26Elfen Lied Interruption Part 4
Author's note: Alright, I have a feeling that this is going to be the last instalment. Everything is set in place for the final conflict, and it's all a matter of putting it together. Again, to be honest, I have not a single iota of a clue as to how this story is going to end, so bear with me on that. On another related note, the story's going to get extremely zany, abstract, and utterly feral. It's just a gut feeling, but that's typically the direction my stories tend to go. I will reiterate the justification for the rating once again. Teenagers of today (13 and up) are extremely corrupted, and it's not uncommon for me to come across a 13 year old spouting off about drugs, hookers, and the latest dead baby joke he heard about because it's just so cool to be edgy and different. Pfft. Anyways, I'm giving this a teen rating because I assume that the majority of Elfen Lied's audience is NOT 18+ and most likely around the ages of 15-17. Don't harp about this like some kind of high and mighty prick fellating the phallus of whatever religion or set of oh-so-pure moral standards you uphold. Save that shit for your inane angst filled adolescent quest for meaning, don't drag it over to fan fiction. We have enough of that already on the damned site. Also, if you didn't catch my drift the first time, this story is about how I would actually act if I were placed in the situations that I fictionalize myself in. My basic personality goes like this: lots of mood swings between hyper and Marvin the Robot depressed, lack of empathy, callous, tasteless, and strife with delusions of grandeur. (At one point when I was high on weed, I actually convinced myself I was the antichrist.) Ahem. Anyways...
Without further ado, let's roll bitchcakes.
Oh, and one more thing. This story's going to involve an internet personality that everyone universally loathes. I present to you:
Chris_Chan
Nana looked at me with teary eyes and abruptly asked me in an emotion choked voice, 'What are those baggies with white powder?'
'That's what they call cocaine.' My eyes glowed feverishly, 'And you know what it does to you?'
'No...'Nana was still sniffing back trails of snot and whimpering like a lost puppy.
'It makes you feel absolutely brilliant!' I almost kicked one of the downed guards in my zeal, 'Nana, will you partake in this feast of cocaine with me?'
'You...eat that stuff?' Nana stumbled a little bit and lost her left leg. I supposed that sorrow made it harder for her to control her prosthetics. She fell to the floor and started bawling again.
I dragged myself over and sat next to her. I gave her one baggie.
'Okay, here's what you do. You just sniff it, okay?'
'I...sniff it?'
'Yes, my dear. You sniff it.' I opened a baggie and looked in. The pristine white powder looked like freshly fallen snow. How I loved the poet inside me.
Nana hesitantly stuck her nose inside the bag.
In typical Nana fashion, she took the biggest snort this side of decrepit Columbian slums and immediately dropped the baggy, spilling coke everywhere.
I almost wailed, 'NOooooo...' As I crept hyper speed on all fours and attempted to vacuum up the wasted Yayo on the floor.
Nana's eyes took on the quality of an insane old hippy visionary. Her pupils dilated as her eye whites quickly became bloodshot. As quick as a flash, her missing leg flew toward her and shoved itself onto her stump with a violent sounding Katcha click! Nana's hands flailed around in the air as she used her vectors to levitate herself. Pretty soon, she was floating stomach down in mid air. Her limbs were splayed in the fashion of waxy flexibility seen only in catatonic schizophrenics. She muttered things to herself as her invisible spider-like vectors stalked around the room, causing her to float around rather creepily in her wannabe splayed superman position.
I myself felt a rush of sensation as I took my last whiff of coke on the floor. I felt so...alive! I felt like I could take on a whole army of Lucys with one finger. I gave a whoop of joy and snorted some of the good stuff from my own baggie. Oh, lawdy! It was like taking a fucking rocket ship to mars, except being strapped on the outside of the rocket!
'This...this is fucking incredible!' I yelled like an incoherent old man.
Nana simply kept on floating around in circles. It might have been just me, but she was floating slightly faster than before.
I could smell everything, I could see with eye of an eagle! I smelled the sweat coursing down the downed guard's necks as they slowly bled to death. I smelled the oh-so-kawaii strawberry perfume Nana slathered on. I saw the very weaving ofof Nana's school uniform, and I could see the pores of my skin as clearly as a cluster of acne scars. My dick was erect and tenting my soiled underwear. Oh, the fabric of my underwear was so coarse! I cocked my head at an odd angle at Nana, who was flying around in circles at about sixty miles an hour. She was yelling something about her being the queen of all diclonius.
I wonder how Lucy would have reacted to that. I wonder if she would have appreciated my ability to break dance. I stabbed my elbow into my sides and did an air chair freeze on the guard that was already unconscious. I held it for two seconds, and then found myself dancing maniacally on the one that was still trying to crawl away. Nana had stopped spinning. She was simply floating in midair and clapping to the beat of my top rock. I took both my guns and unloaded everything on the meat pile that was used to be the chubby guy. I took the gun I stole from the nerdy researcher and attempted to make the bemused looking head on top of the pile explode. Only one bullet hit.
It was right about then that I realized that in my cocaine fuelled reverie, I had wasted all of our ammunition. Even Nana realized something was wrong, as she glared at me with (all) red eyes and asked in an almost indecipherable stream of words, 'Whydidyoudothat? Nowyouhavenothingtoshootwith. SeeI'.'
I turned to her with equally bloodshot eyes and shrugged, 'You can still protect me with your vectors, right?'
'Rightbutonlyifyourespectme.'
'What?'
'Nevermind.' Nana sat cross legged in midair. I was pleasantly surprised that cocaine actually improved her intelligence. I was expecting something along the lines of a mindless drooling retard high on sugar.
But then again, cocaine was a strong stimulant of the central nervous system. It might have screwed around with her neocortex somewhat.
'Can you speak a little slower?' I asked, my eyes darting around the place.
'Okay. Like. This?'
'Nah...just speak a little faster than that.'
'Like this?'
'Yeah.'
'Cool.' Nana bobbed up and down in midair, 'Last one to find Lucy is a rotten egg!'
And with that she floated away at approximately a sprinting speed.
Somehow, the obscene amount of cocaine ingested had improved my problem leg. I was able to do a relatively fast 5 kilometre run to keep up with her, but barely.
As I ran through the halls, my head lolled around like a bobble head while my tongue hung out and did its own thing. Spittle flew everywhere, and I was mildly aware that there was a battalion of security personnel waiting for us at the end of the hall.
I also noticed that there was a maintenance closet coming up in about three meters.
In my cocaine fuelled wisdom, I gave a piggish squeal, kicked down the door, and found the replacement weapons I was looking for. Two hammers.
It should be noted at this point that I was quite a fan of a particular movie called 'Oldboy', and there was a particular scene in that film involving a brutal melee fight with one man armed with one hammer. Needless to say, given my violent and neurotic nature, I was desperate for a chance to act out the scene. The need burned inside me for over a year until today. The day when the Hammer of Thor will crush the unworthy motherfuckers of this research dump to a pulp. I smiled a shitfaced grin, stumbled out of the closet, held out both hammers, and simultaneously flipped them all off with a magnificent double whammy. I looked over the Nana and said in the most manly voice I could muster, 'Cover me.'
She said in the most manly tone she could muster, 'Roger that.'
'Drop your weapons! Do it! Or else we'll be forced to shoot!'
I cocked my head sideways and said in a cracked voice, 'Fuck. You.'
They opened fire at me, and none of them hit, thanks to the protective coating of Nana's vectors. I gave a high pitched battle cry and charged recklessly into the fray. Fortunately, Nana had the frame of mind to hover after me. After patting my pocket and making sure the coke was still there, I yelled, ' DO YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS!? IT'S FUCKING HAMMERTIME BITCHES!' With that declaration of heroism, I blindly swung my hammer and caught a guy square in the face. I spasmed and jittered uncontrollably as I giggled and bashed another guy's collar bone to powder. At this point, my sadism took over again. Every swing was calculated to either bash the guy's face in or to mangle it with the pliers. I caught one guy in the eye with the pliers, yanked his eyeballs out, and smashed his chin. I beat one guy's face repeatedly until it was a bloody mush and consequently got swarmed by ten of them. Nana pulled them off me.
I continued my attack. I was delirious with joy. None of the bullets were hitting me, and the idiots seemed to be afraid of coming near this cyclone of deadly hammers.
