Synthetic Family

[Demon Mistress Luke]

This is most likely going to be a long story. It will end up being around 50,000 words and should be completely finished by the end of November. HAHA. It'll be done eventually.
I'M POSTING THIS HERE UNDER THE ASSUMPTION THAT IT WILL NOT BE STOLEN IN ANY WAY.

Sorry, not to sound mean or anything. ^^;; I'd be devastated if someone stole this from me. ;~;
I'll post the next page on Sunday or so. Or maybe today. Depends~
I can also remove this if I need to for whatever reason, I'd hate to be breaking any rules. D:

Chapter One Page One

The glaring sun beat down mercilessly on the already hard baked ground. For as far as the eye could see there was only packed dirt, craters and mounds of debris. There was no hint of life, plant or otherwise. Every sound was amplified due to the persistent silence. It was disgustingly hot, as well and the dry breeze provided no relief. The distinct lack of living trees left little shade available and thus no refuge from the crippling heat. Quite suddenly, there was some movement in the practically frozen scene. A rather large lizard scuttled across a rock, its long tail dragging after it as it jumped onto the ground with a nearly silent hiss. Without a moment's pause, it raced across the dense ground. Its claws kicked up a little cloud of dust as it easily made its way through the flat terrain. Running at a distinct diagonal, it was hard to tell what it had seen. The barren land had a way of masking things until you were right on top of them, though. All at once, there was a flurry of movement and sound. The lizard simply sat and watched with its three multicolored eyes. The sounds of rapid gunshots, snarling, yelling barking and the like filled the area. One rather large man could be seen fighting with a pack of dogs. The man was around eight feet tall. Not much else could be inferred about him due to his clothing choice, but it was clear his was strong.

In his right hand he held a massive gun and in his left he held a more lightweight, sharpshooting laser rifle. The dark cloak he wore swirled around him as he moved rather desperately to beat back the dogs. The dogs themselves were in a pack about ten strong. They were massive beasts, many of them with extra eyes and limbs. Their mange ridden coats and bloodied bodies provided an unsightly display, but it was the fighting that was more interesting. Despite the ten-to-one odds of the battle, the man was winning. He had a few bites and lacerations on his body, telltale signs of an ambush, but other than that he was uninjured. He was sweating heavily from the heat and the extended physical brawl of keeping the Mutts off himself. Still, he fought on without seeming to tire. Rather than dodging all of the Mutt's lunging attacks, he fended them off by using his heavier gun as a club when they drew too close. The heavy weight of the piece made it an effect weapon and every time he landed a hit on a Mutt, there was the sound of bones being smashed and flesh being bruised. He seemed reluctant to move from his spot, even endangering himself to keep the dogs at bay. As he moved to detour the efforts of one of the Mutts, it became clear why: He was looming over the body of an unconscious girl.

Swinging violently, he caught one of the dogs in the jaw and sent it flying just as he managed to shoot a laser through another's head. With harsh calls, the dogs retreated quickly. As the ones that could move fled the scene, he looked with interest at the rifle. He hadn’t known it shot beams of light, lasers he now recalled. Nodding once, he took stock of the area to make sure it was safe. The Mutts that couldn't move due to injury were quickly dispatched with careful shots to the forehead with the newfound power of the rifle. Six of the dogs were killed in all. Panting heavily at this point, the man slumped down near the women and slipped his thick arm out of the massive, bloodstained gun. Carefully, he brushed some of her dark hair from her face. There was blood caked on one side of her face accompanied by a rather nasty bite mark. Seeming fairly unfazed, the man reached into his jacket and pulled out a rag. Not seeing a way to do it gently and effectively, he roughly rubbed as much of the blood and dirt off of her wound as he could. As he did so, the girl started to whimper and squirm. Pausing in his efforts, he looked at her intently. As he watched silently, her bright yellow eyes fluttered opened.

"...Lars?" She spoke quietly, her voice hoarse and weak sounding. Before she could say anything else, she winced and closed her right eye. The bite marks circled this eye and were already turning a nasty shade of red; the light purple tint around the edges promising severe bruising later on. "It burns." She hissed raising a clawed hand to rub her eye, “My face, it burns- Nngh!” Lars caught her wrist sharply and shook his head at her; the motion causing some of his off-white hair to detach itself from his sweat soaked face.

