Chapter Nine: Don’t Provoke The Wookiee

Real MFG's original story by Max Gardner and Travis Taylor

“Ha ha ha ha ha!

 And I scared his ass!”

            --Ol’ Dirty Bastard

            Miles climbed into his posturepedic mattress after removing his various scarves, bandannas, and whatever other articles of clothing that gave him his dramatic aesthetic.

            It looks damn cool, but it’s starting to stink. Maybe one of these geezers has a cleaners here.  He lay on his bed, counting the cracks on his ceiling, trying to ignore the heat, and the probable number of visitors who had pissed in this bed.

            Old people. Losers.  Finally, he managed to fall asleep.

            I’m in a large gray metal city somewhere in the sky. It’s very dark, but for some reason Bizkicka is glowing. Someone is approaching, dressed like the Big Black Cock of Death.

            “Who are you, and why are you dressed like a shiny black dildo?” The figure still approaches , breathing almost mechanically. He has a glowing bat, too.  With a single swing, my hand flies off, taking Bizkicka with it.

            “Goddamn it, that looked really spiffy! And my hand is off now, too!” He looks at me through his helmet. There is a face molded into the helmet which looks strikingly familiar.

            “If you only knew the truth. Miles...I see your daddy.”

            “Oh, it’s you.” For some reason I make a face similar to  cat’s asshole.

            Miles awoke to screaming and the clomping of horses outside.

            “Miles!” Bumpy was pounding on his door. “They took Nasty Bitch!”

            Miles quickly wrapped himself in his scarves and bandannas and grabbed the Bizkicka. He ran to his window, opened it, and jumped out, landing on a senile old man below him.

            “Aaaah! My hip!”

            Miles ran in the direction that he heard the horses coming from.

            Wait a minute. It’s almost midnigh-

            He heard a single shriek from down the road. He finally came across them, ten men on horses, each dressed in bandannas and scarves similar to Miles’ dramatic garb. They also wore shiny metal breastplates. In the center of each bandanna was the same face as was on the cushions in the Stun Zeed: a smiling madman with a crown.

            As Miles got closer, he saw something he never would have expected to see. The Demon Beast lay on its back, its arms and legs tightly bound. Beneath the Beast was a flattened horse, and next to it was one of the riders, cut neatly in half.

            “Kill that thing!” The men raised a variety of fierce looking weapons.

            “Stop!” They all turned to look at Miles.

            “And who,” said the tallest and most muscular of the group, “are you?”

            “I am called Miles, and that is one of my companions.” He held Bizkicka in an attack pose. A few of the men exchanged confused glances.

            “Your friend has killed one of our riders, and one of our horses. That man was the eleventh descendant of the bloodline of our royalty.”

            “ELEVUHN!” Miles and the riders all bellowed in unison. All the men stood staring at one another. One of the riders approached the tall man.

            “Sire, is he one of us? He said...that word, and his name is...”

            “Possibly. There aren’t supposed to be any of the batfighters left, though.” The tall man turned back to Miles.

            “It would appear that we may have found a lost one of our number. We will leave you and your friend here. If you wish to discover if you are indeed one of us, you will meet us at the testing cave. It is one day’s ride up this road, after the Sycamore Forest.” The men all mounted their horses wordlessly, and rode off into the night. Miles scratched his chin.

            “What the shit is going on out here?!” Santa Claus bellowed, bounding awkwardly down the tavern stairs and striking a pose in the center of the sandy road, pants down and at the ready.  Behind him (but slightly to the side) stood Bumpy, Fernando, Jimmy Scott, and Midget Sub-Woofer.  A company of old folk had assembled along the roadside and were now staring through glazed, lifeless eyes at the demon beast, who had given up her struggling and was content simply to snarl incessantly at the remarkably strong ropes as if it would persuade them to loosen.

