you think he's far too strict with us? We can never leave his sight and we always have to do those pointless experiments! I know the outside is dangerous, but at least we can be ourselves without having to be part 'of something greater' as he says!"
With that, Monoculor was officially out of breath and the two stopped, leaning on a wall. The two monsters jumped in fear as they heard a particularly loud explosion in the vicinity, but the silence that followed managed to calm them down.
Belphomet recovered his breath first, but still took some time to continue the conversation.
"Look, brother" Belphomet said "I want to live on the surface just as much as you do, but we gotta stop sometimes and make plans. No offense, your plans are really good, but Meka is way smarter than us and he will soon-"
"Catch up with you?" Petrolic Wraith's voice finished the sentence and Belphomet jumped away from his spot. There, just were he was standing a second ago, black ooze leaked out slowly from a crack on the concrete, ominously solidifying into the spider-like shape of Petrolic Wraith.
Both monsters froze as his white reptilian pupil burned holes in their heads.
'God, now he looks ANGRY! it's worse than that one time we interrupted his analysis on that meteorite!' Monoculor thought in terror.
'Meka never gave us a beating when we misbehaved, but now he might do just that!' Belphomet thought in fright, but luckily for him, that wasn't their maker's intention.
Petrolic Wraith always saw his two creations as an accomplishment and he himself as a pioneer in the artificial creation of sentient life. 'But in moments like these i wonder if i actually made a mistake somewhere...' he thought somber.
Petrolic Wraith was silent for a moment, trying to figure out both what he wanted to say and how he wanted to get it how. Eventually, he spoke "I...cannot even begin to explain why this plan of yours is bound to fail horribly. Just look around for God's sake!" Petrolic Wraith shouted, Belphomet and Monoculor jumping at the sudden noise.
Petrolic Wraith was content with his speech so far and continued "So tell me, why did you think using a situation like this, in which you can die painfully in many ways, was the best choice? Why not remaining with me, so we can see that the cycle of evolution is furthered?"
Petrolic Wraith was silent again and waited for the two monsters' response.
Eventually Monoculor spoke up "Look, i know you created us and took care of us and all of that, and we really appreciate it, but we want to live for ourselves too without having to participate to your boring tests" Monoculor said to Petrolic Wraith "We are sick of living underground and never having to leave your side! We're using this situation to escape you because these days we never have a time for ourselves!" the cyclopic monster then shouted.
Petrolic Wraith listened carefully to each word uttered by Monoculor. 'So that's his reason for always running off like that...I think i can do something about that issue, but now i'm curious about Belphomet' the spider-like monster thought as he set his singular, reptilian eye on Belphomet's slightly trembling form.
After a while of staring, the snake-like monster finally spoke "Y-you know, i'm n-not on board with your plan of f-furthering evolution or s-something like that. I-it really looks awful in practice". Belphomet now understood just how bad the situation on the surface would be if Petrolic Wraith actually got its way. The images of bloody corpses and deadly fighting were etched in his mind and would no doubt give him nightmares for weeks.
Petrolic Wraith listened to Belphomet's reason and wasn't very surprised about it. 'Belphomet has always been the more reserved one of the two, so it's normal for him to feel this way. I have a way to get around this problem' the spder-like monster thought and began to speak to his two creations...
...however it was at that moment a heavy round, presumably from an artillery post, landed nearby and caused a powerful explosion. Belphomet and Monoculor crouched and held one another in fright while Petrolic Wraith's hands closed in on them, so close yet not touching them.
The three monsters were unharmed, thanks to the cover provided by the surrounding buildings, but the ground quaked considerably and the sound was almost deafening.
After the round's side effects ended, an eerie calm set on the three monsters. Petrolic Wraith was now visibly angry as he groaned and said, almost shouting "Do you see now how dangerous it is?! That round could've easily blown you to shreds and whose fault would it be? Now let's get back to the hideout and we're going to have a long talk about-"
Petrolic Wraith's angry speech was interrupted by a large fist colliding with his face, which then sent him barreling into a brickwall. The resulting shockwave was also strong enough to launch Monoculor and Belphomet backwards.
