“Don’t judge a thing by the number of tentacles.” Tayre Wakefield smiled, rolling a coin back and forth across his fingers to look cool. He wore tight leathers and three belts holding his pants up, two for style and one actually wound round his waist to hoist his pants up. The useful belt was covered in badges.

“That’s really gross and I’m going to not think about it in detail.” replied the Intern, scrunched up against her desk and twisting dials seemingly at random.

“I’m just saying” Tayre replied, prodding his bounty hunter badge with a thick finger “I’ve seen a lot of these critters, and just because one is dainty or fragile, doesn’t mean it isn’t evil.”
“Did you just say dainty?”
“Deadly.”
“R-right. And this thing is deadly?”

In the testing chamber below them, a very small thing with light-blue feelers and big eyes was wandering, tapping all six tentacles against bare steel walls and occasionally jumping about to mix things up.

“Definitely. Look how restless he is, never staying in one place. He’s a wanderer, a predator!”

In truth, Tayre had found the blue fellow collecting mushrooms along a river bank, but he could have easily been foraging the side salad for a main course of murder. The Evil Assessment agents had thought the little guy was so non-threatening that the intern should be entrusted with it, but still. There was a chance!

“Oh, man. So, I just have to verify this guy is as lethal as you say he is, and then you get paid?”

“Yeah.” Tayre whispered, making his eyes cloud over in the way he did when he needed to look dark and troubled for the ladies “We hunters bring new kindsa alien in and get paid based off of how lethal they can be.”

“Is that not… risky?” she asked, staring at him with what looked like genuine worry. A good person? Here?

“someday-” His voice hitched in perfectly accidental fashion “-I might not make it back.”

“Oh jeez.” the girl mumbled, restlessly twisting dials just a little bit faster “That sounds terible.”

“Someone has to do it.” Tayre muttered, channelling his anti-hero. “Catch them. To keep the kids safe.”

The intern looked up at him in awe, and he held in his grin.

There was a buzzing from the walls above, and a bored voice called out “TEST ONE, COMMENCING”

“Ooh, that’ll be it!” the girl chirped, lurching towards the viewscreen, her hair wobbling as the floaties keeping her pigtails in mid-air wavered from the sudden motion before catching up. Fashion has gotten just ridiculous – girls used to wear proper clockwork, not this techno-nonsense!

“That little monster is the toughest one I ever caught.” Tayre said, driving the point home. If she had any influence on his pay, it was worth the buttkissing. Some people went and actually fought for the money, instead of just grabbing a weird looking guy. Dumbos, the lot of them.

—

Jambo was stuck in a room, and it wasn’t particularly nice. For one, it smelt like sweat, but if it was a gym this area was very unfortunately impoverished. Which would explain the lack of equipment, or furnishings, besides the simple wooden table in the middle of the room. It was a real shame to live like this – Jambo made a mental note to ask Mrs. Flubbings about a church fundraiser for these fat pink folk. That poor dear has loved having a cause, ever since her husband wandered off.
There was a buzzer and some loud robo-noise overhead he didn’t quite catch, and then the doors in front of him opened.
A thin women in a pinstripe suit walked in and sat down briskly, looking petrified. She had a briefcase in either hand, and chucked them both down. Curious, Jambo took the seat opposite her.

“CREATURE IS CIVIL. DANGER RATING PLUS ONE” shrieked the voice from the ceiling

The woman in front of him was less fat than the first tubby thing with the badges who had offered him a ride home. Perhaps their males got pregnant, like the seahorse, or new-Zebra?

The woman whispered something into the flashing box tied to her neck, and after a moment the box shrieked. “My daughter has lost her passport!”. Judging from the woman’s sweaty complexion she was very distressed about this indeed.
“My, that’s awful. Do you have any idea where it may be?” Jambo asked, his big eye narrowing in concern.

Once the box had bleeped and made a few mushy noises, the woman answered “In the left briefcase, there is my daughter’s passport.” sweat stained her lovely suit as she looked Jambo in the eye “and in the right briefcase, there is a fully automatic machine gun with crossfire grip and heat-seeking capabilities.”

