• A Pulsa Prologue
• Chapter 1 - The Prognosis
• Chapter 2 - Out with the Chaff
• Chapter 3 - Gatey Doux, not Gatey Douxn’t
• Epilogue

A Pulsa Prologue

“Yesssss! Ha haaaa! Take that!” Pulsa squealed on her couch, kicking her knee-high boots in celebration. Her character danced in victory before ending in her signature pose on Pulsa’s digital screen, covering wall to wall of her entire mansion’s living room. Her opponent, Kai101, was challenging her to another match, this time without random items spawning on the stage. The phone by her side vibrated.

“No. More. Items,” it read, complete with an angry face, eyebrows and all, rendered in glorious ASCII. Typical Kai style.

“Fine! I’ll still beat you even without my favorite parasol bonker item!” Pulsa conjured up a phantom keyboard in midair. Her fingers flew over it, somehow transferring the data to her phone.

“Five stocks. Standard play,” came Kai’s reply. The part-fighting game, part-platformer restarted on Pulsa’s magically high-tech enchanted mansion.

And then Pulsa’s phone buzzed again, but much more violently. It was her serious, urgent alarm. Pulsa held onto her video game controller with one hand, halfheartedly trying to stay alive while she gestured with her free hand, manipulating and hovering the phone through midair to float before her eyes.

Her character fell off the platform and died from one of Kai’s windup punches while Pulsa read and re-read the confusing information reported from her mapping drones. It was… slightly alarming.

She dropped the controller entirely and summoned up her floating, ethereal keyboard. Kai knocked her character off the platform to another death.

“Something weird is happening on the border of Cirrane,” she typed and sent.

Kai knocked her character off for a third time before his character ceased moving on the screen as well.

“Oh no you are not doing this to me. I was winning and now you’re going to make excuses!” Kai texted back.

“No, really. Is Giggiline holding another surprise pop-up carnival? It’s awfully far out of the way.”

“She’s not. Well, not that I know of. I can ask Lina…”

“Here’s what my mappers see.” Pulsa sent over the data. A huge cluster of red dots appeared deep in a forested area, and the time lapse over a few weeks showed a distinct deforestation and terraforming.

“Huh. I’ll let the team know,” Kai replied.

“I’ll try to get more up close footage for you.”

“Thanks Pulsa. I’ll get on this right away. So this last match was a win for me, I guess. A little unsatisfying, but a win is a win. GG.”

“In your dreams!”

Chapter 1 - The Prognosis

“Glory, brother.”

“Not just to us.”

“But to all humanity.”

“For the sake of our species.”

Two individuals, one hooded and guarding the entrance, the other approaching, greeted each other with the back and forth exchange in addition to a hand salute with the backs of their hands facing each other, ring finger curled in.

“Welcome, brother.” The guard stepped aside and allowed his secret society colleague in, where he was handed a hood of his own to adorn.

“Any nescients today?” His voice grew bolder as he put on his cloth. It gave him a sense of confidence that he lacked when he was exposed. Now, he was part of the group. He belonged.

It was a relief.

“Just one,” the guard bared his stained teeth. “The timing could not have been more serendipitous. The species-traitor has been locked up in the cages along with the other aberrants. Our Leader shall make a great example of him.”

“I look forward to it, Brother.”

“Humanity.” He signed with his hand.

“Humanity.” The new arrival responded in kind.

The gathering took place in a wooded forest with many small lanterns softly illuminating the clearing. The smell of both fresh and rotting pine in mid-autumn saturated the air with a cloyingly sweet smell. They’d dug a large pit in the center, in front of the makeshift stage where the speakers would preach to the followers. A large, wooden effigy, carved amateurishly but still standing tall and imposing, had been pounded into the cratered earth, but still stood at least double the height of a human.

The congregation of acolytes and zealots, men and women alike, chatted amongst themselves in small groups, all wearing the same identical hooded garb. Many gathered dry, fallen wood, idly throwing them into the fire pit. A frisson of excitement vibrated in the wooded air. A Prognosis meeting within closed walls was quite rare, and today, they even had a significant program to go with their open air gathering. Truly, today would be an event.

