chatgpt bugging on that bacon egg n cheese talm bout sum "extended thinking limit" so this will be continued tmrw

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🌤️ DAY 12 — THE FRITTER, THE RESURRECTION, AND THE HAMMER OF JUSTICE

Dawn smells like woodsmoke and something sweeter today — a single, perfect token of comfort: a golden apple fritter. What follows is absurd, brutal, and strangely tidy: an ancient fighter returns for pastry, meets an old tortoise’s secret, and the forest briefly watches a myth duel a myth.

🥯 Morning — Gerson and the Apple Fritter

Gerson is up before most. He shuffles to the communal fire, pulling a small wrapped parcel from a pocket beneath his coat — an apple fritter, warm, still trembling with a buttery steam. He unwraps it ceremoniously like someone reading a poem.

Gerson (soft, delighted): “Ahh— a breakfast for a slow philosopher.”
He takes a breath, closes one eye, and the smell blooms: sugar and fried apple and a thousand tiny memories.

Lazarus (from a distance, noticing): “That looks amazing, old man.”
Gerson (chuckling as he sets the fritter on a flat stone): “Not for you this morning, lad. This one’s mine.”
He cuts a tiny piece and hums, not in prayer, but in gratitude.

Cumulus floats by, curious.

Cumulus (gentle): “It smells like sunlight.”
Gerson (which-that-smile): “It’s been a while since I had a proper fritter. Small luxuries, you know?”

He takes another bite, eyes closing. The camp goes about its morning, unaware that something older and hungrier is about to be called back.

.

🪦 The Smell That Calls the Fallen

Far beyond the clearing, something buried under the earth — a memory and a body — stirs. Yujiro Hanma, who had been struck down weeks ago in an impossible night, is not content to sleep where salting, burning, and burying once seemed final. The scent of an apple fritter, carried on a particular current and hitting a place deep within him, is a trigger. He rises.

He’s not quite the man he was. There’s frost in the hollows of his face, and the way his chest pulls air is a mechanic of hunger and old power. He walks like a thing put back together by spite.

Yujiro (wordless at first, voice a low rumble): “—”
The single thought in him is crisp and simple: Acquire the apple fritter.

He moves like someone who can shatter trees by thinking about it; when he runs, it is more a war with the wind than a sprint. The birds fall silent.

⚠️ Only Two Witnesses — Mike and Sasha

At the edge of the clearing, Mike CrowFone had been packing crow plushies in a small crate, muttering to himself about sales numbers. He hears a sound like a freight train and looks up.

Mike (nervous, staring): “W–what—th!s 1s—”
He watches Yujiro's outline rip through the trees and assumes his mind is playing up again — his schizophrenia, he thinks, or some hallucination. He blinks twice and continues muttering to his plushies, palms sweaty.

Sasha, leaning against a tree, guitar unused across his lap, hears the rush and raises a brow — then flatly refuses to accept what is happening.

Sasha (deadpan, to Mike): “You’re seeing things, man.”
Mike (wide-eyed): “I’m n-not—this is real—”
Sasha (staring at where Yujiro appears, then turning his head like a man changing the channel): “No. Not happening. I refuse.”

So, Mike panics inward thinking it’s his condition; Sasha refuses to validate the sight. In the rest of the camp a handful of others will later recall “a wind” or “a shape” — but only Mike and Sasha truly see the whole thing, and each interprets it through their private lenses.

⚔️ The Charge — Yujiro vs Gerson

Yujiro arrives like a storm. He towers, he breathes, and then he strikes — the apple fritter’s scent driving him straight to the stone where Gerson sat, calmly finishing a last, fragrant bite.

Yujiro (growl, simple): “FRITTER.”
He launches himself. The motion is inhuman — positions and speeds that should be invisible; the trees along his path are a blur.

Mike (shouting, half-hallucination, half-real): “SASHA — HE’S COMING—”
Sasha (still staring blankly, then slowly stands): “I’m ignoring this.”

Gerson reacts like someone who had been waiting for just this kind of morning.

He blinks, and the corners of his mouth twist into something mischievous. The world tightens for a moment, a breath held, and then the tortoise moves.

He does not dodge. He transforms.

