The magic of the watch defined: https://haunt2003.com/index.php/community/world-of-darkness-2nd-edition-homebrew/wod-artifact-level-spirit-talisman-the-watch-of-amelia-watson/

Posted on X:

https://x.com/LaylynofHAUNT/status/1977736719668560041

Weapon of mass creation

Amelia Watson's BGM (epic version)

https://youtu.be/W-bntsLJ3VY

“Together we drove to a small cabin in the mountains. It seems an archaeologist had come to this remote place to translate and study his latest find: Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, The Book of the Dead. Bound in human flesh and inked in blood, this ancient Sumerian text contained bizarre burial rites, funerary incantations and demon resurrection passages. It was never meant for the world of the living.” -Ash Williams, Army of Darkness, 1993

“Madness is like gravity; all it takes is a little push.” -The Joker, the movie The Dark Knight, 2008

“It is madness for sheep to talk peace with a wolf.” -Thomas Fuller

wallonthefloor

28 Days Later Theme

https://youtu.be/DbwlGv9SWfY

Tokyo, Japan

November 3, 2019

Christie had no idea where she was being taken.  She was just a tourist visiting Tokyo.

She remembered a moment where she drank something at a club talking to a guy.  The drink had an odd taste to it.

A little later, she woke up in an elevator going deep underground.   It must have been at least 20 floors beneath the earth.

She didn’t know anything went that deep, in this foreign city, of 41 million people.  They hustled her through corridors that were higher than cathedral ceilings filled with pillars as far as the eye could see.

There was the smell of stagnant water, wet concrete, and rot.  The air wasn’t fresh here, deep below the earth.

The two men carrying her along were impossibly strong.  Their grip was like steel bars.  Trying to free herself from a cage meant to house a lion.

They wound through several corridors to a sealed area.  The door seemed to open electronically.   The door itself seemed ridiculously thick, possibly a meter.

There was a luxurious room at the center of several rooms.  There were lights in the ceiling, but they were turned off.   Expensive furniture shown in the light of several candles.

Christie’s captures kept marching her forward.   She wanted to scream, but nothing would escape her throat.  

She kept walking along with the men, as if she were in a trance.  Her will seemed not her own.

She passed by the doors of what seemed like thirty rooms.  At the end of this hallway was one large double door area.   It looked like something that would be in an old noble’s manor anywhere in Europe.

The doors opened without any visible mechanism.   The room inside stretched out to a single individual sitting on a red throne.

Christie was able to get a good look at him, as she was dragged forward.  Moments later, the two men dropped her in front of him and began leaving the room.

The man on the throne was tall, dark and handsome.  He was intoxicating to look at. 

He smiled at her.  Her heart thumped in her chest from that smile.

As crazy as it sounded, had she been brought into some kind of dark romance novel?   The lady wondered for a bit, if this man had somehow chosen her.

She was unharmed.  Her captures had not even bruised her.

Perhaps, this wouldn’t be so bad after all.   She looked into the man’s eyes, as he looked into hers.

He spoke with a foreign accent that she couldn’t quite place.  He wasn’t from her native Canada.

He smiled gently.  He stroked the side of her cheek.

She found herself moving against his hand.  She enjoyed the feeling of his touch; it was just oddly cold.

He spoke sweetly saying, “I can see the modern romance novels running through your mind.”

She smiled at that.  Perhaps, this wouldn’t be a nightmare after all.  Perhaps, this was the beginning of where she was meant to be.

He made a gesture and the doors behind her closed.  For a moment, she registered something was wrong.

He smiled and said, “It’s magic.  It’s just like from your fairy tales.”

He almost went back to stroking her cheek. This time when she looked at his hand, she noticed his fingernails were unnaturally thick, more like daggers than the nails of a normal man.

He smiled as her eyes went wide for a moment.  He decided to talk more.

The man stated, “Let me introduce myself.  My name is Ninazu.  My human mother named me after the god of the underworld, hoping I would have a long life with such appeasement.”

He smiled gently.  He stroked the side of her cheek.  She went back to accepting it.

Ninazu gently said, “It worked in a fashion.  I was born in what you people would call 3,310 BC.  I was literally born 5,329 years ago.”

Ninazu continued, “My people were the first real civilization of man.  I hailed from what was known as the Uruk period of the magnificent empire of Sumer.”

Ninazu bragged, “My esteemed people literally invented writing, laws, literature, the plow, pottery, bronze working, advanced mathematics, the wheel and the ziggurat.  Over on that pedestal there is one of their proudest achievements.”

Following his gesture, Christie looked at a book on a stone table.  It was odd looking.  She felt unsettled just looking at it.

She asked, “What is it?”

Ninazu instructed, “It is the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, The Book of the Dead.  It is the very reason I am not dust, today.   It is the very reason my followers are not dust today.”

He smiled and said, “It is one of the very few true sources of magic in this world.  It’s capable of things modern man denies and is incapable of even dreaming of.”

The ancient man stated, “The Necronomicon existed before I was born and is more powerful than the little firecrackers your people call nuclear weapons today.”

