::About Oceania Azure::
A new Smoke Twines tale that follows Tyeko, a charrie from the original Smoke Twines and others.
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Imagine a world with constant war. Imagine a world where madmen control vast empires. Imagine a world where a mere vapor can kill. This is the world of Oceania Azure.
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Smoke Twines: Oceania Azure
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Monday, March 24, 2003
The sun drifted dazedly overhead, as the morning shifted without consideration towards noon.
"So, you obviously believe that you hold some sort of REAL ABILITY, just because you've had some basic military training from your leaders, right?" The man stated, gazing languidly across the group of children, who remained gazing silently towards him, their eyes widened by the sudden realization that this was a true lesson within the confines of the institute, their endless contingency of denying hope could finnaly be devoided. They had reached their moment of traversement into true Soldier-hood.
"THIS is where most of you will be measured, in these obstacle fields where you will be both examined for your leadership, when assigned to such a prestigious (Unworthy of you little fools) roll, and your abilities as a solitary organ of the group, as every efficent soldier should be," hair brown fell lightly across the man's twinkling eyes, his lips set in a darkened smirk, adulterated by his obvious interest in their performances. His light-blue shirt hung loosely, limp rags, against his arms which displayed their own tale of effort through their constricted muscles.
The field lay empty before them, a single description of vastness, extending beyond the limitations of human sight towards hte curvuture of the horizon on all sides, the only boundary definable by the institute itself which rested behind them. The Field. THe children's eyes swung blindly across the impossibility, it's true size defined by Canada's expanse. The terrain itself, even empty, offered a strange variety, patches of mud stretching for a few feet, and in the distance forest rising upwards.
"There are no lessons today," The man stated, eyes rolling towards the limitations of the field, "But there will be. Your days will consist of two things; in the Earliest hours in which those who remain here will awaken, and those who are delivered here like the animals you are by your masters, you will immedietly be immersed in a 6 hour course on new technology and stratedgies. The first courses will be basic, though advanced to you, but do not worry, both will become far more complex, yet if you have any mind at all, much more useful. However, that is umimportant, as it will be described to you by time. What is most important is that after that 6 hour period, you will be sent out into the field to use what you have learned. Each day the new techonolgy you have learned will be added to the old (You have none as of currently, so do not worry), and hence each day you will have both new stratedgic ideas and technology to initiate them with," The man's voice hissed lightly between his lips as his eyes narrowed dangerously on the final note, a blade slicing suddenly into the group, yet instantly dissovled into his original mocking confidence, "Do not worry how it will work; you will find that out soon enough. The idea of Each Day will be this: You will be broken up into teams, each team being entirely different for each...not so much day, as eventually campaigns will last into the weeks, but each new mission, and you will be consistently assigned a new rank and position. You will then work with your group to achieve your established mission. There are no real defintions: The tasks will always be different, the team sizes and numbers will vary, there is no equality except that which you establish with your own mind and skill. You will not be informed of your progress in our eyes, but those of you intelligent enough will realize who is being accelerated. And, eventually, even the idiots will have it forced down their throats. Each battle, the terrain will be different, the weather it's own inclemency beyond our control. It will become more complex, yet at the same time, if you are in any way worthy of later command, more useful to you. THese, by the way, will be the few and final hints that you will ever be awarded. All knowledge beyond this will be entirely up to you. But none of that matters now; what matters is today. Today will be the simplest and most basic of all your battles, as you have not learned anything yet. NOW, all of you...your rings."
The children shifted dully in the group as the word reverberated through their medium, and they slowly reached upwards to touch the rings surrounding their necks, small, weightless, nearly intangible collars which remained tightly secured around their throats, which had been positioned upon their necks before they left the institutes confines. Nearly invisible, matching the color of each child's skin, they were completely soundless. Almost as if they ceased to exist.
"These collars are what allow this "Game" to exist; they measure the radiation which strikes you from the Pistols, the weapon you will be using today," The man stated, and quietly rose the small, black object in his hand upwards, "It is exactly as a real pistol would be; a hand gun, exact same weight, texture, and function. You pull the trigger. Even the blast has a reflexive blow to you, though no shots are fired but focused beams of radiation. THEY ARE the exact same gun, and you must remember this; we are training you to use these weapons at a later date. The "Beam" itself will act as a bullet, and is calculated to swerve and sink, to be effected by the wind, to act exactly as a real bullet would. You can not expect complete accuracy, or instant hits; they do not move at the spead of "light" as they are NOT light. This is the technology of the institute. This is what defines us as the Greatest Military Academy, and these are the standards you must impose upon yourselves as well. Your first battle will be strictly these; you will be broken up into...let's see, there are 100 of you in this sessions group...5 groups of 15....and 5 groups of five. Don't stare at me as such...you must learn how to use groups depending on size. I will give you no more hints beyond that. From this point forwards, I am no longer your companion; I am your cruel and vengeful God."