I did a figure eight pattern with my two iron invaders, did a dinky little spin, and nailed a guy in the stomach. In my drug induced haze, I saw Nana's head balloon to nearly two times its size- allowing me to detect the look of longing in her face for one of my hammers.
'Here!' I boomed in a baritone voice. I threw one hammer at Nana. She caught it with one of her vectors, nodded to me while spinning around her hideously bloodshot eyes. Giving out a squeal that would make a Korean pop star quit her job, Nana brought the gavel down on one guy's skull. It caved in like wet clay while spaghetti-like strands of brain slipped through the guy's nose.
One fool tried to blast off my head from behind, but he obviously hadn't learned about my god-mode at the moment. The .45 bullet fell on the floor with a severely dented nose. I gave the fool a trollface grin, tackled him to the ground, and proceeded to turn his face into a vat of Campbell's chunky tomato soup.
Nana looked like she was having quite a lot of fun venting out her demons. My hypothesis was correct- behind the happy-go-lucky mask, there was the soul of a killer.
Even though she still retained enough of her old self to not kill with her vectors, she killed with the hammer. And kill she did- most of her victims possessed ten or more open fractures with splintered and jagged pieces of bone sticking out of the wounds. A guy even had all five of ribs sticking out like a bad Halloween costume on one side. Bloody mist was spewing out of his mouth as he whinnied in the manner of a mare being raped.
There were approximately four guys left. They were cowering against the wall and pissing their pants.
The extent of damage the cocaine did to my nervous system was evident- like the four survivors, I had pissed myself yet again, my forearms were cramped in their entirety, and I had a hideous Charlie horse in my quadriceps.
'Fufufufufufufu...' Nana trilled while she trembled uncontrollably, 'What do we have here?' She knelt down beside one of the trembling guards. This one had a prominent widows peak and a slight belly that was pooching out rebelliously in his mid-aged season of life.
Nana stroked his cheek and put her finger on his mouth, 'Shhhh...shhhh...shhhh...don't worry. I'll put on a strip show before you die...'
The guy gave a terrified hiccup.
I asked for my hammer back.
'Fuck you.' Nana cradled the hammer to her chest, 'It's my hammer, my precious hammer, and you can't fucking have it.' And with that declaration of independence, she started to take off her clothes. I was too busy longing for my other hammer to be aroused by the scene.
'Ohhhh...the floor's...so cold...' She took off her bra and revealed two perky little breasts. They seemed to quip in a bright voice, 'How do you do?'
'Eeeehhhhh...Richard...your hair...it's sooo...shiny...and...the blood...'
She squirmed around on the floor.
She looked like a kid with Down's Syndrome trying to make a snow angel. The wet blood on the floor was smeared all over her like body paint.
'Everything's sooo...nice...and...the blood...it's sooo slippery...' She gave a hackneyed giggle and did the Homer Simpson, causing the crimson patterns on the floor to become an obscure occult symbol.
I knelt down next to one of the guards and asked in the nicest voice possible, 'Can you please give me your gun? If you do, I promise I won't hurt you.' I showed him my awesomeface. He forked over the gun.
I did the same thing with the remaining three and stuffed all of the firearms in my underwear.
Of course I turned the safety on, dear reader.
One of the guards burst into tears. I didn't blame him.
Nana sat cross-legged in midair once again. Her dead stare flitted around the room for a bit before settling on me, 'We are going to find Mayu, right?'
'Erm...isn't that what we were going to do in the first place?'
'Precisely, and when I find her, I'm going to fuck her silly.'
'Have fun then.'
'I will.' Nana did another creepy 360 Buddha spin, made several farting noises with her mouth, and then followed me into the deepest darkest reaches of the laboratory. I started to whistle an atonal tune that I, the musical genius, had made up on the spot. Nana started to sing along in an off key voice with her own made-up lyrics (most of which was gibberish). She even waved goodbye to the four remaining guards before setting herself on the ground and decapitating them.
The thought of interrogation pertaining to Lucy and co's whereabouts passed through my head once four headless bodies spewed out pressurized geysers of the good stuff.
Eventually, after five arm breakings and three deaths due to lack of cooperation, we finally ascertained with cocaine fuelled certainty, the whereabouts of Lucy and the rest of the gang. They were on the one hundred and eighth floor- more commonly known as the top of the building. Who woulda thought Nana and I were so unimportant that they stuck us on the twentieth? After that, it was: take a right, turn to the left at the appearance of a water cooler, and look for the word 'director' at an inconspicuous looking door at the end of the hallway.
The top atmosphere at the top of the building differed greatly from the lower floors. The lights were dimmed to a comfortable level ala a swanky hotel, the floor was covered in a carpet full of psychedelic floral designs, and the air smelled of paperwork, coffee, and professionalism. I liked the descriptions my mind came up with when I was under the grip of good old Yayo.
Nana had not bothered to put her clothes back on. On the way up, we had a rather enlightening conversation about her origins. It seemed that she operated as a lab rat of sorts in her early days, being the brunt of brutal experiments that usually ended up with her 'papa' coming in to reassure her everything was going to be alright.
When she spoke of her 'papa', which I imagined to be someone not too far removed from my nerdy captor, her eyes welled up with tears. Stockholm Syndrome much? In the meanwhile, it seemed like a good opportunity to grill her on her admittedly titillating relationship with Mayu, given her susceptible and apathetic state. Surprisingly, she gave a shrug and admitted she was attracted to girls ever since she figured out where her vagoo was, even going so far as to describe in rather explicit detail a sexual relationship she had with another diclonius known as 'number 03' while she was in captivity.
Huh. I would have thought her lesbianism stemmed from years of abuse at the hands of piggish lab researchers. While we stumbled around floor one hundred and eight trying to remember the detailed instructions a weeping guard with multiple fractures to his arm sputtered out, I found that I preferred the Nana's cocaine fuelled state to her 'normal' ditzy self. Her current personality was like Lucy's hateful deadpan sociopath archetype, except as I mentioned earlier, much more apathetic and docile.
I assumed that her desirable state was somewhere in the stages of tapering off the extreme high she experienced earlier.
As my coke high wore off, I began to experience hideous headaches that made my insomnia induced ones seem like playful gentle taps inside my head. I patted my pockets for the baggies and found only one. The other must have dropped out during the hammer confrontation.
I offered Nana some, but she declined.
I couldn't very well force her to take the admittedly deadly drug, so I inhaled what was left in the baggy. My headache instantly cleared up, and I was in god mode once again. I tossed aside the used piece of plastic and drew out a .45 from my underwear.
'This. This is war.' I declared, while imagining myself as Napoleon.
Nana nodded in her endearingly sage manner while her vectors spun the hammer into a blur.
We finally found ourselves facing the director's door. There was no turning back now.
'Okay, are you ready?'
Nana nodded.
Yelling at the top of my lungs, I donkey kicked the door, imagined it falling down from my immense strength, but was instead propelled backwards when the hypothetically multiple locks did not budge.
I fell on my ass and set off one of the .45's. I thanked lady luck when it blasted a hole in the carpet as opposed to taking a chunk out of my buttocks.
Nana floated over in her Buddha-like position and knocked on the door.
Fuck, why didn't I think of that?
'Who's there?' Came a muffled voice from inside.
I summoned up my mustachio voice and boomed in a quasi-Italian accent, 'We're Hea! To Bring-a you da lab report-a, from-a Nana and Da Human...a!'
'I don't recall scheduling for a report...' muffled the voice, 'But come in then! If it's information on the drone, I'd like to hear about it. The human doesn't matter.'
A group of locks simultaneously went 'Chunk chunk chunk chunk chunk' from behind my nemesis the door. I staggered up and fished the live .45 out of my underwear. The blackened hole in the carpet was still smoking. It was at that point that I realized that shrapnel from the pressurized bullet was buried in my juicy butt. My underwear was wet with blood.
I turned the doorknob and was greeted by a most demented sight.
