An excerpt from insanity

[Academia Nut]

Because Third Soul asked me to, here is an excerpt from a dead project I was working on well over a year ago. This is about the best bit from the whole damn thing, although there is a side story that is also postable.

Anyway, if you value your sanity, look away because this is from something called Sailor Cthulhu.

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Reaching the edge of the last building and seeing the unoccupied car parked in an alley behind, Harold once again drops to the ground, only to find four rather oddly dressed teenage girls in the same location. They were wearing what was best described as Egyptian schoolgirl fetish wear, like someone had taken the kind the ridiculous sailor fuku seen in anime and then built it using the materials common to ancient Egyptian nobility, complete with tacky jewellery with way too many hearts and ankhs.

His face twisted into an expression of shock and confusion, Harold asks, “Is this some sort of sick joke?”

The girls look at him with equal confusion for a second before one of them, the one with the subdued brick-red colour scheme shouts out, “That’s the demon!”

“Huh. Can’t say I’ve never heard that line before,” Harold comments, looking them up and down before saying, “This is going to end in some sort of fight to the death isn’t it? And you have some sort of introductory speech prepared, don’t you?”

“Uh… well, actually, we didn’t have one prepared yet, you kind of dropped in on us, we usually either burst in and start blasting or figure out what exactly to say depending on the demon,” the one in the saffron uniform explains, scratching the back of her head in embarrassment.

Sighing, Harold says, “Well… I’m sure you have a generic one ready.”

“Yeah… but it’s not very good yet, we were still working on the rough draft,” the one in white silk replies apologetically.

Shaking his head, Harold asks, “The anime shows sure make it look easy, don’t they?”

“Frankly I think they make it look easy because they just say whatever the hell comes to mind and don’t worry about looking stupid,” the orange and bronze one notes, inexplicably wearing a rather impractical bronze breast plate over her outfit.

The saffron girl points out, “They’re fictional shows written by committee.”

“Shut up,” the orange girl says, pointing a finger accusingly at her partner.

“Can we get on with this, I’m kind of busy right now,” Harold says impatiently.

“Oh, right… uh… should we go in ascending or descending order?” The orange one asks.

“Ascending,” both the saffron and silken girl say simultaneously.

“Okay,” the orange girl says with a nod. Clearing her throat, she then strikes a dramatic pose and says, “For great justice, I am the Warrior, the Fiery Sword of Purification, and I shall punish you. I am Sailor Cthuga!”

The red one then picks up the sequence and says, “Mistress of the Secrets of the Heart, I command the arcane forces of ancient times, I am the Wizard, Sailor Y’golonac!”

The white one then begins, saying, “Weaver of the Future, Protector of Dreams, I am the Vizier, Sailor Atlach-Nacha!”

Finally the saffron girl takes her turn, saying, “I am the Queen in Yellow, the friendship that binds us together against demons like you! I am Sailor Hastur!”

Then in synchronic stereo they all switch poses and say together, “And we are the Pharaoh’s Court Magical Sailor Squad!”

Harold managed to maintain a straight face right up until the end, when the absurd and absurdly long team name finally broke down his resolve. He broke down laughing; great, massive belly laughs, so potent that he had to lean against a nearby wall for support. For a moment the laughter petered out, but then he took a massive inhalation and started again, continuing on for a full minute before he finally managed to most regain control.

Wiping away tears while still suffering residual giggles, Harold says, “Oh sweet lord, I’m sorry, I haven’t really had much to laugh about in a while.”

“Hey, this is serious!” Sailor Hastur says indignantly, put off by Harold’s dismissal.

“Yeah!” Sailor Cthuga chimes up angrily. “We told you it wasn’t ready yet!”

Now mostly in order but still wearing a massive grin over his face, Harold says, “No, I don’t think any amount of work could make me not laugh at all that. Now if you’ll excuse me…”

Harold then inhales deeply and then shouts out, “Nyarlathotep, get your ass over here now!”

Slipping out of the shadows wearing a pleated cotton kilt, a variety of Egyptian jewellery over his bare chest, a crook and flail held in his hands, and a golden Tutankhamen style mask, the Herald of the Outer Gods says, “I was wondering when you were going to figure this out Harold.”

Pulling out a cigarette and lighting it up, Harold turns to the magical girls fawning over the robustly built Black Pharaoh and says, “Not to ruin your incredibly creepy adoration session, but there is a bit of a hostage situation in that building that I expect you might want to deal with.”