"Mutts chomped your face, I wouldn't touch it, Isis," Lars replied quickly, releasing her wrist with an apologetic head tilt. Isis nodded slightly and rubbed the offended wrist for a moment before offering her hand to the much, much larger male. Lars took her hand gently and slowly pulled her up in hopes of preventing further injury. Isis let out a groan as he did this, her round, catlike ears pressing back against her skull as her vision blurred. He body swayed dangerously and she leaned against Lars for support. After a moment’s recovery, she brought her hand back up to her face and delicately touched her wounds. She hissed at the jolts of pain this sent through her face. While keeping her inflicted eye close, she managed to quietly survey her partner.

 

[Demon Mistress Luke]

Chapter One Page Two

"You're hurt too, we need a town..." She paused for a moment, her long and fluffy tail twitching. She almost hadn’t noticed that she had it, but something told her it was normal to have the extension of her body. The white and gray appendage looked just as ragged as the rest of her. Silently she lifted her face to look at the much larger man, "We have to go, brother. We have to go there," She blinked at him a couple times and he nodded quietly. Neither of them knew exactly where it was they needed to be, but they could feel it. They needed to go east, it was urgent. First, though, they knew they needed medical treatment. The Mutt’s didn’t look like they had the most sanitary mouths and the duo had a feeling infection could set in quicker than they could find the nearest town. With a grunt, Lars stood up straighter and Isis quietly stepped away from him. She was dressed similar to him, clad in simple, all black clothing.

Before they left the area, they cut up one of the hounds and cooked the meat, making a meal of it. They ate carefully, overcooking it just to be safe. Most animals were toxic to some extent, so eating the wild ones could be dangerous. In all honesty, they didn't actually know any of this. They both looked at each other silently as they ate. They didn't know anything, really. Why they were here, where they were going, what was dangerous and what wasn't... they were simply going by their gut instincts. Neither of them had to say this to the other, they understood the situation perfectly. For whatever reason they were here and all they knew were some names that they didn't have faces to. The Harsh Waste, they assumed, was the disaster that was in front of them; the Mutts, the dogs that had attacked them. Everything else was a blur. They had just barely woken up in the very spot they were now leaving when the Mutts had attacked. The only thing they were certain of that it was dire to go east.

Lars also had to adjust all the gear they found near them before they could leave. There were quite a few packs, weapons and clothing scattered around the area. Both of them quietly agreed that they were some kind of travelers. Since both of them were feeling a little weak and worn out, they took their time with collecting everything even though getting medical attention was urgent. Despite the heat of the day, their internal clocks told them that it was barely morning. Isis muttered lightly as she rubbed the nasty bite on her face. The sun was aggravating the wound and causing it to burn like acid on bare flesh. Attempting to ignore it, she picked at an article of clothing that had been tossed around in the struggle with the Mutts. It was black and contained a lot of parts. For a minute, she though it was shredded to ribbons, but almost immediately she slid it over her shoulders and started to wrap the cloth around her body. It was an automatic reflex, so she simply went with it. Once she was done securing it, she noted it was a rather ragged coat; purely black and gray with silver embellishments. For some reason, she felt cooler when she slipped it on. She assumed it had some sort of cooling technology built into it.

It took them a few hours to collect all the items that were strewn about, but they managed to make a couple neat piles to look through. Both of the adults looked through the clothing first. Lars found an odd, metal contraption that he slipped onto his head and promptly pulled a bloody and ripped hat over. He wasn’t sure what the contraption was, but he thought it might be important. The hat looked like a military hat of sorts, but an old one. He liked the look of it and it didn’t press uncomfortably on the white, rounded ears he had in place of a ‘normal’ human’s ears. He wasn’t sure what normal ears looked like even, but he was sure most people didn’t have ears like a… polar bear. That was the name, though he had no clue what one looked like. Did they even exist anymore? He shrugged it off and looked through the articles of clothing big enough to fit him again, hoping to find something else useful or interesting.

