Memoirs of a RAFian

[Cloak]

That was friggin' beautiful

Thanks. I think.

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

Why do I think of sarcasm whenever I see someone post some something like that?

New chapter. Last one of Book CXIX.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO:
The First Step

And what was Cloak doing throughout the whole race this second day?

He was sleeping. Yes, sleeping. He slept through the entire rest of the race, up to his appearance at the end there.

He was in his dreamspace, with his ancestor Aniyu, again. And he appeared to be a cub, a child even younger than Leatherhead, again.

"You cannot keep running from your pain, Cloak," she said. "It will scar over, it is true, but it would never truly heal."

Cloak's reply was petulant. "So what?"

"Cloak," Aniyu's tone was firm, but gentle at the same time. "You cannot reach your true potential, you cannot be truly free, until you actually face this. You cannot run from you pain forever. It will just hurt you the more that you refuse to face it."

"I . . . can't."

"Can't," Aniyu asked, "or won't?"

"What's the diffenece?"

"You know the difference, Cloak."

Cloak lapsed into silence.

"I know that you resist change," Aniyu said, before being interrupted by Cloak's swift protest.

"No, I'm not!"

"Then why do you want to hold on to this pain, this grudge?"

Cloak didn't have an answer for that. It took him a while to speak again, unaccustomed to being challenged in such a way.

"I'm not saying that it will be easy," she said. "Very little is worth doing if it is easy."

They lapsed into silence once more.

"Fine, then," he said, taking a deep breath, "Fine. Let's do this, and get it over with."

She gestured to her right, Cloak's left, and suddenly Cloak noticed a bunch of thorny vines, twisted and entangled so much that they were a single, solid form, there.

"As I said," Aniyu replied, "it won't be easy. There's a lot there, a lot of layers. To get to the inner most ones, we have to go through the surface ones."

[Cloak]

New chapter.

BOOK CXX:
APE ESCAPE
CHAPTER ONE:
The DNAlien and Anger

"This first layer seemes to be knotted up by anger," Aniyu said, having gotten up and gone over the wall of thorny vines. It shook rather ominously as she touch them. "Cloak, you have to come to terms with your anger towards your mother."

There was a lot of it to go through. As Cloak remembered all the moments in his life where he had felt anger towards Ursa, felt grievances that went unacknowledged by his mother.

The time she claimed that he was not smart enough to participate in a trivia show.

The many times she called him useless or worthless.

The times that she was never satisified with all the work he did for her because her standards were just too high.

The refusal to allow him to go to birthday parties of the other kids when he was young . . .

The constant negative comparisons between him and his father. He now would much rather be like his father than his mother.

The constant refusal to allow Cloak have any autonomy of his own.

Tell him the proper way to kill himself . . . clearly indicating just how little she thought of him. He knew if he had gone throuh with it . . . and he had a funrral . . . she would turn it into being about her, instead of him.

All of his life, it was NEVER about him, not ever, but ALWAYS about HER. Always about what SHE wanted, never about what he wanted. Always . . .

As he remembered each memory, they appeared, tinted in red, upon the thorns. They had startling resolutions. Cloak ignored the angry tears in his eyes.

"Yes," Aniyu said, "you do have legitimate reasons for your ire. But it does not well to hold on to this anger. It has happened. It was not good, but has since past. Let your anger out, but then forgive and forget."

"There is no forgiveness for what she's done!"

"And," Aniyu said, simply, "there cannot be any healing for you until you do."

***

Larry Dunn, one of the trio who tried to mug Cloak to his folly, had fallen on hard times, having lost his home to foreclosure and not having a job, because he had kade his living with mugging, and his two "friends" had sold him out. He was homeless and penniless.

And he blamed Cloak for it. He felt horrible hatred for Cloak, and the RAFians, by extension. He wanted to destroy them, wanted them to writhe, wanted them to . . .

He felt a tap on his shoulder, and when he turned around, he found his face full of a single, small, purple squid-like creature with a singular eye containing a red pupil, a small black slit iris and green sclera. It had six tentacles, a visible brain and a black line which runs down the center, around its eye and mouth.

It was a Xenocyte*, a parasitic creature whose only purpose was to turn their hists jnto DNAliens. Human DNAliens have light brown humanoid bodies with black hands and feet with a Xenocyte like head. They could spit goo from their mutated mouths.

Larry Dunn was now a human DNAlien**, his will and mind subverted to whomever controlled the Xenocyte.


*

**

[redtailedsaffa]

Heh, that was a great finish. And the Aniyu stuff is getting intense now, damn. Feely ****.

PDF of the last book:

[YeerkSalad]

Would someone please explain who Aniyu is? And wait, when did Cloak get mugged?

[Cloak]

Yeah, jumping into the middle of a series is risky business, Salad.

Cloak was failed to be mugged in the book, "The Bureau", and Aniyu is Cloak's long dead ancestor, communing with him from Beyond the Veil.

[YeerkSalad]

I see. Thanks!

Is Aniyu based on any factual stuff, or is she completely made up?

[Cloak]

Fictional.

And, sorry guys, but no more chapters today. I'm more tired that I thought, as such, chances are that I'm gonna be asleep within the hour . . .

