by Logan Jacobs
“Giant snake. Why’d it have to be a giant snake?” I said to no one in particular as I gazed up at the monstrosity before us.
He reminded me of a big walking anaconda. His big snake head was the size of a bumper car, and his four foot long forked tongue licked at the air every few seconds. Instead of a snake body he had a humanoid body and walked on two rounded feet that resembled an elephant’s. He stood over ten feet tall and was covered in blue-green scales cut with bands of bright white scales. Every inch of the Dark King seemed to be made from coiled muscle covered in more muscle on a bed of muscle. He was carrying a double sided battle axe that was, of course, bigger than mine. Not that I was comparing. It’s not the size of the axe but how you swing it.
Still, I gulped slowly and could’ve sworn I saw my life flash before my eyes. After all the hours spent training with Grizz, this was how it was going to end. I was going to get eaten by a giant ass snake-dude with a cool name.
To make matters worse, the Dark King wasn’t alone. Nope, Havak luck held strong this day. Inside of the impossibly huge interior of the dojo, the Dark King was in the process of pummeling the stupidly large troll Nova and I had seen earlier. How we missed him getting ahead of us I didn’t know.
As I watched, the Snake-Face fire-door kicked the troll back into the wall of the dojo with enough force to punch the monster through the stone and off the side of the mountain top plateau. Fog began to pour in through the hole which gave the dojo interior a lovely “this is where our valiant hero meets his doom” vibe.
Then the Dark King turned to me and bellowed. As he did, I caught a glimpse of a big yellow flag that lay on the floor amid the stone rubble near the hole the troll guy had made before he had fallen to his doom.
“Yeah, fuck you too,” I shot back in my best Kurt Russell and dashed into the dojo. I needed to grab it without getting killed, but I was probably gonna get all sorts of killed in the next few moments.
“Your impertinence shall not go unpunished usurper!” He hiss-talked at me as he moved with surprising speed given his size. His dark slit-eyes gleamed, and his pink tongue licked the air as he took me in. “You shall kneel before your Dark King and beg for mercy before I ingest you for sustenance.” Snake-face took a swipe at me with the axe, but I sidestepped just in time, and the beast missed me.
I mentally thanked Grizz for those agility exercises he’d so adamantly put me through the last few weeks. At the time, they’d seemed pretty basic and boring, but I was sure as shit glad to have the extra speed they provided and decided that they were well worth the soreness.
Instead of coming to a halt, the overgrown reptile crashed violently into the front of the dojo. The door shattered into a dozen pieces the moment his body collided with it, and the sound of wood snapping filled the air as his body made a massive hole in the front of the building.
The Dark King lost his balance, but he reached down with one of his scaled arms, swung his prehensile tail around to rip the rest of the door off its hinges, and caught himself before he made contact with the ground outside.
“Whoa there, tipsy!” I yelled as my mind spun to try to come up with a way to not end up as snake food. “You might wanna ease off the booze. Buzzed battling is drunk battling, buddy.”
As if angered by my nonsensical comment, the Dark King’s scales all seemed to snap into place and turned into a body of armor that looked both pliable and unbreakable all at the same time. He lunged at me for a second time, and I threw myself on the ground as his massive slithering bulk passed over me. Then I turned around, saw that his back was to me, and realized I had an open shot at his leg.
“Leeeroy!” I cried as I sprang to my feet, raised my axe above my head, and brought it down as hard I could on the Dark King’s knee. “Jenk--”
My trademark warcry was interrupted by an ear-splitting crack as my axe blade hit the Dark King’s scales and shattered into a million pieces.
“Oh, you’ve got to be shitting me,” I gasped as the shock of the impact ran up my arms and made my teeth ring.
The massive lizard-man spun around, and I jumped over his snake tail before I ducked under a clumsy claw swipe from one of his over muscled arms. He then shuffled forward to shoulder slam me, but I twisted out of the way, and the entire dojo shook when he made a Dark King sized dent in the stone wall.