            “I’m not...entirely sure,” Miles said confusedly, kneeling beside the body of the rider who had fallen victim to the demon beast.  Although his entire body had been bisected at the waist, his armor remained more or less intact, save for a series of deep scratches along the breastplate and a large hole at the top of the helmet where the beast had brought a claw down on the rider’s head.  Miles slowly untied the scarf around the man’s neck and wrapped it around the lower half of his face.  The madman’s face, topped by a crown and the symbol XI, flapped majestically in the night wind which had blown in from the direction of the beach at the edge of town.  He gestured to his companions.  One less scarf to wash, he thought.  “Sub-Woofer, get some of Nasty’s clothes from the suitcase, wouldn’t want any of these geezers to have a heart attack, now would we? Jimmy, meth.  Quick as possible, we don’t know how bad she’s hurt.”

            Sub-Woofer sauntered off to the tavern, muttering under his breath and with Jimmy Scott in tow.  The midget tripped once on the stairs, and, for the first time in his life, Miles found himself completely disinclined to laugh at the spectacle.

            If anyone noticed Miles’ introspective silence, they didn’t show it. Fernando, for one reason or another, came from the direction of the beach carrying a good-sized rock. Bumpy had joined the rest of the geezers in staring blankly at the Demon Beast, which was still struggling against its bonds.

            Jimmy returned with a good sized tank.

            “Miles, I got it.” Jimmy said in his smooth baritone.

            “Get it to her fast! One of her legs is breaking free!”

            “Uh...me?”  Miles shot Jimmy a look that summed up the phrase “I’m two seconds away from planting my boot up your ass.”

            Jimmy approached the Demon Beast, and started administering the meth. As the Beast writhed and began transforming back into its original Atlantean form, its one free leg caught Jimmy between the legs.

            “Jimmy! Are you okay!” Miles yelled from his position of safety.

            “Just fine. In a little bit of pain. I’ll be fine. Really....fine. Finefinefine.” He fell over, moaning in a voice a few octaves higher than it had been a few minutes beforehand.

            Miles turned, noticing the fact that Nasty had fully reverted and was lying nekkid in the middle of the path.

            “Whoa...” Bumpy said, awestruck.

            “Oh shit. Midget! Hurry your short little stubby ass! Bumpy’s hitting a hormonal plateau!”

            “Whoa...”

            Many of the old people behind Bumpy started popping pills.

            “Mid-GET!”

            A few of them swooned, clutching their hearts.

            “MIDGET!”

            The rest fell over, leaving a pile of grey, liver spotted bodies.

            “Whoa...” Bumpy’s face turned bright red. “I never...” He clutched his bony chest, and then succumbed as well.

            “Great,” Miles said through gritted teeth. “Third town this week that we’ve halfway exterminated. We probably have a hell of a reputation.”

            “Got the clothes, sir. Hey...uh...Miles? Put that back. AAAGH! My fucking eye!!! One more time and I quit, you hear me?” The ground shook with the Midget’s bellow.

            Nasty started getting dressed, trying not to notice the manner in which Fernando was caressing his rock.

            “It’s okay, Rock. It’ll be all right. No need to have any of your lichen fall off. That’s right. Calm...”

            Miles gazed longingly at the direction that the Shitty-shama had taken off in.

            “Miles? If it’s all right with you, I’d liketo go back to the room, maybe get some ice?”  Jimmy Scott’s voice was truly unnerving to Miles, as it now resembled that of a singularly sultry and seductive female, perhaps in her thirties.

            “Yeah, everyone. Let’s call it a night. Before any witnesses come asking, the Shitty-shama were responsible for all of the dead old people.” Nasty Bitch approached.

            “Miles, why’d Bumpy die? He wasn’t hurt or anything...”

            “If you have to ask, you’ll never know.”

            Miles looked off at the silhouettes going back to the inn, at Jimmy Scott limping, at Fernando caressing his small boulder, at the fact that Nasty’s gown was on backwards. He heard a distant “ho-ho-ho” from the direction of one of the taverns, and saw a burst of flame explode from its chimney. He looked at the mound of dead people. He thought of the Shitty-shama, waiting for him at the testing cave.

            “Oh, man,” he said, rubbing his new scarf.

            He sees you. He sees you!

            You again? Who the hell sees me? Paul? The Shitty-shama? I’m getting tired of these riddles, baldy.