[redtailedsaffa]

You have a lot to catch up on, Salad. Contact me for any PDF needs though.

[Cloak]

And just to add on to that -- a book idea.

• Book CMLXXXV: "Leave It to the Bone Beavers" -- The RAFians must deal with some demonic beavers . . .

Don't think that I rehashed this. Remember, all titles are subject to change.

[guitarhero01234]

Wait a second, this book is called Ape Escape?

BRB, gonna go play one of my favorite games of all time.

[Cloak]

Yep. But it's gonna be more of a parody of another franchise . . .

New chapter.

CHAPTER TWO:
Caged and Confrontation

At a zoo, where the term "zoo" and "low-budget" were just loose definitions, there was a chimpanzee, an orangutan, and a gorilla. These three had an odd peculiarity that set them apart from other chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas. Intelligence. On par with humans, or even surpassing it.

And, yet, they lived in utter squalor, as these "zoo administrators" cared far more for their bottom line and profit than actually taking care of their animal attractions. Their exhibits were rarely cleaned, and they were fed bare minimum every day. It was less of a zoo, but more of an animal gulag.

The environment was ripe for fostering anti-human sentiment amongst the three. The sentiment had be sowed and taken root with alarming rapidity. Though given the filthy living conditions, the fact that "zoo" management considered there animals lesser creatures put here for no other reason than human entertainment, the general sickly heath conditions of most if not all of the animals, is this really all that surprising?

Thoughts of a rebellion stirred within the chimpanzee (named Julius), the orangutan (named Maestro), and the gorilla (named Brutus).

***

YeerkSalad was investigating an incident with Cloak, GH, and Yarin. The two more experienced RAFians stood stoic and almost aloof in their investigation, while YeerkSalad exuded more excited exuberance than the other two.

"Settle down, Salad," Cloak said, "it's just a routine inspection."

"Yeah," GH said, sardonically irreverent, "you gotta pace yourself."

"Don't be such killjoys," Salad said daringly, flexing his bionic arms in anticipation for some action. "Field work is were all the excitement is."

"Chances are nothing out of the ordinary will happen, Salad," Yarin said, rather stiffly. "It wouldn't be logical to get your hopes up for action."

That's when Larry Dunn, the DNAlien decided to show up, spitting the goo all DNAliens can spit at them. All four dodged, and Salad looked eager to prove himself.

"A DNAlien?" Cloak identified. "Here?"

"You know what these things are?" Yarin demanded.

"BANZAI!!" Salad yelled as he entered the fray early.

"In retrospect," Yarin noted, "we probably shouldn't have let him train with Parker."
"It's Cloak," GH said, wryly, "he knows everything."

"That's not true, GH, and you know it!" Cloak countered. Then he proceeded, "DNAliens can be reverted to normal by DNA repair devices. They are weak to heat and fire, except the Pyronite DNAliens. Human DNAliens, like this one, are also weak to high frequency sound."

"Yeah," GH said, with a little smirk and wink, "you don't know anything, do you?"

[guitarhero01234]

That zoo sounds like a place that I would vandalize or something. And by "vandalize," I mean break into and free all the animals indigenous to the local area and leave cryptic graffiti in their place.

[Cloak]

Kinda the point. . . . But an understandable reaction.

New chapter.

CHAPTER THREE:
Abuse and G.I.F.s

This "zoo" was also committing more than mere neglect to their animals. Some of the staff members outright abused them, beating them if they dared to express some of their indignity at this type of cruelty and imprisonment.

They had their self-worth questioned.

They had to wonder what on earth they did to deserve such abominable treatment. What had they done to earn such wanton punishment.

Julius, Maestro, and Brutus knew better than this however. They would not be beaten down. Their spirits would not break. Their resolve would not be dissolved. They would not be kept down.

Julius, being the smallest physically of the three, found a way out of his cage, but he hid this knowledge from his jailors, though he wasn't against sharing it with his two friends -- the always-thinking Maestro and the brutish Brutus. And he had discovered a secret -- a secret concoction that was intended to cure dementia and Alzheimer's in elderly humans. For humans, it's only a temporary cure.

For apes, however . . .

***

Cloak shot GH a glowering look, which caused his smirk to grow into a mischievous smile. Then the DNAlien spat the goo between the two, and Cloak couldn't help but think that was supposed to be some sort of personal attack.

"Well," GH said, "that was rude."

"C'mon! Let's fight this thing!" YeerkSalad said. "C'mon! C'mon!"

"Salad --" Yarin said, before he was distracted by the goo.

Cloak fired a blast of fire to get the DNAlien to back off, deliberately missing, with GH playing some high-pitched music.

"Yarin, you've been working on a genetic identifier and rebuilder, right?"

"Genetic Identifier and Fixer," Yarin correct, "G.I.F., for short."

"GIF? Really?" GH said. "You and your stupid contraption names."

Yarin shot GH a withering, scathing look.

"Use it on the DNAlien," Cloak said.

"There's some provisos with the --"

"JUST DO IT!!!" Cloak roared.

[guitarhero01234]

ALWAYS ABOVE, ALWAYS ALONE! REAFFIRM: THIS IS THE PLANET OF THE APES!

[Cloak]

Yes, yes, that's what this book is loosely based on, Planet of the Apes.