“What.”

PLEASE SELECT A BRIEFCASE said the ceiling

Jambo slowly reached for the left briefcase, not knowing why the woman was growing steadily less-pink.
As he touched it’s leather handle with an outstetched tentacle, Jambo quickly wondered if she had meant her left, or his.

CREATURE IS HORRID. DANGER RATING PLUS ONE!

The poor woman bolted from the room, vanishing even as the briefcase clicked and opened. Jambo tried to rush after her, but the metal doors hissed shut just behind her, and he saw with wonder than the briefcase had been filled with rocks.

What an odd place.

—

“Oh jeez, oh jeez.” the intern mumbled over and over, wringing her hands “He went for the gun!”

Tayre scratched his head and felt his eyebrows knit closer together in frustration. He had been making something up about how slow decisions let the monster revel in the testers misery, but then the little thing had actually picked the gun. It made his entire speech a waste.

“It’ll be okay, he’s already been caught.” Tayre said, surprised he wanted to assure the little newbie at all.

The newbie pressed some more dials at random, and he wondered what any of them did.

—

TESTING ROOM TWO, SKIPPED.

A new door opened before Jambo, and he plodded onwards happily. This room was bare, with another table and a claw suspended overhead which was rapidly retreating into a tiny manhole in the ceiling. A tiny little scanner lay on the table, and it bleeped as he walked past.

TESTING ROOM THREE, SKIPPED.

A new door in the furthest wall opened for him, and he waddled happily onwards.

—

“Oh gods, did I press something wrong?” the intern asked, her dials twisting on of their own accord even as she pulled at levels and mashed buttons to stop them.

WARNING – WARNING! NERVOUS LEVEL MONSTER DETECTED

“Why did they name the monsters after how bad they make you feel?!” the intern whined, looking on the verge of tears.

“H-Hey now!” Tayre assured her, even as the little thing walked through room after room of assessment puzzles unopposed “It’s alright, nervous isn’t awful.”

WARNING – WARNING! MUTANT ACTUALLY AWFUL LEVEL MONSTER!

Tayre hated the ceiling.

The intern flailed “I don’t know what I pressed! Nothing I pressed should have broken the maze like this, I don’t-” she froze, and turned pale.

“What is it then, little darling?” he asked, using his most comforting voice without having meant to

“The s-scanner. The scanner in room one, it checks every creature as they walk past, to register them.”

“And?” Tayre asked, unconsciously rubbing his hunter’s badge for luck

“And it recognizes him! It’s detecting how dangerous he is!”

“Oh.” Tayre managed, quickly seeing the appeal of turning rapidly pale.

“Someone caught one of those before, they must have, but I didn’t see it in any of our records. I thought I’d learned off all of the ones we processed here! Oh man, oh no, I don’t want to doom us all on my first day, oh man, oh no-”

The intern fumbled with her desk, mashing the buttons again in a fierce effort to close a door.

The intern pressed a button and found a shade beyond pale. Her skin reflected light at triple the normal rate, and for the next week seemed to have a lovely glow about her. She’d just opened a door leading from the testing zone and into the hallways.

Tayre swore.

—

A new door opened, and Jambo walked on through. This room was finally different from all the square ones, in that it was very long and very messy and filled with loud people in pinstripe suits. They had a healthy population, but such an odd culture – very low tolerance for someone encroaching on their personal space, as they all rushed backwards whenever Jambo got anywhere close.

One tripped and was crawling into a corner, and that poor fellow had turned red. They were like chameleons, only really quite terrible at it. They never chose a colour anywhere close to the background, Not the sort of feedback you’d give them of course, as they seem bashful enough as it is.

Jambo turned a corner and kept walking, thinking on how to describe this place best to Mrs. Flubbings.

—

“He broke out!” Tayre insisted, the intern quiet and clinging to his side. He wouldn’t see the poor thing fired on her first day, even considering the minor disaster she’d possibly caused.