            What about you? Did you see your fishy pal there with no clothes on? Not bad, huh?

            Shut your pie hole, que-ball.

            Miles awoke with no clear memory of how he had returned to the tavern and found that several hours had apparently passed. Rays of sunlight filtered through the olive-green shutters on the wall opposite his bed, and the sea birds, he noticed as he peered out of the window to survey the streets below, had resumed their ominous circling as though waiting for some particularly elderly citizen to scavenge.  And, oddly enough, the rows of oldsters who had collapsed in domino fashion on the night before had vanished, as had Bumpy, although that last detail came as no surprise.  Miles sat up, scratched his head, and frowned as he recalled his encounter with the Shitty-shama, and their challenge.  We know where we’re going now, he thought.  This’ll take some getting used to.

            Nasty had dozed off in the large chair (an evil-looking contraption which resembled some devious medieval torture device) in the corner of the small room and was snoring loudly.  Various cuts and bruises on her arms and belly had been wrapped in bandages, but she had incurred no serious damage.  “Hey...Fernando, cut that out,” she mumbled in her sleep, her voice thick and uncoordinated.  “I mean it, that’s kinda weird, I--eek! Stop that right now!”

            “Death of a planet--gather in the heavens and strike with justice! Comet of Doooom!”

            FWOOSH.

            “Wow! That was a good one, buddy!”

            “Just wait till the Comet melts, son.”

            Miles glanced out the window again and saw an old man running in circles at the center of a blackened crater in the street, his clothes aflame.  Bumpy and Santa were apparently up and about.  A wrinkled old prune of a woman ambled over to investigate the pile of charred bones, metal, and plastic which had been the old man.

            “Ass Furnace!”

            A ball of flame burst from beneath the tavern’sporch and incinerated the old woman where she stood.

            “Santa and Bumpy?” Nasty asked groggily, rubbing her eyes.

            “Mm-hm.” Miles chuckled as the old woman collapsed.  “The man has talent.”

            “He’s a fucking freak,” Nasty replied, struggling to remove herself from the seductively comfortable confines of the reclining chair.  “I guess that means he’s coming with us, hm?”

            Miles shrugged.  “Guess he’s got a place among us.  Although you were pretty impressive yourself last night.”

            “What?!”

            “I mean I’ve never seen a horse get squashed before, and it was kind of funny when all those horny old guys keeled over in the road.” Miles scratched his head, his cheeks growing red beneath the new scarf he had lifted off the slain Shitty-shama warrior.

            “Old people scare me.”

            “Out of the ground, raze all greenery with flame! The Fire Tower!”

            The room was bathed in a volcanic red light for an instant as a column of flame burst from the ground outside the tavern and shot into the sky, carrying with it the dying scream of some unfortunate senior who had fallen victim to Santa’s anal prowess.  Nasty gathered her strength and finally managed to launch herself out of the chair, which, in her absence, collapsed in on itself of its own accord.

            “This town’s not right,” the Atlantean concluded, brushing herself off--a layer of dust had collected on the floor as well as on the townsfolk.

            It was in the brightly-lit corridor outside that Miles noticed the senile old man sitting in his ancient rocking chair just below the window at the end of the hall, and he faltered for a moment as he recalled the same face from the night before.  While the elderly more often than not all looked alike, once in a great while a distinct pattern of wrinkles and blotches would surface on the skin, lending the bearer some degree of physical individuality.  This silently staring man in the rocking chair, Miles realized, had been one of those who had died the previous night, and his living presence offered yet another mystery, perhaps one, Miles decided, that should remain unsolved.  He couldn’t imagine any surgeon in a town such as this remotely capable of the complex medical and magical attention required in so tentative an operation.  He found himself wondering where the other victims had gone.

            Rammstein, he thought grimly.

            Whatever disturbing truth lurked behind this mystery, Miles took care to give the old man a wide berth as he started down the stairs and motioned for Nasty to do the same, although the wrinkled creature’s teeth, should he have decided to lurch out of his chair and gnaw on a leg, couldn’t have torn apart a wet piece of toilet tissue.

