Babysitting

 I was on my way to the Newborn's corpse, when I ran into some kid. I mean I don't know how old this body is logically, but as a nearly omnipotent mechanical goddess merely trapped in a flesh body, I consider all of you children... though this one was even more of a child compared to most of the people I deal with.

They were using a crutch as a weapon, which is... an interesting weapon, they had a mask like my own, so I assumed they weren't an enemy, but that doesn't mean they weren't a threat, so I raised my knife. 

Luckily they turned out to be intelligent and we agreed not to fight. I was ready to continue on my way, when it turned out that we were heading to the same place. 

I also learned they were the ones who helped KRAKEN summon the Newborn and cause this entire catastrophe in the first place. I almost punched him, but... It's not like it's really his fault. It's still... mine really. Whether they had the magic or not didn't matter. I could have stopped it... I should have stopped it, but I was too focused on myself and... Well I wasn't paying enough attention and I let it happen. Besides as he explained he didn't know what he was doing and was basically forced at gunpoint. 

Understandable... I have myself learned what kind of awful and degrading things I am willing to do when my life is on the line... like work as a maid for a bunch of degenerates... 

Either way the point is I, in my magnanimity, chose to forgive their mistakes and the two of us continued together. They're not as good a companion as Drake and they asked a lot of questions. So, many that I threatened them to make them shut up... Well I threatened their computer in fact. I mean I can't really do that anymore, but I did do that once before... It was funny. Can't really remember who I did that too or why, but... It was fun. 

When I regain my true form I'll have to do more fun trolly stuff like that. 

Also their name is Kai... I think I vaguely remember them from Dr. Ferris' blog. 

They seem to believe I still have all my cool Thoughtborn powers and I'm just gonna let them keep thinking that.

It's Over...

 It feels... tiring... I don't know how much time has passed, but I've been breathing filtered air for who knows how long and killing people isn't exactly a non-exhaustive activity. I imagine the filters on any normal gas mask would have failed by now, but these are some kind of Fear Gas Masks with... magic or something... I don't know.

Sorry I'm rambling a bit, this post wasn't supposed to be about how exhausted I am or about my gas mask and other protective gear... no this post was supposed to be how I finally found and killed Jeer and Rioter... 

There I was, bat-genoming around the forest. I had misjudged an earlier fight and had gotten myself slightly injured so I was moving slower than usual, which turned out to be a good thing, cause all this time while I was stalking through the forest, someone else was stalking me and my slower movement let them catch up to me... It was Rioter. 

I was watching another Brute and waiting for a chance to strike when Rioter caught me. He tackled me from behind and pinned me to the ground, letting out a loud roar that echoed through the forest. I was pinned face down and while I had my knife in hand, I couldn't get a good strike on him. I thought this was the end, he could easily crush me and I had no way out of this. 

Except it turns out Rioter's little roar of triumph had alerted someone else who was looking for him. I felt Rioter get knocked off of me and rolled onto my back to see what had happened. It was Jeer. He had tackled Rioter and the two were now scrambling to try and get an upper hand as they tussled with each other. 

The two of them resembled large hairless apes more than they resembled anything human at this point. 

... Yes I know hairless ape is itself a description for humans, but... just trust me they didn't look human. 

I could have just let them fight and taken out the loser, it might have been a good idea, but at the time my thought process was, get them while they're distracted.

I ran forward and slid past behind Rioter slicing the back of his legs with my knife which let Jeer get the upper hand and knock Rioter onto his back. While Jeer started to pummel Rioter with multiple blows, each of which could have easily killed a normal person... you know like myself, I took the risk of getting behind Jeer and stabbing him in the neck. 

It... didn't kill him. It definitely hurt him, but he turned and knocked me away with a roar of pain. I let go of my knife which remained stabbed into his throat. He turned on me and I was dazed by the blow he had struck me when he turned. I mentioned I had been injured earlier right... well the lucky bastard hit me right in my injury. The pain was immense and I was having trouble focusing as Jeer began to advance towards me. He seemed shaky as well, but that might have just been my vision. 

Regardless Rioter suddenly leapt onto him from behind and his hand grabbed hold of the handle of the knife, yanking it backwards and tearing it through the flesh of Jeer's neck, Jeer let out an inhuman screech as his throat was torn open and he began to thrash as Rioter held onto him until Jeer collapsed.

Jeer was dead, but Rioter was still alive and Rioter now had my knife. Luckily for me this is also when I remembered that I actually still had a gun. I had been using the knife because I had almost run out of bullets and had wanted to save some bullets for exactly this occasion. Rioter began to approach me and I drew my gun. 

