Jump to content

the big war


Utter Nutter
 Share

Recommended Posts

Since the beginning of time itself, there has been war. Wars have been fought over religion, for power, for lust, for land, for pride, for a sense of patriotism, for perceived differences between the warring factions, whether they are real or fictional, and a myriad of other reasons. This is the story of one such war, and unspoken war, which is older than man himself, and yet man does not know of its existence.

Since the beginning of time, all Vegetables have hated Fruits. They think that the Fruits think too highly of themselves, just because most of them are born on trees. The Fruits’ fault here is in not realizing how they made the Vegetables feel, and that has led to them acting in ways which might be considered ‘insensitive’. And then the shit hit the fan one night, when two friends – a Potato and an Apple, were sitting in an inn. The Apple had gotten fairly drunk, and was flitting in and out of consciousness. The Potato was brooding over his frothing mug, and finally decided to let his dear friend know about the hatred that had begun to creep into his heart too. So, the Potato told the Apple all about his feelings, about how his kin felt the same, and about how he feared what lay in store for them in the future. The Apple just sat quietly there, staring at the Potato. Then suddenly, he began to laugh. Loudly. He slapped the table. He fell onto the floor, literally rolling on the floor, laughing. The Potato was stunned at first, but then he felt his insides fill up with something that he (later) didn’t think was possible – blinding rage. He jumped onto the Apple, and beat his dearest friend to death. This one incident lead to a series of small scuffles and barfights, which grew in size until a full scale war was inevitable.

What the Fruits and Vegetables were not aware of, was that everything they did was being watched. Starvius, the fat God of the foodstuffs, wiped his brow. For millennia, he had hid the existence of the sentient Fruits and Vegetables from those that would eat them. He had made the decision to sacrifice their lesser developed species to the emerging human civilization, and he had worked endlessly behind the scenes, through unnamed agents, to keep their existence a secret from the gluttonous humans. As he looked at the small battles and fights between the Fruits and Vegetables, he wiped a thick arm across his sweaty brow. This was going to make things difficult.

Starvius saw that war was inevitable. So he increased the number of agents he had amongst the Fruits and Vegetables. He was forced to use the Forbidden Arts to place a few select humans in the Hungerbond – a state of perpetual hunger in the human which forces the human to serve human to serve his master, Starvius, or no amount of eaten food would ever sate his hunger. He used these human minions to handle the few humans who had chanced upon the war, and make sure the other humans never believed such stories as true events. Some of the sights that some humans saw had even become legend, relegated to fables for the children.

Then it happened. A renegade chieftain of Pineapples chanced upon an unguarded village of different Vegetables. All the males had gone to war, and only the females and children remained, with a few old and partly-rotting Vegetables posted as lookouts for trouble. The Pineapples, deep in enemy territory and realizing that they would never make it to safe land, attacked the village and slaughtered everyone in it. They carved grinning faces on the heads of Pumpkins, and put them up on poles all around the village. The chieftain sat down and waited for his death, content that what he had done was worth whatever fate he faced now. They waited for four days. When the Vegetables returned to their village, they saw the slaughter, they smelled the stench of their loved ones’ rotting innards, and they flew into a frenzy. To this day, the Battle of the Rotting Village is spoken about in hushed tones by all those that know about it. And many historians attribute this battle as the true start of what came to be known as the Food War.

The war was brutal. Entire villages were burned. Orchards uprooted. Fields razed. Nuts were kicked. Oranges were squashed. Cucumbers were beaten up so much that their insides squirted out of them. Starvius watched all this, helpless. His agents could not pacify the leaders of either side, to seek a diplomatic solution and end the war. Battles had escalated so much in scale that it was becoming nigh impossible to prevent human sightings. He was forced to increase his thrall of Hungerbound, but it was difficult to maintain control over so many. This would not do. This would not work. This war had to end. Enough juice had been spilled. And Starvius became convinced that some more had to be spilled – by him – to put an end to all of this once and for all.

