Killing Time 9

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I’ve generally considered extensive plans to be overrated. I’ve barely been keen on simple plans, though they are better than most. Just like with a machine, the fewer moving parts on a plan, the less chance it gets screwed up. The inevitable struggle between order and chaos.

If I had to say one came first, I’d think it was order. A nice orderly pile of all the energy in the universe and then…bang. Since then, chaos has been the great equalizer in any plan. Every independent actor has fed it.

But enough philosophical talk. It was a good enough distraction, but you probably wanted to hear about what predicament I’m in now, which conveniently undermines my point.

It started much the way my puberty began…surrounded by deformed beings while I planned how to get into a place. The place in question was the Foley building. At 725 feet tall, it wasn’t the tallest building in the city. I wouldn’t be climbing it anytime soon, though. Thanks to my own high profile crimes, the only service I knew that offered discreet flights for secretive clientele with lots of money was out of business. I was about as grounded as the mercenary pilots who had helped me.

That meant I needed to improvise a bit, which I’m none too shabby at. I ran into trouble getting the cooperation of my allies around my car. The Rejects, as a semi-official group, were being rather stubborn in their regard for conventional views on physics.

“You’re going to get us all killed.” Zane said as he pounded his fist on the hood of my car.

“Hey, watch it! I’ve got some explosives in there that are tempermental,” I berated the man with the giant version microencephaly.

“You almost killed us already, didn’t you?” Mika asked. She rubbed the bone spikes composing the lower half of her arms together. Her nervous tic irritated the rest of the group, I could tell. It sounded like bone rubbing over bone. But her flesh ended at her elbows and bone alone stuck out in conical points. There just wasn’t much she could do with that, nor could she help the similar spikes under her knees. She kept her balance with the last of her mutations, a pair of skin-colored tentacles that dangled out of her back.

I had been learning their names. Mika, Zane, Larry, Roberta, Steve, and…I glanced at the last of the Rejects, whose group identity warranted treating that as a proper noun now. The last member of the group had been nicknamed Tom by all the others in the group. In contrast to Zane, his head was perfectly normal in size. Yep, there was nothing wrong with it in circumference and so on.

It was just shriveled looking and a dark grey color, with deep, black pits where the eyes and mouth would normally be. We sometimes noticed something moving around inside the holes. He never spoke, but he chose to stick with us.

Tom had no particular objection to me getting him killed. Good man thing, that Tom. He was dependable and loyal. Possibly brainless, but dependable and loyal.

“It’s a very simple plan. Nobody needs to die, except for all the people we kill. They definitely need to die. Think of it this way, every person you scare off is someone I don’t have to mutilate. Y’all can spread out through the downstairs, cause some panic, and save lots of lives. Just leave this Prime guy to me.”

They bought that long enough for us to all get loaded up in the ice cream truck and ready to go. Moai and I sat in front, with the Rejects in back. Yeah, we saved the truck.

From the back, Larry cleared his throat and spoke up. “Psycho Man, why are we doing this in the truck?”

“Because it’s expendable.”

“Why are we riding in something expendable?”

I threw up my hands. “Look, there’s no reason to be worried. This is top of the line rocket technology like what the North Koreans use. You know, they have a very high survivability rate, or so they say through their state-controlled news service. If it’s good enough for their missile program, it’s good enough for my ice cream truck program.”

“That’s not what I asked, but I suddenly feel worse.”

I rolled my eyes inside my helmet. “Oh, you big baby. Just buckle up and grab a puke sack. It’ll all be over soon.”

I heard his belt click as he whined one last time, “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

With that, I gunned the truck and flipped a switch to activate the jury-rigged rockets attached to the sides of it. They added to our acceleration but would never be enough to achieve liftoff. That’s why we were driving into a rubber band. Yep, a bigass rubber band stretched between two taller buildings. It caught us perfectly as we drove into it on top of a parking garage.

I adjusted the rear view on the driver’s side to catch a glimpse of the Foley building. We pushed against the taut rubber. As we drove off the garage, we were embedded in the band enough that it didn’t let us just fall. When I thought we had about the right angle, I killed the rockets.

The rubber band flung us at the building, leaving me feeling like my stomach had turned into a screaming killer frog. My frog stomach got worse as we flipped end over end, but I activated the rockets long enough to slow our rolling. That was hard with me smacking into the windshield like I did. Lucky Larry and his damn seatbelt!

Thinking of Larry reminded me of what he called me, Psycho Man. That put a little song into my head. “Psycho man, psycho man, does whatever a psycho can. Kills a group of any size, he’s got cybernetic eyes. Look out! Here comes the Psycho man.”

Still, I got a front row seat for my moment of triumph, or so I thought. Instead, I saw a figure step out onto the balcony facing us. The person raised a hand, and suddenly we shifted slightly downward. There was no loss of inertia, no glancing blow on a shield or anything. We were moving in one direction, and then it changed suddenly with no loss of speed.

“Cushion with the soft serve!” I called out to everyone. That too was part of the plan, back when it seemed more unpredictable. I didn’t get a chance to see how well they followed it because my head was spinning along with the truck.

We hit just below where we meant to, the truck cracking the glass windows and blasting a crater into the marble floor. I was first slammed back into my seat, then through the windshield. Some of my favorite body parts made wet thudding sounds as I flew end over end along the floor through some sort of aquarium and then into a water bed, which halted my movement but ruined the bed.

I curled up in a ball there for a good minute, nanites flooding into me from the busted quilted layers in my armor. I would have said the pain was excruciating, if I could have made that out. Really, it was like everything hurt so much at once that I couldn’t tell any one individual hurt nerve ending from any other.

Then I heard a voice call out, “You couldn’t direct him down to the street, Pivot? Really, you dropped him into my living space?”

I crawled out of the busted bed frame amongst leaking water tubes. When I felt like enough of my leg bones were solid again, I stood up and pointed a finger in the direction I hoped that voice had come from. “Listen here, Prime! It is I, the Great and Devious Psycho Gecko, here to, to, to, to…” I got caught on that word for no particular reason that I can remember. Then, something stoney bonked me on the head and I realized I had more to say “…to put you on ice cream!”

I turned and high fived my rocky helper, who turned out to be Moai. He just stood there, facing off to the side. My addled brain figured out I should check that direction, but didn’t yet remember the 360 degree view on my helmet.

Pivot stood there, the Annihilation Eight stepping up to form a line in front of her from where they’d been scattered about the place. All eight. Wait, eight?

Yep. Gorilla Badass, Man-Opener, Motley Sue, Terrorjaw, the polka-dotted guy, and Rumble were there. So was a mass of shiny, shifting pieces of something metallic mixed with sand. Quick Sand, or more like Cyber Sand. And Dr. Typhoon, who wore some sort of new collar and helmet within that swirling localized tornado he had created around himself.

That shit just wasn’t right. I killed those guys. They were supposed to stay dead.

“Moai,” I whispered loud enough for everyone to hear, “bring me my red underwear.”

He didn’t respond to the bit of horribly-timed humor. Instead he looked to the second story landing of the penthouse we penetrated. There stood two familiar facies in suits. I recognized Pivot, who had ruined our landing with one wave of her hand.

I knew the other, a young man, as well. He had put on some muscle and height since the first time we crossed paths. Back then, he had been a sidekick who followed me to my hideout and was tortured hysterically for his trouble. I knocked him repeatedly with a frozen bratwurst. Holdout, who had taken the name Lone Gunman after I killed his mentor. I should have used a knockwurst.

“Going to try and run away again, Great and Devious one?” asked Pivot with a smug smirk as she leaned over the railing on the second story. “You didn’t think the heroes were the only ones who could reverse engineer the life-support systems of your armors or that handy surgical nanotech, did you?”

“Is there anybody else who wants to come back from the dead around here?” I asked, looking about. “My day would just about be complete now if Uncle Ben and the Wayne parents showed up looking to kick my ass too. Anybody?”

Shifting metal behind me provided a disappointing answer. Looking back through my helmet’s rear cameras, I saw the Rejects climb free of the totaled ice cream truck. They were each covered in cuts, bruises, and various flavors of ice cream, but they all looked like they would live. Even Larry, who stopped to throw up all over himself.

As I said, they were not a sight for sore eyes. On one side, you had a superhero and nine villains. On the other you had six untrained mutants with powers, my minion Moai, and me.

I didn’t know we were busting into this place while Prime, aka Lone Gunman, had the whole frickin’ team of Pivot’s here. Like I said before, I didn’t want these Rejects to die. I didn’t like the idea of anybody dying for me. I was more sure of that as the group stepped up behind me. They readied sharpened claws. Their powers made the air glow. I joined them, gathering energy in the sheaths surrounding my gloves.

With the tension so thick, the fight would start at any moment in a deadly dance of chaos and blood. I turned to Moai while I had a moment. “Well, Moai, you better promise me that no matter what, you’ll get these guys out of here alive.”

He turned his face toward me, just staring.

“Come on, man. If we’re separated, and if the odds look like they’re against me, you get these guys out, ok?”

Moai nodded reluctantly.

