Brick's Memory of His Father

A memory by player, Xking

As I try to fall asleep in the cave after the arduous battle, the light from the camp fire catches the excess drajules slipping out of my sack. The dancing flames create shadows, and those shadows create silhouettes. Silhouettes of things I know are not there, but that knowledge is not enough to repress the memories. My earliest memory of my dad, Brett wasn’t of him holding me or anything like that. It was of him saying things like “Not good enough” or “This one either.” He was examining his new batch of Majimonsters. He was a breeder through and through. He would spend most of his time engrossed in anything that could gain him a special Majimonster. One with perfect stats or unusual traits were the only things worth keeping and those deemed less than that were either sold off or traded for supplies. I remember people would sometimes go to him for requests of Majimonsters they wanted. When I was old enough to join him we’d go out looking for “cores,” that’s what he’d like to call Majimonsters we’d use for breeding. It was during one of these hunts that my binding story began, where I met Warlarckra. God Eater wasn’t the core we found, or even the perfect offspring we got from the breeding. No, he was normal. Perfectly average from the whole thing. My father was ready to discard him like I’ve seen him do with all the others but I couldn’t let it happen to him. Not to God Eater. He was my special! I finally convinced my father to let me keep him under the pretext that I’d use him as my first core. Only God eater and I knew that that couldn’t be further from the truth. These memories had no intention of stopping now that the story had begun once again. Another bad habit of my father was his method of raising his perfectly raised Majimonsters. Whenever he was commissioned for a breeding job he always made sure to make two perfect monsters. One for the client, the other for himself. And once they were perfect they had to remain perfect. Even when training his Majimonsters he made sure they never took any real damage. Physical scars were something to avoid at all costs. Any physical damage that would hinder their appearance or way of life, especially their ability to breed, would immediately reduce their value to zero in his eyes. With that in mind, my father made sure to train his Majimonsters against ones that were horribly weaker in an attempt to minimize damage. At that point it was just bullying. It was because of this that I had to leave. I used to tell myself that it was my decision to depart but it was because of him and what I did that made me leave. While out in the cave, God Eater and I ran into a wild Majimonster, a Cragmatik. I knew exactly what it was because my father had a prized one for himself. The battle was hard fought but God Eater was victorious, sadly not without damage. One of his ears took damage from the Cragmatik’s stone axe, nipping off the tip of it. While I saw this as proof of his worth and a badge of honor, Brett saw it as imperfection. After telling me to discard him and get a perfect one, and seeing I wouldn’t give up my friend, he began to move toward me to do it by force. I couldn’t take it. I wouldn’t take it! I drew my knife and pointed it at him. “If you come any closer, I’ll make sure you can never see yourself as perfect!” This was it. I couldn’t go back from this. I grabbed a sack and filled it with what rations I could gather and ran. Days turned into weeks and weeks brought me here. With strangers in a cave. Traveling to a place I called home. I turn my back to the group and hold the Majimonsters I've collected on the journey. “If I don’t make it through whatever this is, I’ll make sure you’ll have homes. Or at least be free to find it yourself.”