A little girl in a wheel chair was sitting behind a great oaken desk doing some serious word processing on a black Mac. A cup of steaming liquid was set upon it, and various pictures of friends and family were littered about. There were three tanks lined up next to each other in the room. They were immense, technologically advanced and greebled things- connected with multitudes of wires in varying sizes to an enormous outlet in the wall. A steady hum accompanied the bubbling in the tanks. There was some kind of reddish liquid in them, and lo and behold, Lucy, Kouta, and Mayu floated around in them. Oxygen masks covered their mouths while slim wires of varying colours protruded out of their skins like expelled Guinea worms.
The little girl typed away on her spiffy Mac and suddenly noticed our mode of dress.
'Why are you in your underwear, mister? Are you aware that it violates all-
She caught sight of Nana, 'You...' She snarled under her breath, 'How did you escape!?'
Nana gave a yell of surprise as something grabbed her by the neck and flung her against one of the plaster walls, creating a well-proportioned Nana imprint.
The invisible force continued to strangle Nana as the girl in the wheelchair shrieked while her face turned puce, 'How the fuck did you get out!? I had top security! Now you and your buddy are just going to FUCK things up! FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUUUUUUUUUCK!' The girl seemed on the verge of having a brain aneurysm.
She took a deep breath, reached in her skirt, and pulled out a bottle filled with little pink pills.
Seroquel. Antipsychotics. Go figure.
She popped an obscene amount in her mouth and swallowed it with a bottle of Ethos water she yanked from under the desk. She panted, panted some more, and then finally let go of Nana and returned to her station behind the desk.
Her bloodshot eyes settled on us while her face started to do impossible contortions seemingly of its own accord. Clasping her hands together like a manager about to fire several employees, she grinned and said in a slightly unsteady voice, 'It seems like you two have smarts. I like that in my subjects. Now Nana, if you're IQ's slightly above seventy eight, can you tell who I am?' She took a large gulp of her volcanic coffee, slammed it down, and caused one of her picture frames to fall over.
Nana, in her cocaine enhanced wisdom, took offense to the comment, 'For your fucking information, my original IQ's well over one hundred and fifty- that bastard Kakuzawa just drugged me on such a regular basis, my brain got fried.' Nana jabbed her pointer finger at her temple, 'I'm probably smarter than you'll ever hope to be while this cocaine high still lasts, so why don't you just shut your bratty little mouth, dispose of your training diapers, and let our friends go?'
I almost felt the need to applaud. Everything she said was so pronounced and clear- kind of like an android newscaster. I was starting to like the bipolar little dunce.
Little red spots appeared on the girl's face as she shot out of her chair, 'I don't wear diapers, you motherfucker! They're pull-ups! So what if I piss my bed!? You probably pissed a fucking river when Kakuzawa threw those fucking anvils at your head!' In a rather cartoonish movement, she swept everything off her desk, coffee included. Shame. She continued her rant, 'You know who I am!? I'll tell you who I fucking am!? I'm Mariko! President Mariko of this motherfucking company! I have fifty two vectors positioned behind you two to eviscerate you in VERY CREATIVE WAYS!' She emphasized the last three words by banging both of her fists on the desk. How mature.
Nana shrugged, ' I recognized you. I just wanted you to have a brain aneurysm before we get started.'
'Why...you...' The ten year old maniac huffed, panted, and popped another handful of Seroquel into her mouth. She fell back against her chair. Her eyes spun around wildly,' I'm going to keep you two to torture. I was originally planning for twenty minutes, but I'll settle for several hours. I have time...' She pressed a button on her desk. I almost expected a trapdoor to open beneath us.
'Cancel my appointment with Mr. Gibson. I have business to attend to.'
She shut off the intercom and brushed a vector against my face. Delicious loli was not delicious. I did not want. Not at all.
Nana smirked, 'Then I guess I have no choice then.'
'What in blazes are you talking about!?' Mariko almost shrieked. A suggestion to take more of her medicine almost slipped off my tongue.
Mariko's head suddenly snapped back abruptly as if something had punched her on the forehead.
I stared at Nana in horror, 'What the fuck are you doing, you mediocre dunce!?' The 'My Immortal' reference rolled out in a disturbingly natural manner, 'You're just going to piss her off even more! Now she's going to tear us apart with invisible tentacles-
'Calm down, reader of bad fan fiction.' Nana almost drawled, 'I disabled her vectors. The little bitch's useless now.'
Mariko stared stunned at the ceiling for several moments before running her fingers frantically over her forehead, 'Whuh-what!? What the fuck did you do!? My vectors! My...my...'
Her face strained, contorted, and bent in ways I never thought possible. It was as if she was trying to force out a huge shit. Surely enough however, we heard a loud farting noise. In her efforts to push out her invisible tentacles, she shat her pants. Thank goodness for her pull-up diapers. The very air stood still with a dangerous silence that lasted for about five seconds. Mariko's face turned red, purple, and finally puce. I expected her to do the octopus dance of the psychotic spoiled child, but instead, she burst into tears, and started to slam her head repeatedly against the desk. I burst out laughing uncontrollably.
'Damn. It's almost as if fate has a coprophagia or something.' I quipped in between heaves of laughter as I ran over to the tanks to free my damsel in distress. I pounded on the tank with Lucy in it and had a sudden realization.
She was naked. My Lucy was nude. My eyes bulged out in a very perverted manner as I started to furtively rub my crotch. Nana caught sight of this, gave an exasperated sigh, and knocked me out of the way with her vectors. With a crisp slight of her invisible tentacles, she shattered the glass and caused waves of greenish sticky fluid to pour out on the floor and consequently all over on my prone body on the floor. Hey, at least I washed my underwear. I coughed out a good measure of the bitter goo and felt someone's bodyweight on me.
It was a nude Lucy, positioned just above my raging boner. I would have had a green goo tinged nosebleed if this were an anime.
Nana dragged Lucy off me as if she had X-ray vision. Kouta was the first to wake up. A fountain of green goo spewed forth from his mouth as he jerked and flailed about like a beached whale. The wires started to literally shoot out of his skin, as if his body were rejecting them. Little beads of blood oozed from the itchy looking puckered pinholes that covered his body.
The same happened with Mayu and Lucy's body. The sight of chickenpox appearing all over MY Lucy's marble-like skin was rather disconcerting. I almost wept at the defilement of such beauty.
Lucy woke up with no apparent vomiting. She spat out some of the green stuff and instinctively scratched at the little puckers in her skin, 'Where...the fuck am I?' She squinted at her environment.
Nana knelt next to Lucy, 'You okay?'
'Not really...' Lucy rubbed her head. Her body was still slimy with green goo, 'Let me guess, Kakuzawa's laboratory again?'
'No.' Came a creepy voice from behind the desk, 'You're not in Kakuzawa's laboratory.' Mariko had apparently recovered from her bawling, and was slowly wheeling towards us, 'He's dead. I supposed you still remember me?'
'You're...you're that little brat that knocked me out that night...' Lucy mused groggily, ' Let me make another educated guess- you took over his company? What a considerate thing for a little girl to do for her daddy. Were you pining for his death?'
'Daddy is of no consequence now.' Mariko said in an uncharacteristically calculated voice, 'I want you for your genes, Lucy. I want to be the new queen, and you and your troublesome little band broke out before I could even begin experimenting on you.' She looked directly at me with two predatory eyes. This was definitely not the same childish brat that greeted me and Nana, 'I should have killed all of you instead of keeping you alive as guinea pigs, but it doesn't really matter now...'
'What the fuck do you mean?' Nana snapped, 'I disabled your vectors, you can't do shit.'
I was pretty sure that all Diclonius had funny split personalities. I wondered what Lucy's silly side would be like. Maybe naive and over trusting like Nana? I drooled just thinking of the possibilities.
'No, I can't.' Mariko smirked in a rather disturbing way.
'Then what are you smiling for!?' I chipped in. I wanted to be part of this rather cheesy dialogue.
'You'll see.' Mariko chirped in a singsong voice, '
She fished out a little device from her skirt. I wondered in the back of my mind if she'd been hiding it in her diapers all this time. She dialled up a few buttons and smirked at me, 'Let's just say this is a little pet project of mine. I've worked real hard on it.'