The cyclopic monster looked at the owner of the fist and remained petrified on the spot: that human was definitely the largest of those he saw today and his muscles were simply unbelievable. Petrolic Wraith, now being just a black, slimy stain on the wall, saw the human that took him down and recognized him as the one he saw minutes ago. 'This is bad! I can't let him harm those two!' Petrolic Wraith thought as he returned to his original form and slashed at the powerful human with his new-grown hands.
"Take this, human! My hands are capable of tearing through steel with ease! Your puny flesh will stand no chance!" Petrolic Wraith shouted in order to throw his enemy's attention away from his creations.
Thankfully it worked since the human was now fully focused on him. This gave Belphomet the opportunity to grab his brother by the back of his head with his mouth and rush away from the fight.
Petrolic Wraith looked at his opponent and saw that his slashed did absolutely no damage to his body, but he didn't care about it at all. His objective wasn't to defeat him anyway.
"You're the fool here, comparing my well-trained muscles to simple steel, and by using this power i'll blow you away again and again!" the human told him rather arrogantly.
Petrolic Wraith readied himself, completely sure in his survival.
'I'll get beat up long enough to make him think he killed me, then i'll go get those two rascals and have a stern talk with them. There's no way they can fully escape me anyway!' Petrolic Wraith thought in glee.
X X X
Belphomet slithered across alley as fast as he could, dragging Monoculor along with his mouth, but the snake was never really good with physical exercises and was soon out of breath.
Now the two were leaning on a cracked brick wall, far away from the "battle" between Meka and that terrifying human. Belphomet was recovering his breath while Monoculor was in deep thought. 'That was close, but i have a feeling that he'll catch up with us yet again and then we'll be at square one again, but how the hell does he do that?' the cyclopic monster thought almost angrily, so he tried to remember their previous escape attempts, until...
"OK brother, i think i got most of my stamina back!" Belphomet said suddenly, interrupting Monoculor's train of thoughts, but this caused him no hindrance at all. In fact, he had already a plan in the making, even though it was crazier than anything else he'd thought up to that point.
"We got a headstart on Meka, we can finally be free-" Belphomet said happily, but Monoculor interrupted him, feeling bad about what he was going to say "Brother, it's not going to work, Petrolic Wraith will still easily catch up with us".
Belphomet's wings slightly dropped in sadness and Monoculor felt bad about it, but he knew what he would say next would weight much more on his conscience "I have a plan that will most likely make us lose him forever. Remember that one escape attempt we made where we went to a construction complex?"
Belphomet's wings dropped even more and Monoculor knew he perfectly understood "...we got lost in there and Petrolic Wraith couldn't locate us properly. He only found us because we weren't moving much". Monoculor nodded slowly and briefly explained the plan "You understand then: i'll go to Z City while you go to E City. This way Petrolic Wraith will have no choice but to split his already weakened forces in order to find us".
Belphomet nodded sadly and Monoculor caressed his cheek as he said "Don't worry brother, we'll meet again someday. Petrolic Wraith definitely isn't all-powerful and with his schemes of evolution and whatnot, the heroes won't stand by and let him do whatever he wants".
Belphomet nodded sadly ,his eye looking oddly bright and said "Still...this is a goodbye...I really hope this plan doesn't work, so at least we'll be together anyway..." then he broke down in tears and said "GOODBYE BROTHER!" and slithered off far faster than Monoculor thought he could.
'Well, at least he's fast enough to avoid trouble...We'll meet again someday, i promise' Monoculor thought before slowly hurrying in the opposite direction.