“Explain.” the Overseer demanded, his frilly bowtie rustling as he spoke from the weight of his chins slapping against it.

They were in his office now, the testing rooms rendered useless by a button whose sole function was apparently to disable all the others. They couldn’t find the button to disable the disabler.

“He just wrenched the door open, there was nothing we could do.” Tayre said smugly, confident a professional hunters testimony would have it covered.

“What a shame then. Reports show that casualties are still in the single digits, for now. Still, mister… Wakefield. You’d best go wrangle the critter, hmm?”

Oh.

The intern turned to him, her eyes bigger than human eyes were supposed to get. She looked like he was her hero.

“Actually…” he said, trailing off. She was still looking at him like that, like he was going to save the world and wasn’t at all a liar. “…I, uhrm…”

“Better get going, eh, Mister Wakefield?”

His fingers fidgeted and grabbed at his biggest badges – sharp on one edge and round along the others, with four hooks underneath to slot around his fingers through. A pair of novelty brass knuckles he’d bought himself off the network.

“I, uhrm. I was about to say-”

She smiled at him. She was smiling as she cried and looked at her hero.

He’d actually tried to hunt a threat once, but the thing was all snarls and sharp edges and he’d gotten a nasty scar on his thigh the size of a ketchup tub. He didn’t know if he could even fight anymore, he’d gotten so fat, and spent most days remembering.

She wouldn’t stop looking at him like that.

He let out a long sigh, and faced the overseer.

“It’s as good as done.”

—

Jambo rounded down another corner. It was hard to find the way out, and everyone wailed as soon as he spoke. They made mushy noises with their mouths and rushed away from him, whichever way he turned. Some sort of alarm was going off, so perhaps there was a fire, but whenever he tried to follow one outside they would be twice as loud and back up into corners.

The odd pink things were simply everywhere. It wasn’t a surprise to see them so populous – he saw quite a few clinging to each other openly. It was refreshing in a way, but it’d be nice to stumble across one being a nice mellow colour like blue, and perhaps being less loud.

He found a small one leaving a big room. Her face was wet, and she was baring her teeth. Not wanting to spook it, he followed along as stealthily as he could.

—

Tayre could hear his own wheezing echo down from the incarceration chamber’s roof. This is where they penned up the threats not suitable for transport. It had only one permanent occupant, ever – sometimes he suspected the other hunters were about as noble as he was about facing real threats.

He knocked on the door and strapped the bleeping red communicator to his neck.

“Hey, Stabby.”

The threat snarled, as it always did. He could see its tub-sized blades writhing around itself as he spoke, and it ambled towards the door.

“Right Stabby, I know you and I messed each other up pretty thoroughly and you sort of got the worst end of it, but I need your help.”

It growled. Or at least, the communicator didn’t translate anything, and it tended not to translate growls. The universal language of Grrrr was beyond translation.

“I’ll let you go, buddy. Fight this one guy and I’ll put you right back where I got you.”

The Grrr-ing stopped.

“Attaboy, Stabby.”

—
END OF CHAPTER ONE

Well, that’s my first dabble into updating this universe!

To briefly explain the massive hiatus, I skipped two months of college and two months of life due to just not being fond of myself. I understand though, if I write often enough then not only will I be way happier with myself, I get to share adventures with folks and become a handsome tragic creative type, so that’ll be wonderful!

I hope you guys enjoyed the update. I decided when figuring out where to go next, that the New[t]World is very, very big. Yup. I’ll cover the hows and the wheres and whys soon, don’t worry!

Our poor wandering protagonist from before is rather unevolved, compared to others. You’ll see!

I am working on how I want to update this site, as I’d love to have a blog section and a stories section, as well as a section for oneshot mini-stories that arent part of a bigger narrative. I’m looking into it!

Next chapter will be up on Monday. It’s already been written, and it’ll close up this miniature, introductory arc!

Thank you wholeheartedly to my loved ones who picked me up when I didn’t particularly want them to. You matter, and I’ll make damn sure you know it.

To anyone wondering how these worlds connect – Shhh. All in good time my good buddies!