"A Hard Working And Unsatisfied Wife Plays With Fire"
- @jav.scd.lol 26 November 2025

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There’s a brief vision that comes to mind before I open my eyes, a dream I can half remember before it all slips away through my hands. A man, barely more than a speck in my field of vision really, but he’s not moving and he’s fallen to the side, the fire’s no longer burning on most of him but you could still see its work right? I could-God, but the weirdest thing is that I could smell it? Rancid, smokey, awful burning meat wafting through cutting straight through the jumbled up mess that was everything else because there’s just something primal about it? Something you just get even if you’ve never gotten it before.

And I try to look away from him right? Like I said he’s so small but it’s just tents that are burning or crumpled up and people all over the place just running or in pieces or crumpled up like this and sometimes I can cut through the noise to hear them groaning or sobbing but I just can’t look away. No matter where I look he’s always right there at the edge of sight or smack dab in full focus and I try to back away or turn around but there’s this great big solid weight all around me that feels worse and worse the more I try to do anything. 

It’s like there’s a lead straightjacket wrapped up all around me that turns into solid stone at a moment’s notice and I realize that this thing is around my chest and I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe so I’m just thrashing and shuddering around in place and the sounds, the smells, the merciless heat of the sun and the fire lapping at my skin all blur together until I’m just, just, gone again.

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There’s a strange itch I can’t quite place when I jerk awake, my eyes still blurry and blinking awkwardly in the harsh yellow light. Something familiar between my eyes that makes itself known when my body suddenly seizes up in place to let out a sneeze for the first time in years. That’s when I realize that I can feel something sweet and floral wafting through the air with every breath I take and fuck! I must be dead then, guess that old priest was right about all of us getting new bodies up in heaven or something because mine’s definitely… a lot better than it used to be.

Wait, my eyes aren’t unfocused, there’s just, there really is nothing there, it’s all just yellow on yellow in front of me, there’s no real sense of like, wait no this isn’t even what I-I’m struggling to describe it’s all just-I need a moment. 

Okay so I’ve never been to space personally but I’ve seen livestreams and footage from up there right? And you can see things there, I know this sounds kind of stupid but even in deep space there’s always light or other ships or things floating around inbetween right? Stars and the like. There is always something to be in relation to you, you are always somewhere and heading to another place right? 

But wherever I am there’s just yellow on yellow and yellow? Just, everywhere. I’m really struggling to wrap my head around it, it’s not a solid mass but I can’t see anything past it either, and if I try to brush my hand against it tha-Is that even my body? Everything’s all covered up in these steel blue plates, I mean I try to move my arm and fingers and I feel the weight all around me and see the metal arm and fingers moving bu-

My entire body from the neck down is lit up with sharp shooting pain and with a loud gasp I suddenly don’t feel heavy anymore, and oh God that’s worse isn’t it? What just ha-

‘Why aren’t you moving yet? They’re literally right there, just get to it already,’ I suddenly think, except it's not… Why would I think that? 

‘What are you even supposed to do with these?’ I think again, as both of my hands wraps themselves around a familiar feeling square steering wheel that wasn’t there before, my thumbs coming to rest on a pair of buttons at the top I somehow knew was important and I couldn’t press accidentally even as my arms instinctively turned it from side to side and raised it up and down as if to test its range of motion which somehow causes me to feel an immense pressure all around my upper body that almost makes me want to puke.

‘You also need what now? Oh come on, he would have had me bouncing up and out of here already,’ there’s another hint of shooting pain and suddenly I am very clearly somewhere. I’m seated on… something, it’s soft enough to embrace me but firm enough to support my entire body and my feet are stepping on what a cursory glance reveals to be pedals that somehow wrap around my entire foot? And again my body moves on its own, my feet pressing down and easing off and dragging it to the sides which causes that sense of pressure again but all around me this time.

