by Shad N Freud
“Depends on the value, or if it’s of religious significance to the Inquisition. I mean, if you find a piece of the Regalia, no dice.”
Jin scratched his chin. “Fine. Second demand, I refuse to share a room with anyone.”
“Sure thing, unless accommodations are limited.”
Jin nodded. “Fair enough. Third, I have a rock and it’s coming with me.”
Carl blinked before tilting his head. “A…rock?”
Jin smirked as he grabbed a lacquered box, opening it to reveal a spherical black stone that glowed with an inner light. The entire stone to glow a dim purple as a dark mist seeped out of the box. The stone began to whisper, an oily, sinister voice emanating. “Pleased to meet you all, my designation is KR4NG. I am a main data cortex created by McGillicutty Corporation, and…that’s about all I remember from the time before I came here. I hope I can be of use to you and your mission.”
Carl cringed as he grit his teeth, the black mist-like negative energy known as darklight seeping out of the box setting him on edge. “KR4NG is a bit of a mouthful.”
Jin shrugged as he closed the box, ending the sense of foreboding. “I call him Krang myself. He comes with or you can get the hell out.”
Carl looked at the box with some trepidation but sighed before nodding. “He comes with. Keep that box closed when I’m around, though. He gives me the creeps.”
“Thank the Allfather,” Amayako said from the doorway, alerting the group as to her presence. “You need this, Jin. Don’t get me wrong, I love you like you’re my own son, but I’ve gotten tired of paying your electric bill. Seriously, you need to go see the world, smell the roses…get a girlfriend. And not one of the girls here. Pack your bags and get out.”
Amayako smiled as she nodded to Carl. “His mother entrusted him to me, and now I’m entrusting him to you. I’d better not have an Inquisitor knocking on my door with bad news, Carl, or I’ll be paying you a beating.” The raven-haired dragon lady smiled at Carl as Jin got to work packing for the trip. “By the way, Carl…my offer still stands if Tryst ever convinces you to open that book I gave her as a wedding present. Some positions need more than one woman, after all.”
Amayako purred and her smile turned a bit more predatory as she strode away, swaying her hips as she walked back to the temple proper. Cenere’s eyes followed her rump as it swayed back and forth hypnotically, smiling like an idiot, then looked up at Carl.
“So, friend of yours?” Cenere asked as Carl rolled his eyes.
“She and I go way back. We both trained under Sifu Yi at one point. Wily old bug taught me everything I know about martial arts, and Amayako tried to teach me everything she knew about sex. This was years ago when I was first courting my wife and when she was just getting started as a Templar.” Carl pulled his pack of Jacks out of his coat and pulled one out of the pack with his teeth. He took a long drag on his cigarette, blowing the smoke out his nose. “Let’s just say that I wasn’t the only one Amayako tried to hook up with. And Tryst and I still get some pretty…racy Avarice Day and Christmas cards.”
“Really?” Cenere’s ears perked up. “Don’t suppose I could see a few of those could I?”
Jin shook his head as he shouldered his bag. He glared at Cenere as they walked out of his vault. “Do you ever think with anything other than your dick? I swear, I’ve only known you for five minutes and I can already see your future: somehow, you’re going to end up spreading a venereal plague, and bring about the Apocalypse.”
“Ha! Joke’s on you, Shrimp, Inquisitors can’t catch mundane diseases.”
“Succubus Rot’s not exactly mundane, now is it?”
“Midget.”
“Pervert.”
“Butt-plug.”
“Plugged-butt.”
“Children!” Carl yelled as he massaged his temples. “Last time I checked, I’m not running a daycare center. How about acting your age instead of your shoe size?” Carl growled as he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed the nearest church. “Hello! Cardinal Beaumont here. We’re at the Kyoto temple to Bahamut. Mind sending a car around? Brilliant. Twenty minutes? Grand, we’ll be waiting out front. Cheers.” Carl ended the call and slipped his phone into his pocket. “Right, we’ll be getting a ride to the airport.”
Emergency lights ignited, bathing their corridor in red light. Carl pulled his glove off and looked at the brand on the back of his hand, noting a smattering of glowing red dots among the golden dots in the temple proper. An Inquisitor’s brand was his badge of office and far more than a simple tattoo. Among other things, it acted as an alignment detector, able to sense where a person’s aura fell on the Good/Evil and Order/Chaos spectrums by whether it turned light or dark and gold or red respectively. Most people fell in the middle on the Good/Evil scale but tended to fall under Order as opposed to Chaos.