“Yes girls, go, save the Priestess. This one is a demon general; you do not yet have the power to defeat him,” Nyarlathotep says smoothly, and the girls immediately jump to, rushing over to the nearest door, kicking it in, and beginning to blast away.

Returning his cold, gold gaze to Harold, Nyarlathotep says, “I was wondering when you were going to figure things out.”

Shrugging, Harold says, “Don’t compliment me too much. I mean, I figured you were behind this pretty much from day one, but that pretty much came out of left field, and I know you’ve got all sorts of other shit cooked up.”

Looking at the various flashing lights coming from the inside of the warehouse, Harold frowns and says, “That’s an awful lot of firepower being thrown around for one partially transformed Deep One hybrid and maybe six or seven of his buddies, especially in a hostage situation.”

With a voice that says that he’s frowning behind the mask, the Soul of the Outer Gods says, “We’re still working on fire control…”

Chuckling again, Harold takes a drag on his cigarette before saying, “Okay, you’ve been working on this little project for at least twenty years, probably more, to get the pop culture sufficiently embedded that the girls question all this minimally.”

“You always were a clever one,” Nyarlathotep says mockingly.

“Ha ha,” Harold says dryly before saying, “Although at least this explains Yu-Gi-Oh.”

Shuddering slightly, Nyarlathotep replies, “I will admit to starting that, but after a while that project got away from even me. I’ll have you note though that marketing and focus groups have allowed me to destroy three other civilizations so far. Humanity’s depths of evil can surprise even me sometimes.”

“Are you sure marketing has enough soul to qualify as human?” Harold asks rhetorically.

Tilting his masked head, Nyarlathotep then chuckles and says, “Perhaps, but then again, that is why we play this little game, isn’t it Harold?”

Throwing his finished cigarette butt to the ground, Harold then takes out another one and lights up, saying, “But of course. Sure laughing at us humans though aren’t you, what with those little pawns you’ve got there.”

Snorting, Nyarlathotep replies, “Yes, well, it’s rather easy. Even for such a primitive and pathetic species, your young truly exemplify stupidity.”

Waggling a finger accusingly, Harold says, “Now, now Gnarly, that’s unfair. Stupidity is incurable, while ignorance can at least be reduced somewhat.”

“You did hear their speech,” Nyarlathotep says accusingly.

Pulling out a small notepad and a pen, Harold flips it open and makes a quick tick mark, saying, “That’s another point for Team Outer God.”

“You keep score?” Nyarlathotep asks in annoyance.

“Eh… I think I went insane a while ago, so I find that the only way to improve upon the humour inherent in casual verbal sparring with one of the most powerful entities in the cosmos is to add a touch of prop comedy to the mix,” Harold says with a shrug.

Nyarlathotep pauses for a moment before resting his masked forehead in his hand in exasperation and says, “Add a point to your side, I think you temporarily infected me with your fragile concept of sanity and then broke it.”

Adding another tick, Harold pumps his fist and then says, “Yes! Now it’s Harold: 27, Nyarlathotep: 3,461… what? I’m not stupid; I know you’re smarter than me.”

“Sometimes I forget that you are in fact more capable than your squishy outer form suggests, not often and it’s always when you open your mouth, but then you remind me of why I can’t just talk you into selling your soul in exchange for a few shiny trinkets,” Nyarlathotep says with a sigh.

“Yes, yes, well just to make you happy, I will admit to occasionally underestimating you too, and yes, it’s always when we have these conversations. We’re so… underwhelming when we meet each other, unable to do much more than glare at one another, both knowing that the other is immune to any sort of verbal chicanery we can bring out,” Harold says with a smile.

“Yes, well the moment that I get the chance I am so going to reintroduce you to the meaning of the word ‘suffering’,” Nyarlathotep says with utmost certainty.

“Feeling’s mutual, although I know that you can carry out your threat and I can’t, so I must apologize for feeling superior about the fact that the rules of this game of ours put you at a greater disadvantage than me,” Harold replies smugly.

Inside the warehouse the fireworks had settled down, causing both to look up and Nyarlathotep to comment “Looks like we’re coming to the end of this little scene in this farce.”

As if on cue the ‘Great Old Sailors’ as Harold was mentally referring to them returned, toting along with them a rather traumatized looking Hoshiko, who had a haunted look in her already stress induced gaunt face.

