So, a scene popped into my head. One of a handful. I’m not sure how they’ll come out, if they ever do, but I reckon that it might be welcome here rather than waiting for a different prompt, or trying to get everything in one place before it does come out.
First draft status, and I’m not sure if the end bit works or not, so it might stand change if I manage to get more out of me.
Heroes Fall, third short.
“Baby, come to bed. It’s three in the morning.”
“Can’t. Don’t wanna do it again.”
“I wasn’t going to jump your bones. C’mon, you’ve got a ton of ammo already. It’ll be enough.”
“You still make me laugh, Ms Kincaid. I want spares to give to the national guard this time. Last time, five of them were pinned down and got taken out by Devastation. I gotta try loading them up. They’re the only ones that died last pass.”
“Shush. You only call me Ms Kincaid when you’re feeling nostalgic. How many more do you need?”
“I’m always nostalgic for you. It took a hundred rounds to knock him out last time. Would be easier if I could just kill him. Wanna give them double that.”
“Move over ‘Eternus’, let me help. I’ll load powder, you finish, okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s okay love. Thanks Ev.”
“You know, one of these days I’m going to retire from the network and turn full time reloader. Any chance we’ll be able to get to my parents’ this weekend? I want to tell them the news.”
“Not sure. I only took a short break after the last run. Two days, then I ate lead salad and came back. But I think things were clear enough that the team didn’t need me on the origin cycle. Worst case, it takes me a few weeks to handle whatever might come up and then I’ll be able to free it up.”
“Have you thought more about the pills?”
"Yeah, a little. Was pondering on it while I was working. I’ve gotten better control over how far I go back each time. Origin cycle, it was always that same day, or the night before, no more than twenty four hours though. After I cycled back when the Kitain killed me, it was all over the place. Weeks, months, a year in one case. I’m just worried that a suicide pill might fuck things up.
I’ve been poisoned a few thousand times, and Rabid sure loved to add toxins to his disease aura. Always came through fine But if anything fucks my memory, I don’t know what might happen. Maybe voluntary changes things. Can’t risk that."
“Donald, you say you blow your brains out often enough that I can’t get the image out of my head despite never seeing it.”
“Sorry Ev.”
“That’s not my point. Shush. If your actual brain being shredded doesn’t screw your memory, why would a cocktail of gentler things?”
“I don’t know. Most of my deaths are sudden, fast. The ones that haven’t been were at least with me conscious right until the end. Every cocktail you and the doc have suggested includes something to knock me out, and they’re slow so it doesn’t hurt. What if that fucks things up? What if I’ve already tried it, and I’m on a permanent loop that I can’t fix unless I don’t take them? What if. What if. That should be my fucking call name.”
“I wish…”
“Yeah, love?”
“I just wish it was easier. Better. Different.”
“I’m used to it now, if I’m being honest. There’s times I think about doing repeats for the good things.”
“Maybe you should.”
“Nah. Don’t want to spoil them. Our first date. I had to repeat that once, and I was terrified I’d fuck it up. Trying to navigate the little things that make us us? What if I fucked it up and you hated me?”
“Oh, Don, baby, I’ll always love you. I always will have loved you. Whatever it is that makes you recycle, it wouldn’t dare try to steal that from us. It would be too cruel.”
“I love you Evelyn. More than I love anything in this whole fucking universe. I’d let it all fucking burn for one night with you. Let’s get some sleep.”
I’ll let it all fucking burn if the Kitain take her again. Take her and just run.
Thanks for letting me know about the new scene.
I like it and think it adds a nice little happiness for the protagonist who needed some after the first scene :)
I’m not sure about the last sentence. It’s not clear to me what is meant. Is it that the protagonist will rewind time to before her death and then run off with her (to protect her) and leave everyone else to die?
If they can rewind time, and have done so for the equivalent of 1000s of years, I feel like “losses” would be insignificant and routine. I’m sure it would be exhausting, but at the same time, they could just do a few lifetimes of vacation to counter the burnout and then get back to trying to save the world.