Taking his time, he scrutinized the whole area from the large eye holes cut out of his mask. How had the Prognosis made such great strides in this area? The footpaths were well worn from being so often walked, but more than that, there were so many felled trees and land flattened, making way for the development of the large wooden structures that had been erected. How had they done this without heavy machinery, even if it were far on the outskirts of Cirrane?

“Glory, brother,” he greeted another as he explored this new… compound? He wasn’t quite sure what it was yet.

“Glory.” They signed to each other.

“Forgive me, I fear I am out of the loop. I know the prefect will speak today—”

“I know! It’s friggin’ amazing!” The new person was giddy beyond belief, as if this were some sort of musical concert and he was the biggest fan in the world. “He’s everything you could imagine in a leader to cleanse this world of subhumans! I had a hand in building this podium and digging out the pit, you know?”

The newcomer could practically see the grin beneath that hood.

“Ah, I see. Would you mind telling me what this establishment is to be?”

“Brother, you don’t know!? You must be the freshest of acolytes!” The giddy one exclaimed.

“Heh heh… yeah…” the head covering only served to increase the temperature around his face to match his blush.

“This is a new combat base! We’ll train our soldiers here! Have you gone through any of our methods yet?”

“I’m afraid not…”

“You have to be a good shot, of course! But we won’t do that here. You can do that at any old gun range with one of your brothers in plain daylight. Less suspicion, you know? There’s already so many guns here. God bless this great nation, and a pox on those subhumans who would defile it!”

“Glory!” the newcomer flashed the sign again.

“Uh, yeah, right! glory!” He didn’t return the sign. “You know we don’t say that unless it’s a greeting. Don’t worry, I know you’re new,” he whispered.

“Ah, sorry!” the newcomer winced and rubbed the back of his head.

“So are you a good shot?”

“Yeah, I’m okay.”

“A humble one, are you? Well you’ll have to show us here sometime. But like I said, we don’t train firearms here. Physical fitness, and training of the mind,” he tapped his temple, “if you know what I mean. You have to be fit and strong to keep up with these subhumans. And the Prognosis says, ‘because we are the master species, we must continue to earn the title every day.’ You know at least that much, right?”

“O-of course!”

“Hmm. You look a little scrawny to me,” he commented on the newcomer’s fairly thin frame.

“I’m a good runner.”

“Ah, yeah, yeah, okay, I get it. This camp’ll whip you right into shape it will! Especially with the prefect leading it. We’ll pack on the muscle in no time!”

“What were you saying about training the mind?” The new initiate changed the subject.

“Have you seen one live in the flesh before?”

“No, not yet.”

The talkative one’s lilt grew sinister, bloodthirsty, and tinged with anticipation.

“That’s the sickest part of it, you know? You probably have. Maybe someone you know is a subhuman. They can take our shape, pretend to be us, sometimes even good enough to live among us for years at a time. But they ain’t us. The truth always comes out. They can’t be us, will never be us. Their little subhuman nature always comes crawling out someway,” he shaped his open palms and fingers into claws and pantomimed eating a nut like a squirrel. “And it’s our job to…” he took a finger and slid it over his own throat, “kzzzt.”

“Naturally, brother. But what does this have to do with training the mind?”

“You can run, you can shoot. The camp’ll make you stronger if you stick with it and you got the will to be one of us. But how will you know the enemy if you can’t even identify them?”

“I see.”

“Yes. Seeing is everything. These subhumans are wolves in sheeps’ clothing. They seek to usurp us. Some of them feed off us, you know. Impregnate our women. Steal our profits. Wreck our societies. What good is your shooting if you can’t even aim it at the enemy when you see them?”

“So you teach how to identify them.”

“You got it, brother. Follow me. We talk as we walk. By the way, have you fired any of our new enchanted rifles?”

The new initiate shook his head as he followed behind while his elder continued to volunteer all of the information he knew.

“Some of them, women, turn into enormous, fur-covered wolves. Larger than a human. She’ll tear your throat with but a swipe of her claws! You should see the bloody remains from some of these attacks. They only come out on full moons. Rest of the time, they look human as you or me.”

“But then, how can we know them without a full moon?”