“Pharaoh, the demons have been defeated and we have recovered the Priestess!” Sailor Hastur proclaims proudly before letting her triumphant look fall and says with a pout, “But she won’t talk to us!”

Looking at her and seeing all the classic signs one learns far too well in his line of work, Harold replies, “While I suspect that you probably just incinerated the evidence, I would wager good money that before you went in there something horrible happened right in front of her eyes and she is currently in a catatonic state as her mind tries to come to grips with what she has just seen.”

Hoshiko blinked at Harold’s voice, grabbing onto anything familiar, even if it terrified her to the core, in an attempt to find something rational for her mind to use as a starting point after what she saw in that warehouse.

“My shadow?” She asks weakly.

Looking at Nyarlathotep sharply, the masked god replies, “I had nothing to do with Lexx, I swear.”

[The Third Soul]

I believe this Dark Helmet quote sums up my feelings best;

"My brains are going into my feet!!!"

Anyhow, yeah that was... mind bendingly random.

[Academia Nut]

Yeah, I know, its one of the reasons I stopped working on it. It was getting a little too insane. The basic premise revolved around a competition between Harold and Nyarlathotep to decide the fate of humanity, with neither side allowed to act directly against the other. Should Harold win, the Outer Gods would kick all the supernatural creatures off Earth, while if Nyarlathotep wins he gets to do what he wants to humanity.

The catch is that Harold is the son of Yog-Sothoth, so he has access to a number of abilities that actually make this a sporting compteition. Moreso, the whole reason for his birth was that the children of Yog-Sothoth exist slightly out of phase with time and space so that the omnipresent deity of time and space actually doesn't know what is going to happen to them, which amuses it in incomprehensible ways. So Harold was born essentially outside of fate, and never told about his heritage. Inevitably though he got drawn into the world of monster hunting, until the day he discovered that he was getting stronger and faster rather inexplicably... and then Nyarlathotep showed up and explained the whole deal.

The whole 'Great Old Sailors' thing was a way to try and draw out the various slumbering monsters early by tying their life forces to something living, with each blast and spell used slowly drawing the essence of the various Great Old Ones further into the waking world. Nylarlathotep was trying to make it harder for Harold to just off a bunch of teenage girls, or hopefully drive him completely around the bend with guilt. It was, of course, one of many plans being implemented at once.

I also have a little side story featuring Harold against a Cthulhu Star Spawn.

[Aranfan]

Holy Shit. You are a genius man. This was great.

[Sidewinder]

Amusing. May I assume Harold is an original character?

[Academia Nut]

Oh yeah Harold is original. Technically anything not directly taken from the Mythos is original too. Closest basis to an actual character in the Mythos would be the Whatley brothers from the Dunwich Horror, although Harold is far more (and less) human than either of those two.

[Aranfan]

What amazes me most about this is that it makes some form of logical sense.

[Academia Nut]

Ehhh... okay, here's the most actiony piece I ever really wrote for this story.

Harold Busts Out- The Star Spawn

Harold was having a bad day. A really bad day.

Looking up, he saw where he had gone through the wall and the exact I-beam he had wrapped around before falling ten metres to the floor. He wasn’t exactly sure how many bones he had broken, dozens at least if you counted all the vertebrae and ribs and in his wrists. Fortunately his body was already healing itself with preternatural quickness.

Fringe benefits of being a freak he supposed.

Forcing himself up despite the fact that his leg bones had not yet fully reformed, he limped over to a nearby vat full of fish offal. It was disgusting, but it would have to do. Thrusting his hand into the mass of slimy, wet guts, he began absorbing the nutrients his body needed to accelerate the healing, urging himself to heal faster. He didn’t exactly have a lot of time.

With a horrific roar and the sound of brick and mortar sundering under the impact of several hundred kilos of flabby flesh, the thing that had thrown Harold in here in the first place announced that it wasn’t going to just leave him alone. Pulling his hand out of the vat, Harold decided that he had eaten enough.

Rushing through the fish rendering plant, Harold found that at least in here his smaller size gave him some advantage over the seven metre tall monstrosity, which had to tear through the machinery and catwalks to get to him. Distressingly, Harold’s speed advantage was not as great as he would have hoped.

