Author's Notes:
Sorry, guys! Not the snip I was planning to put up next. This one popped up out of nowhere while I was going over the reviews for one of the new human fics appearing in the archives.
Short and sweet. Approx. 1800 words long.
Oh, and by the way, I decided to timestamp the chapters according to the chronological order in my timeline for Aimless. This can be either precise (as in "5D/EM") or vague (as in "1Y") and is read relative to Joshua's arrival in Warfang. Convention? D for days, W for weeks, M for months, and Y for years. EM for early morning, LM for late morning, EA for early afternoon, LA for late afternoon, EE for early evening, and LN for late night.
All right, y'all. Enjoy!
City Life – Mirror Image
Chapter 24: Random Musings 1
"Experience teaches us what exists and how it exists, but never that it must necessarily exist so and not otherwise. Experience therefore can never teach us the nature of things in themselves."
- Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
[2W/EM]
"Ah!"
Kilat looked up at Joshua. She withdrew her tongue and let his forearm slip from her paws, glazed with thick spit. "Huh? What's wrong? You know I don't bite."
"I know that."
"Then why'd you interrupt me?" She frowned. "You're not trying to get out of bath time, are you?"
Joshua paled. The last time he tried that, she used enough electricity to stun him. Then she gave his face so many sweeps, the smell not only persisted for an entire day but was also so potent it drew unnecessary attention from anyone who merely got close to him. The timing was absolutely terrible. That incident took place right before Volteer's second attempt at turning him into some f*cking errand boy! One of Volteer's apprentices told him to ask the Guardian for cologne, only for another to reply that it wouldn't even drown out the repulsive morning breath.
"No, no, no, no!" Joshua blurted repeatedly, waving his arms to appease the child. "It's nothing like that." He thrust his right hand at her snout, beckoning the little girl to clutch it with her digitigrade paws. "Here, take it. See? It's fine. It's totally fine."
"Says the bath-hater," she said.
"Kilat! We already talked about this."
She giggled. "I know! I'm just teasing you." The dragoness pulled his arm closer to her and reapplied another layer of spit before gazing up at him. "So what's poking your scales?" She brought her snout down and started another round of sweeping, with her ears perked and attentive.
Joshua tried not to focus on how weird it felt. Twice a day. Twice a f*cking day. "Weeeeeell… there's something I want to ask you."
"Mmmmm." She paused for a second. "Can't this wait until I'm done?"
"No! I'll just forget again!"
Kilat nudged his arm extra strong. "Ooookaaay. As long as it won't make me talk too much."
Seriously? She didn't have to spell it out for him. Of course she wouldn't want to talk. Her f*cking mouth is a little preoccupied tending to his personal hygiene! Joshua squashed his annoyance—he really didn't want to forget again. "Errr, how to say this properly… uhhhh…"
It took a few moments to gather his bearings. "Okay, let's just start with this. You know how I look like, right?"
"Yeah." Kilat had already moved to his right elbow. Goddamn, she was working fast! F*ck, he hated it every time she got to the armpits. He was ticklish there.
"And for the past, month or so practically everyone's been calling me 'hairless ape' this, 'furless ape' that, 'ugly monkey', and all that kind of shit."
He watched Kilat pull out an ingrown hair using her paws. The manual dexterity these dragons were capable of still amazed him to this day. "So?"
"Do I really look like one of them?"
"Huh?"
"C'mon, Kilat! You know how the Apes look like. Hunched shoulders. Hulking piles of dirty, smelly fur. Menacing claws and teeth. And those uuuuuuuuugly shit on their faces! Seriously, how can anyone—how can everyone here mistake me for one of those FUGMOs? Even you! You thought I was some kind of Ape back at the Dry Canyon. For real, dude? Even if you compared me side-to-side with f*cking Ooogabooga, I still look absolutely nothing like—MMMF!"
Joshua shoved the dragoness away. "PLEH!" He spat on the floor. "Goddammit, little girl. For the last time, stop washing my face while I'm talking!"
Kilat locked eyes with him, her rejoinder a timid smirk. "Sooooooorrry. You were flapping your arms around like a little hatchling!"
The gamer scowled at her. F*cking kid. But before he could give her a piece of his mind, Kilat leaned over and gave him one deliberately slow stroke. A sudden upward sweep followed. Joshua gagged and wiped his face multiple times, inadvertently providing the dragoness bathing him with an opening.
"Besides, I got you to shut up," she tittered. "Works every time."
For obvious reasons. Joshua crossed his arms. "Hmph."
