Dear Journal,

I woke up. Again. I know, it’s bad form or something to start my entries and stories with waking up. But, come on. You promised I wouldn’t wake up. Any day now, I would continue to sleep peacefully. And yet, here I am. Writing to you. Again. How long are you going to continue to deny me my right to Endless Slumber? I don’t even know why I continue to let you string me along, but I trusted your word. I swear, if we ever meet face to face, I’m going to punch you so hard! You’re lucky I don’t deliver these things myself. One day. One day, I’m gonna catch you and you’re gonna wish you’d never contracted with me!

With all due hate,

Sepeti

An errant spray of bullets pinged off of Sepeti’s shoulder as he angrily scribbled in the notebook. He absolutely needed to dot his i’s and cross his t’s before he could continue with his day. It was mandatory or it would drive him crazy. And a crazy Sepeti was good for no one, least of all himself.

“Peti! You done?!” a voice yelled as the owner was thrown across the battlefield, zooming by at inhuman speeds.

Sepeti shushed them as he tugged at the large bun of hair sitting atop his head, frustrated that his entry just wasn’t coming across as angry as he wanted it to. He wanted Journal to feel how frustrated he was. The damnable entity would acknowledge his gripes, one way or another. Every time he went to write the newest curse word he could think of the notebook would blink a bright red before expunging the untoward entry.

“Stupid, stupid fuckin’ thing,” he spat as he jabbed at the page with his inky pen. A large blot spread across the page as he accidentally split the overmetal tip in half, drenching the page in deep red ink.

A rocket-propelled arm bounced off his chest with an effete ping, crushing itself under the forward momentum that had carried it across the raging battlefield.

“Dammit!”

He threw the broken pen without looking. Explosions rang out as the pen cut through war machines and automatons before impacting the dried earth, leaving a crater in its wake.

Ignoring the destruction he’d caused, Sepeti pulled out another pen. They were supposed to be the latest in a long line of so-called ‘Sepeti-proof’ pens but he’d already gone through five, and it was only his first entry for the day. How was he supposed to communicate all of his frustration if his pens kept breaking down on him? He was going to have to give R&D a piece of his mind for making such faulty pens.

“Peti!” a feminine voice rose above the cacophony of explosions and twisting metal. “Peti! We could really use some help right now!”

Sepeti shushed the woman, waving a hand in her general direction. A blast of pressure emanated from the simple gesture, sending everything in its direct path flying away. Heavy tanks creaked as they were picked up and flung by the, seemingly alive, force. Instead of slowing down, it sped up as it hit the ground and changed course. The range of the living air grew as it sped toward the ever-expanding horizon, mowing down rows upon rows of rumbling Machina.

“Thanks!”

The feminine voice reached Sepeti but he was already knee-deep in a new entry. He was going to figure out how to get a few choice curse words past the censor’s, one way or another. Stupid extradimensional beings and their strict rules. Soon he would break their boundaries and punch Journal and their brethren. As soon as he figured out how to ascend from this damned mechanical world. Stupid boundaries, refusing to be broken.

“Hey Journal,” he dictated as he wrote down his thoughts. “Soon and very soon. I’m gonna come up there, wherever the hell you are, and kick your ass!”

The notebook blinked red and quickly retracted the whole sentence. Sepeti ground his teeth and kicked the empty space that he was standing on, sending a quake of annoyed energy away from where he floated above the battleground. A huge crater bloomed beneath him as the ground trembled from his outburst. The sound of twisting metal and explosions crescendoed as thousands of metal foot soldiers were buried underneath the earthquake he’d caused.

Sepeti rubbed his ears as the creaking of the metal grew annoying enough for him to actually notice. He snapped, flexing his tattooed hands.

Silence drenched the battlefield as he applied a dampening field to everything within his line of consciousness. From his vantage point above the battle and due to his heightened senses, he could see and hear extremely far. Farther than was necessary for his skills field of effect but he was too bothered by his growing annoyance with his failed notebook entry to worry about adjusting the settings. Why should he adjust the settings when all he needed to do was activate the skill? Too much work.

“Hey Journal,” he read the bit that hadn’t been deleted over again. “Soon and very soon. I’m gonna visit you. And I’m gonna kick your…”

He scratched his head as he tried to come up with a word that was as satisfying as ‘ass’ when threatening to beat someone up. He’d used ‘kick your butt’ one too many times and he was getting tired of the phrase. Saying something over and over again tended to make the word or phrase lose its luster.

“Hey CO,” Sepeti said as he tapped the tiny headset that was resting in his ear. Truthfully, he didn’t need it to communicate with his team. He could easily hear them regardless of where they were on the huge battlefield. The problem was with him being able to get his message across to them. He’d tried shouting before but all it did was lay waste to everything. “Can ya hear me? I need a juicier word for ‘ass.’ Something spicy. Something that really gets the message across that I’m gonna kick someone’s ass. Maybe even a phrase that isn’t ‘kick your ass’ since I can’t really use that. And it can’t include ‘butt.’ I’ve used that too much.”