“Exactly, brother! How indeed? That was the question. Well, their human forms carry some of their beast traits. Because that’s what they are, after all. Have you ever seen women as tall as men, wickedly fit, and far more muscular too? They hide their powerful figure with clothing, seduce our men, and then devour them. But there’s plenty of signs. Their nails would be long and chipped, their necks thick from biting and pulling. You see any women like this, and you can be sure she’s a subhuman she-devil.”

“I see…”

“And any woman who smells permanently like the sea. Eats fish only. Can’t stand any vegetables or meat. That’s a sure sign. They’ll tell you it’s a diet, or some kind of allergy. But if you see webbing between her fingers that looks far too long, then you know. She’s another one of them.”

“How do you know all of this so well?” The newcomer marveled as they continued along the large clearing toward some rectangular boxes covered by large, camouflage tarps.

“Heh heh. Heh heh heh…”

The air became rank the closer they got to those boxes. It smelled of sweat and animal excrement. The newcomer could hear slight moans and whimpers playing off the beat of their regular footsteps.

“Glory, brother,” the experienced one flashed a sign to the guards.

“Glory.” They all greeted each other.

Without pause for applause, the experienced zealot lifted a bit of the camouflage tarp to give the newcomer a look at the naked humans, mostly women, degraded and caged behind bars in a far too tight containment.

“…Because we have some to burn at the stake today after our prefect delivers his speech.”

The newcomer gulped.

Chapter 2 - Out with the Chaff

All of the torches were lit now as the sun set amidst the pastoral Cirrane skyline. Deep in the Prognosis camp, the red glow from the lit oil lanterns reflecting off the hoods of the acolytes and zealots whilst they chanted throatily for their prefect proved a stark juxtaposition to the idyllic scenery.

“We are the Prognosis. We are the true inheritors of this planet. We do not compromise.”

Each member chanted their own particular mantra made up of these lines, or lines like them. There was no coordination, no rhyme, no rhythm. Just the low, growling utterances of unwavering belief and utter devotion to their cause served as the common theme to the chant.

The volume of the chanting diminished rapidly as one by one, the acolytes and zealots noticed movement toward the podium in front of them. The newcomer, standing at the back, stretched his legs and craned his head, looking around furtively for… something.

One man, hooded like the rest of them, but with a few patches of distinction bearing the mark of the Prognosis pinned to his clothing, began to speak.

“PROGNOSIS!” He announced. His voice was deep, powerful, and carried with no need for a microphone.

His crowd of devoted, attentive admirers began to whoop and cheer loudly. “Prefect! The prefect is here!!”

The prefect lifted his powerful arms and reached out with his hands, making downward motions in the air to hush his captive audience.

“I stand here before you today,” his voice continued to boom, “to bring good tidings, my fellow brothers and sisters!”

“GLORY!” They all raised their closed fists into the air.

“The Prognosis stands strong, and grows stronger every day. Acolytes, zealots, brothers and sisters, we must be on the lookout not only for the subhumans, but also for other, right-minded people who fear for the future of our species against the persecution and predation of the beasts! Be cautious, be wary, be coy… and we can pick up the wheat from the chaff. The ones who are willing to listen, willing to join our cause, willing to fight for the survival of our species!” He concluded at the peak of a growing crescendo.

“GLORY!”

“Now, I am sure you all know the real reason we are gathered here today…”

Everyone clapped and cheered.

“Brother! Bring out one of our bounties!” The prefect gestured with a grandiose wave of his hand and stepped aside.

A hushed murmur overtook the crowd as two lackeys lugged a small yet heavy cage across the raised stage. They were clearly struggling with the weight until the prefect became impatient and went over to help, directing the lackey in front to join in the back. Then, the prefect played his hand on the lead handle and hoisted it effortlessly in one smooth motion. Soon, the cage was center stage.

“This! Is what you’ve been waiting for! This! Is what we’ve been fighting against! This! Is the face… of our enemy!”

The prefect yanked the tarp off the cage, flinging the heavy cover like a weightless rag into the back corner of the stage. Inside the cage was a dirty, nude, waifish woman. She looked like she hadn’t eaten in days, and she recoiled at the light, scampering away from the crowd until she hit the bars.