"To tell you the truth," Kilat said. Her gaze panned across his entire body, a gesture that, in this context, meant she acknowledged his ranting. "You're right. You don't look like them, you don't smell like them, and you don't feel like them." She laughed. "Ancestors, if you really are some sort of Ape, you must be one of the strangest ones alive." Then she suddenly beamed. "Oooh, ooh, ooooohhh! I know! Maybe you're just a freak! Like the grayscales!"
Joshua didn't know if he should feel offended. The term she mentioned puzzled him. "What's a grayscale?" he asked.
"A dragon that can't use any Element. Their scales are always gray, as if there's no life. Lani told me it's why a lot of people shun monoscales."
"Monoscales like you."
"Yeah," she wilted. "Like me…" But only for a split second. She perked almost immediately after. "Ehhh, it's okay. At least I have you! I'll always have you!" Kilat nuzzled his cheek, completely forgetting about his bath. Joshua relished the soft and wonderful feeling. It was like his girlfriend took an exorbitantly priced Hermes bag stitched from crocodile belly leather and rubbed his face with it. Man, he'd rather have this over a slobbery tongue any day. "Though I still find it weird, calling a hoo-man my brother."
"Heh, I love you, too, Kilat," Joshua chuckled. How much weirder do you think it is for me, then?
In return he rubbed her belly. She shuddered at the touch. It was cute, sort of. "Sooooooo, if I don't look like an Ape, I don't smell like an Ape, and I don't 'feel' like an Ape, why does everybody keep saying I'm one?" He gestured at the sliding door on the other side of the room. "I'd also ask Seriphos—you know, the only guard who bothers replying to me—but it isn't his shift yet."
The child replied, "I don't know. I actually don't know."
"So when I pulled you out from under that bush—
"I was thinking, 'Waaaaaah! It's an Ape. Oh no, he saw me. Eeeek! He's coming for me. He's gonna finish me off, nooooooo!'" She noticed his cocked eyebrow. "Hey! Joshuuuaaaaa, don't give me that look! I was bleeding, everyone in my group was dead, and there were so-so-so-sooooooo many of 'em hunting me! That's when you came along and you knew—I don't know how, but you just knew it was me! 'You're that yellow dragon', you even said." She leaned forward, and a balled paw cuffed his chest. ("OW"!) "That really-really-really-really made me lose my scales!"
"Yet you somehow managed to associate me with one of them? Instead of, uhhh… a traveling bandit, for example?"
"Argh, I don't knooooooow!" She moved back. "What else do you want me to say? Your 'ape-ness' was screaming at me."
"…What the f*ck?"
"Egeria help me!" she jabbered. "I can't, I-I can't explain it to you. It's just, there's something about you that tells me you're an Ape."
"That really doesn't help me at all."
"I'm sorry… I wish I can do more for you. Look, why don't you ask Volteer? Maybe he can—
Joshua shook his head. "Today's Meredy, remember? He's not picking me up 'til Mazarach, and that's five days away!" More like five long days away. Joshua was still bothered by the fact the days here were longer than the days on Earth. Knowing his body had managed to adapt to the way things were on the Realms... that scared him as much as it amazed him. "Until then, I'm a manual scavenger." The thought was depressing. It wasn't a profession for gamers and their sedentary lives.
Kilat returned to her work, moving to his other arm. This time she rested on his lap. "Don't be sad, Joshua." She took his left hand in her mouth and started massaging it. Joshua admitted to himself, it felt good. Kilat really did know what she was doing. But none of that could ever distract him from the fact it was so gross. Damn it, and she still had the rest of his body to go! How sickeningly delightful. "That won't last forever. It's only your second week."
"But I can't take it anymore! Given my oh-soooo-wonderful luck, I'll still be doing that shit until next month, or longer! Someone f*ck me, I don't wanna do that anymore. It's the worst, job, ever. Jesus Christ, I don't know how the moles can even love that crap. They're absolutely f*cking insane. All of 'em!"
Kilat did not answer him. She focused on her work. "It's gonna be okay, Joshua," the little girl cooed. "It's gonna be okay." She hummed a tune he couldn't recognize. It was probably something she learned from her mother. Whatever it was, though, listening to its light, peaceful melody calmed him down.
Joshua Renalia leaned back on the wall. His thoughts returned to their conversation earlier. Kilat couldn't explain herself at all. It was as if her very instincts told Joshua he was an Ape. However, for all of his protests to the contrary, he would've never denied the fact humans were genetically connected to primates. His species originated from Earth's monkeys. Genetic differences between mankind, gorillas, and other primates were essentially zero.