Sure enough, he found a pair of spikes that hooked nicely onto the lightweight boots he wore and an odd bracelet that matched the equally as odd headpiece he wore. He put both of the items on before turning to Isis. His pale blue eyes met her piercing yellow ones and a slight smile formed on her lips. She seemed pleased with her discoveries and Lars couldn’t blame her. Aside from the cloak, she had found a mouth-only gasmask that fit her perfectly. The interesting thing was that it actually silenced her breathing instead of amplifying it. More foreign technology, it interested them both. What she seemed most happy about though was the guns she had found. A sand colored rifle rested comfortably on the small of her back, the scope folded up neatly so that the gun took up less space. She also held an oversized pistol with a knife attached to the muzzle. They weren’t sure what the weapons were called, but they could tell they would need them. Dividing up the packs so that Lars had the heaviest ones and Isis had the lightest ones, the pair slowly moved on.

 

[Demon Mistress Luke]

Chapter One Page Three

Moving through the Harsh Waste was hard. In the awful heat of the sun it was rare to see any other creature, human or any sort of living threat, but there were other dangers. Debris often times created impassable walls that they had to walk along for miles before they could find an opening. During previous wars, entire cities had been torn down with toxic and chemical bombs. Old cars, buildings and even bones could be found in the huge relics of the past wars. Craters as well created huge obstacles for the injured duo. Some areas had been more than leveled, they had been completely decimated. The huge pits were larger than most lakes and were dangerous to go through and practically impossible to move around. Down below, in many of the holes, scientists had created odd, terrifying jungles filled with all kinds of unneeded and dangerous experiments. They opted to go around these as well, even if at their limping pace it took hours upon hours to get around and then get back on track. They found out all too soon that their injuries caused them to move painfully slow and that the further they moved, the worse they and their wounds felt.

Before they knew it, it was starting to get dark and they had hardly made any progress. Not to mention there wasn’t a town in sight. The two adults could both feel the underlying sense of fear that the thought of sleeping out in the opened brought and they decided to act upon the mutual fear. So, they bedded down for the night in the crushed remains of an old skyscraper. At this point, both of their wounds were inflamed. Isis' face was swollen and hot and she had difficulty keeping even her good eye opened. The bite was a bright red with a deep, dark purple around the puncture holes. Lars wasn’t much better off. The claw marks on his body throbbed violently, causing him to breath heavier than usual. The bite he had received on his left hand was even worse, the coloration matching Isis’ bite perfectly. The glanced at each other weakly, both of them uneasy and tired as they forced their bodies to squeeze themselves into a small niche in the metal and concrete wreckage.

"Lars... Do you feel as bad as me?" She coughed slightly as she spoke and leaned back against a steel beam, curling into herself as she did so. He nodded mutely in return, feeling her pain as clearly as he could feel his own. Sitting in near deafening silence, they began to inspect their outfits a little more closely, interested in the various technologies they had somehow acquired. There were some things they had they weren't sure how to use, after all. The guns, for instance, were something they knew nothing about. Lars had figured out his laser gun accidentally while he had been fighting the ambushing Mutts, but he didn't know how to work the larger one at all. A Gatling gun, that's what the much larger gun was called. He blinked and ran his large hand over its surface, running his hand all the way down the bullet feed to the oversized ammo pouch he wore as a backpack. It fascinated him, but he didn't want to call attention to themselves during the night by trying to figure out how it shot. He decided that I they survived the things that came out at night as well as their injuries, he’d learn how to use it as soon as the sun showed itself.

Isis mumbled something about the mask she wore, saying it kept out toxic fumes and filtered the air in general so the air she breathed was cleaner and better for her. She also mentioned that it silenced her breathing, so she assumed it was for an assassin’s purposes. Struggling to keep herself awake, she coughed heavily as she explained what her cloak did. It reflected the sun’s light, she thought, so that she was kept cooler. Lars gently pulled her against him and she dropped off into unconsciousness instantly, resting her head on his shoulder. Smiling lightly at her, he mulled over what she had said. Both technologies would come in handy if his vague recollections of the Waste were anything to go by. Not to mention what he saw today. Groaning lightly at the pain in his body now, he pulled off the odd set he had stuck on his head in hopes of finding out what it did. The contraption wasn’t something he could remember very well. The large man felt a fondness towards it though, so he assumed it has been his for a while. At the thought, he paused for a moment. Why was it that neither of them has very many recollections of their lives? They were both in their twenties and yes almost everything was blurry and vague. Shaking his head, he looked back to the lightweight metal technology in his hands.