Finally, the ceaseless yellow expanse in front of me is broken apart as something like a monitor flickers into existence that extends ‘up’ from a yellow expanse I instinctively recognize as the ‘floor’ that shows me part of the quarry from before at a weird slightly tilted down but high up angle. 

There’s burning tents and people slumped over or strewn about and I can hear and somehow feel the ground shaking whenever something is dropped from above and I’m left gasping and straining against my seat and I feel something firmer than any wall I’ve been thrown against crumble and the view changes and I’m looking up at the sky now and I see those red shapes from before flitting about in the sky and every now and then they drop something that rakes light across the ground or causes it to shake with a loud BRRRMM and then one notices me moving and drops something that rattles against (my face?) and the stinging pain makes me instinctively jerk the steering wheel back but the same firm pressure from before still keeps me in place there and yet I know that I am fine.

‘Is that all? Can we start now? Wait, oh that almost worked, just keep wriggling around like that, I’m almost there,’ I think again, and even though my arms and legs were already moving and straining against that immense pressure, I can’t help but let out a, “What? Who is this? Why can I hear you? Where am I? What’s happening?”

‘You want me to what? Give you the whole-’ for a brief moment I am made very painfully aware of something that, oh God that can’t be right that can’t be how it works why were we not alone why couldn’t we just be alone and the thought sent me wide eyed and reeling, heart pounding away in my chest only for it all to be taken away by my mechacampus? What? 

‘There is a effeminate/weak red smear pelting cowardly bombs at our face that’s just begging to be ripped apart and you can’t even handle that? Urgh just!’ the viewpoint in the monitor very suddenly zooms in to a point in the sky where an arrow pointing down materializes alongside bold and easy to read text that says ‘parking lot where Aliyah probably is if she isn’t dead already’, followed up by an arrow that points up to where one of the red parts flew over (it helpfully snaps a picture of it to freeze in place there) that says ‘enemy dropping bombs show loop of it killing people with lasers here’ that I refuse to perceive as it starts to play a montage of dead or wounded people around where I apparently am, and closing with a simple ‘equation’ that goes ‘You = Typh-Ea = Powerful, Aliyah = Your Woman, Enemy with no Powerful to stop > Kill your woman > You should kill enemy now’

For some reason I feel the need to state, “She’s not ‘my woman’ we’re not dating! it’s not like that!” And I can somehow feel eyes rolling at me before I am made to understand that my arms and legs should yank back and forth like so if I want to keep my friend from being clip here of men I didn’t know were walking around behind my actual self earlier being splattered across the ground or set on fire (looping).

“Oh God please stop doing that I’ll do it I’ll do it”, I yell out to the towering voice in my head before I move the wheel back and press firmly down on the pedals and experience crushing pain throughout my entire body as if I’m violently shaking and shuddering against something vast and firm and unyielding as the little red mites flitting about me pelts my face with stinging bombs until with a final bonecrushing pull I burst out of the liquifying ground that had kept me imprisoned for aeons just so.

And I’m laughing and she’s laughing and I’m free flying spinning feeling the rush of warm air on my chest, her/my legs and clawed arms dangling freely, running around heedless of the little mites still flitting about and barely interrupting my joy with their stinging lights and pellets until I get annoyed enough to spin around in place again and again just so to whip the air around me and send them careening away sometimes in pieces when their pellets are flung back and backfire just so.

And my eyes come to rest on the… parking lot, with all of the little people who are laying in place either dead or shellshocked near overturned cars and fragments of humanoid drones or barely clinging on to a cliff edge where there was once a slope leading down to the quarry, and I can’t help but think ‘Oh God did I do that? I didn’t know it woul-there were still people alive in the quarry? Did I kill them? I didn’t mean t-’ until with a loud gasp I’m back in the chair again, staring out at the screen and moving my little pedals and wheel as the imago reels back in horror at our actions, before I feel a sense of disgust/annoyance in the back of my head rear up and searing pain erupts all along my arms and legs and I feel myself pressing down on the pedal and I feel the imago’s right leg lashing out and kick one of the red smear’s segments with a satisfying crunch and sending it soaring away towards a distant mountain just so.