Suddenly, a single boy, standing silently at the front of the group, his eyes focused and darkened, meeting the instructors own, "A battle on an open field, with no sort of protection what so ever? This is not a batle...this will just be a slaughter, a test of who can fire more."
The man gazed quietly towards the boy's own, as his lips slowly twitched into the same, smirking confidence, "Well then, kid, I guess you better fire the most."
And with that, the boys (and few scattered girls) were goaded out into the field as their collars altered colors, forming a myriad of colors, establishing their teams.
And gazing at them once more as they scattered off into the distance, grouping and establishing themselves, the man smiled one final time, and their vengeful God slowly turned and walked quietly back to his throne.
Sunday, March 09, 2003
James had never liked Suzzie.
From the creation of their singular processes of life, to this seemingly bitter culmination, he and she had always despised one another. Always. THey were mortal enemies, always in direct competition, always deteroiting the others held esteems. They're purposes in life were to destroy the other. In the days...in the days before the Flashes, great wars had been waged on the playground, divided by gender, yet each side uniquely led by two solitary guides. James and Suzzie. The legacy of their school age, all were aware. Many had fought in such pathetic wars, battles of which resulted in girls slashing and capturing, and the resulting escapes executed by the boys. James...he knew, always, he MUST hate Suzzie. Just as she, behind the guise of featureless female cloak, knew she must despise him.
Yet, there was always something more beyond those limitations. James never understood...perhaps he never would have, facing his annhilation within the next few moments as the soldiers pounded at the pathetic establishment he and hte remaining children had constructed. Suzzie was struggling to gather the others for a final retreat, as James constructed a force to fortify the door's capabilities.
Why was it that the truest joy came not when the battle was concluded, and either side was collapsed limply against the play-ground's edges, and the liviing crawled blindly, skin either sheared by nails or shoulder's bruised from forced collapses, but during the wars...during the true battle, when the two leaders themselves would collide upon the battle-field, each aiming for the throat...
They were going to die. The other children screamed, curling loosely into their mis-shapen balls as they sobbed, arms constricting around their legs as if they could possibly offer them shield from the finger of death ever approaching. Suzzie had backed limply against the wall, watching in quiet horror...yet, as James gazed back, as he and the others who remained in a state of sanity untainted by the poison of fear struggled to with-hold the soldier, the single man, the single man whom seemed to possess the power of hundreds...
Suzie was not collapsed. She did not shiver blandly, surrendering to the unconsented caress of the death, ever approaching, it's quiet figure standing solidly upon the road of life ever delineating, ever defining. Suzzanne simply gazed at James, her horrified expression blended with confusion, yet a small smile slowly adulterating the misery. A smile of understanding.
"Hold it," James whispered quietly, as the jagged laughs of the outside figure's sheared through the metallic entrance, the same shrieks of joy that had persisted for the past two hours. Always...and Suzzie, gazing, sad, so sad, why did it matter...why should it matter yet it did... "HOLD IT!!!"
The machine gun bullets shredded the boy before James as cleanly as it had the metal. THe bloody spray washed across James, hurling him backwards as a bullet erupted into his arm, the jagged tooth rending at the flesh it's entirety was bent upon. Consuming. Machine-gun...
The other children toppled blindly, shrieking as they spread from the door, yet their bodies, aged no more than 11 years, were torn as quietly as cloth, the bullets rending the open door, streaks of radiated light burning through the proposed holes. His friends...he watched Steve's head explode, the eyes bugging blindly from the skull for a brief moment before the resulting pressure shredded the white pulp and painted a mural defined by artistic rage against the wall. So much...so much...James body struck the floor...a girl attempted to sprint across him...her chest dissolved like a shredded book cover. Oragans sprayed across his face...my god, how did it approach this magnitude...where had they delivered such merciless cruelty to deserve this...why did it matter if...
For 7 years of life his life, James had wondered why he enjoyed over all else approaching his mortal enemy on the field of battle. Why their twisted games and wars had always been perpetuated, and never halted as the vicious creation they described. As the bullets sprayed across the wall, the stream slowly swerving towards Suzzies, the tide quietly approaching, and James rose himself upwards and propelled himself into the air, he finally understood.
