chapter xlix of the overwoods, but it's the original unabridged version
***** THE OVERWOODS *****
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/76627/the-overwoods-midnights-notebooks
***** THE OVERWOODS *****
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/76627/the-overwoods-midnights-notebooks
The Overwoods - 122,899 words - 622 pages - 155g
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/76627/midnights-notebooks-the-overwoods-mirrors-format
The Overwoods - 119,881 words - 151a_updated
147a
145b
140b
--ovw--XLIX--ovw--
This wasn't a workout. But if my body was going to do something nice for someone that day, then hey, let's flip.
MONDAY
8:59 AM
Northwest of Windcreek
Status: Unavailable
I put my phone back in its pocket, and took one of the tiny, compact combat knives. I wasn't intending to really use it, unless necessary.
The light purple shade of the 9AM Overwoods sky spun, and glowed, like milky purple Taro bubble tea. The kind Kaylee and I were practically addicted to; I just didn't buy as much because I cared about not spending funny crazy money.
"You have about a second and a half to stop because I don't believe in hurting anyone."
Most of the time I didn't, at least.
Those wore the words I spoke as I took my first two steps.
"Just..." Connor croaked, "...just stab him."
No.
Arms out, roundoff half turn, two whips, flip with three twists, full in back out back pike. With both my shoes now on top of the Talon's large head, I twisted into my left for the quadruple twisting dismount- without trying to stick this time, because the heel of my left foot was going into this Talon's left temple, near the left ear and impact swinging into his frontal and limbic lobe, and corpus callosum.
Assuming Talons' brains were the same as that of "normal humans," anyway.
I felt the subtle gush of heat leave my body upon contact and out through my left foot. Connor broke free, spun around, and threw a punch to the Talon's nose the millisecond that I front flipped in pike position over them both. On the half turn right before my landing, Connor dropkicked the large creature in both shins. And in that quick split moment right before the Talon toppled onto his knees, my right palm and right elbow connected into the same temple I'd gone after earlier. I caught light green and teal-tinted snow on my wet lips as I inhaled again. The male Talon attempted some kind of very inexperienced parry to Connor's next punch, and then an even worse attempt at evasion, failing miserably at both. It was like watching me at the real-competition-vault (not the beach-makeshift-table-vault) before I understood my powers- both physical and mental. I followed up with attacks from both elbows to a gainer flash kick to modified back walkover. I acro layout series'ed backwards to give way for Connor Meadows. He followed with his left hooks and a very intentional spit in the Talon's face (those left hooks, I myself was very familiar with, but thank goodness he never spit in my face *in that way* during any physical beatdowns between the two of us) until I lifted off the ground again for a butterfly kick to modified twisting fast hurricanrana (Connor Meadows was familiar with *THAT*), with Connor stomping his boot down hard on the male Talon's solar plexus simultaneously, upon the slamming-to-ground impact.
I performed a modified back walkover up from the snowy ground and into my default fight stance while Connor lit himself another megacigarette. And then he threw one at me for no reason. I caught it with a look on my face, shadow-stepped towards him, and put it in his pocket. I then walked over to the Talon lying on the ground. I looked at him, observing him for a moment while pain flared up in both my feet, both my legs, and in my left hand- even though I hardly used it.
"Christopher," uttered Connor in his slow, slurring, South-ish moo. Not that he was a cow or anything. But he sometimes sounded like one. I looked at him.
I said nothing.
"You gon' set that hand on fire and headlock this monster, or what?"
I took a few small apple bits from one of my pockets and laid them on the ground. I shook my head. There was no need to put this man in a submission lock. He wasn't going to be walking for a week.
Neither was I... probably. If I thought about it.
Sam "Alacrity/Edge/Eldredge" Shilberg zoomed in towards us- a lightning quick flash of Christmas lights; a bullet of racing, bolting, speeding comet-tailing shining yellow and golden and pink and military-green clothing and blond hair- to stomp the Talon man in the head for her (I don't know, probably) 7,386,553,025th knockout of the year and then immediately zoomed off again. I remember that I even caught her smile at me, for just a quarter of a millisecond.