Only for it to spin back around and rush up in the air flying in sequence with its other two segments and joining together to form a great metallic beast with a horned head that has fire in place of eyes and feathery metal wings covering the rest of its face. It had honeycomb shaped pores on its slim chest that brought forth swarms of metal drones I now understood were in its likeness, and an oversized pair of arms and hands that looked like it dwarfed even mine with spindly fingers that abruptly ended in a way that implied holes even though I couldn’t see it from this angle, and its legs were comparatively stubby and unimportant seeming. I instinctively understood it all as an Imago much like Typh-Ea/Myself, which made this all slightly interesting to wake up to… or well, no it must have noticed me after I had already put out the call that lured in… myself? God what am I thinking? What have I been-

We feel a presence reaching out, and I’m pushed back into the moment again, a voice is speaking, loud enough for everyone to hear in a language I don’t recognize and yet somehow understand.

“I am Duke (My ears hear it as ‘Jim’) of the Planet (Fleet?)” he manages to say, before I close the gap and swing my right fist at them only  for them to jump or rather skim on the air back out of the way and counter with a punch from the left that buys them the space they need to… continue on with, “First of my line! And the bonded wielder of the venerable imago Omnivaga,” a swarm of the Duke’s drones rushes out just as I finish righting myself by kicking off a nearby mountain, and I grab and hurl a few tons of the heavy stone plummeting down towards them faster than their little bombs can leave the chamber.

With a single swipe of his arm he bats the stones aside while yelling out, “And as a loyal vassal of The Grand Ruler of the Western Kingdom, the great and honorable Baihu,” and for a brief moment I am suddenly reminded of the little people still below us as hundreds of large small boulders are scattered onto the ground, distracting me for just long enough as the rat bastard jumps up in mid air past where my fist was rushing forward to meet his face, before I hear a deafening roar and feel his full weight crashing down upon my back and knocking the proverbial wind out of my lungs followed by the sound of a passionate, “I will claim this world with your loss!” And the sudden realization that I was about to be driven straight into the ground face first at a weird angle. 

But that’s when it happened again, a sudden spike of rage and embarrassment overpowering my confusion followed by searing pain throughout my legs and lower body as my legs unspool themselves on their own, long and flexible metal hidden under the carapace swiftly wrapping around the Duke’s upper frame and yanking down with monstrous strength before he could react, spinning myself around completely before releasing my grip and throwing him far away. His pained screams ringing out as in one graceful movement I reel my legs back in and simply will myself to stop in place with a forceful thrust of my hand, before I once again find myself holding the wheel, shaking and bleeding from the nose.

Fuck me, I almost just died there didn’t I? If ‘you hadn’t pulled that off’ maybe I-what? No that wasn’t me that was? You? Who is this? What is Typh-Ea? Why are we?

A sudden flash erupts near where my face was a moment ago and I feel searing heat on my cheek and I see the battlefield again but not through the screen and there’s the Duke flying towards me again with claws made of light ready to tear into me and I’m really going to die aren’t I? 

‘Fuck off’ the voice in my head suddenly declared, ‘He just barged in out of nowhere and tries to smash your head into a pulp and you’re going to what? Let him? You’re just going to let him kill your woman? Conquer your world? Humiliate me in an almost fair duel? No! If the emperor was here I’d be eating that dumb fucking gay ass red piece of shit imago he’s prancing around in for breakfast already, but I guess I’m stuck with a spineless loser who’s too afraid of letting me in to be what she really is, the ultimate practitioner of the most noble of games.’

I blink in place, already moving back and scrambling to find something, anything I could use as a weapon or some angle I could rush him from without getting too close to his dangerous looking claws, only sparing a thought to ask what any of that is even supposed to mean.

Her response comes in the thought that opens the mouths in our palms as I instinctively grasp onto a nearby and presumably empty bus to consume it whole, and five simple words, ‘Kill him and find out.’