by Yuli Ban
“The G-Men are getting ready for the Day That Never Comes.” This time, his voice became dreamy and detached. He brought the branch to his lips and sucked upon it as if taking another hit. His breath flared in the cold night. “And they are having a meeting tonight.”
“Where?”
Doof did not immediately say, instead making another motion as if hitting the Magnifico! Maria shook him again.
“The police are almost on their way, fellow! You’ll be in the slammer in ten minutes flat unless you tell us, and I’m sure your mates will love to know exactly which cell to find.”
“The meeting is at the Sistar Ballroom,” he said. We could see the red and blue reflected on the sides of the buildings. Even if he were not inebriated, there wasn’t any time for Doof to get away. I was fine with letting him get jailed considering he tried to kill us, though I also knew that this was a bizarre desire to have in the game. But then my ears finally registered the name of the venue.
“What did you say? Sistar?”
“Just tell us what they’re after,” Maria shouted.
“Now now, hold on. One at a time.” With effort, he forced his head towards Maria. “It’s the Sistar Ballroom. No relation to you, just that one guy named Plessy Sistar.” Maria shook her head and pointed at me, but Doof went on, “Second floor, room 235. Right next to the broken boiler. You can’t get in without an invitation. ” He plopped his head down to face me. “And as for you… The G-Men want—”
Because of course it would happen, his chest exploded from a high caliber round. He screamed out and cursed. We both ducked again, and I was starting to feel déjà vu.
Before either of us could get to him, a second round obliterated his face and, indeed, everything above his shoulders. It was just like those old movies— his head exploded like a watermelon. The stump left behind bled out as his brains and the remnants of his lone eyeball trickled away.
When we looked over our shoulders to see who was responsible, I will admit to expecting Tatiana. But I wasn’t surprised to see another mobster type standing there, holding a Tommy Gun vertical, and pulling a massive cigar from his lips. He stood like Death, a silhouette in front of the diner fire.
“The name’s Brother Dowdy. Pleased to kill ya.”
The wall of rain obscured him and blew into our faces.
A Jazzy Death Dance
“You can’t be serious right now!” I screamed. I jumped for the ray gun, but bullets popped off against the curb to keep me away. The sheer intensity of the rainfall made it too difficult to keep my eyes open, and the winds picked up extraordinarily.
I checked my inventory just to see if I had anything that could help, and at that point I must have been legally insane. Maria also had no help to give. When I remembered the RPG, I also immediately remembered that Olga snatched it up at the first opportunity. As for the sniper rifle, I couldn’t find it in the thick rain. All I had were my naked stats— and outside of my increased strength and borderline-leveled Shoryuken, there was nothing immediately useful. If we wanted to survive this encounter, we had to run.
The distinctive rat-tat-tat rapid chop of the Tommy gun overpowered the waterfall of a cloud burst, and I could even see the flash of the muzzle. Within seconds, my vision went red as I felt a massive pressure in my chest. I sucked in and felt my ribs— though they had healed from earlier, a round shattered one of the bones and left behind mucusy blood oozing from a massive wound.
“This is bullshit,” I shouted. “I’m supposed to be overpowered!” I staggered away from the half-melted tree, keeping an eye on exactly where my ray gun had fallen as I silently cursed Tatiana for playing the role of badass. Dammit, that was my job. She had no right to bogart my roles in my own story. And it was my continued inability to be assertive that kept causing these messes. I didn’t tell Ana that I wanted to hunt Colonel Doof before I went with her to Johnic and Dr. Shotgonavan— the latter of whom we never had the chance to meet. That was what led us to this point in the first place. If I didn’t learn how to man up and make my own trail to follow, that bullet in my chest would have only been the first of many.
I was already tired of questioning the game. Like Hell I was going to let the game win.
Brother Dowdy or whatever the fuck his name was, he took a moment to reload. This was just enough time for the light to turn green and bring on a new stream of cars— my chance to grab my gun.