And I smiled back at her, and songs started to play in my little corgi marshmallow strawberry ice cream oatmeal with raspberries vanilla cookie mind.
A combustifly perched on my left shoulder, where Happy usually settled himself. Jupiter (and Jupiter Two) tried doing that, too, but both dogs were bigger than I was.
--ovw--
Jupiter...
I remember that Sam gave me a bottle of some kind of alcohol (vodka I think) that she stole from V1, when I told her the story of what happened to Jupiter. Like I already wrote here before- Jupiter didn't die of natural causes, either; I was surrounded by animal abuse as a child. As if abusing the child was not enough.
I never drank the alcohol, but I kept the bottle. Penguinowo protects it.
Typical brutal from the streets unrefined impulsive and crazy and high and junkie but very friendly and kind and very reliable Sam, I thought to myself, without literally *any* punctuation marks or grammar rules (sue me)- Beautiful girl with eyes just like the Overwoods snow. The fellow dirty fighter friend I loved both inside of the ring and out. The only dirty fighter friend I had in the world who had a... a similar "streets" kind of hypervigilance as I had; we both moved fast for a reason; we both ran and also attacked like poisonous hellhounds; she understood, and I understood her. We just coped in different ways, we all did- like Kaylee; like James; like Connor; Henry and Tiana and Wyatt and Chaquille and those drug-addicted smokers at the webwork, most of whom actually turned out to be very nice humans under the shells of leather and scars and eleven thousand tattoo coatings.
People didn't talk to Sam the same way I did. In fact, most people just didn't talk to her at all. Unless they thought she was a hooker, or something. I didn't understand why; I still don't. Her parents didn't speak to her with any respect because she used to date a girl that they didn't like. The girl overdosed on some kind of crushed pill and died, but her parents still treated her like a handicapped stray rat. I didn't have any parents unless you count the "legal" "guardians" who sexually abused me. I also didn't drink or smoke. We came from completely different universes- but to me, it was almost like we practically had the same name. We were both totally thrown to wolves. Both street rats. Both damaged. Both fearful and wounded and scarred and treated as complete, total, useless and worthless trash. Treated as totally invisible. And we both believed we really were worthless, yet we still fought, fought for ourselves because nobody else ever, ever, ever would.
Sam told me her mother molested her, and that her father introduced her to megacigarettes and other drugs around the age of nine. I saw her mother the next day. In the streets of V4. And it took more than everything in me and more than everything in the whole universe not to charge at her and throw her to the ground and crush every single bone in her body and not to tear apart every tendon, tooth, tissue, intestine, organ, follicle and strand of hair and piece of cartilage in her physical sack of pathetic demonic mentally fractured tainted adulterated contaminated cells-
I didn't do it; I looked away and carried on with my life, and never mentioned seeing the walking demonic bag of actual crap to Sam because I didn't want Sam to relapse on fentanyl or on heroin or whatever it was and I didn't want Sam to drink all night, either. I let her beat me up in SRA. She deserved more than just a victory, and so I also bought her a rainbow bracelet. I bought one for me, too, and we both had one. We wore wear them whenever I'd accompany her out partying, making she didn't do anything too stupid and making sure she got home before she passed out completely on a random dirty unsafe street while peeing on herself- because that's actually happened and it was not fun.
Only days after I saw the evil woman and consciously chose not to murder her, she was hit by a car and died while luring freezing street children with cheap spiked candy. Her husband- Sam's other biological parent- overdosed and died hours later.
I spent that entire night, and the entire next 48 hours afterward, with Sam Shilberg; sometimes with Caleb visiting us. But Sam wasn't worried nor was she upset nor was she going hysterical nor was she grieving; grieving at all. At one point she had cried but said she was only crying tears of pure joy. She had told me that she was genuinely and truly happy for the first time in her life. And I have to say she didn't seem sad to me in the slightest. She even laughed when I asked her if she knew why she was so happy.
