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The underside of a bridge, no light but the moon.

In the daytime, this was a popular spot for skaters and the like.

Night, the occasional gang shooting.

"You look a little young to be doing this."

"Money's money."

The lizard he'd been recommended to after his usual dealer got caught was a little young herself, just a bit too much makeup and flashy clothes for this part of town.

Narrowing her eyes, she handed him a bag of god knows what and he turned to walk off.

"Kid... How old are you?"

Turning around, the arrogance and almost naivety reflected onto her, but she didn't throw it back.

"What's it to you?"

"Question's question."

With some hesitation.

"17."

"Damn... Kids like you need to stay out of this life, let the rest of us burn."

"Why the fuck are you even here if you don't want to be?"

A slow grin settled on her face.

"Addiction isn't an on and off thing."

His head tilted, frowning. The hyena turned to walk away, shaking his head.

"No, kid, I bet you're just some wannabe thug. You're doing this to look good. Well you look like shit. And you're going to know real pain... Or maybe you won't live to see it."

Turning back, annoyance, anger, and a twitch of his muzzle flickered across his face.

"Just who the hell are you anyway? You talk to all of your customers like this? This why you're new in town?"

Footsteps from the shadows behind her, a ways down the bridge.

Riddick ripped his pistol from the back of his pants, locking sights on the figure who was still calmly strolling towards them.

"Put that gun down, you fucking moron. Don't tell me you'd cap your brother."

Recognizing the voice, his muzzle twitched again and the hyena put his handgun back in its place. Sure enough, as the pillars diverged for a moment, Roger came into full view for a second, then flickered back into the shadows.

The older hyena was on par with most wolves, his species' potential not as easily realized but he had been doing work on himself for years. The same steely gray eyes the rest of his family had, arms already painted with tattoos.

"Roger."

As the two came face to face, Riddick took in Roger's disappointed glare, not sure of how to feel himself.

Words began to formulate in his head and almost traveled to his lips but a quick backhand silenced him, a cry of pain emanating from the younger one.

Not giving Riddick even time to stagger, Roger turned on the dealer.

"Clarice! What the hell, I said you could sell here but to my fucking little brother?!"

The lizard rolled her eyes.

"What, you want me to take names for every hyena that comes down here?"

"That's exactly what I told you to do! Look out for..." Roger pointed to where Riddick stood but found him on one knee from his stagger, staring back. His finger corrected itself.

"Him! I showed you a picture and everything!"

"Just calm down. I haven't sold to him before, I remember these punk ass kids."

Roger turned back to his brother just as Riddick stood back up.

"And you... You're in a lot of fucking trouble."

"What? You gonna tell mom? If she gave a damn she'd have stopped you a long time ago."

As Roger moved closer Riddick flinched.

"That's because I never got caught, Roland."

"My name's"-

"I don't give a damn! I really don't! What the fuck were you going to do with that shit anyway?"

Pop it, obviously...

"Huh?"

He wasn't going to answer. Roger knew the answer, it was obvious.

The bigger hyena could have kept pressuring but let up, one hand on his forehead turned away from the other two.

A long silence followed, Clarice and Riddick glancing over to each other, one out of amusement and the other perhaps hinting at her to leave.

"Roger, you remember when I was 9? And you made me the lookout when you were holding up that gas station in the middle of nowhere?"

Roger's hand came back to his side, he straightened up and looked at the moon illuminating his front half, the other in perpetual darkness to Riddick's already adjusted eyes.

Clarice's lighter sparked, making Riddick flinch again as sudden orange light pierced his vision.

Whatever she was lighting was for damn sure not store bought, the shape a giveaway.

Seeing her face, she was, upon inspection, quite beautiful. Her scales were a pale color, eyes dark red.

As he realized she was absolutely surrounded by drugs Riddick realized just how disgusted he was.

"Yeah, I remember... When you came out you started crying, and James called you a pussy so I punched him in the nose."

Riddick spread his arms, the small bag he knew he'd probably ended up paying too much for clutched in one hand like a trophy.

"Look at me, Roger!"

"So you are doing this for looks."

"Shut up, Clarice." Roger's head slowly turned over to his brother.

After a brief stare, he walked back over.

Riddick's arms didn't lower, his face didn't even change. He was frozen, part of him expecting another physical abrasion but the other determined not to recoil again.

"You think I could be proud of you..."

