Chapter 142: Doran’s Havok

Learner’s notes: Day 15

On combat:

The most common way for hooter to permanently deactivate, or ‘kill’ each other, it to damage the structural integrity of their physical forms beyond the individual’s tolerance. The three most common ways of doing so include poking holes with sharp objects, cutting with bladed objects, or crushing with blunt objects.

All of these techniques seem to be aimed at relieving the hooter’s body of the red specialized units that transfer nutrients across it’s body, or damaging the strange specialized organs inside their bodies.

Why would someone ever willingly have specialized organs? It made no sense, creating a huge bundle of weaknesses. The only saving grace was the fact that they seemed to do their jobs more efficiently than unspecialized units.

Hooter fists fall into the blunt category, and are a poor example thereof. It is not only difficult to kill another hooter with fists, but also damaging to the hooter’s own fists in the process.

Highly inefficient. I will not be using them.

This odd hooter appears to have gone about things in a more pragmatic manner as well, forming blades about two hand spans long that jut out of its split open palm. The blades appear able to equally cut or poke.

I’m not about to rule anything out, but there is a possibility that this saggy-stage lumpy hooter isn’t actually a saggy-stage lumpy hooter.

Or perhaps this is the reason the other hooters seem to defer to the saggy lumpy ones.

Requires more – it’sattackingsigningoff!

***Learner***

The hooter asked if it missed anything, staring at Learner, along with the two remaining hooters, who held their weapons in front of them cautiously.

There was a silent moment for Learner to take a few notes, before it lunged toward Learner, swinging a blade toward Learner’s neck.

Oh, look, it’s got tiny serrations!

The carefully crafted ratcheting vice of bone and mucle in Learner’s chest tightened, forcing the two Unqua beads closer together.

Click, click, click click!

As the two beads stiffly resisted being pushed together, they gave off the unqua’s unique aura that made themselves small.

In an instant the saggy hooter in front of Learner became enormous, its blade passing far above without even threatening to touch the hairs on the top of Learner’s disguise.

Yes, I’m definitely seeing the appeal of specialized units.

Learner opened the channels in it’s fingertips, releasing a carefully controlled stream of Crystal Lattice catalysts.

A spear of crystal shot out, growing massive in size as it detached from Learner’s body. The spear caught the saggy hooter in the center, or ‘gut’, and propelled it across the room, slamming it violently into the far was, causing the ceiling to rumble and shake, sending down little particles of dust.

I wonder about the structural integrity of this room, Learner thought as the vice unclicked.

Click, click, click, click.

The room shrank as Learner expanded.

It seems as though most creatures in this world take distance for granted.

***Kala***

“Did you know about this?” Grant whispered.

Kala shook her head. “I knew Ryan was sick, but I never knew with what. And I didn’t care about the bastard to pursue it any further. His stupid asshole aura hid that thing from my eyes.”

Kala shook her head. That had been a stupid mistake. She had to keep track of even the unpleasant ones.

“What should we do? Kill it?” Grant asked, holding one of his emergency blades

“No, it’s highly intelligent and forming its personality while it learns about the world. it’s trying to save us and make a good first impression. We have to act in good faith or it might turn out poorly.”

“So that’s what that gibberish was.” Grant said, relaxing. “It called us bitches.”

“It’s been riding around in Ryan.”

“And? Does the guy say bitches a lot?” Grant asked.

Kala forgot Grant had been absent the last couple weeks. She rolled her eyes with a sigh.

“All the time. He called everyone a bitch, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what she thinks the word for women is.”

Grant started chuckling.

“That’s not funny.”

“It’s a little funn –“

The creature leapt forward, slashing down at the other creature.

The monster from the Filter…vanished, blinking out of existence. A fraction of a second later a massive crystal caught their opponent in the gut and slammed it against the far wall, shaking the entire room.

Not vanished, Kala realized as she began to grow from the size of a mouse to a full human again. Shrunk, like an unqua, and using crystals, like a lattice.

Oh, crap it copies things, doesn’t it.

