>> Psycho Circus

  Six weeks ago.....

  "Do you even know what Tufty is? Do you want to?" Kami paces the dark as rivers of water crash against my ankles. Rushing across the backs of my clawed feet. Washing away shadows of memory and moments of might-have-been.

  As if the storm beating down this old, rusty, shack has such force as to drag away my dreams.

  Eating what was, and carrying it away.

  "Y'think I don't bloody care?" I snarl over the madness of it all, barely loud enough for humans to hear.

  I'm going for casual, but my insides compact like a trash disposal.

  Kami hesitates. "I could show you."

  A drip of water flicks off my ear. My eyes narrow. "I know your angle. I don't like where this is goin'."

  Her teeth grind in frustration. "Spook. I don't care if-"

  "Mate. Hey. Hey." Zip leans in, hands up. "Like, we're all done shouting. Right?" He doesn't wait. "So, like, how bout we show Spooko the video. Yeah? Like we planned?"

  "You... what?" I frown. "Video?"

  Her eyes flip to The Night Tyrant, still steaming in the roaring dark. "Polybius tracked down a bunch of sightings. Of someone.... else with Tufty's class. Most fell through. But...."

  "Sightings?" My right ear peaks. "Y'make em sound like some.... crazy urban legend type thing."

  "Yeahhh." Zip glances at her. "Like, that's- they kinda are. Sorta ghost-stories, y'know?"

  "Jesus." I whisper. "And what is his bloody class? You're bein' awful bloody cagey about it."

  They share a look. "Spook. You have to under-"

  "Now! Tell me!"

  "Mate." Zip says, to Kami. "Like, if-"

  She takes a deep breath. "Tufty is a very, very, rare. Very, very dangerous [Psyop Specialist] class called a [Psychopomp]." She takes another. "They're [Assassins] that target entire civilisations."

  I go extremely still. "What."

  "We found a video." Kami says. A ominous note to her voice. "It's.... it's barely anything. But we think it shows how they.... It's best if you just see it."

  "Fair warning, mate. S'not pretty."

  Kami plucks a shard of digital ice from a floating screen, and flicks it toward me. It stops, right in my orbit, and I force myself not to hesitate. Tapping the thumbnail to expand it into a wide, shining, vScreen.

  Life erupts in my face like a volcano. Blasting me in the face with an entire, incredible, themepark that unfolds from nothing in midair. Surrounding me in teenagers, families, and their friends - all cheering and roaring as a phoenix cut from neon flame soars bright above them.

  All them GMOs, and almost half of them Avians.

  I've never seen so many wings painted in so many dazzling colours. So many feathers marked by wild-spinning lights and shadows. By crashing rides, and stalls, and glowing toys, that turn the night incandescent.

  Huge glowsticks looped around Bright birds. Whirlygigs boincing in the paws of little dragons and bats.

  Even feathered foxes, cats, and rabbits with tiny flying saucers in their claws.

  Some are more human, but none so fully.

  Elflike. Strange. With fairy wings, or furry legs and hooves, or patterns of lights threaded right into their skin.

  Some tall and slender. Others small, and slight.

  But most are definitely, and defiantly, inhuman. With fur, and scales. Antenna and wings. And things I can't even identify.

  My implant's senseVison kicks in, and the smell of smoking hotdogs, sweat, and fur, and fireworks erupts from the 3D image. Blasting me directly in the brain, and wiping away even the smell of rain and silt around us.

  Candyfloss. Bubblegum. Cola. The spark of ozone from the bumper cars.

  All at once, the tin shack is gone and I'm simply there.

  Feeling the chair on my back. The table against my knees. The grooved planks pressed to my feet - warm, and deeply textured. Their heat, and the heat, of the crowds washing over me.

  The noise, the chaos, bustle and heave and joyful shout - all rising into a rampage of delights.

  I lean back, and become the GMO who captured this video. Settling into his body.

  My name.... is Kayno. My body.... is Kayno.