Roger started to turn away again, though where he was going in the first was anyone's guess.

"That's all I ever wanted."

"Then take the fuckin'"-

With a hesitation and then sudden jerk of motion, Roger snatched the bag of molly out of his brother's hand and threw it out of sight.

"I paid 80"-

Roger shoved his brother hard enough to drive him to the ground, without his arms ready the only thing stopping Riddick's head from hitting the concrete hard was his instinct.

"You want to make me proud?! Go make something of yourself! Get the hell outta Perth! Get out of the ANZU! Earn money, start your own family, and leave everyone else behind!"

The younger brother's face was hidden by a pillar's shadow but it was clearly splayed with shock, anger, everything he'd been feeling about a minute or two ago.

But more intensely.

"Roger, I"-

"And quit being a fucking problem kid, alright? You used to get A's and dress nice and be fuckin' perfect, I left you alone and now, what the hell... Is it my fault?"

Riddick's shoes scuffed the concrete as he stood, elbow busted open.

"...I'm sorry."

"You're sorry you got caught, you punk ass bitch."

Spinning around, Roger bit one finger, almost in thought.

"Just tell me why. Why do you want to look good to me, eh? Is it because I'm not home enough? You wanna look hard when I come around? Fuck, you're gonna be 18 in a few months, you'll be out too."

The darkness hid Riddick's sudden cringe and then the shaky refrain, straightening himself up but not able to keep the tears from forming in his eyes.

Roger's ears perked up, almost a sixth sense.

"You got my attention, and now you're going to act like a pussy. Great. Fuckin' great. Clarice, I want to have a word with this kid."

Clarice gave a 'hmmph' and finished off her blunt, tossing it into a puddle nearby as she walked off.

If it could get any darker it did.

"I... I need you, Roger. It's not the same. Everyone's been giving me shit a-at school since you graduated, I... I have this problem and"-

"Christ, if anyone's bullying you solve it yourself. You're a fuckin' hyena, you can win most fights. Either that or remind them who I am."

"That's not it... You just ignored the important parts like you always do..."

A hand found its way to wipe the tears from Riddick's cheek but then upon realization jerked back to a fist at his side.

"I'm not having this conversation with you, Rid. If I find you down here again, I'm going to beat the shit out of you. Or buying anywhere, for that matter."

As he started to walk away, some overbearing feeling came over the younger brother and he realized if he didn't say anything now he might never have the opportunity to.

"I want to roll with the Smokes, that's all I want... Just give me that."

Roger's fists clenched and he stopped, his shoes making a bit of crumbled granite scratch under his foot.

"You want to roll with a small time that's not even doing well... You got fuckin problems. Pretty much all of them stem from you being a dumbass."

As he turned back around his face was passive, so much of a negative feeling that it took the piss out of everything.

"You don't need that. You're good with computers, you can code. You can make something out of yourself."

Roger pulled up his sleeve and showed the red cloud with a skeletal hand protruding on his shoulder, the fur nearly invisible from a craftsman's best work.

"I already sold my soul, and here you are asking me to let you do the same. And I say no. You can get out of here, I'm forever stuck in this hell."

"You taught me everything I know about computers, though..."

"And? You don't have this death mark on your shoulder. Now get home, you got a baby sister to watch out for. Don't ever let me catch you out here again."

As Roger walked away uninterrupted this time, Riddick watched him, then headed his own direction.

///

Riddick

G201 House, Norway

November 26th, 0700 hours

He jerked awake mid snore, the wet of his drool coming down the side of his muzzle.

For a moment he held his breath, knowing the slightest intake would send him careening down that road he, for whatever reason, sent himself on every night.

But just thinking about it brought on the headache.

Giving a growl of frustration as the hangover hit him, he grabbed one of the bottles from beside his nightstand and threw it at the wall, watching it shatter.

Light glanced off the shards midair from the window's angle and stabbed his eyes, making it flare up.

He got up quickly and carefully, avoiding the broken glass as he dragged himself to the bathroom.

There was no point in doing that, now he just had a mess to clean up... He had to work on these things at some point. He had to stop.

Routinely, he threw up for a minute and made sure nothing else was going to happen.

Rubbing his eyes as most of the pain left him, his head still hurt.

Riddick's body was practically trained to evaporate his hangovers at this point, he'd been having them for so long.

