FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

'Let me hammer him today!' (Pink Floyd, The Trial)

Mano's path led her back up out of the water and into a corridor that led her to a rowboat on a canal. Approaching the rowboat to sit down in it and pick up its oars, a chill went down her spine when she saw that Atlan, having predicted that she would go down this path, had hung the carcasses of feral cows upside-down on each side of the canal, as though she were rowing her merry way through an underground butcher shop. It wasn't like he just kept meat in reserve to eat it and this was where he kept it. It had been designed specifically to lower her emotional defenses by damaging what were literally her sacred cows, over a twisted anti-Ganges.

Her three eyes narrowed.

This was typical of the way that Atlan would deliberately misinterpret Eli's words to justify his cruelty toward others. Eli had never stopped Mano from being Hindu, or Fugue from being Shinto, or Ammut from being Christian. Ultimately, her main concern had never been about ultimate reality, but about doing everything she could to help people down here on Earth. Relieved to reach the end of the canal, Mano stopped rowing to step out of the rowboat and back onto dry land, onward into the inky darkness. When she reached the end of a white marble path between columns, Mano found what seemed to be a doorway with two torches on its sides.

It was a double door, also made of marble, but there were no doorknobs or doorknockers for her to use to open it. There was no way for her to slide either of them to the side, or to push either of them inward or outward. Carved into the surface of the marble doors were scales, like the Zodiac symbol for the Libra sign that represented sublimation. On the left scale, which was raised, was carved a heart. On the right scale, which was lowered, was carved a feather.

Guessing the solution to the puzzle that was presented to her, Mano pulled down on the carving of the heart on the left while pushing up the carving of the feather on the right, opening the door in front of her to a sound that Rakim would have recognized from the Zelda games. The puzzle had been designed so as to be disheartening for her, in spite of and even because of the fact that she had found its solution. She could only enter into the next room with a heavy heart.

Mano did a double-take when she stepped onto the circular marble platform set in the square room around it. She was forced to take a few more steps forward than she'd initially been planning to because she realized that, since the center of the room seemed to rest on a very precarious and small balancing point under it, if she stayed too near its edge, the platform would topple in her direction, causing her to slide right off it. She could see steam rising from a pit of boiling water below her, lit with a reddish glow against the room's darkness above it to make it give her the impression of it being a lake of fire.

"Fancy some steamed octopus, Your Worship?"

That was when Mano noticed a jellyfish/anglerfish hybrid wearing a toga standing in front of her on the opposite side of the platform facing her. She was holding a long white staff by her side that Mano first mistook for a spear or a halberd before quickly realizing that its end was shaped like a gavel. She looked like she could have belonged on Olympus or in the Heavens, if not for the hellish glow shining through her transparent body from below.

"My what?" Mano scratched the back of her head with one of her many hands.

"You see, unlike you, I actually do believe in Atlan's plan for fish kind. Unfortunately, he got it into his head that he could get you to help us by having you add your credibility to his word, to recruit you to cement fish loyalty to the Fishist cause. This is a mistake." Maat was wearing a blindfold, the lantern-like protrusion coming out of her forehead the only other source of light in the room than the reddish light illuminating the bubbling boiling water below them. Mano understood that Maat couldn't see anyway, and that she was relying completely on sound and on the position of the see-saw-like platform below them to gauge Mano's location near her.

"What makes you think that?"

It was true that Mano, having known what she'd learned about what Atlan had been prepared to do to get his followers to remain loyal to him, would not have joined Atlan for the world by that point. Be that as it may, she was curious to hear why Maat would have come to this conclusion herself. "It's true that there are those among us who believe that there is something divine about you. Because of your connection to Eli, some of us believe that you are her Prophet while she is our goddess, or even that she was the Prophet, and you the goddess she prophesized for us. But if you're here to stop Atlan, I find it hard to believe that you would truly be."

Mano nodded. "I am." What was the point of lying to her about it?

"If Atlan can twist your arm into helping us, I'll defer to his judgment, of course - whatever gets the job done. But as it stands, I believe you killed Eli." Mano's three eyes widened. "Eli stopped her heart with yoga." Maat raised an eyebrow at her. "And who did she learn it from?" Maat extended her gavel to the side to emphasize her point. "No, you could've saved Eli, just as you could've helped us from the start. But you chose not to, because you envied her for her talent and fans. So you let her get so sad that she wanted to die, and gave her the means to do it, to get her out of the way. Now that the hard work is done, you're back for us."