Maria called out my name, and I figured that she was calling from near one of the cars parked along the sidewalk. However, those were quite a ways away from where we were, and it definitely sounded as such. Once I got my ray gun, I loaded it up to fire and popped off three rounded. Each struck the side of an eighteen-wheeler, eating away at its total health until it was ready to explode. Though that was an accident, I thought of how I could use it to my advantage.
“Hey, Brother Doody, you ignoramus by the diner!” I wasn’t a maestro at insults yet. “I’m gettin’ away in this truck! Catch me if you can!”
As expected, he opened fire. Each bullet pelted the already weakened truck until the engine caught fire. At that point, every successive bullet drained much more of its health until it all went up in golden flames.
The police sirens, silenced by Doof’s death, came roaring back to life.
“Shit!” I heard him shout. “You little ratty bastard.”
I gave myself a chuckle and jumped behind another car, and that put me close enough to him where I could see his silhouette through the rain. By that point, it had stopped coming down quite as hard as it did before. Water stung my eyes and half-blinded me as I went forward, and I could not keep my gait steady on the slippery ground.
I tried to activate my Threat Detector ability again, but lo and behold, I was out of mana.
‘For god’s sakes. The first time I even use mana and I didn’t realize it.’ That was my fault entirely, and at least I learned something. My mana refilled point by point every few seconds, but it was not quick enough for a battle. Thus, I had to rely on my own stinging eyes to find him. As I felt around, my hands went over something hard and metallic. Fumbling with it, I felt a coin slot. There was no light. The best I could guess was that this was a parking meter.
Brother Dowdy said, “I don’t have to deal with you stinkin’ bilge rats like this.” And he let his shotgun explain. The parking meter vanished— when I felt for the coin bank a second time, there was nothing there. A foot lower, I felt jagged pieces of metal jutting up.
I aimed my ray gun and fired at his general direction. He jumped out of the way in time.
As I tried to fire off more shots, the ray gun beeped and blinked. Overheating— I needed to wait 10 seconds for it to cool down.
“You’re being washed in a winter rainstorm! You’re cold enough!”
Brother Dowdy blasted me away. I fell on my back, my own blood already pooled beneath me. I survived through luck alone.
Once I realized what had happened, I made a bizarre noise and gasped to catch my breath, still unsure of exactly what had happened until I saw my midsection exposed. My own guts were spilling out from me. It still took me a second to process what was happening, and by that time, Brother Dowdy had arrived and stood over me like the Reaper.
“You like yer heads, El Sexorcisto?”
I tried to say something, but there was too much blood in the way. I crawled back, the feeling in my arms and legs leaving me and my vision rapidly fading to grey, black, and white.
“Looks like there’s somethin’ on yer head that looks kinda like a face. Lemme be a kind boy and get it off for ya.” He pumped the shotgun and pulled it towards his eyes. “Kiss it goodbye.”
“No—”
I shut my eyes and waited for the final moment. If I still had strength, I could have started Bullet Time and dodged the gunshot. And maybe if I still had time, I could have chosen to follow Maria instead of blazing my own trail. Even though it was my harem, we all had to know when to follow each other. Yeah, that would have w
orked so well. I’m not the only one in the Wytches Crue, after all.
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…
Brother Dowdy went flying. I opened my eyes. His body smacked into the grille of an oncoming car and rolled in the road. His hat flew off, revealing his oversized, pulsating green brain.
I looked to my right and saw another light just like the one from the rubble. Was it my guardian angel come back to save me? There was even a voice.
“Alex! Alex, are you okay?”
I sat there, dazed and confused. My guardian angel sounded much more familiar this time around. And what’s more, it was honking. I started smiling, unsure how to take such an event. When did angels learn how to honk?
It wasn’t until I heard another voice joining the honks that I snapped out of it. “GET UP!” That was Tatiana’s voice. I looked up and saw that this wasn’t a holy indescribable light. Instead, it was an RV. There were the girls in the windshield, looking positively comfortable inside their climate controlled camper. I tried waving at them, but I was completely limp in that part of my body.