X X X
Petrolic Wraith returned to the depths of the underground of D City. The combined forces of the heroes and soldiers would eventually find his temporary base in the sewers, but his permanent one was far too well-hidden for them to even begin to wonder about its existence. The easiest way of accessing it was slithering through the minuscule cracks in the ground, and no one could do that unless they turned into liquid, while the hardest...
...there was a reason why Monoculor and Belphomet could only do three escape attempts, this one included.
'Well then, that brute thinks i'm dead for good, so now i can finally focus on getting those two rascals back' Petrolic Wraith thought and accessed the web of mental links that made up the hive and immediately had the feeling something was deeply off. He could still feel the signals of the dwindling blobs near and inside the sewers, but there was no trace of Monoculor's and Belphomet's.
Then a horrible thought came into the spider-like monster's mind. They must have figured out how he managed to track them every time and thus decided to separate.
Monoculor and Belphomet were his first attempts at creating sentient life and the tests they would have to participate in were a way for Petrolic Wraith to gauge their physical abilities and their overall intelligence.
However, in order to accommodate functional brains, Petrolic Wraith had to drastically reduce the tracking mechanism. This mechanism, while being biological in nature, didn't seem to mesh well with the brains of normal creatures, melting them to the point where they become unusable. Petrolic Wraith tried to make some facsimiles of himself, but they ended up just as mindless puppets for him to control. The closest he could make of that was Belphomet, but only esthetically speaking.
And so he made their mechanisms in a way that would make them function when Monoculor and Belphomet were at maximum 5m of distance. Anything more and the mechanisms would become useless.
'W-well, no matter. I can just track them down using the blobs' stains! They're pretty hard to get washed away, so there's no way the humans cleaned most of them!' Petrolic Wraith thought and began accessing his web of mental links...only to find that most of them were unusable. There was only one possible answer to that.
'...Goddammit, why?!' Petrolic Wraith swore in pure rage, but there was no one to hear him.
X X X
Monoculor really didn't know what to expect after separating from his brother. Petrolic Wraith always told them that the world outside was cruel and dangerous, but he thought their Meka was just dramatizing.
Now, after one bad attempt of stealth, he was being chased by a mob of soldiers who definitely didn't have good intentions.
"Take him down!" one of the soldiers shouted as they fired round after round at him, but Monoculor was a bit too fast for them and sturdy enough to tank a few bullets. But he knew they would eventually wear him down, so he tried to think of an escape plan as he dodged.
He looked around and found an empty alley, so he dove right in there as the soldiers followed him suit.
'I didn't manage to lose them, but at least i have the advantage of being smaller in a closed space. Just a few more turns, a good hiding spot and then!-' Monoculor's train of thoughts was interrupted as he tripped and fell down an opened manhole and down in the sewers. Unfortunately for him, he fell headfirst aganist the concrete and lost consciousness. The last thing he heard was someone shouting and grabbing him by the legs.
X X X
Belphomet silently slithered through alleys, trash cans and the smoking remains of human vehicles. He was as silent as one could be, but inside his mind a hundred thoughts races in his head, competing on which one could make him feel worse.
Among them there was a clear winner: "Was i too harsh with my brother?".
Belphomet REALLY didn't like this plan and he debated with himself about turning back to Monoculor. But he kept moving forward, not become he won all of those arguments, but because he largely ignored them and kept going forward.
Eventually, he silently arrived at the border of D City, overlooking the man-made roads of dull black asphalt, but he couldn't follow them because humans might see him and call the heroes.
Belphomet sighed as he grimly looked at the much-less welcoming wilderness, where the trees casted long, thick shadows in the dim light of the twilight.
"Well, i hope this isn't for nothing' Belphomet thought as he took the first metaphorical tentative steps towards it 'I hope we can meet again'.
Belphomet slithered as fast as he could towards the woods as small droplets of water fell from his unfocused eye.
X X X
Monoculor awoke on the dirty floor of the sewers, startled and disoriented. He looked around dizzy, waiting for his sight to readjust but also to start getting a look around.
