::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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Friday, January 14, 2005
Down.
This was the only conscious thought that settled upon Irieshu's mind.
He gazed at a nearby door; with the onset of the alarms, metal had encased it.
He reached into his pocket and removed from within it what could have been described as a metallic spider; he placed it against the doorway. Stepping back, he leveled his pistol with it.
The explosion was designed to be directed inwards, and it obliged. The gaping hole revealed a room hidden by the resulting veil of smoke.
Without a second consideration, Irieshu cast his body through the curtain.
I'm going to kill you, old man; I'm going to kill you, you bastard.
Irieshu crossed his arms against his chest and unleashed the once involuntarily bridled fury of his guns. The smoke was blinding; his only register of a hit was the resultant shriek which he had learned was the defining link between grown men and young boys. He passed through the edge of the curtain, through the room, bullets blindly thrown in his direction by confused guards; into a hallway, a guard, falls, another, his body spasms as it's forced against a wall by the punch of the bullets. He turns another corner; another doorway, this no longer in steel, they never suspected him to get this far, the fools, he kicks the doorway open.
A Mounted, mechanical gun instantly turns in his direction, its rotary guns and soul-less eyes each equally black and depthless, each equally merciless, meets his own of equal quality.
For a moment, the two machines of death, one of metal one of death, gaze at eachother.
As if in choreography, Irieshu leaps the hand-rail of the stairs as the machine obliterates the piece of tiling upon which he once stood.
The stairs are designed to spiral downwards for several floors; Irieshu begins a quiet plummet.
Tyeko shreds the last remains of the packaging away. His father stares down in dumbfounded astoundment at the object that has been revealed. A large box, black but for a single instintence of subversive red in the form of a solitary button. Akira's eyes move slowly from it to the face of his son, whose lips can no longer contain his expanding grin of victory.
Irieshu's boat crashed against the wall.
In preperation, Irieshu had opened the bubble-like shield which encapsulated him within; as it struck the unforgiving earth, his body propelled from the ship. He struck the earth at a roll, the harsh concrete of the establishment he had come to shredding the remaining uninjured flesh upon his back. Like a brillant candle his ship burst alight, having been driven into the sentry post of the facility; as he hurtled forwards, capturing his balance in mid-run, it exploded, destroying the defense completely.
Slowly, he rose his eyes upwards, mind inhaled his target. It was the only place it could be; it was his destiny.
Akira's Tower.
And within it, inaccessbile to any man but Akira himself, rested Tyeko, and with him, Akira , buried beneath the very Earth which he had tortured and destroyed. There was only one entrance, one single door, and it rested in the center of this pillar of oppression, bathed bloody in the fading light of the setting sun.
He hurtled towards the entrance, as the guards surrounding it, slowly registering the explosion of light and heat of the now toppling sentry tower, began to recongize the reality of the situation. Their machine guns began to lower.
Too late.
Irieshu cast his hand into his pocket and with equal fluidity his hand exhaled three solitary beads.
As they struck the Earth, the split, releasing a nova of white light as Irieshu rose his pistol and, eyes closed, his only guide his memory of their position, released their souls.
Before the light had even ceased, as the crumbling pinnacle of the Sentry Tower snapped from it's foundation and began it's magnamious and slow tumble towards the Earth, Irieshu traversed through the resulting spray of blood, baptized in his final hour, and, with another manipulation of his weapon, fractured the glass windows of the Tower's, the modern palace, entrance.
With one final lunge, his body would shatter it.
Tyeko's fingers uncurl the wrapping with the passion of an exhausted body seeping into relaxation, a release of tension and expectance of beauty, an acceptance of the inevitable with, short of regrets, euphoria. He slowly rose his gaze and met his father's eyes.
Irieshu's body struck the Earth like a discarded rag, sliding along the waxed floor as glass filled his body, infected his gaping wounds. Even as he slid however, he leveled his pistols for the astounded faces of the sentries filling the acceptance hall. Each bullet dissolved a skull like an expression in paint against the walls.
Explosion of ringing sound after sound as he discharged each messenger of death, body still sliding, each sound, each motion, drawn out fully, each shot a millenium, each face it destroyed a universe. A pistol emptied; almost unconsciously, it washed like dirt from his hands, and he drew another from the collection lining the inside of his vest.
His body struck the wall defining the end of the room, but he gave no concern; his eyes remained focused simply on the naive, empty, terrified eyes of the soldiers, as they struggled to react in these few seconds which represented an eternity.
And as instantly as it began, the scream of his pistols ceased.
The last body, tail of severed vertebrae flapping madly like the twitching leg torn from an insect, collapsed limply to it's knees and finnally graced the Earth from whence it came.
Slowly, Irieshu stood, and discarded the now empty pistols from his hands onto the running carpet of blood which described his passage across the floor. With the talent of a magician, he drew two more into his hands.