The crowd of Prognosis members cheered and jeered. The newcomer looked on in shock. Was this really what they were after? An innocent, degraded woman? Was she even a so-called subhuman?

“It’s great, brother, isn’t it?!” The acolyte who had been guiding him around cackled. “These woods are downright _infested _with these rodents! They must breed like rabbits! Stupid rabbits, all they wanna do all the time is fuck and make more rodents!”

“Yeah… hah hah… it’s great…” the newcomer replied, but his soft reply was drowned out by the crowd. “Giggiline… Giggiline!” he hissed into his hood. “Where are you!?”

“Now, my brothers,” the prefect spoke in a grand, sweeping voice as he walked from one end of the stage to the other. “Do not let her appearance fool you! This here is a seal! Behold! Her pelt!” He reached into his robe and brought out a large, gray, rubbery sheet.

The prisoner wailed in anguish and lunged an arm through the bars, mashing her face against her bonds in desperation.

The entire crowd laughed.

“Giggiline! Giggiline! Hurry!”

“Now, we could just execute her… but do you think a beast such as this deserves such a simple fate?”

“NO! BOOO! NEVER!”

“Now, even I don’t know what will happen if we slash this to pieces…” the prefect flattened it out and gripped it at both ends. “This will be a very educational moment for all of us, won’t it?”

All eyes were on the prefect as he grandstanded in his act of unconscionable cruelty. Nobody saw a circular disk seemingly detach and depress from inside the cage. Even the selkie prisoner herself didn’t notice.

“Should I… should I not…?” the prefect pretended to pontificate.

“DO IT! DO IT BROTHER! GLORYYYYY!” the crowd screamed.

“Giggiline!” the newcomer screamed.

“What the fuck is Giggiline!?” the acolyte turned to the newcomer.

“You all have been very naughty…” A cute, nasally voice rang out from the center of the stage, followed by a loud honk.

In the middle of the cage, smoothly rising out of the lowered circular disk, appeared Giggiline’s orange and pink-striped pigtails and large red nose.

Chapter 3 - Gatey Doux, not Gatey Douxn’t

“What the hell is that… clown!?”

“Is it another subhuman!?”

“It’s GIGGILINE! The demon who…… who did… impossible things to me!”

“Oh shit! HER!?”

“You’ve all been naughty, naughty… NAUGHTY!” Giggiline screamed.

At the final word, an enormous pair of speakers materialized on the stage. The sound membranes came apart at the seams, each layer separating from the whole and bulging forward to screech and vibrate in midair. Everyone in the vicinity covered their ears, but it was too late. They were temporarily deafened, ears ringing. Then the speaker membranes returned back to their original shape.

“What are you!?” The prefect screamed, the only one not incapacitated from Giggiline’s gut-wrenching speaker scream.

“I’m the protector of Cirrane! And you are not welcome here!”

The clowny hero pushed the top of the cage upward as the metal bars expanded and wobbled like jelly, lengthening with Giggiline’s super strong/reality warping push. Then, while poles jiggled, Giggiline gyrated her own body to the gelatinous poles, shimmering right between and through the cage.

“GET HER!” the prefect ordered.

Giggiline pulled out a little pinwheel from the space in between her breasts. Holding the multicolored, cheap plastic-looking child’s toy between herself and the prefect, she pursed her lips and blew. The pinwheel began to slap loudly as her hurricane force breath battered the leader of this human-power cult.

“WHAAAAT!” the prefect screamed as he leaned in against Giggiline’s inexplicable abilities.

“Ooh, you’re stronger than the normal person! But that won’t help you…”

Giggiline exhaled a second quick puff, blowing the pinwheels off of their stem like multicolored dandelion fluff. The prefect lost his footing as he was carried away, crashing into the trees beyond.

Meanwhile, the crowd of hooded cultists were closing in upon her.

‘Do you guys like pie?” Giggiline stuck out a devilishly long tongue that reached down to her chest. It waggled of its own accord before it, too, plunged into her cleavage covered by her polka dotted, skin tight costume. When her fleshy tongue came back out, an enormous, military grade bazooka launcher came with it.

