Venom's Story: Fire At Will

Sometimes he did it because he wanted to. Sometimes he did it because he needed to. Sometimes he did it because he was curious about what would happen. Sometimes he did it because he thought it was deserved. Most of the time, though, he did it because it was an itch: an unreasoning, irrational, unrelenting itch.

This time, he did it because he was curious.

He found the strange person first on that space station, and had barely glanced at him. There was something odd about that person, perhaps, but there were so many other loves to sort through that he didn't pay him any thought. He'd found the woman and her husband and the ring, and that had happily diverted him from whatever might have been odd about a single mortal. That ring was now ensconced in his Collection, which was now arranged beautifully in the biggest room of his big new home-- stealing away the life savings of a bitter old man who's greatest love was his money had been not only exquisite but practical-- but he couldn't spend all his time admiring, protecting, and keeping up his Collection. It needed to grow.

He found the strange person again on the planet below the space station, while he was searching for a love that would eventually give him that big house with a big room for his Collection. He'd paused, then, but only briefly. Despite his curiosity, he hadn't pursued it. His heart's desire was too vague, too diffuse, too nebulous for him to see it easily, and besides, it had nothing to do with houses or money, so again he had moved on.

He found the strange person a third time, later, wandering between worlds in another search of something to add to his Collection. It was in a dark place, a dragonry with dark children trapped in eggs and dark people waiting for them to hatch. This time, he paused, watching this strange person from a shadow and pondering what made him so strange. And, as he always did, as was his habit, he pondered what sort of thing he could take for his Collection-- but the wants and desires were still so difficult to grasp. Usually when he had such trouble finding someone's greatest love, he simply moved on, but now he was curious.

So he hid in the shadows and watched the strange person stare out over the landscape, listened to him muse about-- about--

Freedom.

That was it. The most important thing to this person was his freedom. He scowled unhappily at him, for he couldn't add freedom to his Collection-- freedom was intangible, independence was invisible, a care-free life weightless. Certainly he could take such a thing, there were any number of ways to check a mortal's freedom, but what would be the point? There was nothing for him to savor, nothing for him to make his own, nothing to look at and remember. It was a fruitless endeavor, to him.

And yet, now that he knew what this strange person loved above all else, he could feel the familiar itch tickling at the back of his senses. The itch that told him to take, take, take, and see what happened. What would happen? How could he make this lack of freedom come about? In the short term, or in the long term? As he pondered, his doubts about what he might bring home to add to his Collection started to fade beside the immediacy of the itch, the insistency of the curiosity, the satisfaction of the habit. He could find something, surely, he told himself absently as plans rose and fell in his mind, were considered and rejected, and then he didn't think of it at all, because all that mattered was that itch.