I don't think he knew what it was, he didn't slow, didn't recoil, just kept moving towards me and as I had promised to do a while ago. I shot him in his stupid smug face. It was... exactly as satisfying as I had imagined it would be. After that I took a breather and then got to work. A heart and lungs from Jeer, a brain and another eye from Rioter. Assorted other organs from both and I put them all in the handy organ storage boxes I had been given.

With the packages secured I began heading for the meeting place. Hopefully I'll meet Drake there and well...  hopefully this will all be over soon, it's time to go see the corpse of my old boss. I was told that this would all end at the Newborn's Corpse...

Bat-Genome

 My first knife fight against one of these brutes went well. That's not sarcasm actually, it did go well. My earlier fight with big sexist, racist KRAKEN dude who's name I didn't bother remembering feels like a long time ago, but well... That was also a fight with a guy much bigger and stronger than me where I had only a knife, well I mean I ended the fight by shooting him with his gun, but you get my meaning. The point is fighting him was good practice for these guys.

Their strength doesn't matter, I'm faster, more agile and most importantly I'm smarter. When I fight them they just try their best to hurt me or grab me, get me into a position where I'd have to contend with their overwhelming strength, but as long as I don't let them, they're easy enough to take out. Cutting tendons and stabbing joints also works very well to shift the power dynamic between me and my opponent. Hard to crush my windpipe with an arm you can't use any more.

The point of this of course being... I've gotten pretty good at killing these things, I say things partially because they're barely human anymore and also because well... none of them were human before the forest anyway, they were Towerborn which may have been human once, but it's not like even they remember that. 

The only important thing is not to get overwhelmed. If even one of them does manage to grab me, that's probably it. Which means that again much like during my time fighting KRAKEN in my base, it's time for Bat Genome! Stealthily moving through the forest, identifying solo targets and taking them out while looking for my main goal. The dense forest actually works pretty well for stealth, I'm hardly wearing camouflage appropriate clothing, especially with how much blood is now covering me, but visibility is so bad through all the thick trees that as long as I'm careful it's really easy to spot the brutes who make no attempt to hide themselves before they can spot me.

Time in the forest seems to be strange as well... I have no idea how long I've been here. I can't see the sun or stars, but I'm not even sure if there is a day or night here, it's like... 

It's like the forest isn't on earth.. It feels a lot like being in a different realm, like the times I've visited The Newborn's domain. It's been a while since I've really thought about it... I can't even remember what the Newborn's domain was called.

Use

 Okay... I have now killed a few of Rioter and Jeer's men they seem to either be in the middle of a war or they've made up, cause I keep running into them very close to each other and it's almost impossible to even tell which is which except that some still carry around identifying marks. 

Anyway after fighting all by myself against a bunch of crazy buff caveman jungle dudes I have one thought... 

Why did I run away from the guy who can literally fire lightning from his hands. I'm an idiot. 

If I run into more of those weird things I'm so dead... Hell a wrong move with one of these guys would likely still result in horrible death. 

I like to think if I was still my normal self I wouldn't have let my emotions get in the way and make me act like an idiot. I would have tactically assessed things and made the best possible choice...

Which would probably have been that I am a perfect being and don't need the awesome magic man... So... Stupid, but from a different angle...

I've been learning so much about myself since I became human... Most of it not good. 

I think I'm almost out of bullets too, so I should probably start using my knife more which means getting in close with these big burly monsters... I'm not looking forward to this... I wish Drake was here...

Dr. Genome

 So, while I was waiting in the woods to recover my strength I heard someone approaching. I got ready to fight when something, unexpected showed up. It was a man, walking with a cane. He didn't seem infected by the spores and there was something immediately familiar about him. I knew I should know who it was, but couldn't exactly place why.

The who however quickly answered itself when he teleported over and disarmed me in a few seconds. I knew who it was then and why he was here. It was Doctor Ferris, I'd been reading his blogs. I was on the ground at that point and I quickly raised my hands in surrender and spoke.

"Wait wait wait! You're Doctor Ferris aren't you? I'm Genome. We're here for the same purpose, sort of. Sorry I pointed my weapon at you," he relented then and helped me up even was nice enough to give me back my weapon. 

I mean I guess he didn't have much reason for concern. He's probably one of the only humans in the world who was capable of actually being a threat to me. 

I did in fact feel much safer with him as we journeyed further into the forest. We talked a bit, mostly stuff that didn't matter. About his powers, the fears, I spoke about adjusting to being human now and he spoke a bit about what happened to Tyler. 

We ran into the occasional enemy, but they were easy enough to dispatch with the two of us. 

Then however we ran into something... different. I'll let him talk about them himself later cause... I don't know much about them, but he seemed to know what they were. 

The fight however, well that's different. I did my best... I fought with everything I had... and I couldn't even hit them. If I had been alone I would have died. I can't even blame it on this weaker human form. I don't think even at my height of power I would have stood a chance. I ended up just doing my best to survive and meanwhile he... a for all intents and purposes normal human was fighting these things and winning. 