“It can grant immortality.  It can raise the dead, in a fashion.  It can raise ravenous armies from the ground.  It’s capable of many great feats for those willing to pay the price of its gifts.”

Christie looked at it.  Her rational modern mind doubted everything the man said.  However, her gut and her heart were terrified of the book.

There was something unspeakably dark and malevolent about what lay on the stone table.   Strange whispers filled her mind when she looked at it.

She could feel sounds coming from it.  This was even as her ears literally heard nothing.

Ninazu smiled.  He watched the fear and confusion well in the young lady’s face.

There was the unspoken revulsion of mortals.  There was the recoiling instinct of seeing something carved from the flesh of many tortured human beings.

The book of the Great Old Ones tickled the subconscious.   It reminded these primitive people of how close they were to the actual end of their useless little lives.

The mortals were nothing more than a giant herd of pigs.   Pigs were good for nothing but slaughter and consumption.

Christie moved her face away from the book.   She gazed into Ninazu’s eyes to calm herself.

He went back to stroking her cheek.   She closed her eyes, until the disturbing voices receded from her mind.

The tall, dark and handsome man spoke in his odd accent, “I have lived a very long time alone.  I have grown tired of it.”

Christie leaned into his hand.  She could guess that like her, he was lonely.

Ninazu continued, “There were times, I have felt like this before.  My book and I have moved several times quietly throughout human history.” 

He stated, “We have visited many countries.  We have seen the rise and fall of many empires.”

He informed, “There are so many things in this ancient world you do not know.   The real darkness holds many secrets.”

Ninazu smiled and said, “That said one thing is different from so many times before.  Do you know what that is?”

Christie looked deeply into his eyes.  She responded, “No.”

The tall, dark and handsome man informed, “I have traveled this world since I have awakened and found nothing that can oppose us anymore.” 

He continued, “It is just a world of mortals.   A world of common everyday people.” 

Faster than Christie’s eyes could follow his hand moved behind her head and painfully grabbed her hair.   His eyes became unnatural, enlarged and veiny red.

She was immediately terrified by how inhuman his face looked.  She could hear the book whispering to her in its maddening chants several times louder in her mind than before, even though no sound of the book touched her ears.

She was terrified.  The man before her no longer looked handsome.   He was a cold, demonic corpse masquerading in human form.

Ninazu continued, “The age of Myth and Heroes is over.  Do you know what that means?”

The frightened woman sobbed.  She didn’t answer.

Ninazu continued in a ghostly voice that no longer contained any trace of human warmth or life, “That means there is nothing left that will even be a light challenge to my kind, little piglet.  That means your only remaining value is that you are all here to be slaughtered.”

Christie was trembling.  Tears streamed down her face.

The fiend continued, “It won’t just be you that dies.  It will not just be you singing the music of your screams.  Soon enough, I will personally drag all eight billion of you screaming to your deaths.”

Ninazu expressed the undead madness in his head, “The end of humanity will be a fitting accomplishment for me to end my existence on.” 

First, he would unleash madness on another servant of the Great Old Ones.  Once he had accomplished this task from his master, his personal plan would begin.

The Necronomicon would be his key.  The magic would allow him to rapidly convert and deploy.

He smiled seeing his kind sweeping the world like locusts.  The vampires would voraciously drain every living thing, before desperately turning on each other.  Even his own troops would die from blood starvation in his repulsive self-destruction fantasy.

Ninazu cackled and expressed his inner madness, “Before I go, I will take you all screaming with me.  That cacophony will be my dirge.  That music will be my final triumph for my masters.”

Meters away, the vampire guards listened outside the door.  They couldn’t really hear what the boss was saying, but they weren’t listening to his words anyway.

Each snickered as the torturous foreplay began.  This was their favorite part of bringing him his meals.

The boss would work on her for at least an hour.  Both guards listened to the show.

They listened to the woman’s screams.  They listened to the ripping skin, the breaking bones, the sobbing, the pleading and the whimpering.

Nothing was as evil as the boss.  He would bring the whole human race to its knees soon enough.

Forty-one million people in Tokyo had no idea their supposedly safe home had this going on right below their feet.  They had no idea about the horrors to come…

“Evil has only the power that we give it.”  -Ray Bradbury, “Something Wicked This Way Comes”

“Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult.”  -Anne Rice, “Interview With the Vampire”

Ninomae Ina'nis Ch. hololive-EN

『TEMARI』 - Ninomae Ina'nis

https://youtu.be/LtTO1HMGjqA

On a remote mountain in Northern Japan

November 3, 2019

It was a quiet moonlit night in Japan.  The sounds of the forest were beautiful and soothed the shrine priestess’s soul.

She could hear the water lapping on the lake nearby.  She could hear the last sounds of the insects that winter would soon take.

Ina was walking on the outskirts of the shrine.  The shrine priestess moved in traditional high wooden shoes, kimono, and parasol. 

The lady of the shrine moved with grace and serenity in the darkness.  She was the most dangerous thing for kilometers.

Ina feared nothing in the dark.  She was something of the void’s darkness herself.

Ina wanted the peace and quiet of the forest.  She found something else.