Running water from the sink, he shamelessly bent down and gulped it straight from the tap to clear the taste of his insides out of his mouth.

The small bathroom window with less opaque white blinds gave just enough light to put some sort of either pleasant or abandoned mood in you.

He looked in the mirror, water dripping from his muzzle.

"Roger was right. You're a jackass."

Shamefully he stared himself in the eyes as his hand traced up the vicious burn wound bulging from the flesh of his chest, the many scars adjoining it as well.

The biggest reason he never took off his shirt in the weight room.

An even bigger reason, he turned around to see the various tattoos all on his back.

"You're damn right."

A fiber of him wondered why he'd done what he did, the other parts knew but didn't have the goodwill to answer.

///

"You're awful quiet this morning."

Riddick didn't respond, his head propped up in his hands.

Sometimes he wished he was other people. He'd stare at them for a good while and some part of him actually believed he'd just turn to them.

He didn't dare look at Tai.

"Tired?"

"A little, I'm just surprised you're up out of extreme."

"What, 4 to 1?"

"Yeah..."

They didn't say anything else for a long time, Riddick realized Tai had been rummaging in the freezer for a good five minutes.

"You need any help?"

"Actually, I just found it. I made breakfast."

Shit...

Tai set what had once been bread and was now char in front of Riddick, and then sat down with his across the table.

"Toast."

"You put it in the freezer?"

"I didn't know how early you would get up, so I slept down here and put them in there to keep them cold."

Looking back up from the black thing on his tablemat, not even a plate, Tai was smiling broadly as he took a bite from his toast.

"Usually they're warm..."

"A-Ah, I see... I just read about it online, I wasn't sure... I could go outside and start a fire"-

"No, it's fine. They're good this way too."

Riddick tasted more ice than char as he nonchalantly bit into his 'toast'.

"So, did you look at a recipe?"

Not that one was really needed for toast...

"Well, after I typed in toast I couldn't figure out how to get the pointer onto the words."

"Scroll it."

"I picked it up and touched the screen with it..."

It appeared Tai was struggling to get a bite from his toast.

"I think I might have made it wrong..."

You don't say?

"It's a good effort. I don't think it's that bad."

"I have a bit that isn't black on mine, and it's not chewy... Might need some ketchup"-

"It's fine!"

The sudden exclamation made Tai pause and slowly sit back down, chewing on his toast.

"I quite like it, thank you."

"You ate fast."

A portion of it was in his pajamas' pocket.

"Yeah, but uh... Let me do breakfast next time, alright? I hate to see you, uh, slave away."

"It was nothing, I was having trouble sleeping anyways."

"Were you?"

Riddick watched Tai's smile quiver so fast he could barely notice it, but it went to a frown and back in that split second.

Other than that none of Tai moved.

Nothing was moving, it was as if the very dust particles dancing in the sunlight of the window had stopped in place and Riddick's eyes panicked, he wasn't able to move at all...

His hand quivered, it was all he could do.

Tai was still in place, his smile quivering...

What was happening? Had his body fallen asleep? He couldn't speak...

But the dust was still.

Tai.

He was doing this. Somehow, Riddick knew this moment was all him.

As their eyes met everything stopped, Riddick breathed again.

Tai wasn't attempting to smile, just staring at him.

I should have been more concerned...

Tai stood abruptly and his chair fell, he made through the hallway and was almost to the front door when the hyena was there, grabbing him by his shoulders and spinning him to face, eyes drilling the cat.

"Get away from me..."

Riddick had no idea why he was keeping Tai here, why he was holding him but he wasn't leaving him.

He watched in horror as Tai's eyes started to gloss over and his feline slit pupils disappeared, the whole of his portals turning a crimson red.

If possible, his fur was paler.

"I asked you nicely, peasant."

The house quaked and Riddick's eyes widened.

The strange sense of fear instilled in ANZU came back and he mentally pounced on it, thrashing with it until it was throttling him and he it.

"I'm going to kill you now. Do you understand?"

Before the sentence was out Riddick had a pistol he'd almost forgot he kept on him against Tai's chin, just another person to blow through...

"Do it. See what your bullets do to a god."

"TAI!"

As if screaming his name would do anything...

Riddick felt motion against his gun's barrel and realized Tai was breathing, he hadn't been a moment ago.

The hyena and the cat locked eyes, clashing mentally, at first Riddick was overwhelmed but relief washed over him as he felt Tai retreat.