  His fur. His eyes. His whip of tail. His teeth, and lips, thick with ketchup and coal-seared monster meat.

  I'm look out through his eyes. His implant.

  But I'm not in control here. He is. And my gaze shifts as he does. Catching the round table in front of me. A demolished burger, a forest of of fries in a self-heating basket. And a 'Big Blue Squishy' cup with a straw rammed in the top.

  That's the bubblegum smell.

  He picks at them, listlessly, as if something is bugging him. Something that drags his eyes out over the crowd.

  "Look. There." I say, thickly, through chips and fangs. "He's still there? Sha, what's he doing?"

  "Who?" Replies a second, larger, voice. Slow. Distracted. Deep. "Where?"

  "Kid over there. The GMO. Red balloon."

  "The tanuki?"

  My eyes zoom in, and suddenly the real me sees him.

  A smiling girl at the centre of the square, right beneath the Ferris wheel. Round fluffy ears, and a furry little face. Dark clawed hands and toes, with a cute lil button nose.

  And that red, red, red, balloon held - so very still - in one hand.

  As if time, and wind, don't exist for it at all.

  "That is a girl."

  "Boy. Girl. Sure. But is she okay? She's been there our whole meal." My viewpoint leans forward. Concern rushing through me as I focus on the balloon-girl.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  "Don't." The other twists its huge head into shot - revealing scales of bright, lustrous, metallic green. A long body, coiling and sinuous, with five glitter-dark eyes - and a feathery crest like some strange bird.

  A Quetzalcōātl. A dragon-serpent.

  Robotic hands drift in orbit around it, like tiny planets. Its fangs diamond sharp,. Flattened, on the sides.

  "Don't what?"

  "Don't." The Quetzal growls, not unkindly. A friend? "Don't play hero. Not again."

  I frown. "She's lost."

  "She's waiting."

  "She's just standing there." My hand flickers into shot. Utter darkness, spotted with golden rosettes of fur. Sheathed claws in thickly padded fingers.

  A Jaguar. Or something like it.

  "Waiting." The snake-dragon flicks its many hands. "Parents will come. Or someone."

  "Or not." The view flips back to the kid, my leg restless. "Come on. Won't hurt to ask-"

  "No." The Quetzal states. "You are a man. And I am a man-snake."

  "What?"

  The serpent twists his huge head in almost a loop. "We talk to that child, it... will go wrong. I feel it. I taste it."

  "Go wrong? How?"

  "I.... do not know. But our world think terrible things about man-people and cubs." It pauses, shifting its too-many eyed face. "It thinks worse, still, of man-snakes and cubs. They will dream one evil of me, another of you."

  I scoff. "You? You're cuddly, man. Cubs love you."

  "Your sister's cubs love me." The snake hisses, flicking its tongue. "But a random child is not your child."

  "Whatever, man. I'm going. Can't leave her there. Not if I can help."

  My chair scrapes, and I catch a flash of my large paws pushing off the ground. A jaguar's tail, thick with fur. A thin garment.

  No armour. No weapons.

  I feel every padding step I take on the grooved floor. Every breath. Every inch of the joyous crowd pressed in against me. The noise welling thick and wild in ears that peak from my skull.

  The smells. the sights. The tinkle of music. The lights. The wings that brush at my sides, soft as breath. The tails that whisk past my legs, like playful little clones of Sha. A pointy eared human as tall as my thigh, playing sword-fights with their kid.

  It's almost too much for Kayno's passenger.

  And then it stops, and I crouch my self down.

  The little girl-cub smiles at me. "Hullo!"

  "Hey. You're lost?" I ask. Gentle. But hesitant, now - Sha's warning still hard in my head. Stupid snake.

  "I can't find my mummy!" The girl blinks huge, sad, eyes rimmed with oncoming tears. "Are you a helper person? Mummy said to find one if I get lost! But... But....."

  Confusion. "Do you know where she is?"

  "She went in there! With the bad man!"

