Date: October 27, 2033
Time: 22:22 UTC – 15:22 LT
Coordinates: V-City, North America from Punky’s Post-Apocalyptic Adventure
There sat a young woman in a prison. A prison made of glass. A prison guarded by motion sensing lasers and monitored by cameras mounted from the ceiling. The containment was small, closer to a kennel than a cage, and she could neither stand nor lay her 2-meter-tall body on the metal floor she sat on.
Her skin was brown, her eyes were a sharp violet, her hair was flowing, black, and messy, and her name was Punky. She locked her body in a fetal positioned and looked at the door before her, never blinking, and only breathing. And it was in this cage that she thought back on how she wound up here. Prisoner of the ruler of V-City, Lou Underwood. A man who had the same body as her, the same powers as her, and who had imprisoned her best friend, Yuccot Kikansky.
Yuccot was the first person Punky saw when she fell to this world, and her companion over these past five weeks. But now, if Punky wanted to keep Yuccot alive, she had to stay where she was, never resisting, and never doing anything. At least until Lou figured out what he wanted to do with her.
As Punky emptied her head of thoughts to make time pass faster, the door to her chamber opened, revealing Lou, his female body clad in a navy suit, hair short and slick, and his eyes a grayed blue. He looked at Punky with exasperation, swirling a tall glass of brown liquor in his hand, before he sat in front of his prisoner and ranted. He ranted about his life. His failures. His traumas.
Punky looked at Lou like a dog staring at its owner as he rambled on and on, filling and refilling his glass as his voice grew loud and hoarse. All until he threw the glass at a wall and looked at Punky, his face inches from her cage.
“I fucked this world. If I died when I was supposed to, the world would be fine. But because I clung to life… I brought the world into ruin. I killed humanity. And when I tried to rebuild it, I did so with false ideals. I did so with hatred and pushed people away when they were ‘impure.’ I do not have the willpower to change the world, to make it better. But you, Punky, do have that power. While you are not my niece, while you are not Raiyne, while you are a fucking idiot, your heart is pure. You have the will to actually make things better. And now that you are here, I think it is finally time. It is time for you to give this old man something he’s been running from for far too long. A goddamn grave.”
With that, Lou Real Booted Punky’s prison into dust. She looked up at him with widened eyes as he did this, and soon found herself wrapped in his arms. Tears rolled down his face as the two joined together. Punky returned Loud’s embrace and, with their bodies pressed together as one, they became consumed by a violet radiance.
Date: February 22, 2222
Time: 10:44 UTC – 06:44 LT
Coordinates: 18°N 66°W (Puerto Rico, Central America)
The sun shined down without a single cloud to impede its rays. The air was thick with humidity. And despite the weather being stable year-round, today proved to be exceptionally hot, reaching 32°C before the day truly even began. Despite this, people of this island still embraced the morning and began setting out about their days, and two such people were neighboring boys, both age 14, who ran out of their homes, wearing baggy shorts and loose shirts. After exchanging a wordless greeting, the two boys ran off from their home, heading across the sidewalk before pivoting into a forest trail.
As the two ran, the thick greenery around them offered momentary relief from the sun, but the heat still left them short of breath as they carried on, causing the smaller boy to trail behind his taller friend. After following this path for a kilometer, the boys made their way to the end of the trail, and into a clearing. A small park with a play structure for children and large open fields for sports and festivities. The two boys pivoted to a cluster of tables shaded by large parasols. They slowed their pace as they made their way to this structure and were quick to take a seat at a table.
Once seated, Gregg opened up his backpack and pulled out two bottles from his backpack, each containing a fruit smoothie. He handed one to Ji-hoon and the two each took a long, hard gulp of their smoothies, letting out a sigh as the chilled beverage dropped to their stomachs.
“I keep telling ya, Ji-hoon, you’re still ten years too green to keep up with me,” the larger boy said, wiping sweat off his face.
“Again, Gregg,” the smaller boy began. “I don’t really care about beating you. I’m just doing this so I can take care of my fitness requirement. I still don’t get why we need to go running every day.”
