And if anyone contests it, I will slay them.
I'm talking a soul drinking here. I will
.
As it turns out we have now exceded our Character Limit on the first page.
The silence in the air was palpable. There were five people sitting at the conference room’s table – although three of them were only people in the roughest sense of the word. At the table’s head sat a man whose predominant feature was his gigantic head, which was nothing more than a green, glowing U. The serial number emblazoned on the front of his shirtpocket said Duke 2.0, in similarly radioactive letters. He made a move to speak.
“Gentlemen,” he began.
There was a quiet cough from his left. He turned to look, blanched, and turned back to face the rest.
“Gentlemen,” Duke said, “and Vester, who we sometimes mistake for a gentleman due to the size of her-“
“BOOBS” shouted one of them, immediately bursting into flame.
“Chin,” continued Duke pointedly. “And put yourself out, ToonyMan, or you’ll kill us all.”
“Psh,” said ToonyMan, dousing his head with the nearby bucket of water that they kept on hand for precisely that purpose. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you.”
Duke would have stuck his tongue out at him, if he had anything resembling a tongue. “As I was saying. Gentlemen and lady, we are screwed.”
There was a murmur of discontent. One of the others stood abruptly, the spider on his shirt squeaking in annoyance at the sudden movement. “Duke, I resent that. You can’t just declare that we’re screwed without going through the proper diplomatic channels. In fact-”
“Sit down, Josh,” said Duke. “I have already done so. Our screwedness is confirmed.”
The hulking shape to his right gave a growl of malevolence, removing its bowler hat with one green tentacle. “Pics,” he rasped, “or it didn’t happen.”
“Oh, it happened all right,” replied Duke. “Look!”
A flickering beam blazed out from where his forehead should have been, bathing the opposite wall in a faint light. An image of a tall, red skinned figure with glowing eyes appeared. He wore what could most accurately be described as ‘the most pimpin’ pope hat in existence’, and an ermine robe that appeared to have been sewn with human hair. There was a gasp.
“The Enemy,” muttered Vester.
“Actually,” said Duke, “The NME.”
The spider on Josh’s shirt squeaked loudly and shook its head. “I agree,” Josh said, stroking his beard. “What does the Emperor of Mars have to do with us being well and proper screwed?”
“Hmph,” scoffed the abomination, fluttering his wings. “Nothing, I suppose. He fears my Elder might.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Cthulhu,” Duke said, thanking his makers that no trace of fear could show itself on his odd face as he spoke its unholy name. “He has everything to do with our screwedness. Take a look at this.”
Another image replaced that of the Emperor.
“What the hell is that?” shouted Josh.
Vester threw her vest over her head. “My eyes!”
“Huh,” said ToonyMan, tilting his head sideways. “That’s… odd.”
“Put that thing away,” rumbled Cthulhu, “or I’ll put you away.”
“What’s wrong with you people?” said Duke. “It’s just a picture of- oh. Uh. Whoops. Someone must have been fiddling with my settings.”
The unspeakable image faded away. A new one took its place. It looked like a map of a huge and barren wasteland. The people seated at the table gasped.
“Behold!” said Duke. “Texas. The NME has announced his intentions to lay claim to this state, due to its rich oil fields, its sprawling terrain, and its women.”
“Why its women?” said Josh.
“Mars needs women,” whispered Vester. “It’s an unspoken rule. So don’t speak of it.”
“Ah.”
“IT NEEDS THEM FOR SEX,” chimed in ToonyMan. Coils of smoke began to peel off his forehead.
“I get it, already.”
“The point is,” said Duke, “that we simply cannot allow foreign interests to take control of a sovereign state of Earth.”
“He wouldn’t dare risk it,” said Josh. “Texas is guarded by the SuperDevil.”
There was an awkward silence.
“What?” he said.
“Um,” rumbled Cthulhu. “Not anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Cthulhu kind of stepped on him,” said Duke.
“What was he doing in Texas?” asked Josh curiously.