"Because I feel so much safer now," she had said to me. She'd looked from me to Caleb and back to me. She was holding a clear plastic bag with gray pills and green pills and white pills in it. "Youz guys wan' help me flush this shit?"
That was when I knew, at least for myself: she was just like me. Just in a different body.
She was sober after that. Well, sober from half the stuff she used to do. Since her money wasn't going to drugs as much, she could spend them on video games and pearl necklaces and hair accessories and different hair dyes and fancy sunglasses. So that's what she did. I told her her natural shade of blond was beautiful and perfect just as it was.
"It yeminz me of that disgusting bitch, y'dickhead!" she'd hollered at me, half her R's turning into Y's the way they typically did. "Hoe had the same fuckin' haiyh."
I'd stared at her, and I said nothing.
"Yo," she'd continued, "Juz keepin it a bean with my young boul, y'know?"
She'd gone from black to red to purple to just her usual hair, but in dreadlocks and with pink highlights.
We were also both underestimated sometimes. Two skinny adults with long hair who didn't eat much, but ones who could still physically (and mentally) strike you much harder than others- wherever needed, whenever needed, however needed.
--ovw--
I backed up into Connor. Two more Talon- seemingly a male and a female, at least by the looks of them- approached us with weapons. One was flying and the other was running. Sam and Kaylee were occupied.
I watched as the large bird-people-mutants brandished their weapons at us. Both were visible. Both were sharp and jagged.
Connor, apparently, was otherwise occupied as well.
I heard the sound of a blow behind me.
"What are they holding?" Connor asked me.
Other thoughts please other thoughts other thoughts other thoughts other thoughts
He said something he said something he said something
Something.
Actually I don't know
What did he say?
"WHAT," Connor Meadows mooed at me, "ARE THEY HOLDING?"
--ovw--
Ohhhhhh they're armed LOL
Zomg lol yas armed and big and evil and selfish and ugly creatures ofc
Ofcccc
Just like the ones that used to rule the planet
Lol
They wazz soooo big tho
Lowkey are these even still telepathic thoughts anymore because real????
I triple-shut the doors to my mind and put up four telepathic barriers, effectively murdering one-half of my strength.
I blinked away monsters and mental-tsunami-memory-flash-floods of people larger than me holding sharp or blunt or heavy or rusted objects back in the Lowdown. I shook off memories of blood puddles mixed with gin and of and crushed red pills and of vomit and of broken bodies and of bloodstains and alcohol stains, and of constant sexual abuse and of constant gaslighting and of constant nightmares. Nightmares- those, I still have sometimes. And sometimes a lot of them, even as I write this now. Sometimes, when a memory is so ugly (or the person in the memory is), it attempts to ruin the beauty of what's in front of you. But it only does the opposite; it reminds you of what is beautiful and what is not abusive. And sometimes, those who tried to destroy you fail at something else, too- they fail at yet another disgusting piece of miserable evil:
They fail at turning you into them. Because as much as it hurts and feels like garbage, nobody will ever be as miserable as them. Take how you feel but multiply that by ten thousand, another ten thousand and another ten thousand- that's how they feel deep down inside, where it sinks into the subconscious mind, buried under all of their abuse and insanity and lunacy and full-on psychopathness. They can't even express it; they can't even unravel it.
--ovw--
(*Psychopathness because words because English language btw lmao.)
I blinked away little light green and teal snowflakes, and I blinked away tears. I started a mental playlist of unmainstream indie pop albums from thousands of years ago; from secret archives granted only to the most talented members recognized by the Union's leaders. In my case, granted by James. I thought of his red-orange hair and pistachio ice cream light green eyes.
He once caught me with my ukulele, writing a new song, seemingly alone save for him; that was in the center of the Coliseum at around three in the morning.