“Because it’s easy and good for you? What, would you rather bike 2 kilometers, go to the beach, and bike back home? That takes way too long, and this is something we can get done right away.”
“Couldn’t we just do some exercises inside then?” Ji-hoon asked, his hand on his cheek. “I don’t like getting coated with sweat each morning.”
“Eh, sweating is good for you, and you could definitely use some more sun. C’mon, lemme see that tan of yours!”
Ji-hoon then took off his t-shirt to reveal a notable farmer’s tan around his body, leaving his arms and face a darker shade then the rest of his torso.
“And this is why I keep saying you should go shirtless. You look so much cuter with darker skin, and you look like a dork when you take your shirt off like… that.”
“I don’t think it makes me look cuter…” Ji-hoon said, puffing up his cheeks and folding his arms around his torso.
“Well, I think it does! And you should do what I say. Keep it up and you may just get a kiss!”
“Buddy, I don’t care about kisses. Especially not from you.”
“C’mon, you used to love my kisses back when we were little,” Gregg said, grinning from ear to ear.
“I loved everybody’s kisses when I was little.”
“Yeah, and what changed? Do you think you are above kissing and want to express your affections in a more… physical way?”
“Pfft. No! I just want to hang out and chill. Is that so wrong?”
“We could chill and kiss and keep it casual,” Gregg said, leaning toward Ji-hoon.
“I mean, I would not be opposed to that, but why kiss in the first place?”
“Oh Ji-hoon, you babe swaddled in a cashmere blanket of ignorance. Let me remind you of the joys of a nice hearty smoochie smooch.”
Gregg then scooched closer to Ji-hoon until they were shoulder to shoulder. After both laid their smoothies on the table before them, Gregg placed his arms around Ji-hoon and planted their lips together. Gregg shut his eyes while Ji-hoon kept his eyes open and they remained together for a matter of seconds before Gregg released his friend.
“Was that to your liking, good sire?” Gregg asked, a smile upon his face.
“That… felt better than I thought, but… hold on, let me try,” Ji-hoon mumbled before he leaned into Gregg.
Gregg’s eyes went wide as he saw how forward Ji-hoon was being, but remained still, allowing his friend to make his move… which was a quick peck on the lips, lasting no more than two seconds.
“Ah, that was more like it!” Ji-hoon exclaimed with a satisfied grin.
“So you’re more of a pecker than a kisser,” Gregg concluded. “Then how do you feel about…. This!”
Gregg swung himself closer to Ji-hoon for another kiss, but instead of aiming for his lips, Gregg instead planted a simple peck on Ji-hoon’s forehead.
“Hehehehe. That was pretty nice, actually. Thanks for that, Gregg.”
“Anytime buddy! Now then, we should get ourselves home and shower, unless you want to stink up the whole school.”
“It’ll probably stink anyway, but yeah, let’s get clean.”
As the two finished their smoothies and began stepping away from the table, Ji-hoon paused as he felt his foot brush up against something. He then peered down under the table… where he saw a hand.
“Holy crap!” Ji-hoon shouted.
“What, did you find a dead frog again?”
“It’s a hand!”
The two boys rushed down under the table, where they saw a human hand sticking out from the dirt. The fingers wiggled and moved, but no other part of this person was above ground. Without exchanging words, the two pulled back the dirt around the hand with their fingers, pulling away at the ground as quickly as they possibly could. As their digging continued, a second hand thrust itself from the ground, spurring them to continue the process until desperation overtook both Gregg and Ji-hoon.
The two teenage boys then grabbed both hands and pulled as hard as they could in a vain hope that this would help the person trapped underground. They did this until something within the ground broke, causing the two boys’s bodies to lurch backwards, where they smacked their heads into the table above.
“FUCK!” They shouted in unison, letting go of the two hands as they addressed their heads.