“The point is,” said Duke, cutting him off, “we can no longer rely on SuperDevil to deter Martian aggression, nor can we risk open war with the Empire of Mars.”
“I say we kill all the Martians,” yelled ToonyMan. “WITH GUNS.”
“No,” said Vester. “They would wipe us out if it came to that. They have the power of Science.”
“Exactly,” said Duke. “Which is why I propose we fight them with a combination of Politics and Science. You know. For irony.”
“Your puny human politics are nothing to the Elder Gods,” said the resident Elder God. “But I see the wisdom of this course of action. We must install a King in Texas. The NME would never attack a monarch who passed muster.”
“Who will be King?” said Josh.
There was a moment of silence.
Suddenly, they heard the roar of an incoming motorcycle, racing towards them at full throttle. The roar stopped just outside the door of the conference room, and the door abruptly imploded as a thick-soled boot came crashing through it.
The figure stepped into the room, the light from the hall at his back like a halo.
His name passed around the room in hushed tones. “Aqizzar…”
The Baron put his steel crowbar away and squinted at them. “Did I hear someone say ‘King’?”
---
Duke, ToonyMan, and Josh sat up long into the night, working on the plan to avert a Martian invasion. Understandably, tensions were high, especially because ToonyMan’s head had a propensity for exploding every five seconds.
They had determined that there was only one way to create a King in this modern age of democracy. It was the oldest way. The best way.
To become King, the aspirant would have to slay a Dragon.
Right after this, the other three had cleared out. Vester had gone to find a Princess, claiming that there could be no Dragonslaying without a proper damsel in distress. Aqizzar had ridden out the window in a cloud of smoke and awesome. Cthulhu had flown away, taking a significant chunk of the ceiling with him, and leaving them to wonder how he could possibly be flying with those tiny wings of his.
“I think the real problem here is finding a dragon, honestly,” said Josh, wiping the sweat off his forehead with his spider. Once we’ve got one of those, Aqizzar would have no problem killing it.“
“That’s the thing.” Duke turned, flashing faster in agitation. “If Aqizzar slays the dragon too quickly, the populace won’t make him King. It’s the sort of thing they’re used to seeing him do. What we need is a challenge. We need him to be down and out for a bit, and then rally back and kill it in the sort of dramatic moment you see in movies.”
Silence ruled for a moment. The intermittent flashing of Duke’s face and ToonyMan’s constant pyrotechnics began to wear on Josh’s nerves. “You know, that’s all well and good, but the last dragon was slain years ago.”
Duke scratched his glowing face. “That is a bit of a problem, I guess.”
“Yeah. It’s not as though we can just make a dragon out of-”
ToonyMan interrupted him with an explosion of flares that singed the ceiling and blew off part of Josh’s beard. “THAT’S BRILLIANT!”
“What is?” asked Duke.
“LET’S MAKE OURSELVES A DRAGON!”
“You might actually be onto something,” said Duke, ignoring Josh for the moment, who was busy trying to find enough bits of hair to glue back onto his face.
“All we need is a base creature,” said Josh, sticking patches of charred beard hair to his chin “I say we use a Gila Monster. I heard Aqizzar killed one of those once.”
“Where would we get a geneticist, though? And a lab? I imagine creating a Dragon would require both of those.”
“Genetics? GENETICS?” said ToonyMan. “What’s wrong with the two of you? Genetics is for PANSIES.”
“Well,” said Josh, “How are we supposed get a Dragon without-“
“GIMME THAT GLUE!”
He yanked the bottle out of Josh’s hands and ran off.
“Oh damn,” said Duke. “You realize he’s just going to find as many Gila Monsters as he can and glue the poor bastards together.”
“It’s a shame,” said Josh. “Now about our Dragon…”
“Ah, yeah,” said Duke. “I figure we’ll feed it nothing less than a steady diet of meth heads. That’ll swell any lizard to abnormal sizes. It’ll probably pick up fire breath along the way, and… huh.“
“What?” said Josh.
