Overlord Brawl: Book 1 of the Neon Octopus Ally Series

by L. A. Johnson

  "That's true," Fleek said. "But if anybody else does survive, you're still going to have to beat them by getting more votes."

  Soda decided. "Then I’ll just have to go full scorched earth.”

  3

  Soda was still brooding on the bridge of the ship when a familiar and unwelcome face popped onto the console screen. Floyd.

  "Oh, there you are," the frumpy looking guy in the suit said. He had brown hair, glasses, and an expensive haircut that still looked cheap because it was on him. "I hope you're happy with yourself, Soda.”

  "Oh, go peddle your psychobabble somewhere else, Floyd," Soda said, waving a tentacle at him. "I'm busy. Just for the sake of asking, though, why wouldn't I be happy with myself?"

  "You killed all of those board members! Just because you knew I had them wrapped around my little finger. I had this Overlord gig won for sure until you meddled. Well, you won't get away with it, I can assure you of that. I have minions now and I am going to make sure that they-"

  "Hang on," Soda interrupted. She stood up from her chair to try to intimidate him. "Are my ears deceiving me or did you just accuse me of trying to steal the Overlord position from you? Because it's exactly the opposite way around you pointy-headed little-"

  "No," he interrupted. "I didn't take the Overlord position from you, not yet anyway. All I did was talk the board into relieving you of duty after the girl wonder twins Ari and Kirian took you down. Are they there with you on the ship right now? I'm surprised you're not angrier at them than me."

  "No," Soda said, sitting down. "Only angry girl warrior is here. And what do you care, anyway?"

  "Just curious. So, you admit that you killed the Intergalactic Board?"

  "No, of course not. I've been here, on this stupid ship with these idiots the whole time. I have witnesses, electronic logs, and computer records that can verify my whereabouts. To tell you the truth, killing them never even entered my mind. Even though you were putting in overtime ingratiating yourself to the board, I completely forgot about the Anti-Parliamentary provision. And frankly, I think that's going to liven things up around this galaxy, so I owe a thank-you to whoever did kill them."

  "Well if it wasn’t you, then who was it?" Floyd asked. "Who else would have the nerve to get into a life or death battle with a slimy, immortal, planet-destroying neon octopus?"

  "Good question," Soda replied. "Whoever did this had to know I'd want back into the Overlord position. And the rules change was a clever perk. There's no way whoever did this wouldn't do their homework. And when they did said homework, they probably figured out that you were a dumpy, low-rent psychiatrist by day and an illegal, hideous Preying Mantis species by night. If I were whoever did it, I'd wait for me and you to kill each other and then take over. It's a good plan, it's just not mine. And now I guess you have rent-a-mob minions?"

  "You take that back. I have never bought minions, I brainwashed them fair and square."

  Kirian came into the room, did a double take at the screen, and drew her sword. She pointed it at Floyd. "You. I'm going to find you and I'm going to kill you." The luminescent tips of her dark hair burned bright and her eyes flashed.

  Floyd simply sat back in his chair. "I'm the one you want to kill? What is wrong with you? Sure, I tried to brainwash you, but she tried to kill you!" He pointed at Soda. "And now you're just hanging out with her on your little spaceship?"

  "Oh, snap," Fleek said as he came into the room when he saw Kirian turn her sword toward Soda. "Look, Floyd's obviously trying to turn you guys against each other. He wants you to do his dirty work for him, Kirian. Don't listen to him."

  "Fine," Kirian said, turning back to the screen and the smirking Floyd. "You're right, she sucks too. The reason I'm going to go after you is that she's immortal and you're not."

  "How do you know that I'm not immortal?" he asked.

  "I don’t. But I plan to have fun finding out."

  Floyd shook his head. "Whatever. You both know where I am. I'm not scared of either of you, and I'm not going anywhere. But if I were you I'd watch my back, because the rules have changed.

  "So I heard," Soda said.

  The screen went blank again, changing back to a window with a beautiful view of stars.