An unobtrusive wooden door at the back of the room creaked open. Out of the shadows popped out a rather corpulent man dressed in an ill fitting red and blue striped shirt. His jeans were even worse, as they were tightened to the point of squeezing out the contours of his genitals. A strange and rather crudely made medallion fashioned after a hybrid of Sonic the Hedgehog and Pikachu hung around his neck. He wasn't exactly bad looking, but the flabby jowls and greasy balding head sort of took away from his passable features. The most disturbing thing however, was his smile. It was a smile that told of a thousand mental disorders clumped into one physical container- an utterly creepy smile that foretold the perversions he would commit if he were alone with a twelve year old girl.
It took me a while to recognize the guy, but when I did, I almost guffawed.
The ugly thing standing in front of us was Christian Weston Chandler- the most famous man child on the internet famous for ripping off Sega and Nintendo in creating his own vapid comic series, 'Sonichu the Electric Hedgehog.'Sure, I had trolled the guy several times, but he had inexplicably disappeared in the January of 2010. I guessed the troll posing as him online had finally shoved him over the edge.
Apparently, I was misguided in my belief that he had become an hero.
Lucy curled her lip in disgust, 'Really Mariko? That's your secret weapon?'
'Ah, but I am her secret weapon.' Said Chris in his reedy and rather annoying voice, ' You see, she turned me into super Chris, in exchange for my services.'
Mariko kept on smiling. I wanted to throw something at her, 'What he means is, he agreed to be my sla-erm...boyfriend in exchange for bionic implants.'
'That's right, Mariko my sweet.' Chris struck a heroic pose, 'This is the best job ever! I'm gonna marry her next month, and-
'Do you even get paid?' Nana asked in an acidic voice.
'Nooooo...but her being my sweetheart is good enough!' Chris pointed a finger in our general direction, 'If my dear Mariko wants you all to die, I'll gladly do it for her.' He looked at the ten year old for approval. Mariko's face briefly twisted into something that looked like complete and utter disgust, and then just as quickly morphed back into an incredibly fake smile, followed by a wink that was supposed to be sexy. It just looked incredibly awkward.
Lucy gave out a loud ahem, and stood up on her feet with the help of her vectors. Her glistening nude body caught my attention once again as yet another pervy woody sprouted in my pants. This time however, Kouta took notice of this and frowned at me. As I was still reasonably high on cocaine, I gave him a toothy grin and the peace sign. Kouta face palmed himself and mouthed something along the lines of 'Fail...fucking fail...' I opened my mouth to say something, but my train of thought was interrupted by Lucy, ' Okay, first of all, Mariko's fucking ten. Why are you treating her like someone your own age?'
'That's none of your business!' Chris almost bawled, 'I've been searching for a sweetheart for-
'It doesn't matter how long you've been searching for a girlfriend, it still doesn't give you the right to seduce a ten year old! How old are you, thirty?'
'I'm twenty eight.' Chris crossed him arms like a dejected little child, 'And for your information, she feels the same way about me, so that doesn't really count as being...as being a pedophile.'
'Oh, yes it does.'
Everyone's heads spun around at the sound of Mayu's voice. The sixteen year old was hugging herself and shivering, ' It doesn't matter what context it's in- even if it's mental. If you've even touched Mariko-
'WAIT JUST A FUCKING MINUTE!' I screamed at the top of my lungs, 'Just who are we fighting here!? Mariko made the decision to have an obese and ugly lolicon fuck-buddy, so it's her own fault! We should be beating the shit out of the loli and the pedo, but what are we doing? We're fucking having a philosophy of ethics debate! You cuntwaffles! I'm going at this alone!'
With that grand declaration of war, I buried my face into the remainder of the cocaine and violently snorted the rest of the baggy.
In one word, I could describe my current condition.
Superman.
I gave a giant whoop and yanked down my underwear, revealing my raging boner. All four girls' faces turned bright red while Kouta double face palmed himself.
'Isn't this fucking peachy!? I'm going with the nudist trend!' I picked up my hammer and went at Chris swinging and yelling. However, something was horribly wrong. The fat slob was simply standing there and smiling. He said with chilling clarity, 'Don't. Do. Drugs.'
I felt an immense weight bury itself in my stomach. I could have sworn a refrigerator was being slammed into my torso as I flew ten feet into the sky. I made a little inventory of the organs that were most likely shattered from the blow. Intestines were probably scrambled, my spleen was most likely gone, and my colon could have- COULD have been pushed down several notches, peeking out of my asshole like the shy puckered face of Gollum. Some ribs were definitely broken from the aftershocks of the fat bastard's punch, and...that was pretty much it. I crashed into the dry wall and made a blobby imprint of myself. I stayed there for a few seconds before literally peeling off my impression and falling down in a heap.
Kouta looked at me with a gaping mouth. I coughed up some blood and gave him the finger.
Lucy looked at me with a similar look on her face. I gathered up enough strength to wink at her lewdly.
I guess Mariko's bionic implants really did the trick. A blur of blue and red systematically disabled Nana and Lucy's invisible tentacles by caving in their foreheads. Nana was officially out for the count, as she started foaming at her mouth, had a little seizure, did a little dance, and fell into a lifeless lump.
Lucy staggered a little bit.
Chris had done a shoddy job on his second target. Maybe he lost momentum.
'It hurts...' Lucy moaned as she swayed from side to side like a charmed snake.
I tried to move, but as they say- the mind is willing, but the body is not. My mind was still that of Superman, but my body was Stephen Hawking's. Fuck me sideways.
Chris stood there panting like a pig in heat, 'Did...did I do good, my sweet?'
'Yes. You did wonderful.' I sniggered ever so gently out of fear of hurting my ribs. Mariko had briefly rolled her eyes after she said that. Chris clapped his hands and jumped up and down like a delighted retard seeing Barney the Pink Dinosaur. Until this moment, I never wanted to kill a man quite as much.
'Now, Finish her off, and make it quick.' Mariko tapped her fingers impatiently on the oaken table. She seemed to notice the absence of her coffee. She pressed the intercom, 'Jerry, more coffee, if you please.' She adjusted the picture of her standing next to her daddy and gave us a crisp and professional smile in the vein of giving an employee an early promotion, 'It's been fun, but I'm afraid that I simply have no time to fuck around.'
'Speaking of thaaat...' Chris swivelled around a tad too smoothly to face Mariko, 'Can we pleeeeaaase make hanky panky again tonight?'
If there was a god of empty, awkward, and utterly deadly silences, this would be it. Mariko's face was surprisingly blank, 'What are you talking about?'
Lucy stopped stumbling for a moment, 'Did you...did you just...imply...'
'I think he did...' Kouta got up slowly and dramatically.
I burst out laughing uncontrollably and spewed blood all over the place. At that point, I didn't really care about my ribs anymore. Splintering ribs or not, the picture of Chris doing the schizophrenic little loli was too much to handle. I was in excruciating pain as the stitches started to set in, but my cocaine rush kept me yakking my head off. After ten seconds more of laughing by myself, I gathered up enough cognition to say, 'Okay, let me get this straight...' I coughed out some more blood. I noticed it was a delicious shade of bright red, 'You...you fucked him? I mean...where in the contract does it say you have to fuck him? Are you really that desperate? That's fucking sad...'
Mariko continued to look incredibly puzzled.
'I mean, COME ON! This is even more sordid than...than when Chris did his blow up doll and uploaded it! This is a new low- a fat twenty eight year old in a consensual relationship with a ten year old? Both of you make me want to puke and laugh until my colon falls out!' I lost control and started to laugh again.
Mariko glanced at Chris, looking incredibly bemused, 'Whaaa...what are they talking about? Are they talking about that wrestling we did?'
'I...I didn't mean tooooo.' Chris crossed his arms behind his back and began to shuffle to and fro like a guilty schoolchild, 'I mean, you enjoyed it, riiiiight?'
'Right...but it hurt a little bit...in my lower parts...'
Lucy rubbed her forehead a little more before stepping into the center of the playing field, 'Just hold on a minute!' She stared at Mariko incredulously, 'Are you saying you don't know what he did to you?'
'Of course I know.' Mariko said impatiently, 'We played a wrestling game that Chris invented, and we had lots of fun.' She crossed her arms arrogantly, 'What, are you jeeeeaaalous?'
'He...did something very bad to you.' Lucy almost whispered.
'There's nothing bad about wrestling- like I said, all that happened was that it hurt a little bit, and then-
Kouta groaned in frustration, 'He had sex with you! Do you even know what a penis is!?'