Starvius went into the deepest cave in the densest forest on Adarkis. There, in complete darkness, he began to meditate, chanting in a low, but rhythmic tone. For 11 days and 11 nights, he meditated. On the twelfth day, when he emerged from the cave, his enormous belly severely shrunk, his forearms bony, his face gaunt, and with 5 of his 12 chins missing, he was not alone. He had created, from within himself, five Avatars, which he intended to use to end the War. They were beings of pure Culinary energy, given the power to shapeshift from their normal form to a human form to their true form, and no morals. Only two rules guided them – Stop the War, and Keep the Secret. Then Starvius let them loose into the land.

What precisely happened next is not certain – there are many claims from different people which contradict each other. Most of them suggest that within a few days, many Fruits and Vegetables lost their leaders to mysterious circumstances. Entire clans disappeared overnight. War parties would attack enemy settlements, only to find that the camps were deserted – fresh footprints on the ground, banners ready to march to war, meals hot and ready to be eaten, and yet not a soul in sight throughout the camp. Most War survivors agreed that it was a very horrifying time for all involved, especially since no one knew what it was that was hunting them, and why.
Starvius’ agents took advantage of the mass confusion in the armies, spreading rumors of this being the work of a third, more malevolent force, who was taking advantage of the War and killing off their leaders, priming them for their eventual invasion. Some species, like the ever-confused Tomatoes, who had fought on both sides of the war at different times since they were not sure which side they belonged to, paid heed to these ‘warnings’, and retreated from the war, leaving Adarkis for other lands till things had calmed down. Others, like the stubborn Coconuts, remained adamant, and were ready to march to the gates of Hell itself to fight Vegetables for a cause they did not remember.

It took a most horrific event, known by most as the Annihilation, to finally force both sides to lay down their arms and cease fighting. 

A big battle was to be held on the open grassy fields one Monday. Both sides had entrenched their troops a couple of miles from each other for a couple of days now. Offers for surrender had been made by both sides, and declined violently. The Fruits decided that they would attack at dawn the next day, and prepared their soldiers to be ready to fight at a moment’s notice. Some of them expected the Vegetables to attack at night, so they set up an ambush for them, just in case. Night came. It was very hard to see, with no moon and a cloudy sky. Both sides had extinguished their torches so as to take advantage of the cover of darkness, so that neither could attack. Then it started raining. It rained all night. When dawn broke, the Fruits were ready. The grass was pretty wet, and some mud stuck to their feet, but they were ready to kill some Veggies. They lined up into their formations. Some of them noticed something halfway between their armies in the no man’s land – a thick low wall of something dark that was spread out along the breadth of their army. Damn Veggies! It was surely another trick of theirs! But this wouldn’t deter the Fruits from their goal. Orders were given. Horns sounded across both sides. The sky shook with the might bellows of soldiers bent on killing, and then they charged.

The soldiers in the back of the lines of charging Fruits noticed that the soldiers up front had slowed down and stopped. Yet there seemed to be no sounds of fighting. No sword clangs, no shield banging, no sickening sound of metal invading flesh. Curious, the leader of the Fruits sent a small little Strawberry to go up front and check out what was happening. As the little Strawberry ran up to the front lines, she noticed that the soldiers had stopped and were staring at the wall they had seen earlier this morning. When she reached the very front of her side of the wall, she noticed that the Veggies on the other side of the wall were staring at the wall too, and not attacking. Then she looked up at the wall. Her mouth fell open, and her sword dropped from her hand with a ‘squelch’ sound, sticking upright into the mud.

The ‘wall’ was a massive pile of dead bodies. They all seemed to be bodies of nuts. ‘Piconuts’, thought the young Strawberry, ‘They killed all the Piconuts!’.

The complete extinction of the Piconuts sent a shiver through both sides. Their leaders agreed to a meeting, and taking this as a sign from the Gods, resolved to stop the War.