The old hunched shell folds like the cloak of a performing armorer. Silver armor creaks into place across his frame, plating that rings like a bell. His walking stick reshapes into a massive Hammer of Justice — a ridiculous, gleaming instrument with runes along its head. Where once was a slow, smiling tortoise is now a figure of myth: the Hammer of Justice.

Gerson (voice deeper, theatrical): “If you want the world to end over a pastry, you will have to be faster than history.”

🛡️ The Duel — Strategy vs. Savagery

Yujiro’s furious strike should have buried Gerson. He moves, however, into a dance that is not speed alone but orchestration. Gerson lifts the hammer and slams; the ground answers with falling hammers — spectral duplicates of his blow — that crash around Yujiro like meteorites. The air fills with the sound of metal on earth.

Gerson (calm, audible over the chaos): “Dodge left — left again — right — and keep your balance.”
His voice is the cadence of a teacher — an old drill captain calling commands.

Yujiro spins and lunges. He is strong beyond reason; his fists could split boulders. He tries to match Gerson’s speed but the Hammer of Justice is not merely about hitting. Gerson calls down axe-showers, a spinning rain of clean-edged iron that forces Yujiro to rely on tactical dodging rather than brute force. The ground shakes with each hammer fall.

Yujiro (panting, primal): “You’re—slower—”
Gerson (a small grin): “I’m older. I have more tricks.”

Yujiro attempts to land a blow — one, two, three — but each time Gerson’s armor deflects, each time the hammer’s call alters his center of gravity. The Hammer of Justice’s strikes are deliberate: they break a rhythm, rearrange footing, and leave an opening.

At one point, Yujiro launches himself and thinks he will connect. The world slows for a second — the slice of instants that heroes live for. Gerson lifts the hammer, and the air fills with the sound of a falling anvil. The anvil smashes down and hits the tree behind Yujiro, the sonic shock absorbing his momentum and leaving him off-balance. Gerson’s follow-through — a precise, small arc — knocks Yujiro sideways, not to gore, but to collapse.

Mike (to himself, a whisper): “This is my schizophrenia, huh? This is—this can’t be real.”
He watches, palms white on his plushies.

Yujiro tries again, furious and almost supernaturally fast. Gerson meets him with a sequence: hammer—axe—hammer—gap — a choreography that both punishes and instructs. Every strike Yujiro throws is cleverly parried or avoided. The hammer is a teacher that pounds lessons into an opponent until the student can’t stand.

Finally, Yujiro, breath ragged and failing to time even a single opening, collapses under a final, non-lethal, immobilizing blow — fallen and still. The old power that animated him ebbs as the apple fritter’s scent fades and Gerson’s ritual hammer-call settles like a bell.

Gerson (soft, handing the remaining fritter back to himself and taking a small bow): “There. That’ll teach you to wake for breakfast without manners.”

”

🪄 Aftermath — Old Man Shrugs, The Witnesses React

Gerson’s armor falls away in a creak and a puff of steam; he shrinks back into his tortoise self like a trick. The Hammer of Justice folds into his staff; the silver dims; the runes quiet.

He looks down at his hands, blinks, and polishes a crumb off his sleeve with a small, impish smile.

Gerson (cheerful, back to his regular voice): “Well, that was vigorous. Good exercise. Fritter tasted better after a warm-up.”
Mike (staring, half-hysteric): “I—did you—did you just—”
Sasha (flat, turning away): “Nope. Not seeing it. I refuse. I refuse to have mythology interrupt my chord progression.”
Gerson (with a wink, handing Mike a small scrap of the fritter): “You saw it, lad. Keep the bit. Eat it and tell a story. Or don’t. Either suits me.”

Mike clutches the scrap like proof that his mind is not alone. Sasha walks away, humming as if to re-tune his ears; the refusal is a defense — he will not let a world of monsters derail his sense of what matters.

A few other tributes eventually drift over — Oliver’s camp hears the rumble and arrives. They see Yujiro’s body and Gerson sitting, unperturbed.

Oliver (kneeling by the corpse, grave): “Is it… over?”
Gerson (shrugging, wry): “He was drawn by scent. He died with a purpose. He leaves us now. Let’s bury him and not make songs about him.”
Cassie (soft, ritual hands): “We will do what must be done.”

aoole dfirtter