Tai's face turned from the smug, razor grin, collapsed to anguish.

The two stared at each other for what seemed like forever, Riddick's own intensity vanishing.

But he wouldn't remove the gun, no matter wha-

Tai winced once and then threw himself around Riddick, the hyena staring at the door with his gun idle.

He felt the tremors of the cat's sobs.

"I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to do that..."

Tai's voice became almost childlike, and his accent was abandoned as he was muffled against Riddick's shoulder.

The hyena gave no response, his arms slowly coming around Tai.

The cat was still sobbing through apologies, Riddick coming to the fringe of his senses again and bringing one hand to the back of Tai's head, pressing him against himself.

Riddick's gun hand was still shaking.

He had to kill this- this freak, whatever he was, whatever he'd done, it was ungodly and it needed to die.

His gun started making sounds with every quiver and Riddick forced it to steel as he brought it closer and closer to Tai's head...

Who the hell was this kid crying in his shoulder...

Who the hell was Tai?

"I-I killed him, they made me!"

Tai was beginning to ramble, Riddick shaking more violently than the cat now.

"They put a gun to my head and said if I didn't they'd cut my leg off and eat it instead, so I..."

He started sobbing again and Riddick pulled him closer, tears beginning to form in his own eyes as he begged forgiveness from the god he didn't believe in.

"I took the brick and I s-stared smashing his head with it... Until the brains started coming out and then... They m-made me take a knife a-and..."

Tai gulped, Riddick was screaming on the inside to just end him already but he waited for someone else to do it, so desperately clinging to his innocence...

"I cut off his arm and they m-made me... they made me..."

"Tai..."

Riddick pulled him close, biting his lip to keep himself from breaking.

He couldn't kill Tai.

He couldn't kill anymore, he wasn't supposed to be here in GSS. This was a mistake, he should have denied. He should have gone back home...

And Tai was here, in his arms.

A fist connected with Riddick's jaw, sending it snapping back with surprising force.

Surely, he thought as his legs were swept from under him...

Surely Tai wasn't doing this.

He felt the gun pried from his hands as he crashed into the coffee table shattering the glass, and then the chrome he'd taken from Roger's corpse was on him for the first time.

He didn't panic.

Roland White watched Tai's face change with the realization of power.

As the cat turned the gun on himself Riddick prowled and lunged at him, a loud crack and two bodies hitting the wooden floor, shortly after a gun.

///

Tai

Void

"Congratulations, you've officially made a vision in your head programmed to train you think you're a complete idiot. Good job, Tai."

If I wasn't already out I would have taken my time getting up, feeling bad even in my head.

"Ariya, I... I think I did something really bad..."

"You don't say?"

I'd pissed off a mirage.

It didn't take long to realize everything was different.

There wasn't an endless white abyss but instead... It was like nighttime. Pitch black.

Some sort of odd lantern illuminated us, we were right next to a wall of some sorts.

Fuck, I could be less interested...

"First you deny my training for, what, a month? Then you get yourself fucking killed, then you send a tremor throughout North Europe."

"I- wait, that last part?"

Not letting up her angry glare, Ariya waved a hand and some sort of news feed appeared in midair, Vervous was apparently the centerpoint of a small quake.

And apparently it was my fault.

"So... You can just, pull up broadcasts?"

"I just reached out and cut on the TV, that's you through me. You want to know what else is going on out there? A certain hyena with a bullet in his stomach."

My hands came to my face, shaking.

"I... I"-

"WHAT THE HELL, TAI?!"

"I... It's fuzzy, I can't remember..."

"If the GRA doesn't euthanize you, they're going to kick you from G201, erase all your records, and probably send all your teammates home too. Good fucking job."

"I d-didn't want for any of this to"-

"This is your fault, there's no getting out of that. Maybe you do need some help, because I'm your consciousness. And I can see every bit of you. And I can tell with you, Tai, that you're putting on a show for everyone who thinks you"-

"IT'S NOT MY FAULT!"

The dimension quaked and Ariya leaked off a bit of that black mist from the first time she'd gotten killed, wincing and clutching her shoulder.

We stared at each other.

"It's nice to know even my own head isn't a bastion."

I couldn't think of anything biting to say.

I'd never been so filled with rage, I had no clue where this was coming from...

No, she was right. I tried to kill Riddick.

I didn't mean to shoot him, I meant to...