His arm struck Suzies's shoulder. He dragged her downwards as the bullet's shred what remained of his wounded shoulder.
"NOW, do you know why I took this job!? It's for moment like THIS," The voice hissed, as the man quietly entered the confines of the fort, the sun rippling blandly in its green shade across his sillhoutte, defining its image. James' eyes gazed up dully, the pain in his arm deulding, yet he could have sworn that he was resting within a girl's lap...that someone, yes...a girl...was sobbing against his chest.
The man reached outwards towards one of the confined walls, the dimensions of their fortification amounting to less than a closet. They had been so foolish...what was that sound. James felt something. Someone...stroking his forehead...James gazed upwards. Eyes...eyes that looked so familiar...
The man grabbed the little girl by the throat. The girl screamed, swat at the hands in a pathetic attempt to defend. IN one motion, the hand twitched from the girl's wrist to her throat. In eqaul time, he swung the girls body upwards, his own arm perfectly calm, untaunted by her writhing body as he slowly held it upwards. His fingers closing slowly against her neck, her body spun to face the others crippled against the outer walls, those who remained alive watching as she kicked futiley, her eyes bulging, pleading as she scraped at the hands.
"Moments..." The man paused, then, in unison with his own desired breath, crushed his hands deeper, "LIKE THIS!!!!"
THe girl's body jerked, and, defying all logic, formed a final, hideous squeak, as her eyes widened. Her armsslowly fell limply from the hand and wrist that remained so defined.
"Thu-thump, thu-thump...thu----thump," The man whispered, as his voice cracked, eyes lighting yet darkening within the same instant, rolling within their sockets, as the little girl's tears drooled down her purpling cheeks, "thu--------------thump...say good-bye to your little friends. Let this be a lesson to you--thump-- don't challenge hte empire," THe voice cackled, and the sound, again, Something clutched around his shoulders...arms...a girl...crying...how..., "THU--------------------------------------------------------thump," The little girl's body relaxed, as the expanded pupils were slowly concealed by the quietly closing curtains, the eye-lids concluding the show, yet the tears still ran limply down her cheeks, as her lips slowly shifted in imploration, sobbing and begging, "And...wait for it...we should get one good more..." He stated, as the throat he clutched made a final, convulsive retching noise, "Thu-------------------there it is-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------thump." He tossed the body to the left without a second thought.
"I'm sorry," Someone whispering to James, someone talking, a face so close to his own, two lips shifting...why was this wrong? It had to be...but why? THe face was so soft, so kind... "I'm so sorry I wasted it all...James...I'm so sorry...I never hated you, or meant any of the things I said, oh god..." in the distant backround, a world no longer concerned with his existence, an explosion, a flash of light, an echoing scream, "I....I....James..." The face gazed into his own, two eyes, a girl...Suzzie...
"CHILDREN die so well! There's nothing like a hit job on a kid; EXCEPT for this sort of unadulterated pleasure!" The man shrieked, "I HATE hte professional crap. THIS is why I'M HERE. I'm an ANGEL OF DEATH!" THe man screamed, his own eyes scanning, the entire world devoid of color, sound. His pistol slid fluidly from target to target. He shifted it towards a boy crawling towards a corner. SHot him in the crotch. The boy toppled over, eyes and mouth screaming unison, and the man dissolved his skull.
"James, don't go...please, we need you, please don't..." Two lips touching his cheeks...Suzzie...but...impossible...yet... "Please..."
James slowly focused his eyes, meeting Suzzies own. Slowly, he reached with his remaining arm upwards, and lightly traced a tear from her eyes. Something within felt suddenly pure. This was correct. How...his mortal enemy...but perhaps the greatest enemies are those whom are a part of us.
James rose himself slowly. His body hung limply, arm nothing more than shredded cloth and flesh resembling, his remainging slowly rising to his side. His eyes remained sunken, but he no longer felt the fear. He was to die. But he had touched the face of the girl whom he had loved since the first moment they had clashed. No more...
The man turned towards him, pistol quietly leveling with his eyes in a natural function, the man designed by God himself to kill. The single scene...he stood between her and the bullet silently, arm to his side, eyes meeting the lifeless cavern of the gun.
"I will not let you hurt her."
The other children rose their eyes, sheer shock registering across even their faces. James...the very defintions of their lives, as they were slowly dissolved, were finnaly destroyed. Suzzie sat back quietly, face set in a strange confusion and horror, yet tears running down her face.