  Kirian heaved herself into the chair next to Soda. "He's right, you know. Annoyingly right about you trying to kill me repeatedly."

  She waved a dismissive tentacle at Kirian. "Yes, he's always been annoying," Soda said. "But he has a good point about the board. If I didn't kill them-" She paused and looked around the room daring anybody to look at her accusingly before continuing. "And I didn't. Then who did?"

  "Okay," said Fleek, backing up a few steps. "And I'm just saying this to be thorough, because after that interview it's going to come up. Why couldn't you just contact the board members when we were sleeping or busy and strangle them one by one? You demonstrated your ability to do so on live television. Not smart, by the way."

  Soda whirled in her chair to face him. "You're wearing ripped jeans and sporting a green mohawk. And you're calling me stupid?"

  "Okay," Fleek said. "Not stupid. Um, let's go with, I dunno. Volatile?"

  "Crazy," Kirian said, looking down at her cell phone.

  Soda objected, swiveling in her chair to face Kirian. "Now look here, you snarky girl Conan the barbarian looking-"

  Kirian held a hand up to stop her. "Just listen, Soda. I did a quick search on my phone and the members of the board were killed in separate incidents. I'm looking at the news reports. They were killed in different locations and in entirely different ways, none of which happened to be strangulation. Gun shot. Robbery gone wrong. Run over by a bus. Hit in the head by a hockey puck. I mean, what are the odds of that one? There's no way they can pin any of these murders on you. In fact, these deaths look desperately random, like whoever did kill them wanted it to look accidental."

  "Diamond Girl sure left those details out of her little news report when she was accusing me of murder on live television. Wait. If what you're saying is true, then somebody went through all the trouble to kill them and not get caught knowing that they wouldn't have gotten in trouble in the first place because of the Anti-Parliamentary Rules. And furthermore, they could have just strangled them all and pinned it on me. Which would have been a giant pain for me, but again, in the end it wouldn't have mattered."

  Kirian looked up from her phone. "Exactly. It doesn't make any sense."

  "You're right." Soda tapped a tentacle nervously. “Who in stars name would do such a thing? Because I know for a fact that Floyd is too lazy. And it wasn't me." Again, she looked around the room daring them to say something, but now they understood that it wasn't her. “Something fishy is going on here, and I plan to get to the bottom of it.”

  4

  Ari left her deluxe suite and made her way lazily down to the front lobby of the Regal Hotel and Casino, the flagship one in Vega. She was wearing the finest leather pants and a designer top. Finally, she had it all. The money, the status, and the respect. For the first time in her life, she felt like she fit in somewhere.

  Harry, the don in charge of the Regal Crime Organization and owner of the hotel saw her come down the stairs. "There's my girl!" He embraced her and kissed both cheeks. "So smart, this one. Worked her way up from pit boss to Security Chief of the whole city," he said, presumably to nearby onlookers.

  "Harry, you old sweetie, you say the same thing every morning."

  People were gathering around Harry and taking pictures, as usual.

  "And the instinct," Harry continued, to the old front desk guy. He was the same one that Ari had met on her first trip to Vega, when she was on the Most Wanted Dead list for the galaxy. She had told him then that she was going to clear her name and she did.

  "Not since Raiman has somebody had this much of a nose for trouble. Sharp as a tack. Nothing gets past this one. And a knockout, with all the black leather, and the ponytail, and the face tattoo. One of a kind." Harry finished.

>   "And she's a killer, too!" the front desk guy added, pointing at her. "Staar Killer. Yeah, she's a Regal through and through. I knew it the first time I saw her."

  Because of her notoriety on the Most Wanted Dead list and her connections to the ex-Overlord, she was now one of the luminous figures in Vega. She now had connections that could make almost anything happen. And it did when she proposed a plan for an umbrella type city-wide security complex. The local crime families had thrown money at her to get it done. It had been a good investment too, crime was down fifty percent at the casinos and thirty-five percent in the city itself. Just the headlines themselves, touting the nearly unlimited budget and experimental technology available to the Command Center had been enough to scare off most of the individuals and organizations planning anything suspect.