I lied and said I was just visualizing strategy for my next SRA, while playing myself some acoustic music. You know, like a normal person/NPC/normie. Eww. And that was years after the first time James found me in the middle of writing a new song, also alone save for him and my pet ukulele. Except that time, I didn't know he was there at all. And I didn't know for years until he told me. It was on the pier at The Port of course. I was walking slowly, just like I always did while I hummed and strummed. Vaguely I can still remember staring blankly at the glow of the combustiflies, at the little hermit crabs, and at the glow of Vicinity Two and the Everglades far in the distance.
"That was precisely 12:00 AM," James had said to me. I just stared back at him with the most expressionless face imaginable. "The only 12:00 AM where you were doing something other than working out alone or tumbling alone or physically beating up ex-convicts and child traffickers," he'd continued. "Or sitting or crying."
Of course I said nothing.
"That isn't the only I baptized you as Midnight, though."
Baptized, my butt. I only agreed to his shit because money and Malcolm's Vystir issues and because GOODBYE FREAKING UGLYASS LOWDOWN GOODBYE GOODBYE GOODBYE. I allowed him to talk and talk and talk and smile at me and talk and laugh and talk and talk and talk and talk some more and laugh and finish talking.
I said nothing.
But I can certainly still remember crying.
--ovw--
It's fine, I have an apple in my pocket
Multiple, actually. Multiple little dark red happy apples and happy little apple bits.
Happy little apples, get it? Happy apples. Hah.
Pun intended fully.
I'm clever.
I repeated simple words in my mind.
It's fine
I have an apple in my pocket
I am not hungry
ORBIPLOSIONZZZZ
Yuh.
I win like that
--ovw--
"WHAT," Connor Meadows mooed at me, "ARE THEY HOLDING?"
I bit my tongue, bit the inside of my cheek, bit my lower lip, and took a closer look just to answer Connor's question.
"A bear trap and a beer bottle?" I said, as I pocketed my one wielded knife, carefully placing it back in alignment with all the other ones in the black leather. "A bear trap and a beer bottle. That's... certainly a choice for weapons."
Connor spit, twice, on the ground behind my shoes before responding in his very fascinating accent.
"Hell, man," he said. "I'd use the same ones."
"Tango Echo Delta, team!" Kaylee yelled from her spot on the ground about twenty feet away from where we stood. She probably telepathically heard our conversations, or, more probably, was reading all of our minds- as long as none of us were locking up from her.
Or the rest of the telepath world.
"Eldredge heeayh," said Sam's telepathic voice.
From about fifteen yards to my right, I saw Jupiter Two practically sear two Talons with one opening of his mouth. I smiled. My new friend had jaws.
"Team- Tango Echo Delta," Kaylee commanded again. "What's up, Edge?"
Sam's voice was the physical one when she replied, and we all heard it.
"Y'ALL 'ON NEEDA KEEP TELLIN' ME WHAT TO DO HEEAYH," it said. "I'M HAVING A BLAST YO!" I heard her knuckles connect with a Talon's face- and I saw it from where Connor and I stood. The Talon woman stumbled a million steps back until Sam again pursued her and connected her knockout blow, all the while still throwing hands at the others around her, her brass knuckles gleaming and shining the more she threw her fists. She was a glowing rainbow of pure destruction. I saw her smile at me. "I DUNNO ABOUT YOUZ GUYS!"
"A brother and a father are missing," Kaylee replied, with her physical voice, slowly backing up toward us while still shooting Welwitschia arrows; throwing mutated poison anthurium bombs. There was still a smile in her voice; it wasn't as prominent.
"They could be..." I paused. "For all we know they might be hurt."
Sam zoomed her way in and toward us, a glowing speeding lightshow of yellow and green and white and blond and pink.
"That's why we're here," she said.
"They might be-" Kaylee started.
I wasn't exactly frantic. But my next words were automatic and five times faster than my words normally were.