“Good,” I said, then I slammed both my fists into the ground just behind me. With a series of loud cracks, the otherwise ineffectual double punch unleashed too much energy into the marble for the floors to handle. A very confused mob of mutants fell through to the next floor. According to the blueprints I stole, that would put them in the executive offices. They could evacuate in comfort with the VIPs and VPs.

I looked to Moai, who stood dumbfounded beside me. Then I gestured toward the hole. “Well?”

With a slump of his stone shoulders, Moai jumped through after the Rejects.

Even before Pivot shouted “Get him!” Man-Opener rushed at me, with Dr. Typhoon and Quick Sand moving through the air to flank me.

“You dare come at me, bros?! I am the Great and Devious One!” I yelled, disappearing and making three holographic copies of myself. The holograms split up. Quick Sand cut through the one that headed for him and began to spread out as much as he could to find the real me.

Lightning crackled in Dr. Typhoon’s funnel before he struck out with it. It curved away from his ideal path toward my hologram and instead arced through Man-Opener’s armor. The other man’s armor shut down momentarily due to the electromagnetic pulse. I hopped up its knee and then to its shoulder, then leapt high into the air over Dr. Typhoon.

A sonic blast knocked me into the ceiling and against the glass window, but not before I dropped a headless rubber chicken grenade down the eye of Dr. Typhoon’s personal storm. The explosion flung him onto a leather loveseat. I couldn’t see if any bloody bits were sticking out because I had a rock villain to deal with.

Motley Sue rocked a rapid fire solo, shattering the windows behind me and slowly pushing me towards the edge. I gave my gloves a reduced charge and thrust my hand into the floor. It broke part of the way through and gave me a grip. Another punch with the other hand gave me another. I pulled myself along the floor.

Gorilla Badass threw himself in front of Motley Sue’s hair amps and let himself be hurled toward me by the same force pushing me back. I was still invisible, but that hardly mattered with the holes I was leaving behind.

Badass flew at me and instead of making another handhold, I threw my hand into his chest. Bones gave beneath my fist. I brought my helmet close enough to his ugly mug for him to hear me over the notes that pushed against us both. “I am the Prince of Pain.” I tossed him away.

Before I could make any more forward progress, Badass’s chain belt wrapped around my wrist and I was hauled back. I saw the gorilla clinging to the edge of the building. I held on tight as gravity took me down, figuring I could break through lower on the building and make my own escape. As I was swung against the glass, however, a yellow portal appeared and I was pulled through it by the man in the purple tights with the yellow polka dots. Portalmeister.

I was back in the penthouse, but when I threw a punch, another portal appeared in front of my hand and sent it somewhere. It was still attached, but just not occupying the space at the end of my arm. Portalmeister grinned under his headset gadgetry. “You’re the one who denied me a chance to prove my superiority.” He fell back, taking me with him through another portal.

We ended up somewhere dark and huge. I brought my knee up into Portalmeister’s gut. “I don’t know what rivalry you’re even talking about, but I’ll deny you a lot more in a second, for I am the Executioner’s Blade.”

I went to throttle the other man, but my hands warped somewhere else again, followed by the rest of me. This time, the area appeared like a kaleidoscope of bright colors. Reds, yellows, greens, purples. Whatever strange excuse for light suffused the place, it left me visible. I went ahead and shut off my stealth in that case.

Portalmeister followed me into this strange dimension that I hurtled through, falling with no bottom in sight. Portal after portal appeared beside me as he flew out of one and into another to keep me from catching him. “Sixgun was mine to kill! I was going to make him kill a civilian. I was going to make him shoot himself!” He babbled on about Lone Gunman’s mentor. Gunman, back when he went by Holdout, served as a sidekick to a Lone Ranger knockoff named Sixgun.

“So you thought you’d work for his fucking sidekick to get back at me?” I asked, throwing a kick at him as he zipped out of a portal.

The question hit him with more force than the kick had. “What?”

I spun around and caught him by the collar so I could address him face to face. “Lone Gunman is Holdout! You’re being ordered around by his old teenage sidekick with the short shorts. Geez, were you somehow deaf for the big press conference he held?” I projected images of Holdout and Lone Gunman overlaid on one another.

Portalmeister finally found his ability to speak again. “I was in prison when it happened…I didn’t know. The Lone Gunman hid this information from me…” He growled. Hey, if I could be cheesy by calling myself the Prince of Pain, Portalmeister was allowed to growl.

“Drop me off back there,” I proposed. “In all the chaos, I’m sure you’ll get a clear shot at him. Drag him into your freaky kaleidoscope chunks-blowing land here.”

Portalmeister summoned another yellow portal and pushed my grip loose to fly through it. I was lost in that shifting landless dimension for a few seconds until he swooped in from above me and hurled me into another of his portals. Then, I popped back to reality on the floor of the penthouse. I slid along the marble and knocked over a lamp.

Rumble jumped at me, trying to squash me like a bug. In his case, he could squash a Volkswagen Beetle without much effort. The downside was that I rolled forward. His foot broke through the marble and I launched myself into what would normally be a knockout blow. My fist caused a bit of testicular torture to the man, and then I grabbed them to swing between his legs and onto his back.

I put my arms around Rumble’s head and locked in a sleeper hold, putting pressure on the massive man’s massive arteries. “I am your pointless death,” I announced to him.

Rumble tried to grab at me, but his boxing gloves made that difficult. He had trouble gripping me with them on. He threw punches, but I slid from side to side and he beat himself instead.

I was pulled off when Terrorjaw hurtled Rumble, clamped his mouth down over my head, and yanked me off. It was less fun than being yanked off normally sounds. I could see down his gullet all the way to his stomach. I brought my left hand up and activated my Nasty Surprise. The miniature sawblade extended out from under my left wrist and chewed through Terrorjaw’s belly tissue. Terrorjaw’s resistance soon ended entirely. I plucked him off me and threw him into Rumble’s face. “I will bring you to your afterlife.”

I dodged another blow from Rumble that sent him down into the next floor and turned to a reactivated Man-Opener who charged with his blades brought to bear. I pulled out my laser potato peeler and aimed for the exposed helmet of the pilot. The peeler sparked and refused to fire.

Fucking ice cream truck crash.

He swung at me in a ponderous arc, but I was able to jump forward. I wrapped my arms and legs around the massive arm of the machine, too far along for his blade. He brought the other one up to chew me off with its sharp teeth, but I let go with my arms and hung upside down with my legs. The saw on the arm I held onto stopped as the other arm’s blade cut into the armor and wiring underneath.

I saw my opportunity. Man-Opener looked up at me. I chuckled as I looked down at him, then jumped high into the air, pulling energy from the core in my chest into the sheath around my fist. I would bring it down and crack the skull of my enemy. I yelled for all to hear, “I am Psychopomp Gecko!”

High in the air, I saw Portalmeister sneaking up on Lone Gunman. The Gunman whirled and pulled a scoped revolver, executing his mentor’s old rival with a single shot to the head that blew his headset to pieces. All of the yellow dots on the deceased villain’s costume disappeared as he dropped.

While I was focused on them, I wasn’t paying as much attention to Pivot. Right as the gun fired, she redirected my motion with a wave of her hand and conked me against the ceiling. Then the wall, the elevator door, through a hundred and twenty inch television, against the floor, through another wall into the kitchen, up into a light fixture, through the kitchen sink, into the bathroom, through the toilet, and then face down into the floor right in front of Man-Opener.

Before I could get to my feet or roll out of the way, a shot rang out. The Gunman had faced me before. He knew what it took to pierce my armor. I roared with pain as my kneecap burst apart.

Nearby, I heard Motley Sue playing. The notes raced higher and higher, as if trying to run up a sharp cliff. Then they sank downward, bringing with them a sharp stab that cracked the armor on my lower back and embedded some of the shards into my skin.

At least it took my mind off the knee pain.

Gorilla Badass flipped through the air and landed on my left arm before I could make further use of my Nasty Surprise. Quick Sand piled himself onto my right and pressed down hard enough to keep that one down.

“Cut him loose,” ordered Pivot.

“But only loose from his armor,” added Lone Gunman.

Pivot turned toward him, furious. “This again. You gave me this job and you’ve been countermanding my orders every step of the way. At New Orleans over and over again and at Three Mile Island. Now here. If you want him dead, why not kill him now? Why all the games?”

Another shot rang out and Pivot dropped as well from a hole to her head. “Thank you, Pivot, that will be all.” Gunman twirled his gun and then blew on the barrel. With a grin, he holstered the gun, then leaned on what was left of a railing. “You heard me, just his armor. He has a power source hidden in him. Pivot’s orders would have killed us all if you had cut into it.”

Man-Opener nodded and turned his remaining arm to the delicate task of slicing through my armor. Gorilla Badass pulled it loose from me, leaving my skin covered in blood as the connective nerves were torn loose prematurely. Once, on my chest, Man-Opener cut too close and opened me up about a half inch deep.

Soon I was dropped like a sack of potatoes. A naked sack of potatoes covered in blood, with more pouring out a chest wound.