The sounds of nearby animals and insects grew completely silent.  Something was nearby, heretics trespassing on the sacred grounds of the shrine.

The priestess reflexively prepared her defenses.  A silent protective spell went up.

She moved the newer parts of her to the surface of her back, should she need them.  Luckily, this would not disturb her kimono, as she was rather fond of traditional dress.

Multiple things scurried in the night.  They likely thought of themselves as stealthy.

They moved faster and lighter than that which was natural.  Ina closed her parasol and came to a stop several meters from the nearest tree.

She listened like a night hunter.  She subtly sniffed the air.

She sensed the presence before she saw or smelled them.  Their movement was boorish, unsophisticated, and overconfident.

These were hunters.  These were things used to being alpha predators. 

They were used to helpless prey.  They were like pet snakes who had only ever hunted rats that had already been stunned.

Ina was not helpless.  Ina was not stunned.

She could smell their rotten mana and forms.  There was also a hint of Old One taint.  This was the scent of a completely different Great Old One.

Ina searched for her memories.  Her readings of forbidden knowledge and knew what they were.  Twelve vampires slowly moved out of the woods to attack.  

The fools still thought stealth and surprise were on their side.  They were moving into position to pounce, much like cats that had no idea they were already spotted.

Vampires had few vulnerabilities.  It made them overconfident.  They often forgot one of their greatest vulnerabilities was magic itself.

The undead had chosen their target poorly.  The priestess moved in what had become her post possession instinct.

To her attacker’s shock, four tentacles burst out of her back metaphysically.  They spread out many meters at preternatural speed.

Like mice grasped in a hawk’s talons, the first four never knew what hit them.  In an eyeblink, four vampires had been smashed into the ground and disintegrated into dust.

The ever-calm priestess was almost enraged.  Did they really think she had survived the horrors she had, just to be killed by something as pathetic as they were?

The bloodsuckers seemed momentarily confused as she grabbed four more.  The hesitation simply put them on even worse footing.

The remaining four regained their composure.  They moved.

The other four who thought they could move in for the kill bounced off an invisible barrier without ever touching the priestess.  The only evidence of its existence was a flash of neon purple in their impact.

The four vampires in her grasp also disintegrated.  There were now only four.

The survivors tried to run.  Ina looked for the one she would most easily mentally break.

The panicked vampires sprinted thirty meters in a second.   It was nowhere far enough to escape Ina.  She had already caught them.

As she dragged her intended victim slowly towards her.  One by one, she disintegrated the other vampires over her intended target.

The vampire shuddered at the dust of each one of its companions.  The creature’s sanity might slip soon.

The fool needed to know who he had upset.  The fool needed to know how silly his overestimation of himself was.

The vampire would have urinated on itself had it still been alive.  It struggled with such panicked ferocity that Ina wrapped it in a second tentacle to remove any hope. 

She kept her two other tentacles on standby while she dragged her prey in.  She slowly moved it into position upside down.

They were eye to eye.  He was nothing more than a helpless fly in a spider’s web.

This thing had made her angry.  This thing had pissed off the darkness inside her off.

The priestess asked, “Who sent you?”

The vampire refused to answer.   Even in terror, the fanatic looked away, awaiting its death.

Ina clarified, “I do not need your permission to learn what you know, leech.”

This animated corpse had tried to kill her.  Ina’s normal gentle nature melted away.

She was sick of being helpless.  She was sick of being a victim.  She was no longer a sacrificial lamb.

The priestess mentally sifted through several forbidden spells.  She focused on the one that was the most painful way to get what she wanted.

Ina’s eyes glowed purple.  The purple glow of spell circles appeared.  The vampire began screaming.

She shifted through the vampire’s mind like a baker violently sifting through flour.   The flour metaphor in this case being the very nerves of the creature’s mind.

Ina began saying what she found out.  This was confirmation and a way to let her enemy know just how completely it had failed to keep its secrets.

“The five must not assemble.”     She violently and painfully had the spell dig deeper.  Who were these five the rival cultists feared?

She stated, “Kiara the Phoenix?”   She didn’t have an image.  It was Sumerian words written in blood on a text of leather.   Neither she nor the vampire could read them.  Someone else had translated them.

She said, “Calliope Mori, the Grim Reaper’s apprentice?”  Again, more Sumerian words.

She inquired, “Me?”   This time they had an image of her and the other children who had perished.

She questioned, “Amelia Watson, a time traveling detective?”  These were Sumerian words of text.

She paused saying, “Gawr Gura?”   She blinked saying in disbelief, “An Atlantean survived?”   These were more words of Sumerian text.

She dug deeper into the memory, “An Atlantean was one of my best friends?”   This was the most unbelievable revelation of the four.

There was more.  The vampire was trying to hide their memories.  

She found it.   Her eyes flared brighter purple in the spell.

She angrily said, “You used sacrificial rituals to try and rob me of my sanity?”   Her tentacles squeezed the vampire tighter. 

“You’ve already been doing the rituals to start the process.”   She glared at the despicable cultist, “You are why my waking nightmares are worse.”  Her eyes glowed almost like twin purple flashlights.