Giggiline retracted her tongue, unwinding it from all of the bends and slots of her impromptu weapon and slung it over her shoulder. The ones rushing the stage to tackle her suddenly stopped in their tracks as she took aim. And the ones behind them crashed into the halting chargers, leaving them all a crumpled, messy heap.

“I usually take it easier on bad guys, but you guys have made me so mad!” Giggiline’s face turned cherry red as steam blew out of her ears. “So, this is gonna hurt!”

She pulled the trigger with her gloved hand, not even bothering to turn or readjust her aim. The clowny hero simply pointed it straight down the middle and held down the trigger, as pie after banana cream pie launched out of the green barrel.

Her deadly projectile desserts hit the closest acolytes and zealots with such force that any who took a cream pie to the face were immediately knocked unconscious, the pie tin smacking their faces and immediately giving them two black eyes that would remain swollen for weeks. Others who had been slugged in the body found themselves launched backward through the air, bending them in half and leaving deep welts in their far softer bodies.

The ones on the sides who thought they were clear of Giggiline’s deadly attack continued to rush her, hoping to tackle the intruder. What they didn’t see was that her pies boomeranged mid-flight, slowing to a crawl, hovering for a second, and then turning back with far greater force than before. It smacked them in the back of their heads, knocking them out cold as their foreheads slammed into the floor.

Only a handful of lucky human-supremacy followers remained standing. They looked at each other in abject fear and decided to run for it. Except a strange thought-bubble cloud had appeared above their heads, connected by little round, white dots. Inside those thought bubbles were various fears of getting destroyed by Giggiline, be it by getting stepped on by her big clown shoes, getting pied in the face, or any other array of preposterous horrors.

“You think you’re getting away from me?!” Giggiline cackled. “You captured these poor creatures to slaughter them… why, you should have your pie and eat it too!”

And just like that, their thought bubbles evaporated and reformed, displaying their only, all-consuming, singular desire to eat pie. Giggiline’s little command rewired all of them to lick the banana cream pie and crust off of the wooded floor and their unconscious colleagues until they themselves were gorged and unable to move.

“Giggiline!” Kai pulled the hood off of his head as he shrieked while escorting the poor selkie away. “He’s coming! I have to save the others!”

“I’ll lead him away!” Giggiline responded with no hint of malice or humor. She was serious.

“I’LL KILL YOU, AND THEN I’LL SKIN THAT ANIMAL ALIVE!” The prefect charged with shocking speed. He must’ve been moving as fast as a car on a highway!

“Oh no you don’t!” Giggiline moved to stand in between them.

The prefect didn’t miss a beat. He threw a powerful punch that would’ve immediately liquified its target, human or not, with his supersonic punch.

But Giggiline’s torso bounced backward like a rubber band before snapping back forward and returning the prefect’s power two times over.

“Oof!” He wheezed as he was sent flying away once more.

But even that wasn’t enough to stop him. His fingers carved deep grooves into the earth as he halted his own flight, and knowing now that he was no match for Giggiline, he immediately charged toward Kai where he was rescuing their prisoners.

So fast was his movement that Kai couldn’t even sense his imminent doom. But Giggiline blindsided him mid-charge with a huge balloon glove to the face.

“Oh my god! How is he so strong and tough!?” Kai gasped, clearly shaken.

“Hurry Kai! I’ll distract him away from here!”

Giggiline appeared to teleport, leaping off one squeaky shoe and reappearing a few yards ahead with every hop. She was no boxer, but that didn’t matter. Her unorthodox blows, whether it be confetti thrown by her hands, pies slamming him in the face, or daisies producing high-pressured water like a firehose… all of her blows struck true, sending the prefect further and further toward the edge of the Cirranean territory.

But her attacks were losing power. Her intensity began to weaken, and bruised as the prefect was, his endurance and resolve saw him back up once more, charging forward relentlessly.

And then it happened.

The prefect landed a haymaker of a hook right onto Giggiline’s cheek.

Her face began to turn rubber once more to absorb and return the impact… only it never return. Her body twisted like a rag in midair as his punch sent her flying.

“O… ow! OW!” Giggiline shrieked as two large fountains of tears burst forth from her eyes. “How did you do that to me!?” She clutched her cheek.