And it was with that the alarms began to ring.
Tyeko holds his father's eyes in his, mesmerized by the love he sees in them and its contradiction with the hatred Tyeko feels within. Without a pause or hesitation, he shreds another layer from the gift. Through the hole formed, a path of cold, black steel becomes visible.
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Tyeko held the metallic box, wrapped lavishly in his profession of remorse and idolation, out before him as he approached his father.
The soldier's on either side of him gazed at him with mistrust only as his father's gaze fell fully upon him. His father's gaze, tendrils of insanity clearly reflected in his eyes in the dull light of his throne room, buried safely beneath the surface away from the war he cultured, immune to everything but that which disguised itself as it.
"My...my son," Akira whispered, "You have returned to me."
Tyeko felt the disillusion drain from his eyes, "Yes, father. I have returned to you."
A grin, mutlated by the inherent hatred carved in his face by his cruelty as scars in wood by a knife, attempted to fill the old-man's face. A smile, truly. Tyeko gripped the metallic box more tightly.
"You left us long ago, son. And now you return...with strange, strange tales. Stange tales of a kidnapping...a man..."
"A man named Irieshu who stole me, father, who took me from you."
Uncertainty radiated from Akira's face, but with these words cracked like melting ice.
"Tell me that again, son. Tell me you...you hate this man."
Like coals long ago exhausted and now rekindled, Akira's eyes burned as his lips shifted.
"...he took me from my home, viciously hurt me, tried to...to...I don't know what his intentions were, but tortured me, father. I hate that man."
One of the soldier's leaned close to Akira, "Sir...I'm not sure he is to be trusted."
Akira, without taking his eyes from Tyeko, grasped the man's skull with both hands and twisted until the organic snap commanded him to cease. The figure crumpled limply, body lolling loosely upon the gold-plated steps ascending to Akira's throne.
"THIS IS MY SON!" His voice echoed within the chamber, with each soldier it touched, like an infectious disease, passing a spasm of terror across their face, "MY SON. He is to be trusted as I would be trusted; respected as I would be respected! Do you understand!!!??" He shrieked at the body, whose blank eyes gazed up in unhesitating acquiesce, "DO YOU UNDESTAAAAND!?"
All eyes but a young boy's who was not so young attempted to gaze away as the monarch's body hunched in swelled apoplectia, lungs exhaling as a volcano would exhale smoke.
Slowly, Akira calmed. Once more, the bewildered, confused euphoria surfaced in his eyes, a dewey conception revealing for just a moment the twisted remains of the mind beneath it.
"My son...my son, to have you returned to me is to be reborn. You...you have been shadowed from the world for a long while, perhaps. Do you...do you understand that you are now heir to the throne of God?"
"God, my father?" Tyeko barely whispered, fingers claws biting his beautiful betrayal.
"God, my son. I am now the ruler of mankind; to change the world, God must go through me. I am above him; I have done as I promised you and your mother I would. I have claimed supremacy."
"Mother would be proud, father," I'll kill you, you bastard, you monster, you, "I know she would be."
"YOUR MOTHER WAS A WHORE!" Akira roared, then just as suddenly broke into tears, body like an imploding star, collapsing inwards upon itself as he wept, quaking with the internal chaos of fusion.
For a moment, his hatred forsook as mercy, all kindness, all caution, as he spat, "So, you think you've won the war?"
Like a psychotic dramatist, his father's weeping ceased and a maniacal smile hinged on the corners of his mouth, swinging inanely, rivaled only by his eyes, "Oh, not quite yet, son. We're close...oh, we're very, very close though. There is no doubt we have victory; all that need be done now is the menial labor of war. Like sweeping, or cleaning a window; you could ignore it, but it'd simply be uncomfortable. No, this war, within perhaps even a day or two, will be over."
Close father, so close, but still have a knack for over-estimation...this war will be over within another minute, "Father...I have a gift for you, for your...kindness, of allowing me to return home."
"Of course, my son! OF COURSE! PLease, give it to me!"
"No, father, I'd like to do this formally, in honor and christening and proof of your Emperorship, I'd like..." Tyeko struggled to fight the grin forcing its way onto his face, the insane laugther bubbling up from his chest, as he spoke these final words, "...to lay it here before your feet."
"My son..." Akira whispered, as all sanity seeped from his eyes.
Tyeko approached the throne, knelt upon one knee before it and placed the package upon the steps as he whispered in return, "My father..."
With a strange resolution in his eyes that only one other man could have understood, Tyeko began slowly unwrapping the gift.
The ocean seemed oddly placid, refusing to recongize the impending conclusion of the most destructive and shattering era it and it's mother world had ever witnessed. It seemed oddly placid like a man who knows he must be still or else they will see him hiding; it seemed to be ushering Irieshu to rush across it.
And rush across it Irieshu did.
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