“Um.”
“What is it?”
“Well, I don’t mean to pry, but… why is your spider glued to your face?”
Josh frowned at him. “You don’t have a beard. You wouldn’t understand.”
“I don’t even have facial features,” said Duke pointedly. “But yes, I don’t understand. Nor do I want to. Now, let’s get to work.”
“I call meth head duty!”
As they set about creating themselves an offense against the universe, neither of them noticed the tiny camera and microphone stuck to Josh’s spider.
---
The lone figure stood out in the middle of the desert, tinkering with a device on the side of its helmet. It wore bright green body armor, glinting in the light of the full moon, and carried a heavy white shield. The glow of its red eye scanner cast dim shadows around the cacti.
There was a dim rustling overhead, and the desert animals went silent in the dim hush of fear. He had come, and they knew that he was not of this Earth, nor any other.
Cthulhu set himself down on a high sand dune, just across from where the armored figure was standing. “I didn’t expect to see you wearing your old outfit,” he rasped. “Are you afraid to look at my face? Silly human.”
The voice that issued from behind the helmet was monotonic, but carried with it a definite hint of malevolence. “Cut it. You know why I called you.”
The Elder God chuckled. “Refresh my memory.”
“They’re planning something. Something big. I want in on it.”
Cthulhu stopped and glared at the figure. “How could you, puny human, possibly know of something like that?”
“I hear things, you know. I have spies in places you couldn’t possibly imagine.”
“Don’t insult me,” growled Cthulhu. “The things I can imagine would shatter your fragile mind into a thousand forever screaming pieces. You could not hide your transmitters in any place that I would not be able to find them.”
“Oh?” said the armored figure. “Look again.”
“What do you-“ started the abomination, then stopped. He reached around with one of the tentacles on his face and prodded what he had long assumed to be an Elder Pimple on his back. It felt hard. He ripped it out of his skin with a flick of a tentacle and held it up to his gleaming red eyes. It looked like a remote transmitter.
“Oh, you’re good,” he rasped. “Very good.”
“Of course I am,” said the figure flatly. “That’s why I want in on this.”
“In?” rumbled the Elder God. “There is no ‘in’. This is merely a measure to prevent the invasion of the puny Martians.”
“Is that so?” said the figure. “Then why are you planning to slay that Dragon before Aqizzar does?”
“Lies,” said Cthulhu, turning away.
“Oh?” said the figure. “Then why is SuperDevil dead? What were you looking for while you were there in Texas?”
“Silence. I am an Elder God. What use would the Kingdom of Texas be to me?”
The figure whipped off its helmet, revealing long hair and a mad grin that spoke of all the insanity an Elder God could bring to the table and more. “Kingdom? KINGDOM? FUCK the Kingdom. When I’m done with it, it’ll be a Queendom, under me, Queen Sofia!”
With that she chucked her helmet at Cthulhu. It struck him where his butt should have been, although his butt did not conform to Euclidean Geometry. He whipped around as fast as he could, enraged.
“My noneuclidean butt is not yours to strike,” he rasped. “Give me one good reason not to devour you and this entire worthless desert right now.”
“Just one? Okay. How about a deal?” said Sofia, grinning widely.
“What sort of deal could you possibly propose,” growled the Elder God, “that would not end badly for myself? I’ve dealt with you before. It always ends with me being sodomized by the Goat with a Thousand Young. Repeatedly.”
“Aw, but I thought that was the kind of thing you were into,” said Sofia, pouting.
“I,” rumbled Cthulhu, “am an ancient being with powers and an intellect far beyond your wildest dreams, not a sexual deviant.”
“Right, that’s me, I forgot.” She crossed her arms and smiled a smile that would have made the bravest of men wet their pants. “Well, this time we’ll both get what we want.”
The abomination considered this for a moment. “Very well,” he said. “I will hear your deal. If it’s not to my liking, I’ll devour you.”
