by Logan Jacobs
JoJo led us into the shop. It was a melange of Earth knick-knacks and antiques and brik-a-brak that would have made weekender in Vermont spooge.
A huge projection screen TV played a rerun of Press Your Luck from like Nineteen Eighty Three. The contestant had indeed just gotten a Whammy and lost all their money. The walls were covered with everything from Roman shields to an Atari 2600. It was a home to everything Earth.
“Look at this find,” JoJo said and picked up a Shake Weight and began to shake it phallically in front of his face. “So exciting.”
“Careful, JoJo,” I said and slowed his frantic shaking. “You could lose an eye.”
“Pshaw,” he waved my concern away. “Or how about this?”
JoJo wrapped himself in a bright pink Snuggie so that he looked like a Teddy bear burrito.
“Okay, that I like,” I said. “But we’re actually here for some donuts.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” JoJo said as he unwrapped the Snuggie and walked over behind the large donut counter. Every kind of donut you could possibly ever want to shove in your face hole was laid out in the display case.
“Give me two dozen of your finest,” I started to say, “you know what? Make it three. Yeah, three dozen donuts, JoJo.”
“Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, yes,” he bubbled and began to put donuts into the boxes.
“Hey, JoJo, let me get one of those,” Tempest said and winked at him like they were old buddies as he placed a large bear claw into the box. With a giggle he handed it over to her. She shoved damn near half the thing in her mouth and took a giant bite. A second later she began to moan loudly. “Fuck me, that’s fucking good as fuck.”
“Fucking A right it is,” I added. JoJo handed me the boxes, and I paid him with my thumb print on the credit reader. “Thanks, JoJo.”
“Oh, absotively posilutely, champion Havak, anytime,” JoJo waved as we began to walk out. “And remember to always spay and neuter your pets.”
“You got it, buddy,” I waved back while we exited. “You know what? I can’t wait to get back to the apartment. I need one of these right now.”
I opened the top box while I carefully balanced them on my one arm and hip as I took out a still warm chocolate glazed donut. It smelled like sugar heaven. I half closed the lid and brought the donut ever so slowly to my lips. I was going to eat the shit out of this donut, and it was going to be good.
Then someone knocked it, and the boxes, out of my hand.
“Wha fuck?” I uttered and looked up dumbfounded right into the chest of a big green alien with slimey tentacles for hands. He looked like Cthulu on two legs. The mass of tentacles is what had slapped the donuts from my grasp. They now lay on the ground gathering dirt sprinkles. Ruined.
“There you are Tempest,” Cthulu growled in a voice that was equal parts menacing and gross, like wet spaghetti in a strainer. “Thought you could cheat us and get away with it, huh?”
“Fellas, fellas, fellas,” Tempest said with a big fake smile as she held up her hands in front of her in the universal sign for “let’s calm down shall we”. “Cheat is a very harsh word, don’t you think?”
I glanced around the Cthulu’s giant chest and saw that there were three more big alien dudes behind him. They all looked pissed.
“Man, I knew we should have gone to get coffee first,” I muttered to myself. “Hey, guys, how’s it going?”
“Who's the flesh bag, Tempest?” Cthulu asked gruffly.
“Why you gotta insult people with words, Marko?” Tempest asked, her voice full of mock hurt. “He’s a friend of mine.”
“Well that makes him an enemy of mine,” Marko grumbled. “You owe us a lot of money, and a replacement for Rangor’s leg.”
“Yeah!” The alien known as Rangor chimed in. I noticed that he had a wooden stick where his left leg should have been.
“Rangor lost that leg fair and square,” Tempest replied.
“Yeah, well, I want it back,” Rangor said.
“Okay, so, that’s going to be a bit of a problem,” Tempest admitted. “I’m using it to hold up my coffee table.”
“Is no one going to mention the fact that my donuts are now all over the ground?” I asked. I could feel my temper beginning to flare as I looked down at the now dirt and grime covered sugary delights.
“Shut it, flesh bag, the adults are talking,” Marko growled at me. I looked over at Tempest very slowly.
“Did he just say what I think he said?” I asked her incredulously.