"They might be in an experiment. They might be subjected to stuff. They might be. Might be being experimented on, tortured, raped, kidnapped, brainwashed, maimed, killed. Anything- these people do anything and everything and I've seen-" I paused to pull out one knife, throw it in one straight line- at the right wing of a Talon that mercilessly lacerated half of Kaylee's back- before she could say much else. From atop the tall trees around and all above us, Happy the raccoon tossed a mini-apple, which I barely axe-kicked in Kaylee's direction. "Kayles!" I yelled. She caught the apple in her right hand and started consuming it immediately, as her blood saturated the back of the impractical, delicate, silk orange top.
"We don't know," I said. "But I think we all know that if they're tested on or tortured for even one day, and it's my fault, I will never forgive myself."
"Me neither," Kaylee groaned, as Sam shielded us with her body. I put my left hand under the fabric of Kaylee's halter tank top, on her waist- as the skin of my back started to sting madly. Whatever claws these monsters had on them, they weren't normal claws. "Thanks, Marblefox."
"MORPHINE," said Sam. "More accuyate yite now."
I locked eyes with Sam for a moment, before looking at Connor.
"I gotta agree with the crazy bitch," he said. "You are a walking painkiller."
"Too bad you guys can't get high off it," Kaylee muttered, ostensibly to nobody in particular. She looked at me. "I'm good, Midnight-full-of-rainbows. Morphine. And I owe you an ice cream." She nodded toward the rest of the Talon. "Go give 'em that Danny fire."
I looked towards the Talon and sighed.
"It better be two scoops of cookies-n-cream," I said. "With cherries."
"Give mah young boul a break," uttered Sam. "You ain't hizz boss yo and you not even employed yo." Sam cracked her knuckles. Then she twirled her strawberry-pink highlighted locks around one finger and performed, arguably, the most exaggerated, and quite possibly the dumbest, and yet also the funniest Kaylee Ann Davenport impression I had ever seen in my life. She started to walk on tiptoe, waltzed a few steps toward me, did a bow and then also a curtsy while lifting up an invisible orange skirt which I swear only I could see, and said, "Oh, but Danny if you die at the claws of these Talonfolk, I can give you unlimited perfect pink and orange funeral bouquets of perfect flowers while I wear that pink U.S. dress you bought for me and give the most wholesome eulogy!"
Kaylee's nostrils flared like two green peas becoming slightly bigger green peas.
It was so un-Sam, and SO Kayl-esque. I laughed but only inwardly because stinging on my hands and on my back plus Kaylee's emotional responses can be extremely unpredictably fragile at times. Like mine, slightly (sort of), but with less streets-type-toughening, and also less observer-intel-collector-conditioning, and much, much more princessing. She and Tiana Ambervi had quite a number of things in common, if I really thought about it.
"My dad can have you fired!" Kaylee responded.
"That he can," said Connor, who was lighting yet another megacigarette, snowflakes collecting on his neon-blue whiskers. "But bless 'yer heart, give 'im a break, I punched the boy in the face and y'all can see it. Let the other flamethrower and the tank handle this."
"Aww, damn, yo! I thought that'uzz MY PUNCH from last yeayh's SRA. Yeah, no, mine was way better and redder and darker and bigger'enn 'dat. Yo, gimme a megacig." She raised an eyebrow at me and then at Meadows while he muttered something unpleasant under his breath and reluctantly gave Sam a red stick from a box. "I WANT THE GYEEN, THE DAYK GYEEN." Sam took the box of megacigarettes from Connor's hand and fumbled for a dark green stick, and then lit both. She raised her left eyebrow at me for a second time and said, "Wuzee mean?" She took a really, really long double-drag from the combo of drug sticks. I winced, cringed, and flinched all at the same time. "Other flamethrower?" She asked. "Wuddhe talkin' 'bout?"
I pointed at Jupiter Two, the happiest Samoyed alive. The big white floofy floof trotting around keeping the Talonfolk busy while we convened; Happy watching over him and over all of us from tree branches far above, tossing down little dark red apples and little apple chunks as needed. The little painkiller floof.