But as they rubbed the developing bumps through their dark hair, they opened their eyes to see that the person trapped in the ground was free, with their head, torso, and arms all above the surface. The person was a woman with deep brown skin, black hair fashioned into a pixie cut, violet eyes, and her body was naked, giving both Gregg and Ji-hoon a full view of her breasts as she hacked up dirt. The boys stared at her in surprise, wondering how she even got down there… while also staring at her boobs as they jiggled with each cough.
“Oh, that… that’s dirt. In more ways than one,” the woman said, her voice high-pitched and child-like.
“I, um, who… what were you doing down there?” Ji-hoon asked, his voice quivering.
“How the heckerum am I sposta know?” The woman asked. “I just… found myself in a bunch of dirt and tried to get out. In fact, lemme finish this!”
The woman with violet eyes then pressed her hands against the dirt encompassing the lower half of her body and put pressure on it. As she did so, the content of the dirt began to morph into water. The boys looked at this feat in awe, recognizing it and, in turn, recognizing the woman before them. To these two, there was no mistaking it. This woman of a dark complexion who could turn dirt into water simply had to be Abigale Quinlan.
The two boys then scurried out from under the table and stood with their backs to it, exchanging looks of worry as they realized they just saw THE Abigale Quinlan’s boobs.
“Uh, hey kids, where… the… crud am I?” The violet-eyed woman asked as she looked over her environment, her eyes fixating on the clear blue sky and lush greenery around her.
“This, um, this is… Borinquen,” Gregg stammered, “and we… we’re sorry we looked at you naked like that! We didn’t mean to?”
“Huh? You kids think my boobies are spooky? They’re not! They’re soft, squishy, and they’d never dream of hurting nobodies. Well, maybe other boobies, but not mine! C’mon, take a lookie!”
Ji-hoon and Gregg both slowly turned to see the naked woman before them, fondling her breasts and pressing them together. They shared confused and concerned expressions, unsure of how to even react to this sight, before Ji-hoon finally mustered up the sense to speak to this woman again.
“Wh-Who are you? You… can’t be Abigale!”
The woman with violet eyes then stopped fondling herself, focused on the two boys, and brought her hands together.
“Ooooh! You boys thought I was Abigale Quinlan. Well, don’t worry! Abigale stopped being a problem years ago, and I took her place! You can call me Punky! And unlike Abigale, I don’t kill or hurt people! …Unless they give me no choice and even then… I don’t like it! It’s mean and dirty!”
The two boys then turned to look at each other once more, both equally perplexed as to what the hell this woman was talking about. They had seen a broadcast of Abigale Quinlan just a week ago, so clearly what this woman was saying had to be wrong.
“Um… Punky, was it? We don’t know what you’re talking about… and could you please… Real Boot some clothes.”
Punky then stared at the two boys for a moment longer before the gears finally fell into place.
“Aaaaah! You boys must have been in V-City your whole life and fed the proper-no-gander! Worry not! Punky is profoundly proficient at propositions! So she’s gonna tell it from the starty start so there is no confuzzling! Back in 2014, peoples learned about Abigale Quinlan, a nasty terrorist lady who killed 52 millions people! But they sent her into space on Christmas day and the world was saved! Until 2016, when the Melding happened, merging our world with the Rifters world! Most people died or became mutants, and things were real real real bads for 17 years. Except for V-City, where the pure humans got to live the nice life. Then, just a few weeks ago, Abigale Quinlan’s body crashed back on Earth, after spending 17 years in space, but instead of her being in control, Punky took over her brain space and said, ‘move over ya stink muffin, it’s Punky time!’ Then my crabby crab-buddy, Yuccot Kikansky, helped me get to V-City so we can save the world from being the apokélisp.”
As Punky explained this, she dressed herself in a pink tunic, a sports bra, a panty, and modesty shorts. But even with clothes on and a degree of modesty to her appearance, Ji-hoon and Gregg still looked at Punky with stilted expressions, unsure of how to interpret the story she just told them.
“Okay, I’m calling Justine. This lady is crazy,” Gregg said as he looked down at his wrist computer.
