Open challenge
"Oh no, it seems I'm running out of little paper gods," Discord purred to himself. In a moment he forgot the thought, just let it float ahead of him, and he sat licking himself in the dirty gutter of the Sprawl. The day was warm, the streets were wet, and nobody bothered with the feral creature sloshing about in the sewage. He wore the flesh and entrails of a young hyena, still with soft fur and almost cuddly perhaps, to a child. A stupid child, whose parents didn't care, or didn't take their kid to the zoo. Because Discord was frolicking in his own world, not in filth, but in warm crystal streams that softened his skin like lotion and relaxed him like a drug. Any child that might try to cuddle him at this moment, disrupting his experience of Lostworld, might soon discover that a hyena can crush bone, swallow, and not even feel a bitter stomach. Conscience no consequence besides. But the day waned and Discord caught up with his thought. Yes, he needed more money. But hyenas don't jobs! "A scavenger doesn't work a day in his life," he purred again.... That settled it for him. The money must be stolen. I think I left an RPG around here somewhere. Discord's memory was inconsistent, but his senses were sharp and his stubby maw picked up the scent of mortar and plastic explosives. He kept a storehouse hidden in the neighborhood, behind the grating of a basement window. In the alley he returned to his human form, fully clothed in green shorts and a yellow ephod below rings of curly red hair. His hyena print became thick dark freckles on his limbs, but not on his face. He proceeded down the alley, walking with his shoulders back and in a confident stride, as a man in love with the world; but his face was fixed in the blank smile of delirium, with insane eyes. He stopped in a sunbeam from a window ajar, and checked his own name on a medical bracelet. He stopped and closed his eyes, tried to fix his name and himself in reality. "David Eppes," he said, but before his eyes he only saw the words Discord Son of Eris. If he could not anchor his consciousness in only the left brain then he knew he couldn't walk among normal people for long. "The uglies all want me dead," he said, "just cause I can't be ugly." Discord lost his mind again a moment, pissed on a wall, and felt altogether happy and forgot completely he was broke. But the day grew dimmer and, literally, he began to read the writing on the wall. The perceptions he experienced were mingled between reality and Lostworld, the bizarre hallucination that is the consul of the pineal gland and echoes back into reality. Millions of butterflies, translucent but flickering like ghost lanterns against a purple sky, gnawed with lizard teeth at the trashcans in the alley. And he saw four thousand holes at Blackburn, Lancashire. And on the golden path before him were photographs like a trail of breadcrumbs, leading Discord to his stash: photos of a Brinks security truck driving slowly down Colfax Ave, of intersections and cross streets along its route, and in relief of the sun and moon so that Discord could tell the time of day. Yes, he still had some time. Species transformation took a lot of his energy, and his stomach growled with True Ferocity. "First thing I'm gonna do is buy a T-bone steak, save the bone for later." He stood before the grating, and his pupils contracted to pinpoints, as though he were focusing on the most minute point in space, a singularity, a black hole. He saw the bolts of the grate and the spinning electrons, but without quantum confusion as though his observation meant nothing to reality, and so every possible path of movement appeared to him all at once until the metal burned the eye like a star--and at that moment the bolt fell out of the grate, and the grate onto a photo of the tiniest spot of rust on the Brinks security truck. Discord pulled out an RPG, armed the rocket, and walked toward Colfax Ave.