Although, if they had watch Ev die or be with her as she dies, I could see that being extremely taxing on their psyche. But again, the few lifetimes of “running away”, I think, would allow him to recover. Though maybe this is pre- his first vacation lifetime and he’s trying to justify the “vacation” run to himself.
Well I’ll end my stream of thought here, hopefully it’s clear I like it and find the scene interesting. If we’re lucky, you’ll be interested in writing to some more prompts in the future :)
Edit: just saw you had previous posts and read them. Enjoyed those too, though had difficulty following the “I still do not understand. It’s a religious letter.” scene. First time reading through it I thought it was a conversation with 3 characters, but now I think its just the vampire and demon.
The original heroes fall is too long to repost in one comment.
But the link is https://lemmy.world/comment/16264684
The writingprompts c/ on .world got shuttered in favor of this one, and I switched to this account as well, so not everything is in this account history.
The scene with Tobias has two vampires and Tobias’ demon, a canine looking rabishu (a type of spirit with real world mythology, but very different from the fictional version used by me).
That was a fun read thanks for sharing it :)
That is what he means. If he can’t keep her, he doesn’t care about the rest of the universe. He’ll take whatever they can manage to have until…
It may help to know that the origin of the character was from a previous prompt about a “groundhog day” superhero. I’ll copy in the story as a separate response here.
But, originally, he led a fairly linear life. The backward skips were bad, but he didn’t lose much. He gained because he could undo the bad.
But then he went waaaay back. And he’s been bouncing back and forth through the same span of time ever since.
He had gotten inured to death. He accepted that he was just gloomy to keep going, seeing the death, but apart from it because the only thing that mattered was fixing those deaths.
And then he met her. And his entire universe shifted. He’s seen her die. At least once, likely more. That’s breaking him. That’s shifting his goal from saving the world to just not losing her.
Which is probably a bit spoilerish, but the whole thing is burning in my brain currently, so it needs out
The added context your link to your previous story helps. Thanks :)
Your writing is fun and the plot is interesting, are you thinking of turning this story/character into a full short-story/book/novel? I’d be interested in reading more.
"Nobody gets it. The time, the money, the research that goes into it. That’s before the range time, of course.
You see, if you are running into the kind of conflicts our team gets into with no combat powers, and you want to make it long enough to swing the fight, you need something.
Most of the time, I favor a heavily modified .45. My main handgun started life as a Colt, standard seven round magazine, nothing fancy. I inherited it from my grandfather. He was a Naval officer and did competition shooting both for the Navy and as civilian once he retired, and this was his carry, rather than a competition gun.
At first, I just polished everything to make it feed smoother. Then I started tweaking until it’s this monster that can take very high powder loads while still cycling with subsonic rounds for poo and giggles. The magazines I make for it hold fourteen, though I had to expand the frame and if a mag gets trashed, it takes a couple of days to replace.
But that’s my “oh crap, I gotta run” gun. I keep it on me 24/7 because I never know when the alarm will go off, and Shift has been known to pull people out of bed into the briefing room, or even into the field.
I have the usual assortment of versatile long guns too, plus a modified revolver that can take an assortment of calibers because of some springs and careful machining. I favor 5.56, 12 gauge, .308 and 300 winmag because they’re easy to find if I run out of my custom ammo. There’s better options, of course, but I can think of a dozen times in the last decade where I had to buy from local stores during extended fights.
But it’s the ammo that makes me effective in normal fights. Between knowing some top notch molecular manipulators and inventors, added to my willingness to experiment with propellant and materials, I can usually keep a few magazines in every caliber for common threats.
Like my Ragnarok stuff. All of those villains take unusual gear to even scratch. Nuke can be taken down by depleted uranium in a pinch, but he regenerates so fast, and can use them in his own way to power up his explosive nature. So I have a custom round just for him. Can’t share the specs, but it’s a laminated round, layers of different materials including some enchanted metals. As the round does its job, it neutralizes parts of his powers.
Back before we had to permanently put Rabid down, I had an exploding round that spread nanobots to counter his infectious range enough to get close and secure him. He hated me something fierce. Not just because I shot him a lot. The nanobots left him weak and confused for weeks after he’d heal up physically.