“Yup,” Tempest nodded. I saw her hands clench into fists at her side, and she gave me the briefest wink.
“Okay, just wanted to make sure,” I said almost jovially right before I head butted Marko in the face. The hard part of my skull crashed into Marko’s protuberant, slimey nose. I heard cartilage crunch as luminescent orange blood splattered. Marko reeled back into his three buddies who had to hold him up.
“Fuck them up,” Marko gurgled through a mouthful of blood. The four bruisers spread out into a loose semi-circle as Marko and Rangor closed in on Tempest and me.
She shifted her feet into a fighting stance as I felt the warm, comforting surge of adrenaline hit my system like a double red eye.
“You sure know how to make a morning interesting, Tempest,” I said and brought my fist up in front of me.
“It’s a gift,” she shot back, and I watched as two more Tempests seemed to spring from her body. They all grinned in unison just before they launched an attack on the bruisers. Her, or their, fighting style was more brawler than Kung-Fu master, and they moved with one purpose. It was weird and kinda fun to watch. One Tempest would throw a punch at a bruiser’s face and just as the bruiser would try to dodge another Tempest would hit him with a perfectly timed round house as the third Tempest swept his legs.
I could have watched her fight off the other two bruisers all morning but Marko had decided he wanted payback for the headbutt which I guess I kind of understood seeing as how I’d turned his nose into Playdough. I was expecting a series of punches but the tentacle weirdo launched a series of spinning kicks at my face.
For being a big dude, he moved very fast, and I almost caught a leg tentacle with my head. I backed up as I dodged the flurry of windmill kicks. I needed to give myself some space while I looked for an opening. It didn’t take long for me to find it. There was a point in his whirling dervish onslaught where his back was completely turned to me for a second before his leg tentacles whipped back out. I continued to skip backwards until my back was almost up against a wall. Marko smiled in victory as he figured I couldn’t retreat any further.
He wasn’t wrong.
As his foot tentacle came toward my face I ducked low, coiled my legs, and then sprang up with everything I had once the squishy foot had sailed over my head. I brought my right elbow up quickly and with all the force of my upward drive. It smashed into Marko’s chin while his forward motion brought him even closer. I heard his teeth shut with a loud CLICK as his head snapped back. Before he could even begin to recover, I snaked my right leg behind his left and used the rest of my momentum to clothesline him across the throat. He went almost perpendicular before gravity took over and he landed flat on his back on the hard, unforgiving pavement. A fish smelling oof burst from his mouth as all the air was forced out of his lungs. I grabbed hold of his shirt, pulled his torso toward me and rabbit punched him in the face, knocking him out.
I let his limp body fall back onto the ground and turned to help Tempest with the rest of the bruisers. Turned out, she had it well under control.
Two of the three were sprawled on the ground, one with a pool of blood spreading out under his head, while she sparred with the one-legged Rangor who tried to hop out of her way. She held the wooden stick that had been his replacement leg in her hands like a baseball bat. He attempted to get out of the way, but the other two Tempests blocked him. Tempest Prime then whacked him on the head with his own leg. He fell to the ground unceremoniously.
“Looks li
ke one legged guys in ass kicking contests aren’t that busy after all,” she said to the unconscious Rangor as she tossed his wooden stick-leg on top of him.
All three of Tempest's bodies turned toward me. One had a black eye that was starting to swell nicely. They all three grinned widely and then two of them walked over to Tempest Prime and kind of got sucked back into her body like a photocopy in reverse.
“That was fun,” Tempest said and walked over to me.
“Yes,” I agreed as I wiped bright orange blood from my knuckles, “but what the fuck was that all about?”
“Ah,” Tempest shrugged, “I cheated in a card game and took a lot of their credits, as well as Rangor’s leg.”
“Makes sense,” I said. “Let’s go back inside and get more donuts.”
“And some caffeine beverages please,” Tempest added.
“I like you more and more,” I grinned at her as we began to walk toward the door into JoJo’s. We didn’t get very far as blue energy encased both of us and halted our movement like a pause button had been pushed.
“Halt,” a booming voice said from the sky. “You are under arrest.”
“Oh great,” I muttered.