...

"Tai, you can run away from me your whole life. Which can be a year to a few minutes, fuck if I can tell. But let me, right now, teach you one thing. One single ability."

I brought my head from my hands, having retreated after that brief exchange.

"Unless it can somehow fix everything I've just done, I don't care."

Ariya's face slowly stretched into a grin.

///

"Try harder. You've done it before."

"Yeah, when someone was about to die."

"I just thought- it didn't trigger when you took the bullet in Thailand."

"...Maybe it only happens to people I love."

I didn't mean that, as much as Reyna and I had an ever-deteriorating relationship. Or the last time we'd seriously talked I'd yelled at her.

"I've been here forever... What time is it out here...?"

"Long enough for Riddick's corpse to run cold."

I looked up, hopeless abandon.

"Why would you say something like that?!"

She leaned down.

Something about her had changed; I looked for it now that she was closer.

I couldn't tell her for a fox anymore; if she was unnaturally wolflike before she'd gotten taller, darker furred, more brown than black and the eyes...

They weren't the same color even, they were green.

No clue how I hadn't picked up on that, I was just too distracted.

"Your last run-in with Ariya affected your perception of her quite a lot. So I've changed. To make myself less cruel I stopped taking after her and taking after you."

"But I'm not so"-

"Pity. You don't even know yourself."

We locked eyes again, and it happened so frequently and intensely it had to have meaning to her as well.

"...Riddick..."

"He's dead, Tai. Another reason you need to get this done. Fast."

My breathing and my heart picked up, my stomach went down.

A death toll of around 10 now and one of them was...

I banished the thought from my head.

I'm good at locking away my sins.

I was sitting against the wall, making myself comfortable.

Reversing time... At will.

Then again, she told me it could just as well have been visions of the future. Time stopped, kept going for me, and then went back.

Everything was so complex and construed, it was navigating a labyrinth...

"Maybe you need some incentive."

I could have sworn I was onto something, why did she break my concentration-

Heavy footsteps.

The ground was shaking, I saw the visors.

A sea.

A sea of BMF's.

There's no exaggeration, I couldn't make this shit up.

They raised their railguns, I watched the plasma charge up and light up the barrel...

I felt myself evaporate, my screams drowned-

///

Tai

G201 House, Norway

November 26th, 0530 hours

I shot up in bed, then threw the covers off and stood up.

...

Incentive enough.

I went for the door, then saw the time.

It wasn't too off for me, but no one else would be up and there was nothing to do.

In addition to that I'd gained some sort of childlike fear of being alone, when I used to love being completely isolated.

But with all that had been happening...

Suddenly it came back to me, the purpose of doing it.

Riddick.

Without another thought I threw open my door and ran to the catwalk's railing, looking down at the main room.

No bodies.

I'd pushed Riddick into the coffee table, he cracked the glass but didn't break it.

Already somewhat elevated, it was how he was able to get to me.

Straining my eyes to see, no signs of strain or breakage on the table. But it was dark, and I was far away.

My hand had been subconsciously crawling around my muzzle and my fingers were in it now, biting at them nervously...

I wasn't satisfied.

Turning around, he could be pissed at me all he wanted, I was going to barge in his room at 5 A.M.

Trying the door, it was locked.

I gave a moan as some strange feeling traveled up my body.

A click in the door.

I tried it again, it swung open.

Snoring.

That wasn't good enough, I needed to see him.

Some part of me told myself I was only really worried because I wanted to cover my fuckup.

The part of me I didn't know.

As I moved through the mess of clothes I ran a hand up the bed and met with his shoulder.

Felt the rise and fall, steady.

My fingertips brushed his neck and I stared down at his sleeping form.

Those three angry veins were still there.

Staring at him, I idly traced them to an almost sticky patch of fur.

Looking down, my finger was grazing a burn wound.

Jerking my hand back, Riddick groaned and rolled onto his side, facing me.

He opened his eyes drearily and then they snapped full. He looked up at me and I half expected him to start beating me up or something... I mean, that was our last altercation...

Tense, I stared back.

"Dare I ask?" His voice was scratchy with early morning fatigue.

Think of something.

"I'm sorry."

"...For what?"

"...I meant, I came in to check on you. You were uh... Making noise in your sleep."

He looked away and his cheeks turned red, a sly smile creeping up his face before he shut it off.

"Screaming about Roger."