Skidding to a stop, he punched in the glass case to a fire box and hauled out the axe found within. Just before he had taken his unexpected flight, he had dropped his cutlass and pistol somewhere outside, and with the only path currently blocked by the monstrosity tearing its way towards him he wasn’t getting either any time soon.

Kicking open the rear exit, unconcerned by the heavy chains and padlock sealing it off, Harold exits the plant and is forced to immediately duck as a clawed hand the size of his torso cleaves through the stonework trying to get at him. A tentacle capable of putting a giant squid to shame then lashes out through the gash, looking to do various unpleasant things to Harold but he quickly intersected it with his axe, the blade cleaving through the phantasmal flesh and forcing the appendage back, but otherwise doing no real damage.

Leaping from the top of the steps leading to the door, Harold hits the ground running, this time along a path perpendicular to his previous one, hoping to maybe circle back and find his weaponry. There was also a handy power distribution station along the way, and with any luck the beast would tear through it trying to get at him, perhaps doing some actual damage this time.

Behind him the creature bursts out of the plant, roaring its outrage at the injuries Harold had already inflicted upon it, but losing him for a few seconds while it tries to figure out where he had run to. Spying him just as he leaps over the chain link fence to the transformer station, the creature rears back and expands its massive, draconic wings and takes to the air for a moment, landing with a thunderous crash on the other side of the station in front of Harold.

Skidding to a stop on the gravel surface of the station, his hair standing on end from the ambient electrical energy, Harold mutters at a volume just above the hum of the transformers, “Fuck.”

Backing up as the beast approaches, the creature obvious relishing having its prey squarely where it wanted it, Harold decides to try for bluffing, “All right, I’ll admit the rocket launcher was in bad taste, and the howitzer probably stung a fair bit, but I’m sure we can come to some sort of agreement? Listen, you forget about the artillery attacks and I’ll forget about the village you ate, and we’ll call it even with regards to the respective beatings we’ve given each other. Deal?”

The towering beast spread the tentacles about its ravenous maw and roared in fury, spraying Harold with spittle and other things he did not want to think about. Wiping off his fast, he replies, “Thought not.”

Then with a metallic clang, he backs up into a large tank. Looking behind him, he reads the label, ‘Warning: Contents Extremely Flammable, Reserve Fuel Tank for Generator’.

Shrugging, Harold says, “I can do extremely flammable,” before taking the hooked back end of his fire axe and jerking it upward, opening a metre long gash in the tank and letting the contents rush out in a torrent that brings with it the distinctive smell of gasoline.

Throwing his whole body out of the way dodging the barrage of claws and tentacles thrown his way, Harold begins weaving through the various pieces of electrical equipment, hoping for an attack to sunder something marked ‘High Voltage’ and create a spark. No such luck, the creature seemed to sense the danger and avoided smashing anything, instead deciding to retreat out of the power distribution system carefully.

This gave Harold time, time to follow the flow of gasoline downhill towards the docks. Leaping onto the chain link fence and using his axe to pull himself over the top, Harold drops back to the ground and finds to his surprise that he had picked the drainage point for the station, gasoline already running out the channel meant for rain and snow melt.

Rushing for the water, he leans over and drags his axe along the concrete of the trough, creating a wide spray of sparks. Some land on his own gasoline soaked clothes, setting him alight, but most ignited the stream of gas, which then proceeded to quickly burn back to the source.

The beast seemed to know what was coming, but unfortunately its wings were useless as it had high tension cables above and to the sides of it. Expanding them anyway, it roared in agony as thousands of volts flowed through its necrotic green hide in great, angry arcs of blue-white lightning. Then the flames reached the tank, now about half filled with liquid gasoline and half filled with fumes. The fumes ignited, and suddenly the pressure was a great deal higher within the tank, forcing more liquid out of the crack, which still couldn’t handle the amount of exiting liquid and gas and widened as a result. Most of it boiling over, this liquid vaporized upon exiting the tank and consequently ignited, producing more heat and creating a cascading pattern of boil, vaporize, ignite, boil that to the human eye instantly turned the tank into a fireball that completely consumed the power generation station and the beast caught within.

Harold was stunned for a moment by the shockwave that smacked into him just as he dove beneath the waves. He lingered for a moment in the dark water, both to regain his wits and to let the water snuff out his burning clothing, watching the orange flames spread and several of the parked boats begin to sink from the damage caused by the explosion.