“Dude, are you seriously this fucking slow?” I asked as I watched him lumber around. He didn’t seem to like my witty Spidey-banter, and it made him act without thinking. “I thought snakes were supposed to be all lightning fast and shit.”
“Marc! Don’t toy with him,” Nova shouted at me. “He can spit fire.”
I dove out of the way just as a green ball of flame exploded on the stone floor where I had just been.
“Why can everyone use fire except me?” I groaned. If fire-hurling-powers were an available boost I could get from Grizz or Artemis, I was definitely going to take them. Then I could fry baddies with my morning breath and hard boil some eggs at the same time.
“You dare mock the Dark King!” He said with a low voice that sounded like a bass drum getting dragged over a rock garden. “Perhaps after I digest you slowly, I will spare your comely female’s life and add her to my alliance so that she may feel what it’s like to know the power of my dark might.”
“Hey you, you keep your damn hands off her,” I responded with my best George McFly.
“Marc! Focus!” Nova shouted again from behind me.
She hated when I acted goofy in serious situations, but I couldn’t help but let a grin cross my face for a moment. The grin was short-lived once I saw the Dark King start spinning his giant axe above his head to gather momentum before splitting me into two pieces.
“Is this where you split me like a log?” I asked, and he let out what sounded like a demonic laugh as he clasped the base of his axe with both hands. It was then that I noticed his large, rather disgusting nutsack hung below the bottom of his kilt-like outfit, and it wasn’t armored at all. It kind of hung there like a drowned chicken covered in flesh colored Saran Wrap. “I’ve had it with all these motherfucking snakes in this motherfucking dojo!”
Instead of trying to move away from him, I lunged forward to close the distance between us. Then I literally drop kicked his balls into the middle of next week.
The spot was soft and squishy as the spikes on my greaves made contact, and it totally sounded like two balloons popped.
A miserable groan-hiss emerged from the black beast’s throat, and he fell to his knees by the hole the giant troll had left behind and was only a foot or two from the edge of the mountain. He dropped his axe so that he could clutch at his ruptured Dark King family jewels, but before I could hit him again, Nova charged from behind me, let out a battle shout, and then jump kicked the big snake-man in the face. The sound of a tree trunk snapping filled the small dojo when she hit the Dark King, and the force of her strike caused him to tumble out through the hole and tumble off the side of the cliff.
“Is that what you would consider a good opening?” Nova asked when she turned to me, slightly out of breath.
“Or, you know, kill-stealing, but whatever, I still found his Achilles’ Heel,” I replied as I looked over the edge. “I feel like I should have a snappy one liner to shout at him though. Oh, how about ‘How’d you like our spinning ball kick?’ You know, cause Chun-Lee, and the dojo, and I kicked him in the balls before you kicked him in the face?”
“Marc, if you say that is funny I will believe you,” Nova said as she grabbed the flag.
“Jokes are better when they are explained,” I said in an attempt to salvage the bit.
“Good to know, but there is one thing you said that I do not understand. Is it one of your Earthling jokes?”
“What don’t you understand?” I asked.
“The spot in which you kicked him. It was not his heel,” she said as she gestured to my groin.
“Oh, I understand now.” I let out a hearty laugh and shook my hea
d as I gestured to my left leg, “You think this is my leg, don’t you?”
I could have sworn her cheeks started to flush, but before she could say anything, our bodies were ripped into a gazillion pieces as we were teleported back home.
Chapter Two
A moment later, I was crawling out of the ‘state-of-the-art’ teleportation tube, that looked like a giant paper towel tube made of clear plastic that stood on end.
“Marc, you’re amazing!” Artemis squealed as she leapt on me, wrapped her lithe arms and legs around my body, and peppered me with kisses while she buried my face into her ridiculously large chest. “And I promise I wasn't even worried about you this time because I knew you could do it, but boy, am I glad you’re alive.”
She kissed me full on, and as I staggered backward under the assault of her affection, I suddenly felt her hot breath on my ear. “Seeing you return has got my emotions all in a rush hour traffic, and I want to tear your clothes off right here.”
