//------------------------------// // Chapter 1: Just an ordinary day... (REWRITTEN) // Story: What I am // by Ponynator //------------------------------// Chapter 1: Just an ordinary day... I am just a normal teenager... I thought. I am just living a normal live... I thought. I am nothing special... I thought. But all of this wasn't true and all the time my friends, my family and even I weren't aware of it. You may ask now what I mean with this, well... it all started out as an ordinary day... <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> "Okay, you know what? Fuck this shit! I am going psycho!!" I yelled into my microphone. "I hope that the new skill I got for Krieg is as awesome as it sounds in the description..." My friends and I were currently playing Borderlands 2; sure the game was over a year old now and we had already finished it, but this game truly never gets old. The jokes and lines of the characters were still hilarious and Handsome Jack was still an ass... Adding the fact that I was currently playing as the newest character, a "good" psycho called Krieg, and that we were all playing different characters then we did the first time, we still had lots of fun. "Ryu, shoot at me until I have less than a third of my health points!" I said to him via Teamspeak. "Why?" he asked. "You will see," I replied while chuckling. "Okay, give me second." Ryu, well, what can I tell you about him? The best I could describe him would be: 'An evil sadistic troll'... But that wouldn't suffice, would it? So, Ryu is one of my best friends; sure, we argued a few times... okay, we argued many times, but he's still my friend! I couldn't really blame him for it - he is he and he cannot change himself. Having started working a few months ago isn't helping it at all; he may earn money now, but being forced to do everything his boss says isn't his life-style... So he sometimes boils over... "WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT!?! Why am I lying on the ground?!" Ryu yelled after being shot down by a stray bullet. Okay, he boils over many times. But it's still better than his other side, the one that makes him "an evil sadistic troll"; believe me... I immediately rushed over to him and helped his character up. "Okay, just shoot me and I am going to..." I was cut off by an RPG being deployed in my face. "What the hell Ryu? I only said 'shoot me down to a third of my HP' and not 'KILL ME!!!'." "That wasn't me! I swear!" he replied. "You said 'shoot at me until I have less than a third of my health points'; well, you have less than a third of your HP now", Micha piped up while laughing silently. "First of all, CUT THIS CRAP MICHA! Second, I also said 'Ryu' and not 'Micha'," I replied, the anger not so hidden in my voice. He immediately stopped laughing at this. "Crap", he said barely audible. "Touchê." Micha: Customs officer, formal joke maker and our supposed-to-be leader. Supposed-to-be cause I don't listen to him and because I don't understand why he should be leading at all; he may be a customs officer, but he's not my boss... He's a polite guy who helps where he can - if he can - and wants nothing in return; he even helped me write my application for an apprenticeship for an example, which took more than two hours. He can also be extremely polite; polite enough so that he could say 'fuck you' into your face and you would say 'thank you' without even noticing that he just insulted you. After Ryu had finally helped me up again I immediately used Krieg's action skill, - "Let me kill them, I-..." - which brought some strange results, - "Oh shit..." - my character's fingers bent outward and his bones began to crack, which was accompanied by his voice getting darker. When he was finished, he took the buzz-axe out and I began to storm at the enemies which were annoying us the entire time. "...Did he just turn into a Badass Pyscho?" Cell asked unsurely, his mouth probably open a few centimeters. My answer was a buzz-axe flying at the enemy beside him. "Okay, he did." With that he went back to fighting. Cell... there isn't much to say about him, he's pretty much an average guy... Okay, that's not really true; first of all, Cell is someone I trust totally (and that is saying something, because I am not one of those 'I trust everyone like my family' guys, I am pretty suspicious to be honest). Of all of these guys I have known him for the longest time; it all started with playing Team Fortress 2 with him and well, after a few years we were friends (it was pretty much the same with the rest). "Hello, I want to introduce you to MR. BUZZ-AXE!!" I yelled and ripped a nomad apart who was trying to protect himself with a shield - which didn't work... "If I ever see you with an axe in your hands... I will run away and scream..." Ryu commented. "Like a girl?" I asked. "Yeah, like a-... shut up Yan!" he snapped, making everyone laugh. In case you didn't know... I am 'Yan' ¬— — — — A few hours later... We had stopped playing Borderlands 2 a few hours ago, finishing a few story missions and tons of side quests; Cell always insisted on doing all of the side quests before doing the main quests - I kind of understood him, but sometimes he just overdid it... "Yan, stone," he said. "MORE?! I