El Sexorcisto Z!

by Yuli Ban

  Ana giggled weakly and said, "I liked the part where you screamed to the heavens."

  Tatiana then said, "Can we FOCUS."

  Then came the screech of a rocket propelled grenade. It shot past us and exploded in the lobby of the diner. We all ducked again, protecting our faces. The heat from the explosion singed the hair off my arm.

  Olga smarmed us with, "Of course, he's got a bazooka!" She looked right at me and said, "Can you risk it and run to the camper? Try to take the heat off us for a sec? I may have a plan."

  "What if I get shot?"

  "You have added speed, doncha?"

  To this, I could not retort. It was true— my running speed was supposed to be 20% faster. But would that be enough? If I made a mistake, I'd be down a head...

  So I said, "I don't think this is the best idea."

  "Well, I'm not the one who usually comes up with ideas. That's Maria's job. But we're in a pinch and I need material to make a ray gun!"

  "What exactly do you need?"

  "Just get me a carburetor, the engine, and a bunch of plastic, metal, and wood. If I can get that, I can use some elven alteration magic to make a ray gun."

  “Are you serious?!”

  A second rocket zoomed past us, this one landing much closer to the sign. We all jumped from the pressure and landed on our sides and bellies. Before I could complete a roll, the asphalt by my face erupted and a sniper bullet left a gaping, smoking hole. I yelped and backed up behind a plant.

  "Alright, alright! I'll do my best."

  "I know you will, Alli!"

  "It's Alexei!"

  "I know."

  I smacked my lips and rolled my eyes. Elves. What was with all the nicknames? Then I prepared to run as fast as I could across the parking lot. The diner was on fire. Patrons ran out, flames on their arms and legs. Several of the cars began to smoke, their own hit point count draining quickly. In these sorts of games, all cars were basically Pintos, so it only took a certain amount of damage to make one explode. As I made it back to my old spot, I realized that if I could time it correctly, I could use the exploding vehicles to my advantage. One flaming red hotrod lived up to its name, as its engine had caught on fire.

  I called out to Olga, "Can't I just use this?"

  "Not if it blows up! Just go to the RV!"

  I didn't want her to shout it and I began looking to the trees across the street, paranoid that another rocket would streak for the RV and doom us.

  But before I could waste any more time thinking about the current situation, the hotrod exploded. Immediately and instinctively, I dashed. I reached the road and crossed it in a split second. The sniper shot off three bullets, and I could hear them ricochet behind me.

  When I reached the RV, I tackled the door with my wrist and forced my way in. Then I heard a woman cry and a man scream, "Get out! Get out!" Both were naked. Making matters worse, they both looked like they were pushing 90, so I just got an eyeful of saggy grey schlong and tits. Oh, the inhumanity!

  But I ignored them and ducked under the dash panel. Then I began to beat out the insides.

  Just to keep the two off my ass, the windshield exploded, sending the two scrambling out the door to offend the entire world. I hoped in my heart that the sniper wouldn't target them— they were innocent in all this, even if no one was truly innocent in the game. And I could make something up about how they were having sex, so obviously they weren’t innocent, but wasn’t that just some more puritanical bullshit?

  Finally, I managed to get my hand around the engine. I pulled, and the entire thing caused me to strain just to keep it in my hands. But I was able to pull it out and carry it outside the RV.

  For my efforts, I even leveled up!

  I wasn’t going to complain about the inconsistency— I was happy to skip the beginner stage for upper-body strength. Thank God for being El Sexorcisto!

  Immediately, the weight of the engine decreased by half and I felt as if I could have chucked the thing some distance with a bit of effort.

  Olga appeared crawling from under the RV, making me jump.

  "How did you get here so fast?"

  "I made a break for it. You okay?"

  "Yeah, I'm fine. Here's your engine."

  "Neat! I already found the carburetor."

  "Where did you even get that?"

  She smiled and said, "I got it by sneaking under the camper."

  "But I mean, how did you—"

  "I got it from going under the camper. Seriously, Alli, you gotta remember that we're road pirates. This shit here is what we do! I’m not a Level 72 Psychonician for nothing! I could probably build a machine that can damn-near hack the game servers by this point!"