The pistol slowly leveled for Suzzies face.
The man's lips cocked.
The bullet fired.
7 years upon the playground. He had been tortured by her, his mind and body. He had fought wars in which she had acted as a tyrant against him, tortuing his catpured soldiers, capturing him at times. Beyond the Field of recess, there rested the verbal spars, and competition, the constant arguments. Two sides...opposites yet paradoxically the same. Two mortal enemies. Two mortal foes. Hating one another in fear of the contrary...
James stepped into the bullet.
He felt his kidney break, his organs pop like a distant pain, an emptiness within him. He toppled back, knees twisting, as his eyes blanked. He struggle dto remain standing, yet his legs colapsed, he bowed to his knees. He toppled backwards silently, mouth cocked open, hole equally spread within his gut. Toppled backwards...
His body did not strike the floor. Two arms encased him, drew him near. The face again...the distance fading. Something hugging him, crying all the more. Yet bonded together, he slowly rose his remaining arms and clutched it around her shoulders.
The next bullet snapped her spine open. The second was driven through her brain and down her throat, perfectly angled, so as it was halted within the confines of her now rended organs. The man's voice cracked once more, as he quietly removed a grenade from the confines of his pockets. Pulled the pin silently.
Placed it on the dirt floor.
The other children struggled to crawl, struggled to escape, as the man disappeared beyond the doorway, and left the massacre in silence. And silence ther was until the final moment. They crawled, some sobbed, but to James it was all within the distance. He gazed only into the now placid, limp face of the one who was his mortal enemy.
He did not even feel the final flames.
Wednesday, March 05, 2003
He lifted the bayonet cautiously, the mud spilling, earth's blood, into his trench, as the copters hovered dully, mere buzzes upon one another, across the radiated skys.
Those who fought in this war never returned. It was the basic instinct of John to surmount to this casual choice, that he should choose to sacrifice his entire existence for thepurpose of perpetuating this horrendous war. He had never known anything different; living life had always consisted of sacrificing the soul for the misery of the body. He supposed this explained his lack of companionship throughout the ageless years of his reptitious life, a pointless cycle of self destruction which would ultimately conclude in his death.
He was the perfect soldier. He was not surprised that the Government had viewed his progress over the years; he had suspected, in the darkest corners of his mind, that they consumed all knowledge, even the personal status of the soul. He had, after all, spent his life degrading it, hoping that those who spied upon it would find nothing but the torched remains. He had been incorrect. So incorrect...now, trapped in the endless wasteland that was the perpetual battle, the space between outer Asia, just beyond Tyeko's control, and the wave of empire which threatened the Earth. The perpetual battle...how long had this persisted? How many lives had it consumed? Years now...he supposed that there were families existing within it's confines, children who had never known a universe different from the perpetual tension which was life. 34...perhaps more years. He had watched children age...he himself was so bitterly aged, his soul not utterly degrade of even the burning shards...
The bullet's shredded the dirt beside him. The resulting explosion tossed him blindly against the nearby wall. Yes...casualties seemed endless, yet the supply of soldier's seemed to proportional increase. Where did they draw from? What was the purpose? If either side wished, they could conclude the war...an explosive device was quite capapble of annhilating the thin line of conflict.
The radiation climbed its way upwards, eating away at his organs, defenseless, screaming beneath the surface of the flesh.
He supposed that was the worst fate; the relization that those who which you scream can indeed hear you, yet...yet will never come to your aid.
The war...the war would never conclude, would never halt...it was the life of the soldier...the life of the Soldier in The Pit...
The endless Warzone...no other place upon the Planet could define it...no other...
He quietly struggled to his stance, body sliding in the writhing mud, as the hail quietly mutated into bullets.
How many others like himself could there be in this pathetic world?
Silently, he rose himself upwards, out of the trench. Loaded his machine-gun violently, the ageless purposelessness quietly dissolving from his brain. This WAS life. THis was his purpose. He always und
His hair rippled as it slashed the blood across the mud, instantly absorbed into darkness, and his skull, limp remains of flesh where the neck had been torn off like a shard of cloth, landed dully in the run. The empty eyes staring upwards, at the green and lifeless sky. The helicopters dropped burning gasonline downwards upon his trench a few moments later, and the body, toppling a few feet to the left of the head, began to silently burn. The smoke rose upwards, hundreds of darkened souls, into the heavens, as the body of John returned the ash from whence it had once come.
And around him, the endless battle survived its name.
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