There was something mentioned this other book bound by forbidden leather, “September 13, 2022.”   None of this was in her own book’s English translated version.

She thought out loud, “New Timeline?”    There was another version of the Necronomicon being used out there as well.  

This one had visions of her own future.  This one had visions of her apparent destined downfall.

That was all the vampire knew of value.  The prey had become a waste of time.

The vampire crumbled to dust in her grasp.  She had much to consider.

She opened her parasol and began strolling back in a measured lady like fashion.  In some ways, it’s a shame that such rudeness disturbed such a lovely night.

The priestess returned to the shrine.  There was a fate she wished to avoid.

That said, there was also something bright she had learned.   She had four true, predestined friends.  She had simply yet to find them...

"Walk down the right back alley in Sin City, and you can find anything." -Frank Miller, Sin City

“The rain was comin' down like all the angels in heaven decided to take a piss at the same time. When you're in a situation like mine, you can only think in metaphors." -Dick Justice, Max Payne 2

Jeremy Robson

Amelia Watson's Theme (Film Noir Version)

https://youtu.be/ZDs9Hienxqs

Amelia Watson’s Private Detective Agency Office

Los Angles, California

November 2, 2019

Amelia Watson sat in her office.  Before her was a mystery.

Was it a terrible actor who was a waiter?  Was it a waiter pretending to be an actor because he thought it increased his chances with women?

It was LA.  It was hard to tell.

The detective bent her will to one task.  She pretended she was taking this blowhard seriously.

The “actor” was openly reading note cards in front of her.  There wasn’t even a hint of natural conversation.  Grade schoolers could outperform him.

It was taking all of Amelia’s willpower not to openly mock him.  Her inner gamer was itching to smack talk this noob.

The waiter, who may or may not be an actor read, "I'll need you out there pounding the ground."

It took all of Amelia's will not to respond sarcastically, "...nothing beats a Ground Pound!' That's funny, because that's actually what I did to your mom last night!"

Her face was a blank.  Through sheer force of will, she looked empathic, as he kept delivering one cliche line after another, poorly.

She finally got to the end of his tedious delivery that took somewhere around thirty minutes.  She estimated it would have taken around five if he had memorized his lines.

He could have at least been really attractive.  Was it too much for them to send attractive desperate actors to send her to her death?

The job was to find someone on the beach of Santa Monica.  She was tasked to help police identify and arrest the individual by calling it in once located.

Twenty thousand was the upfront payment. Once again, it was a set up through a proxy. Whether she survived or not, she would never get the second payment.

Amelia pretended there was a secret camera on the right side of the room. Moving her hand to where it would cover what she was about to say, she looked in that direction and said, “They’re watching from a camera over there. That’s all the money, right?”

The “actor” deposited another sum he had hidden in his pocket.  All the hired “actors” had tried to walk off with part of the cash.

Amelia shook his hand and escorted him to the door.   Once he was out of the door, she took out his lifted cellphone.

It took about two minutes to bypass his password.   It was nothing special.

She went through his recorded messages and his texts.   Messages were a dead end.   The texts included a few bits though.

They included the amount and the target information.  It also included a promise to be hired for the same work up to three more times.

Amelia wrote down the number from the text.  There was a knock at her door.

She locked the phone and answered the door.   The “actor” stood there.  Amelia handed him the phone.

She simply said, “I think this dropped out of your pocket.”

The “actor” smiled and walked off.  Amelia closed the door.

She walked back to her desk.  Three more jobs would be four total.

Since she was the mark a few other times, that meant she was the fifth.   She thought of the other clue in ancient Greek, “The five must not be allowed to assemble.”

Amelia grabbed her hat.  She grabbed her keys and her weapons. 

Amelia Watson prepared to drive to Santa Monica beach.  The game was afoot. 

This would be another ambush.  The question was if she would be the only target...

"Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it."  -Haruki Murakami

"The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living."  -Marcus Tullius Cicero

"To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die."  -Thomas Campbell

Tokyo, Japan

November 3, 2019  (16 hours ahead of LA time)

Binky had gotten Calliope Mori to the scene of the woman’s death, more than a minute before her demise.  In her non corporal form, she observed the woman from Texas.

The doomed lady was drunk and obviously in extreme emotional distress.  Whatever happened in the young woman’s life had not been kind.

The Grim Reaper’s apprentice was here seeing the last few moments of life the girl from Texas would ever live.  It was the quiet misery of lost friends and broken dreams.

The body Calli would soon possess did not know the last few moments had come.  She tried crossing a street.

She never saw the truck.  The doomed lady never realized she had crossed the street, before she was supposed to.

Her mind had fooled her in its absolute grip over her thoughts and her heart.   It was over.

Calli did as her mentor had asked.  She just decided to do it a moment early.

The young girl from Texas would never know the pain of death.  Calli felt that a second of fear was enough.   The girl from Texas closed her eyes and was gone.

Like her softie boss, she learned in that moment of truth, she too disliked unnecessary suffering.  She bonded, in time to have the body that she possessed kicked like a soccer ball.