It’s mostly about prep time."
“But, Eternus, the question was how you can survive so well without powers, but let’s table that for now. You said no combat powers, does that mean you do have them? What can you do?”
“Well, Ms Kincaid, that’s classified. All I can say is that it allows me to have prep time and room to develop both my gear and skills”
“So, time manipulation?”
“That’s classified”
“Classified by who?”
“That’s classified.”
“Eternus, you agreed to this interview, why won’t you answer the actual questions?”
"That’s classified.
No, contain yourself. That one was a joke. I am answering them. Where operational security allows. But I’m a person. I don’t necessarily answer things the way you want because I largely go with the flow of consciousness. I also don’t have an obligation to answer things I don’t want to. If you ask me boxers or briefs, I’m walking out because it’s none of your business, nor anyone else’s.
But here, the way I survive without combat powers is trusting my team, and them trusting me to not shoot until I’m certain it will achieve a goal. I only shoot a person if there’s no other choice, even with less lethal ammunition. I only shoot animals, or any living thing, as a last resort. I have no issues dumping rounds into machinery, spirits, or other non living, non human entities that are a threat to humanity.
But when I need to shoot? I don’t miss, and I use the right tool for the job. Which loops us back around to where this particular subject started. Time, money, research, practice. That’s how I do it."
“That is still evasive. What people want to know is how you do it, and now that we know you have some kind of power, they will want to know that too.”
"Ms Kincaid. After everything I just said, including that the information is classified, do you really think I chose to say it that way by accident? A slip of the tongue? No, ma’am, it’s ammunition being sent to a target. You’re the rifle. The information that I do have a non combat power, and that I am a fantastic marksman is the ammunition that will neutralize a target.
This is my first interview, ever. You, of the entire list of journalists that have requested one, got picked because you are the right weapon for the job. So, if you’ll be kind enough to help me off with this microphone, I’ll be on my way.
Unless you need to be oiled and cleaned."
“Key-rist Eternus, did you really need to add that last part?”
"Well, yeah, General. It wasn’t an accident. That was the sixtieth version of things, and I needed something to snap her out of her laser focus on my power. That it also bumped her anger a little, and worked as a pickup line just helps make sure things work this time around. Maybe. I’ll have to see.
All I know is that we need to recruit Generator instead of fighting her. Can’t do that if her sister gets killed. Can’t keep her alive if she doesn’t trust me. She hasn’t trusted me because she thinks I can’t protect her.
So far, even telling her everything hasn’t worked. The closest I got was when I lost my temper after the fifth run through and she tore into me after the camera was off, but cooled down enough after an apology to at least listen when I showed up at her door with the usual “come with me if you want to live” bullshit that Streak hates.
So I called an audible. And I think it worked, Max. After the mic was off and I was leaving, her approach was totally different this time. More open, less aggressive. She just asked what I meant by it. I told her “That’s classified” and she laughed. I haven’t gotten a laugh out of her in, what; a hundred years of subjective time?"
“Eternus, this plan of yours, stopping the Kitain, how many times have you come back? I know I’ve asked before, but this is the first you mentioned how long you’ve been at this one step, and you’ve never even said that much before.”
"I don’t know. Max, I just don’t know. I’m barely hanging on here. Trying to keep track of every fight, every little encounter, pinning down that Generator is the only one that can let future us make the next step. Fuck Max, I think it’s maybe a thousand years now? Maybe more. Back and fucking forth, eating a damn bullet every year or two, having to redo every fucking fight, sometimes multiple times to get a different outcome than my first cycle back to see if that works?
I can’t even write the shit down because it won’t come with me. And I think I love her now."
“Eternus, let it out man, let it out, I got you brother, just cry it out.”
I never thought I would dip back into that world again, mainly because the first trip was so specialized. But this prompt made my brain flash hard, and I had to.
And now I’ve got this idea bubbling around with five others I never get around to expanding lol.
That was a great read. Thank you for sharing :)
Don’t know if you’re interested, but I had another scene work it’s way out of my head, and posted it here as a second comment
Thanks :)