He frowned.

Riddick stared up at the ceiling, distraught.

I didn't know why I said that, my brain didn't even process it. My mouth just moved.

Roger. I could have sworn I'd forgotten his brother's name...

"One moment." He got up, opened and closed the bathroom door. Retching sounds, I winced and turned away from the door.

There were an assortment of bottles, not all of them holding liquid... In fact, those that were purposed for drink were empty.

And there were quite a few of them.

Looking at the smaller orange ones I realized I'd forgotten to start taking my own pills again.

When I initially checked my duffel bag it was completely empty, not even my clothes were in there. I wasn't sure why it had been cleaned out but I had nothing.

What freaked me out a little was the slit in the inside of the aviator jacket, a makeshift inside pocket.

With my pills in it.

Someone had been watching out for me, maybe Lynx but I'd find out later she was busy at the time.

Riddick opened the door and stepped back out, grabbing a shirt and pulling it on.

I gave a hesitant motion towards the bottles and he grumbled something, ignoring it.

"You up for breakfast?"

"...It's pretty early."

"I'll just make toast, probably go back to sleep afterwards..."

The hyena gave no more indication I was there, walking towards his door.

"Toast..." He wrinkled his muzzle, I could barely see against the lights of electronics.

"Like I said, it's early, but... If you're up for it there's plenty of 24 hours in Vervous."

"Sure..."

As if he'd forgot the proposition he'd just made...

Toast.

He gave me a smile and grabbed a jacket from his nightstand.

As I moved towards the door Riddick caught my shoulder and held it firmly.

I looked back.

Did he... Somehow remember?

"I thought I locked my door...?"

I bit my lip.

"No, it was unlocked when I opened it."

Well, I supposed that was truth.

He shrugged and I left to go get dressed. I still didn't feel relief, and I felt like I was never going to feel it. From the time he mentioned about lack of sleep to the time I had the gun I remembered nothing.

But punching him, taking the gun, that was my doing.

Logically I felt it on my head and assumed I was being attacked... For someone that has no recollection of the past minute or so that panicked me.

Everything that happened afterwards I couldn't explain.

But I was in control for that.

///

"So happy you decided to come back."

"Can we just... Make an agreement right now, no BMF's?"

Ariya gave a grin.

"Alright, no BMF's."

Looking around, we were in the void again. The white void, nothing that was there last time, that wall and the night were gone.

"About those, that thing I said was out there? While you were busy shutting me out I found it."

I gave a nod. "Can I see it, then?"

I heard a creaking sound behind me and looked back. Ariya was now standing less than a foot away, in the doorframe of a...

A doorframe. No door.

"Coming?"

Scratching the back of my neck, maybe I just needed to get used to this shit...

Stepping through, we were back in that place. But it was daytime.

"I honestly can't explain why everything turned black earlier, unless you unconsciously made it that way. Considering what was going on I wouldn't put it out of question."

The lamp was gone, it was just some sort of dark blue marble wall.

Looking up, I couldn't see the top...

"It continues infinitely in both directions. About 20 kilos high. Not hollow. And it's not a wall either, it's a square."

"...A defined shape that continues forever?" She looked impressed for a moment. I realized we were speaking Euro Common, not Arabic. For whatever reason I didn't feel I had some sort of vocabulary crutch. In fact, I felt pretty well learned.

"In here, things don't have to make sense. But this wall- cube, sorry, has something in it."

"You said it wasn't hollow."

"No, I mean..." Ariya 2.0 picked up a rock, I realized it came from the cube as there was a chip out of it next to her the right size.

She extended it to me.

I reached out my arm but she snatched it back.

"What you're about to see is going to lose you sleep for a few days. This isn't the memory that made you go AWOL at breakfast. This is a replay of it."

We stared each other in the eyes again.

I began to think of Ariya 2.0 as less of Ariya and more of Tai. After all, she'd said so herself.

Taking it, my body tensed and my head started filling with water, icy cold.

They put a gun to my head, they were drunk.

It was me or him.

The man was gagged, his hands bound.

Some part of me expected to be younger but I couldn't have been but 17.

The brick, his head. They made me.

Gave me the knife, told me I looked hungry.

Taunted me for a while...

With a gun to my head, I gave in.

Yeah, I was hungry. I managed a few scraps a week.

And I...