  I look up, toward a 'gingerbread cottage' shaped ride, gleaming with lights in every window. This walls festooned with sweets, and chocolates.

  Something tightens inside me.

  "The.... the bad man??" I hear the concern spike in my voice. I can feel it. The need to protect.

  "Mmm-hmm!" A big nod. "The bad man took mummy! And said I should stay here?" Another very slow, fuzzy-faced, blink. "I dun wanna get lost!!! Can you find her?"

  Pain hits inside me. Not one girl, but two. Both in actual, real, danger.

  "Sure, I'll go find her." A flicker of eyes toward the snake at the table. His own fixed on me. His feathered 'cowl' flaring. "You wait here, okay?"

  "Okay, nice man!" She beams, the sweet baby. Like one of my sister's girls.

  Something Must Be Done.

  My tail flicks. The hunting flick. And I start towards the friendly cottage.

  An itch of claws peeking sharp from my pads.

  Whatever this guy is up to, it stops now. You don't touch women. You don't hurt little girls.

  You. Do. Not.

  The door swings at a touch - oddly cold, and hard, for funfair plastic - and my nose enters first. Eyes quick. Body low, and steady. Heart pounding its rhythm of excitement, as I slink down the painted concrete floor between rows of painted-on doors.

  The smell of gingerbread strong in the air as I make for the hard, left, turn at the end of the passage.

  I'm a hero. For real, this time. I'm right at the turn. I'm about to-

  It's a dead end?

  I stop - right before a big plastic oven, with a fake plastic kid inside.

  Bit grim. Okay.

  But no woman in peril. No crooked man.

  What the heck?

  Are they really in here? And where's the ride? Maybe these doors actually open, or.....

  Or did I just get pranked by a toddler?

  No. Wait.

  I stop. Whiskers twitching. Sensing something.... very wrong? I can't put my paw on it.....

  Something.....

  I take half a step, and touch something.... wet? Sticky? On dry, clean, ground? My head dips, as I look.

  A trace of deep, dark, red stuck to my fur.

  Red as the balloon. Too red to be real.

  Something shifts in the oven.

  I'm not breathing.

  I sense something. Beyond sight. Beyond sound, and touch, and smell.

  Danger......?

  A single step back, and the gingerbread walls shatter into cubes of light. Everything is suddenly concrete. Painted. Grim. A dim little alleyway, boxed between colourful rides. Metal doors painted 'Staff Only' in every direction.

  Scarlet explodes across every surface. Every wall. The oven shattering. Becoming a bloodied dumpster overflowing with-

  Men. Women. Children. Teens.

  Lips that do not breathe. Eyes that stare, but see nothing at all. Tangled legs. Tangled arms. Tangled wings, broken and bloodied. A thatch of crumpled feathers, torn out at the roots. Ripped from their bodies.

  So still. So very still. But for the slow, endless, drip of Red.

  Yet they have no smell. Nothing. As if they don't exist. But they-

  The red balloon whirls past my nose. It's cord passing right through my neck, as if it isn't real either. And for a second, it shifts. It gleams like a blade.

  Then I'm falling. Tumbling. A whirl of cold air on the fresh, hot, flesh of my severed neck.

  My body crumples with it. The girl-child simply stood there. Smiling. Bloodied all over, as the gingerbread house reforms around us.

  "Bad men go in the Bad Men pile!" She giggles. "Good kids go in the Good Kid pile!"

  And then all the blood flickers away. Her camouflage restored. Her hands moving quickly to spray something over me.

  My own lips move. Begging. Screaming. Silent.

  My entire self shrunk to almost nothing. To the movements of my face. The pressure of my skull against my hair. My hair against the ground.

  And then they stop. Everything.... stops.

  "All done!" The girl beams. Recorded by a dead man's eyes. "You're all invisible. Isn't that Nice? And now....."

  She skips, and turns, as if waiting for-

  The Quetzalcōātl. Sha. His mighty head twists around the alleyway, staring violence at the little girl.