  I shrugged. Technically, she was right— they were serious about being road pirates, so I couldn't fault her for knowing some technical stuff like this that escaped me.

  Then I began punching at the side of the RV, causing the whole thing to buckle and make me worry that it would possibly fall on its side and squash us. But it held, and I was able to peel off some of the exterior. When I finished, I tossed a glance at the other two.

  "What are they doing farting around over there?"

  "They're trying to distract Colonel Doof."

  "Colonel Doof? Who the hell even is that? I like to know who’s trying to kill me, you know!"

  "Tats said she'd explain it to you when this is over. But if you want a truncated version…” She stuck a pen-shaped arc-welder behind her knife ears, and I had no idea where she got it from. “Tatiana used to be a big deal in this world, and Doof was her right-hand man. But she squandered it. You don’t go squandering us like she did him, you hear me, Alli?”

  I paused. No, not the game— you can’t pause MMOs, which begs the question of how I did it the first time around. Though it was tiring to hear the elf consistently mess up my name, I did have to wonder about this. Tatiana already had a history in the game so negative that someone was willing to kill me to get back at her?

  ‘Wait… Is he after me?’ All that time, I thought I was the target and no one bothered to correct me.

  As she welded two parts together and imbued the contraption with magic, I asked Olga, “Doof isn’t necessarily shooting at me, right?”

  “Oh no. He’s been hounding Tatiana for months now. But give me peace and quiet, please! We don’t want any accidents!”

  I’m not the only one… I’m not the only one… I’m not the only one… I’m not the only one… I’m not the only one… You’re not the only one…

  Olga worked like a machine. Her fingers switched wires from where wires did not exist. Tubes stuck together perfectly, and the welded metal had no obvious seams. Smoky wisps of magic faded into the air.

  I felt more anxious even than when the tornado struck— Ana, Maria, and Tatiana drew away Colonel Doof’s fire the best they could. However, they did not have weapons either. This baffled me— I had a reason to be defenseless. They met me brandishing katanas and nuclear RPGs. I still don’t remember where Tatiana kept her guns when they attacked that military base (something about anal fucking gone wrong?) and that’s not getting started on where I got the original ray gun in the first place.

  But Olga did it, she made the magic happen. Though the metal was wince-hot to the touch, I snatched the completed weapon away from her before she could even tell me it was ready to use. And though my mind wanted to toss it away, I squeezed harder and let the heat burn my palm.

  Finally, I was armed with a megavolt of plasma death. I charged the ray gun up and aimed it at the tree across the avenue. I could see the barrel from the sniper rifle peak out, so I aimed just a bit further in the branches. Though it’s been a week since I first got the ability, I recalled that on my first day I received an upgrade to my abilities— the Threat Detector. I never needed to use it since it was so obvious where my wannabe killers were trying to kill me from, so this was the perfect opportunity to save my ass.

  I thought the words ‘Threat Detector: On!’
and hoped I did it right. By pure luck or maybe pity, the game responded. A red box surrounded the tree and quickly began narrowing into a vaguely man-shaped form. Doof was reloading and possibly seconds marrying my brains to the pavement.

  So I stopped waiting, took a stance ripped off from old sci-fi pulp serial covers, and popped off several blasts. Each one made a sound like a drill whirring for an instant as hot globules of golden energy zoomed. The bolts streaked onwards and disintegrated the tree bit by bit, breaking the leaves and branches down into ions. The figure in black fell through a cloud of glittering gold and scrambled to his feet, but there came Ana, tackling the bastard like a missile. He fought back fiercely, looking damn-near electrical in how desperately he was struggling. But Ana had her claws in him, and he was screaming out to be free.

  I pumped my fist and said, "Yeah!"

  I heard Tatiana cry, "Fuck him up!"

  Just the motions Ana made looked bloody and brutal. She may have been a catgirl, but she was breaking him like a tiger. Finally, we heard the magic words: "I surrender!"