Mariko thought for a moment and tried to recall the image of a cock, 'Erm...is it that dangly thing men have between their legs?' Kouta face palmed himself so hard that he gave himself a bloody nose.
'He did something very bad to you!' Lucy yelled exasperatingly, 'He touched you in a very bad way! You should be mad at him!'
Mariko frowned and faced Chris, ' Did you do a bad thing to me?'
'Hanky Panky isn't bad, it's just...it's just when a man and a woman love each other very much-
The pedophile didn't have much time to complete his explanation. He stopped in the middle of his rudimentary sex education class as a gristly crunch sounded at the back of his head. He grimaced a little as he tried to reach for the source of the sound. In doing his little struggle, he turned around to reveal a hammer buried into his skull.
Huh. I almost forgot about my little friend.
Somebody had hit the back of his head so hard with the claw side that the entire business portion of the hammer was wedged rather messily into the caved in remnants of his skill. Bits of viscera, brain, and skull were dripping lazily from the wound. I muttered under my breath, 'It's definitely hammertime...'
Superhuman cyborg or not, no one could survive a blow like that, and in concordance with my prediction, Chris Chan's limbs started to spasm and wave around like a demented break dancer doing a wacky top rock. His eyes rolled to the back of his head as he fell unceremoniously on his face with a wet sounding splat. Apparently it hadn't occurred to Mariko to implant him with a hardier head.
Mayu stood behind the corpse of Chris, panting and smiling maniacally in a fit of drunken rage. I never knew the girl had it in her. Perhaps pedophiliac rape was her berserk button.
Mariko's face turned ashen grey. She knew she had officially lost the battle.
Then, her face abruptly turned into a pout, devolved into a screwed up face with eyes brimming with tears, and then finally degenerated into the supersonic wail of a newborn baby.
Lucy drunkenly sidestepped several feet before asking in a slurred voice, 'Are you done now? Let us go already. What more could you possibly want from us?'
Mariko pooched out her lower lip and repeatedly slammed her intercom with comically splayed hands, 'SECURITY! SECUUURRRIIIITY!'
'Oh, for Pete's sake...' Lucy stalked over with the best impression of stalking that she could muster up in her current state, and gave a very surprised Mariko's hand a hearty yank.
It came off from the elbow just like Nana's.
'Is it mandatory for all of you to have creepy prosthetics?' I wheezed.
'Just the ones stupid enough to fight me, Richard... just the ones stupid enough to fight me.'
Mariko looked up at Lucy with a sort of pseudo reverence. Her mouth hung open stupidly as she absentmindedly waved her stump around.
'Stop. Ringing. The. Fucking. Intercom.' Lucy intonated like a stern school teacher, 'Let us out of here, or else I'm going to beat the living shit out of you.'
Mariko stared dumbfounded at Lucy for several moments before bursting out into laughter.
Lucy slapped Mariko with the prosthetic.
'You don't get it, do you?' Mariko giggled.
'Noooo...' I mumbled from my little corner. I grinned, revealing bloodstained yellow teeth. I guess my teeth would be orange then. I rolled over like a dead bug and wheezed at the sky. It was getting pretty fucking cold inside the room, and it was all because of those goddamn air conditioners. I yelled something to Mariko about shutting off the air conditioners before rolling over to my side again and whimpering rather pathetically about my broken ribs.
Mariko completely ignored me, 'In about five minutes, my S.W.A.T team will be storming into this room to annihilate you all. Since you and Nana can't use your vectors, I'd say both of you are pretty much screwed.' Mariko smirked, 'Of course, you'll be taking a front seat to watching your friends die one by one. Now isn't that pleasant?' She took a dainty little sip of her coffee and looked at the antique clock on the wall, knocked slightly astray by my intrusion into the plaster, 'I say you've got a good four minutes to think of something to-
Without another word, Lucy lunged across the desk and grabbed Mariko by her collar. The ten year old evil genius only had time to utter a duck-like sound before being bodily pulled out of her wheelchair and over her oversized desk. Lucy held Mariko in a full nelson, 'So, have you ever heard of human shields? I'm quite good with doing that.' The rabid little girl thrashed about like a wounded racoon stuck in a trash can, 'You- you dirty bitch!' Mariko screeched, 'I'll make sure you all die slowly and horribly! I'll-
A wonderful idea suddenly popped into my head, and I decided to share it with everyone.
'Lucy! I've a wonderful idea!' I noticed my voice was several pitched higher than my normal voice.
Still holding Mariko in a submission, Lucy turned to me and rolled her eyes, 'Richard, just keep still for the moment! I'll get to your ribs later!' Mariko bit down on Lucy's forearm. She didn't even flinch. The hottie was made of stern stuff. I tried to do the Grinch smile and split my lips.
'Take...some...cocaine!' I wheezed, 'It might...help with your vectors!' There was still a little bit left in the bag. I was hoping that Lucy's sensitivity to the stuff would be quite high.
Lucy grimaced yet again as Mariko left yet another bloody bite mark on her arm. Her legs were flopping around uselessly like Joe in Family Guy. I wondered if Mariko jabbed forks into her thighs for fun.
'I've got no time for drugs!' Lucy yelled, 'Can't you see I'm kind of busy here!?'
'I said...' I crawled over in an agonizing slither, 'It might...huuuuueeelp with the activaaaation of your vectooooorrrsss...' I could have sworn I breathed out a fine spray of bloody mist every time I dragged my words. I made an absurd mental note to get body armour the next time I went on epic misadventures such as this.
Lucy winced yet again. Her forearms were starting to look like a chew toy, 'Well, I guess anything that helps...' She dropped Mariko, who fell to the floor like a broken doll. She started to bawl her eyes out again while quoting Pulp Fiction. What a fucking psycho.
Lucy shuffled over with all the agility of a yuppie on Xanax, 'Alright...give me the bag...if this doesn't work, you've just wasted two precious minutes...' Snatching the baggie from me, she snorted the good stuff, shook her head once or twice, and suddenly stumbled backwards, 'Whoah...' She slurred as she turned her head to the ceiling, 'I can literally feel Nyu pressing against my subconscious...' Lucy's eyes were completely bloodshot. One of her eyes had turned completely red. Exploded blood vessels- it was a sign that she OD'd on that little bit of cocaine. I cheered with a strangled sounding yelp, 'Lucy! Try your vectors- blargh...' I rolled over onto my back yet again and did some dinky little bicycles with my legs.
I felt myself being gently picked up by Lucy's invisible tentacles. Similarly, she was doing the same thing with Mayu, Kouta, Nana, and...
'Why the fuck are you carrying Mariko!?' I squealed, 'She's just going to-
'Shut up.' Lucy said in a surprisingly even tone. I was rather disappointed. I expected her to have a bright and naive alternate persona. It was possible that the cocaine caused her to become even more clinical and detached than before. It was when she started talking that I realized that I was only partially right.
'Ladies and gentleman, fasten your seatbelts. Do not turn on any electronic devices until I fucking say so, and there is absolutely no smoking permitted on this flight. We will be heading outside of this research facility at thirty miles an hour, cruising at about four hundred meters off the ground. Don't masturbate in the bathrooms or dispose of your condoms in the toilet. Refreshments will be served later on in the flight as soon as I embezzle shit from the catering company. Without further ado, let us begin this wonder-filled flight into oblivion and possibly several broken limbs.' Lucy looked at all of us one by one, 'Please fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a rough ride.'
With one well aimed sweep of her invisible tentacles, she shattered the entire window overlooking a rather nice view of the sea and sent powdered glass raining down upon us. It had crossed my mind to hold out my tongue and taste the fake fragments of sugar glass, but I knew better. The whole thing was so fucking absurd, it had to be true.
As if on cue, the door was kicked down by the S.W.A.T team Mariko had ordered.
The acceleration almost rivalled that of those one-shot drop towers in well-off amusement parks. Lucy had used her surplus vectors to push us out of the window and into the forest below. Mariko wailed and screeched, even spewing out, 'Blarf!' at one point in time. Kouta closed his eyes as if accepting becoming one with the cosmos, Mayu stared slack-jawed into space, and Nana was sitting in her lotus position once again. I felt like James Dean or something in his red convertible as the wind blew past my face. Just as I thought we were going to be mutilated by branches and sodomized by young trees, Lucy gently lowered us through the canopy of leaves, and decided to swing off a branch to add style to her escape. Unfortunately however, the added chutzpah to her Tarzan routine missed and caused all four of us to rain down upon the ground and subsequently to feast upon dirt and roots.