However, the instant after he said that, a voice erupted from the edge of this park.
“LIKE FUCK YOU ARE!!!”
The voice was male, loud, and the moment after that sentence was uttered, the boys heard a rustling from behind them, revealing a man. A man with pale skin that shimmered in the sunlight and hair that was just as bright. A man who emitted an aura of light through his very presence and had an almost otherworldly quality to the boys. A man who was unknown to this world at large, and called himself Nari. Nari the Genocider.
As Gregg and Ji-hoon saw Nari emerge from the surrounding forest, they froze, staring as he ran towards them, dashing faster than even an Olympic sprinter. Nari stopped only as he came a step away from Gregg and, upon looking the boy in the eyes, Nari performed a roundhouse kick to the teenage boy’s face, slamming his heel into the boy’s skull with such force and power that it shattered into dozens of pieces, his skin tore, and the contents of his face splayed and scattered from the impact. As the kick concluded, Gregg’s lifeless body touched the ground, his head mangled into an unrecognizable pile of meat, skin, and bones. All from a single strike.
Ji-hoon’s eyes widened as his young mind struggled to understand what he just witnessed, and before he could accept the reality before him, his life too came to an end. With a single snap, Nari caused an explosion that took out Ji-hoon’s left eye and part of his skull. The second snap decimated a portion of his frontal lobe, tearing through the skull like it was a wafer. The third struck his heart, and with each successive snap, Ji-hoon lost more and more of the vital components that made him a living person. By the time Nari reached his final seventeenth snap, all life had left Ji-hoon’s body, which laid limply on the grassy floor below, bereft of life and beyond any hope of recovery.
Within five seconds, Nari murdered these two children, and the look on his face… was that of elation. He was proud of his mind and his efficiency. He looked like a child who just won the first prize at the state science fair.
Punky had not moved since Nari emerged from the woods, and stared blankly at Nari’s smug disposition. It was only as she let this scene breathe, as he looked hard enough to stain her eyes with this sight that she truly understood what happened, and what needed to be done.
Punky threw her right hand out to her side and, from utter nothingness, a sledgehammer appeared. It was a dense and heavy tool, no less than 15 kilograms in weight, but she swung it like a wiffle bat as she rushed up towards Nari, smacking the weapon into his arm. His body fell to the Earth and, as his face morphed from elation to agony, Punky swung the hammer down onto his skull, bursting it open like an overripe melon.
Nari’s brain was splayed before her, looking just like hamburger; exactly like hamburger. Yet Punky did not stop there. She continued to bring the hammer down on Nari again, and again, and again, smacking and shattering his body as a vicious rage burned within her, fueled by the sight of the two dead children within her peripheral vision. Three swings gave way to ten, and gave way to thirty, until Nari was in an even sadder state than the children he so swiftly murdered.
Punky then put her hammer down as she looked at the children’s bodies, murmuring to herself as she saw the gory details.
“I wish there was some way I could bring you back, but… I can’t. I’m sorry.”
As she finished this phrase, she felt something trickle down her face. It was Nari’s blood. It was slinking down her face and… freeing itself from her clothes. A sense of deja vu filled her mind as she saw the blood leave her person and scatter across the ground, back to the body she so viciously assaulted, reforming and reconstructing itself into a person. It happened within a few seconds at most, and when it was done, Nari was standing upright, naked, looking at Punky with a stern expression.
“What the POOP are you?!” Punky shouted, stepping away from Nari.
“I am your salvation, you ungrateful cur,” Nari sneered. “You’re Punky. You were imprisoned by Lou Underwood, correct?”
“I… I am… and I was! Oh flippers, I forgot about that! I got dirted and I forgot that he touched me!”
“He… wait, he touched you? I thought he just hugged you?” Nari asked, putting his intimidating aura aside for a moment.
“Oh, he did. Hugging is a type of touching.”
“That’s not… anyway, I have something of grave importance to tell you, but first, I need to know what your last memory was. Your last memory before you found yourself… here.”