already mined 12 fucking stacks of 1000 blocks!" I nearly yelled. "A stack has 999 blocks here." "That's not important!" "You need to be precise," he replied smugly. "I-... UGH!! Can't we just build a simple wall, defeat the Wall Of Flesh and THEN make the wall fancy?" I asked him furiously. "Nope," was his only response, mine was grumbling. We were playing Terraria now, which had received a gigantic update a few days ago and as you can see, Cell was being overly enthusiastic about saving the biomes before we enter the 'hardmode' of the game. "Wait a second, stop!" he suddenly said. "What!? I am already at the stone level!" "Look at the clock." I gave a quick glance at my watch. "It's 8'o clock," I simply said, shortly before doing a spit take - if I had drank anything. "Oh shit, it's 8'o clock, the bus is here in 5 minutes!" "Correcto mundo," Ryu added, who was still in Teamspeak the entire time. "Why didn't you tell me?!" "I thought you would see it," he simply replied. "Same goes for the fans of your Fimfiction story..." Ryu was also my pre-reader for my story dedicated to the My Little Pony cartoon. We were all bronies by the way, so luckily no hater in my little circle of friends. "Argh shit, now I am in a hurry! I need to gather my things, see ya later!" "Don't forget about the camera! I want to see it!", Micha said quickly before I shut my computer off. I quickly put my cell phone into my jeans pocket, grabbed my bag and put my jacket and my shoes on. "Yan, weren't you supposed to be on your way already?" my mom asked. "Yes, I forgot to look at the clock and I am in a hurry, so I gotta go, bye!" I said quickly, opening the door and closing it behind me before my mother could even say goodbye. I ran downstairs into the basement and headed to our cellar compartment, I unlocked and opened the door, turned the light on and quickly gathered what I needed: A self-made circuit board for a Tesla Coil. I was doing a little project for my physics course at school to improve my grades and Cell was helping me with it. The last circuit-board was officially KIA after overloading it, luckily my father was a electrician and we were able to build a new and better one. Cell, who was working as a mechanic, was able to get a few old ignition coils and scrap metal. It took us weeks before the first prototype was finished and the result was a meter tall Tesla Coil. Which only produced 1cm long sparks... So I decided to increase the input voltage; the result was a smoke fountain coupled with a fire alarm piercing through our eardrums. Hopefully this one holds off more... I thought and put the board into my bag. With that I turned the light off again and went out of the cellar, closing the door behind me and locking it again. Looking at my phone I noticed that it was already two minutes after eight. Shit, only three more minutes until the last bus. I really hope that the driver isn't too early.. Sadly many buses weren't driving that late in my city, the bus I needed to get was one of them. For some reason it was only driving from 8 AM to 8 PM every hour. I was running like crazy to reach the bus station in time, luckily it was only half a kilometer away - so after roughly a minute sprinting I was already there. Only 10 seconds later the bus stopped at the station. The driver opened the doors and I stepped in, showing him my ticket. The moment I took a seat, the bus immediately drove off, slamming me into the seat. Ugh, why does every bus driver keep on doing that? I better check if the circuit board is still in one piece... With that I opened my bag and sighed in relief, seeing that that my slightly fragile freight was still in one piece. Satisfied I closed the bag again and took my phone out, writing a message to Cell that I was able to catch the bus. Not a minute later he already responded: 'Good; while you are on your way, take a look at what Micha just posted.' Under his message was a link to a news-site, with an article named 'Mutated horses in Germany' "What the fuck?" I mumbled and curiously opened the link, waiting for my phone to build up the page. Mutated horses in Germany... Is the media on drugs lately? I thought to myself. After a good ten seconds the page was finally loaded and I began reading; the article was about multiple reports of a strange animal sighting, all people described it as a dark-blue colored horse with a flowing mane and tail. Suuure, as if Luna would be running through our world... The police stated that the whole incident was just a prank, they also stated that they were going to press charges against everyone involved for creating mass panic. Wow, a little hard for a prank; it's not like anyone is gonna believe it and panic... With the article read I decided to listen to some music, luckily I always kept my earphones with me when I was out of the house. I started the track and leaned back in the seat for the one hour drive. — — — — An uneventful bus ride later... I was standing in front of Cell's house. My hand was already moving to the bell, but before it made contact the door swung open, Cell standing in the doorframe with an Air Soft gun in his hand and a Payday 2 Dallas mask covering his face. "Are you serious?" I said after a ridiculously long pause. With that