Mano shook her head. "This is madness!" Maat struck the ground with her gavel-spear. "I'll be the judge and jury of that! I'll try the whole cause and condemn you to death!" At this, Maat disappeared right in front of her somehow. The walls of the room flickered, as though they were screens waiting to project some kind of image to her, but everything that Mano was about to see was going to seem to take place completely on the circular platform itself.

A hybrid between a shark, a crocodile and a lion appeared before her. "You should have talked to her more often," he reproached her before throwing up on the platform. As he vanished, his vomit coalesced into an otter just as Mandrake could coalesce from water to otter, but it was Bridges, not Mandrake. "You should have helped her cross the ocean," he told Mano, bouncing a pebble on the floor from him to her as though the floor had been water. Mano raised her hands to protect her face from being hit by the pebble, but it never came. "Why couldn't you have convinced her to stay?" Fugue asked while throwing a harpoon that pierced Klein running away.

"You shouldn't have been a believer," Klein told Mano as Fugue nailed him to an upside-down cross with his spikes between two giant butterflies. "It was your duty to protect her," a chameleon admonished her while rescuing the poor harpoon, spikes and cross from the wall as Klein fell upside-down into the reddish boiling water below. "Why did you let her throw it all away?" Shinai asked her, standing in a ring of fire, growing a scorpion tail to sting himself.

"You didn't understand her gender," Rakim accused her as he walked searing out of the flames that had engulfed and consumed Shinai the moment before. "You should've known how to repair her," Ogun told her as he threw a bucket of water on Rakim, putting him out but short-circuiting his electronic components as he did. "Have you burned down any new lives today?" Betta asked her as she fire kicked Ogun to ashes.

"You should've helped Eli to forget," a rat with pigeon wings told her while disintegrating into dissolving pigeon feathers in front of her. "She was doomed when you two first met," a lobster in a tuxedo assured her from a giant lobster tank. "I talk people out of this every day!" Mandrake chastised her exasperatedly from his therapist's couch over his notepad before melting away along with his couch and notepad as Boko desperately tried to catch them.

"As you cowered underwater," started Scylla as she dehydrated while tied to a pole above the waves until she dissolved into sand that joined the sand on the beach. "You left us up here without power," Milgram continued, electric current flickering through her as though she'd been a defective lightbulb. "Don't you think we'd hide if we'd found a way?" a white lion/snake-taur hybrid golem she'd never met asked her in turn before chiseling himself to dust.

"You got too caught up in your self-care," Soma levelled at her while struggling to escape from one of his web-vine-hydra cocoons as he burned within it. "So now that we've caught you unaware," Maat reappeared to bring her white spear-gavel down on Mano's head, only to disappear right before it would have hit as Mano had raised her arms to block it. "Don't you think that it's time you joined the fray?" a dolphin asked her in unison with all the others.

***

"Submit to the glory of Christ or face eternal damnation," Eli had read the sign she'd noticed that someone had pinned to a telephone pole while she and Mano had been walking down the street. Eli ripped it down. "I swear, blackmail's the last refuge of people who don't think anyone would ever agree with them if they had a choice," Mano had shaken her head. "Everybody do what I say, or the monkey gets it!" Eli had said, getting Mano in a headlock.

"You wouldn't hurt an innocent monkey, would you?" she'd asked Mano, raising an eyebrow at her as she'd pretended to hold an imaginary gun to Mano's head. "That depends," Mano had laughed, pulling her head out of Eli's headlock with what Eli liked to call her octopus 'squeezability,' "does the monkey prove that Darwin was right?" Eli had laughed. "Garbage belongs in the trash," Eli had finished, throwing the ripped prospectus into a nearby trash can.

Mano would always smile when she'd remember this. They'd loved each other so much...

***

"Get a load of this!"

Maat had turned her head left and right in vain, looking for where the voice was coming from. It clearly wasn't Mano's voice. It wasn't even coming from anywhere near Mano. "I move for a mistrial!" Somehow it seemed to have been coming from everywhere around them at once, but how could this have been possible? "Who goes there?" Maat asked, raising her spear-gavel in a way she hoped to appear menacing while still trying to track the miscreant down.

"I swear, it's like they didn't even_try_."

Maat's expression looked like she did not see the humor in the situation. "I never sounded like this when I used to read poetry to you, did I?" Mano recognized the voice. "Show yourself!" Maat didn't. "Of course you didn't," Mano answered her, "I would've told you that." Maat didn't understand what was happening. "Good. You've gotten to know these people over the years, haven't you, Mano?" Mano nodded. "Based on everything you've come to know and love about them, do you really think that any of these people would tell you any of what these versions of them told you just now in real life?" Mano shook her head. "I don't think so."