The camper pulled back and I heard the door open. Ana came running out. At first, she was saying something about me needing to get up so they could run Brother Dowdy over, but then she saw my gaping wound and gasped. She motioned for the other girls to come out and collect me.
“You dumb Dora-ass broads!” Brother Dowdy opened fire with the Tommy gun again, spraying and praying all over the RV grille. “Never fix yourselves in two mens’ bid’ness!” However, I could see a glint on one half of his body in the headlights of the cars. If he wasn’t half dead from the impact, he ought to have been.
But then something strange happened. He dropped his gun and choked! Yes, it was as if he walked right into a cloud of noxious gas and suffered liquification of the lungs. He then began to make odd motions, twisting his hands and rotating his arms as if he were possessed.
And perhaps he was. No more than a few seconds after the odd moment, he turned towards the maw of the street and shouted, “Damn dirty devil dame! You twisting my eggs with the Black man downstairs?”
Even in my reduced state, I had to raise my entire brow and say, “What?” Slang! Can’t understand what they said 100 years ago and can’t understand what the kids are saying now. It was perfect when I was a kid, goddammit. But that was just the near-death delirium getting to me. I already experienced something like it once before after my brief time as the fully-actualized El Sexorcisto ended in disaster. At least this time, I could understand why I was dying.
Then again, I was in good hands. Good, sexy catgirl hands. They felt a little slippery, as if she was using those fingers for something wicked.
I heard Brother Dowdy shout, “Auugh!” and fall to the ground, but I didn’t care much about what was happening anymore because my lower head took over my rationality. When I finally looked away from Ana’s beautiful underthigh, I saw that she and her comrades were cheering on Maria and stared towards the street. And there was that beautiful red demon girl, tail lashing about, standing over Brother Dowdy with Batzor’s Core, now dented with a Dowdy-shaped bend at the end. I was glad that I handed over the Core to her and made a goofy noise her way.
Tatiana dropped her breast and made me choke on her tit milk as she said, “You came just in time, Alex! I can’t make breast milk willy nilly, after all. You’ve gotta be careful about this.”
With each suckle upon that teat, my health pumped up back into the yellow and eventually green territory. The numbers jumped by 10 each time— 34, 41, 51, 61, and onwards until I was back at 100. Except as I licked that sugary vanilla milk from my lips, I grinned as saw my health increased to 115. This meant that I’d be able to take a few more hits. Unless, of course, Dowdy came at me with that slug of fire again— it was only through the grace of God, every god, that my health fell to ‘1’ instead of ‘0’— and that was from a full block.
Once I was in my right mind, my head turned back to the rousing battle of Maria vs. Brother Dowdy, Succubus vs. Gangster. Dowdy came up swinging, but Maria dodged his every attack. I recalled that he was able to jump out of the way of plasma bolts and wondered how he was suddenly so sluggish. Had taking an RV head on dazed him?
Olga provided the answer without my asking: “Oh wow! Maria’s using her mind tricks again!”
I turned to her and said, “Mind tricks? What the hell else does she have besides telepathy?”
Tatiana shoved her breast back into her shirt and said, “Didn’t we tell you? Succubae have demonic psychic powers. She’s basically shoving his mind fulla noise right now.”
“Yeah, but I thought you all said that she just had telepathy and the ability to phase through walls.”
Tatiana turned to me again and said, “And I’m saying that’s what she’s using. Think about it— if you had telepathy, couldn’t you use it to basically scream into someone’s head and drive them insane?”
“Alexei Sistar, you backstabbing ape, get over here and shoot this bastard!”
Brother Dowdy pulled off this creepy Terminator walk towards Maria. She could not keep her balance and fell onto her ass. The mind warping powers she had were being countered. Yes, yes, I could see it— spheres, donuts of green waves blasting off of Dowdy’s head towards Maria. Those supercharged brainwaves were beating her down mentally.
Once I fully came too, I jumped to my feet. “Where’s my ray gun?”