Demons, on the other hand, found their way into the territory of Chaotic Evil, shown as a dark red on the brand, and rarely left.
“Bloody Hell! We’d better get to the temple; somebody arranged us some entertainment until our ride gets here.”
“This is going to be a thing with us, isn’t it?” Jin asked as he reached into his nexus bag and pulled out a pair of retractable-blade kamas, his hands crackling with electricity as he began running down the corridor. Cenere started humming a Satanic Hymn as he pulled his whip and a couple throwing knives off his belt. He quickly passed the gnome as he bolted down the corridor. Carl sighed as he snatched the gnome on the run, drawing his baton.
“Sorry little guy. I’m sure you don’t like being picked up, but you run like a chihuahua and time’s a wasting.”
“You get this one. Don’t throw me, though.” Jin groused as Carl ran down the hallway.
The training area was filled with women grunting, punching, kicking, and making short work of the masses of demons who’d been foolish enough to attack the temple. Carl almost bowled Cenere over as the tiefling stopped suddenly at the door. The training hall floor was slick with the blood and viscera of dead demons, and the gorgeous women in the hall were panting with exertion, some in clothes that had seen better days. Cenere had a grin from ear to ear, his eyes darting around the hall.
“Again, pup, business before pleasure.”
Cenere looked at Carl with his best approximation of puppy dog eyes. “But…but Carrrrrl…these girls are all dirty, and their clothes are all torn up…they need a bath! And all I want to do is wash their-”
“Backs, I’m sure,” Carl snarked as he grabbed the tiefling by the collar. “We’re leaving. Now.” Carl saw Amayako helping one of the girls to her feet as she struggled to hold her ruined top closed. He shuddered as he desperately tried to look anywhere else than at her heaving bosom covered in…Carl thought about baseball, Bea Arthur, Antarctica, and settled on thinking about his daughter’s crying face. Ah, his favorite form of anti-erection visualization.
He then booked it for the front door as Amayako lost the battle with gravity and her ruined top finally gave up the ghost, giving Cenere a sizeable deposit for his spank bank as they fled the temple. As they ran out the front doors, the trio saw a portal to the Abyss open and dozens of insectoid demons flooded out, blocking their path.
Jin struggled to free himself as Cenere began to sing a death metal dirge and lashed out with his whip, twirling a throwing knife between his fingers as he picked out targets. Carl sighed as he set down his burden and drew his pistol, thumbing the safety off, sliding the rune for auto fire to the on position. The portal closed and Jin smirked as he slid one of his kamas into his nexus bag to free his off hand to cast spells.
Carl smiled as he began spraying the verminous horde with 10mm death. “I think I’m going to like this little git.”
∞∞∞
Ten minutes later, an armored limousine pulled up to the temple. The driver whistled as he slid out of the driver’s seat and cheerily made his way to the back to open the door for his passengers, then blanched as he saw who he was suppos
ed to pick up. Carl, Jin, and Cenere sloshed as they walked to the car, dripping with water, ichor, and bits of dead demon. “Kid, do try and avoid fire hydrants, yeah? I mean, the mansion does have showers, after all.”
“Piss off, old man. You needed the bath anyways.”
“Never a dull moment. Ha!” Jin groused as he climbed into the car first, and the driver grimaced as he watched his charges ruin the Italian leather seats of the car. The driver sighed as he closed the door for his passengers. “More like we won’t get a moment’s rest! What kind of dragon-shit outfit have I signed on with?”
Carl smirked as he lit a cigarette. “Yup, I’m gonna like this little git.”
Chapter Four
A monastic trainee screamed loudly as he flew through the air and slammed into a padded wall. He rolled on the floor, clutching his shoulder as a towering pile of scales and muscles loomed over him. He glared up while trying to get off the floor, only to hiss in pain. “Damn it, Zeke! You dislocated my shoulder!”
The mountain of lizard stooped down and gently prodded the fallen human’s shoulder, eliciting a grunt of pain. “Aw, crap. I’m sorry, Victor. Don’t know my own strength sometimes.” The lizardman looked over at another monk and gestured him towards the door. “Go get healer Fanta, would you? Alright, Victor, hold still. I’m going to reset it on three, alright?”