“Gorilla Badass, would you be so kind as to hogtie him? We wouldn’t want him escaping like his friends, now would we?”

I tried to struggle, only to find my mouth filled with sand and what looked like small robots. Not nanites, but sand-sized mini machines. Quick Sand really was Cyber Sand, it seemed.

To add insult to injury, a security team arrived through the elevator. They didn’t even need to stay on alert around me. Hell, one squeeze of the trigger by an excited idiot and I could have died thanks to them.

Naked and bound before a hero who had every reason to want me dead, I didn’t have very high hopes for the situation. Don’t get me wrong, I was ready to try anything. That wasn’t what Lone Gunman had in mind, though. He walked calmly down the stairs and over to me, then knelt. He looked pristine in that damn business suit, with an obnoxiously charming smile to boot.

“I wanted you dead. It was the most pragmatic thing to do, but now I am so glad you could be taken alive. My new people here at Hephaestus can take apart that dangerous power source of yours. They can carve out those cybernetics, like those eyes there, and learn how to build them. Improve on them. Would you like to know we can make you obsolete? Do you want to hear how your dissection will let me build the world I want? That’ll have to wait. I have something more important in the works for you before I grant you the mercy of death.”

He patted me on the head, then stood and buttoned his suit jacket. His security detail parted to allow him access to the elevator. He got in, turned around, and smiled at me. “You once introduced me to your form of torture. I think I’ll show you mine. It is new and improved too. Boys, let’s find the ‘Prince of Pain’ a room of his own, with thick chains to keep his hands from roaming.”

I suppressed a groan. “Hey, you can’t call me the Prince of Pain. That phrase is only allowed if it makes me sound badass. Besides, torture? Oooh, scary. You think there’s a kind of pain I’m not familiar with? Here, have your guys check up my ass for any damns I may have smuggled in. Reach way down in there and see if I have one to give. Don’t worry. My ass won’t bite.”

Lone Gunman shrugged and spoke softly, but got his point across nonetheless. “I’ll go see if our surprise guest is ready for the big reunion.”

Leah.

With the battle over and the adrenaline subsiding, pain that my body was able to ignore was visiting with the latest bunch of it settling all throughout my system. It was hard to force myself to talk loud enough like that, but I managed a glare at him as I said, “You know, Holdout, you used to be a little shithead, but you’ve grown up to be a real bastard.”

“I had a good teacher,” he said as the elevator door closed.

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Killing Time 7

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All things considered, I expected my enemies would assemble to kick me out of their laboratory sooner than they did. The arrival of the Annihilation Eight was heralded by a call coming in live via the control room. Pivot, of course. I wondered what her angle was in all this. With the revelation that her new boss had a personal vendetta against me for some reason, maybe she was trying to move up in the organization. Maybe we had sex once and she wasn’t satisfied?

That was a joke. Ha ha. Fat chance. I haven’t had sex in a loooooooooooooong time. Some people have posited that this fact explains a lot about my behavior. They weren’t there the time I had a girlfriend and tried to destroy the world. Then she betrayed me and left me, battered, leaning against my own dimension bomb.

I guess you could say it worked out in the end. You might even say she dropped quite the relationship bomb on me.

But I digress.

Pivot called and I shushed the rejects around me before taking it. I had my armor on, though. I got to see her masked face and blonde bun, but all she saw of me was an eye filling her screen. “Hello,” I answered, “Kong residence. You calling for King?”

“I have someone with an animal name in mind.”

“You want Donkey then. He’s off getting smashed with his brothers. I swear, that guy’s practically off in his own little land half the time.”

“Cute,” she said, annoyance creeping into her voice like some sort of creepy creeping thing that creeped. Like an Aye-Aye with a pornstache shooting finger guns. She reached up and adjusted the corner of her domino mask.

“Alright, I’ll go easy on you, Pivot. What are you calling about? Is the master plan coming together? Is the masturbator coming? Or is this more of this little taunting thing you’re trying out?”

“I don’t need to taunt you. I just wanted to see the look on your face when you realized I have all my team at your gates.”

“All your team but the guys I already killed,” I reminded her.

“Even you can’t fight them all off. Rumble said you were so small you offended him.”

“Uh huh.” I nodded along as if I was listening. She couldn’t see the nod, so she noticed when my eye wandered off to the side. I was pulling up the exterior video feed, which showed six supervillains at the entrance gate. Rumble walked over it like it wasn’t even there.

“Well, we’ll see how your guys like it when I go medieval on their asses. Ready the catapult!” I called out to no one in particular. Improving on an idea from the Middle Ages, I decided to automate the catapult which you’ll remember fires cats. Irradiated and mutated leopards with three heads. I activated it from afar and watched as cages tumbled through the air. We only had three living ones, but I had them save some of the corpses too. More ammo.

I had been anticipating an attack for awhile.

Motley Sue blasted one crate out of the air with the power of rock. Gorilla Badass pulled the chain off his belt, but then he did something and a glowing blade grew from the end of it. Dextrous with both hand and foot, he whipped the chain around and carved through a cat carcass like it was nothing.

Geez, if I’d known friggin’ lightsabers were part of this struggle, I’d have cloned some troopers to fight these guys off with. I would also clone David Bowie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Andrej Pejic for personal reasons that should not be elaborated on at this time. Spoiler alert: the whipped cream would get eaten.

Rumble resorted to punching in order to solve all his problems, but that left him with a loose leopard. That wasn’t good. There were few enough situations where loose leopards were acceptable, and there was too little beastiality going on for this to be one of them.

Despite their best efforts, two of the leopards got loose and Terrorjaw got a mouth full of kitty carcass.

In the midst of all that, I caught a glimpse of the final members of my opposition. The first stalked forward in a suit of power armor that fell into the size range of a “walker”. It was about as tall as Rumble, headless, and bright white. Two thick legs that bent similarly to a human’s rose up into a wide torso. From the capabilities of the armor itself, it seemed a stylistic choice that the pilot’s helmet and armored arms extended out of the torso.

From the shoulders extended arms that were nearly long enough to reach the ground if fully extended. In place of a hand at the end of the limb, it had three heavy duty axe heads spinning around a central axis. The blade shaft in the middle was held between armored shafts that matched the same rectangular design as the rest all along the walker. These bright white plates ran diagonally with the interior corner at the lower end, on top of some sort of black underlayer that barely showed through at the corners. Where they met in the middle, they formed a “V” shape that protected everything but the exposed helmet and arms of the pilot. That was hardly a weak point; experience had shown that this suit could take a lot of punishment in that supposed weak spot.

“Huh, Man-Opener, eh? Interesting choice, Pivot. Tell me, is this one of those guys who has his own grudge against me?”

Man-Opener stomped straight through, not pausing at all even as he brought one arm forward and chewed through a leopard that put distance between itself and another member of the team. That guy was the final member of my opposition. He wore green boots, green gloves, and purple tights with yellow dots all over it in various sizes. The tights came up into a mask that covered his face, but there was something else on there I couldn’t make out. He was a let down after Man-Opener.

I didn’t pay a lot of attention to Pivot’s reaction except to note that her voice had an edge to it, like she was tired of talking to me. That happened to most people who deal with me on a regular basis. “You’ve been doing some reading, I see. Frankly, I’m surprised you can sit still long enough.”

The Eight hacked their way through my stalling attempt relatively quickly, with Man-Opener in the lead. I closed the blast doors on the entire place.

“Trust me, Pivy baby, unlike some men, I know when it’s time to stay nice and still for a woman. Wait, that’s not what I meant to say. Damn! Anyway, looks like you have breached my outer defenses.” I switched to interior cameras in time to see the man in the purple step out through a yellow tinted portal. He turned to watch Man-Opener carve partially through the door before it was knocked against the opposite wall by Rumble. He and Man-Opener crouched to walk through halls designed for regular folk.

The group stayed somewhat close together as they made their way down the hall. Just to be an ass, I switched off the lights.

“Yep, they’re in. So much for the leopards. Should call them leopeasy instead. Of course, they still have to get all the way through the power plant, then through the corridor to the lab. If you’re recording this to see some shocked reaction of horror, you’re going to be disappointed. Or your boss is, since he’s probably the one making you call me up. Am I right? This thing where you get a taste of my reaction, it’s for the benefit of Prime’s video archive, isn’t it?”

Pivot smirked. “You act like you’re smart now that you have access to our internal documents. That doesn’t take a keen deductive mind, Sherlock. If it wasn’t for the sight of you finally laid out on a slab, I would love to see you react to more of our surprises. You still don’t see them even when they’re right in front of your face. Every time you talk, it gives it away.”

She smiled as she held her hands up, palms toward me, fingers spread. “You think you’re sharing these big revelations, but you provide a showcase for your own ignorance instead. You petty, pitiful man. Your personal touch of madness is that you think you’re free even though you keep playing to someone else’s script. Like how you want to gab with me instead of running or fighting. I taunt you, you can’t help but taunt back. Tell me more about your brilliant insights while my men come closer and closer.”

She grinned like a mustached stalker in the night who had me alone. “I hate our conversations, but if it keeps you too preoccupied trying to prove you’re smart, then I’ll at least use that.”