he closed the door again and reopened it just a second later, the mask and gun gone. "Sorry, Dallas is here for a visit." I looked at him with no emotions on my face, his showing hints of nearly bursting into full blown laughter; so I just stepped inside his house and walked past him, spotting the reason for his behaviour. "You really love beer, don't you?" "Hey it only were three bottles!", he responded, closing the door behind him. "So, do you have the new circuit board?" I opened my bag and grabbed said object. "Of course!" "Yeah, drunk science!" he yelled, giving me a thumbs up and began running down into the cellar, me following after him. As he turned the light on, I could see the object we spent hours of work on. "I already repaired the cables and added the connector plugs, you only need to hook up the circuit board now and we are ready for another test." "Great," I said and walked over to the machine, carefully plugging in the correct cords, so I didn't mess up again our entire work; meanwhile Cell put up the camera. "Uhm Yan?" Cell piped up. "Yeah?" "How are you going to get home now, with the bus not driving so late?" I stopped dead in track, my hands not moving a bit anymore, realising how stupid it was of me to take the last bus. "Let me guess, you didn't even thought about it, did you?" "Nope," was my response, his was sarcastic applause. "Uhh, overnight stay?" "Mh, why not? You are lucky that I have a sleeping bag." "Thanks, I will just call my parents, not that they think that I am lost or worse: abducted," I said and grabbed my phone, dialing the number of my parents. My all-time worrying mother answered the phone after only ten seconds: "Yan, is something wrong, why did you call me?" "I just wanted to tell you that I won't be home this night, cause I will stay overnight at Cell." "Uh huh, will Cell drive you home tomorrow?" she asked. "Uh, why should he? I can go home by bus." "There's a bus strike tomorrow... the one you were talking about yesterday..." I heard Cell snickering at this. Oh c'mon... how did he hear that? "Uhm, Cell can you drive me home tomorrow?", I asked slightly embarrassed. "Of course Mr. Alzheimer!" he happily replied. "You heard him. See you tomorrow then, bye." "Bye!" my mother said and ended the call. "Yan, you would forget your head if it wasn't attached to your body...," my friend commented. "Hahaha, that line is older than you... Let's get back to work," I told him and concentrated on the Tesla Coil again. "So, just one last plug and we are ready to go," I exclaimed and grabbed the last plug, which was the one for the array of capacitors we used to generate the high-voltage input. "Be careful Yan, I don't know if-" With these words I was greeted by a world of flashing white and pain... So much pain... I don't know how long I was knocked out or what exactly happened - my head hurt and I found myself lying on the ground. I tried to open my eyes but the only thing I saw was the bright light coming from the lamp at the ceiling, so I shut them again. I tried to look again and could see a silhouette; I blinked a few times and saw that it was my friend. I tried to stand up but fell down again. Now I could see that he was pointing something at me: It was a knife. "C-cell... w-w-what the... h-hell?" I stuttered, the pain in my head wasn't that strong anymore, I just felt extremely dizzy. "S-shut up!" He yelled at me; I could see that he was nearly panicking; at this point I had no idea what really had happened and was beyond confused. "W-where's my friend?" He yelled again, pointing the knife at me with a shivering hand. "What have you done to him?" "Cell, what the hell is wrong with you? I am your friend!" I was nearly panicking too; after all, one of my best friends was pointing a knife at me, nearly poking into my throat and saying things that made no sense to me. "You aren't my friend! Y-you aren't real!" Thinking that this was some kind of bad joke I yelled back. "Cell, this is NOT funny! I could be dead! And what by the name of all good things do you mean with 'you aren't real'?" "Stop that! Stop talking like him! Stop acting like him!" I saw that I was getting nowhere with this, so I pleaded to him. "Cell, please tell me what's wrong." "YOU ARE WRONG!" He never yelled at me like this before, even when I accidently destroyed his old laptop by dropping coffee on it... "Cell, what is wrong with me?" I tried to stay calm, I feared that my face or my whole body was burned or something like that and that he didn't recognize me. "Look at yourself!" I looked down, trying see a hand... But what I saw was black... It wasn't even a hand... It had holes in it and was solid... "No..." I said to myself. I looked at my side... My shirt was ripped open at the back... Out of it were protruding two insect-like wings... "No, no..." I touched my forehead... What I felt was a cranky horn... I felt at my chin... There were two small pointy things coming out of my mouth... "Nonono...." The realization struck me like the bolt before and I knew what I was... Screaming was the only thing I could imagine at this point, trying to wake up from the nightmare... Just that it wasn't a nightmare... "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!" End of chapter 1