Prolog: Displaced
Prolog: Displaced
(\PoV: 3rd person/)
It was a cold October day. One could argue that October is a cold month, but doubly so was this for it was an October in Minnesota, and the snows had come early. Going more specific in time, it was Halloween. As for the place, it was a small group of small houses at the end of a road that connected to a well-traveled biking trail on which no motorized vehicles could travel, save snowmobiles in the winter.
The small neighborhood was alive with little children running about in costumes, (though more often than not they were dressed in many layers of thick coats, sweaters, scarves, hats, mittens or gloves, and snow pants.) And so we go to one of the houses off to the side of the road, (which ends at the very small, but winding footpath up to the Trail,) which looks very plain, nondescript, and otherwise unimportant. But, it is nonetheless the place where our tale begins…
A small group of children, no more than three or four in number and seven or eight in their years, walked excitedly up the short staircase to the door of the house, where there waited a large bowl of candy on the railing of the small wooden platform connecting the stairs to the house. The bowl had been left out the previous night and had frozen to its stand before being filled with all manner of sugary confections. The small group, which consisted of an astronaut, a ghost, a pirate, and an eskimo went immediately for the bowl! Greedily, they grabbed large handfuls, unaware of the sign beneath which read: “Take One, or Face Death!” The sign, of course, was just a jest, just as many such things on this Materialistic Holiday were.
However, the children in their haste did not notice the large shadow showing through the inner door’s curtains, (for this house had, as the others did, a first door which was glass and an inner wooden door with a large window in its upper half, covered on the inside with drapes of a decidedly Victorian fashion, with various spring flowers blossoming or in-bloom.) Nor did they notice as the wooden door opened to the inside slowly and a dark, clawed hand reached for the handle that opened the glass door. As the outer door opened slowly, ominously, one of the children noticed the movement, the small, gaunt pirate looking from his swollen grocery bag to the large, frightening figure slowly emerging from the shadowed doorway.
As the creature slowly began moving outward, one could see its details more clearly. Its black skin was scaly and rough with thin red lines, yet possessed a reptilian slimy-smoothness and sheen. Its hands held five gnarled fingers, the first four with eight-to-six-inch claws that looked sharp enough to cleanly cut anything that ran along them, the fifth seemed to be some sort of thumb with a two-inch hooked claw. Its chest was large and its ribcage jutted out, making the upper half seem thicker and larger than the lower half. Its arms were long, but also thick and strong, with ribbed scale plates along the elbows. Its legs were much the same, and its feet had three clawed toes, with large raptor-like talons on it’s inner toes. Its tail was thick, and greatly reminiscent of an alligator’s.
But what terrified the little swashbuckler was none of these, but its face. It had two long horns, which were much akin to those of the stereotypical European and U.S. demons, being large, rough and curved upward before turning outward once more. Its muzzle was squarish, and it had eight long, sharp teeth jutting out from it, (two in the front from both upper and lower jaws, and four further back along the muzzle.) Its nose was two large holes just above the mouth on the muzzle, but the worst of these nightmarish features was its eyes. Two blood red, fist-sized orbs on the face, set above and to either side of the muzzle, almost seemed to glow with sadistic glee upon seeing that some had broken the one rule that it had set. Then… It spoke.
“The sign said take OOOOONE!” The last part was spoken as though a roar, and startled the pirate and his companions. The pirate dropped his bag and ran, the eskimo jumped out of his skins and ran as well, the ghost also turned and fled, leaving the only girl of the group, the astronaut, to face the beast. She shook in her boots, but bravely dove to collect her pirate brother’s loot for him! The Beast looked down at the white, blue, and red-clad explorer and gave a short laugh before raising his hands behind his head and removing it, revealing a second one underneath.
This second head was much more familiar, as it was human. It was large, (though not as large as the Beast’s,) and had a large mass of black hair tied back into a ponytail. The face of the man was pale and chubby, revealing one-too-many hours indoors, but it was bright and filled with a jovial energy, which his greenish-brown eyes and wide grin sitting between a mustache that seemed to connect to a beard thick enough to require a brush to comb, (though it was of middling length,) attested.
He put the mask under the crook of his arm, put on his black-rimmed glasses, and knelt down to the little girl, who had yet to look up or stop shivering even. Slowly, the astronaut lifted her head up, noticing that instead of a monster’s jaws, there was instead a man’s face. She blinked her teal eyes and began to giggle. The man followed suit, as well as the parents of the quartet nearby. Finally, the man said, “Happy Halloween, Lucy. Now, why don’t you go on back to your scared little brothers and have a good evenin’, alright?”
The little girl, Lucy, got up and nodded, then spoke with a wide grin on her face. “You really scared them, mister John!”
The man laughed. “Oh little one, I told you to call me John! The only ‘mister’ in my family is my dad, Mister Christopher,” John then rose, and looked over at the young brunette’s father and mother before turning back to Lucy. “Now, I think you’d better get back to your parents,” He chuckles. “If only so they can get Jacob’s candy instead of him!”
As little Lucy grabbed the bag and went back to her family, John went back inside his house and grabbed a large bag of mixed candy. He then went back out and started pouring the contents into the bowl. After this was done, he went back inside. The inside of the house was small, but rather homely.
The entryway was also the living room, which connected directly to the kitchen, and to the right was a hallway that lead to the two bedrooms that were his and his three brother’s. There was a couch laying flat against the right wall, with a chair on the wall he was facing tilted so that it and the couch almost touched. There was a small coffee table that sat near the couch, with a menagerie of items on top of it, (an unplugged printer being the largest and some LEGOs being the smallest.)