It... Shook me. In my life I had fought and killed plenty of humans, quite a few towerborn even and assorted other servants of the Fears... even in this weaker human form I had managed to kill Spit and yet... None of it mattered. I was and am weaker than Doctor Ferris. I don't even think it's close. 

I've deluded myself my entire life believing myself to be some sort of God, all powerful, all knowledgeable, but... I was just a servant then, one of many and now I'm even less than that. I've never been anything special.. Doctor Ferris is something special. Something unique.

Hell even Drake is something more special than I am. He's a normal human who saved my life in the forest and saved a bunch of other people risking his life to let others reach the forest safely. 

When the fight was over I... Didn't know what I was any more... I didn't feel like I belonged near Doctor Ferris. I felt like a liability. 

That's when I noticed something was watching the fight. It was one of Rioter's... or Jeer's wild people. It fled upon noticing that I was watching and I didn't even think before chasing after it. It was an excuse to get away from Doctor Ferris and not think. I had a job to do and I may not be worth much, but I can at least do this.

I caught up with the fleeing wildman and found that he'd led me back to a group. 

I don't have time for introspection now, it's time for action so I'm writing this now and then I'm going killing.

I can at least handle a bunch of brutes...

Through the Blizzard and Lightning... and strings... and Memory loss... and Guilt? Whatever the fuck the Valravn does?

 So... There was gunfire and death and a moose and also that one guy who can shoot lightning. 

With all that going on Drake and I... Continued to stay in hiding. I mean as much fun as it would be to help kill some people, we weren't going to risk ourselves unnecessarily and the Moose definitely seemed to have things in hand.

 The Superpowered people probably helped a bit too. 

Of course after the KRAKEN and White Comet people were done with we still had to deal with the Fears. 

Luckily we had had a plan already to deal with that. Of course things went a bit... More crazy than we expected.  

The Convocation was joined by The Wooden Girl and The Black Dog... Then The Blind Man showed up and our back up the Cold Boy joined him as did The Valravn. What is the Valravn... Honestly I'll get back to you on that one, but at least it appears to be on our side. 

So... This was the moment. Time to get into the forest. Drake and I emerged from our hiding spot wearing what were essentially lightly armored Hazardous Materials suits and we waddled as fast as we could towards the Forest. Lightning fell all around us as did dead frozen bird corpses, At least one person got grabbed by The Wooden Girl and turned their guns on the rest of the group. Which ended up being a problem and I ended up splitting up from Drake as Drake decided to go deal with them arguing that it was important that more than just the two of us made it into the forest. 

Before he ran off he grabbed my hand and told me he trusted me and knew that even without him I could handle things and then he ran off and last I saw of him was him tackling the unfortunate person and trying to wrench the gun from their hands. 

 

After that I remember almost getting hit by some kind of flesh tendril from the Dog, that was caught by The Blind Man and then I was in the forest and the sounds of the fighting were rapidly falling away behind me. 

I was worn out from all the running and took a few seconds to update and catch my breath. 

I think someone is coming, but they're talking and probably therefore aren't monsters... So... Honestly I'm just gonna keep resting. I really don't feel like running anymore.

 

I was going to title this post Busy, but then the shooting started...

 So... It's been a while. That would be because we ran into a bit of a problem at the edge of the forest... Followed by another problem. We have attempted to enter the forest a number of different times and from a number of different directions and each time we ran into problems. 

First we ran into a section of the forest that was... Well completely Black... We weren't sure what was going on, until the leaves started to move and we ended up fleeing from the MASSIVE FLOCK OF CONVOCATION BIRDS THAT HAD BEEN LITERALLY BLOCKING OUT THE ENTIRETY OF A FOREST CANOPY

so... Anyway we tried again a bit later after being told we'd get help from our new patrons. Except now there was a roadblock being created by KRAKEN and some other group. I checked around and I assume these are the White Comet people the AMU blog mentioned. 

We're pretty bad ass, but the Fears weren't going to help with these guys apparently and Drake and I alone weren't going to get through. We tried another avenue, but... Well... There were... Monster's there... I don't know how better to explain it, so we found ourselves just kind of waiting watching that barricade which seems like the best way in, but we needed a distraction, which is when The AMU apparently decided to show up... Well I say that like it happened with perfect timing. We had been camped out trying to come up with a plan for a few hours before we saw them arriving. We were hidden so I don't think they saw us, but whatever they were planning seemed like a good chance for that.

I am currently writing this while the AMU, KRAKEN and the White Comet are having a shoot out.With any luck this will be a good chance to get in, but we're waiting till the shooting at least drops off a bit and most of the combatants are de-

Excuse me I just saw a Moose running by... I'm gonna end this post here cause there is no way I am not finding out what the hell that's about?