Odyssey

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"So to conclude this presentation, It's as the title says. I want to create the best city there can ever be. I want it to be the pinnacle of what human society and the human experience has to offer, in all the ways I deem right and proper." I nodded my head and took in a deep breath. My Slides came to an animated end, by virtue of Power Point, and I awaited judgment. I mean, I'd spoken about many things, I'd planned this and scripted it, I'd added everything I knew, it was engaging, funny, personal, deeply passionate, it had numbers, examples, graphs, it had animations. Everything was here, and there was no reason not to like what I had to offer.

"Hey.... Andras, it says here..." One of the many white aging men, who sat heavy on their black chairs with metal legs that could roll silently and smoothly over the carpets of the glass meeting room spoke up. He held up my file and put on his glasses laid over his man boobs and the rolls of his neck-fat, too small and frail for his sausage fingers, he managed to put some of his oils on the lens, maybe that is why I disliked him.

"Yes, Sir." I dreaded this, I knew it was coming as well, but I had dreams myself, and false confidence was confidence as well. He hadn't even been paying attention. I'd seen him, drooling over his secretary's peaches, I'd checked it out myself, but I had decorum, tact.

"This is a marketing firm?" Another guy took on the question that everyone wanted to ask. He had been paying rapt attention to me, and I thought I liked him. 'They don't see the vision.'

"You know that right?" Another jumped in.

'How sweet, like triplets, or maybe from frozen. They finish each other's sentences.'

"I do. And my pitch today was about how even a Marketing Firm can take the first step into making change. Nay, before anything else in this day and age it is adverts, a good marketing campaign, that makes not only all the money, but the one thing that actually still holds power over the majority of people. Politics? No, I hate them, you hate them, deep down we all think they're trash, just the kind of trash that offers us great opportunities. It's not big construction companies that make the change, certainly, nor do people have a thing for following their cereal company in its journey to change the world. They do listen to their favorite influencer though, some big brand, some star or other. Those guys, the best of them, they have companies like this at their beck and call. GOOD!" I clapped my hand, and then spread them wide. "Use them! Don't you want to change the world! Only you can do it!" I pointed to the big man sitting on his chair at the head of the glass table opposite of me. My smile was big, brave, charismatic. I knew. I'd practiced it after all. "Well..."

{FSH~!}

Two double doors grumbled open in front of me, and like an anchovy in a can I was sloshed around by other anchovies, all of us floating in the sour liquid that we called anxiety and depression, thus I felt as I crammed myself in the germ filled metro.

My face was to the ground, I feared someone would step on it. I was usually just above average height, but the granny beside me with her shopping cart stuffed with plastic bags and things which took up the space of four people, seemed so large. She towered over me in a menacing light. ‘Is that a belt in her hand?’

I shook my head fiercely. ‘She’s not gonna hit me, get a hold of yourself.’

When I was a child, my mother left, and my father used to beat me severely. Those years… until teenage hood were dark, stuffed and gagged, and bound, in the very depths of my Davy Jones Locker.

When I became a teen, and grew a spine, and some muscle as well, I didn’t stand for it. I spent more time away from my house than in it. I didn't like who I was, because I was my father's product. I had been warped by him, and I wanted to change that. If not for those years of effort, my first and only girlfriend at that point, who really enjoyed my dark and serious attitude, we broke up when I started to become happy. I worked part time, to support my psychologist costs, and my food costs, I spent most night homeless, roaming the streets. At school, I didn’t excel, but I did my damned best.

I changed my name, to separate myself from the person I was, and the life I used to live.”

‘Now, be a man like the name you chose Andras. Come on. It’s just another failure. Who said chasing your dreams would be easy? Back to the normal day job tomorrow morning. I’ve grown haven’t I? Back then I would cry at the first excuse, now. I can laugh at it. Praise Andras.’
I left the Metro and stared at a corner store as cars zipped by me. I stood at the foot of a pedestrian bridge crossing the highway. I shrugged off the shivers born at the memory of a cigarette’s burn. I walked up the steps, they were a sickly pink color, where the paint hadn’t peeled off to reveal the concrete underneath.