“Please do not do that,” Grizz, my six-and-a-half foot tall holographic space barbarian trainer said before he almost smiled at me. “You did well, Havak.” Then he inclined his head to Nova who was exiting her own tube. “You as well, Ms. Kwark.”
“You can call me Nova.” the Starfire-esque warrior said with a shrug. “I’ve told you that a hundred times.” Her eyes flicked from the big warrior to me. “And it was mostly Marc. I was just there for support.”
“Nonsense!” Artemis said as she bounced off me and wrapped Nova in a hug. “I saw the way you punched that one ogre so hard in the face he shit himself.”
“Uhhh, thank you.” Nova just stood there, expressionless, and made a slight patting movement on the other woman’s back.
“Yeah, that guy really had a real ball kicker of a day,” I chuckled even though no one else did. “Geez, tough crowd.”
“We are a tough crowd!” Artemis said before she did a little fist pump. “The toughest crowd in the bronze tier for sure.”
“Bronze tier?” I started to ask, but before I could get the words out of my mouth, Aurora entered the room, and my brain lost the capacity for all rational thought for a few seconds.
Aurora’s silver hair was tied back in a bun at the base of her neck to reveal some of the bright blue tribal tattoos that snaked up her neck. Normally girls with tons of tattoos weren’t my thing, but my teammate had the body of a Playmate from the 1960s, and her cleavage, narrow waist, and large hips were enough to win me over. Besides, she had been bitten by a Shriike, a vampire-like creature that fed off the life force of other beings and whose bite would turn its victim into a mindless being that only cared about feeding, when she was a teenager, and the tattoos helped her keep control of the space vampire within.
Today she wore a white gown that had a slit in the side that ran up her hip, so her right leg was entirely exposed. The gown was very form fitting and showed off the Shriike woman’s many alluring curves. Since the vampiric warrior babe spent a lot of her time levitating in the air, she normally didn’t wear any shoes outside of battle, but today she had small golden slip ons that suited the whole ‘Greek-goddess’ look.
“Oh, you’re back in one piece I see,” she said with a light smile. “I’m glad you are both okay. I normally don’t watch the matches.”
“Um, why not?” I asked.
She looked at me as if I should already know the answer, “It’s bad luck, sugar.”
“Why is it bad luck?” I asked.
“‘Cause I’d worry about you both.” She winked a gleaming purple eye at me. “I suppose you will want to celebrate with some sort of dancing, drinking, and revelry.”
“You had me at celebrate,,” I laughed, “but first we probably need a shower. Nova is all covered with slime and--”
“I have a better idea, babe,” Aurora interrupted me. “Something really fun we could do. All three of us. Together. As one. To celebrate. It will be incredibly entertaining, and we’ll get very sweaty. Maybe even moan a bunch. Are you interested?”
“Ahhhh,” I started to say, but Aurora kept talking.
“Artemis can join in, too.”
“Oh! I’d love to help out how I can,” my adorable former-AI-algorithm-that-had-been-downloaded-into-a-genetically enhanced-human-form gushed as she clapped her hands together. “Just let me know what I need to do.”
“It’s up to Marc,” the white-skinned woman said in her slightly hoarse, sultry, and for some strange reason southern accent tinged voice, and then everyone turned to me.
“Uhhh, well, yeah,” I said as my heart started to gallop in my chest. Then I glanced at Nova and then back to Aurora. “I mean, I know we are teammates now, and I’ve thought about taking our relationship to the next level, but that was a pretty epic match, and I am all sorts of awesome, so if you three really want to do it, I’m down.”
“Excellent,” Aurora said with a nod.
“Do you wanna like start in the shower,” I said, “or like the bed--”
“We’ll start in the training room,” Aurora said as a sly grin crept across her full lips. “Artemis, is there any way we could make the training programs a bit more of a challenge? I’m so bored with the current settings.”
“Wait, I’m confused,” I said.
“The best way to celebrate a victory is to train harder and longer afterward,” Aurora purred as she tapped her fingers on my chest. The way she said harder and longer made my naughty bits feel, well, naughty.
