“Ol’ pal, huh?”
Hiccup takes another whiff of the frying dragon wings. “Fick me twice and call me Sally, damn, Og, that shit smells fickin’ delicious.”
“It should. Our wings have been rated the top wings in Jatla two years in a row. In fact, our deconstructed dragon wings, Dragon as Lore, have even been served to the Empress.”
“I’d like to serve her, if you know what I mean.” Hiccup winks at Og as he takes his little leather book from his back pocket. The goblin feels some gas coming on and lets it go. It’s not like anyone is going to smell it with all the spices in this kitchen.
“Did you come back here to insult the Empress or to fart?” Og tells one of his staffers to fry a Chiup hog chop. The assistant chef bows slightly and gets to work.
“Fart? You’ve got the wrong guy, Og, and I must say: you sure are running a fickin’ tight ship around here! Love it. But I’m not interested in working in a kitchen. Can’t lie, Og, I got a pretty kush position right now babysitting a pair of commoner twinkies, a fickboy and his curvaceous wet dream. Beside the point, I know, but I thought I’d share.”
Og’s smile fades even further. “You weren’t being offered a job. In fact, I’m wondering why you came here.”
“Need a favor.” Hiccup licks his fingers and flips through his book. “And yep, according to this, you owe me one.”
“I owe you a favor? What for?”
“Remember that time I helped you get home after a night of Horse Piss and ponytail races?”
“Yeah, and I remember you crashing on my couch, shitting in my kitchen sink, eating all the food in my house, barfing in my rain boots, kicking my Thulean Pomeranian, and leaving a sweat stain on my couch that I was never able to get out. Had to get rid of that damn couch. I loved that damn couch.”
“I plead the fifth to all that, especially the sweating. I’m not a particular sweaty goblin.”
“Plead the what?”
“Never fickin’ mind. Look, Og, aside from all that, I got you home. Who knows how your puckered starfish or your perfectly-shaped mouth would have felt if I didn’t help you get home that night. This is Jatla. Jatla is a shithole. Things that shouldn’t happen – such as waking up in an alley with a crusted over dirty Sanchez or getting an STI in your armpit of all places – happen all the time. They are happening right now, as we shoot the shit. You get my point.”
“No, I don’t,” Og says over the sound of the frying wings.
“I’ll break it down for you: an ink shadow named Barry is after my chalupa, and I’ve promised him a good time tomorrow and dinner at a Michelin star restaurant.”
“GobTree isn’t a Michelin star restaurant. It was in the running this year.”
“You think that ficker will know the difference?” Hiccup offers the chef his best puppy dog eyes. “Please, Og, I need your help. My chalupa and the future ability to get said chalupa wet depends on it.”
Og takes some sauce from the front of his apron and squeezes it into the frying pan. A great ball of fire lifts off the pan, forming a mushroom cloud as it dissipates.
“Holy fick! What was that?”
Og’s smile returns. “Impressive, huh? It’s my new sauce, Hot AzzBalls, named after my girlfriend, Holly AzBallat.”
“First, fickin’ love that name, the former, not the latter. Second, gimme, gimme, gimme!”
“Anyone ever tell you that you were overly demanding?”
“No one has ever told me something I haven’t heard before.” Hiccup pauses. “Think hard about what I just said. Anyway, chop, chop, Og, I walked my ass all the way over here from the Red Lamp District. I’m fickin’ starved.”
“You sure are an ass.” Og finishes frying up the dragon wings. He procures a plate with paper placed on it to soak up all the excess oil. The especially spicy wings go on the plate, and within seconds of reaching Hiccup’s vicinity, the first wing goes in his mouth.
His eyes water immediately. “Holy fick!” Hiccup burps and produces a ball of fire which nearly scorches the nearby assistant chef.
“Fick!” the goblin chef screams.
“Fick!” Hiccup replies, another ball of flames coming from his lips. “Water! Fick me!” Every word that comes out of his mouth is accented by flames.
Og is by his side moments later, laughing his ass off.
“What the fick did you do to me!?” Hiccup asks as he gulps down water, his throat on fire.
“Hot AzzBalls, am I right?”
“Fick you, Og!” Hiccup lifts his fist to punch the orclin, but decides otherwise when he sees the giant butcher knife in Og’s hand.