"Only flamethrower," I said, correcting Connor. "I don't throw fire at anything. Not literally, anyway. I can throw knives, yes- and even throw myself- but not actual flames."
Kaylee snorted. She spawned more Welwitschia arrows.
"You literally set things and monsters and people on fire from the inside by striking them," she said. "Duh. Like, how is that not flamethrowing? A flamethrower is that circle thing on a stove and you do the same thing."
I stared at her.
"Kayles," I said. "I'm pretty sure they call those circle things 'bur-'"
"YO OKAY YO," blurted Sam, interrupting me, "YOU GIRL IZZ THE DUMBEST LITERAL PEASHOOTAH IN THE OVEYWUZZ." She contiued to smoke the two megacigarettes simultaneously, blowing the smoke away from us, which was something so sweet of her to do and not something Belinda ever cared about doing and hence literally never did do, and something that made Sam's usually-emotionally-evoked V4 accent very bearable. To me, anyway. I think she meant to say pea shooter. I wasn't very sure at the time. "'Cept that a peashootah is actually cute and a zombie would actually be interested in one!"
Kaylee rolled her eyes in the Kaylee Ann Davenport Signature Queen Royalty™ fashion.
"I'm sorry my dad didn't KILL HIMSELF," she said.
"I'm sorry you have TOO MANY DADS TO START WITH," said Sam.
"YOUR MOM," said Kaylee.
"That's not funny," I said.
"I'm lost right now so I'm gon' go beat me up some good birdfolk," said Connor as he backed away slowly.
I stared at him. I said nothing.
"What?" he said. "I'mma go get y'all some good birdsoup. That oughtta calm y'all down."
My eyes widened.
"They're still people, we can't cook them," I said to Connor with literally zero actual conviction because I technically had no idea. I still don't even now as I write this, actually. Were they people? Are politicians people? Are Talon people? Dogs are people. In fact, dogs are the best people. Always have been. "No soup, no thanks, Connor. But, you know, if you find me a strawberry donut tree or a pancake bush or a French Toa-"
"YO BITCH I HAD A MOM YO." Sam threw both megacigarettes on the ground and stomped them. "AND SHE WAS A FUCKIN' PEDOPHILE HOE YO." She stomped and stomped and re-stomped the dark green and red cinders. "BUT YO THAT'S STILL MOH' THAN YOU CAN SAY MISSUS ORANGE DUMB PRINCESS HOE BITCH YO."
"Why you rapping?" said Kaylee. "And I'm not the blond one, you can't call me dumb. And I'm not married."
I shook my head. I glanced at Kaylee's bow, and then I glanced at her- the walking, talking supply of unlimited totally vegan dairy-free animal-friendly arrows. (Animal-friendly unless shot directly at them, please do not shoot animals, or I will kill you, also I haven't killed Kaylee because she hasn't shot at animals other than the Talon if Talon are in fact animals because I still do not know now.)
I still didn't know where Caleb was. Connor, Sam, Happy, Jupiter Two; no Caleb. But Kaylee was there, to help me find both him, and Malcolm. My other counterpart; survivor of N-word.
I shut my eyes.
Not that N-word, the other N-word.
En Gail.
The experiments. The actual torture. The nightmare that sometimes still haunts my actual dreams if I'm having a bad week.
"YO HE HAVING AN ACTUAL FLASHBACK NOW AND IT'S 'YER FAULT YO AND Y'WENT THROUGH THE SAME DAMNED ACTUAL SHIT YO GIRL YOU A MESSED UP HOE YO I HOPE Y'CAN'T SLEEP YO AND 'YER BRO FUCKIN' LEAKS ALL 'YER PASSWORDS YO AND ALL 'YER DAMNED PO-"
"Kayles," I muttered, interrupting them both as politely as I could. "Keep shooting."
129a
145b
The Overwoods - 120,494 words - 611 pages - 152a_updated
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/76627/midnights-notebooks-the-overwoods-mirrors-format
The Overwoods - 120,494 words - 611 pages - 154a