“Please do,” Sofia muttered to herself.
“What was that?”
“Nothing. Here’s the deal. You help me take out the Dragon before Aqizzar does. This saves you the trouble of having to fight both him and a mutated superlizard.”
“I see no further benefit to myself,” said Cthulhu.
“Wait for it. As Queen of Texas, I’d grant you leave to do anything you want in my Queendom, which includes looking for… whatever it is you’re looking for.”
Cthulhu pondered this for a while. “Still no deal, unless you can guarantee that previous misfortunes will not repeat themselves.”
Sofia threw her hands up in the air. “Fine. I promise that you will not be raped by Shub-Niggurath. This time.”
“It is good,” rumbled the Elder God.
“Shake on it,” said Sofia, spitting onto her palm and offering it to him.
“No. And we shall not speak of the last time you shook my hand either,” said Cthulhu, and flew off, flattening several sand dunes with the gust from his muscular, tiny wings.
“He’s a waste of tentacles, if you ask me,” said Sofia to herself, picking up her helmet from where it lay and walking into the desert, laughing madly all the while.
Clouds began to gather on the horizon. A storm was coming.
------
A huge crowd had gathered on an open field by the Bay, milling about restlessly as they waited for Duke to come up on the makeshift stage that had been constructed for that day’s event. Most of them could not help but notice the titanic rectangular object just behind the stage, covered by a tarp. It looked like, and in fact was, a huge cage.
Josh stood on a nearby hill, watching the proceedings while Pablo the spider clambered all over his shirt. He was there for two reasons. Firstly, to make sure everything proceeded as planned. And secondly, to make sure that whenever ToonyMan came back, he didn’t come back with something that would break most of the laws in existence.
Duke walked around from behind the object and mounted the stage. He paused to clear his throat, then stopped when he remembered he didn’t have one. He settled for adjusting his necktie, and began.
“Forumites,” he said. “by now all of you are aware of the danger posed to Earth by the Martians.”
There was a rising cry of ‘lolwut’ as what Duke was saying began to sink in. He raised his hands for silence.
“I know, I know. It seems ridiculous. However the threat is real and very, very close now. The Martian Empire has begun mobilizing battle fleets for a colonization attempt in Texas…” here Duke crouched, and said in a low tone that carried to every corner of the field, “And they say The NME himself will be accompanying them.”
A moment of silence followed this proclamation. The crowd began to murmur to themselves. Some of of them began to edge away.
“But!” shouted Duke. “We have a solution! Ladies! Gentlemen! Um. Penguins! I give you your Baron, and the future King of Texas!”
A Chin, and the Aqizzar attached to it, made its way onstage in a cloud of manliness. The crowd went wild with cheering and applause. Several of the female members of the audience swooned. Most of the male audience did so as well. He nodded approvingly.
One member of the audience, however, did not. “Bah!” scoffed one of the penguins, hefting his gold-tipped walking stick and adjusting his monocle. “King? That way lies madness. And not the good kind of madness, either.”
“Settle down, Prime Minister,” said Duke, as soothingly as he could. “It’s only a temporary measure. With a King in Texas, The NME has no right to lay claim.”
“Hmph,” said the Prime Minister.
“Now, then!” said Duke. “Here is what we’ll do. To become King, Aqizzar must face a trial of manhood.”
“Manhood? Aqizzar IS manhood!” shouted one of the crowd members. There was a roar of assent from the entire assembly. Chaos reigned.
Duke turned to Aqizzar. “They’re not going to go for it,” he whispered. “At this rate, they’re going to make you King without due process, by which I mean slaying the damn dragon.”
The Baron frowned. “Is that bad?”
“Yes,” said Duke. “Without due process, the Martian Empire still has every right to claim Texas. Can you get this crowd to settle down?”
“I’ll try,” Aqizzar said. He gave the audience a look.
The entire crowd went silent.