From here, I had the best view. The Moon was now above the city skyline, full and plump. It had a dark yellow, almost orange hue to it. There was no other star or object in the sky, I had never known a starry sky, and I'd never seen the milky way like maybe even my grandparents could, there was just too much light, everywhere. Yet right now, as the city was cut in half by the river of asphalt that was its single greatest and most costly highway, with the moon hanging over it all, telling us puny little humans that our struggles mattered little. It was my one true comfort.

Then, something happened, and it occurred to me because nothing must flow smoothly in my life. It was thus because of this experience I dared to try and taste, that I happened to bare witness to the biggest catastrophe Earth would ever know, and also the biggest windfall it would ever encounter in its billion year long history.

It didn't begin from a small point. Suddenly, as if dropped from some deity in the sky, a portal as black as the absence of light itself, reminiscent of a black hole. It was enormous, and it was weird. The wind, which talked to me like a long lost friend, fell flat. And in a gust of hate and rage it shattered our friendship, it slammed into me and made my feet skid back.

Traffic stopped coming, yet no alarms rang, no flames or screams, nor did I hear any crashed. It was truly a gate and hundreds of cars had just flowed their way, one hundred kilometers an hour into whatever was on the other side. Soon even the sound of car horns echoing in the city died and only silence reigned. It was crippling, I and the rest of the world, the Earth itself, we all were at the edge of our seats.

 
From my side of the two sided gate, like a coin, a group of people, humanoid, yet not quite, appeared. They came gliding to the asphalt of the highway, A more than a dozen. There were monsters there, a woman three meters tall with a wingspan enough to cover half the lanes in one direction, a woman with roots for feet, another who swam in a bubble of water, who was as large as a bus.

Then, disaster.

An invisible membrane in front of the Gate bloated, enough for me to see it from the other side, then it popped, a tornado formed and it seemed as if all the oxygen in the city was being sucked in. Then it was total silence.

For a millisecond. A burst of fire, a column of plasma to shear the crust of the earth aimed for the horizon. Death, absolute devastation. Be it road or building, steel, or gold. Be it stone or dirt, tree and water. They’d become waists of energy, entropy added to the universe.

All before it was dead, human life as well, before the curve of the earth helped the rest dodge that sad and sudden fate. Hundreds of thousands of people had just died from that retaliation. Billions in infrastructure. Human civilization was just humbled.

The figures that had come out before were now shocked still, and I was closer than I thought. At one point I’d walked down the bridge and onto the road itself. There wouldn’t be any cars coming from the other side of that black gate of misery any time soon.

“What was that?” One of the four human men said, the rest were all female, well endowed, crazy beautiful and of course, half monster women, some more than half. Like the aforementioned bus sized lady.

"They went ahead and did it! Why can’t he restrain himself!?” Said another.

“You two, relax. Felric, what is up?” The third one nudged his friend, and potentially leader, the man named Felric walked at the front of the entourage and he had a weight about him. Maybe it was the gaudy armor.

“You, who are you? Are you some type of Self defense force?” He pointed to me, and it all seemed too impossible. I almost fell, but while I was weak, seeming too weak would be embarrassing. I clenched my jaw and stood straight.

“I am not. I am, Andras, but a simple human, a witness, and your first non hostile contact with our realm.”

“You… Don’t seem awakened.” He scratched a golden goatee on his chin and walked closer to me, his companions, male and female stayed back. Though the winged woman with bronze skin did move a few steps before he threw her a scowl. She stopped still as if she were a criminal.

“I am not, none of the people here are, as far as I know there is no magic. Though…. I must say that sounds more impossible that it did just a few minutes ago. I am Andras by the way, nice to meet you.”

“A Realm without Aether or Mana. It's a first isn't it, Gory?” He asked the third of amongst them to speak. Bespectacled, with a robe of of loose green cotton, and a golden circlet instead of a crown atop his buzz shaved head.

“Yeah, a First for all I know. But if you don’t have any Aether.What is all this light?”

“It’s what we had to figure out to advance, when you don’t have magic you have to improvise. Science we call it, though that specifically is electricity.”

“How is this electricity… created?” He continued to ask.

“Scholarly twerp.” One of the others spat on the ground before Gory.