The agony she had chosen to take for the mortal immediately made her question her sanity.  She had no idea that pain like this even existed.

She soared many feet out of the street.  She crashed several feet away into a nearby building.  The building itself was damaged by her impact.

There was a second wave of pain as her body then crashed to the ground.  Somehow, that hurt worse.

Memories of the life of a little girl growing up in Texas flooded the reaper’s mind.  The undertow of the grief that the woman had been going through pulled the reaper’s conscious.

There were years of memories that became her own.  She knew what it was to have family, fears, love, dreams and disappointments, just in the sharp way that mortals knew them.

The body, that should have been mangled, was not.   She was neither crippled, nor splattered.

She was a hybrid of what she was before and what she was now.  Less than what she was when manifested, but far more than the mortal that had just lost her life.

The magic involved rewrote the body into the reaper’s own appearance.  It moved the bystanders to not see her accident, change, or her body.

The truck driver was in the street trying to figure out what he had hit.  No blood or hint still existed, other than the dent in the front of the truck.

The strange modern clothes the reaper wore reknit.  Her newly acquired identification switched to her name.

Calli walked from the accident area.  She was lost in the grief the woman had been awash in.

The boss was right.  Human emotions were no joke…

"At some point in time, the world I knew either vanished or withdrew, and another world came to take its place... my mind, here and now belongs to the world that was, but the world itself has already changed into something else.” -Haruki Murakami.

"The world will ask who you are, and if you do not know, the world will tell you." – Carl Jung

Jeremy Robson

Atlantean Lullaby (Gawr Gura's Theme)

https://youtu.be/SLeewAD8tEY

The beach of Santa Monica

Los Angles, California

November 2, 2019

Gura could hear the ocean.  She lay on a soft bed, nestled like a child in sheets refusing to get up.

She could smell the Atlantean roses as she began to awaken in a groggy state.  She could hear the happy hum of the roses as they drank up the world’s mana and the sunlight.

She could hear her mother gently calling, “Time to wake up, sleepyhead.”

It was dark when she awoke.  It was unexpectedly dark. 

The smells were wrong.  What she saw was wrong.  The background sounds were wrong.

This was not her home.  She looked for her mother and couldn’t see her.

Her mind released the grip of sleep.  Her memory returned.

No, her mother wouldn’t be here.  Gura remembered forever losing her.

This was not her home.  This was some weird place. 

The local humans had made something with unnatural lights and the noise.  What she was seeing meant a long time had passed.

There was something else.  She was wearing clothing she didn’t know.

The shark marked cloth was something that would have defied her mother’s Atlantean fashion sensibilities.   Someone else had purchased or made this.

The cloth was woven together magically, without visible seam or stitch.  The cloth wasn’t Atlantean either, it was something made and dyed from the plants of the sea itself.

There was also a glow that Gura investigated within.  There were glowing letters.  They were a language Gura did not recognize, but could read anyway.

“Not flesh of my flesh.

Not bone of my bone.

But still miraculously my own.

And never forget for a minute.

You were not born under my heart.

But in it.”

-Fleur Conkling Heyliger

As soon as she read it, the glow faded away.   What was left was the green letters, inside the shark clothing.

Her thoughts were interrupted.  There was cacophony and obnoxious mechanical sounds.

Gura heard music.  She heard laughter and the noise of people.

She could read a nearby sign that said Santa Monica.  She had no idea what that meant.

The Atlantean walked onto the beach.  She began exploring in the dark.

As this place could be dangerous, she tried her best to be stealthy.  The strange people couldn’t hurt what they could not see…

Tokyo, Japan

November 2, 2019

"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream." -C.S. Lewis

"Often when you think you're at the end of something, you're at the beginning of something else."  -Fred Rogers

There were no adventurer guilds.  There was no obvious danger to the world.

There were no dragons nor demons to slay.  There was no treasure to find nor bounties to hunt.  Cutting even evil people down with swords was very illegal in both Austria and Japan, thus the Phoenix had to adapt.

For the first time in thousands of years Takanashi Kiara had to work normal jobs just to get by.   She had quested from Austria to the capital of Japan just as she was instructed by the celestial in her last life.

Once there, the Phoenix Gajin had become a non-Japanese, idol in Japan.  She sang and danced. 

Kiara had learned public relations and worked with fans.  She had already become fluent in Japanese, German, and English.

She lived under glittering lights and worked with the other members of her idol group for years.  The girls she worked with pushed themselves for long hours.

They worked on their professional images.  They each lived extremely regulated lives as they chased the dream of reaching for the highest stars of the entertainment life in Japan.

Kiara's group had singles on the radio and many fans.  There were dazzling shows that became memories that she would never forget. 

With her idol group, she forged friendships that had seemed like they would never end.  Unfortunately, these bonds began to fray under pressure and the weight of dreams never completely achieved.

The girls she had loved like sisters were human.  Age became the unstoppable anchor that had limited the time they had together.

Far too soon, the time came when they were no longer a new group on the rise.  The time came when they were no longer a group in their stride.  