“DIE, FREAK!” He didn’t let up.

Giggiline re-apparated her bazooka and launched a volley of pies. They knocked the hood off the prefect’s face, only for him to lick up the creme while continuing to charge forward but not slowing his advance in the slightest. The clowny hero of Cirrane yelped and covered her face, completely untrained and ill-equipped to handle an actual high pressure slugfest.

Unfortunately for her, the prefect changed his attack and swept Giggiline’s leg out from beneath her. She fell to the soft earth, and he mounted her, wrapping his legs around her torso while sitting on her stomach.

From there, he began to viciously throw fists and drop elbows onto Giggiline’s head. She swiveled and dodged, shrieking and crying for help as her colorful makeup actually began to smear.

“GAH! No!” Each of Giggiline’s cries were immediately met with another vicious, silencing assault.

“Looks like you’re no match for a proper human!” He snarled as he continued to attack. “They made me better, stronger, tweaked my genes. Engineered me into the perfect human! YOU ARE NO MATCH FOR ME!”

Giggiline’s defenses were failing. She barely had the strength to protect her head anymore. She watched as he began to drop another vicious elbow. This one blotted out the glowing moon as it descended, plummeting Giggiline’s vision into darkness.

Only for his elbow to bounce off of an invisible dome before striking Giggiline’s skull.

“Huh!?” He punched some more. The blue boundary flickered and wavered, deflecting his attacks until it shattered with a loud crack.

Giggiline looked to her left to see Archie—no, Gatey Doux—running toward her. She must have conjured the barrier! But it wasn’t enough. And now she was running with one arm outstretched, reaching for her girlfriend, her face a silent mask of horror. Even Gatey’s power to conjure anything via mime wasn’t enough.

“DIE!” The prefect screamed.

As he repeated his killing blow, Gatey Doux actually began to stumble and weaken as she fell to the ground. A piece of something that Giggiline had left within the mime’s regular human form, Archie, left her body and reunited with Giggiline in her time of need.

“Stop.” Giggiline ordered calmly.

The prefect froze in mid-strike.

“Get off of me.”

He did.

“Dance like a monkey.”

As he raised his arms and scratched his armpits, balancing on one leg then the other, Giggiline’s clown makeup reformed as all of her bruising disappeared.

“You…tried…to hurt…my cupcake?! You’re gonna get it! For REAL!”

She reached into her cleavage with both hands, arms disappeared beyond the elbows as she dug deep, and withdrew a cannon. Then, moving over to the engineered superhuman, she placed a gloved hand on his hand and pressed him down like a jack-in-the-box. He became springy, helpless to move on his own.

“LATER GATOR!”

Giggiline placed the villain’s transformed body into the barrel of her cannon and invited Gatey Doux over to do the honors.

Silently, Gatey mimed striking an invisible match, then placed said invisible match near the fuse. It lit with a sizzle. Gatey Doux then yelped soundlessly in pain and “dropped” the match while shaking her hand and blowing cool, cool air to soothe her burns.

“Cover your ears!” Giggiline giggled.

The two girls plugged their ears, turned, and squatted. The fuse burned deep into the cannon.

KABOOM!

Out went the jack-in-the-box prefect, up into the atmosphere before exploding in a shower of sparkly fireworks.

Epilogue

Giggiline, Gatey Doux, and Kai had freed all of the mystical beings captured by the Prognosis. They were on their way back to Cirrane in Gatey’s invisible clown car which she drove by miming, with every single Prognosis member tied together in a bundle, secured by a neat, red bow.

“What happened back there?” Kai asked with concern.

Gatey Doux shrugged and shook her head.

“I got too far from Cirrane and my powers weakened. I thought it would be fine, but… I need to be prepared next time,” Giggiline spoke seriously, more in line with her Jovie persona. “I didn’t think there would be a human who could challenge me like that. These Prognosis jerks… they’re dangerous.”

Gatey frowned and stroked Giggiline’s hair to lighten her up, all without taking her eyes off the road.

“Thanks, Gatey. I’ll be fine as long as I have youuu,” Giggiline rested her head on Gatey’s shoulder, setting off a loud whoopee cushion. For better or for worse, the day was won.