Dating Game: Rasputin Barxotka
Hey all! Not only do I have this lovely bit of fan art from Vas Littlecrow Wojtanowicz, I have the pleasure to present a crossover of The Demon Archives vs Rasputin Barxotka. This was inspired by Crossover Dating Service Diary Game on the Webcomic Underdogs forum, where Vas and I planned it. It features our very own Jane, and Hielope Aquaria, a water succubus/creepy giant aquatic demon from Hell 🙂 See the other half of the story (from Hielope’s perspective) here.
Written by Daniel Sharp with assistance from Rev. Vas Littlecrow Wojtanowicz.
All characters from Rasputin Barxotka are copyright VAS Littlecrow
EDIT: Just to clarify, this isn’t quite canonical, but it would have occurred less than a year before Jane and Tenzin first started working together, and about 3-4 years before the events of Chapter 1.
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Personal Log
March 17th, 2104.
Today I had a very interesting experience. I’d had assignments outside of the lab before, and talked to a fair number of people, which was alright, I guess. I hadn’t really met anyone worth talking to for longer than a couple seconds, aside from Mom and Dad, and even they get on my nerves sometimes with all their expectations and protocols. Today, I think I met someone who really cared to understand me for who I am and who I could be. Too bad I’ll never get to see her again.
It started out like a fairly simple assignment. Mom checked over my subroutines before briefing me on the day’s assignment. Apparently an unknown aquatic creature had been captured in Issyk Kul. It appeared intelligent, but seemed to have some sort of odd effect on the human researchers who attempted to study with it. They wanted me to go try to communicate with it since whatever the issue was wouldn’t affect me. One of the benefits of not having a body, I guess. I tried to get Mom to be more specific, but as per the norm, Dad chewed me out for asking impertinent questions. And no, he couldn’t go either because he didn’t have the abilities my newer matrix provided. Lame.
Anyways, I transferred over to the Marine Biology lab and got my first look at the creature. For lack of a better term, it looked like a cross between a mermaid, siren and sea monster from the old myths, with dozens of thrashing tentacles, chitinous clawed arms on a large, well-endowed female form. I wasn’t hooked up to the analytic software at the time, just the visual feed, but it looked like her form was shifting rapidly as well. It was fascinating. I’d never seen or studied anything like it.
It took a couple of minutes for the meatbags in charge to get me all hooked up, but I was too impatient. It was plenty of time for me to make a sub-routine to make my own analysis from the visual data I did have. While the creature was technically restrained in a small tank, I didn’t get the feeling that it was trapped. It seemed more…sad. Like it was going through some sort of bizarre charade.
Once I finally got set up, I projected my normal avatar into the water a few yards in front of the creature and said hello. What followed was probably supposed to scare me. It grew in size, skin and hair changing color, tentacles reaching out to grab me. I didn’t flinch. I wasn’t really there. I did record the alterations and give my analytic subroutine a bit more processing power to try to figure out how it shapeshifted.
It didn’t take long for it to realize it couldn’t touch me. It changed shape rapidly a couple of times, alternating between obvious attempts to scare me and interesting attempts at seduction. I returned the favor, changing my appearance to match its own and shouting “Boo!” through the speakers.
The creature stopped, and uttered a brief laugh, almost in wonder. “Are you like me?” it asked, accompanied by some oaths and terms I had certainly never heard before, though I made sure to log them.
I assured it that I most certainly was not, that I was merely an advanced AI on greeting duty since she’d scared off all the humans. She smiled at that, a big, toothy smile. I mean really toothy. She’d given herself fangs in her latest form.
She seemed pleased that I wasn’t frightened of her, and started asking me all sorts of questions about myself, to which I responded in kind. What was my name, where had I come from, what work I did for the researchers. I tried my best to answer all of her questions, but couldn’t seem to convince her I wasn’t a creature like her. She told me about herself, her name (Hielope, a beautiful name in my opinion), where she came from, the types of beings she worked with, about what she had to do to survive. She even performed some more shape-shifting so I could get a better look at how it worked. Some of the terms she kept using matched up with some interesting factoids from Earth’s mythology. It was a little strange, but not much stranger than me being a synthetic brain with a personality.
We really were getting along pretty well. Hielope had settled down on a comfortable form, almost human like. She was telling me how she often gets so lonely, because everyone is basically afraid of her or food for her. She never felt like she could be herself, which I totally understood. We’d been talking for about an hour when I shyly asked her if she could take the form she’d been in when I’d first arrived, so I could get a better look at here. I could understand why some of the meatbags had been scared of her, but I just thought she was beautiful.
Just then the researchers started bothering me. Apparently they’d gotten enough data and it was time to end the conversation. They kept saying how dangerous Hielope was and that they’d have to get rid of her. I tried to convince them that she wasn’t dangerous, just lonely, but they didn’t listen. They even had the nerve to force me out of their system, like I was some flash drive they could eject! I didn’t even get to say goodbye to Hielope before I got transferred back to Mom’s lab, and she wouldn’t let me go back.
I heard later that Hielope had escaped somehow, which made me feel a bit better. When she’d said she wasn’t from this world before I hadn’t understood, but I think I get it know. While it comforts me to know she’s still alive somewhere, somewhen, I still feel … empty. It’s weird. I guess this is what heartache feels like.