My body now resembled that of a ragdoll. I was surprised I still even had the strength to breathe.
Kouta grabbed his leg and did a passable impression of Peter from Family Guy. His foot was twisted at an odd angle. Welcome to my kingdom of pain, fellow b-tard.
Lucy herself had rammed face first into a tree, prompting a baritone voice in my head to chant, 'George, George, George of the Jungle...' Her naked body peeled off the gnarled surface and splattered onto the ground. She lay dazed and confused, looking at the sky with a bloody nose and painful looking reddish bark imprints all over her body. Miraculously, her boobs weren't flattened by the force. Maybe her invisible tentacles had something to do with that. Was she capable of groping herself? Maybe even possibly able to masturbate with those oh-so convenient tentacles? I drooled a little bit as I did my trademark dead bug roll to the side. I felt some blood drip on my face.
I looked up.
In her smooth scattering of her passengers, Lucy had accidentally dropped Mariko onto the spiked and jagged stump of a decapitated young tree. Now the little brat lay there wheezing and puking out her pizza stuff while doing a spastic little impression of the Homer Simpson. I grinned to myself. Nothing warmed my heart more than the bratty little instigator of our misery being Shish Kabob'ed. I rolled to my other side when I heard my ribs crackling in complaint.
Nana had Mayu on her shoulders. Apparently her cocaine high was still going. If it were old Nana, I'd warrant she'd land on top of Mayu and spend another hour looking for her.
Lucy suddenly did a Kip-up and cocked her head both ways like a wild animal, 'Well, landing gears are down, it's time to get into da choppa.' She said in a perfectly even tone. I wanted to step on Kouta's face for introducing her to Arnold Schwarzenegger movies.
'Are you sure there's a chopper around here?' I asked in a small voice. I heard the clamouring of the S.W.A.T team above us. I hoped they didn't have any scaling equipment.
'This used to be the institute Kakuzawa kept me in.' Lucy said flatly, 'Of course I know where the choppa is. Come with me if you want to live.' And with that idiotic phrase, I felt something invisible wrap around my waist. After securing the protagonists in her grip, she suddenly caught sight of her lost luggage.
She looked at Mariko for a moment before shrugging, 'I told you to fasten your seatbelt.'
Mariko spat out another measure of gooey pizza stuff before dying.
'Aww-right then, let's GOOOOOO!' Lucy whooped uncharacteristically before hovering through the jungle while carrying her passengers in a very uneven manner.
Kouta was being dragged on his ass, I was being towed across the rough ground like a sack of garbage, and Nana and Mayu were floating just a few inches off the ground.
Lucy was losing strength. Not good. Every once in a while she would absent-mindedly let go of me, prompting me to scream (much to the detriment of my ribs) for her to come back. She dropped Kouta once or twice, but her crowning moment of glory was when she dragged him through several bushes of thistles. Kouta looked like a Harlequin baby by the time we were out of the forest. I heard no signs of the S.W.A.T. team following us. Perhaps they were waiting for us right at the helicopter.
And by golly, I was right. Spitting up mouthfuls of dirt and beetles, I gave the battalion of soldiers a shitfaced grin before cradling my powdered ribs while pissing and moaning about how I was going to sue Lucy for manhandling me. Lucy muttered a string of incoherent curses and spat at the guards, 'Don't you know your employer's dead?'
'Freeze! Get down on the ground!' Yelled the captain of the S.W.A.T team, 'Put your hands where I can see them!'
Lucy rolled her eyes and dropped us all on the helicopter landing pad in a rather undignified manner.
'I said Mariko's dead! Don't you guys get it?'
The captain paused for a moment, 'Excuse me? If the mistress if dead, why don't you prove it?'
'Mistress?' Kouta asked rhetorically.
'That's what the boss wants us to call her.' Piped up one of the grunts.
'Oh, for fuck's sake!' Lucy jabbed a finger in the direction of the forest, 'You see, she had a little accident jumping out the window with us, and if you look in the vicinity near the north end of the building, you'll find the her stuck on a stump.'
The captain didn't lower his weapon, 'There's no way we're going to fall for that. Prepare to-
'It wouldn't hurt if you sent several men to search for her. I'm serious. She's dead.' Lucy said. Her cocaine high appeared to be wearing off. She wasn't speaking in garbled colourful sentences anymore.
The captain narrowed his eyes, paused for a moment to think, and then called for two of his men to search the vicinity, 'I don't know how you think this is going to change anything.' The captain said as-a-matter-of-factly, 'Even if the mistress is dead, there's someone poised to take over her position, and we're getting our pay one way or the other.'
'Oh really?' A goofy looking grin spread over Lucy's face. I was a little creeped out, 'I thought you guys would be happy over her dying- you know, steal the company funds, out from under her dominating thumb...'
'It doesn't work that way, missy.' The moustachioed captain growled, ' We just happen to be financed by the Yakuza, and if we were to do that, we'd have our balls handed to us in a paper cup.'
'Mariko's with the Yakuza?' Nana asked with mild surprise, 'Is she controlling them or-
'Nah, the Yakuza seized control of the Diclonius operation right after Kakuzawa croaked. He had some flimsy connections with them during his tenure, but...what can I say? The old man's a fool. The Yakuza probably planned his death once they heard of a readily made line of super soldiers waiting in the annals of this research facility.' He shrugged, 'They just used Mariko as a figurehead- the kid's a monster, I tell you. She survived a C4 going off right in front of her face, and regenerated all her missing skin, muscle, and organ tissues within several months. I highly doubt falling on a tree's going to do too much to her.'
'So I'm guessing they use her for demonstrative executions and things of that nature?' Lucy had officially returned to her cold and aloof old self.
'Precisely. But beyond that, the mistress is a useless little bitch. She needs help wiping her own ass for chrissake. I don't even know why I'm still calling her mistress right now...that little shit has humiliated me so many times-
Nothing could really surprise me at this point, not even the captain's ribcage departing messily from his torso and leaving it a floppy empty vessel of meat. This head wavered to and fro for a moment like a misguided Muppet before settling down on the mound of intestines that were starting to spurt endless amounts of black feces. His ribcage floated in the air like some kind of gruesome hunting trophy.
Mariko limped onto the scene with the help of her vectors. A gristly gaping wound was embedded in her stomach, but strange little webs of viscera were starting to writhe and interact with each other of their own accord, as if trying to repair the bloody hole. She held the heads of the two scouts that went to find her, 'Did you guys miss me?' She quipped as she dropped the ribcage on me. Luckily, it bounced off my throbbing head and landed about three feet away from me.
Lucy growled under her breath and sent her invisible tentacles flying towards Mariko. Nana followed suit, but the little girl was far too fast. I would later find out that whenever Mariko was suitably enraged, the number of her tentacles numbered up to fifty, in stark contrast to Lucy's meagre eight and Nana's even more pitiable four.
Mariko smirked, 'Na-a-a. You didn't say the magic word.' She waggled her finger at Lucy and Nana, 'The magic word is SORRY!' She screeched as she tried to punch Lucy and Nana in their foreheads.
Poor Nana didn't evade in time, and subsequently had her invisible tentacles disabled.
Lucy however, had learned her lesson. She gracefully did a back layout to dodge Mariko's attack, and chained it together with a bewildering gymnastic tumbling sequence that culminated in her doing a full out over Mariko's head and attempting to disable the little monster's vectors from her upside-down angle. However, Lucy's valiant attempt at an attack was in vain, as Mariko's anticipatory parry deflected the incoming punch and caused to Lucy to become wide open.
Mariko decided for a little bit of overkill this time. Even I thought it was a going a little too far.
I saw the outline of a fist's underside manifest itself in Lucy's stomach and the grotesque stretching of her special place.
I guess Lucy won't be having babies anymore. I wondered if my penis still worked.
With a wet sounding croak, Lucy fell down weightlessly on the dirt, clutching her genitals and coughing up blood.