“I wholeheartedly agree,” Nova grunted. “On Paladin we would often train for hours and hours without rest, our bodies glistening from our efforts.”
“But that’s not what I thought we were--” I started to say. “Now you’re just fucking with me, right?”
“Ha!” Grizz laughed and then slapped his holographic knee. “You should see the look on your small man-face, Havak. From elation to such bitter disappointment. Why, it reminds me of the time I fought a team of Hunter-Killer Probots from Alpha Quatro Nine-Eight. They thought they had me beaten when they cornered me in the city roof’s null gravity sector, but then I set my auto cannon to its explosive settings and destroyed them all. Oh, the joy I felt at seeing the surprise on their electronic faces was unmatched until now.”
“Great story, bro,” I sighed, as I barely held back the depth of the sarcasm I felt coursing through my veins. “I guess we can do more training if--”
“You already agreed,” Aurora pointed out.
“True, he did.” Nova nodded.
“Affirmative.” Artemis finished for them.
“I feel like you ladies had this planned, or--”
“I’ll set the training module for a harder difficulty! What fun!” Artemis’ brown hair bobbed slightly as she jogged over to the large bank of computers that served as the control module for our training room, and began typing furiously as she nibbled her plump, cherry-red, bottom lip. The blue screen illuminated her face and reminded me of how effortlessly alluring she was. The blue-gray jumpsuit she wore flattered her from every angle. She’d modified it a bit so that it was now strapless, so her petite shoulders were exposed. I have no idea how she made a strapless jumpsuit work, but she did. With a few more clicks, Artemis stepped away from the screen and faced Aurora once more.
“I’ve increased the difficulty for these training constructs and tasks,” she explained quickly. “Now, you will be required to do more in a smaller amount of time in addition to coming up with multiple escape strategies. You seem to excel when it comes to attack strategies, but your knowledge of when and how to retreat from a situation might need some acute-reconstructing-.”
I laughed at Artemis’ flubbing of another English phrase. “Fine-tuning, babe” I called out to her playfully.
Grizz huffed as he strode over to me. “Before you begin your training celebration, I think now would be a good time to discuss the powerups you’ve earned in the battle royale.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot all about that,” I replied as I rubbed the back of my n
eck where the nanobot attached to my cerebral cortex lived. It allowed me to gain powers and skills with the push of a button. While cool as fuck and very Matrix-esque, it wasn’t as easy as it sounded. I still had to practice those skills and abilities to gain stamina, strength and muscle memory. To be fair after a month or so as the champion of Earth all three of those stats had increased dramatically due to Grizz and Artemis’ grueling training. Also, I hadn’t actually forgotten about it, but I was hesitant to choose a powerup because it affected both Nova and Aurora, and the power gamer in me had wanted to save it until I was sure I had the best possible build. “What are the options again?”
“It can be anything,” Artemis chimed in. “However, it needs to be shared among the team.”
I turned to Nova and made a poor attempt at a joke, “How about the ability to shoot fireballs? Since everyone else seems to be able to.”
Nova looked at me and replied in a matter-of-fact tone, “If everyone else can wield fire, wouldn’t it make more sense to choose water powers?”
“Havak!” Grizz piped up, “Make this choice wisely.” He paused and reiterated, with his Space “The Rock” Johnson eyebrow raise. “Wisely.”
“Okay, okay. Man, everyone's a critic,” I sighed. “Who peed in your Cornflakes this morning?” I questioned and raised my hands in mock surrender.
“What are Cornflakes and who is this person who has urinated in them?” Grizz asked as his eyes narrowed. “I will find him and rip out his spine to use as a spoon.”
“You know, I read that he did that once,” Nova said from beside me.
“Ripped out a man’s spine?” I asked, and from the look of Grizz, it didn’t surprise me.
“And used it as a spoon.” She looked at me grimly.
“Isn’t a spine a bit big to use as a spoon?” I asked, confused. “Like, it’s…” I spread my hands wide. “Like at least this big.”
“I know something else that’s at least that big,” Artemis chimed in, and as Aurora giggled, my face started to heat up and Grizz let out a belly laugh.