The creature’s butt jiggled just a little as it hopped to its feet, reminding Kala that it’s chosen form seemed to be an exact copy of her. And it was naked.

If Grant made that connection, he wisely chose not to say anything.

Very wisely.

***Learner***

Learner turned around and gave the other two hooters one of Ryan’s ‘thumb’s up’, letting them know that they were on the same side.

Probably. The ‘thumb’s up’ seemed to be highly situational. Meaning agreement or acknowledgement, assent, or encouragement, depending on what was necessary. One thing Learner knew: it was always used in a positive interaction.

So while Learner wasn’t exactly sure if they were using it in the right context, it could only mean good things. A positive thing in this situation would be ‘I am helping you’.

Language is hard.

Learner’s efforts to master hooter body language were rewarded when the tall flat hooter with the grey hair gave a thumb’s up back. Copied behavior!

Yes! Communication has been established with these pathetic prey animals! The first step in infiltrating their strange hive society and getting closer to the Manifold Predator has been taken!

A massive weight slammed into Learner’s side, and they tumbled across the room as poke after poke landed in Learner’s neck and face.

Learner felt the sack that was hiding all her unspecialized units part like the Manifold Predator’s gelatin under a hot knife.

The creature’s blades poked all the way through learner’s head and gouged into the stone floor beneath it.

No, bad! Hooters had a strong negative reaction when they spotted Learner’s units, which was why Learner had made just enough specialized units to contain them and complete the disguise.

Now they were going to spill out!

Learner turned it’s head to the side and shoved the annoying creature off, slamming it back against the wall again.

“No look!” Learner said, covering its head with its hands as its units drew the perforated face-sack back together.

I was so focused on making a good first impression that I failed to make a good first impression! As soon as I learn the word that represents that phenomenon, I am going to curse it!

***Kala***

“Is it bleeding…little you’s?” Grant asked as they watched the monster hide its face from them. Unfortunately the other creature’s talons had gone all the way through its head, and bits of it were welling out the back as well.

The tiny little Kalas industriously held the tears in the creature’s skull closed while others sealed it somehow. The gaping tear rapidly vanished under their care, and the last remaining one simply flattened itself over the part that was missing a bit of skin and…melded into the skin, growing hair to match the rest of the scalp. In a matter of seconds, there was no sign of any damage whatsoever.

But they all knew what lay just under the skin, now.

“Am I the only one that’s a little weirded out, here?” the monster disguised as an old woman asked, coming back to her feet as the wound in her stomach sealed itself closed.

Kala tapped Grant. They needed to get back into the action.

***Learner***

Learner’s notes: Day 15.

On anger:

Anger is a new sensation to me. It seems to come part and parcel with this form.

Anger is the natural result of frustration, which is the sensation when many solar rotations of careful planning are ruined by a stupid mutant creature.

Anger is…AAAAGAGAAHHHHHAGHH!!!

Learner jumped off the ground and hit the mutant across the midsection, knocking it to the ground before beating on it with Learner’s inefficient human fists.

It was absolutely the wrong move to achieve maximum disruption to the creature’s form, but it felt so right.

“You stupid bitch make bad thinkings!” Learner shouted as it landed blow after blow on the bitch’s face.

Learner wasn’t entirely unscathed, as poke after poke jammed its way through Learner’s disguise. The saggy bitch was ignoring the blows to the face and instead trying to eviscerate Learner with her blades.

There was some damage to the multitude of internal organs Learner had replicated from other creatures in the Filter, but nothing even remotely capable of threatening Learner’s life.

Honestly, it was about as ineffective as Learner’s punches.

The units in my hand are getting damaged beneath the skin, Learner thought after a good fifteen seconds beating on the saggy face, gradually coming back from the strange exultant detachment of anger.

Adjust strategy.

Learner clapped a hand over the creature’s mouth and let the units split through the skin of its palm, flooding the enemy’s airway with units.

Consume.

The creature’s eyes went wide, and it bucked violently, throwing Learner off and into the hole in the center of the room.

Learner wanted to explore this strange dimension more, and going back to the little prison underground was not conducive to that.