Kouta suddenly stood up and faced Mariko. He had been hiding the whole time. I guess the chicken shit had finally decided to man up. I would have manned up, but the only thing I could really do was crawl along like a pathetic little worm...
But wait.
I saw a sheathed hunting knife hanging askew on the leg half of the captain. The fucking guy must have been some kind of Rambo wannabe. As luck would have it, it was only five feet away. Could I make it?
Mariko started to do her usual villain ramble, 'Feh! Now her boyfriend stands up for her! I've already cunt-punted your little bitch, I don't even think she can count as a woman anymore!'
Kouta clenched his fists, 'Don't...you fucking touch her anymore.'
'Oh?' Mariko raised an eyebrow, 'And what if I do? You'll kill me? A poor, innocent ten year old with a hole in her stomach?' She spat on the ground, 'Don't think I'll kill you quickly, human- over the years, I've learned that drawing out your victims' suffering for as long as fucking possibly is a very fun game. It's quite unfortunate that that tall idiot had to die so suddenly- I would have taken out his eyes and put his testicles in them...
She thought I was dead. SHE FUCKING THOUGHT I WAS DEAD! I almost let out an elated whoop of joy, but I focused my efforts on obtaining the hunting knife as unobtrusively as possible. Just three feet to go. I felt the last of my ribs give in. I could have sworn my lungs were punctured.
Kouta muttered, 'You don't know the power of the Long Cat.'
'Say what?' Mariko paused in her super-villain speech. She looked genuinely puzzled.
I grabbed hold of the knife and held it close to my chest. Now it was just a matter of crawling over to Mariko's feet and cutting her Achilles tendon. The pain would probably give all of us enough time to get the fuck out of the freakish research facility.
Kouta said a little louder, 'YOU DON'T KNOW...THE POWER OF THE LONGCAT!'
Mariko's face contorted into a mask of complete and utter puzzlement, 'What the fuck are you talking about? I swear, if you're just trying to bide time, it's use-
'Longcat...I call upon your powers...rise forth from the abyss...and grant us the strength to suffocate the false ones...' Kouta closed his eyes and started to do strange symbolic things with his hands. I focused on my mission to get to annoying Loli's ankles. She was wearing bobby socks- that made me mad, it was one thing for her to be evil and all, but to have no fashion sense? That was it.
Mariko frowned a bit, opened her mouth to say something, and then finally chuckled, 'Is this your last resort? Summoning a creature from your imagination to somehow induce a Deus Ex Machina ending? Pathetic! Prepare to die!'
I slit her Achilles tendon. Dark blood sprayed at my face in a jet.
Mariko gave out a frightening shriek of pain, and started to bawl again. This time for her mommy. The tiniest inkling of pity surfaced in me, but was immediately diffused when she started to pepper her maternal summons with various exotic curses.
Kouta nodded at me sagely and continued his fucking stupid summoning. I really wanted to crawl over and slit his ankle.
'Kouta! What the fuck are you doing!?' I wheezed, 'Gather everyone up and get in the fucking choppa!'
My current frame of mind did not take into account the waiting S.W.A.T team standing right next to our beloved choppa. The world was finally beginning to pulse in the over-saturated colours of a fifties sitcom. I let a shit-faced grin spread over my features before blacking out for a minute.
I snapped back into consciousness and noticed that the clouds had started to turn black. Kouta was busy dancing around and yelling for his Long Cat to come down. I smiled yet again and relapsed into my comforting darkness for another few seconds. I liked rain. Rain was good for washing away all the guck on my face.
I opened my eyes and saw lightning streak across the sky. Mariko was still screeching for maternal love, and the S.W.A.T team was standing there like a Special Education class without a teacher. Then from out the clouds rose a darkened shape. I couldn't make out the texture at first, but as the lightning illuminated it, I could tell that it was fur. It was fucking fur. I couldn't believe my eyes. A meme was manifesting itself into reality in some bizarre metaphysical twist of fate.
Everyone literally stopped everything they were doing to witness the glory that was Long Cat.
I could safely say at that point that everyone had the same look on their faces- dumbfounded, open mouthed, and drooling a little bit at the chin. Rain started to pour as the winds suddenly morphed into a ferocious whistling gale. The cat's immense body extended into the heavens and glowed with a blinding intensity. The feline's face was barely visible as the rapturous shroud of light almost consumed it in its intensity. Two paws shook and trembled with rage as it prepared to let out its battle cry.
I could have sworn Kouta's starry eyed gaze had tears to complete it, but it could have been just rain.
A resounding meow of a billion content cats was issued forth from the god-like feline's mouth. Suddenly, it lowered its head a bit and trained its mighty gaze on us mere mortals. The skies seemed to distort as Long Cat's long body stretched in anticipation of a belly rub.
In an echoing voice, it thundered, 'WHAT IS IT THIS TIME, KOUTA?'
Kouta confirmed my theory of his crying by wiping away at his eyes, 'Long Cat, my master...how good it is of you to grace us with your presence-
'SILENCE!' Thundered the cat god, ' YOU HAVE SUMMONED ME FOR THE THIRD TIME, PUNY HUMAN- MUST I ALWAYS DEPART FROM MY REALM OF ETERNAL GLORY TO DO YOUR BIDDING? A THOUSAND POUNDS OF CATNIP IS INSUFFICIENT FOR A THIRD SUMMONING!'
'So...that's where all our funds went...' Lucy gasped in a small voice.
'B-b-but...we're in a little bit of bind here...and... and I was wondering if you could huh-help us...'
'SHUT UP!' The very earth seemed to quiver under his mighty voice, 'THIS IS THE LAST TIME I WILL HELP YOU...ONLY YOUR PUNY CIRCLE PREVENTS ME FROM ROASTING YOU...BAH!'
Now I knew what Kouta was doing the whole time Lucy was being tossed around. He was drawing a circle rife with obscure occult symbols in the dirt. The crafty bastard.
Mariko suddenly stomped her good foot on the ground, 'I will not lose this! Not even to a cat in the sky! What the fuck are you going to do!? Throw fish at me!?' She gave Long Cat a double bird, 'I say, fuck you! I have fifty vectors, and I'm going to TEAR YOU APART!' Mariko let loose her invisible tentacles at Long Cat. The effects manifested themselves as barely noticeable ripples in his fur.
'ARE YOU DONE?' drawled Long Cat, 'MY TURN.'
Mariko disappeared.
There was a long awkward silence before Long Cat sighed and said, 'I TURNED HER INTO A FISH.'
Indeed, there was a pathetic little carp flopping about on the dirt, still swearing with the best of them in helium filled voice. Long Cat sent a tiny bolt of lightning at the carp and roasted it black.
The S.W.A.T team looked at their mistress, and then looked at Long Cat. Finally figuring out the equation, they scattered and in random directions.
'THERE. I HAVE HELPED YOU. ANYTHING ELSE BEFORE I LEAVE YOUR PATHETIC LITTLE B-TARD BODY TO ROT IN THIS MORTAL WORLD?'
Kouta stammered, 'C-c-could you possibly transport us tuh-to a hospital...and...and...
'AAAAAND? I DON'T WANT TO GET SUMMONED AGAIN. IT IS PAINFUL TRAVELLING FROM DIMENSION TO DIMENSION...'
'Can you please...nuke this place?' Whispered Lucy.
'SPEAK UP, MORTAL.'
'Erm...Lucy's asking if you can...destroy the research laboratory...' Realizing the cost of life it would entail, a look of horror crept across Kouta's face, 'B-b-but we can't Lucy- we'll kill innocent people...'
'JUST DO IT!' Lucy screamed at the cat god.
The deity's shoulders shifted upwards a little bit, as if shrugging, 'AS YOU WISH...NEVER SUMMON ME AGAIN...'
'Wait! WAIT!' Kouta screamed desperately at the sky, 'Don't go! She didn't mean that! She didn't meeeaaan that!'
Long Cat ignored him and raised one paw.
A blinding flash of white light followed by intense heat engulfed me, and then it all went black.