“I sneaked into V-City with my buddy Yuccot Kikansky. He’s a crab man and a nice one too! When inside, we got captured by the ruler of V-City, Mr. Lou Underwood, and he said he would kill Yuccot unless I did exactly what he said! So he put me in this weird prison box thingy and kept me there for a week. I couldn’t do anything and it was real real small, so I got super sad. But then Lou came up to me, drank some booze and took me out of my prison to give me a hug. It was nice and warm.”
Nari’s face wrapped into a grimace as he took in Punky’s words, clearly irritated by her childlike manner of speech, but he nevertheless replied, speaking with a dour and concerned expression on his face.
“Good. At least you remember what happened to you. But what you need to know, Punky, is that you were not freed from your prison. You were merely taken into another.”
“Huh? I don’t see no bars.”
“That’s because the world is your bars, Punky. You are trapped within Lou’s mind and, unless you escape, everything you are will cease to be.”
“What? No way! How’d he even do that?” Punky said, completely buying the bluff.
“You and Lou share the same body and the same power source. By making physical contact with one another through something like a hug, the power between your bodies flow into one another. You and Lou are currently a singular being. A being with the power and ability to become the ruler of the world, and a being that can only have one mind. If he takes control, he will rule the world with a cold iron grip. But if you take control, you will be able to usher in an era of peace and prosperity.”
“I don’t understand though… where am I?”
“As I said, you are within Lou’s mind. You are within the battleground where you might fight against Lou. Or… any of the others within this domain.”
“Others? Why would there be anyone but Lou and me?”
“Together, your minds are a complicated thing. There are many other identities between you two. Many other repressed persons who are vying for control of this body. There is you, there is Lou, there is Abigale Quinlan, and there are more. And I am one of those ‘more.’ You can think of me as Lou’s conscience. His repressed good side. And you may call me Nari. I desire not to take control of this body for myself, and merely wish to help the goodest party in their pursuit. And your goodness is supreme, Punky, so consider me your ally.”
“So, does that make us friends, Nari?”
“I suppose it does, Punky. But as friends, we need to stick together, gather more allies, and take out enemies as we find them. The only way to defeat the likes of Lou and Abigale Quinlan is through combat. To dominate them with our overwhelming power and persistence.”
“Uh-oh! I’m not that good at fighting, so—”
“You have an edge, Punky. Remember how you created that hammer? You did that from nothing. I want you to try to make something, anything, out of thin air.”
Punky stared out into space for a moment as her mind processed this request, before she put her hands out and looked in them. Within her palms, a small rodent, a chipmunk, appeared within a blink of an eye and began looking around the world around it, clearly confused as to where they were.
“…How in the hell did you just do that?! You can make living things?!”
“Huh. I guess I can,” Punky replied, her face beaming. “Cool, isn’t it?”
Nari’s expression grew dour as he recognized what he just witnessed before he erupted into laughter. Punky looked at him with a cockeyed expression before her vision fluttered back down to the fresh corpses lying just a few meters away from the two.
“Uh… wait, if you’re my buddy, then why did you kill those kids?”
“Oh, right. Um… those kids weren’t real. They were merely weapons conceived by Lou. Meant to locate and lure you into a docile state. The world of Lou’s mind is a true to scale world, and while it is full of men, women, and children, they are mere distractions. They have no feelings, no identities, and exist to weaken your spirit. And actually, I should take care of them before they start making too much of a stink.”
Nari leaned down to the corpses before him and Real Booted them into dirt, erasing all trace that they were ever there, aside from the emptied smoothie bottles that remained on the table.
“Ah! I understand now… and what was so funny about this chipmunk friend? Does he look silly?”
“Oh Punky, you precious little child. You know enough about Real Booting that you cannot create a truly living thing from nothing, correct?”
“Oh, yeah. That’s right. I guess I never thought of it like that!”
“As such, is it not remarkable how you can create a living creature, a small rodent, from nothingness?”