There came a point where they were in decline.  They felt the pressure from newer, younger groups who were reaching even higher levels of popularity.

Part of the fate of an idol group was luck.  Kiara’s group had been luckier than many.  

That said, in the moment, it’s hard not to be jealous of those whose luck passed you by.  All the girls had given their all to try and make it to the most dazzling heights of fame.

Years had flown by.  Before she knew it, it was a beautiful dream that came to a bittersweet end.  

The idol group had dissolved.  Within a month, the company's idol dorms that had been her home for years would expect her to move out.

She had a nest egg of money.  Knowing how fickle jobs can be, as a former guild leader, she had always prepared for the worst. 

Not everyone in her group had been as disciplined.  Now, the contract with her agency had expired for all of them. 

Kiara soon found herself as the last member of her group in Tokyo.  The loneliness in that was something the Phoenix wasn't used too.

The other girls had gone to family in other parts of Japan.  It was harder watching them leave one by one, than Kiara had anticipated.

Unlike in war, it was nice to see those she cared about retire from a career.  That said, she felt surrounded by the little things that used to be.

There were favorite idol posters.  There were favorite parts of idol merchandise she had collected.  There were memories of friends she would likely never see again.

In her melancholy, she had gone somewhere her manager wouldn’t let her go, under her strictly controlled time and diet.   She went to a local fast-food restaurant.

It was an American place for fried chicken.  The Phoenix was eating something known as original recipe.

This place known as Kentucky Fried Chicken had a magical seasonal meaning in Japan.  A genius advertiser had convinced the people of Japan that KFC was something people in America ate for Christmas.

No, that was not completely true, “Kentucky is Christmas” was not just a thing to eat.  For the Japanese, it was a celebration of a foreign non-religious holiday that many people enjoyed.

Three million six hundred thousand Japanese families sat down to eat this every year.  Kentucky Christmas was a huge part of how Japan was KFC’s third largest global market.  It was also a third of the chain’s yearly sales.

It even had romantic connotations.  A famous actress had recently dumped a fellow movie star, because the nonromantic man had not thought enough of her to reserve this holiday meal, that with two KFC stores in Tokyo had even included with wine.

It’s not that the meal was expensive.  It’s that the meal was hard to get.  The meal required the forethought for reservations around a month in advance for the premium menu.

Kiara sat enjoying her meal and fantasied about what it would be like to own a restaurant like this.  As she did so, she remembered an Elven fried chicken recipe she had enjoyed in her last life.

She remembered it.  The ingredients were here on earth, both the oils and the spices.

It was a matter of how you prepared it.  She sat dreamily remembering the recipe and the lady who used to make it for her.

The memory of that world and Angelica’s face could still bring a smile to her face.  She thought of naming a restaurant after her lost love, but decided that would be something that Angelica would hate as an idea.

The last real love of her life was an introvert.  Her name being used seemed disrespectful to her memory, as Angelica truly loved her anonymity.

A second name popped in her head, Kiara Fried Phoenix.  She even liked the initials, KFP.

There was a humor to it.  With the word Phoenix, there was a little bit of magical spark to it as well.

Kiara finished her meal and went back out into the increasingly chilly streets of Tokyo.  It was a fleeting thought.  

How could she ever do it?  There would be investors, employees, building location costs, advertising, and ten thousand other small details.

She was a former idol with a small nest egg of money.  That little dream seemed impossible to make real…

Continued on the next page....

“Heroes are ordinary people who make themselves extraordinary.”  -Gerard Way

“Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”   -Alfred Tennyson

Lita Cena

The Pretender - Foo Fighters Lyrics!!

https://youtu.be/QvEqMBEF1rc

The case was a set up.  Amelia Watson knew it, as soon as she took the bait money.

She was loaded out for what was to come.  The light Kevlar she wore as a detective uniform disguised her intent.  It also hid the form fitting vest she wore for one extra layer of protection.

The detective was ready to fight.  The investigator was in hunter mode.

Amelia Watson entered the place she had found in her investigation.  It was just as the hired actor, that in turn had hired her, had predicted. 

The perps had congregated in an old mining cave in Nevada.  Amelia wasn’t supposed to be aware that the perps were vampires.

The cave was far enough away from society that there was little chance for witnesses.  Further, if witnesses disappeared here, they’d likely never be found.

The front guard was pleased to smell the target human walking up to the entrance of the cave.  The blood sucker mused that might as well have been food delivery. 

The guard saw a serious looking figure that was dressed in yellow, like an old novel detective.  What startled the guard for a second was the detective drawing a gun.

Vampires had nothing to fear from bullets.  Neither steel nor lead hurt them permanently.

The vampire’s confused hesitation was fatal.  A phosphorus round fired off from Amelia’s large caliber pistol blast.   The vampire screamed, flared, and burned to dust.

The cave erupted in frenzy and screaming.  Pistol rounds went off one right after another.

One vampire exploded into bright ashes, one right after another.  The ancient hunters had become nothing more than prey.

Far below the majority, the lead vampire waited at the end of the cave complex.  He was deeply confused and stayed put in an emergency.