  Truth be told, ever since the Vega Security Command Center had gotten up and running, things had been quiet. Too quiet. If she were a betting woman, she'd figure that something was coming. But despite having set up residence here in the casino hotel, she wasn't a betting woman. Otherwise, she would have shared her suspicions with Harry.

  "Alright, boys. I have to get to work." She winked at the front desk guy as she continued toward her office.

  "I'll go with you," Harry said, making a show of opening the door for her. The door in question was guarded by a hulking guy holding what looked to Ari to be an actual tommy-gun. The guard smiled sweetly at the two of them while his eyes darted around the room looking for signs of trouble. There was none though, it was just another quiet morning.

  Once inside the door, they made their way through the mostly empty hallways until they got to the sparsely populated back area of high-level administrative offices and the new Security Command Center.

  Ari and Harry walked together down the hallway. Ari stopped short of her office, though, in front of a spectacular mural that she had been wondering about.

  "Harry," she said. "Why is this amazing mural here, in the back area of the casino instead of out where everybody can see it?" The colors were so real that Ari had touched it just to make sure it was a wall. The figures depicted against a deep blue background looked to be creatures of a mythology that both interested her and creeped her out. She had followed the wall around a few corners once and the scenes in the mural had changed tone several times from celebratory to violent and then back again. None of the buildings or creatures in the mural looked familiar to her.

  Harry stopped walking and stood next to her as she admired it. He looked thoughtful for a moment before answering. "No idea. I didn't commission it. You're right. I would have totally put this thing downstairs in the lobby. In fact, I investigated having it moved once, but these hallways aren't just load bearing to this floor, they're load bearing to the entire building. The architect told me that moving a single panel could bring the whole building down. How weird is that? It's a shame."

  Ari frowned. "If you didn't commission it, then who did?"

  "Nobody that I know of. You see, this building predates the rest of Vega."

  Ari turned. "What? You're messing with me now."

  "Nope. When Vega was discovered, only this building was standing. Everything else built up around it. Luckily, the rest of the building was easy enough to renovate into hotel rooms while leaving the giant areas in the lower floors intact for the casinos. The history of the building is downstairs in the library room. Its open to the public, but hardly anybody goes in there."

  Ari looked Harry in the eye. "You're seriously saying that Regal didn't actually build this place?"

  "Nope."

  "You just moved in and took over? That sounds awfully convenient, even for you guys."

  "Hey, that's the lore. Empty planet. We got here first." He gave her a wink. "I can see that you're skeptical. You're a smart girl. But that's really all that I know. This stuff happened way before my time."

  Ari heard that last part, but she was distracted by the mural again. They had stopped in front of a scene of the mural that she didn't remember seeing before. It looked like a battle. Spider-like creatures looked to be fighting giant bats.

  "Wait, Harry. What you're telling me is that this building, and this mural, pre-date everything and everybody else on Vega?"

  "Yes. Very old. Very mysterious. All of them."

  "What do you mean, all of them?" Ari asked.

  There was a glint in Harry's eye. "There's more than one mural back here, sweetheart."

  "Where?" Ari asked.

  "Oh no. I've got to keep a little bit of mystery in our relationship. Otherwise maybe you'll get tired of me."

  Ari smiled, but then she got a shooting pain in her forehead. She wobbled, and Harry caught her.

  The headaches had started after she was hit in the face by a meteor on the planet Regulus. It was a long story., but the headaches were getting worse and more frequent.

  "Hey, Ari. Are you okay? You need an aspirin or something?"

  She shook her head to clear it. "I've got one in my office," Ari said. She recovered herself and he let her go.

  "Okay," he said. "If you're sure." Then he turned and continued to his office.

  Ari watched him go. She felt silly needing his help and decided she'd call the doctor first chance she got. She couldn't help but like Harry, even though he was the head of a galactic crime organization. He had a sort of charisma. Although, to be fair, since she had been rescued from a planet marked from destruction by Kirian, Destroyer of Planets, she had consorted, helped, or run into a cast of characters so outlandish and at times downright evil that Harry seemed calm and reserved.