“Back on track everyone.” Felrin clapped his hands. “What do we do with you, Andras? This was meant to be a hard quest,a B Rank Promotion. Pray tell, Andras, what was the damage to the relationship of our nations? How likely is it that others will be let through these gates, or that we will be allowed to stay here?”

It was at this point that two thoughts flashed through my mind, so fast they went that I had lost control of them by the time I realized what they were, and what they bid my body do.

‘Do with me? In any world, and any context, that’s not a good sign, of anything. I am in danger. But… Can I turn this situation around? Nay, my whole life and future around?”

“As things are, the damage is incredible. We, leave in densely populated cities, of millions. What about your people?”

“NO!” Felric was shocked. “Wow… That safe?” His wasn’t the only intense reaction. Even the silent, so far, strong and impressive looking monster women, had shock written all over them.

“I told you this Quest was a Diamond Rank, right? Well, above that is there are four more ranks before Challenger, and I am only trying to promote. If one becomes a challenger, then and only then, can they have permission and the power to clear land, some withering forest, and rule over a city, people will flock in and eventually they will clear more land, if they stand tall to the challenges that are to come. This is all well documented and known in our world. Cities are small and crammed, travel between them is expensive but possible, and those not inside the city walls face trouble often, especially in frontier territories.”

That second thought which had just been a flash before thundered into my dome like Zeus himself, and it screamed at me to take action. I did before I could refute it. I didn’t want to.

“You won’t be allowed to stay here, you are the face they will put to those that caused this damage, a million people may have died because of that one attack, there has never been such a devastating single attack in my world’s history. We do have weapons that can do that much damage, but I think your realm and that gate will be a unifying force, and a place to try those weapons out without consequences. SO! I have a proposal.” It all came out in one breath. I wanted my life after all and Felric did not seem like a man of much patience, nor of upstanding morals.

“Take me with you. I’ll disappear from this world. Hook me up with somewhere to stay, and a foundation, something I can use to survive, and They’ll never know you were here. Never.”

“Praise be the Lord of Power, you are saving me a lot of trouble with this. Are you sure, Andras, that you’re gonna go through with this.” Felric walked up, his eyes went wide, like those of an abandoned puppy.

“If you somehow lock yourself into your side of the deal.”

“Then, here ye. I swear upon my honor and the Bonds I hold so dear, to the God of Justice, Flames, To the Goddess of the Scales of Balance and of Ice, that I will bring you to my realm, the city in which I reside, gift you with Guai to protect you, and will take you to the Guild for you to Join and become a Trainer.”

Felric’s companion did not take this lightly. Five of the few dozen women there grabbed at their chests, one of them even dropped to her knees, their expressions pained. Gory himself was red in the face. “Felric! What have you done!?”

“Gory.” Felric turned around and silence fell upon the scene. Gory seemed frozen in time. I don’t know what was communicated, and I did not care. Felric could be a ruthless dictator for all I cared, if there were truly Gods, which in their Realm did not sound impossible, then he’d set my path, and I was going. Whether I liked it or not at this point. 

“Right, happy now, Andras?”

"Sure, just one thing. What is a Guai?" I thought I knew at this point, but it never hurt to ask.

"They are Guai." He pointed to the Dozen gorgeous yet monstrous women around him. They'd remained silent all this while, waiting, yet I had seen them look at each other, chuckle even. Whether they talked in whisper or not. They seemed perfectly intelligent. "The Monsters that make us, trainers. And themselves useful. Are we done here? The sooner we leave the better. You know."

“Certainly. Let us go through that Gate.” I said and marched on, showing a smile on my face as I passed in the path that opened for me, scrutinized by monstrous women, sexy women, voluptuous women, women that looked about ready to bite me or punch, which did not seem like it would leave just a bruise.

‘Kay, I’ve done it now. There is no turning back. I shall grasp this opportunity, and screw Earth. I’ll get myself some Guai, and grow strong, and clear some land, and I will make the best damned city there ever was. To catch them is my real test, to train them is my cause~’
I sang that tune in my mind and pushed past the membrane surrounding the gate. One moment I felt alive, the next, nothing.