Muistella
Muistella
*)That night...(*
The third and final upstairs room of the place had been trashed thoroughly and, while it was once a kitchen, was now simply an extension of the swamp, especially since the roof over it had been demolished. The dirt floor had turned to mud, and only the cast iron wares - pots, pans, and cooking utensils - remained. Everything else had fallen victim to the march of time. Sleeping amongst the mud and muck were Banon, Allison, and Banon's six kids.
A few hairs past midnight, however, Banon woke up and stretched. He shook Allison awake, and she yawned and looked at Banon.
"May we find somewhere private?" he asked. Allison obliged him and got up, stretching, and followed him down to the basement.
"What's this about?" asked Allison.
"Well, Allison," started Banon, teasing his hair, "you and I have been living together for two days now, and I just realized I still don't know a whole lot about you other than you can both lay eggs and plop out a fetus and you're biologically very much similar to myself."
"Ah," she said. "So you want me to unload my past on you?"
"If you're willing," he said. "If you are, I'll tell you my life story as well. It's only fair."
Allison sighed and sat down in the water near her mermaid's-purse, floating gaily beside her. Banon sat across from her, near the remains of the purse that held his kids.
"Where do you want me to start?" asked Allison.
"Your birth. Who were your parents, and how did they meet?"
Allison had a ready answer for this. "My mother was Marsha Ûndreyr, born and raised in Tsube Province, in the Floating City." Banon whistled. The Floating City of Kai Umi had a reputation for allowing such unions as the one that spawned Allison. "She was a lovely human. My father was Denadin, born in captivity in Tajiri Province and later released when his Trainer died at the hands of the Zealots. As far as Politoeds go, he was a bit above average. Very smart and very spiritual. He'd picked up Common while he was still a Poliwhirl, and was an active member of Mew's religion."
Amongst Pokemon and half-breeds of same, Mew was the deity of choice. Although a few years earlier he'd committed several rapes, the Pokemon still held him in high regard for his usual gentlemanly nature and his focus on nature compared to the other deity of animals, Aslan. Whatever churches there were to him were comparable to parks.
"How'd they meet?" asked Banon.
"One day my mother was out of town picking herbs when she was jumped by a Bulborb and took a set of fangs in the arm. Denadin was only a few feet away and scared the beast off with a Hydro Pump, then healed the wounds Marsha received, leaving before she opened her eyes. For the next few weeks, she hunted for her savior and found him in a church to Mew in Kai Umi, preaching. She stayed for the sermon to talk with Denadin afterwards, and they fell in love with each other the more they talked. They were officially married two weeks later, and after six months of marriage, I was conceived."
"How old are you?" asked Banon.
"Twenty-eight years old," was the answer. "I'm an adult and have been for about twelve or so years."
"When did you join the Church of Aslan?" asked Banon.
"I joined when I was seven," she said. "I didn't, however, so much as join than I was orphaned. My mother and father had taken a vacation before I joined the church... a vacation to Earth. According to the person who contacted me, the Klansman responsible was executed by the Corps."
Banon cringed. He knew Earth wasn't the safest place for half-breeds, but this was ridiculous. Attacking a human and a Politoed who, for all appearances, could have been master and slave on suspicion of crossbreeding without evidence? And he thought that the crimes that led Ivalice to declare the Church of "Sientology" terrorist were heinous.
"It was in the orphanage run by Aslan's denomination that I met the Judge from yesterday, Alk. He was two years old when he was brought in, and his parents had been murdered by members of Hellsavant. It wasn't until he became an adult three years later that it became known his father was a KZIRAT higher-up." Hellsavant was a Neopia-based terror organization who was at war with the Krossing Zealots Interested in Raiding, Assault, and Torture (KZIRAT), based on Crandon. "Both of us quickly took to the cloth and took our chastity vows; hence the belt you took off of me." It was as if she blamed Aslan for it, and not Banon, but frankly this could have been just the 100 or so eggs she'd just laid courtesy of his froggy balls talking. "I was the head of the local church in Baguba for three years - that is, until two days ago, when clerics of Nerull chased me into the pond you fished me out of and you defrocked me. Alk, on the other hand, did not take to a lifestyle watching over a church. He studied constantly on Ivalicean law, and when the opportunity came to him to take his own church somewhere in Meridell, he opted instead to become a Judge. He's seen over quite a few engagements and remains faithful to the Church to this day."