I detected some hypocrisy there, which would make the next knowledge bomb I meant to drop on her even more delicious and destructive. I checked the cameras.

Yep, her team was in the corridor to the lab. I took a seat on my trailer couch then, between Roberta and Larry. “You know, when I showed up and took over Three Mile Island, I implied that I could blow the place up with a few pushed buttons. Truth is, it takes a lot more than that to convert a radioactive core to a nuclear weapon. Plus, I had my hands full just keeping that core maintained by my lonesome. So I thought ‘Hey, why not start disabling some alarms?’ So when Moai and I hightailed it a couple days ago, I left the place with only automated maintenance and a program to force a meltdown from a distance. Which I activated.”

Looking like a deer caught in a pair of headlights, Pivot said, “We cut outside access. You shouldn’t have been able to get anything to or from that place by internet.”

“True, true. Perhaps this is a bad time to point out that your soul-sucking bureaucratic procedures involved faxing things. Why bother hunting down how you folks got internet service behind those thick walls when I had a fax landline right there to get me in?”

“That’s a nuclear power station, Gecko! You won’t get away with this!” She restrained herself from baring her teeth at me, but I could see she was grinding them.

“Pivot, do I look like the world’s most charitable pimp all of a sudden? I only ask because I wasn’t aware I gave a fuck. Hey, you think you can have your guys pick up a box of Hot Pockets we left back in there? They might be cooked in the middle this time. Did you know that if you pay close attention to a person’s hair, you can find out their astrological sign? Before long, it’ll be obvious they’re all cancers. Cancer? I don’t even know her! You know what’s a good cheer for small teams? The micro wave.”

Pivot quit the conversation in a rage, presumably to try and get a hold of her team. I took off my helmet and smiled at my various rejected companions hanging out in the trailer. I mentioned Larry and Roberta. There were others, like the pinhead guy, but I didn’t have their names quite down. Boring names like “Bob” and “Steve” were always harder for me to nail down than interesting ones like “Sunbright” or “Arctica Blitz”.

“Ooh, how did she take the meltdown?” asked Roberta, swiveling her eye stalk around to look me in the face.

“She did not care for it. But you know what they say: if you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the meltdown,” I said.

Microencephalic Man, which was purely a placeholder name, nodded. “Most of us didn’t like that plan either.”

True. That was why I only had six rejects with me out of the thirty or so who had stayed at the place. The others went their own way. Of the six with me, the other two were in the car with Moai, driving us to our destination.

“Did you warn them where we’re going? Please say you didn’t tell them that,” whined Larry next to me. I think he didn’t really have anywhere to go.

I put an arm around his runny looking shoulders. “Nope. We’ll have the run of L.A. before they even know we’re there.”

Another reject, who I think was named Steve, spoke up then. “Just to be clear, I didn’t sign up to get killed in a hail of gunfire. I want to survive getting a little payback on them.” His skin, muscles, organs, and blood vessels were all clear. His skeleton wasn’t. Unlike many of the other rejects, he had regained his confidence fairly quickly by wearing a hoodie and long pants. I didn’t know how he could see things, but I knew I didn’t want to face him in a staring contest.

I started to answer, but then Roberta jumped up on my side excitedly. “And I want to go sight-seeing! Rodeo Drive, the movie studios,…um…the Hollywood sign?”

I put an arm around Roberta too. It didn’t fit well because of how her legs worked. She leaned back against my arm, so I think she appreciated the sentiment. I looked over at Steve seated at the breakfast table. “We’re going to play this smart. Hell, if y’all just want to sit back and watch the fireworks, that’s fine with me. I never planned to bring a team along and I’m not much of a leader. Just help me out how y’all can and remember to enjoy yourselves. Uncle Gecko’s going to take Prime out to the shed for a little game of hide the bacon. It’s a fun one, for me at least.”

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Ragin’ Against Cajuns 10

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I was not gifted with powers that would impress most people. If powers were swords, I got stuck with a stiletto. Good thing I had the legs for stilettos. In the whorehouse of the struggle between good and evil, I’ve never been a high-priced VIP escort, but I’m still known for getting down and dirty and bringing even the most stubborn to their knees. Like a badass sword-wielding prostitute who has trouble mixing metaphors, I was ready for revenge this Monday.

My first job of the night on Monday? Blow my way out of custody.

It wasn’t easy putting everything together with such limited equipment. What I call energy sheaths were a field of energy shaped around my fists and forearms by a specialized projection system inside of wiring shaped to function like barbed wire when not charged up. Barbed wire may have tamed the wild west, but it had a terrible form in regards to concentrating energy in a roughly-barrel shape and directing it outward.

The nanites helped with that. I reprogrammed them on the fly, having them form supports and other pieces to help aim and fire. The problem is, they were the reason the entire thing would only get one shot. Way back when I was first shrunk in the beginning of this big conflict with Hephaestus, I mentioned to y’all that changing size has some technical aspects to it that are dangerous. Well, one of the biggest problems for things that are small is that they are more sensitive to differences in temperature. They could put me back together, they could even have the secret program activated to form a grey goo blade, but they never could stand the heat, so I tend to keep them out of the kitchen.

This time, there was no getting them out of the kitchen. This time, escape was on the menue. Time to ladle on the pain.

I stood way on the other side of the wall I was going to shoot and began to cycle in the power to the coil I had mounted on my body. Except right where I was aiming, a man appeared.

It happened with a loud crack! Then, there stood one of those Faustus acolytes. He was wearing a loose-fitting white tunic with gold trim. Fancy schmancy, those Faustus uniforms. Gotta give them props for the tailoring. He didn’t look familiar, though because my memory showed them all in hoods. Usually people don’t look familiar to me because I don’t care, so that was thoughtful of Faustus. I wouldn’t feel guilty.

Feel free to snicker at that last sentence.

I considered blasting the hell out of that place anyway, but then I realized that a mage teleporting in could teleport me out pretty easily too, so I powered down my last-ditch weapon before any of the essential nanite parts were destroyed.

The acolyte got his bearings, then stared at me, head slowly tilting downward. Then he held his hand out, palm up. “I’m sorry, but why do you have a barbed wire dick?”

Did I forget to mention where on my armor I mounted this new weapon of mine?

“Oh this?” I leaned back, bringing my hips forward in the process. “This is just a little something I call the Obliterator. Oh, do you mean the new weapon? I have a different name for that, but I’m saving that surprise for when I finally shoot my load all over the wall there. Speaking of which, who are you and why shouldn’t I bukkake blast you too?”

“You can call me Samson. We spoke the other day.”

I shot him with finger guns. “Gotcha. Yeah, you were there for my capture too. Supposed to be enlightening me. Now, about why I shouldn’t blast you…care to enlighten me?”

He threw up his hands and all of a sudden there was a transparent yellow wall in front of him stretching the width of the room. It made it more likely my shot would kill me if I screwed up, plus it was yet another barrier out, so shooting at him was no longer a good option. I still wanted to, just to clarify. Just in case anyone had concerns.

Despite the murder cannon poised over my jibbly bits, I decided to negotiate. “Alright, you’re in here now. Can you get me out?”

Samson shook his head, face hidden within his hood despite the unforgiving light of my prison. “It’s significantly easier to get into this place than to escape, and things outside are…testy.”

I stepped forward and tested the wall of Samson’s with a few knocks. I had to turn to the side or my cock cannon would have bopped it before I could. The wall fizzled where I touched it, but otherwise seemed solid enough. As often as I piss people off, I’ve found it pays to get acquainted with some of this crap when I have the opportunity. “Testes, eh? Things went balls-up?”

Samson took a seat, leaning against the wall. I could see a continuous fizzle through my end where his back touched it. “I was placed in charge of quietly dusting off our contingency plans. It was difficult with all the chaos you caused. Then Pivot arrived with more manpower, wondering why you hadn’t been placed in her custody yet. Someone took a closer look, saw what I was doing. Magus Carter had to burn me to save the organization, but he gave me enough of an opening to hide. Now I’m in the egg with you.”

“Egg?”

“Yeah, an egg.”

“A motherucking egg? You guys captured me only to shrink me down another damn time, then stuck me inside an egg?!” I took another look around. “Where the fuck do you find a rectangular egg?”

Samson chuckled. “Would it make you feel better to learn it’s not a regular egg? It looks quite elaborate from the outside, and it has been enchanted many times over in order to make it suitable as a prison. Don’t let the idea wound your pride.”

“Huh…I guess the yolk is on me. What would happen if I scramble this egg, surprisingly tough though it may be?”

Samson helped himself shakily to his own feet and pulled a canteen out from under his tunic. He waited to answer until after he had a few gulps. “If you had somehow managed to crack the shell with that ridiculous getup, you would have been freed into the room where the egg is. It will release you if the shell is broken from the exterior, a piece of knowledge I’m glad I kept from our Hephaestus brethren. They’re greedy and always in a rush. They try to direct the flow of the universe instead of swim with the current. The new president of their company is all of this personified. Don’t be offended, but I dearly hope they try to kill you sooner rather than later. It won’t help me if we’re ejected into the middle of a Hephaestus base.”

