Skire Scoop entries

Faux didn’t particularly like people. In fact, Faux didn’t particularly like much. It liked hunting, to an extent, if only because it was good at it. It liked peace and quiet. It liked knowing it had been useful to those it cared about (which, ironically, was nearly no one; it had never quite gotten close enough to anyone to the point of caring just yet). 

Thus, seeing a whole gossip of Gravents - those nosy, chattering little hover-things, always trying to ask questions and to spread rumours, always swooping about and causing a ruckus - soured Faux’s day quite a bit. It had much to do. It had a contract to fulfill, and that contract was several days of walking away. It could’ve just used transportation, of course. It had just left from Uto of all places, and the city was bustling with technology and people capable of using it. It just preferred the peace and quiet of actually getting from point A to point B on its own limbs. 

Seeing one of the Gravents wheel around, orange-yellow vent wings blazing and ribbon-like teal tail flapping behind it like the useless decoration it was, made it considerably worse. 

Everyone knew who Scoop was. Her news articles were... popular. Widely-spread. An achievement, for a creature such as a Gravent. A bore, for a creature such as Faux. 

Clearly, she’d spotted the iridescent blue CCCat. It wasn’t particularly hard, considering its bright colours and frankly ridiculous size, but it was still annoying. Sometimes, Faux wondered what had possessed it to form with those highly-saturated hues. Bright blue and orange? With iridescence? Come on. Though remembering that the Gods surely wanted it to look that way, surely, usually calmed it enough for it to stop thinking about such unimportant things as appearance and vanity. (Though there had to be better colours for camouflage. Maybe Faux could cover itself in dirt and grass so no nosy Gravents decided to say hi.) 

Scoop landed neatly next to Faux and, upon noticing it wasn’t slowing down or stopping at her friendly “Hello!” she started trotting alongside it, failing to effectively match its gait without occasionally running. 

“Hi! Hello,” she tried again. “I saw you from up there - you look very cool, by the way. I love the spikes. Very creative,” she smiled brightly, exposing teal dunkle-teeth that  matched her tail, eye patch, and some of the skin membrane on her true wings. Those, she hooked into the vent holes above her collarbones, causing her vent-wings to fizzle out. 

Flattery, really? Does that ever actually work? Faux wondered. 

Scoop blinked at it, though her smile didn’t abate. “So you do understand me. Good! What?! Just because I can’t connect to a Hive doesn’t mean I can’t read your crowns! Sorry if you don’t actually like your spikes. I still think they’re neat, though.” 

Chatterbox. 

“Okay, I get it. I just have one question for you, friend, and then I’m off. Out of your proverbial hair. You don’t even have to answer. Alright?” 

Faux turned to ‘look’ at her, though its eye was still safely tucked in its eye-pouch. It showed a thin sliver of its sharp teeth, but didn’t fully bare them. 

“Well, I hope you can actually speak! So, question. What is your proudest accomplishment? I mean, I’d also like your name, if you’re willing to give that, and maybe a quick photo, but if you’d prefer to stay anonymous, that’s fine, too.” 

Wow, she was chatty. Faux briefly considered eating her for the crime of being too bird-like (and also not a CCCat), but decided against it. For now. 

What was Faux most proud of? 

Maybe it could say it was proud of what it did when it formed, decades ago. It had saved a CCCat that was being held prisoner by some evil, ungodly non-magical thing. It had taken its host, transformed it as fast as possible, sneaked in, and killed the gaolers all on its own, like a good CCCat. It had freed its brethren and taken no credit for it. It had waited for orders patiently, and executed them for as long as they had come (which had been for a few weeks, at most, but it was oh so very proud of those few months). 

Maybe it could talk about some of its more difficult hunts. Some of its targets had wielded magic. Some had been powerful, snarling Crooks driven mad by their righteous imprisonment. Such beasts had deserved their time in the Alter World. Not all did, of course, but creatures so vile as to burst out of their containment and near-immediately butcher anything in their path (including, most importantly, innocent CCCats) should have stayed there and rotted. Faux had done the next best thing and put them down. The bounty had been sizeable, but that hadn’t been why it had done that, not really. 

Maybe it could talk about... 

Or maybe it shouldn’t talk about any of this at all, actually. 

“Piss off,” it snarled at Scoop. The little Gravent hopped back, unhooking her wings to unfurl her magical vent-wings with a pitiful, scared cry. Faux splayed its crown-spikes threateningly and exposed its teeth and gums. 

Luckily for Faux, Scoop took the order to heart and leaped into the sky to catch up with her gossip. Her vent-wings flapped uselessly, beating fast as though they weren’t entirely made of magic and had actually needed to beat. A waste of effort, in Faux’s opinion. 

Not that Faux had any opinions, after all. It was a weapon. A killer. Nothing else. It didn’t care about news or scoops or the opinions of annoying little Gravents. It would start to care when the news were useful instead of just fluff pieces. 

It looked up at the now-distant gossip, wondering if anything interesting was ever going to happen again. Maybe then it’d actually listen to the critters.