“No! No. I’ll wait for the healer, thanks.” The younger trainee scooted away from “Zeke” with a mildly panicked smile on his face. A dark-skinned Indian woman in purple robes quickly walked over to Victor and glared at Zeke, who had the decency to look sheepish as he rubbed the scales on the back of his head. She shook her head as she pointed at the door.
“Ziccorro, this is the third time this week I’ve had to clean up your mess. Lama Mercado wants to see you in his study. Now.”
The dark-skinned Indian woman rolled her eyes as she placed her hand above the young man’s shoulder and began channeling a cool, numbing ki into the young man’s neck. She then looked him in the eye and smiled as she took a firm grip on his arm. “Alright. Now, I’m going to reset your shoulder on three. Three.” She jerked the arm outward, then shoved it inward, causing his shoulder to pop back into the socket with a sickening thock. She frowned at Zeke as she stood up and brushed the light dust off her robes. “Ziccorro, I’m pretty sure you’re not deaf. Mercado’s study. Now.”
Zeke sighed as he shuffled out of the training hall and made his way slowly to the Lama’s office. His tail dragged on the ground, his shoulders slumped, and his head hung low. It was not the first time the massive lizardman had needed to visit the Head Lama’s office, and he already knew how the lecture would go. He looked up as he walked into the temple’s library, shivering slightly as he left the sweltering heat outside for the downright chilly hall filled with books, scrolls, and massive super computers.
Most Buddhist temples the world over were also massive data centers, maintaining vast servers loaded with data. The next room was even colder, as it stored huge crystal matrices that served a similar purpose for the Aetherweb, the magical equivalent of the internet. He dragged his feet to the open door of the leading monk of the monastery and paused as he caught the smell of spiced tobacco. As Mercado only really smoked cannabis, and that was on the rare occasion that his arthritis flared up, Zeke knew that someone new was in the office. He poked his head in, stooping slightly to clear the doorway, and saw an odd assortment of people in the room.
A gnome was sitting in a booster seat, pointedly ignoring the…was that a male tiefling? Zeke shook his head to clear his vision and make sure he was seeing clearly. Standing next to the male tiefling was an…orc? Wearing a very nice greatcoat. The orc was smoking a clove and telling a dirty joke Zeke missed, causing Lama Mercado to laugh uproariously. Zeke’s ridged eyebrows quirked upward in confusion as he gently knocked on the doorjamb.
Mercado turned his wrinkly bald head toward the door. “Ziccorro! Come in, come in! I’d like you to meet these fine people. First and foremost, this is Cardinal Carl Beaumont, Grand Inquisitor of Greed and Sloth. The handsome young man standing next to him is Deacon Cenere di Cornua Ferrea, Inquisitor of Lust. And last but not least is Oracle Jin Squalrider. Everyone, this is Ziccorro Direscale, one of our strongest monks. Literally. We’ve had to reinforce the floor joists in the training halls, as well as pad the walls. He’s a bit more brutal than he means to be.”
“About that…I’m afraid I threw Victor…er, Monk Anderson a bit harder than I meant to. Healer Fanta’s with him now.”
“We’ll talk about that in a bit. Ziccorro…Zeke, these fine people are here on official business. You’re to go on a quest with them. They’ve got a Prophecy they need your help to fulfill.”
“Me? Lama Mercado, if this is about the casks of Baiju that went missing-”
Carl and Cenere both grimaced as they pulled their gloves off, the brands on the back of their hands showing the presence of Chaotic Evil beings, the spinning stars pointing in the direction of the greatest concentration of chaos. Cenere swore under his breath as Carl sneered. “Bugger. Look alive, gang. Looks like we’ve got company. I swear, they’re like ants at a picnic.” Carl looked up and caught Zeke’s eye. “Ziccorro, right? You any good with that sword, or is it just for show?”
Zeke smiled ferally, his alligator-like snout showing off all of his teeth as he drew his huge sword. His ki flowed through his body like a raging river breaking free from the dam he’d been forced to erect to keep himself from killing his fellow students, restricting the use of his natural talent so as not to be a danger to everyone around him. Now, he had a target for all the years of pent up aggression he’d been forced to bottle up, and the demons paused as the primal rage within the big lizard bubbled to the fore.