“Thanks.” Duke prepared to speak again. “As I was saying. A trial of manhood will give Aqizzar the right to be King.”
“Not that I support this idea – very much the opposite, in fact,” said the Prime Minister. “But what manner of trial?”
“It is simple,” said Duke. “The Baron must slay a Dragon.”
“Capital idea!” said the Prime Minister, laughing. “Except there are no more dragons to slay!”
“Is that so? Well, how about this!” said Duke, running back to the cage and whipping the tarp off with a flourish. “I give you PointZilla the Dragon!”
There was a collective gasp. Somewhere in the back of the crowd a baby began to cry. With what could have been a grin, Duke turned to face that monstrosity he and Josh had created.
It wasn’t there. What was there was even worse.
Inside of the cage was ToonyMan, his head freshly ablaze, holding what appeared to be a squirming mass of red and black lizards. They had been wrapped in a few strips of duct tape. Some of them were quite dead, and the ones that weren’t didn’t look very happy at all, much like Duke.
“Where,” he said. “is the Dragon?”
“The Dragon? What, are you blind? It’s right here!” said ToonyMan. He leaned closer to Duke and whispered, “I ran out of glue along the way so I had to stop by a hardware store for tape.”
“No,” said Duke. “Where’s my Dragon?”
“Let’s be honest with each other, Duke,” said ToonyMan, dropping his ‘Dragon’ and clapping Duke on the shoulder. “Do you really want your Dragon?”
“No, but-“
“Exactly!” shouted ToonyMan. “You don’t. This one will do just fine.”
“No. No it won’t. Where is the Dragon?”
ToonyMan looked around sheepishly. “I’ll be honest. I haven’t got a clue.”
Duke rubbed his U. “Then what where you doing inside the cage?”
“I got in through the enormous hole in the back.”
“WHAT!?”
They were interrupted by Josh, running towards them at full tilt. “Guys!” he shouted. “We may have a teensy problem.”
“I guessed that,” said Duke. “Did you see it get out?”
“No, Pablo did,” said Josh. “He was trying to get my attention, but then Aqizzar arrived, so I was out of commission for most of your speech. He says it’s heading North.”
“North?” said Duke. “Well, then so are we.”
---
Sofia sat atop a tank, rolling through Texas in style. The sun was beginning to rise over the edge of the horizon, casting her armor in a faint orange light. With a frown she triggered her visor and leaned back.
Suddenly a high-pitched voice interrupted her reverie. “Miss Sofia!”
Sofia sighed and flipped her visor back up. “What is it, Sergeant?”
The tank’s hatch popped open and out clambered a waist-high green creature. He was wearing a hat, and with his bulging eyes and floppy hat, he bore a superficial resemblance to a very large frog. “Miss Sofia, the plan has gone forward!”
“Your platoon released the Dragon-thing, then?” said Sofia. “Good…”
“Not so good, Miss Sofia!”
Sofia sniffed. “Why not, Sergeant?”
“Well,” said the sergeant, twiddling his fingerless hands.
“You’ll tell me, won’t you?” Sofia said sweetly, but the look in her eyes was more akin to that of a cat. A hungry one. “Do you want what happened to Giroro to happen to you?”
“No, Miss Sofia! Anything but that!”
“Then you’ll fucking tell me what happened!” she screamed, smacking the Sergeant in the back of the head.
“Yes, Miss Sofia,” he said frantically as he regained his balance. “The Dragon has been released, but in entirely the wrong direction!”
“What?”
“It has headed north, Miss Sofia!”
She paused for a while to let this information sink in. As she did, a thought struck her. “Sergeant, who the hell is driving this tank?”
“Me, Miss Sofia!”
“Then what are you doing up here talking to me?”
Stricken, the frog creature scrambled back down the hatch. The tank, which had been ambling left for the past few minutes, now righted its course.
“Fucking idiots,” Sofia muttered. She fiddled with the receiver on her helmet until it picked up a signal. There was a jumble of static, then voices.
