the only cigarette in a carton of addicts
Word Count: 931
How strange the days turned. My guts leave me and suddenly I realize how many opportunities I started for myself, how many I guarded violently, expecting that they would serve me at an unseen later time. How many investments I left to languish because they required that I make a choice. That I stop standing on my precipice. I told myself I liked the view. I liked looking out at this mountain of possibilities, this landscape of could-bes and might-bes like they alone would justify my career beyond any action taken. How passive. How like the herd of worthless that call themselves Negaverse officers.
Schörl reminds that I've done nothing. All missions run were given to me. Both my promotions were from fulfilled orders. She implies that I'm still a child living off my parent's dregs, off handouts and others' misfortunes. She insists I suffer with no context for it -- like misfortune is a habitual thing. I know she's right. I know my idleness.
As I look at my empty medals, I hear her voice in my ear.
- You have no civilian life, and freedom from the full constraint of banal humanity. A freeing up of much time, which should show just how special and innovative you are. But that isn’t the case, really, is it? Your quota have reflected no initiative. Nor recruitments, information, notches to your proverbial rifle… your baseline seems to be complaints, deflection, and an ability to lose your humanity.
How right she was. What little I've done since -- a training essay, updates to the database, dutiful trail-following. Youmafication limited me to this life, to this duty and I still watch all the ripe possibilities rot and fall from the branch, unable to pick between them. Idle as I was when a human boy. I wonder how long until she decides I'm more a waste than Chrysocolla, than Ochre or Heliodor. Until I'm only as much as my starseed can give at a moment's notice. Piss on that fate.
Better that I move now, emptied of human sentiments. When I still had large and small intestines, I met Castor. While I kept my liver, I met Lysithea, Malus. When I had kidneys, I met Gevaudan. I saw something with each. Respectively: a dead foreign power, a chance to become human again, and a recent history to the Negaverse. To youma. Choosing among them, I would chronicle our history. Pray that the undertow doesn't drag me toward the other options. Pray that Schörl doesn't drive me there, so swollen with her own need for my blood and piteousness. That she won't cost me my story.
These stories -- I made them mine. I ate them like I eat air. I feel their burrows in my marrow since I glutted on them. But I need to bend them in the way that my general bends others. Make them work, toil like harried slaves. But their direction can't be mistaken; I need a thoughtful path.
Impulse is Lieutenant's play -- Captains and Generals plan. There's so much yet to do, so much more I can give before I let Schörl drive me like a blind animal. Better that I use what was learned from Gevaudan, spread it like mulch to germinate better soldiers and better youma.
They're each selfish, careless things, our officers -- too afraid to stop posturing and ask what they don't know. I've seen enough to infer that much. I wonder if they would listen to a lecture on their monstrous counterparts. To talk of sickness. Of curses. To explanations of how the first youma came to be and what we are now, bent and stretched like shadows of tree boughs. I wonder if they would listen to a youma officer explaining the lot of it, if I need our human counterparts to add their observations. I must; appearance means so much to them. There have to be others who can share what they know -- smarter, savvier ones who watched long enough to learn. Others who are themselves youma. Others with enough clout to sway opinion. We'll make a seminar of it. Collect all our knowledge and publish it.
But a seminar won't satisfy Schörl. She'll grow her dissatisfaction with me. Cast me an invalid. Label me rations -- so much meat around a starseed.
And there's so much more to do. So many ways around her and none of them palatable. The unicorn drags me out from under her, but I'll be human again. Haunted by all my faults and troubles, made to sit for seven hours of useless classes, made to take parents, to play boy to a family, to make friends, to plan career paths, to plug in, to fight Metallia. Castor and Lysithea make no promise that I must fight, but Schörl would require it. Would seek it. Could I meet her, tied to all these preoccupations? Worse, could I leave her? Could I wash clean?
Spare hours for deliberation have passed. I spent my time on thought -- squandered it. Planted myself here in pointless possibilities. Her claws close quicker and quicker and I'm no more prepared for it. So much case is left to build and I don't have her wit to borrow. No, it names me enemy now. Target.
I'm rich in what I've lost, but I can stand to lose more. What's Eion Risk but so much dead wind. What is Faustite but treasonous General-killer, self-impressed idler. Better that I build up or break off.
Youma am I, but not yet dead in the head.