He told himself he wasn’t being a coward.  Someone needed to guard the cult’s paperwork.

No human or group of humans would make it through the twenty vampires that made up the cave network anyway.  It was unthinkable.

“Yeah”, the vampire thought, “no human could make it down here.”

The lead vampire calmed itself knowing victory was imminent.  He might even get to drain some of the intruders, once they were captured.

The rationalized confidence dropped when they heard the first phosphorus grenade go off.  The screams and panic of the other vampires echoed through the cave walls.

Was this a military attack?   Was the government itself hunting them?   Was there a whole platoon of soldiers out there?

Minutes went by like hours.   Had he still been alive, the lead vampire would have pissed himself in panic.

The vampire was reduced to pulling a pistol for its own defense.  That and he was relying on the last guard outside.

There was a last shot and firing right outside the door.   The guard screamed and disintegrated.

It was then that the lead vampire heard the moment of victory.  Outside, there was the sound of the gun jamming.

Being an older vampire, he knew what that meant.  The heat of the rounds had ruined the firearm. 

From the sound it was nothing more than a single remaining survivor.  The survivor was forced to toss the gun to the side due to the heat. 

The lead vampire sadistically giggled.  Once again, luck was on its side.

He set down his firearm with care.   He was going to enjoy this.

The lead vampire threw open the door.   It screamed in victory, “What are you going to do now human?” 

The vampire prepared to drain its target.   It would take its time killing the hunter. 

For a single second, it saw the woman in yellow clothing.  The woman in yellow drew a pistol in a flash and aimed.

The shot went off.  The lead vampire crumbled to ash.

Amelia answered, “I’ll use another pistol I brought.”  

The detective moved inside looking for the paperwork she knew she would find there.  There had been sacrifices and dark ritual magic performed here.

It took minutes to find them.   There were maps, scrolls, and multiple loose-leaf pages.

The core issue was it was once again written in ancient Greek.   This investigation was going to be a pain.

Amelia gathered the paperwork.  She’d need an expert in ancient Greek and someone who could look at the text.

There were only two things she made out herself.   This was due to seeing these specific clues often enough to remember reading them even in ancient Greek.  

Amelia was clever enough to grasp phrasing.  Retaining it a few years down the road would be a different story.

The first clue was a phrase that translated to, “The Five must not be allowed to assemble”.   Amelia had no idea what the five meant.

The second clue was a date.  It was from an ancient calendar.  If translated into a modern calendar, it read as September 13th, 2022.

She thought through her contacts and knew exactly who she could refer to.   She only needed to make a small stop first.  After all, Amelia needed to buy some liquor for the bribe.

She flashed into an alley by a convenience store and made her purchase.  Once outside and under the cover of darkness, she was ready to go.

The watch dialed the directions to ancient Athens.  As she appeared in the ancient time, the watch rewired her English speech, reading, and writing to the local dialect.

She wouldn’t be able to take notes for this talk or record it.  After all, it would be in a language she barely understood, once she returned home.

Thanks to the magic of the watch, she walked unnoticed through the ancient city.   She stopped briefly before the statue of Athena; the Olympian who the city of Athens was named after.

Amelia looked upon the face of the goddess of Wisdom, Art, and War.  On the statue, Athena posed with her sacred animal, the Owl.

Athena was a figure that had consistently aided mankind.  She was the one from several stories that had interacted and assisted the Greek Heroes Perseus, Heracles, and Odysseus.

According to Myth, her owl was said to have been a princess on the island of Lesbos named Nyctimene.  Athena had sheltered her after she had been abused in unmentionable ways by her own father. 

In thanks, the owl became the guardian and companion of the Olympian.  That was of course one of the most common stories of the Myth.

There were of course conflicting stories of Nyctimene.  Some even cast her as a villain who wronged her father.  As with many of the old stories, many tellers may have distorted the basis of the story beyond comprehension long ago.

Amelia got back to the task at hand.   She was about to hand slow poison to someone who would be fated to die of something much stronger.

She couldn’t allow herself to be melancholy or lost in thought.  She needed a translation.

No, she needed more than just translation.   She also needed the perspective of an ancient nonlinear thinker to see if there were any gaps in her assumptions.

Magic always had unseen nuances.  Modern thinking didn’t reason in its metaphysics anymore.

That said, it would also be good for Amelia to visit a friend.  She needed someone to talk to after all the crap she’d been through.

It would be good to see the old man.  It was time to talk to Socrates again…

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown".  – H.P. Lovecraft

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents".   – H.P. Lovecraft

Aviators

Aviators - Can You Hear It? (Lovecraft Song | Alternative Rock)

https://youtu.be/EwfF3S0NPWI

The vile, gurgling sounds grew louder in the darkness outside the room.   Something unknowable slithered, with wet and slimy purpose nearby, larger than the shrine and just beyond the veil of the actual world.

Primal fear tried to grip at the young lady’s heart.   Madness tried to dig inside her mind, with the force of forks being driven into her skull.

That wasn’t just a metaphor, she could often feel the ghostly pains of things being thrust into her flesh without leaving wounds.   She could feel insect-like sensations crawl against her skin.  She felt slimy cold things sliver across her.