Starvius was relieved. He wiped his sweaty brow with his forearm. His gamble had paid off. He wouldn’t need the Five again. He summoned his Five, and assigned them each a part of the world, where they would oversee the Fruits and Vegetables from the shadows, never revealing themselves, and would Keep the Secret. But to his horror, the Five refused. They attacked him. The Five of them together were very strong indeed, and while Starvius defended himself with every ounce of his considerable power, they were wearing him down. Starvius realized that they would overwhelm him. Knowing of the destruction they had caused while they brought an end to the War, he could not let them kill him and end everything he had worked so hard to achieve. So he was left with no choice. He concentrated and summoned a huge bolt of energy, and fired it at them. One of the Five recognized the bolt for what it was, and pushed them all out of the way, taking the bolt on his chest. When the bolt made contact with the One, a huge flash of light blinded Starvius. When he regained his senses, he examined the crater where his bolt had impacted on the Five. Even though the bolt had completely disintegrated everything that it had touched, he knew. Four of them had escaped. This was not good. They could not be allowed to roam freely in the land, unchecked. It was too dangerous. Starvius immediately contacted all of his agents and let them know. They could not hide from him, no matter how much they tried.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Years later…

It was a good day. Peppers loved roaming around the docks in this kind of weather. Warm, yet wet. Sunny, yet cool. She walked up the pier and sat down on one of the crates of textiles. She leaned back on her arms, raised her head to the sky and took in a lungful of the salty sea air. It was good. It reminded her of him…

Peppers sensed movement behind her. She opened her eyes and looked around. Nothing put the pier – ropes, crates, a broken bottle, a couple of seagulls, and a foot sticking out from behind a huge sack. Peppers smirked.

The little boy was hiding behind the sack of flour. He hated the flour. It always got into his clothes and made him itchy. He took a deep breath, and inhaled more flour. He immediately covered his nose and mouth with both hands pinching hard on his nose to stop himself from sneezing, and trying to not make any noise while he coughed the flour out of his throat. His eyes watering now, he peeked around the sack to check on the lady in black. But she wasn’t there! She had disappeared. The boy risked jutting out his head further from behind the sack in order to see is she had walked further on, when he was jerked up roughly and picked up bodily from the collar. He looked down into the dark, dark eyes of the lady he had been following, who seemed to have no trouble holding him up with only one hand. His eyes wandered further down, and were greeted by the sight of her heaving bosom, her cleavage deep and visible. He averted his eyes instantly, terrified.

“You know, at first I thought it was kinda cute, but now it’s getting annoying. Who are you, boy?†she said in her low, husky voice.

“I... I… err…â€

The woman looked closely at him. It seemed like she was staring into his eyes, and yet trying to see something past them. The boy found himself unable to look away. He tried to form a coherent reply.

“I… I was just trying to… I mean… I wasn’t doing anything…â€

Gods, she was beautiful. And the eyes… he was sure there was something hypnotic in her eyes.

The woman continued to state intently at him, and then recognition flashed across her face. She furrowed her brow. Her lips became a thin, slightly pink line. Her eyes seemed to darken even more, if that was possible. The boy felt terror like he had never felt before in his short life. Suddenly, the half-fears of being reported to the guards or being beat up or even thrown into the water were replaced by the dread of an unknown fate – something which seemed much worse. The woman uttered one word, her voice quite different from what it was before.

“Starvius…â€

Suddenly the woman released her grip on his collar, and he fell down. Ow! His butt hurt. He looked back up towards the woman. She leaned forward, her angry expression now replaced by a small smile. She put up her hand to her chin, palm upward, and blew something on his face. His eyes began to burn, and everything went dark. The boy screamed. She had blown pepper into his eyes! If there was one thing worse than flour in your eyes, it was pepper, the boy decided. He blinked, still unable to see anything, hot tears rolling down his cheeks. He crawled to the edge of the pier, and blindly threw an arm down, scooped up some water, and splashed his eyes with it. He did this several times, blinking rapidly to get the pepper out of his eyes. When he could finally see, he stood up, and looked around the pier. But the lady had long gone.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and the Guidelines of the game and community.