Out of Control 2 (Patreon)

Out Of Control
Chapter 2

-VB-

On the furthest edge of the city that I could never leave now, I sat huddled in the corner of an abandoned house with boarded-up windows and spray-painted walls.

“None of this was what I wanted,” I mumbled to myself while rocking back and forth slowly.

It was horrible. I could feel a ticking clock in my head, always there and never at the front of my mind, that never failed to remind me that I would need to change and assault somewhere as an Endbringer again.

I didn’t choose to appear in an Endbringer form. I didn’t fucking choose to trigger an Endbringer Alert response. I just wanted to get away, but something held me back. My own power sent me back here every time I opened a portal. Was it because I was an Endbringer in all ways that mattered and so I couldn’t leave Earth Bet as long as Eidolon remained?

And I fucking chose that.

I chose it as my part of brainstorming CYOA builds. I thought it might be cool to have a character who had the capability to open a portal to anywhere but would have to return to Brockton Bay within, like, a day or something. This build was never supposed to be used for any real-life transition! Hell, if I was ever going to choose a CYOA build, then it would have been the one that let me go anywhere or let me be Eidolon v.2, the Trumping Trump.

And don’t get me started on my pica. I would never choose that as a mental disorder, so fuck whoever did that; I don't appreciate having to eat things that weren't food! Someone must have gotten a hold of my CYOA and then changed it to fuck me over.

(My only suspect was my older brother…)

I let out a shuddering breath between my unmanly sobs.

‘I guess… I should start doing something. Shouldn’t stay here all day like a loser.’

But then I spent another hour sobbing about my life anyway before I left.

-VB-

Despite having the body of an Endbringer and being able to change into an even stronger form, I trudged through the streets of Brockton Bay as one of the many refugees, homeless, and others who now roamed the streets.

Like most of my CYOA builds, I had the “Rust” Gamer as part of my CYOA build. As a Rust “player,” I walked around breaking barrels, searching toolboxes, and wooden crates. Not only did I get whatever was inside it, I also got bonus loot from them. It was why despite appearing as an Endbringer and thus possessing no clothes of my own, I was able to find myself clothes, even if it was just a pair of jeans and a ragged red hoodie.

I ignored the others walking down the street, some running but most ignored each other. However, try as I might, it was hard to ignore the fact that the closer I went towards each portal - to check up on them and see if I needed to close them - the more military troops I encountered, and I wasn’t talking about militias, police, or National Guard. I mean full-fledged proper army stationing and cordoning off portals with barbed wire fences and watchtowers.

‘What are they doing over there?’ I thought to myself. Because of my then ever-growing frantic attempts to leave only to be spat back out to Brockton Bay, I was pushing myself into one world after another without quite recognizing each one of them. I knew that the first world I tried to flee into was Nisekoi - a safe rom-com universe if nothing else about the place was dangerous - while the last place I remembered was … RWBY. ‘Hmm, that might be bad. I should go and close that one. Can’t have the Grimm flooding into the city while I can’t leave it.’

But I didn’t know which portal led where.

“I’m going to be walking around a lot, aren’t I?” I muttered as I reached into a backpack I picked up to “withdraw” a bit of scrap metal from it when I was actually withdrawing it from my Rust inventory fused with Bag of Holdings (infinite inventory for the win) and then bit down on it.

My Endbringer physiology easily tore through the scrap metal and I proceeded to start chewing and then swallowing it.

I didn’t do this because I liked eating metal. No, it tasted like dried and rotting blood, never mind whatever other stuff was on it like chemicals that made men less fertile or whatever. No, I ate this because every six hours or so, I would get stomach cramps until I shoved a hand full of scrap metals down my nonexistent fucking throat.

Nonexistent throat, I say, because I don’t have a human body anymore.

Wait. Shit.

Shit.

Shit.

Do I still have to shit? Like, fuck, could toilets even carry off metallic waste in bulk?

Oh fuck, was I going to shit metal?

I stood there in a daze as questions about my biology (or lack thereof) began to haunt me.

I shuddered as I continued moving along.

---

“Hey, you!”

I must have walked about half a day when I met my first trouble.

It was a bunch of tattooed, bald, and -. Oh, these guys must be the Empire Eighty-Eight.

I looked around. We were in a ruined street lined with ruined middle-class suburban homes. The road was uneven, and I couldn’t even see over the jutting road behind and in front of me.

Oh.

‘I see now,’ I thought to myself. ‘The roads make it hard for people to see. The space is small enough that people could be ambushed, and it is a road, so people use it.’ It was the perfect ambush spot.

“Hand over whatever you have in that bag,” the lead gangster chuckled as he touched his gun holstered at his belt.

I sighed and then snapped my finger.

The man opened his mouth to ask why the fuck I did that - reading his lips - but he stopped after “fuck” because no sound was coming out.

His four friends also tried to talk, but no sound came out of their throats or their surroundings.

I lifted the hoodie back and grinned maliciously.

---

As a Rust player, nothing in the world was not useful. Stone, scrap metal, components, sulfur, metal, wood, leather, animal fat, bones, and even flesh...

When I left that little spot on the road, only blood stained the ground and nothing else remained.

“Waste not, want not,” I chuckled to myself as I tossed my new Bone Knife into the inventory.