            “My employer,” the man seated at the bar was saying, “is prepared to meet whatever fee you might have in mind.”

            Nasty gasped in surprise and Miles reached for Bizkicka as he saw this individual: sweaty, blond, and clad only in a pair of metallic underwear.  Beside him sat a man younger than the rest but still somewhat aged, his gray hair reaching nearly to his waist.  A small crest of some sort--a round yellow face, smiling in a vaguely irritating manner--pinned his long red robe closed at the shoulder.

            “We want to keep this a request, you understand,” Sting continued, unaware of his enemies’ presence, as they still remained in the shadow of the stairway.

            “Might as well,” the older man sighed, defeated.  “Although this...this isn’t something I feel entirely right about.  Not only am I deserting these people, but I’d feel...dirty, creating such a thing.”

            “Sting,” Miles called from his perch, brandishing his spiked bat as he strode into the center of the bar.  Old men scattered before him like roaches before a flashlight, retreating into darkened corners and booths.  Sting smiled in a remarkably disturbing fashion which seemed to say: Romantic, that’s what you are.

            “Miles, I don’t believe this one is something you should concern yourself with,” he said.  “I had no idea you were even here.”

            Miles merely launched himself at the Paul’s emissary, attempting to grab hold of his neck and end this evil.  The perpetual film of sweat, however, rendered his entire body as slippery as an eel, and Sting evaded Miles’ grasp with incredible ease.  Miles grimaced, disgusted, and wiped his hands on the legs of his pants.

            “I think it’s time we got going,” Sting said, hurriedly grabbing the older man’s shoulder and ushering him towards the door.  “Some other time, Miles.”

            Miles cursed loudly and ran to the door, but Sting had vanished without a trace.  Bumpy and Santa bounded up the tavern stairs, Bumpy’s eyes wide.

            “Miles, we just saw Sting, he was with some old guy!”

            “You have an uncanny talent for stating the obvious, Bumpy,” Miles replied quietly, harnessing his weapon.

            He spent the better part of the day alone at the far edge of the beach, watching the waves roll hypnotically to the shore and back again.  Several gull-picked skeletons had been deposited in the tall beach grass and the stench had become strong enough to eclipse that of the various species of fish which had a tendency to wash up dead along the beachhead.  Miles smelled nothing, heard nothing: he thought again of last night’s incident, and of the remarkable ease with which the Shitty-shama had incapacitated the raging demon beast.  He recalled also his dream--was the bald man his benefactor or some unusually devious mage who had found a suitable plaything on whom to unleash his powers? Miles frowned; he should have given him a blow to the kneecap and extracted his answers when he had seen him in the seedy bar in the decadent town.

            He stood and began swinging Bizkicka at the dense, tall weeds around him and soon passed an hour away.  He was drawn out of his practice by a bit of conversation drifting in from the beach and peered over the weedsto see Word, the zombie he’d encountered in Raccoon Village and later along the road to Pimptown, seated on a fanciful red cloth beside the shore.  A group of elderly women had gathered around him, and a pair of dark spectacles was perched crookedly on what remained of his nose.

            “Look at his disposition,” one old woman said enthusiastically to her companions.  “He’s got that mojo workin’ for him.”

            “You’ve got mad sour flavor, Pearl,” the second of the three old women replied.

            “Word.”

            Miles waved genially, and continued with his shadowboxing when Word failed to respond.  Tomorrow, provided Nasty’s nightly transformation left any survivors in the whole of Adirolf, he would purchase a week’s worth of supplies and leave town for the Sycamore Forest with the others.  He had had his fill of old folk, and nothing was being accomplished by remaining in their eerily ordinary town.

            Funny, he thought.  I never worried about accomplishing anything before.

            A smell like overcooked beef wafted over from the direction of Matlock’s Tavern, and a second later a wide jet of flame burst from beneath the porch, punctuated by a round of applause from Bumpy, Fernando, Nasty, Jimmy, and Sub-Woofer.

            Miles nodded satisfactorily.

            They were all good people.

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Chapter Ten: Terrance--You’re Such An Asshole!