No one looked twice at the lone kid, small, kind of young looking, dressed in worn slicktites and a floppy striped "sagdown" shirt several years out of style, as he wandered around in the ash and darkness of the Eighth Circle. Banies came in all ages and sizes, and could look any way they pleased if they felt like going to the trouble of adopting a seeming, or could show themselves "as they were"- though if this was how this kid really looked, there were doubtless those who would have found him a little strange. His sense of style needed work, and the weary look on his face alone was enough to suggest that he probably was as depressing as a Joey Bane lyric himself.
He had been here for a while now, looking around him like someone feeling slightly lost. Anyone interested enough to notice would have seen that he tended to avoid the other Banies in the area, by and large, though he spoke politely enough to them when they approached him. Almost always, after a little while, they went off and left him where he was, and he found himself alone again.
And soon enough-though perhaps not soon enough for him-someone noticed.
The boy was kicking through the ash of the outer reaches with his back to Mount Glede, while in the area through which he walked, nothing could be heard but one song, over and over again, repeating at his request to the environment: the final chorus from the Seattle concert version of "Cut the Strings," with the six-minute instrument destruction sequence ending in the demolition of the venerable old King Dome, scheduled to be blown up anyway that year after the Quake of '22. For about the fifteenth time in a two-hour period, that vast crash and shriek of destruction filled the air, but the images accompanying it were being suppressed, and only darkness surrounded the boy who was listening, standing there, staring at the ash around his feet, like a dark statue…
When the girl approached him, seemingly melting out of the storm of black ash that was falling at the moment, the look he gave her was less than interested.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi," the boy said, looking her over dully. Long dark coat, short purple skirt, black vee-neck top, purple hair, pale skin-she was taller than he was, maybe a year older, and she looked faintly annoyed. "What?" he said then, for she was staring at him.
"Are you lost?" she said.
"No." He turned away.
"Well, you look lost," she said after a moment. "In fact, I don't think I've seen anyone more lost-looking than you in the last couple months."
"That's nice," he said, glowering. "I don't recall asking you for your opinion."
He walked away from her… then stopped suddenly, staring down at the crevasse which had just opened up at his feet.
"There's a lot of that going around," the girl said, sounding slightly amused. "Get very far on your own?"
"Not really," the boy muttered. "This place is an exercise in frustration."
"Life stinks… " she said.
"Tell me something I don't know."
"That you're not going to get very close to the Keep without a guide," she said. "Even the walk-throughs mention that. Unless you've got one of the newer ones… "
He backed away from the crevasse, angling a little away from the girl. "Maybe I don't want a guide," he said.
"Maybe you should have brought a chair," she said, "because you're gonna be stuck here a good long while without someone to go 'pathfinder' for you."
He started away from her, and almost as if the environment had heard her, another crevasse came tearing along the ground and passed right in front of him. There it stopped, while black ash snowed down from the edges of it into the fiery depths, glittering in the hot light.
He stared down into the crevasse, and his shoulders slumped. "It's never gonna stop doing that, is it?" he said.
"Nope," she said. "But some of us get the hang of 'anticipating it."
She tilted her head a little to one side, watching him. After a moment he turned, slow and reluctant. "All right," he said. "What would you suggest?"
"Telling me your name, for one thing," she said. "Ch-Manta," he said.
"Manta. I'm Shade," she said. "You're pretty new around here, huh?"
"Yeah. Well, no. I've been here awhile… but I don't know the place real well as yet… " He breathed out, then, turning again to look past the crevasses, across the dark plain toward Mount Glede. "I don't know if I'm going to," he said.
"You got problems?" Shade said, sitting down beside him.
"Huh?" Manta said, looking shocked. "Oh, no… everything's fine."
"I'm not so sure," Shade said. "You look sad."
"How can I look sad?" Manta said. "See, I'm smiling." He produced a smile that even in the darkness was not terribly convincing.
Shade laughed softly. It managed, somehow, to be a sorrowful laugh. "Yeah," she said, "I see that. I know that smile… I've worn it, sometimes."
"Have you been here a long time?" Manta said.
"A couple of years," said Shade, "in and out. I know the place pretty well."
"What're you doing here, then?" Manta said, studying the ground. "If you've been here that long, you should have solved the place by now… "
"Oh, there's more to Deathworld than just solving it," said Shade, pulling her feet up under her to sit cross-legged. "It's about people as much as anything else… "
"Seeing them get punished," Manta said bitterly, "yeah. That's worth something."
"It'd be pretty dull around here without the Damned," said Shade, glancing around her as a few of them ran by a few hundred meters away, pursued by demons. A couple of the Damned pitched straight down into a crevasse that opened before them, and the demons stood on the air above them and peered down, watching them fall. "Sounds like you're enjoying it, though."
"Like to see it really happening," said Manta softly.
"How much more real does it have to get?" said Shade. She gave him a thoughtful look. "Or is there somebody you'd particularly like to see it happening to?" Her voice was almost playful.
"Wouldn't be much point in that," Manta said. "It wouldn't make any difference." He shuffled his feet in the ash. "Nothing will, really."
He turned. "Look, forget it. I gotta go."
"Manta, wait," Shade said, walking around in front of him. "Look, you can't just turn away from people when they're trying to help you."
"Watch me," Manta said, his voice bitter. "I'm not worth helping. Let me alone for long enough, and it won't be an issue."
Shade gave him a look. "You know," she said, "if you weren't such a Banie, you'd be a waste of time. Look, how'd you ever get down this far with an attitude like that?"
"When you hear it from all the people around you all the time," Manta said, "you learn to get things done anyway. But I'm tired of it now." He turned and looked at Mount Glede again. "I just want to do this one thing… and then it's going to be all over with. I'm going to cut the strings… "
Shade looked at him in silence for a moment. "That's not something to joke about," she said.
"You think I'm joking, too, huh?" Manta said, giving her a cold look. "Get your laughing done now, then. A week or so and you won't have another chance to do it while I'm around."
The look Shade gave him was odd. "Manta," she said, "you wouldn't really-"
"I see what happened to the earlier ones," Manta said, sitting down on a rock and looking at Mount Glede. "Whatever else their families thought, down here they have some honor, anyway. They're the Angels of the Pit. Maybe people down here are a little crazy… but at least someone notices whether they're here or not. Not like others-" He broke off.
"You don't have a lot of friends, do you… " Shade said.
"I don't have any friends," Manta said. "And I don't want any. They just pretend to care about what's happening to you, and then they dump you when they realize what you're really like. I don't need any more of that-" He choked off, as if holding back tears.