  Yes, that was the word that described Harry and her new life here. Her life had significantly calmed down since moving to Regal. It was exactly the kind of calm and stability that she decided she had wanted when she was on Fleek's spaceship running for her life and trying to save people.

  She entered her Security Command Center. There was a chorus of "Morning, boss." She said hi and sat down in a real leather chair that had cost an obscene amount of money.

  "How are we looking today, guys?" she asked.

  "Just another beautiful morning in Vega," Chip said. "No sign of trouble so far."

  Chip was her second in command. He was a sweet kid and had graduated from the best technology academy. He was the perfect guy for the job and had attacked his responsibility with the enthusiasm of a kid in a candy store. He kept the place running like clockwork. Just so long as he had plenty of his favorite soft drink, which Ari had installed on tap. It was a very worthy investment. She was happy, and she wanted to spread the joy.

  She tapped her fingers on the desk. "I don't like it."

  Chip swiveled around in his chair to face her. "You've been saying that for a week, boss."

  "I know," Ari said, "and it's still true."

  "Did you really get kidnapped by the Neon Octopus Overlord?" he asked.

  Ari sighed. "I've told you that story like a million times. Why are you so interested in her, is it a fetish or something?"

  He just grinned. "I like the way you tell it. It's like mythology come to life. You have had real, actual adventures with famous people I only see on the news."

  Mythology. Interesting. That made her think of the mural. And how weird the last year of her life would look like if it was painted on a wall like the mural. She couldn't help but smile at that thought. "Yeah, well as usual I'm going to tell you she's just a slimy, neon-colored pain in the ass." Ari tried to repress a shudder at the thought of the tentacles that had tried to kill her so many times. "Although, I should also point out that she's pretty good at teleporting."

  "That's right, I saw video surveillance footage. She saved your life when that Staar showed up and toasted half of Arcturis."

  "Yeah," Ari answered, "she did save my life. But not nearly as many times as she tried to kill me, so that doesn't make us even. What's with all of the questions this morning?" It had been weeks since he had brought up her past.

  He leaned back in his c
hair and pointed to his work computer. "One, I was bored. It's been pretty boring lately." Then he pointed to the television in the corner of the room. "And two, Soda was on television this morning, doing some kind of interview."

  "Soda? On tv? What kind of interview?"

  "They were interviewing her to see what her reaction was to the big news out of Acrturis this morning."

  "What news out of Arcturis?" Ari had mostly been paying attention to Vega news. She was happy to be out of Galactic headlines for now and had stopped paying attention to politics altogether.

  "The Intergalactic Oversight Board, whose job was overseeing the Overlord position was dissolved."

  Ari thought about it as she crossed the room to the very expensive expresso maker that Harry had put in last week and made herself a cup. "No kidding. Why would they dissolve the board? Somebody has to keep the Overlord in check."

  "Oh," Chip laughed, "I don't mean dissolved like disbanded, I meant dissolved." He raised an eyebrow at her. Then, seeing that she didn't understand, he made a throat-slash gesture. "Dissolved is slang for being killed."

  "Ok," Ari said. "Good to know. Just for the sake of asking, what was Soda's reaction to the news?"

  "Suspicious," he answered and then laughed. "I think if she wasn't an official suspect before the interview, then she probably is now."

  "That sounds about right," Ari said.

  Ari went back to her desk with her coffee and settled back into her chair. It wasn't five minutes before an alarm in the corner of the room sounded. This was different for a couple of reasons. One, because the sensors were hooked to experimental equipment and had never gone off before, and two because if the tripped sensor was right, then there was trouble afoot. Possibly real trouble, for the first time since this Command Center had been created. Finally.

  Ari got up again, happy to put the thought of tentacles behind her. She did miss Kirian, and maybe even Fleek, but she was very happy to not be living on Fleek's spaceship anymore. Especially since something interesting was finally happening.