A second later the blue energy levitated us off the ground and into the back of a black and white hover-van where we were all squished in uncomfortably.
A little window set in the center of the back wall of the van opened and a uniformed Champion’s District Police officer poked his head into the square.
“Havak?” He blurted. “Ha, oh man, Captain Har’Gitay is going to love this.”
He then shut the window, and I felt the hover-van begin to move.
Tempest and I were shoved in with the still unconscious bruisers, and it was hard to move.
“This is fun, Havak,” Tempest said sarcastically.
“How is this my fault?”
“Oh, I don’t know, I just like giving you shit,” Tempest smiled as she shoved one of Marko’s tentacles off her.
A few minutes later and I felt the hover-van settle onto the ground. The back opened up, and we were greeted by four of the Champion’s District’s finest aliens in blue.
“Tempest?” One of them asked incredulously. “Oh, man, the Captain is going to love this.”
“You a friend of the Captain’s as well?” I asked her as we climbed out of the back of the van and got led into the police station.
“Oh yeah,” Tempest replied. “We go way back. Best buddies, the Captain and I.”
I chuckled quietly. Tempest was starting to remind me of a female Han Solo with her attitude and demeanor. Which was weird and very arousing.
The inside of the police station was a hive of activity. Uniformed aliens of every type walked around with purpose while plain-clothes detectives sat in a bullpen of desks. It looked like Brooklyn Nine-Nine set in the Mos Eisley cantina. I felt a stupid smile spread across my face even though we were probably in trouble. If anyone had told ten-year-old me that in twenty or so years I’d be arrested on a planet in a far away galaxy I would have told them they were insane. Ten-year-old me, which actually wasn’t that different from thirty-year-old me, was giddy as all get out.
Tempest and I were led to a small desk that had a grumpy looking alien behind it. Grumpy Cop glanced up from her piles of paperwork, looked at us, and sighed.
“Havak and Tempest?” she grumbled and shook her head while she rubbed her temples. “Oh, man, it is too early for this shit. Put them both in holding room two. I’ll let the Captain know.”
We got escorted, none too gently, down a hallway and into a ten by ten room with a table and three chairs. The cops sat us down at the table and slapped magnetic cuffs on our right wrists that kept us tethered to the table.
“The Captain will be with you shortly,” the larger of the two cops who’d escorted said with a little laugh. “Man, we should go watch this. It’s gonna be good.”
“Oh, hell yeah,” the other cop said as they walked out and closed the door behind them.
“I feel like we’re in the principal's office,” I admitted.
“I don’t know what the hell that is,” Tempest said as she tried to wriggle her hand out of the cuff. “Man, I hate these rooms.”
“Yeah, me too.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes, and I was just about to get antsy when Captain Olivia Har’Gitay walked in. She was in her normal police captain attire; a tight, curve hugging just above the knee black skirt, a tight, barely able to contain her ample, firm breasts white blouse, and a tight, black blazer with a gold badge on the right side of her chest. Her blue-black hair was done up in a tight bun and her glasses were slid down to the edge of her nose as she looked at Tempest and I over the top of the frames. She sighed loudly and shook her head as she sat down at the table opposite us.
“Tempest and Havak,” she grumbled, “Havak and Tempest. The two thorns in my side. Why do you two insist on making my life difficult?”
“Misspent youth,” Tempest replied.
“It’s how I show affection,” I said roughly at the same time.
The Captain took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose while she took a deep breath.
“I swear to all that is holy, you two will be the death of me,” Har’Gitay said and put her glasses back on. “But, I’m actually glad you two decided to get into an early morning brawl on the sidewalk in my jurisdiction.”
“Wait, you are?” I asked, surprised. I thought for sure we were going to get yelled at in a fashion that would make all Eighties put upon movie police captains proud.
“I know, I’m as shocked as you are, Havak,” Har’Gitay said sarcastically but I could tell there was a hint of a smile behind it. “I’ve been wanting to bust Marko and his knuckleheads for a while now. Can’t have riff raff attacking champions out of the blue for no apparent reason, now, can we?”
“Nope, we sure can not,” Tempest agreed. “That would be an egregious miscarriage of justice.”