Was that why people here believed he was an Ape? Did these instincts… help them discern what he was?
Or maybe it was their frame of reference? Warfang's people had never seen anything like him before. He was completely alien to them. For all he knew, maybe they found the way he moved unnatural, the way he thought unfathomable, the way he lived impossible. It would make sense, wouldn't it? To them, his own Element behaves erratically—lacks structure. To them, his way of life violated common sense itself, not just the norms and unspoken rules they all followed.
Perhaps it wouldn't be so difficult to think—to conjecture that his very existence challenged their collective experience?
"Kilat?"
She trained her gaze at him, looking up from his thigh. "What is it?"
"Do you think, everyone calls me an Ape because…"
"…because…?" Her face held a neutral expression, but even he could perceive the annoyance in her eyes. No need to probe her sphere of life. Obviously she wanted to finish her work, too.
"Because they refuse to believe something like me exists?"
Because they don't want to readjust their understanding of the world, he wanted to say.
Because they're just like the peeps back on Earth, he thought, and I'm just being stupid for expecting something better…
Kilat did not answer immediately. She sat up and looked straight at him, her muzzle sporting a serious look. Somehow, she discerned the profound meaning behind his question and the emotional weight it carried. Despite her demeanor—despite her prepubescence, the Electric dragoness possessed an incredible level of intelligence. She wasn't a prodigy in her Element for nothing.
Her cobalt eyes softened. "It's possible. Don't think about it anymore, okay? You'll always have me. We're family now. You keep forgetting."
.
.
.
Joshua's lips curved into a warm smile. "…Thank you. That means a lot."
"Yey! Now, just sit there and leave me alone so I can finish your bath—
"Though I still find it weird, calling a dragon my sister."
A wing slapped him in the face. "Shut up already!"
Author's notes:
Ahhh finally got that idea out of my system. Left it at "#1" though. For all I know, I'll end up coming up with a surprise "Random Musings #2" as I live life or something. XD
Anyway, sorry for not updating as fast as I did last year. I'm halfway done through migrating the data from all my notes to the spreadsheet containing the snips. I still have to determine both the chronological order and posting order of each snip, not to mention make sure that the details there are consistent. Unfortunately, several of the snips have been deemed redundant and I struck them off the outline.
Since there are more than a hundred snips currently on record, that means I may have to readjust the posting order I decided last November. Ahhhh… content management. It is such a wonderful job. -_-
Replies to recent reviews:
KeyBlader Zen:
#1: you're totally misunderstanding it. Cats and other felines engage in "love bites" all the time as a gesture of affection. Ask someone who has a cat for a pet.
#2: Not really. Just sounds like it though, but "absorbing hers" is closer to what actually happened.
#3: Not every fanwriter needs a spreadsheet. Unfortunately, Aimless does since the scope of the project spans multiple parallel mega arcs, along with "slice of life" snips.
#4: SpyCy will have problems, obviously. How often I'll show that, though… hmm… that's a tough question to ask. XD
See you in the next chap!
Bizzleb: Thank you again for your review. It is good to know I met my objectives for the last chapter. Originally, Boop! was supposed to take place from Kilat's POV, but I couldn't resist using one of the guards. And yep, Seriphos' bio was perfect for my use. He'll probably show up a few other times, I guess. Who knows?
Anyway, understand that Joshua's immediate goal is to escape "room arrest" ASAP, and eventually claw back his freedom to move in and out of the city. He'll need this freedom not just to explore Warfang, but also to find a way home. Putting his best foot forward is the most sensible thing to do.
Re: the Unknown Element. You're not close (lmao). What happened was that he nullified Kilat's Volt Tackle, absorbed it, and used her own energy as his own the way he would normally have if he was manipulating an Electric Orb. Kilat just thinks he was faster than her. Anyway, chapters 11 through 19 pretty much exist to showcase this power (and fulfill some secondary objectives), so… try again, I say!
See you in the next update.
Zero Fullbuster (guest): Thanks. I don't know how your computer being weird can prevent you from logging in though.
InfamousVenous: *boop* to you too :P Anyway, yeah, a light-hearted chapter was definitely needed. I never got to write the planned snip though, and until I get another "sudden idea" like Random Musings #1, then we'll be having Clothes Make the Man for Chapter 25, as intended.