"Oi, he's awake!" he heard someone shout from behind him. Monoculor raised his nonexistent eyebrow as another monster arrived near the first one.
The cyclopic monster's sight had returned to normal and now he could see his soon-to-be-known benefactors: the first one looked like a golden-colored goblin with a long sharp nose, two golden daggers at his sides and only wearing short brown pants. The second one, brown in color and standing on two small Insect-like legs, looked like a mix between a beetle and a cockroach.
While the first monster seemed friendly enough, the second one looked distrustful, especially with his little black eyes, darting from place to place and only barely lightened by his yellow pupils.
Monoculor decided to start a conversation, exactly how Petrolic Wraith would show him "Hi guys, thanks for saving me back there. My name is Monoculor" and the extended his hand as a form of greeting.
The two monsters didn't return the handshake, instead the goblin said "Heh, pretty good of an introduction, but you're still pretty young. Monsters don't tend to be so trusting towards strangers, so what's your deal?"
Monoculor was a bit startled by this reply, but then remembered the time when Petrolic Wraith taught them about monsters and that most of them tended to be violent creatures, so he replied "Well, you did save me back then and i'm grateful for that, so i think you're friendly towards me"
The goblin raised an eyebrow and then laughed good-naturely as he said "Yeah, i was in a good mood before, besides i needed an extra hand at stealing valuables from rich humans"
The roach-like monster finally groaned and said "C'mon Gobold, let's just drop this guy and get out of this damn city before the humans find this place and put holes on our corpses!"
Gobold looked at him and said "Oh come on, Beetle-Roach, we can get an extra hand in our robberies! Just think of what we three could do!"
At that, Monoculor had an idea and so, to get the attention of the two newly-identified monsters, coughed twice. It worked and so the cyclopic monster started talking "You said you needed a hand in that? Then you've found the right guy. Although i'm not very skilled at stealth, i have heat-vision, a very good memory and a powerful laser attack!". In order to demonstrate it, Monoculor turned to his left side and fired a raindow-colored, scythe-like laser which cleaved through the opposing concrete wall with ease.
Beetle-Roach was in a stunned silence while Gobold appeared amused, he said "That looks like a pretty good attack if we have to cleave through a group of enemies, or a sturdy single one. You're in, what do you think?". Gobold turned to Beetle-Roach and the latter said "Yeah, he's good and all, but i think the bit about heat vision is bullshit. Still, i think our group needs a name, you know?".
At that Gobold was in deep thought and then turned to the two monsters "I'm at a loss here, do you two have any suggestions?".
Monoculor was thinking about it while Beetle-Roach named a few ones "I have some: The Store Ravagers, Devourers of gold, The Three Mall Scourges, Sewer Lords..."
Gobold seemed to be evaluating all of them, and all of them weren't getting good scores, when Monoculor finally spoke one "I have one, you see: To the humans always seems ordered and clean, but to the monsters it's like a wasteland where it's fight, flight or death. So we need a name that makes others know that we survive by being the smartest ones. I think 'Wastelanders' is pretty good".
Gobold nodded almost enthusiastically while Beetle-Roach said "Don't care about the phylosophical bullshit, but the name's pretty good!"
Monoculor nodded sheepishly and Gobold walked towards the exit as he said "We have our name, now let's get out of D City and have some sleep, shall we?".
Beetle-Roach liked the idea and Monoculor went along with them, thinking that for the first time, things were really looking up.
'Belphomet' Monoculor finally thought as he followed his two new buddies 'I hope you are safe, wherever you are right now...'.
And thus started the legend of the Wastelanders.
And that was the chapter, people! This is one of the most important prequel chapters i've written, right with "Vigilante" and "Elemental orphans".
Heads up for next chapter, since the POVs are mostly going to be the monsters'! I'm pretty excited about it, but i'll have to stop my writing for a few weeks.
See you later!