“…I guess it’s pretty neat,” Punky said as she brought the chipmunk up to her face, nuzzling it.
“It is an incredibly versatile ability, and I believe it would pair well with my own. Allow me to demonstrate. While you have the ability to create anything, I have the ability to become anything.”
Nari’s body then shifted rapidly, shrinking down into a mere fragment of his former stature, situated on the ground. As his flesh condensed, its texture changed to something sleek and metallic, while his innards underwent a similar change in matter. Within the span of two seconds, the man before Punky was no longer a man, but a mere appliance. A toaster.
Punky crouched down to get a better look at the appliance before her, only for it to hop upwards and waddle towards her before finally speaking.
“Even though I can become an inanimate object, I still have the ability to move freely, and I can also speak to you,” Nari explained, his voice coming from the core of the toaster’s body. “It’s a rather—”
“THAT IS SO FREAKING COOL!!!” Punky exploded, her voice echoing across the clearing and into the forest.
“Punky, please maintain a reasonable volume at all times! Just because I’m a toaster at the moment does not mean I’m hard of hearing.”
“I know, I know, but this is just super-dee-duper wild! Oh, do you need to be plugged in to make toast, or can I put some bread in you right now? I could make you a toasty sandwich if you want. For I is Punky, the sandwich queen!”
Before Nari had the chance to respond, Punky Real Booted two thick pieces of seed-filled bread that she rammed into Nari’s toaster slots before pushing down the lever, causing a ticking noise to begin emitting from Nari’s body.
“Um, this is going to take three minutes, but let’s see if I can speed things up by adjusting this and that and—”
Nari’s body then emitted a vibrant ding before the two pieces of bread popped up from the slots, their exterior colored an even light brown.
“Heh. How’s that for service? Not only am I the good part of Lou, but I’m also the greatest toaster ever!” Nari sarcastically boasted.
Punky then imagined a plate from nothingness, placed the two pieces of bread onto it, and with her hands together, she began to create the contents of the sandwich from thin air. The end result was a… honey and jalapeno grilled cheese sandwich. Nari transformed himself back into his human form as he saw this abomination of food, only for Punky to immediately sink her teeth into it, spraying its juices onto Nari’s face and shirt. Punky did not notice this and instead continued idly munching away at the food before her, causing more of a mess with each bite, until she finished the sandwich.
“You are a rather strange one, you know that?” Nari said as he wiped the honey and cheese from his face.
“Yes, I do! It’s just who I am.”
“Well, regardless, we should not dawdle here for much longer. We have a world to explore, and this is just a small island. But first, I would like to propose a test of your powers, my dear Punky.”
“A test greater than sandwich making?”
“Y-Yes. A test greater than sandwich making. I want you to… create a monster. A monster capable of sending this island into chaos. Capable of terrorizing this entire sea and threatening the mainland. A being of profound strength, strength so great even you would struggle to beat it. I wish for you to create this being as an egg, hide it deep within the ocean, for this egg to crack within a few hours.”
“Oooooh! You want me to make a Godzilla?”
“No. I want you to make something better than Godzilla. Better than any kaiju. I want you to create something that would send people running in abject horror. A creature that will demoralize the world and cause untold destruction. I want you to make… a cosmic horror kaiju!”
“Okey doke!”
“…That was a fast answer… did you actually understand my request?”
“Yep! You’re just asking me to play pretend, and playing pretend is what Punky’s the best at! …But why am I doing this?”
“Because we wish to distract Lou and Abigale with a secondary threat while we hunt for more allies and eliminate lone enemies.”
Nari then threw his right hand in front of Punky, inviting her for a handshake to cement their alliance. Instead of shaking his hand, Punky merely grabbed in with both hands, smiling at Nari as she did so. Nari sighed at this display, bemoaning Punky’s lack of social understanding, before grabbing her with both arms and dashing out of this clearing, heading to the nearest beach. As Nari moved forward, his eyes glimmered as he fantasized about who else he could recruit in his genocidal pursuit.