“Still laying in the rain,” Ana said. “But there’s a bunch of guns on the camper. Do you want this MP40?”
That goddamn MP40! That was the one! I don’t know how I knew, but I just did that the gun Ana handed to me was the exact same one that vanished when I crushed a neo-Nazi with a newspaper stand. It even had all the right scratch marks.
“Where did you get this?”
Before I get could an answer, Olga pushed me down the steps and said, “Maria’s dying!”
I ran back through the rain as the RV’s headlights illuminated the street. All the cars had stopped. And Maria was floating. She grabbed her neck and coughed. Dowdy raised his hand towards her, keeping her suspended in mid-air.
And his voice became guttural and alien-like: “¿ሞተሃል? ከእኛ በፊት ይሰግዱና ለእኛ እሺ አሉ!”
I jumped at the edge of the sidewalk and opened fire. Everything went into slow motion as the bullets exploded from the barrel. He turned to me. I saw into his eyes. There was nothing.
My gun splashed upon the asphalt and disappeared once more. I spread my arms and legs as I hovered in midair. There was no escape. He had me.
With one thrust, I rocketed backwards straight into the old RV. The inertia forced the entire thing tits up, with the underbelly facing Dowdy and the windows all busting out. I punched through the side and fell into the kitchen. Each impact stole half of my life bar.
Once more, I made those winded noises and struggled to find my feet. However, my hit point count rested at 42. As long as I played my way well, I’d survive the encounter. But now that I knew Dowdy was superhuman, there was no telling what it would take to end him.
Ana’s face popped into one of the skyward windows. She said, “Boss! You okay?” At least she wasn’t asking about my— “Is your dick still okay?” Dammit.
“I just got my ass kicked eight ways to Sunday. But I’ve been better.”
Olga kicked open the door and fell onto the wall. “Looks like this badass of yours is a G-Man.” She then scooped me into her arms and helped me towards the door. Tatiana was there to lift me up and out.
“But I got your ray gun back,” Ana chirped. She tossed it over to me. “Though, I prolly shoulda charged it first…”
“Aren’t you going to save Ana?”
“She’s still floating there, but the man is gone.”
I shouted, “He’s gone?!”
The RV broke in half. Hellfire roared through th
e insides and stars of fire flew from the chassis. If the girls hadn’t gotten me out in time, I’d have been roasted to death. But considering that Dowdy’s eyes were glowing red and he was floating above parting flames, perhaps a quick death would have been preferable. Then again, I didn’t want to die at all. I lifted my ray gun and fire at his head. One bolt melted against his face and cut a chunk of his health. This annoyed him enough to swat away the next bolts.
But then the damn thing overheated again. “Useless hunk of metal!” I tossed it at Dowdy and prepared to die.
The ray gun struck the top of his head right in the folds of his brain. All of his two remaining hit points subtracted from his health bar and he fell to his knees.
To the heavens, he screamed, “Nooo!” as the rain and wind began to sweep hm away into the ether.
As was normal, my jaw was on the ground. ‘No, there’s no way that actually worked. I’m being trolled right now.’
Rays of red and green light shot from his eyes and mouth as his face tore in two. Cracks broke through his skin. With them, more light shined through. He floated into the air torso-first and let out one last roar. His body disintegrated bit by bit until all that was left were a pile of burnt clothes.
I threw up my hands.
Maria landed and rolled onto her side. Tatiana and Olga ran to her and tended to her.
There I was on the ground, bemused and altogether unsure of just what had happened. “Well roast me on a fire spit and fuck me with a cat tail.”
“Ooooh!” squealed Ana.
“No, not now.”
However, she clearly had different ideas and dragged me by my ankles through some deep puddles and onto our new RV. Along the way, I grabbed my loot and set in my inventory. Something funny came up in my vision:
‘New mission!’
I’d have read it there if I weren’t ready for some rest and relaxation. The rain was coming down harder than Ana, and Maria was staggering towards the RV along with me.