“zzzzat-uys ready yet? If we’re going to lead this thing towards Texas, we’ll have to travel light.”
“Ready? TOONYMAN IS ALWAYS READY.”
“Put your pants on, for god’s sake.”
“Yes Toony. Please.”
“Pants? THEY’RE ALSO FOR PANSIES.”
“The Baron wears pants.”
“FINE.”
“Wait. What the hell is that?”
“Pablo says – oh God. It’s coming back!”
A dim roar came over the transmitter.
“Run! Run, dammit!”
“Run? TOONYMAN NEVER RUNS.”
“We’re the bait. Run for the-”
The signal cut off. Sofia frowned. She sat up and adjusted the receiver.
“-damn it all! It ate Org! Damn you, Pointzilla!”
“What are they still doing here? ToonyMan, get it away from the crowd!”
“How?”
“I don’t know! Just… set it on fire or something!”
“I can only do that to myself!
“I don’t care, just do something.”
“Where’s Aqizzar?”
“He’s probably halfway to Texas already! He can’t help us now!”
“Duke, ToonyMan’s got its attention!”
“Okay. Get out of here, Josh, we’ll wrangle this thing. ToonyMan! Let’s go! Head for the border as quick as you can! Go! GO!”
The voices were replaced by what sounded like a stampede. Sofia decided that Josh and Pablo, to whom the transmitter was attached, must have been swallowed up by the crowd of Forumites, making any further listening pointless. She could still hear the Dragon-thing roaring, but it was getting softer and softer, presumably as Duke and ToonyMan drew it away from the rest.
Sofia reached for the transmitter, dialing in a set of numbers that interacted in no way possible with human mathematics.
There was a click. “ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl- Yes?” rasped a voice out of the darkest reaches of space.
“Cthulhu. It’s me.”
“So I gathered,” came the reply. “What do you want? We have our deal.”
“You’re going to have to intervene a little earlier, I think,” said Sofia.
The growl that followed threatened to shatter her receiver. “What went wrong?”
“My minions are idiots,” Sofia said, casting an irritated glance at the tank hatch. “That’s what went wrong. The Dragon is headed towards Texas now, but there’s no one to restrain it.”
“And you wish me to do this for you? Not a chance, puny human. I promised to help you fight it, not play baby-sitter to a mutant lizard.”
“I have her on speed dial, you know,” Sofia said softly.
There was a pause. “Fine, then,” Cthulhu grunted. “I will meet you in Texas.”
Sofia turned the receiver off and set her helmet by her side. Before long she was asleep, dreaming dreams that, Elder God or not, would have made even Cthulhu wet his nonexistent briefs.
“So, yeah. That’s basically why you shouldn’t do that,” finished Jackrabbit. He was a four foot high lagomorph, white, furry, cute and had a grin that was fucking insane.
“Have you noticed,” said Workerdrone, slowly, “that people always seem to say ‘so, yeah’ after explaining something no one else could hear?” He was almost the total opposite of Jackrabbit, an imposing Black Templar Space Marine. His voice was metallic and cold, yet impassioned at the same time.
“Oh yes,” nodded Jackrabbit. He waved his hand and a portal appeared in front of their faces. “It’s a trope, actually.”
“Close that,” admonished Workerdrone. “You want to be trapped in there forever?”
“Sorry, sorry.” said Jackrabbit. He clicked his fingers and the portal disappeared. “Hey, what do you think would happen if you downed a whole jug of coffee and surfed that place all night?”
“That’s… the stupidest I’ve ever heard you say,” replied Workerdrone.
“No, I remember when – wait,” said Jackrabbit. They were both reclining on lounge chairs that looked like those leather chairs physiatrist’s use, in front of a warm, Victorian-era fire, which was the source of the only light in the book filled room. A sign over the door said ‘General discussion: Topic:’ but the rest was obscured by darkness. It was the late end of forum activity and few people were on, all in other chambers. Jackrabbit sat bolt upright, not getting much farther off the floor than he was when he was lying down. Workerdrone sat up in turn, towering over him.