“Cool it, Hiccup,” Og says, “and let’s talk about this little favor I owe you.”
“That’s right, you owe me a fickin’ favor,” he says as he wipes his lips. “And I probably should put down that you owe me two after feeding me that damn wing.” The angry look on Hiccup’s face changes and his eyes light up. “Actually, that ain’t half bad. Wow, Og! I mean, the fire is bad, but fick, it leaves a damn good taste in your mouth!”
“Ha! Glad you liked it, it’s part of my goal of deconstructing a dragon wing, this time through the medium of a spicy hot wing. You want to talk about rare, this little bottle…”
Og places his knife on the stainless-steel countertop. He digs in his apron for the hot sauce, which he has placed in the bottle of an empty Apollos Cherry healing potion.
“That’s the stuff, huh?”
“It sure is. Let’s just say this little bottle contains ingredients one can only get on Unigaea, and Unigaea is an extinct world, you get what I’m saying here.”
“Smuggled in the buttocks of a fickin’ ImmiNPC most likely.”
“Who knows?” Og asks as he sets the bottle on the countertop. “All I know is that ingesting it allows someone to temporarily breathe fire. So my idea is this: serve customers a single Hot AzzBalls dragon wing along with a raw, 12-ounce land dragon steak. They eat the wing, and with their fiery breath, they cook the steak. It’ll be brilliant.”
Hiccup nods, impressed and secretly wishing he could have another wing. “Okay, so favors…”
“Yes, favors, indeed. I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine. I need a rare ingredient. You get that rare ingredient, and I’ll make your ink shadow a meal he’ll never forget.”
“What ingredient is that?”
“It shouldn’t be too hard to find. You familiar with the Bodyville Cemetery?”
Hiccup shudders as soon as the thought of a haunted graveyard comes to him. He clears his throat. “Got a cousin buried there.”
“In about twenty minutes, funeral potatoes will sprout from the ground. These only come out once a month, and I’m too busy cooking today to go and collect some.”
“But it is getting dark outside,” Hiccup says.
“Are you scared?”
“Fick no. I’m nobody’s little fruitcake!”
“Good, funeral potatoes only come out at night, at dusk to be exact. So that’s what I need. Bring me back a sack, and the meal is yours.”
(.)(.)
“Fickery,” Hiccup laments as he leaves GobTree through the back entrance and heads north. “All I’m ever dealt in life is fickery.”
Pissed that he is simply trying to collect on favors owed to him yet everyone keeps turning the tables and somehow getting him to do a favor for them, Hiccup angrily kicks a bag of trash. The bag spills open; a rat the size of a well-fed raccoon runs out of the shadows to see what Hiccup has uncovered.
The cantankerous goblin watches for a moment as the rat goes to town.
“Fick you too,” he says after the rat hisses at him.
Hiccup hates the Bodyville Cemetery.
It’s eerie, dirty, and if there is any place in Jatla that would be a breeding ground for ghosts, ghouls, and goth fickers, it would be the cemetery. Even odder is its location, set between the Richman District and the Goblin Riviera. One would expect a cemetery to be on the outskirts of a city, not in its mo
re wealthy and influential district.
Hiccup knows all too well his ass will never be buried at Bodyville, so there’s definitely some jealousy involved in his distaste for the cemetery. Plots start at 600,000 rupees for a single plot in a less desirable part of the cemetery. If you want something elaborate, and Hiccup obviously wants something elaborate, the bill can run upwards of two million rupees.
“Let’s get this over with.”
A burlap sack flung over his shoulder, Hiccup waddles up the winding lane that leads to the cemetery’s entrance. Big goblin oaks have been planted outside the cemetery, their leafless limbs reaching towards the entryway, giving the crotchety goblin the heebie jeebies.
“Who’s there?”
Hiccup spins around, takes a deep breath, and is just about to enter the cemetery when he’s struck from behind.
“Yooooy!”
He rolls forward and slams into the Bodyville sign. His big ears perk up when he hears the snarl of a tiger. Hiccup gets to his feet, his toe knife in hand, and turns to find the weretiger in the leather jacket standing with claws at the ready.