His first opportunity presented itself almost immediately, and he smiled, and whispered a thought to one Cocytus, Seeker for some place called Storm of the Black Wasteland. Then he slipped into true invisibility, turning light and eyes away from him with a simple thought, and crept after the bright-eyed creature to watch the fun.

~~~~~

Though Venom didn't know much about these sorts of things, having not really paid attention to them before, it did seem like it was taking an inordinate amount of time for the Bipedra thing to hatch. Various candidates were starting to get restless-- he among them. He'd been given free room and board at Cy Dragonstake, which he wasn't about to turn down, but after several months of general boredom, he was starting to wonder whether it might be better, in terms of his sanity, to move on and give up on the clutch. It wasn't as if he was all that enthusiastic about bonding, anyway.

There were a number of things one could do at Cy, of course, which were particularly different or dangerous, but he'd already done most of them, and managed to not die each time. He didn't really see the point in trying any of them again. There were only so many women to divert himself with, too, who wouldn't wind up haunting him until he left-- which was looking to not be for quite a while. He'd already exhausted the supply. There wasn't even anything really good for him-- or, conversely, really bad for him-- to drink, but even if there had been, drinking wasn't really enough to keep him entertained. And bothering Tenken got old quickly, especially when the man realized that, no matter how fast he could move or how sharp his sword was, it didn't do any good to run his annoyer through. The last time he'd done it, it had been with a sense of futility, and Venom had merely sighed and rolled his eyes. After three repetitions of that same, failed attempt at getting rid of him, the sour fellow couldn't be goaded into violence again.

The dragonry did make an attempt now and then at putting him to work-- otherwise he, and the various other Bipedra candidates, wound up making trouble, and of course, nice dragonries and their nice staff didn't really like trouble. That seemed silly for a place which hosted Bipedra events regularly and Apocalypses even more regularly, but perhaps not everyone was in agreement about such things. Unfortunately for Venom, most of what they found for him to do wasn't particularly fun, and certainly didn't do much to relieve the boredom: laundry, dish-washing, cleaning out unused chambers... not something an assassin-for-hire would really waste his talents on, if he had the choice. He wound up avoiding the recruiters and chore-mongerers as often as letting them have their way, because either way he wound up wishing he were doing something else, but chores at least kept him halfway busy, when he wasn't being belligerent about them.

So, unsurprisingly, Venom was bored. And, oddly enough, a little homesick. Cy Dragonstake was nice enough, he guessed, but more than a little primitive, compared to what he was used to. He missed his apartment, and the safety and solitude that went with it, and his usual round of bars and the understandings he had with their keepers, and the endless supply of girls that he could easily avoid if they got too clingy, nosy, or manipulative. Bipedra hatching or no Bipedra hatching-- promise to Nuranys's memory or no promise-- Venom was starting to seriously consider simply taking his name off the rosters and going home. He even considered just making a quick trip back to pick up things from his apartment, see whether the fuss from the shoot out had died down, maybe make the rounds once or twice and make sure that last bounty hunter had learned her lesson.

It was just before he actually made that decision that things got exciting again.

Venom was sitting on the wall surrounding Cy Dragonstake, looking out over the landscape and thinking-- as was often the case, these days-- that not even someone sacrificing themselves needlessly for you merited months of boredom. He was nursing a mug of the best ale the place had to offer-- which wasn't that good, especially not for its price-- when a cheerful-sounding voice from down the ramparts a ways refocused his attention.

"Hello! Nice day, isn't it?"

The voice belonged, he discovered as he turned to face the oncoming creature, to a slender, black creature, long and serpentine in the body but more canine-ish in the face. It had neon yellow horns, a similarly neon yellow tuft of hair on the end of its long tail, and bright black eyes that were, as far as he could tell, fixed on him. He tipped his shades down to peer at the thing over them, and got himself a bright grin in response.

"Suppose so," he grunted in answer, turning back to the dull landscape.

"Could I bother you for a moment?"

Venom was unpleasantly reminded of the reason he was here. Whoever this creature was, he sounded uncannily like one very dead priest. He even looked a little like him, in coloring. If he was particularly unlucky, he would be just as persistent and difficult to shake off. He tried ignoring him.

"Really, I have to insist!"

Ignoring didn't seem to be working. He tried glaring.

"Oh, are you going to be difficult? Please say you're going to be difficult, I haven't had a good fight in ages."

Venom sighed heavily. "What do you want?"

Looking disappointed, the black thing chirped, "My name's Cocytus. I'm from the Twisted Fate, a tycharan spaceship." Venom grunted his understanding; he hadn't heard of that particular ship, but he knew the tycharis race. Not too difficult to kill, if you were fast enough and had tough enough bullets, but bound to break a lot of bones if you got too close. "I'm a Seeker there," Cocytus explained, which really explained nothing, "and I just Seekered you. Sought you. Whatever."

"And that means what, exactly?" Venom drawled.

"That means I'd like you to come with me," Cocytus said cheerfully, "to be a candidate at a biotheurge there."

"I'm already a candidate," Venom told him, and looked back out over the landscape. "And I'm not going anywhere with you."

"Then you are going to be difficult!" Cocytus exulted. "You're coming with me, whether you want to or not!"

Quite casually, and without actually looking at his target, Venom pulled one of his guns out of his coat, from the holster under his left arm, put it where he expected Cocytus's muzzle to be, and pulled back the hammer. Usually such a threatening action made people back off, if they didn't have a deathwish. "Fuck off," he added, just to make sure he got his point across.

"Wow."

Cocytus wasn't going anywhere. A glance proved him to be examining the gun with great interest.

"Nobody's ever pulled a gun on me before. How exciting."

And quite promptly he wasn't there anymore. Venom lunged back from the edge of the wall, ready to take flight or fight as needed, but before he could, he found himself surrounded-- even though there was only one of Cocytus, and he hadn't magically multiplied himself. Cursing, understanding quite suddenly the benefits of such a long and fluid body, Venom tried to figure out just how-- and where!-- to aim to get the snake-like quadruped to leave him alone. He gave up on that almost immediately, and leapt into the air. Cocytus was quick, though, and caught his tail in his mouth, which got him shot at, since he had to hold still long enough for a shot in order to catch him.

And, somehow, he didn't get hit. Not badly, anyway-- which made no sense, because Venom was a very good shot, and at point-blank range like this, he should have made the idiot's head explode. He did find his tail free, however, and when he lashed it free, lofting higher, and looked back down, he found Cocytus no longer long and snakelike, but tall and bipedal, and sucking at his forearm. Apparently he'd at least hit something, even if the shape-change and a very quick dodge had saved him from being beheaded in a very messy fashion. The creature's expression looked much like a pout.

Venom snorted at him, and caught at the wind, ready to loft away and leave Cocytus to his grazed forelimb and pitifully widened black eyes. He only got one wing-beat up before smacking his head on something translucent that hadn't been there a moment ago, and then found his wings fouled in bars of the same. One wing-tine snapped, trapped between two bars mid-beat, and he crumpled onto a floor as solid, see-through, and cold as the ceiling he'd just bumped against. Snarling curses under his breath, he crouched there, drawing up the broken wing and setting it with a pop and a wince. It would heal up in moments, of course, and then he could shoot out the bars of the levitating cage he now found himself trapped within, and then he'd get that annoying little bastard....

When he glared down at his new captor, though, Cocytus's expression was both smugly pleased and genuinely apologetic, both emotions warring for supremacy. The effect was so stupidly strange that Venom gave up and started laughing. Cocytus looked surprised, then grinned sheepishly.

"All right, all right," he said at last. "Put me down, let me up, I'll come along and see what you want out of me. It's gotta be more exciting than here, right?"

"I'd like to think so," Cocytus said cheerfully, and moments later not only was he healed, free, and able to assure the Seeker-- whatever that was-- that no lasting harm had been done to his head and wings, he was collecting his things and letting said odd Seeker teleport him to the Twisted Fate. Whatever that was.

He was quite blissfully unaware at being followed.