“No offense taken. To know me is to wish for my untimely demise. To love me is the exception. To err is human. What’s this about a new company president?”

“I don’t know much. We don’t involve ourselves with Hephaestus company maneuverings. They say he had his predecessor shot.” He put away his canteen and rifled through his tunic.

I watched him pull a small sphere out from a nearly invisible opening. “That’s depressingly mundane.”

“Through two skyscrapers and his armored penthouse.”

“Kinky,” I said, giving him a thumbs up while posing with my hips thrust out. He glanced up and laughed in spite of himself. He turned back toward the sphere in his hand, which opened up to reveal something liquid. “Hey, whatcha doing over there?”

“Scrying. If you know as much about this egg as I do, it’s a relatively simple process. The problem is the difficulty in having enough calm water to see anything.”

“Well, let me know if there’s anything good on. I’ve been waiting on a new episode of the Joker Blogs for months now.”

“Sacrificing me bought us some time, but sooner or later Pivot will come for us. The only thing standing in her way is Mikey.” He sighed.

Getting tired of just standing around, I took a seat. I tried to sit with legs crossed, but my schlong blaster precluded that. I wound up laying down again. “Mikey. The terrifying Lord Mage Mikey. Or is he just another Acolyte Mikey?”

“Neonate Mikey has much to learn if he survives the next few days.”

A plate of food appeared in my field of vision when I next looked up. “Neonate Mikey needs to learn how to make a fucking meatloaf or we won’t survive the next few days.” I scooted over, grabbed the plate, and held it out for him. “You want this?”

So the escape didn’t happen that day, but Samson must have been right about how bad things got, because I awoke the next day to his knocking excitedly on the wall. “What’s that?! Where’s Leah?” I sat up and looked around, briefly confused by the sudden replacement of a dream world with the real one. It was a good thing I stopped myself before I bent far enough forward to bang my head into the dick-mounted destruction device I had on top of me. “What is it?” I asked Samson with a big of grump in my voice.

“Pivot and Magus Carter are in the egg room. She’s making her move!” I could almost hear the smile. I couldn’t see it because somehow that damn hood kept shadows over his face no matter what.

I scrambled to my feet. “Does she have the egg?”

“No, she’s arguing with the Magus.”

I got so excited I started hopping up and down. “Cut that out!” Samson whispered at me.

“Can they hear us?” I asked quietly.

“No, but,” he whispered, then caught himself and spoke normally. “No, but it’s distracting.”

“Just, come on, I’m excited!”

“She’s thrown him against the wall.”

“It’s like waking up on Christmas morning with a dead hooker in your bed!” I readied my secret weapon.

“She grabbed the egg!” I fed power to it quickly, as quickly as I needed to.

“And soon I’ll get to show everyone-“ Inside the barbed wire “barrel,” it began to glow brilliant orange, at first looking like a fog.

“She’s sque-!”

I popped into existence in a room, the power concentrating between my legs. There were secure cases holding artifacts all around, but most importantly was the woman in front of me. She wore a business suit and a domino mask, with her blonde hair up in a bun. Her eyes went wide at the sight of me, and I noticed as well that Samson had also appeared in the room nearby.

“This! Is! My! BoomDick!” I held out my hands, them pulled them back even as I threw my hips forward, the energy forced to the fore of the entire sheath setup and accelerated in a glowing ball of plasma even as it accelerated me in the opposite direction. The sheathing and projection scaffold was ripped off me and stayed where it was, save for it falling to the ground.

Pivot saw it coming and ducked far faster than I thought possible. I saw it pass overhead, singing her bun away, and continue on into the iron maiden with the robotic face that hovered against the far wall. The force melted and cracked the armor and he let out a distorted wail. Then I was clear out of the room, having cracked through the door and flown halfway down a corridor. Alarms sounded.

Back behind me, I could see flames and smoke along the opposite wall. I didn’t care to zoom in a lot; my priority was escape. A blast door began to lower to cut off travel to that room. I took a moment, now that I was free, to reach out to the systems surrounding me. Faustus was full of magic men, but that didn’t mean they eschewed all technology. There were plenty of computers, and even a mundane camera system that must have worked alongside a magical one.

Standing around was a no-no, though. It was better to figure out an escape route on the move. I allocated some power to my legs’ muscle enhancers and took long, bounding steps toward the end of the corridor up until a step somehow sent me sideways into the wall with some force. I looked back to see the business-suited woman standing there on my side of the blast door, arm outstretched, hand open, palm pointed in my direction. Some gravity power, maybe?

I slid to the ground, powered up the muscle enhancers even more, and went for a jump meant to power me through the door at the other end of this corridor. Instead, she altered my velocity and sent me into a thick steel ceiling occupying space only big enough for one of us. It having seniority, I wound up bouncing off lightly. Except instead of bouncing to the ground, I bounced back to the ceiling. The effects of gravity were altered on me, but it was normal gravity holding me to the ceiling instead of the ground. Below me, I noticed a couple of my knives had bounced loose and fallen to the ground instead of up against me.

That made me think of using exploding knives, chicken grenades, all that, but those were all weapons she would probably be able to redirect like she did to me. The fallen knives gave me an idea though. I stood up, hands up.

“Pivot, I presume?” I called out to her and bowed. I used the bow to reach for my potato peeler, though a hologram made it appear my hand stayed where it was. If she was capable of redirecting all of these photons, I’d be impressed. I activated it and went to take her head off. She threw me against the ground quickly as she used her power to throw herself hard against the wall, then slid up to the ceiling to avoid the beam that was cutting wildly.

She changed my velocity and the velocity of objects attached to me. Hell of a lot of photons to redirect in a laser. I swept after her and got bounced around the walls like the ball in a pinball machine as she made a complete circuit around the ceiling and wall to the floor again. She finally put a hand back and the blast door came up suddenly. It was yanked back down as she threw herself under it.

She must have figured that facing Samson was a better option. Maybe he’d get lucky and have a plan. My plan was to hit stealth mode and escape in the chaos of whatever was going on. I worked my way through the complex, using the cameras to find an elevator. The door opened and offloaded a squad of Faustus acolytes in combat gear. I slipped in behind them and hit the button for the first floor. I wasn’t lucky enough it would be the house, probably, but even the floor where I got captured was an improvement.

Gorilla Badass swung in from the ceiling before the door could close. He went to push the same button I had and stopped when he saw it lit up. He glanced around and up at the ceiling. Voices outside drew his attention and he peeked out while holding down the Door Close button. He relaxed once the elevator slid shut. Then the announcement was made.

It was Samson’s voice. “Attention all Faustus personnel. Pivot, the commander of the Hephaestus Task Force, has murdered the Magus and released Psycho Gecko. Defend yourselves! Protect the artifacts! Expel the intruders! If possible give Psycho Gecko a clear path to the outside so Hephaestus will follow!”

That was nice of Samson. Gorilla Badass didn’t think so. He stiffened as he heard the announcement. I thought I saw one of his eyes twitch back toward the rear of the elevator car where I stood, invisible.

“I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage,” he said. “And you have explosives, am I correct?”

“Oh, so the moment you face near-certain death, that’s when you want to talk?” I asked, arms folded in front of me. I took a step to the side just in case he decided to whirl around and throw a fist.

Hearing my presence confirmed, he actually relaxed a little more. “I’m here to beat you, but that doesn’t mean I have to fight you every single time we meet. You’re not worth the price of my life.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m only the price of my death instead.”

Badass reached to his right and felt along the wall, then leaned his back against it. “It’s not about the money with you.”

“Really, now? What’d I do to piss you off, then. Was it beating up Gorilla Awesome? He’s family, right?”

He crossed his, uh, hands? Paws, maybe? What do you call them on a gorilla? I looked it up real quick while he spoke. “A cousin I don’t care for. My brother and I both don’t like him, but I thought if I beat you when he couldn’t, it’d humiliate that know-it-all. Hephaestus liked the idea too. Pivot said that she was told to consider recruiting me or my brother Imperious. I can see why Awesome had such a hard time with you. You’re like the rain. It doesn’t matter how many raindrops you punch, because that’s not how you stop a storm.” His hands, as I found out they were called, tugged at the base of his leather vest.

“That’s almost poetic. Can I get that as a blurb somewhere? Like a wiki entry? Do I have a wiki entry somewhere? I thought so, but I’ve been doing hard time lately. Egg prison changes a man. I had to make some tough decisions to survive in there. They say your first day in, you have to either punch the biggest guy in the yard, or become someone’s bitch. Damn my anus is sore.”

“You were in there alone.” I saw a grin start to form on Badass’s face.

“Yeah, that’s why my dick is sore too. Maybe if I put some ice on it, I’ll get it back to the right length. Can a dick get stretch marks? Am I going to need lotion for this?”

The elevator stopped at my floor, which was when the grinning gorilla made his move. He had been tugging at his vest with his hands, it seemed, but now he whipped out at the interior of the elevator with the chain he wore as a belt. I went to block with my forearm out of instinct and it wrapped around my arm.

