by Simon Archer
And finally, in the ripped sleeves and wearing a black tie around his head was the leader of this carnival from a black-and-white movie of ancient times. Straddled by an ammo belt around one shoulder and a grenade belt around the other, the body-builder gangster had a different pistol strapped to every section of arm and leg that could fit one, another five unique rifles strapped to a leather belt around his waist, and a rocket launcher strapped to his back. He was a monster of a man, even standing next to all of these monsters beside him, and had to be the Maxxy I’d heard so much about.
Thankfully, the wounds on each of them were hard to miss, bloodying and scuffing their suits to tatters. They didn’t just waltz over here from the pub. My people had at least put them through their paces before they came here, and they hadn’t had the time to recover. Didn’t make the prospect of having all of them attacking me at once sound fun, but we had to take our silver linings where we found them. Half-dead was always better than all-alive.
“What’s happening here?” Rocky the Rocket said to the Don, “what’s got you so riled up about a rave hands puppy dog like this guy?”
“Nut’in’ ya bozos gotta worry ‘bout.” Don John’s fake accent returned in the presence of his crew. “Dis is my fight. Butt outta my business.”
“Perhapsss that isss for the bessst.” Bone Raptor Sal’s metal beak squeaked open and close as he spoke. “We aren’t doing ssso hot ourssselvesss.”
“A couple of cheap shots from the dames ain’t nothing to write home about, boss.” Anvilhands Mahoney tried to shrug off the various visible injuries on him like they weren’t there. “You just say the word, and we’ll waste this creep. I got another hundred brawls in me before dinner. Let’s go!”
“Oh, really?” Gatling Gun Gunther laughed at his metal-skinned friend. “That cat was dancing circles around you back at the fight. You couldn’t so much as touch her before they just disappeared on us.”
“Well, if Rocky had done his job and found those snipers like he was supposed to, maybe we wouldn’t have had so many distractions while we fought them!” Anvilhands tried to step up and intimidate Gatling Gunther, but winced as soon as his shoulders moved too fast. “Goddamnit, it ain’t my fault I’m a closeup fighter! That pussycat’s gonna be roadkill next time I see her, and there won’t be any help from some team of cowards hiding a mile away.”
“Means you won’t be there either, Rocky!” Gatling Gunther mocked the human rocket. “Maybe instead you can go have fun with those snipers you never found, or that cloud girl who you said you were chasing around, even though she was right in front of us the whole time on the ground!”
“There were two clouds she was using!” Rocky defended himself. “She could have been in either one of them! You can’t tell me that you knew she was in the one you were trying to fight! You were pincushioning that thing so much that she’d have been making it rain blood out the thing if she was in there!”
“Except it turned out that she was anyway!” Anvilhands accused the jet on trial. “You were chasing a decoy!”
“You were all dissstracted by one girl either way.” Bone Raptor chuckled. “Meanwhile, I was busy handling the gorilla man by myself. The bastard nearly killed me. How were they so strong?”
“Oh, don’t give me that crap, Sal!” The heavy-handed mobster pointed one of his giant mitts at the bird in the suit. “That big monkey was clearly weaker than the girls if it only took you to keep him occupied.”
“He wasss alssso ssstealing Maxxy’sss gunsss!” Bone Raptor tried to justify his difficulties as the group turned on each other. “That big monkey took the rocket launcher off of Maxxy’sss back and lit up the whole battlefield! Do you not remember?”
“I remember a lot of squawking and a lot of monkey noises.” Gatling Gunther chuckled to himself. “Were you really fighting him, or did your animal instincts take over as soon as you saw his big, strong monkey muscles?”
“Maybe I ssshould ssshow you exactly how outclassssed you are compared to me!” Bone Raptor brandished his claws. “Then you’ll sssee that you were the one who got off easssy, and I wasss the one carrying thisss team!”