“I had a feeling we’d fickin’ meet again,” Hiccup growls.
“You embarrassed me at the knitting meetup.”
“Yeah?” Hiccup takes a healing potion, his second to last one, from his list and throws a little back. He feels a burp coming on and lets it out, a small fireball shooting from his lips.
“Fick!”
The weretiger jumps back just in time; the fireball hits the ground and ignites a patch of grass.
“So that’s how it’s going to be, huh?”
The weretiger’s stats come up and Hiccup gulps bigly.
Weretiger Level 15
HP: 654/654
ATK: 132
DEF: 86
MATK: 10
MDF: 65
LUCK: 4
Hiccup’s eyes start to water as the weretiger approaches.
“What are you … planning to do?” he asks as he chokes back a sob.
“I’m planning to make you regret that you ever spoke to me in the first place.”
The weretiger lifts a clawed hand and Hiccup springs into action, his action being one of complete capitulation.
“Please, Mr. Simba, please don’t fickin’ kill me!” He throws himself at the weretiger’s feet and sobs loudly as he pleads with him. “I was trying to save my family! Fick! My family is at risk here, please, please find it in your little kitty heart to PLEASE let me go.”
“Hey!” The weretiger tries to take a step back but Hiccup only latches on even harder to his feet.
“Please, spare my life, for my family, my fickin’ family!”
“Relax.” Even though nobody is around, the weretiger glances left and right, clearly embarrassed for Hiccup. “What’s this about your family?”
He drops his paw onto Hiccup’s shoulder and helps the sniveling goblin up.
“It’s racism, I tells ya, plain and simple. A hate crime, apartheid. Yeah, goblin apartheid. I’ll be fickin’ honest with you, as honest as I’ve ever been with someone of the feline persuasion.” Hiccup sniffs. “I lied back there at the meetup. This isn’t about a parade for the Empress, it’s really for a fickin’ ink shadow that has threatened to kill my entire family, fickin’ Spewy too – and he’s so young!”
“Spew Gorge, too? Why does he want to kill your family?”
“This ink shadow, goes by the name of Barry, got caught in a lie. Plain and simple. It’s a long story that involves, um, a threesome with this ficked up goblin named Dougbug and an orclin named Og. Yeah, that’s it. The ink shadow, well let’s just say he was the pig in a spit roast, Dougbug in front, Og in back. Some real dirty shit. Well, I just so happened to walk in on this ficked up little scene. I promised Barry I wouldn’t tell, but he said he’d kill my whole family anyway. Can you believe that!?”
“And what does this have to do with a parade?”
Hiccup wipes a fake tear away. “Fick me, Simba, I’m getting to that!”
“My name is Todd.”
Hiccup eyes him for a minute. “Wasn’t that the name of the knight in shining armor at the meetup?”
“It was.”
“Okay, then he’s Toad, you’re Simba, easier that way. Now back to the parade. You’ll never believe this, but I swear on the Empress’s mound of eternal fertility and her womb of graciousness that it’s true. The ink shadow fickin’ told me that if I threw a parade for him, he’d let me off the hook. Can you fickin’ believe that? I mean, I’m a rich goblin here, and I can pay him anything he wants, but the ficker wants a fruity puff parade. Talk about vanity!”
“Then I will help you with your parade!” The weretiger points his finger in the air.
“Easy, Simba, let’s not get too excited here,” Hiccup says, looking around as if they are standing in a busy cafe filled with hipsters all of whom are judging them.
The weretiger pumps his fist. “I will always take quests in the name of justice!”
Hiccup considers this for a moment as he looks the weretiger over. The beast man’s angry visage is long gone, replaced by the face of stupid altruism. An idea comes and Hiccup runs with it. “Well, that’s fickin’ good to know,” he finally says, “because there’s another part of this little dilemma.”
“What’s that?”
“I need some funeral potatoes, that’s why I’m here at Bodyville, actually. I fickin’ hate ghosts. Hell, the mention of anything paranormal will have me with wet britches faster than you can say ‘orc tits,’ believe you me.”
“And you need my help to get them?” the weretiger asks, a hint of suspicion now in his voice.