Snapping out of it, the piece of rock crumbled in my hand, the reside blowing away in some wind I couldn't feel.

"Breathe."

I did, and it was damn heavy.

Ariya gave me a minute, letting me process it all. After some time I looked back up, our eyes met.

Gold on... Green.

I couldn't get used to that.

"This whole structure is repressed memories, Tai."

I sank down against the wall, leaning even too much for me. She crouched down beside me, and I realized just how much she had changed.

Ratty clothes, mostly black or dark gray.

She was wearing a hood, underneath her hair was identical to the real Ariya's. A bit longer, some sort of green streak now that I looked closer... But what was most unnerving, may I reiterate, was her eyes.

Venomous. The same feline slit-pupil as when I looked in a mirror, regardless of her canine structure.

Whenever I saw my own eyes I just saw eyes. And nothing else.

She was right, I didn't know myself at all.

"You're 19 years old. Officially, on your age I can't tell any more than you can. But you're 19. And that's a helluva lot of repressed memories for a 19 year old."

Ariya moved to in front of me, crouching down.

"You don't trust yourself. That's me not trusting you. I want you to tell me about everything before you were 17... It's fuzzy, isn't it?"

I felt something wet slide down my face.

I could cry, even here.

"I always thought a cannibal was the worst thing you could be."

I watched the grin form on her face. I missed the old Ariya, she might not have been real but she was to me. I could call her a friend, she wouldn't be so...

"Far from it."

I stood up after another minute and my fingers tapped on the cube, the other hand occupied drying my eyes.

I thought I saw her eyes get a little teary but she hid it well, her face darkened under that hood.

"I'm surprised we didn't find this sooner for how big it was..."

"There are several other structures out there, actually. I've been working on getting to them."

I raised an eyebrow, curious.

"About these structures... Where do they come from?"

Ariya looked around a bit, a doorway appeared behind her again.

"Sometimes you unconsciously install them... Sometimes someone does it for you... I mean, Lucian had Germany and the surrounding countries in his..."

I eyed the doorway. "We doing anything else? I'm still waiting on Riddick."

She ran her tongue over her teeth, bulging through her muzzle. "If it's ok with you, I'd like to run through some of the basics she didn't get around to last time."

"...You mean you didn't get around to."

"...Yeah."

It hurt a little bit. I stepped through the doorway, half expecting to find some other magnificent and terrible structure but we were back in an expanse.

I kept a hand on the doorframe just to see if it would still go and it dissolved in my palm.

"Now, everyone you've talked to about Janus was right in some way. I can categorize them into 3 pools. Ariya tried to cover the utilities, the ones you can do at will."

I didn't correct her this time, hoping she wouldn't make a habit out of this.

"James Harper, in your meeting, had you shatter that cube with your anger. There's certainly a rage aspect driven by emotion. Try to stay out of that one, you went there in the alternate timeline."

Alternate... What?

I wouldn't have understood it unless I was here, I supposed she meant this... Last... That morning. Speaking on rage I did hear a bit about friendly fire, I think...

"And Marshall said there were some things you just couldn't prepare for. Spontaneous things. Slowing down time, seeing the future or- well, I suppose we know it's traveling back at this point. Your insurance should your own reaction not be enough."

I felt the place quake.

She sighed. "Another time, then."

///

"And I just thought this sleep thing was done for." Riddick had his hand on my shoulder, having shaken me to wake me up.

Shit, if I could get any sleep tonight I would be lucky...

"I had trouble"- I stopped myself, remembering these were the exact words that triggered my rage earlier. Earlier? That never happened, I had to remind myself.

I'd crashed on the main room's couch and as I got up almost staggered into the coffee table.

Something caught my eye, and I squinted to see it, then bent down.

A crack. I didn't think it had been there before, it was too large not to notice. Spanned from the outside edge to the right, towards the couch I was on.

"Coming?" Riddick waited at the door, zipping his jacket up.

"...Sorry, just got lost for a moment."

In one of Jake's moves, he ruffled the fur between my ears. Reached up a bit since we were practically the same height.

We left, I hoped we left other things behind too.

///

Next up will be the side story im writing for kythl moonpaw's OC

ALSO if you saw an update to the bios that's all it was, I made a mistake and then fixed some of the question mark bugs

Tai does have some pretty serious mental issues, you might not want to trust everything that's from his pov...

Anyways rip old Ariya

Never toast again

Peace,

djynn