With a grunt, Learner tried to activate the internal spinner flying organs, and found that they’d been too damaged to work.

Stupid specialized organs.

Learner made a desperate stretch, elongating its arm by a good two extra arms, catching the edge of the hole and slamming into the stone shaft, damaging thousands of hapless units.

The specialized skin of its arm was stretched nearly to bursting, but it was the only thing that gave Learner’s units the tensile strength to resist detaching from the ledge and falling the rest of the way into the hole.

Thank you, specialized organs.

Learner pulled hard, flipping up and over, landing on the opposite side of the large hole in the floor while reeling in the over-stretched skin and the units contained within.

There was every possibility that the creature was going to make another attack, so Learner had to be extra cautious.

Except…the creature seemed to be busy.

It bent over and convulsed, jettisoning something out of its body that looked very similar to an esophagus. The esophagus was broken down by Learner’s units in a matter of seconds, the tiny dark skinned hooters eating their way out of the package and marching back toward Learner.

As it vomited out a bit more goop, the creature’s face split in two, revealing a much longer mouth filled with teeth, as though a saggy hooter’s face had been plastered on the nose of some great beast.

Well, now I’m pretty sure that that’s not actually a saggy-stage lumpy hooter. There’s nothing in their morphology that suggests they grow into flesh-eating monsters.

The creature unpacked, it’s arms and legs unfolding and lengthening, the massive hunch uncrooking to reveal a torso nearly as long as a man’s entire body, topped with a strange, prehensile, jointed mouth that was able to simulate a neck.

Is that strange? Learner glanced over at the hooters. Their eyes were widened, skin pale, and were flinching backwards, good indicators of surprise and alarm.

I’m really getting the hang of this body language thing.

Despite their apparent fear, the hooters capitalized on the moment the creature spent hurking up it’s own throat to make their move.

The prey who looks back – also known as Kala – made a flourish with her fingers, conjuring some strange purple crystal and jamming it into the far end of the glass tube, then a point of light dotted her finger before she inhaled deeply and the crystal somehow turned glowing red.

Most interesting.

Even more interesting was when the lumpy hooter exhaled the white air which shot through the air in a thin stream, straight into the creature’s nostrils.

The creature recoiled, coughing violently.

“What the hell was that?” the flat hooter demanded.

“Doran’s Havok!” Kala shouted.

“You inhaled that!?”

“It should be fine,” Kala shouted, flicking the sticky charred crystal out of her tube. “Long as I take a sedative!” she conjured a moss and inhaled its smoke.

“Kill it while it can’t think!” She shouted at the flat hooter, then pointed at Learner and motioned to join them. “You too!”

“You fucking idiot, you’re gonna be speedballing like crazy!”

I wonder what all this means.

“Aaaaaiiiigggh!” The creature’s skin flexed and dozens of pointy spines rose out of it’s pale flesh, a bladed tail ripped through the tattered clothes, tearing the last of them away from the creature’s form.

“What the hell was that!?” it demanded. “I….fuck you! AAAGH!”

The creature’s words devolved into pure rage-driven guttural screaming as it lunged forward and…tore the rapidly growing brain polyp to shreds, along with the corpse underneath it.

I did not expect that, Learner thought, continuing to retract the extended arm.

The motion seemed to attract the creature’s attention, and it pounced across the pit in the floor, huge cutting claws extended.

Learner wasn’t in terrible danger, but it didn’t make sense to let the creature harm Learner’s borrowed organs any more than necessary.

Click, click, click, chunk!

Ow.

Learner’s rachetting stopped partway as the damaged bone slipped, only allowing partial shrinking. It was barely enough to avoid the wild swipes of the creature, nearly shearing off part of Learner’s disguise.

Whereas before they had been calculated to cause as much disruption to Learner’s organs as possible, now it seemed like the creature was just angry at everything.

Learner kicked off the creature’s leg and slid out from under the monster. For a full three seconds, the monster continued to slash at the floor while Learner released the shrink and ran away at full speed.