Don't worry about Joshua. He can take it! He'll complain a lot but he'll take it like a boss. Kilat is aww-adorable and I intend on capitalizing on it. Now where the hell is Riza… I need to commission a cute pic of her. XD
Yep. Got that spreadsheet. I'm still doing the content management. I just came out with this since it popped into my head all of a sudden.
Thanks for your review.
Djax80: Considering that his exposure to the Unknown Element is slowly making his body stronger than the average human being, I'd say the worst that happened is that he got a cracked skull. Nothing an offscreen red gem won't fix.
But honestly, I just got carried away. I thought it would be a nice touch to add tiny cracks in the wall to emphasize what happened. I can always remove it. Hell, don't consider it as part of "canon". I don't care. It won't change my plans for Joshua's development if you ask me.
I look forward to the day we hit chapter 100 too. Lots of work to do though. -_-;
Koal (guest): Couldn't sign in again? Are y'all lazy? XDDDD Joke.
Uhm, no. My story won't have the highest word count. The highest I've ever seen so far – on a very well-written story – is about 1.8 million words and is still far from over (but hasn't updated in like a year – I'm sad!). I designed Aimless to be everything The Interloper is not: short chapters, flexible storytelling, lighthearted fare, and a setting extensive enough where other people are welcome if not encouraged to directly contribute chapters to this story while feeling like they are expanding the TLoS universe in a collaborative manner (a structure Aimless shares in common with TokoWH's The Infinite Loops: A Tale of Two Realms).
Lonewolf (guest): *shrugs* Maybe. A belated Merry Christmas to you, too, by the way, but you didn't need to use a review to greet me during the holidays. (Not that I'm complaining! XD)
Jason (guest): Nope. Not that kind of story, dude. Joshua will remain human. Turning him into a dragon will completely defeat the reason I started Aimless to begin with.
TheKingofGames1001: Refer to my responses to Keyblader Zen and bizzleb. I did not give him Electricity. Anyway, I'm watching my step all the time. Hopefully I won't screw up. :D
Draykat the half-dragon mage: Considering that I will eventually throw out time-skips as far as multiple years, if not decades, yes, there is a chance we will see SpyCy becoming parents.
Never got all your theories you were gonna tell me about. :P
And Joshua didn't really meditate. It's just what it looks like from Seriphos' POV.
Go on and use it in your fic. I won't mind.
Cynder (guest) and Quest (guest): Thank you for your review. I'd appreciate it if you could be a bit more substantial next time (and if you could sign in? :D :D :D)
Guest1: Dude, I love how much you want more of my fic, but please understand that I don't adhere to a set update schedule and I'm ultimately doing this just for fun. Thank you. :D
MatrixMash: Holy shit, that is a looooot of comments…
#1. Trapped in TV Land. Here's the link: tvtropes . /Main/TrappedInTVLand (remove the spaces to complete the URL). The description in the first paragraph is pretty straightforward and captures the majority of so-called "human fics" in the Spyro archives, including Aimless.
#2: Re: the inconsistencies and unbelievable actions in battle. I'm not surprised they're there. I'll admit, I half-assed this fic when I was planning/writing the beginning (which included the story arc at the gates). I wanted nothing more than to finish it, showcase the Unknown Element, and go straight to the "aimless" part of the story—this fic's main feature. Scrutinize the details with the lens of real-life physics, and the realism in the fighting falls apart.
As for Infernus, I would like to think it was adrenaline rush and sheer force of will, or hate.
#3: Energy costs. If you're gonna look into it that deeply, you may as well consider where the other dragons are getting their abilities to conjure massive firestorms, create blizzards, move large swathes of the earth, or—in Spyro's case—shoot unstoppable purple death rays of doom.
#4: Less author intervention in the future. Yep, you can expect that. He'll have gained a traveling party at some point, along with enough skills to take better care of himself.
#5: Trial as a framing device. Yeah, it was deliberate. It's funny how this snip started from my desire to make fun of the common "This cannot be. I am eternal!" line drop.
Thanks again for the feedback. I appreciate the scrutiny.
Somas35: I've long acclimatized to a particular style of writing, so my problem now are usually things not related to the writing itself, such as the balance between pacing and detail, or consistency of details (to ensure properly executed suspension of disbelief). At the current lengths I'm writing at, Aimless's chapters take two weeks to a month to write from beginning to end. (Ignore Random Musings #1 please. This snip literally took less than 12 hours.) Meanwhile, The Interloper had chapter lengths between 15K and 20K, and required at least three months of writing work. I've gotten so lazy that, well… whoops! Cat's out of the bag. Now you know why Aimless is here. XD
Hope to see you in the next snip.