“Wha – oh. You know, technically I’m the one with the modified ears attached to my head. I should have heard that first,” said Workerdrone, slightly upset.
“Yeah, yeah,” responded Jackrabbit. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed but my ears extend about half a foot from my head.”
He walked over to the door, opened it and peeked out. Slamming it shut, he turned back.
“They have a cave troll,” he said, simply.
“Nice reference,” observed Workerdrone.
“Thank you,” replied Jackrabbit. “But seriously. Trolls. A shitload of them.”
“Damn,” said Workerdrone. “That’s new. What do you reckon?”
“From the markings? A 4… place raid.” He seemed unable to say the name.
“Damn,” cursed Workerdrone.
“Ah, we can take ‘em. Hang on,” said Jackrabbit, reaching behind his back. He paused. “Shit.”
“What?” asked Workerdrone.
“I forgot! I don’t have my luger! Damn lawyers took it off me!” said Jackrabbit, searching in vain for the butt of the gun.
“Really? The wealth of copyright violation laid out before them and they took your gun? Harsh.”
“I’m surprised you’ve still got your bolter,” said Jackrabbit.
“Oh, they tried to take it off me,” responded Workerdrone, absently readying it.
“Oh? What happened?” asked Jackrabbit.
“I happened,” said Workerdrone. “In case you didn’t notice, I’m a six foot power armoured genetically enhanced super-soldier.”
“Gah. I hate being short. I would have ripped his throat out, but he had these guys with him. Bastards,” said Jackrabbit, mournfully.
The door shook. Behind it came cries of ‘kekekekeke!’ and ‘lolzers!’. Jackrabbit shuddered, his grin never leaving his face. It didn’t seem to be able too.
“Want a chainsword?” offered Workerdrone, holding one out. Jackrabbit took it doubtfully. It was bigger than him.
“I don’t think –” he began, before activating it. He fell forward and the sword was buried up to the hilt in the floor, still roaring. It stopped.
“Uh,” said Workerdrone, “maybe not.”
“Y’think?” grunted Jackrabbit, standing up.
“Let me… oh! Hang on.” Workerdrone crossed the room, knelt and lifted a heavy bolter up. Grunting, he placed it on one of the couches, which he angled towards the door.
“And you said I wouldn’t need it,” he grinned. Jackrabbit’s grin widened in turn and he jumped up behind the massive gun. The door was shaking quite hard now. Cries of ‘desu desu desu!’ and ‘OMFG WTF LOL’ were getting louder.
“Let them come,” said Workerdrone.
“Oh great, here we go,” muttered Jackrabbit, leaning on the gun.
“They will fall to our steel! Let them think themselves innumerable, we shall teach them –”
The door blew in. Workerdrone and Jackrabbit began to fire, the bullets lancing into the hordes of meme bloated ghouls rushing to meet them. After a mere few minutes, all was quiet. The bodies of the enemy lay defeated, their avatars soon to be sucked back to whence they came.
“That was fun,” said Workerdrone, pointing his bolter at the floor. “C’mon, we’ll see how everyone else fared.”
They began to leave the room when Aqizzar poked his head round the doorway.
“Wh – oh, hey guys. You too, huh? Pretty nasty raid. I’m heading over to the DF section to see what’s what. You guys need a hand?” he asked.
“No, we’re fine,” responded Workerdrone. “Have fun. Where were you, by the way?”
“Oh, I was in the Atheists section,” said Aqizzar.
“What? I thought you didn’t go in for that sort of thing,” said Jackrabbit.
“Just looking around. Nasty. Attracted trolls like a light attracts moths. Still, we pulled through. Sofia was looking through as well.”
Both Workerdrone and Jackrabbit winced in succession. Aqizzar nodded.
“Yeah. Anyway, see you. Have fun, stick together.”