An approving tongue click reverberated throughout the room. "That's my girl." Maat struck the ground with her white spear-gavel again. "Order in the court!" Maat shouted. "I always told you that you understood me better than anyone, didn't I?" The voice seemed to have been ignoring Maat completely, as though she didn't even exist. "You did," Mano answered. "So who are you gonna believe, them or me, huh?" Mano nodded. "You, of course." Maat raised and spread her arms in exasperation. "This is highly irregular!" "_You're_irregular," the voice finally told Maat dismissively. Mano laughed.

"Do you remember the walrus and the carpenter, Mano?" Mano nodded. "Yes. The carpenter lied to the fish who believed him, and led them to their deaths." Maat's mind wouldn't have been ready to comprehend what was happening even if it had been explained to her. It contradicted her worldview much too starkly for that. "Exactly. Carpenters, judges, basically, Mano, when all you have is a hammer... everything looks like a nail," Elizabeth asserted.

"You will cease and desist!" Maat barked, swinging her white spear-gavel around randomly by this point, desperately hoping she'd luck out and swing it wherever the originator of the voice could've been. "I will do no such thing," Eli told her 'fan' who had no idea who she was, "and neither will the woman I love," Eli smiled at Mano. "Give 'em hell, darling," Eli winked at Mano.

"YOU'RE IN CONTEMPT!"

Maat threw her white spear-gavel across the room at Mano, hitting her squarely in one of her six arms, causing Mano to scream and a dark purplish blotch to appear on her peachy fish skin where her internal injury had just been caused. Mano winced as she realized that she couldn't even rub the spot where it had hit to assess how much damage it had caused because it hurt too much for her to even go anywhere near it. Mano could no longer move that arm at all.

"The jury finds you guilty, and I sentence you to suffer the full penalty of law!"

Mano had always known that her people were capable of doing certain things that no one else ever could've. Spitting ink was one of them, but there would have been no point in Mano spitting ink in the eyes of an opponent who couldn't even see thus who didn't rely on seeing in the first place. To catch Maat off-guard, Mano was going to have to think outside the box. It looked like it was going to mean having to do something that she knew that she could do, but that she had always hoped that she could go through the rest of her life without ever getting into a situation in which it would be the only thing that she could do. Desperate times, and so on.

"I gave Eli everything I had," Mano told Maat simply.

Screaming as she braced herself for the pain that she knew she was about to experience, Mano ripped her useless arm right out of its socket, as octopi had done to deter their predators since time immemorial. Swinging it behind her for momentum, she threw it toward Maat right over her head. When it first landed on her, Maat didn't understand what had just happened. When Mano's arm started moving and picked her nose, Maat screamed, and passed right out.

"I'd give everything for her again," Mano finished, stepping over Maat's limp form.

***

"Hey, Mano," Eli had told her one day, "you know how you think of Buddha as an avatar of Vishnu, or how some Jews and Muslims still think of Jesus as some kind of prophet, even though they don't think of him as God?" Mano had gestured at her to continue. "I like that people would try to interpret someone else's version of events in a way where it's consistent with their worldview, but still trying to show respect to other people's somehow, you know?"

_ Mano had smiled. "You're right, there's something to be said for that, isn't it?" Eli had nodded. "Sometimes, Mano," Eli had told her, "I like to think that Jesus, Buddha, the whole lot of them, were just poets, atheists, and activists, just like I am," she'd added. "I like to imagine that, in their own way, they were just trying to change the world for the better. But people took them at their word, and made a religion out of it. It's silly that I'd think things like that, isn't it?"_

***

Mano, now sporting only five arms, walked through a corridor made of glass, deep underwater. Nothing else in the underwater complex now stood between Mano and the humbling sight of the wide, open ocean, everywhere around her, beneath her feet and over her head. At first, she could only hear the whale songs, but it didn't take long before she saw the whales that they were coming from, slow, feral, gigantic compared to her, beyond measure.

"Can you hear the whales around us, Mano?"

She could hear him speaking to her long before she'd reached the final room in his lair. "Landlubbers say the whales are singing," he went on, "but they're wrong." He sounded as though he were completely sure of himself, revealing a truth that should've been obvious to her. "The whales are crying, Mano." Whale songs had been one of Mano's favorite things to listen to on her MP3 player when she'd been recovering from Eli's death soon after it'd happened. "Crying for the loss of their loved ones." She'd listened to whale songs whenever she'd been on public transit on the surface. "Soon, the world will drown in their tears, just as it deserves to."