Learner looked back and saw the creature biting off its own talon and slamming its head into the ground, as if it were trying to damage its own units.

How strange.

In that time, the flat hooter had reestablished control over two of his swords, the blades glittering beside his shoulders.

I like flat hooter shoulders.

Learner shook the thought off. Irrelevant to the situation.

The space-warping organs and the shrinking organs were damaged, but the ones buried in Learner’s fingers were working fine.

Learner buried a packet of catalyst in crystal and shot it at the far wall, just on the other side of the creature.

When it hit, the packet cracked and sent another blast of crystals spearing outward from the far wall, damaging the creature and sending it spinning through the air toward the flat hooter.

The flat hooter motioned with his hand, and the two swords flew out, catching the beast in midflight, and dragging it down into the pit.

Stone screamed as the claws tore rents through the shaft on the way down, until the sound suddenly vanished.

“Whew.” The flat hooter exhaled, looking down the pit. “That’ll buy us some time, at the very least. Thanks for the help.” He gave a thumbs up, and this time, Learner returned it.

“You…stupid bastards…” Kala’s voice attracted learners attention to where the observant hooter was leaning against the wall, weakly sawing at her wrist with her shiny golden hair ornament.

“You just sent it….Agh…Into the fucking filter. I’ll kill you after I kill myself,” She said, a bit of spit hanging from her lips. Kala’s head hung limp, but she stared at them with an expression that Learner interpreted as Extreme Rage.

“What’s the filter?” the flat hooter asked, leaning closer.

“Come closer so I bite your throat out.” Kala replied, drooling a bit.

“Well, she’s not going to be any good to anyone for a couple minutes, let’s take her to Kurawe and debrief.” The flat hooter looked down the hole. “Cuz I’m not stupid enough to go after that thing.”

“What’s wrong with this bitch?” Learner asked.

“This bitch is hopped up on Doran’s Havok, which deadens pain, causes a psychotic break, extreme rage and a strong inclination to self-harm. Very messy way to kill someone.”

“Grab her other arm,” he said, hoisting Kala to a standing postion. “And watch her teeth.”

***Magenta***

Magenta was weightless, but it didn’t register so much as the need to kill anything and everything, excise everything that didn’t belong. She was a single point in space, and all this meaty stuff attached to her didn’t belong.

It was abhorrent.

Tear off the hand, tear off the arm, bite off the legs, work the teeth through the flesh.

Magenta’s own warm blood was filling her mouth when she realized that her mouth wasn’t a part of her either.

It was part of this fleshy prison she was trapped inside of, and if she could just crack her skull open, she’d be released from inside herself like a newly born chicken from an egg.

Yes, tear off the mouth, drag it against the stone, peel it away like so much – The ground interrupted Magenta when she slammed into it at terminal velocity, causing a white burst of lights to cover her vision.

When she began to be able to have conscious thoughts again, she realized that the only thing she could move was her tongue. The rest of her damned prison was so badly broken she couldn’t lift a single digit.

Magenta whined in distress as she realized she was going to continue to be trapped in her own body, unable to make things right because the damned thing couldn’t even move.

This is the worst. At least I can get this…horrible tongue off of me.

Magenta was delighted when she was able to saw through her tongue by running it across with her upper teeth, letting the disgusting, long red organ finally fall away from her. The experience was liberating, and she wept in relief.

Finally dizziness overtook Magenta, and she welcomed being freed from the constraints of her flesh.

***several hours later***

That was the most horrifying trip I’ve ever been on. Magenta thought, wiggling her regrowing tongue and scanning the surrounding cavern with her eyes.

To be fair, it’s the only trip I’ve ever been on. Magenta admitted internally. From what she’d seen, she’d avoid drugs if possible in the future.

Her lower jaw was over there, her left hand over there. Her right hand was missing some fingers, and she was pretty sure part of her skull was exposed.

But…I’m still alive. And I need food. She needed food, because she could feel the Warp inside her building toward another mutation.

Just as she had that thought, a massive form lumbered above her in the darkness, sniffing at the mass of rotten corpses she lay on top of.

Ah, just what I needed.