“Boys, boys, settle down!” Maxxy the musclehead Maniac tried to calm the men down before they ate each other. “We’re all just a little sore because we lost this one. But, they still didn’t take down the city, and that’s--”
“I think the guys with the weird hands might have a point, though.” I instigated some more infighting. “Just from the sound of it, rocket guy and Bone Raptor should have been more on top of their roles. Maybe if they had, then the battle would have turned out better. Any tactician can tell you that the guy who can fly should have had the best control of the battlefield.”
“Ha!” Anvilhands pointed at Rocky the Rocket. “You heard him! You’re a little bitch!”
“Don’t forget that I was one of the ones to take out one of those robots by myself!” Rocky drew attention away from his failures. “Can any of you say that you did the same? Yeah, I didn’t think so!”
“Please, you got one lucky shot on a parade float made of metal!” Gatling Gunther chuckled to himself. “Maybe you should focus a bit less on the bullshit you’re trying to sell and more on the good it did, which was nothing, since it stood itself back up. You know, in case you hadn’t noticed!”
“I can show you just what I did to it!” Rocky’s engine revved up, a gush of flames kicking out the back as his body slowly began to rise. “It’ll be quick and easy, and then you can feel it firsthand, test it out for yourself!”
“Gladly!” Anvilhands cracked his metallic knuckles. “I’ll take that bet. Then I can rub it in your face with just how useless you are to this team!”
I was curious why Don Perignon wasn’t getting himself involved in this scuffle unfolding between his boys, but then I took a better look at him. He was focused entirely on me and what I was doing, his eyes filled with the kind of rage that would boil a river of lava. For the moment, I had to be thankful for his tunnel vision distracting him from the debacle that was dangerously close to unraveling his advantage here, even if it meant that he would strike out at me at the earliest opportunity.
“Enough!” Maxxy put his hands up. “There’s no need for this! We’re dealing with bigger fish right now, and we’ve just gotta--”
“No, I don’t think the vulture guy smells like pigeon shit, gun fingers!” I scoffed at the ammunition-handed man and the fake conversation we were not having. “You are such a jokester, I swear!”
“That’sss it!” Bone Raptor had enough of the bullshit, and charged in first, claws flared out and glistening black. “You’re dead!”
Bone Raptor’s claws, both the ones on his hands and feet, had sunk into Gatling Gunther before anyone had a chance to blink. Toppling backward, Gatling Gunther’s Gatling gun hands spun to life, throwing bullets into the air like a popcorn machine. In that same moment, Rocky followed quickly behind his zealous bird buddy, headbutting Anvil in the stomach with the full force of a sonic boom. The two of them flew into a nearby building, collapsing it into the ground on top of them both as the force reverberated through the bricks and shattered them.
“Goddamnit!” Maxxy pulled out two of his assault rifles from his belt, locking and loading with both of them as he pointed them at me. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing, freak. Soon as we deal with you, the Don and I will have those boys whipped back into shape. We won’t need them to take you down, right boss?”
“Dis mook’s my problem, capiche?” The Don didn’t look away from me for a moment. “Jus’ make sure dose boys don’ kill each othah.”
“But boss, he’s clearly using this opportunity to get the drop on us!” Maxxy tried to bring about a rational decision out of someone on his team. “If we just waste him now, we can rein in the crew later--”
“Don’t talk back to me.” He slapped Maxxy upside the face with one of his meaty hands. “Ya don’ question da Don. Ya do what ya told, capiche?”<
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“Yessir,” Maxxy meekly replied, not wanting to upset the Don any further than he already had. “Whatever you say, sir.”
Well, now that the distraction of the Capone Crew had gone and settled itself, with a little nudge from me, we were right back where we started, but with a fight in the background. If Don John had cooled down enough to start thinking a bit more strategically again after I ruined his gun, this might have been a hundred times worse for me, especially with the looming threat of a recuperated Capone Crew providing support at any moment in time. The Don seemed pretty clear that he didn’t want anyone to interfere with our fight, but there was no telling what a loyal crew was willing to do to help out their boss. To summarize, this was going to suck.