She didn't care to have him turn something that had been such a source of comfort to her into a tool of violence against air-breathers because he'd always hated them anyway. "You don't know why the whales are singing," she spat at him. "You're not a whale." She'd just walked into a large glass cube where, deep underwater, they were not so much whale watchers as whale watchees. "And you're certainly not a fish!" She frowned at him. "Yet you barge in as if you owned the place, turn fish against fish, and you have the nerve to do it in my dead girlfriend's name, as if it weren't bad enough." She wasn't about to let him get away with that.

"Maybe you didn't know her as well as you thought you did," he tried to provoke her. "Maybe if you'd paid closer attention when she'd talked to you, you'd have joined us of your own free will already." She couldn't tell whether Atlan believed his own lies, or if he was consciously using them to manipulate his followers without believing in them himself. "You can still take your place in History. Join us! You can still be remembered as a Fishist heroine for us."

The truth of the matter was that, as a dolphin, unlike fish, and unlike other mammals, Atlan was always both sleeping and awake at the same time. The right and left hemispheres of his brain would alternate between being asleep and awake one at a time, always switching back and forth, so that he was always dreaming, even when he was up and about while he did. Atlan's mind was conditioned to be able to think of something both as a lie and as truth simultaneously.

"You don't understand whales or fish as well as you think you do," Mano told him understatedly. "There's more to their lives than crying over their dead, though that may be. They're also singing for their loved ones who are still alive. Whether someone erases their joy or their suffering, they're still being erased. Dolphins mostly eat fish, as far as I know. But we fish aren't the fools you think. We won't let you reduce us to so little as that without a fight."

He looked at her menacingly. "Then fight you shall."

Not so long ago, even with the Kalaripayattu that her mother had taught her, Mano would have had a hard time holding her own against Atlan. This was because, for a long time after Eli's death, Mano had had to go through life with only two hearts, since one of her hearts had stopped beating along with Eli's in sympathetic pain. It may have seemed redundant from an external perspective, but Mano had three sets of two arms each, and each set of arms required the energy from one heart to operate it. With two hearts, Mano only had enough strength to operate four of her five arms, but still had six to operate, which really took the wind out of her.

But Soma had asked for Rakim's help to restart her heart by shocking Mano in his grove.

So Mano now faced Atlan with five arms, but with three hearts, which meant that she had more than enough strength to operate all five of them without reserve. Atlan was fast, and deceptively strong for his diminutive size, but he was finding out that he'd underestimated Mano's skill. He still repeatedly surprised her - on some level, she had to be impressed that he could hold his own against her at all, let alone that fact that he was giving her some serious trouble, considering the fact that she had three arms and two hearts going for her that he did not. But she'd trained with discipline, and with her determination, she stayed one step ahead of him.

"Is this all you've got, tyrant?"

He gritted his teeth, redoubling his efforts to break through her rapidly shifting defensive wall of arms, throwing his whole body into it. The room slowly filled with water around them as they fought, their kicks splashing some of the water at each other while it did, neither of them letting it take them off-guard enough to let down their guard because of it. Eventually, the whole room had become filled with water, all the way above their heads, their battle now underwater.

The question entered Mano's mind as to what she'd have to do with Atlan when she'd win. It wasn't an easy question. For the first time, Mano was coming to realize just how difficult to disentangle some of the ethical dilemmas that had been posed to people dealing with cults and early religions alike all over the world could have been. Should Mano have killed Atlan? But if she killed him, just as he had killed others, would it mean that she would turn Eli's legacy into a religion of violence herself after all, having proven that violence had been the best solution to the problem that Atlan had caused them, inspiring others to do the same in turn?

Yet if she didn't kill him, he who had already killed dozens of people without having had any compunctions about it whatsoever and who was overtly planning to kill half of everyone in the world, wasn't she clinging to her principles too strictly? Wouldn't that have meant sacrificing Atlan's potential victims on the altar of respecting her own beliefs, with her doing so on behalf of many people who did not share her beliefs themselves? Wouldn't have it been arrogant for her to risk all of his potential victims' lives to keep her conscience clear? Or was this just another lie that she'd have been telling herself as an excuse to avenge her girlfriend on a personal level?

Finally, Mano got an idea. She'd never done something like this herself, but there always had to be a first time for everything. She wasn't sure of whether it would work or not, or of what it would do even if it did work, but it would have to be better than nothing. If it didn't work, she would have to try something else, but Atlan was proving surprisingly resilient, his desperation driving him to riskier yet more devastating attacks the more he couldn't accept the eventuality that he could possibly lose to her. She had to try something. "Will you just DIE?" he screamed at her garbled by the water after having just missed her with yet another of his desperation moves.

So Mano stung Atlan with a syringe filled with the most massive dose of the empathy drug that she'd invented which had ever been absorbed by anyone and he collapsed, unconscious.