She could feel these things, even when she tried to pass into the mercy of sleep, which just opened the infinite horrors of her nightmares.  Dreams did not have the limits of the waking world in their horrible madness.

She was the last child.  The only one to have survived all the tests and the tortures.

That was what saved her.  That was what had doomed her.

She could hear the gasps and screams of the other children.  She could hear their sobs and cries.   This was still happening long after the last had died.

Had they become ghosts?  Had she simply gone mad?

It was hard to tell listening to their screams in the now empty rooms near hers.  Was it memory or supernatural?

She had been made an anchor.  She was the only one to fully grasp these things unknowable to any sane mind.

Nightmares clawed at her even in her wakened state.   The madness beyond the stars called singing to her in an ancient choir that predated mankind.

The darkness did not want her to bend.  It wanted her to break.

When her mind was gone, the full possession could occur.  She just had to surrender to a pull no human could possibly resist forever.

The darkness and the madness pushed.  At least physically, the other little girls had already escaped from the terror and the madness.

They hadn’t been judged worthy of being vessels though.  They hadn’t been chosen.

Ina momentarily thought of the possible peace.  The sound of an old playmates sobs in the room next to hers exposed that thought as a possible lie.

Ina was the vessel.  Ina was the sacrifice.  Ina would be the end of this pitiful world.

The darkness that predated the stars in the sky was hungry.  The darkness wanted a return to the abyss.  The darkness wanted an end to all that glittered and glowed in the universe.

She could feel the old one’s presence.  She could feel it long before she had begun reading the book.  The Great Old One was there.

It was so oppressive it was hard to breathe.  It was so overwhelming it was hard to think.

It overwhelmed her senses.  It robbed her of calm and peace.  It slowly sought to break her mind.

Ina forced herself to be calm.  With sweaty, shaking palms, she drew.   A little girl raised by her cult parents to be a slaughtered lamb, refused to give in.

She created.  She expressed.  She invoked.

A picture formed from paints.  With it, a different soothing voice also appeared, though only in her mind.

A warm, friendly, compassionate voice complimented, “That’s a good one, Ina.  You might not be that far away from making your first masterpiece.”    

Ina could feel the one wrapped in light appear in her mind.  Sunlight appeared in her prison of darkness.  A kind Titaness easing her loneliness and isolation.

Ina smiled at the presence of her friend.  The grasp of the madness and the dark receded.

The kind friend was nowhere near as large or powerful as the darkness.  That said, even just a match’s light was a ward against a universe’s worth of pitch black.

The shrine priestess of the darkness almost cried in relief, “It’s good to hear from you, Sana.”

The Titan sized speaker of space replied, “I know what it is like to be alone.  I will never willingly abandon a friend, Ina.  You can count on that.”

The two happily chatted as Ina drew and colored.  Both were big fans of beautiful art, something the darkness neither cared about, nor understood.

This ritual of creation held the slithering darkness at bay.  In time, it completely disappeared.

Ina’s palms dried.  Her heartbeat slowed.  Slowly, the shakes left her body.

Her fear was gone.  She was master of the house.  She was master of her mind again.

Not long after that, her friend’s had to leave.  That said, the warmth wasn’t going to fade in her absence.

A figure appeared that wasn’t even vaguely human.  Ina’s servants had come searching for an important answer.

The Takodachi were the sentient forms of the shrine.  They were her void minions.  They awaited the priestess’s orders on what kind of evil they should best represent. 

After all, it was likely the original lady had already been possessed by that which was beyond the veil.  These could be the orders of the Great Old One itself.

Ina spoke to her legion saying, “We shall take over the world, slowly.”   Her message was simple and the legion was overjoyed.    

Her instruction also defined the evil they were to personify, “The evil I want you all to manifest is Sloth.”

The Tentacult was slightly confused.  They had expected something like wrath and immediate war.

Ina clarified, “My followers, you can all agree the time of man will eventually come to an end, correct?”  The priestess let the weight of her words hit her minions.

The Tentacult could not disagree with such wisdom.   It was the core of what they had always believed.

Ina instructed, “then there is no point wasting resources or a single Takodachi soldier’s life on what will come to pass anyway.  Be patient.  Be wise.  We will win, slowly.”

Her spirit followers could see no flaw in the mistress’s plan.  They immediately began to strive to become a spirit legion of NEETS, lazing about the shrine, nearly useless.  

They would become the NEETS of NEETS.  They would strive to attain a level of laziness no mere mortal human could attain.  Only then could they truly show their absolute devotion to their mistress.

Ina smiled.  The priestess went back to her shrine maiden’s inner chamber.

The Great Old One was already quieter.  A great trait of the darkness was already taking hold and slowly down their efforts to thousands of times less than before.

Ina sat and began a new picture.  Centering her mind, she made sure the little girl inside her survived. 

Her fear was gone.  She was master of the house.  She was master of her mind again.

As the picture formed, it did so with new levels of ability in art.   Soon, she would proudly show this one to her Titan friend…