I’m sure he was confident he had me. I was confident that a knee with some extra power behind it would knock his balls up near his tonsils, if gorillas have tonsils. Just checked, and gorillas have tonsils. I didn’t have time to check on the location of Badass’s balls after I drove my knee into them. Right about then, the doors opened to reveal a squad of Faustus security, who aimed at Badass and at whatever invisible thing had a chain around it.

I projected my helmet at the appropriate height of to the side a bit, in case anyone got any ideas. “It’s me, that’s him. You only want one of us, if I heard right.”

The leader of the squad nodded and they let me pass into the same floor I had wrecked the first time around. I could tell because the holes weren’t all fixed. Before I left Badass to whatever fate they meted out, I patted him down for a communications device and took that with me. Aside from a firefight that broke out between a Hephaestus soldier with a flamethrower and a Faustus mage with fireballs, the rest of my escape went smoothly.

I had to deactivate the device to keep it from being tracked, so it didn’t give me any clue as to the ultimate fate of Pivot’s force in the base, but that’s not why I stole it. I stole it because it lets me tap into their communications network. I stole it because Badass didn’t need to call in any reinforcements and help them out if they’re merely captured. Most of all, I stole it because it will lead me to the real heart and soul of Hephaestus.

But first, I’m going to need my car and pet rock back from Mix N’Max.

 

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Ragin’ Against Cajuns 8

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A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. Tautology. That’s fancy philosophy speak for circular reasoning. Like I said before, you can charge extra for crap with a fancy French name and call it gourmet. When it comes to philosophy, it’s crap with a Greek name. And yet this crap is so considered wise, but the moment I start talking about critical butt sex failure, I’m deemed ridiculous and weird. Such people lack imagination, but I think we’re heading too much into sob story territory here, and this is not a sob story. This is a story about a whale. No!

This is a story about being happy!

Holly and Sam weren’t happy. We knew where Max was after your dimension was so kind as to hold the data for me, but the issue was about getting him out. Sam and Holly had this whole loyalty thing that was getting in the way. It would have been an admirable trait except they were heading into near-certain death.

They wanted to charge in with me. Upon finding out that I knew Max’s location, they gathered up their gear, whatever it was. Sam even took the time to hit up the bathroom. Good head on her shoulders.

I went ahead and gave my own self a similar bug to Max’s, right in the chest. Just had to slip off the armor, jab a knife in there, insert, have a shot of nanites, and by the time I had my armor on they were closing me up. Now that I knew that thing worked so well, I wanted one of my own. I figured I could write on the thing and send out the blog this way if I was ever too far away from my stuff.

Holly opened one of the kitchen cabinets and pulled out a bullet proof vest from somewhere, and started grabbing every knife in the place. I doubt she could have done much murder with some of them, but she was bound and determined to spread some Hephaestus butter.

I grabbed one of them away from her. At first, she didn’t react. After a second to think about it, she got angry and lunged for the knife, which I held away from her. “Hey, give that back!” she yelled, her voice going a little too high. I moved in front of the bathroom door to keep Sam from interfering as I played Keep Away with Holly. I heard Sam shuffling around in there in some sort of hurry. Probably the unpleasant kind of hurry, which is the standard hurry of the bathroom.

I ignored Sam’s attempts to open the door and addressed Holly, who was now tearing up as she jumped and tried to take the knife from me. “As much as you think killing someone with a butter knife is going to solve your problems, there is no margarine of error here!”

Holly pulled a knife and stabbed at me. It slid off the armor and clattered out of her hand, which then stuck a chest plate. She rubbed at her hand where it hit me. “See? You’re not cut out for hand to chest combat.”

“No one’s cut out to fight you, but that doesn’t mean I can’t kill a few of them.”

“Hey, what’s going on out there?!” Sam yelled out. She pushed harder now.

“Nothing, Sam. Don’t get your panties in a knot. And make sure to wipe!” I yelled back.

“Panties in a knot?” Holly repeated after me. “Why don’t you want me to go kill people? Is it because I’m a woman?”

I put my hands up, palms toward her, keeping the knife between two fingers. “I need you to listen to me, Holly. Do you trust me?”

“No,” she said, and tried to grab the butter knife again.

I dropped the knife in front of me with my right hand. She lunged to grab it, but I grabbed her throat with my left hand. I spun quickly, pressing her against the door, trapping Sam in again after she got her hopes up and the door part of the way open. From the flammable gas warning that popped up in my HUD, Sam’s attempt to escape might not have been just because I was doing something to Holly.

As for Holly, I held her up in the air by her throat while she kicked at me and the door. I wanted to tell her something, but it was hard with her whining so much. “Sh, sh, sh, calm down and listen to me. Listen to me!” I lightly popped her head against the door to make her pay attention. She moaned in pain, but it kept her from struggling so much, so I lowered her where she could barely touch the floor.

“Now then,” I said. “You’ve been a little bit on tilt lately. You know, upset, angry, sad, perhaps with some uncomfortable feminine itch or even some burning when you urinate courtesy a swarthy Latin lover named Esteban…not judging, and feel free to correct me on the details of your love life. That’s beside the point. Look at you. I don’t know what Max taught you, but you’ve never been a real part of the fighting before this. Before that night you got terrorized doggy style by a hellhound. Why do you want to do this?”

I lowered her a little more. “Please,” she whispered to me, “Please, I have to do something. I don’t want to be helpless again. I have to help save him. I have to.”

“You’re fodder, Holly. And you’re not quite right in the head. You go in there with me, you’ll die. Sam too, and she’s the stronger of you two. Cry and plead all you want, but I’ve heard a lot of it before.”

“Please,” she said again. She grabbed at her pocket and brought out a steak knife. She slashed futilely at my arm, sobbing. It was not a pretty sight, especially the snot draining out of her nose.

Here’s where not being a particularly good person proved advantageous. “Alright, let me make this simple for you.” I set her down, grabbed the wrist she was slashing at me with, and brought my other hand around, and snapped her ulna. Ignoring the scream of pain, I let her go then, and she stumbled over to the steps leading up to the bed. Sam slammed the door of the lavatory open and rushed out. She glared at me even as she checked on her friend.

“Take care of her. And don’t let her go fighting. I think she’s still in that maze with that demon dog a little bit, up here.” I pointed at my head.

As I turned to leave, Moai rotated and ducked through the door into the entryway. I caught up to him in there and patted him on the side of the head. “You look after them.”

His head tilted back, as if in shock.

“I just got you out. I’d rather you were in there backing me up. I’d prefer it to those two. But this might go bad for me. Plus, I’m leaving Sam and Holly out because they’re not so much prepared for all this wild fighting stuff. Not to this degree. But it’s dangerous out here, too. No matter what, I am getting Max out. Wouldn’t do to have him out and have his loyal assistants massacred. And move the trailer every once in awhile. They might have a way to find it.”

Moai nodded and turned to go back in.

When I stepped out the door, a dozen leisure-suited boogeymen greeted me, smiling from out of the darkness that held their lesser brethren.

I tipped my helmet to them. “Alright, folks, let’s go solve the world’s overpopulation problem.”

Half an hour later, I ran through the corridors of a base that was at times reminiscent of 1960s Cold War bunker and other times the leftover from a 1980s fantasy movie. I could turn a corner from parse, light brown walls and vinyl floors and wind up in a passageway of rock light with dripping torches. To think, it was all part of a compound underneath this epic plantation-looking mansion in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

Rather than try to fight me, guards and workers retreated, occasionally sealing heavy doors behind me that featured magical glyphs of some sort. There was always some way out, even if it involved blowing a hole into an adjacent room or widening some air ducts with a chicken grenade. There had been no guards up top, just a sense of paranoia as I approached the mansion, like I had things watching me from the dark.

Maybe I just have a go-getter attitude or maybe it was all the friendly things I had lurking in the dark, but I got past that mental mumbo jumbo and found my way down through a trap door in the basement.

Then began the running through the corridors part, which was quickly losing its luster because the guards were all leaving me alone. At some point, I noticed that only some of the corridors were sealed off and other doors were left wide open. I took a couple of them before figuring out they were leading me somewhere. I double checked Max’s last known location and saw they corralling me well away from it.

That wouldn’t do. I blew my way through a wall in the correct direction and stepped through. Directly into a toilet. A bathroom. As if to punctuate this realization, a cinderblock plopped into the toilet. I opened the door and stepped out to the stares of other men who had been washing their hands, using the urinals, or peeking out their doors. I pointed back to the charred hole in the wall. “Too much Burrito Bell for lunch, know what I’m saying? I wouldn’t go in there, though, because I blew it up. Shittin’ bricks, you know?”

They fled in terror. That’s some damn common courtesy for you, isn’t it? It was funny, too. Mages were depicted with robes often enough, but these guys looked like regular office drones in button-up shirts and slacks.

The bastards at Faustus had crushed all the fun out of magic with their boring corporate conformity. Or maybe that was just the IT pool.

Either way, I soon found my way past guards trying to flirt with me via rail gun and burst through a wall into the room Max was supposedly being held in.