Right at that moment, a stray bullet from Gatling Gunther’s barrage against Bone Raptor had flown right past my ear and into Maxxy’s eye, knocking him to the ground before he could move. However, instead of staying on the ground for any number of seconds, he sprung right back up, stiff as a board and uninjured by any ballistic projectile to the face. More upsetting than his defiance of gravity and the lethality of bullets was the expression he was wearing, a toothy smile straight out of a horror film.
“WHO’S READY FOR SOME ICE CREAM SUNDAES, BITCHES!” Maxxy’s gruff tone had grown much more… maniacal. “IT’S PARTY TIME ON THE SPICE WAGON!”
Couldn’t have told you just how much I had become unnerved, and yet somehow relieved that I finally understood why the leader of the Capone Crew with the most rational point of view and coolest head was known as ‘the Maniac.’ I would have guessed that this split personality we were all about to run into was the true maniac that gave him the name.
Now, this right here was probably worse than before. No, I take it back. Definitely worse than before. Two against one was going to suck, especially with one of them acting savagely and chaotically, along with having as many ranged options as a kiwi had little hairs. My only hope was that the fact that he was about to disobey orders was going to keep Don John and Maxxy out of sync with each other.
Tripping them up over each other’s attacks was about as good as I was probably going to get out of these sons of bitches. With a little luck, I could have them really grinding at each other’s gears, even hitting each other in the middle of the fight, and then we’d be winning all over again. Not that I had a whole lot of time to do that. My timetable had already run out, and everything from here on in was just risking death.
At that moment, against anyone’s possible predictions in the whole wide world, against all odds and fortunes, any gypsy foresights and statistical projections of the future or the present, the impossible happened. Maxxy the Maniac’s maniacally second personality, being a chaotic mess incapable of reason or logic, took out the rocket launcher from his back and fired it, point-blank, at Don John’s face. Holy shit. The explosion was intense, covering both Perignon and Maxxy in fire and smoke. On top of that, it took out a sizable chunk out of both of their health bars, already suffering from their previous fights. If there was ever a time that I needed an edge, it was right then, and boy, did the random-number-generating gods favor me today.
“What the hell are you doing, Maxxy!” Proving that the explosion was a gnarly whopper to his ego and his composure, Don John had lost his accent again. “Get a grip on yourself! I will not hesitate to kill--”
“THE PANCAKE FAIRY TOLD ME YOU WEAR LADIES UNDERWEAR.” Already reloading another rocket into his weaponized tube, Maniac Maxxy spouted more nonsense in response to his boss’ threats. “DO YOU WANT TO SIGN MY TOASTER STRUDEL WITH YOUR BLOOD?”
Having had enough of the insubordination, Perignon slapped Maniac Maxxy with his Tommy gun like a club, throwing him clear across the plaza we had turned into a battleground. Laughing the whole way, Maxxy landed in a crumpled heap of body parts, apparently unable to feel the pain in his body in his newest state of mind.
Not wasting the opportunity myself, I grabbed onto one of Perignon’s ankles with both of my magic hands, channeling as much of my power as I could into them to quicken their work. Despite the massive drain I was putting into them both, neither hands melting nor crystallization had eaten through the bastard’s skin before Don John swung toward with the butt of his gun again, knocking me just as far away as Maniac Maxxy had been.
Yes, the club swing hurt about as much as I’d have imagined being hit by a falling grand piano would have felt, but that didn’t mean I was out of this. With my green hand clawing the floor below me, I stopped myself from flying any further, then brought about my grappling hook from the purple sleeve to slingshot me forward, throwing me back at Don John once again.
Like any good worker, I was going to finish what I started, and went straight for the same leg that I had done in my previous attack. The speed that I was flying around at made me a speedy little devil on the floor, and Don John’s reaction speed wasn’t compensating for me flying about the floor. As soon as I struck out against the leg with my acid hand, my other hand was pulling me out of the fray before Don’s gun club swings came down and cracked the ground I was just occupying beneath him. A few more of these hit-and-run tactics, and I would have eaten straight through his shin and removed a foot. Try to run around with a nub, jackass.