Static crackled across the headset, popping ineffectively in his ear. His pocket rumbled as he received a message.

|You silenced us too so I cannot answer your question.|

“Oh, my bad,” Sepeti said as he snapped. The noise of the battlefield returned, rushing at him like an enraged animal. He flinched as if sound was something that could be dodged. He could dodge sound-based attacks so there was some credence to his reaction. It was just pure instinct at this point. He drew a circle in the air and he was immediately ensconced in a bubble of relative quiet. All the explosions and usual battlefield noises dimmed as if they’d been turned down manually. “There ya go. Better?”

“Yes, Mr. Sepeti,” a prim voice answered over the headset. “Have you tried ‘rock your socks?’”

“Oh, that has a nice little flow to it,” Sepeti said as he quickly jotted down the suggestion. It slipped by the censors but it just didn’t feel quite right. He scratched the phrase out and it was deleted from the notebook. “But it doesn’t really have that spice I’m looking for. I really wanna get the message across that I’m gonna lay into ‘em when I see ‘em. Ya know?”

“How about ‘knock your block off?’” CO said after a moment of contemplation.

“Hmm,” Sepeti sighed as he toyed with his beard. “That could work.”

He quickly scribbled the turn of phrase into the notebook and was happy to find it was able to make its way past the censors. He read what he had a few times, nodding as he began to feel a smidge of satisfaction.

“Yeah, Ima knock their damned block off,” he mumbled as he continued to fill in the rest of his entry. The rest was his cookie-cutter bits, threatening to one day ascend and hunt Journal and their ilk down. The usual for Sepeti.

All around him, the huge battle raged. His teammates continued to churn through the endless waves of Machina as their spawnships continued to spew fodder to keep them occupied. A pair of huge metal humanoids sat next to the spawnships, waiting to intercept any who dared approach. They gleamed under the twin suns as the pair began their descent for the day.

One of the humanoids lifted a gargantuan arm and pointed at Sepeti’s suspended figure. The arm transformed into a miles-long cannon as energy gathered within. The arm cannon glowed a dangerous yellow-orange as it readied to fire.

“Mr. Sepeti,” CO interrupted Sepeti’s musings. “One of the Protectors is aiming at you. Evasive actions are suggested.”

A resounding, thundering boom shook the barren plains underneath the millions of cannon fodder machines and the superpowered humans zooming about. A shockwave of pure energy issued from the arm-turned-cannon in a bright beam. It rushed at Sepeti, charring everything beneath it. The space surrounding the beam bent as it flew towards its target.

Sepeti grunted as he turned and punched the gigantic beam. It bounced off his fist and returned the way it came, picking up speed as it flew back at the Protector and its outstretched cannon-arm.

The other Protector, idle until it sensed the approaching wave of energy, erected numerous barriers of energy. It layered them in an effort to slow and diminish the destructive beam of energy, arms moving at dazzling speeds as it continuously summoned magical barriers.

“That’s so stupid,” Sepeti muttered, scowling as he watched the large metal contraption casting magic. “Who the hell thought it was a good idea to allow Machina access to magic? I bet it was Journal’s idea. That damned extradimensional idiot.”

“Actually, sir,” CO chimed in as if they sensed he was speaking to them. “The Machina gaining access to magic is due to Boba. At least, that is what has been deciphered from the jumbled messages the Machina have been constantly sending us.”

Sepeti smacked his face as he groaned. He couldn’t help it. Every time someone mentioned the ‘so-called’ Gods of this forsaken dimension, he just couldn’t stop himself from cringing.

“Why do all of them have such stupid names?”

Before CO could answer, the sound of crumbling and crashing barriers died down, drawing Sepeti’s attention back to the huge Machina. The Magic Protector, as labeled by Sepeti in his head, held both its hands up. Its huge shoulders rose and fell as if it were tired from the frenzied casting. The Arm-Cannon Protector, Sepeti-labeled as well, recalled its overcompensatory weapon. Shiny metal pieces slid around its arm in dizzying rotations as parts of the cannon returned to its body. The two machines reached out to one another and locked arms, shards of metal interlocking as they became one.

Sepeti clicked his tongue as he tucked the notebook, Sepeti-proof pen tucked between its pages, into his handy dandy pocket dimension. With a flick of his wrist, he let his long locks down. They fell down to his waist, flaring out like a cape. What was the point of tying his hair up when it would just come undone as soon as he started moving? One day he’d develop some kind of utility magic that would allow him to keep his hair in a bun no matter what he was doing. But, that day wasn’t today. Or any of the coming days. No, he’d just forget and circle back to the thought during another fruitlessly protracted battle.

“This is gonna get annoying, tell everyone to fall back.”

He pulled the headset out and flicked it at the nearest group of retreating Machina. They exploded on impact, dust and debris flying all over. The machine hive-mind had issued a full retreat as the ocean of metallic figures steadily ambled back towards the spawnships.

Something about the way they turned and ran, maybe their herky-jerky movements, really ticked Sepeti off. One moment, he was suspended above them, watching the flowing waves of metal flowing away from him. The next, he shot off, propelled forward by a force that he barely understood himself. Sonic booms emanated from where he was, following him as he bee-lined directly at the fusing Protectors.