John didn’t pay much attention to any of these, and just turned down the hall after having shut the doors. The hall was cramped, especially for one of his size, but he maneuvered through it with practiced grace, avoiding both the thermostat on the left wall and coatrack on the right. His destination was the door at the end, behind which was his and the second oldest’s room.
Upon opening the door, he was greeted with the familiar sight of the metal bunk bed that he and Paul, (the second oldest son,) shared. To his left was the bookshelf and the flatscreen T.V., followed shortly by the cloth-covered toybox serving as spare blanket storage and the sitting place of a 9-year-old tower computer and an X-box One. His brother was surprisingly not on the system currently, but had left the system on. He could hear the squawking of his brother’s online friends and ARK clanmates through the headphones hooked up to the black wireless controller, which was sitting on the lower bunk. They used to have a battered office chair that they used for a gaming chair, but that had been rid of only a week prior.
John gave a small grin and shook his head. He never understood the appeal of online gaming, preferring Bethesda titles such as The Elder Scrolls and Fallout 4. But he ignored the forsaken headset and controller, instead choosing to lay down without taking the costume off and opening up his own RCA Tablet… Computer… Thing. (He never could decide what to call it.) He swiped up on the touchscreen, revealing a hand-drawn sketch of the character Rainbow Dash from the show My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic, as the screensaver as well as the small amount of apps that the tablet had either come with or he himself had downloaded. He made himself comfortable and opened the Browser. What was he doing? Simple: he was reading. Reading fanfiction, to be precise.
You see, even though he was most assuredly a gamer, he was a reader even more so. He was even a small-time fanfiction writer! Nevertheless, he read. He didn’t notice his brother coming back in, but did take notice when he started speaking. He turned his head slightly, but quickly returned to his reading.
As he was reading, he reflected on how he came across the Deathclaw costume he was in. He had been wandering about the small town he lived in, and had been in the park when he felt the need to use the restroom. He went into the small building that held the bathroom for both genders. After doing his business, he walked out and saw a medium-sized box laying on the opposite wall. (The building was fully enclosed and air-conditioned in case of winter cold.)
Curious, he walked over to the box and found that it was already open, revealing a very high-quality Alpha Deathclaw costume, and a small note. It read: “To whoever has found this first, I hope that it brings you better fortune than I.” There was no signature, or identifying mark to show who wrote it.
John, being a very adaptable, (and unworrying,) person, decided to simply accept this as a gift from God and took the box home.
His thoughts then went off on a rabbit trail, pondering how odd it was. In fact, he would wager a small portion, (simply to be cautious,) of the money he had earned as a detailer for an out-of-town marina that he could land in Equestria as a Deathclaw and not react too strongly to it! Not too out-of-town, he reminded himself, just about a mile or three.
Of course, this was all tossed to the side in favor of focusing on more important things. (A good Pokémon fanfiction that didn’t have an overpowered Ash, had a slightly smarter Team Rocket with higher luck stats, and had a character with enough snark that the sheer levels of snark would weigh more than Giratina’s Real-World form!) Indeed, he was a rather simple young man… As simple as an author/roleplay enthusiast/artist/gamer/person with Asperger’s syndrome cold be, at least. Oh, did he mention his ever-changing city-mindscape inhabited both by his characters and others’? No, he thinks in response to himself, he did not.
As the night drew on, and reached around Eight O’clock, he exited Browser and shut the laptop-tablet down and left it on it’s charger for the night. He didn’t have to turn off the light as Paul preferred to play with the lights off. So he lay down, deciding to forgo taking the costume off for reasons inexplicable, and went to sleep.
It was ten when his brother decided to get off early from his gaming, and go to sleep himself.
…And it was because of this, that no one noticed when John started to glow at two, and get brighter, and brighter, and brighter still until finally the light went dark and revealed that all traces of him were gone! Even his tablet, charger, and Bible were gone!
And yet in a land in an entirely other section of creation, far from the Origin as his own world was based off of, in a land filled with pastel equines, (some winged, some horned, and some with none, and a handful with both,) a Demon-Who-Was-Not-Quite-A-Demon awoke in a large cave with a tunnel further in and a crystalline tree near the entrance...
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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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A Displaced Deathclaw? Aww, what the heck? I'll fave and follow it anyway. Here's a like and a mustache.
Nice start, but you have some grammar and spelling errors near the end.
...I like this guy, he reminds me of someone. (gazes upon a mirror whilst stroking his manly beard)
8111007 Hah! Glad I could make an enjoyable character!
There are SOME good Halloween Pranks, this one would be worth getting on tape
Nice to meet a fellow Aspie.
I'm enjoying what is happening for far, and thus, I shall continue reading.
I like the jab you threw at pokémon! Being one myself, I have seen plenty of those problems within the series!! xD
John gave a small grin and shook his head. He never understood the appeal of online gaming, preferring Bethesda titles such as The Elder Scrolls and Fallout 4.
This this is all I cared for
John is literally me.
-Brony
-Gamer
-Fallout enthusiast
-Artist
-Reader
-Occasional writer
Heck, my middle name's even John!
Hey I have that computer... The cambio 2-in-1 tablet/computer with windows 10 pre-installed
8601796
Huh. That's something you don't see everyday. Neat.
8608464
Eh, not quite. It's the Viking Pro.
This, I must say, is a huge example of telling instead of showing.
8616078
...Scrap. Hopefully the next chapters are better.
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away
XBOX FOR LIVE!!!!!