  He never gets to say a word.

  "THE BAD MAN!" She screams at terrible, piercing, volume, the balloon shifting to become a blade as it lands before the snake. "THE BAD SNAKE MAN! HE KILLED THEM! HE KILLED THEM ALL!!"

  "Bad-?" The snake barely has a voice.

  But it's too late.

  "HELP! HELP! HE'S GOING TO KILL ME! HE WANTS TO EAT US UP!!!" She hammers on the doors of the alley. Her whole body covered in scarlet once more as she staggers right past the huge, stunned, snake.

  Slapping a print on his belly as she passes.

  The crowds takes bloody note of that. Even with the noise.

  The entire fairground, erupting into screams. The girl feeding the panic in every way she can.

  "THE BAD SNAKE IS EATING MY FRIENDS!!!!!!! HE WANTS TO-"

  A door opens, directly into my face, and the video jars to a stop.

  Leaving me panting. Shaking. Staggering back in the half-sunken shed.

  As Spook, once more.

  "Damn, that was- Was- Holy shit!" I take a long breath. Sloshing through the sudden flood. The roaring storm that never really left, beating back in on me from above. "That was- I need a sec."

  "Take one."

  "God.... I ..... I felt the fricking.... tasted.... smelt.... cheapo chair wedging my tail, and- and everythin'." I slosh to one of the benches, knocking away tools long gone and forgotten. Leaning on it. "God. I.... It was.... it was just a vid, and then it sucked me right in. The burger. The fries. The..."

  Kami chuckles. "Never had a senseVid before?"

  "Not like that. Wow. I was hearing that poor bastard's thoughts." I blink. "No. I was thinking them."

  No pain, though. None.

  Kinda grateful for that.

  "Hey. Don't go chipHead on me." Kami grumbles as I crawl up onto the table. Slumping into the wash of senses. Not just the burger, but everything. The touch. The smell. the taste. The warmth and texture of the ground. Even the-

  My eyes snapped open.

  "Soddin' bitch killed her mother! Shit! She killed me!!"

  The glow of that glorious burger drains out of me.

  "There was no mother." Kami says. Slowly. "It's how she was caught. That, and the video you just...."

  "Lived." I coil up tight on the desk. Dripping. "Is this from that GMO city-state we keep hearin' about?"

  Zip nods from his desk, skimming toes across the surface of the water. "Highwing? Yeah, mate. Bout twenty years ago. Polybius found the intel, like."

  Nightmarish headlinese flick across their vScreens. Flashes of blood. Of worse.

  "There was a spate of mass Avian killings." Kami narrates. "Targets were civvy GMOs. No implants. CCTV all showed snake or cat GMOs going nuts. Hording bodies. Then, surprise, a traumatised little kid dobs them in."

  "Holy shit. Same girl?"

  She stops. "Girls and boys." She says, slowly. "I think multiple. Zip thinks shapeshifter. Demon thinks both. This is the only tanuki. Others were all-"

  "Both? Holy shit." I repeat. "But how's killin' a civilisation?"

  "You just wait." Kami grins without mercy or humour. "Because if you want to understand what Tufty is, and why we had to show you that, we need to unpack it."

  "Alright." I coil tighter. Wrapping my wet tail around me. "Unpack."

  "You first. What did you get?"

  My claws tap metal.

  "It was freakin' theatre." I say, on instinct. "She..... She weren't just some kid. She had backing. Lots of it. Somebody was making a point, and it wasn't her."

  "Okay. First off, who do you think was the real target of the attack?"

  I hesitate. Smelling a trick. "Avians, in general? Or Sha?"

  "No." She says. "It isn't racial. It's just meant to look that way. To throw you off. To play into fear."

  I lick my lips. "Fear."

  "Bingo." She points at me. "The target isn't people. The target is Mayhem."

  My eyes flick back to the headlines. The blood.

  Oh, Hell.....

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