Surprise, surprise, it was a really big room with a smaller observation room. Like the rest of the place, it had a bit of a schizophrenic design: fluorescent lit the middle of the room while the edges were illuminated by hovering orbs in sconces. It was a room with an odd fusion of modern and fantasy.

Oh, and enemies. Lots of enemies. Terrorjaw, Gorilla Badass, Motley Sue, and Quick Sand were all there from Pivot’s little Annihilation Eight team. Conventional Hephaestus guards held flanked me in a sort of crescent moon shape on either end of the Eight and their magical friends nearby. At the head of a group of men in camo who stood without guns in hand was something that looked like a floating iron maiden flanked by . Not the good kind, with the music and Eddie the Head. The pointy kind. Except the metal face on the outside had glowing eyes.

“Aha!” I exclaimed. “You’re all here! Right where I wanted you. Except Max, where’s he?”

The iron maiden answered with a digitally altered voice. “Your friend is within the testing chamber. Acolyte Samson, enlighten our guest as to the fate of his friend should he resist.”

A man stepped up beside him in urban grey, white, black camo and a hood over his face. He held something in his hand that engulfed it in magical flames without burning himself. I couldn’t see his face at all somehow, but his voice was clear enough. “Resist and your friend is thrown to the minotaur, who shall break his bones and devour him, leaving the head for last.”

“Sounds fun. I think I want to resist.”

“What?” Acolyte Samson asked.

“Well come on. Almost everyone in this room’s about to die and y’all went to all the effort to set that up. I mean, it sounds pretty cool. I’d like to see it since you guys actually found a minotaur. Or bred a minotaur. Hey, which one of you guys’ wives was picked for bull fucking duty? But seriously, all you guard guys, you don’t have too much longer to live. Don’t you want to be able to say you saw a supervillain fight a minotaur before your death?”

Silence reigned in the room as they contemplated my enthusiasm. Meanwhile, I spoke more softly into my helmet. “Alright, guys. The goal is getting Max out. Whatever you do, go for him, alright?”
I heard a chuckle that seemed indicative.

I put my hands up. “Alright, you convinced me. I’ll pretend to give up, then we can struggle and the minotaur can fight while and hopefully break out while we’re screwing around out here. Now, let me just get my helmet off…”

“You’re not getting anything off!” growled Terrorjaw.

“That’s not what your wife said,” I retorted with a smile as I removed my helmet and the shadowy beings hidden in my armor shot out like a fountain of black ink.

The boogeymen were scarcely out of my armor when the orbs around the room turned off. I slammed my armor back on my head and got low, dodging, ducking, dipping, diving, and then dodging again as rail rifles cracked. It didn’t help too much when one of them shattered my hip and another cracked the visor of my helmet. By then, the orbs were out, and with a wide smile from one of the disco-suited boogeymen, the fluorescents went all at once. We were plunged into darkness.

I had the suit though. My helmet allowed me to see with the ole night vision. That threw off most of the guys shooting at me, even some of the mages who hurled fireballs, icicles, lightning bolts, and magic blasts at the area where I stood. I was too busy closing in on the Eight. Motley Sue was my first target, though I soon saw tiny bits of sand whirling in my vision as Quick Sand got a sense of where I was. Eyes closed, Sue was strumming, trying to pay attention, trying to find me in everything that was going on. I briefly saw her eyes open in shock before teeth closed around me like a vice and I was slammed into the ground by Terrorjaw.

His teeth couldn’t get through, but he was pinning me in place. He gave me a nasty surprise. I thought it was only right to give him one back. The Nasty Surprise, my handy hidden mini-chainsaw, slid out and fired up, digging into the flesh at the corner of Terrorjaw’s predatory grin.

He howled even as he tried to dig his teeth into me. “Relax,” I said, “Everyone’s going to want to know how you got these scars.”

The bad news is I didn’t get to finish. The good news was that Motley Sue struck out blindly. Or she just didn’t give a shit about Terrorjaw. Her music caused something to slam into us, knocking Terrorjaw off of me. Unfortunately, it was Quick Sand’s time then. He gathered himself together and drove his sand into my visor, sandblasting it, then looped back around to keep up the pressure. Getting an idea, I called out to the various mages nearby. “Hey, wannabe Harry Potters! Your mommas turned tricks!”

From there, it was a matter of rolling as magical barrages flew into the area around me where Hephaestus’s pet supervillains had gathered. Quick Sand couldn’t keep up with me. He was mostly turned to glass after the first few lightning bolts hit, then melted, frozen, and finally shattered as everything else caught up. There weren’t many sand particles left after that.

It scattered the other villains, at least at first. Then they were on me. Something that vibrated to Sue’s tune held down my legs while Terrorjaw found me again and tried to bite off my Nasty Surprise arm. Even the muscle enhancers weren’t overcoming their determination. I still thought I had a good shot at them, right up until something sparked on the ceiling. One moment, there were just sparks that illuminated a pockmark-faced gorilla hard at work. Then some magical word reverberated through the room, and there was light. And I saw the light, and it was not good. There were parts of it that were good. Max was gone. Out of there thanks to the boogeymen, who have had an annoying ability to teleport when lights are turned on in any room they’re in. That was the first of the bad parts of all this.

The bad parts began when the iron maiden began to grow arms and legs, each one at least as long as I am. The iron maiden spoke, revealing it was the one to say whatever turned the lights back on. It began to chant something else, with its mages joining in. It was horrible. I couldn’t even bang my head to it.

Instead, I took one look at the situation and said “Fuck this shit.” The assassination part of the plan had gone FUBAR and I wasn’t in so much of a position to fight my way out as flee with as many body parts as possible.

I pulled a chicken grenade’s head off while it was slung through my belt, then pulled it out and went to throw it. Right when I tried, the floor opened up beneath me and I fell, grenade coming down with me. Everything looked like stars all around me as I fell, and I could see Gorilla Badass watch me from where he clung to the rafters above. I also saw the chicken grenade coming down right on me. Its explosion didn’t help my head any, but it helped throw me to wherever I was going. I heard my neck snap just before I blacked out.

That would be a great place for a cliffhanger if this was a story, or if I could just blog every single day. That’s not all or even the most important thing to happen to me in this time period. That was probably when I woke up to a room that was all white. There were no lights, but the light just came from somewhere. No doors, no windows, no sign of the hole I fell through.

The white didn’t much help my headache, but at least I hadn’t been out too long. Remember, knocking someone out for more than five minutes means they probably suffered brain damage. I could regrow the hardware, but I preferred not to lose the software, especially the hidden porn files. At least the spinal column regenerated thanks to the impact bursting some of the nanite quilting.

Since then, even though I’ve kept everything I had on me when I got in this place, it’s been…boring. Days straight in here. No word from the outside. No word from Max. No word from anybody. No radio, no TV, no satellite or wifi signals. Food was delivered to me, but it always just sort of appeared somewhere I wasn’t paying attention. Weird thing was, the peripheral cameras linked to my helmet never caught the delivery either. I would keep an eye out all around when it got to be a few hours since my last meal, and see nothing. Then I turned and there was food, sitting right on the ground. Sandwiches sometimes. Pizzas. Fast food burgers and fries. Wherever I was, I knew I was connected to the real world.

All the waste disappeared similarly, which nearly blew up in my face. After I’d noticed that trick being pulled on my droppings, I tried to hide a chicken grenade in the middle of a pile with a loose head, hoping, it might surprise my captor. Like I said, that one blew up in my face when just the crap disappeared.

I figured out a plan, though, and that’s why y’all have been able to read all this. The bug said I was still down there under that mansion. I just had to rig it send the message back through the other device with my computer to inform Max, Sam, Holly, and Moai where I am and hope they figure out something to get me out of here.

Fuck, this became a story about a man finding himself and having to depend on the power of friendship after all. Whatever happens, readers, don’t let them sell the movie rights to Disney.

 

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Ragin’ Against Cajuns 6

Ok, ok, we didn’t leave immediately, but not entirely by choice. You expected more? I suppose I can see that. Why else would I lure my enemies to New Orleans while blowing up the Ziggurat? Well, readers, as you may have figured out by now, one of the traditional signs of a psychopath is poor long-term planning. And some people accuse me of being a psychopath. Psychopathic like a fox!

Much like a fox, I found out that Hephaestus had finally gotten up their fat asses while I was eating chicken eggs. Breakfast, to be precise. Not just any breakfast, though. It was a cheap Waffle House breakfast, with cheese eggs, grits, bacon, and a pair of waffles off to the side. Cheap food, crappy, not very nutritional. Delicious, it goes without saying. You know how they say “pick three?” about t-shirts or services? Cheap, good, or fast? When it comes to food, you have a spectrum from “tastes good” on one end to “healthy for you” on the other. The cheap part doesn’t matter too much. You could charge people a hundred dollars to eat a plate of dog shit if you call it something French and act snooty about it.

So there I was, sitting in my booth, nomming on food that was terrible for me. Moai had squeezed into the other side of the table by pushing that seat out of the way, which had greatly inconvenienced the person trying to sit on the other side of the seat. In the end, the old man had decided not to push the issue, perhaps because I was in my armor, save for the helmet I’d removed for eating, and Moai was Moai. Truly, he was a wise man. A little stinky, too. Smelled like cigarettes.