"Judges," hissed Banon once he finished. "Can't even get a decent fucking meal nowadays unless injuring animals is enforced."
"What about you?" asked Allison. "Were you feral your whole life?"
"I wish," he spat. "My father and mother were slaves." He spat out the last word with enough venom to kill a Malboro, and Allison felt she didn't need to probe any further as to his childhood. "Lost them both - and my master - to an ill-guided attempt to capture a member of the Greenground Storm."
The Greenground storm was a massive sapient flock (or "storm") of Chu and their kin located just outside of Neopia Central. Although nobody knew how they got there - much less the Kacheek and Xweetok who wound up getting raped and producing half-breeds themselves - they quickly became a powerful political force on that planet. Last Allison had heard of the storm, it was under the Neopian chapter of the Pokemon League's protection and thus any capture attempt made against its members was enough to get your Trainer's license revoked. Fortunately for Aslan's followers, obtaining such a license was grounds for an immediate defrocking and excommunication. Allison knew one of the storm's members personally - he was her second-in-command should she get sick or someone drained her tub in the middle of the night. Doubtless that he'd be starting to get worried by now, but Allison put it out of her mind and mentally told those sections of memory tape to burn in Hellgates.
Banon continued. "You want to know how I felt when Birch released me from that slave-market those damned breeders call a 'laboratory?'"
Allison cut in. "Watch your words. I have some human DNA in me, remember." "Breeder" was a fiercely offensive term used to refer to anyone of humanoid descent, but was generally used only against humans.
Banon ignored her. "I was overjoyed. Went out, got myself a King's Rock and found myself a patch of peyote, and ate until all earthly sense left my Poliwhirl body. The next day, I had evolved via the King's Rock. I then stole off on an airship from Baguba Port and made it here."
"What about the six kids out in the front room?" asked Allison. The kids were currently asleep.
"Got those off of my second mate."
"What happened to her? And come to think of it, what happened to the first?"
"My first mate was a lovely Politoed. Nice deep voice - kinda like yours - smooth skin, silky tongue. We were barely together two months when that hot shit Nono's airship had to ditch in this swamp. She was out hunting and didn't notice Nono crashlanding until it was too late. I didn't even bother to bury the remains; I could have simply rolled them up and put them inside a tree trunk."
Allison put the vision of the corpse away. "...and the second?"
"Gabanna." Allison didn't want or need him to elaborate; he was currently serving a life sentence for several counts of murder. Fittingly, as he was an ex-Juggler, he was convicted with an altered reading of the Chewbacca Defense. "Shortly after she laid, he raped her and slit her throat. Her burial site is where you and I mated."
This last bit of information startled Allison, and, coupled with a bout of bile, made her vomit. She turned her head and spat bloody half-digested portions of Chocobo meat into a nearby bucket which looked as if it had been used as a helmet by a Kacheek and slammed down to fit on his large head. Once she regained her composure, she said, rather scathingly, "We fucked on your wife's corpse?!"
"Well, six feet above it," he said. "If it helps, her corpse was in the center of that depression. I wasn't expecting rain from Hell shortly after I buried her."
Allison felt disgusted and immediately opened her mouth to ask why. However, the question died in her throat. She thought back to the etchings Banon made, and realized that even if they had been on top of the turkey before King Randell at Present Day, she would be croaking up a storm and leaking cum onto the bird before anyone got a crack at it, with Banon whaling away at her slits all the while, croaking in pleasure. She wisely shut up.
"Pretty much an unexciting life other than my trainer dying." Banon laid back and stared at the stairs. "That's all. So, shall we go upstairs?"
Allison got up and walked up the stairs and back to the kitchen, where the kids had moved closer to a large black pot-bellied stove. Inside the stove was very wet mud, and the stove had a thick coat of rust. The stove smelled strongly of Poliwag. Allison decided to try the stove as a bed, and, as Banon walked in, she climbed into the oven and made herself comfortable in the thick layer of mud. "Were the Poliwag using this as a bed?" she asked Banon. He nodded in the affirmative, and she curled up and went to sleep. Banon stayed awake for a few more moments before falling to sleep in the mud beside the Poliwags.