  Then we all began to approach, though cautiously as we did not know if this was just a ploy. Ana calmed herself, and I set the ray gun to recharge. Colonel Doof sat up and waited for us. When he tried to pull something from his vest, Ana brought a saber-like claw down across his chest. This threw away the taser he had gone for and opened a gash on his breast. Ana got behind him and gripped his wrists as if she were making an arrest.

  As I approached, I kicked away the sniper rifle while Olga pocketed the RPG.

  She said to me, “Good work, Alli!”

  And I said to her, “Bite me.”

  “I will, later on.”

  Blood on Fire

  The wind blew embers from the diner our way.

  Tatiana was the first to reach Ana and the Colonel, and she was also the first to rip off the black cloak from Doof's face. However, she stuck the cloak right into his chest wound and made him cry out. Tatiana also took over from Ana, letting her skip off while she took the bloodied cloak and wrapped it around his wrists. and I could easily see the hate chiseled onto Doof’s face as his eyes ignited her way. Once I was close enough, I saw all the bloody scratches hashed across his face and body. Ana was sitting cross-legged to the side, licking herself.

  "Who are you working for?" Tatiana raged.

  "Piss off, you fat c—!" Doof’s reply was cut off by a blow to the face.

  I pushed past Maria and said, "What's up now?"

  Then Colonel Doof looked right at me. He looked like an old fellow, three times my age at least. He had one healthy eye— the other was a scar. What's more, he did not have any eyebrows.

  A crowd had formed around us, though most of them were gawking upon the burned-out diner and the collapsed hotel. Several lost their hands and scarves in the wind, and yet they didn’t seem to care.

  "You El Sexorcisto, boy? What are you doing with that bitch?" He spat blood from lost teeth and snarled at Tatiana. Tatiana snarled back and threatened to shatter more of his mouth.

  I saluted him. "Glad to see my reputation continues to precede me."

  He sneered back my way. "I already heard about how you whacked Batzor.” He nodded towards a piss-yellow walkie-talkie on his belt, one from which the voice on the radio scratched out into the night. “You're too good for these sluts."

  Tatiana kicked him for me, though it was probably just for herself. I didn't mind. No one was going to insult my loyal harem so easily. However, it wouldn’t be useful to lose him so soon when there was possibly so much information he had for us. I didn’t particularly know if there was anything he knew that mattered to my situation, but considering that he had been tracking us, it wouldn’t have hurt to follow this plotline just to see where it led. And if it brought me to a dead end, at least I tried.

  “Die, bitch, die,” he kept spewing to the brunette. Before she could strike him again, I caught her fist— I won’t lie, I didn’t know I could do that, but I wasn’t surprised— and stepped in front of the two.

  “Now listen to me, Colonel Doof.”

  “Duff,” he roared, dying with rage. “Call me Brother Duff.”

  “I’ll call you Colonel Doof. I don’t know about the history between you and Tatiana, and I don’t particularly care. Right now, I’m in a bit of a jam and I just need you to tell me what you know about the Rocket 88s and the Hurricanes.”

  “If you don’t care enough to remember my damn name, why bother telling you? This isn’t your fight!” He kept swaying back and forth like a demon and it started to rub my nerves towards being disturbed. Just from the bags and lines under his eye, I could tell he had taken to drugs far more than any of us combined in the past week and this hadn’t aided his fragile mental state.

  Maria thought to me, ‘Tatiana claims he can only see Martians. I’m guessing that’s her way of saying he’s lost his mind.’

  I looked to her and she looked away. Then I figured that Doof may have been watching us for any of this paranormal nonsense and would not trust me at all if he knew I was carrying on a psychic conversation with a succubus.

  Then she said, “You can handle all this. I’m going to go ‘cross the street, steal a camper for us to use.”

  Olga stepped forward and said, “But Mama D, what about the motel?”

  “Fuck it.” She disappeared across the road. Luckily for us, Doof’s madness did not give us any wanted level or else any nearby police men would have given chase. However, we did hear sirens. They grew closer.

  I grinned. Maria flashed me one last glint of a smile in the light of the fire. ‘They’re coming for him. We’ll get a bonus if he stays alive.’