“That’s the other thing the ink shadow wanted – he wanted a five-star dinner, so I went to the restaurant that belongs to a friend of mine and he said he’d do it, if I brought him a sack of potatoes.” Hiccup shows the weretiger the sack.
“He’s your friend and he wouldn’t help you out?”
“Fick no, Simba. Just in case you don’t have a map, it’s Jatla, nobody helps nobody out if they can help it.”
“I see, then I will get the funeral potatoes for you!”
“Shit, you’ll need this shovel too.” Hiccup equips a hand shovel with a black metal tip.
The weretiger takes the bag and the shovel. “You said you were scared of ghosts, correct?”
“Correct as fick, my man. Phasmophobia runs in my family, a family I would like to keep, I might add!”
The weretiger nods stoically. “Then stay here and rest. I’ll have these funeral potatoes for you as soon as I can!”
“Before you go, I have just one more request...”
Chapter 5: Fright Knight at the Golden Swine
Hiccup laughs again. “Fick me, you should have seen that weretiger digging for funeral potatoes!” he tells Og Lemon the chef. “Well, I couldn’t see him exactly, but I could hear him, and while I’m sitting there enjoying a healing potion I suckered out of him, that ficker is getting filthy as a Chiup hog breeder. Ha!”
Og laughs as he shakes his head. The founder of the world famous GobTree restaurant is still in his chef’s apron, the front of which is splashed with red and orange stains.
Hiccup spots Og’s bottle of Hot AzzBalls sauce on the countertop and licks his lips.
“Anyway, I got the funeral potatoes, and the ficker agreed to take part in the parade tomorrow. Fick me, right? Best con I ever pulled,” the shady goblin says as he slowly moves towards the bottle of powerful hot sauce. “Say, what’s that you’re cooking over there?”
He nods to the oven and a tray of meat on a grill inside.
“That’s right!” Og says, a grin stretching across his face. He’s handsome for an orclin, especially when he smiles. When he gets angry, however, his more orcly features come out, such as his slight underbite and a series of stress lines on his forehead. “Seriously, Hiccup, you’ve got to try this before you leave.”
Og places his oven glove on, and as he takes the r
oast out of the oven, Hiccup pivots in front of the bottle of hot sauce.
“Don’t mind if I do,” he whispers. The crooked goblin places his hands behind his back, grabs the hot sauce, and tucks it deep into his back pocket.
“What’s that?” he asks Og.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Oh, must be hearing things. Damn auditory hallucinations, seems to come with the territory of getting older. But never mind me, son of a ficklord, Og, that smells great!”
Og slices some of the roast and places it on a plate for Hiccup. The goblin sucks it down, and wipes his big lips on the bottom of his tunic. “Well, that was ficktacular, Og, not gonna lie there. Oh, look at the time.” He glances down at a watch he isn’t wearing. “I need to get to the Golden Swine, before it gets too late. One more favor to collect on!”
“I’ll see you out.”
“No need, I know you’re busy, Og!” he says, back-stepping to the exit. “I’ll just fickin’ make my way out here. See you tomorrow.”
(.)(.)
Hiccup disappears into the thinning crowd walking along the lane that separates the Goblin Riviera from the Richman District. He sees the Bodyville Cemetery and can’t help but laugh. “What a ficker,” he mumbles, thinking of Simba the weretiger.
Once he’s about a quarter mile away from Og’s restaurant, Hiccup opens the bottle of Hot AzzBalls spicy sauce and sniffs it. “Whew!” He licks his lips and sniffs it again. “Not fickin’ bad.”
He sees the Golden Swine up the street.
The hotel was designed to look like a pig on a spit, the mouth of which is the entrance. It is golden, hence the name, and from what Hiccup has heard, it has about seventy rooms, most of which are booked on any given night due to the hotel’s notorious exclusivity, and its view of the only nice beach on the Goblin Riviera.
Hiccup wipes his hands on the front of his tunic, and walks up the carpeted red stairs that lead to the entrance. An orc in a tux steps in front of him, preventing his passage.
“Move it, pal, I’ve got business in this hotel,” Hiccup says.
“What’s your room number?”
“Probably the same one your mom and your sister are staying in. Look, Toothy, keep up the fickery and I’ll tell Curtis E. Flush that you were giving me shit.”
Jatla is not a Shithole Page 4