After he had left, Jackrabbit turned to Workerdrone.
“Got a hellpistol?” he asked.
“Only because I think it’s hilarious,” said Workerdrone, pulling it out and handing it to him. “It’s so cute! Lookit, little flashlight pistol!”
“That’s nice. Let’s go check the place out.”
“Yeah, okay. Man, raid, huh? I can’t remember when we last had one of those.”
“I know.”
They walked over the corpses and out, into the darkened corridor.
The figure advanced through the narrow corridor he found himself in. As he went, he came to the realization that there was a surprising lack of resistance to his incursion. Sure, there had been hundreds of soldiers, but a complete and total lack of any tanks, mechs, aircraft or anything other then basic infantry. This worried him, as the only reason he could think of for their absence was if something extremely dangerous, requiring all the heavy firepower they could muster was rampaging around the place. The only thoughts he had towards that focused more on how this would affect his mission, rather then what it would do to him if it were to chance upon him. This was because he was somewhat over-confident in his ability to hear any who dare approach him, coupled with a resolute belief that something that destructive must be really, really big; an attitude that should have been vanquished the moment he met Sofia.
Nevertheless, he choose to continue down the hallway until he came to a steel door, already ajar. Moving as silently as he could, he came up to the door and peeked through the crack. Unfortunately, the room on the other side was completely empty, save for a maintenance bot which had powered down. Well, at least he didn't have to worry about someone else getting in his way. With his entering the building, he began a meandering trek up to it's higher floors, made all the more long and meandering due to his forgetting to bring a map. The complete lack of guards, or indeed, anyone at all; only made it all the more tedious. Within fifteen minutes he was bored out of his skull.
Luckily, he had chanced upon a sliding door that lead to a low balcony, overlooking a large courtyard between the building and it's opposite. There a battle between jackrabbit, who had somehow acquired a mech and the guards, who had actually brought tanks this time, was taking place. As far as he could see from this vantage, Jackrabbit was clearly winning. Once again, the figure had arrived too late to see the fight when it was still interesting, with the soldiers having mostly deserted the field. At least the way Jackrabbit used a tank to smash other tanks was entertaining, but he still had to get to his target, and so he turned back and began to enter the building once again.
But he ran into none other than Joshua and his pet spider Pablo, who was perched upon his head.
"Joshua? What are you doing here?" The figure blurted out.
"Hey, NME. I'm just here to watch the show, what are you here for?" He asked.
"Oh, I have business to do upstairs.... What fight are you talking about? Do you mean the one that Jack just had? Because that's not nearly worth the effort needed to get in here." NME replied.
"Yeah, it was good, but it's not what I came for. If you wanna know, just wait a bit and you'll see." He said, now watching jack as he used his stolen mech to jump over the courtyard wall and go onto someplace with more stuff to blow up.
"I'd rather not, what I'm here to do is pretty important." NME told him.
"Eh, your loss. See you later Mars." Josh said, before walking back inside and heading down the corridor that NME had come through.
With nothing more to occupy his time, NME continued his climb up the building, something that brought him nothing but annoyance and tired feet. Right up until he heard a massive BLAM from far away, and rushed to find the nearest door to a viewing deck or balcony. When he finally managed to find a way outside, he saw that it was none other then Workerdrone, wreaking havoc armed with his favorite chainsword and trusty bolter, which he had presumably used to make that gaping hole in the compound wall that was big enough to allow anything short of a small titan through. He was far away from the building though, but NME had recently acquired himself a cybernetic eye, that could zoom. It was nowhere near perfect though, with touchy focus and a specialized contact lens that kept dropping out at the worst times, rendering it unable to see. Right now the focus on it was acting up, and he was in no mood to mess with it until it worked properly. So he went back inside the building to resume his ascent, all the while listening to the muted sounds of battle and thinking "Why does it seem like everybody in the whole damned city choose tonight to attack?"
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Topic: Ridiculous Tales of Bay Twelvery (Read 27455 times)