I woke up in the hospital and found that my entire body was casted. Even my face was heavily bandaged. I could have sworn they put some sort of wrapping around my penis too. Fortunately though, they left my mouth free so that I could yell degrading remarks at the fat Hispanic under paid nurses that pulled stuff out of my ass. Trailing the nurses were Mayu and Nana, who both bore bouquets of flowers in their arms. Mayu awkwardly placed the flowers at the side of my bed and blushed madly. I guess you couldn't really look at a person the same way again when they've found out you stack yourself all the way to a c-cup. When she was naked, her tits were barely visible in stark contrast to her substantial chest size back when I caught her making out with Nana at Kaede house. Nana said, 'Erm...I'm sorry it had to turn out this way, Richard...but erm...I guess we're safe now.'
I wanted to say something acidic and bitter in response to that question, but I swallowed what was left of my pride and asked, 'Where's Lucy?'
'Oh. She's in the bed next to you. I can roll back the curtains if you'd like.'
Before I could protest, Nana drew back the curtains separating our beds. Lucy had bandages swathed all around her crotch and booboo band-aids stuck all over her body. I could literally hear the drip of the I.V. as we stared at each other. Lucy suddenly broke out in a mean spirited grin, 'Avant-garde fashion?'
'Shut...the fuck up...' I moaned, 'Don't forget, I saved you.'
'I did too!' Nana held one hand up like an eager kindergartener. My hands were absent for face palming at the moment.
'Well...thanks.' I noted genuine gratitude in her voice.
'Anytime.' I tried to wiggle my body, and heard something break.
'FUCK!' I wheezed.
Lucy sniggered, 'You're quite the character Richard.'
'Tell me about it...' I suddenly remembered Long Cat.
'Lucy...what really saved us?'
'Long Cat.' Came a voice behind the curtain on Lucy's right side. Nana dutifully toddled over and pulled it back, revealing Kouta with only a mere leg cast.
'You can't be serious.'
Lucy rolled her eyes, 'Kouta, you never cease to amaze me. Tell him the story.'
'I erm...summoned him from an old grimoire I bought online.'
'You what?'
'It was on discount, so I figured, what the hell...'
'Two thousand yen isn't exactly a discount...' muttered Lucy.
'Yeah...and um...all it took was a pint of blood...a little bit of drawing...'
'You messed up my room.' Mayu said in an unobtrusive tiny voice.
'Sorry 'bout that. You're room's kinda plain...perfect for that sort of stuff...anyways...the first time, I thought it was all hocus pocus, but...I kind of believed in that supernatural stuff, you know- like the documentaries on the Discovery Channel...
'Now that he mentions it...' Lucy looked at the ceiling, 'I heard meowing noises in Mayu's room last year when he was fiddling around in there. I thought I was just dreaming.'
'Yeah...and the first time I summoned him, he went into my head. I thought I was hearing things, but the whole room started to smell like rotting tuna fish...he demanded a thousand pounds of catnip...'
'And then you dug into our account and helped yourself.' Lucy almost hissed.
'Yeah...but it did save our lives in the end, right?' Kouta was now in full-on hyperspeed nerd yammering mode. He sounded like Quentin Tarantino in a heated interview.
'I guess you're right.' Lucy said dejectedly. She opened her mouth to say something else, but closed it.
'This...this is fucking ridiculous...' Oh, how I missed my spastic hand gestures, 'First, pink haired mutants...then a bad re-enactment of Die Hard, and now a cat gods? Boy, when I get out of his fucking thing, I'm going to publish a novel on this.'
Lucy rolled her eyes, 'Good luck with that. That doctor said the only working part of your body at the moment is your motor mouth. He even said your penis sustained damage, though I don't really know where that comes from.'
'Case in point, How's your vagoo?' My good old motor mouth. So great for ruining a conversation.
'It's umm...' Lucy signalled with her finger to give her a moment, 'Yeah. It still works, and my reproductive organs are intact. Miraculously.'
'Oh. I see. So there's still hope?'
'Still hope for what?'
'Of you having babies with me?' I was going to say Kouta, but somehow my idiotic subconscious decided to do a devious little ad-lib and replaced it with me. Fuck my life.
Lucy's face turned a bright red, 'Don't...push it human...you may have saved my life...but you are not going to touch me...'
'Yeah.' Kouta piped up, 'I'm the only one who gets to have sex with her.'
'Lucky you. What's her size?'
Lucy literally growled, 'If you don't shut your fucking pie hole, I swear, when I get out of this bed-
'Calm down, everyone! Sheesh...' Mayu wrung her hands, ' We're going to be together for another two months, so can't we at least get along?'
'We are getting along.' Lucy said through gritted teeth, 'But this asshole is so insufferable-
'I am contrite.' I said in a mock eloquent voice.
Lucy glared at me with a 'are you kidding me' look.
Kouta face palmed himself.
Awkward silence number...ten I believe? It fell upon the room like a thick comforter.
An abrupt thought hit me. Yuka. Nobody in the room showed one trace of despair over the girl's death. It wouldn't have surprised me if she hadn't existed in the first place and merely manifested herself as my superego, lifting an insipid trope straight out of Fight Club. Oh dear...my life was starting to read like a bad crack fic. I decided to pop the question. My curiosity was too great. Fuck social etiquette and insensitivity, dammit- I wanted answers!
'So, guys...what about Yuka's funeral?'
Mayu's eyes glazed over. Nana put a hand over her mouth. Lucy slapped her forehead, effectively disconnecting the I.V. needle from her forearm.
Kouta asked innocently, 'Who's Yuka?'
'Tell him.' Lucy said offhandedly as she stuck the needle back into her arm.
Mayu leaned in close to my ear, ' We've...arranged for the psychiatric section of the hospital to erm...hypnotize him...Lucy assumed that it would be far too traumatic for him...you know, his family death toll up to three now?'
'Oooooohhhh...' I tried to nod my head like an obedient schoolchild, but succeeded only in eliciting more cracks in my damaged vertebrae.
'So...don't mention it again, okay? The doctors said the memory could be triggered easily during the first few weeks...'
'We've got to take him to regular sessions every week too...' Lucy murmured.
'What sessions? The sessions for my scratched cornea?'
'Yeah...those...' Lucy said delicately.
'Damn. Those sessions always make me feel so sleepy...'
'I would imagine.' She quipped.
Somehow, I had the feeling that Lucy arranged for the removal of Kouta's memories of Yuka for reasons other than simply wanting his psychological stability. From what I gathered at the short time I was at the Kaede house, there was considerable tension between them- possibly competition for Kouta's love? Damned If I know- cousin on cousin's simply okay in my books, but it was still a little creepy, considering the utterly intense lustful glances Yuka kept shooting Kouta at the dinner table and the subsequent murderous glances from Lucy. I mentally applauded Lucy for her theoretically devious deed. Bravo, ice queen, bravo.
I winked at Lucy.
To my surprise, she winked back.
Now we're on the same wavelength.
I noticed there was a T.V. perched on the corner of the ceiling.
The remote was right next to Lucy.
'Erm...why don't we watch a little bit of T.V., just to get the mind off things...'
'Good idea.' Lucy snatched the remote with her good hand and flicked it on.
'And in today's news, is god a cat? Citizens on the coast of Japan claim to have witnessed a blurred deity in the sky. According to all who witnessed the spectacle, it looked a lot like an elongated cat. This peculiar happening was followed by a lightning bolt striking a condom manufacturing plant called Kakuzawa and co. The seemingly divine intervention culminated in a strange chain reaction in which the plant seemingly exploded on contact with the lightning bolt instead of being set on fire. Very curious, Diane, very curious. What's your take on it?
Well, Tom- I'd have to say-
Lucy switched the channels and landed on Cartoon Network, which was currently televising an anime marathon.
'Yay! Anime!' Nana chirped happily.
Lucy looked at Kouta for approval.
'Animu is good.' He murmured.
And with that, she set down the remote control and subjected us to approximately ten hours of anime.
It's a cruel, cruel cruel summer...
THE END
Author's note: Apart from the cheap Deus Ex Machina ending, that wasn't so bad, was it? Honestly, how would you have gotten your characters out of a pickle like that, huh? Case in point, I have a horrible habit of placing my characters in impossible perils, causing me to wrack my brain for a way to rescue them. Honestly- I thought about everything- from a surprise rescue by Bando to Lucy melting herself in the process of using her full power. In the end, I decided to go with the crack fic tone of the story and put a little b-tard pizzazz in there- any other way would have been a little too serious. Anyways, please read review.