The lines of Machina were quickly decimated as he shot through the air.

Sepeti crashed into the Protector, now a singular four-armed humanoid, pushing it towards the closest of the enormous spawnships. It creaked, metallic bits gleaming as it slowly fell.

Waves of energy and force from the impact billowed out from the collision, sending everything near the point of impact flying.

Two of the gigantic Protectors arms flared out behind it, steadying it before it crashed into the spawnship. The other two arms reached out and snatched Sepeti out of the air. Both hands quickly locked around him as the fingers intertwined, meshing together as they quickly imprisoned him.

Sepeti grunted as hard, nearly indestructible metal encased his whole body. He was quickly immobilized as his arms and legs were the first to be imprisoned.

“Dammit!” Sepeti spat at the Protector’s double heads as they loomed over him. He began chanting, going back to an outmoded form of skill and spell casting that he hadn’t used in a very long time.

Before he could get the first few words out, a pair of rods were rammed down his throat. He coughed as they simultaneously hit the back of his throat. They weren’t pushed hard enough to hurt him, seeing as every inch of his body, inside and out, was reinforced to an unbelievable degree. No, the rods were just a deterrent, an annoyance. Or so he guessed.

Sepeti bit down on them, grinding his teeth on them as he growled. To his surprise, the metal was hard enough to withstand his bite. Again, it had been quite some time since he last bit into something that could resist his raw power.

The two heads of the Protector - finally fused into one oddly shaped digit - creaked as the being looked down at him. A cacophonous squealing filled the air as something that looked like its mouth opened. It sounded like millions of bits of metal were being ground against one another.

{You are Sepeti, are you not?}

Sepeti didn’t understand the language but was able to infer the meaning of the strange speech of the Protector. It felt like the meaning was being transmitted directly to his mind. He continued to work on the pair of rods jammed down his throat, unable to respond for obvious reasons. The rods vibrated in his mouth as another message was transmitted.

{Please stop biting those. They were constructed especially to withstand you. We only wish to communicate with you. Please respond.}

“I cand shpeak whid dhem hin my mouf.” Sepeti struggled to respond, trying his best to speak around the rods.

{Apologies.}

The rods retracted, vibrating just out of reach of his lips. They reminded him of microphones, specifically the ones some of his old favorites used to use when they used to stream themselves.

{Is that more comfortable, Mr. Sepeti?}

Sepeti worked his jaw. He didn’t actually feel any residual pain, he just wanted to milk the drama.

“So, you coulda communicated without jamming a pair of nearly indestructible metal rods down my throat?”

Instead of answering, the Protector let out what sounded like a groan as the many gears in its throat squeaked in unison.

“You guys ain’t very bright, are you?”

{Forgive us, Mr. Sepeti. We are new to this. We just wish to speak with you before you decimate our procession of adherents.}

“Procession of adherents? Are you guys on some kinda pilgrimage? You mean this isn’t an invasion force?” Sepeti continued working his jaw. His teeth ached from biting into the abominable metal.

{We were sent by our divine maker. The Most High, the Bringer of Magicks, the Creator of a few universes, Boba. He bid us deliver a message to you. Did you not receive the messages we sent beforehand?}

Sepeti frowned as he thought back. Remembering things wasn’t a problem, at least not for him. But he only remembered things he actually cared about. At the top of his memories were his most recent dreams, which had all been the same in one fashion or another, and his carefully worded entries he’d sent to Journal. The dreams had been strange and incredibly abstract. He remembered them due to their strangeness but he couldn’t parse the possible meanings hidden within the peculiar visions. He chuckled sheepishly as he remembered one of his teammates mentioning that they had a message for him. He’d forgotten to listen to it.

“Unfortunately, I never received a message.”

{Understood. It was within the margin of error that we had calculated for. Please, allow us to extend the message that Boba has implanted within us.}

“Ok,” Sepeti said, nodding. He wasn’t sure what this message could be. Or why it was important enough to send a host as large as this one. But it didn’t matter. He would see what they had to say. Then he would send them on their merry way.

The Protector’s oddly shaped head smoothed out as the middle opened up. Miniscule amounts of dreadful magic leaked from within the opening, coiling out in a black mist. Sepeti’s eyes widened as he watched the magic form. Everything in him screamed for him to run. Escape. Get as far as possible from that disgusting magic. Get away from the wrongness that was the putrid magic being summoned.

He smiled as a giddy happiness bubbled in his gut. He began laughing like a child, high-pitched and keening.

{Our lord Boba bids you welcome. He offers you the token that Journal has denied you. Release.}

The hole in the Protector’s head widened and the mist coalesced into a formless darkness. The edges of the metal contraption’s head buckled as the force it was unleashing began sucking everything in. Gravity reversed as the thing tugged at Sepeti and everything around him.

The interwoven fingers released him. He allowed himself to be pulled into the void.

Finally. He would finally get to sleep all he wanted.

With a smile, Sepeti fell into the black hole.