That was where we were when someone opened the door to leave and came back in, spitting and wiping at his eyes. There were always several reasons to act like, from certain news channels all the way to pop stars trying too hard to be edgy. In this case, it was due to sand. I found that out when the pieces of sand ricocheted off the glass windows of the Waffle House and came together in a solid mass that then shot at the windows in a solid stream. It was Quick Sand, the guy I covered in goo back at Newark. While he was busy sandblasting the window, I hopped over the counter and grabbed some drinks. He reformed in time for me to play catch with some coffee.

A couple pots of coffee made most of him plop to the floor in a muddy heap. “What’s that, Quick Sand? You like your coffee with milk?” I hopped on the counter and poured milk out of the jugs onto him. He let out a sound scraping glass and tried to punch me, but his muddy fist broke apart against me. He stumbled back, significantly smaller, trying to hold himself together and crumbling. I slid down off the counter and kicked him between the legs. And between the ribs too. Yeah, he didn’t stay together very well.

At that point, a gorilla entered the fight. I didn’t see much at first. He grabbed the building’s overhang and swung at me, catching me in the face with a balled-up foot and the brass knuckles he wore on it. That sent me spinning back without some of my teeth.

Bye bye, little Gecko teeth. Sniff. I knew you had to leave the nest some day. I’ll miss you!

He jumped on my back and grabbed at my hair with one foot, pulling my head back. My head was swimming a little, but I knew I’d be in trouble if I just stayed there on my knees and let him punch me all day. I had learned very early on that was a poor way to win a fight. Before he could, he was headbutted off me by Moai.

That’s why I love the guy. Statue. Whatever. If I knew he was capable of having sex, I’d have bought him a bushel of prostitutes by now so he could get his rocks off.

After that monumental save, I stumbled over to the table and slipped on my helmet. Instantly, a full 360 view came on for me. I could see that Quick Sand was still down, but the gorilla was back on his feet. He was not the strangest-looking primate I had ever seen, not with all the humans out there. He was lean, dressed in a leather vest, because apparently every badass has to wear leather. He had a chain around his waist and the aforementioned knuckleduster on one foot. His long, partially gray head fur was long and hung on either side of his face. The fur above his lip was unusually thick as well. Almost looked like a mustache. In the middle of his scarred and pockmarked face, he held a cigar in his mouth. It had a yellow band around the base. Banana flavored.

He roared at me, spewing cigar smoke into the air. He jumped up and grabbed the counter, dropkicking Moai to the side, then ran along the counter at me until leaping once more. He turned upside down in midair, feet at the ready, but I’ve never been insecure about taking a lesson from my favorite living minion. Rather than block or dodge, I headbutted him between the legs. “Hoomf!” he grunted as he fell at my feet, his momentum diverted by the force of the blow.

“I could have knocked open your skull with that,” I said as I bent over him. “But it looks like I cracked your nuts instead. You’re obviously not Gorilla Awesome. Who are you supposed to be, ‘Gorilla Eunuch’?”

He rolled over suddenly, whipping his chain belt up and around my throat. I leaned over to take the pressure off and he growled at me, “No, I’m Gorilla Badass.” He then pushed on my chest with both his legs so he could choke me with the chain.

He didn’t learn anything from the last time he had attacked me, though. I knew that in some sports you weren’t supposed to touch the ball with your hand, but I decided that monkey ball wasn’t one of them and brought my fist down. Ok, so he was an ape instead of a monkey. Sure. I just had trouble believing he was one of the great apes.

I grabbed his legs and started swinging him around. He tried to sandbag me, but the armor compensated. I tossed him back out the window prompting some scared woman clutching a child to yelp and run for better cover than the bench by the street.

“Here, choke this for me!” I called as I whipped out a chicken grenade, popped its head off, and threw it after him.

The chicken veered off course and exploded well away from him, which struck me as odd, but the rocking chord accompanying it also seemed odd.

“Huh. Weird. Alright, Moai, let’s bounce.” He nodded and I led the way out the door, bunny hopping out the door.

I was knocked off my stride by another chord ripping threw the air and slamming into me. It cracked against my armor and against Moai, actually chipping a little off him. It came from a woman in tattered, dark clothes. Boots, torn red and black plaid pants, a shirt that had been sewed together out of two different shirts, all topped with a face pale from makeup. She had Asian features and long black hair that she kept up in a pair of pigtails wrapped around round speakers. Presumably that was to help with the guitar she held, which had enough jagged edges on the body that it could have been wielded like a weapon.

To make matters worse, I saw Gorilla Badass was up and limping after us from the other direction. He stopped when she yelled at him, “Take a break, Gorilla. They’re mine now.”

I had to say something. “How about you two fight about it instead of standing any chance at all with teamwork? I’ll even let the victor have a break while they try and find me, how’s that?”

She made a scrunched up face at me, “Thanks, but no thanks. We settled on taking turns.”

I held up my hands, “Whoa, you’re all kinda interesting and all, but why would anyone hire a bunch of idiots who won’t even team up to take me on?”

She scoffed and rolled her eyes, sunlight glinting off the paperclip piercing her eyebrow. “You’re going to stop to criticize the people hunting you at a time like this?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, are you going to hold a question and answer session after I kick your hind end? How do you think I’d feel, knowing I was killed by a bunch of morons?”

“Look, we’re all paid to be part of this group, but only one of us can get the bounty from bringing in your head. Now shut up and die already before anyone else shows up.”

“Fine by me, little miss Harajuku.”

“My name is Motley Sue!” she yelled and began shredding. When I say shred, I mean that it literally shredded the pavement as a shockwave headed toward Moai and I, which seemed really strange considering the speed of sound moved faster than that. Moai and I dove to opposite sides. She kept aiming at me. Sound blast after sound blast followed, even after I hit the stealth, even after I projected more of myself. Hell, she was fighting me with her eyes closed, I saw. Echolo-fucking-cation.

“Free Bird!” I yelled to try and throw her off. I’ve heard that’s the easiest way to annoy a musician.

She snarled, but kept up the barrage of harmful music tearing into the street, sidewalk, and buildings around me.

Of course, she had mistaken fighting me alone with fighting me one-on-one. She couldn’t keep on after me with Moai rolling at her. Instead, she had to aim downward and strum her guitar, a burst of whatever she was does launching her into the air and sending a rolling Moai right at me.

Doubtless she thought she had me when she landed with a smirk. Then she saw me running toward her while Moai rolled me away. “Here’s some free birds for ya!” I called out, giving her a pair of middle fingers.

She nearly got me with a blast, but Moai was paying attention and turned down a side street.

Our fight was over for the day, but it disturbed everyone back at the trailer. They wanted to just go ahead and leave as soon as it got dark. That was a long wait, but finally we were all heading out, with Moai and I hanging out in the trailer to patch ourselves up. I was repairing parts of my armor that took a beating in the recent festivities; he had a can of crack filler quick-dry cement. I had been filling him in on what happened since his capture.

“And that’s another reason I’m glad to have you back. This bunch, the Annihilation Eight, have me a little outnumbered, at least in theory. If you count brains, I have them surrounded. Still, one of these days they’re going to fight me as a group and then we’ll have problems. They did a pretty good number on me back in Newark, even if that was mostly Dr. Typhoon’s power. Hey, whatcha doing? Did someone fall down a well?”

I asked because Moai had started gesturing with his head toward the front of the trailer. Then I figured out what he wanted to tell me. The car was stopped. I threw open the door and stuck my head out to find we were indeed stopped, with Max, Sam, and Holly out of the car and looking at the road. Or, to be more accurate, looking at where the road should have been.

“The fuck is this now?” I asked as I stepped out.

“It’s just gone!” said Sam, throwing her hands up. She was right. The road looked like it had collapsed in a huge sinkhole. We were on the highway heading out of there, at the head of a group that had stopped. Other people were confused and scared. The fellow next to us was on the phone and slipped back into his car. He began to try and turn the car around when we all saw headlights toward us in the other lane. Someone was heading into New Orleans and about to make one hell of a pit stop. A lot of people began to wave their arms and shout. Others flashed their lights. I climbed the trailer and waved the driver on in.

Somehow, his car just flew over the gap like nothing was wrong. The driver looked confused to see all of us but kept going, though a child’s arm waved back at me from the back of the car.

The guy trying to back up his car threw up his hands, then went back to his phone call as he drove straight at the hole, figuring it was an illusion or something. His car fell, traveling a short distance before bouncing off a barrier that briefly lit up to reveal various words in a swirly script I couldn’t read. This barrier disappeared as quickly as it appeared, but showed up again once I tried throwing a rock. There was both a hole and a forcefield of some sort.

We found out on our way to try another road out that people all over the city were reporting the roads all collapsed and a field of some sort keeping them in the city, though people had no problem driving into New Orleans. Even hearing that, we checked as many of them out as we could.

Faustus and Hephaestus had us trapped, but there was good news: they trapped themselves in with me.

 

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