Still clutching his axe, Harold dragged himself out of the water on the opposite side of the docks from the rendering plant, his burns already starting to heal over, his body regenerating the relatively minor damage. Looking at the massive pillar of flame and smoke, he tried to see if the monster was dead.

Stumbling out of the billowing black smoke, the monster was a complete mess; the majority of its skin burned off and soft tissue ravaged by the shockwave and the shrapnel, most of its tentacles blown off, but already its body was beginning to repair itself, its otherworldly nature making it nearly invulnerable to long term harm.

“Fuck,” Harold noted, hefting his axe to his shoulder. It caught sight of him and let loose a wet scream that made its previous rage look like the tantrums of a three-year old in comparison to the fury of a Norse berserker.

He had one card left to play, but it was something that he had never tried before, and even if he knew what exactly would happen he wasn’t particularly fond of the idea on sheer principle alone. Shrugging, he asked himself, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

As the beast waded into the docks and began to smash its way towards him, Harold answered himself with, “Oh yeah, I could summon dad into this world, plunging the whole universe into Chaos.”

Focusing inward, Harold closes his eyes and runs hand over the blade of his axe, intentionally suppressing his healing to allow his blood to run thick and free onto the ground. Kneeling down with a twenty foot tall monster from beyond the stars bearing down on him, he concentrates on the desired pattern, urging his blood to flow into the ground, but also holding it back until the trap is complete.

With the beast thundering out onto land and nearly atop him, Harold released his trap. The blood in his hand sprang, forming a line that branched off five times, forming an image somewhat like the veins of a leaf. However, the blood did not stop there, instead transforming the image into a fractal of itself, the individual lines composed of thousands of smaller copies of the same image, which were in turn made of microscopic versions of the same.

The Star Spawn suddenly stood on millions of Elder Signs crafted out of the most powerful blood possessed by a mortal on Earth. The strange, cosmic energies that empowered it suddenly dropped away like a power line connected to ground. Its legs were no longer strong enough to support its obese girth, and it collapsed to the ground with a squelching crash, its flesh burst open under its own weight.

Removing contact with the ground, Harold weakened the Sign somewhat with the loss of the direct connection to the source of power, but it still remained physically and the spawn had suffered a near fatal blow as it now had to obey the laws of physics on Earth. Still, near fatal was not fatal enough for Harold.

Swinging the axe off his shoulder, Harold let it play in his hands, covering it his blood, which formed into various arcane sigils, mostly the branch-like Elder Sign he used to subdue the thing in the first place, but on each side of the blade he formed the twisted, five-sided star Elder Sign.

Eying the monstrosity before him carefully, Harold says, “Trust me, this is going to be worse for me than you… sort of.”

Then, with all the muscles of his body rippling as he lets them transform into something stronger and far more animalistic in nature, he swings the axe with all the considerable force he can bring to bear, smashing into the beast’s bulbous head, spewing a nasty, yellow, bilious substance everywhere. Despite its weakened state, the creature’s skull, or rather skull-like structure as Harold wasn’t sure it had bones, was still tough enough to prevent the first strike from reaching the brain. Thus it takes three more swings to actually kill it, although after the second it was already mostly brain dead.

Dropping the axe, Harold feels the stream of consciousness from the creature nearly overwhelm him as his first and most terrible ‘gift’ comes into play. The millions of years of incomprehensible, alien memories would have overwhelmed a lesser being, but even if this had been Harold’s first time doing this he would have instinctively crushed and subjugated this new addition to his mind, and he had years of experience doing this already.

Dropping his axe, Harold collapsed to the ground in an exhausted state, feeling his body growing even more malleable than before. He could change shape already, creating nearly any structure, internal or external, that he could imagine, so long as he had the materials required. Now conservation of mass wasn’t even an issue.

Reaching into his coat, Harold pulls out a soaking package of cigarettes, curses, and then tosses them aside with a laugh.

Looking at the rapidly disintegrating body, the rising sun, and the axe lying next to him, Harold continues to laugh, before saying, “This’ll make a good story for the bar! How I single-handedly took down a motherfucking Cthulhu Star Spawn with a motherfucking fire axe.”

He laughed for a good five minutes before his bellows transformed from mirth to sorrow, and then he cried himself to sleep.

His life sucked.

[Aranfan]

Indeed, his life does suck very very much.

[Sidewinder]

Harold sounds pretty badass. I like the fact that the whining and emoing is kept at a bare minimum, unlike some characters I can name.