The one little monkey wrench in that plan came in a random explosion thrown around me, unhooking one of my grapples just as I’d thrown it down. Skidding against the ground, I tumbled and rolled over myself before I managed to roll back onto my feet. Looking to my side, I found that Maniac Maxxy hadn’t decided that I was his friend, after all, firing madly into the area with his rocket launcher. His other hand now had both assault rifles held together by the handles with his finger threaded through both trigger guards as he fired wildly with that as well.
He was going to be more of an environmental hazard in the fight going forward rather than an unknowing asset. So much for hoping for that to work entirely in my favor.
Swinging back into action, I had to master the quick release and relaunch of my grappling hook in order to react fast enough to the minefield of missile fire around me. My saving grace was only the fact that Maxxy had decided I wasn’t his only target.
“DO YOU LOVE BUTTER AND KETCHUP AS MUCH AS I DO, PRESIDENT HOOFENBAUCHER?” The mad bomber asked no one in particular except the fiftieth president of our country. “I SURE WANT TO RIDE THE SHINIEST POOPMOBILE!”
Shit, he really was crazy as shit. I had to wonder exactly when this ‘Maniac Mode’ of his would stop, but I quickly realized that it wouldn’t matter in a moment.
“Maxxy, I swear, when you snap out of this, you’re gonna pay for costing me the easy kill I’d beaten out of this asshole.” Don John stupidly returned his attention to Maxxy. “You don’t get to just pull the ‘crazy’ card with me--”
“THE DARKNESS ENVELOPS ME, MR. MACARONI.” His response was as haunting as it was ridiculous. “CAN YOU DO THE FART DANCE? DANCE FOR ME, GABRIEL!”
He fired another rocket out against his employer in his compromised mental state. Since a rocket launcher telegraphed its shots more than a drunk in a bar fight, Don John was more than ready to intercept this one with some kind of flashy move. However, I was also ready for this rocket to make its mark, sliding underneath Don John at the same time to take advantage of the distraction to attack his leg once again. Caught between the rocket and my leg attack, he managed to avoid neither of them as he took another rocket launch to the face. I, on the other hand, had finally reached to the muscles in his leg, and was now going to begin the dirty work of eating through those dense fibers to make sure he couldn’t escape what came next.
“I HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT, AND IT MAKES ME HORNY!” Maxxy continued to rant his obscenities and absurdities as loudly as possible. “WAIT UNTIL THE DINGO EATS YOUR BABY, AND THEN YOU’LL KNOW THE TRUE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS!”
“You!” Don John grabbed at me before I could swing and rappel sideways again. “You’ve had your fun for long enough! Now I break you!”
Lifting me into the air like a defenseless turtle on his back, Don John had me at his complete and abject mercy, probably preparing to break me over his knee like a punk street fighter. Back injuries were the worst thing to happen to a body in a fight. I was not looking forward to the back braces I’d have to wear to recover from this, turning in his hands to grab his thumb with my purple magic. His grip on me wouldn’t break so easily, and his skin was proving just as stubborn up here as it was down at his leg. He was going to break me if I didn’t think of something miraculous at this moment.
Today was apparently a day full of miracles, as not only did my bacon get saved, it got saved by two amazingly slim coincidences instead of one.
Maniac Maxxy intervened again with his special brand of crazy friendly fire to blow up in his junk. At the same time, the gorgeous flames of my favorite pyromaniac came from behind the Don to knock him upside the back of the head, fully disorienting him as I twisted his thumb, breaking it off with the purple crystals. As I landed, I grappled away as soon as I possibly could, and Kate was there to meet me at the other end.
“What the hell happened while I was out?” Kate said as I slid up to her. “Why are there so many people fighting, and who’s the crazy guy over there?”
“EXORCISE THE DEMONS! THIS HOUSE IS CLEAN!” Maxxy wasn’t stopping his crazy tirades anytime this century if he could help it. “WORK THOSE DELTOIDS, SATAN! LET’S GET RIPPED!”