  Doof screamed, “I want you to die of a heart attack! Choke in your blood, you bitch! You savage bitch!” Tatiana snatched the ray gun from me and stuck the barrel right into his neck. The whole time, Doof went on with, “Do it! Do it! Prove to us all! Right here!”

  I threw up my arms and said, “This isn’t working out very well,” to Ana and Olga. Then I said to Tatiana, “I don’t want to tell you to calm down since it’s obvious you have a history with this charming fellow here—”

  She turned to me and raged, “You can stop anytime with that bullshit accent, Alex,” and stooped back down. I backed up and held up my hands just like that one meme. Even the other girls made whoops about the raw snark.

  “Hell hath, then?”

  Doof started shaking left and right and went full Boss Nass, spitting and shaking his cheeks right as Tatiana stood. It was a scene so terrifically ridiculous that I didn’t believe I was seeing it with my own eyes even after I blinked several times. Then I heard Ana cough and suck on something.

  “Where did you get that? I only bought one Magnifico! Blunt.”

  She wheezed through the smoke, “You didn’t see the one I slipped into my boobs, then. Which is a shame. You’re our harem leader— you’re supposed to always be perverted and fall onto our boobs to find these things.”

  “Curses!”

  But an idea took hold. I swiped the cigar from Ana’s mouth, ran from her, and pushed past Tatiana to give it to Doof. Though he was starting to look outright demonic by that point, the sweet leaf pacified him enough to get his shaking to stop.

  “Nooo! You wasted it!”

  I retorted, “Where were all of your weapons, anyway?”

  Tatiana said to me, “We weren’t planning on going anywhere, so we didn’t think to bring them.”

  “You’ve had them on you all week!”

  “Because it helps us relax, silly butt!” Olga spat back. “Don’t you see everyone else blowing each other up over dope?”

  “I wish I had my dope,” ranted Ana.

  But then came the voice of Doof, smooth and golden unlike the raging shriek it was before. “Yeah…”

  “My blunt!” Ana cried as she saw it fall from his lips into the grass. She pulled at her face and wept. “I stole that fair and square, you meanie!”

  I grinned at Doof and
said, “Now then, what do you wanna tell us, my good man?”

  His health box ticked back up. While it was only yellow before despite all the damage he took, a few puffs of the Magnifico! filled it up enough to become a light green. That was around the lower 80s, I recalled. And that smile on his face looked downright unnatural. All things considered, I could not be sure he was not indeed a demon and I merely prescribed to him too much humanity to begin with. Then again, I liked his name.

  Colonel Doof said, “Oh, I dream of yesterday…”

  I frowned. “Uh, no, we need you to tell us who you work for.”

  “The G-Men dream of yesterday…”

  From across the street, I heard an, “Oh fuck.” Maria darted back to us and slid on her knees to Doof. “Did you say the G-Men?”

  “Did you get that RV for us yet?” I asked her.

  She ignored me and shook Doof. “Why do you work for the G-Men? What’s in it for you?”

  Ana tapped her shoulder and said, “But Maria, Johnic was one of the G-Men!”

  “I know that, you doof, but he defected. I’m trying to figure out why Colonel Doof joined them!”

  With his voice starting to reed out, Doof said, “I’ll tell you, but only if Tatiana isn’t listening.”

  “I’m going to listen no matter what!”

  “Ana, Olga, take her to that RV over there.” Maria pointed to a gray and white RV parked just next to the one I ruined earlier.

  Tatiana started going off on her leader, but the girls managed to lift her up by her legs and chest and carried her off. My ray gun clattered against the sidewalk. No cars were on their way at the time, but once they crossed, the traffic light turned green and we were separated by a river of machines.

  A particularly nasty gust blew us over. In the distance and drawing ever closer, there was a wall of rain illuminated by the city lights. Man, it looked surreal and rather creepy to watch it approach as if it were coming to squish us. A tree branch bounced along the ground and stopped close enough for Doof to reach out and grab it. He used the branch as a wand and drew in the air.