“Don’t push it, Dirk,” Har’Gitay shot back. “After both of your assistance in rescuing the President of Earth, I’ll cut you a little slack, but don’t get used to it.”
“Speaking of that,” I said, “any new information? How the hell did they know where we were going to be? That was supposed to be super secret.”
“I was wondering the same thing,” Har’Gitay answered. “We’ve been interrogating the few Skalle Furia that you didn’t kill, and it appears they were tipped off. Someone very close to the inner workings of the Crucible of Carnage leaked the info. But they were behind enough layers of intermediaries that we haven’t been able to find out who.”
“Oh, intrigue,” I whispered conspiratorially. A few weeks earlier the President of the United States had come for a visit, and there had been not one, but two attempts on his life by an interstellar terrorist organization known as the Skalle Furia. In typical POTUS fashion he’d made some inflammatory statements on a talk show hosted by Trillium Vou, a “gotcha” sensationalist talk show host and not one of my biggest fans. In fact, she hated my guts. “Hey, what about Trillium Vou? She’s been trying to get my goat for a while now.”
“I thought that too,” Har’Gitay nodded in agreement. “But if she did have anything to do with it, she made sure her hands were squeaky clean.”
“Vou?” Tempest said and made a face like she’d just tasted something bad. “I hate that bitch. She dug up all kinds of crap from when I was a kid on my homeworld. Got an old lover of mine to shit talk me.”
“She likes the lies,” I said.
“Oh, no, it was all true,” Tempest deadpanned. “I am a shitty girlfriend. I don’t like being tied down. More of a love’em and leave’em wanting more kinda’ gal.”
“Yes, you are a regular scoundrel, Tempest,” Har’Gitay sighed. “Anyway, I’m still digging. If you hear anything let me know, and I’ll do the same. I don’t think this is an isolated incident. Since you’ve been a champion, Marc, things have definitely gotten shaken up in
the Forge of Heroes.”
“Boring I am not,” I boasted. I didn’t want to draw unwanted attention to myself or my team, but hell, I liked being a rabble rouser.
“No, you are not,” Har’Gitay said and let a little grin sneak out. “Not according to the rumors anyway.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Nothing,” she said slyly. A light on her wrist-chronometer began to blink. “Looks like your ride is here. Don’t get used to getting off scot free, you two.”
With that she got up and walked out the door. A moment later two uniformed cops came and got us and led us out to a crowded waiting room.
“There you two are!” Artemis yelled from across the room as she power walked over to us and grabbed us both by the arm like we were rambunctious kids. “I swear always affectionate sky daddy deity, I’m going to have to keep you two separated.”
“Sorry, Artie,” I said and kissed her on the cheek. “We just went to get donuts.”
“That is proving to be a futile effort for you, Marc,” Artemis said and reluctantly kissed me back. “Now come on, there is another announcement concerning the Crucible this morning, and we are going to be late.”
As we walked out, I watched two cops shove delicious-looking donuts into their alien faces and wash them down with steaming cups of coffee.
“One day you shall be mine, donuts. You shall be mine.”
Chapter Six
“After the success of our last update to the Forge of Heroes, the Aetherons, in their infinite wisdom, have seen fit to add yet another exciting wrinkle to the fabric of the games,” Tyche said regally as he took command of the huge auditorium full of champions.
All of my alliance mates and I sat in our little sectioned off box of seats about halfway up the rows upon rows of seats. There was a murmur among the crowd as Tyche made his announcement. Changes to the Crucible of Carnage, as all us champions called the Forge of Heroes, were apparently rare and this was the second one in as many weeks.
Tyche held up his holographic hands to shush the crowd before it got too unruly. Tyche was the highest ranking AI program in the entire Aetheron computer network that controlled every element of the Forge of Heroes. He was the mouthpiece for the elusive alien overlords who had created the arena as a way to quell interstellar warfare and give worlds the necessary technology to better themselves. Tyche’s hologram was a tall, thin humanoid figure dressed in a vaguely militaristic suit and he spoke in a clipped, high class British accent that reminded me of Gary Oldman. He was technically Artemis’ father, and he was a dick, and I disliked him greatly.