Carl smiled, pulling his 10mm out and extending his baton as he motioned his head for the door. “Let’s go see if we can’t get an invite to go meet Lucy, yeah?”
Cenere smirked as he shook his head, pulling a few throwing knives out of a belt pouch and his braided leather whip off his belt. Jin pinched the bridge of his nose and pulled out his kamas, snapping the blades out as he hopped up and down to psyche himself up. “Let’s go fuck ‘em up!” the little gnome yelled as he ran out the door.
Zeke ran out of the Lama’s office and quickly overtook Carl before roaring a challenge to the horde of demons on the grounds. Monks in the fields, tending the crops, turned their gardening implements on the demons that had the temerity to attack the grounds, laughing and grunting as they slew the vile beasties. Zeke laughed gaily as he leapt into a thick knot of demons, hewing limbs, bisecting thoraxes, and viciously decapitating any fool stupid enough to get within his radius. He laughed in joy as his sword sang its way through the air.
Carl flicked his spent cigarette into a demon’s eye, causing the beastie to clutch his face before catching an explosive 10mm round with his other eye socket, his head exploding like a watermelon at a Gallagher show. His baton almost negligently caved in one demon’s skull as he wound up for a strike that shattered another’s clavicle on the downstroke, setting the beastie up for the skull caving pistol whip that came next, chained into a short burst of explosive death as he pulled the trigger, splattering himself and those around him with several colors of viscera.
Cenere wiped some of said viscera off his face before headbutting a demon on the bridge of its nose. He then stabbed the demon in the throat with a throwing knife before jumping up and heel stamping the filthy thing in the chest, using it as a springboard to backflip away. He lashed out with his whip, opening another demon’s carotid artery as he drew more throwing knives, the pouch glowing as it produced more at the cost of a bit of Cenere’s aether. The knives flew from his hand like falcons, burying themselves in the vital organs of the demons beneath him as he activated his pendant, sprouting ethereal bird-like wings as he hovered in place and sang. His operatic voice reached the ears of the defenders and lifted their spirits, the dulcet tones of Queen refreshing the strength
of the Monks and others below as he began throwing down summoned daggers with both hands, a lethal rain of temporary steel, each blade burying itself in a demon with pin-point accuracy.
During Cenere’s six-minute song, Jin played catch with every demon he could reach with his kamas. Between seeing if his blades would stick to the demons, he flung fireballs larger than himself, shards of icy death, and enlightened the more vicious ones with roughly 1.21 gigawatts of electrical death. He laughed ferally as he retrieved his kamas from a dead demon’s chest, tearing them outward and severing the demon’s top from its bottom. He then used his kamas to climb a taller demon for a look at the crowd, the demon screaming in agony while trying to dislodge the gnome that used its lungs as anchoring points. Jin rolled his eyes, ripped one of the kamas out, and took the beastie’s hand as it tried to grab him. He ducked as a head came flying at him, sent via aeropost by the lizard man. He growled as he leapt from the demon’s shoulders, using other demons as a springboard to reach the flagging lizard.
“Ziccorro! Need a hand?” Jin yelled over the din of battle, cutting a demon down to size by taking it’s leg off at the knee then passing the other blade through its abdomen, causing pungent offal to spill out of the gorilla-esque demon’s belly. It screamed as it tried to stuff its intestines back into its gut, only to stop when a pair of throwing knives buried themselves up to the hilt in the demon’s eye sockets. Jin sidestepped the demon as it fell on its face.
“I could use a breather. Having trouble keeping my blood from boiling.” The lizard panted through a feral grin, his veins bulging as hot blood pumped through his body. Jin thought for a moment, flinging a kama at a demon rude enough to take a swipe at him from behind before nodding and then using the leather harness Zeke wore to climb up onto his shoulders. He threw the other kama at a big demon taking a swing at Zeke’s flank, taking the limb off at the elbow and showering the pair in orange blood that smelled like a locker room after a football game. He called up as much aether as he could manage and blasted everything within a twenty-foot radius with a nova of blue lightning, vaporizing everything within five feet and electrocuting everything else in the ring’s path for another thirty feet.