“Kiara!” Pin hollered. “What?” The hellhound looked back at her gremlin friend who was busy driving. “Get your damn head back inside before you lose it!” Pin pulled Kiara back into her seat. As their truck rounded a bend, Kiara clutched the bag she brought with her. The short hellhound’s eye flames burned bright with excitement. She wore her usual getup of a blue and white striped Argentina soccer jersey with skin-tight black spandex shorts. Her black hair fell on her shoulders in messy locks, “How much further?” Pin sighed in the driver’s seat, “We’re almost there. You keep asking, dammit,” She smirked. The gremlin’s seat, pedals, and wheel were all specially adjusted for her to drive. It was a 1973 El Camino in metallic green with GREMTECH plastered on the sides in big black letters over a golden gear with a pair of big fluffy gremlin ears. The gremlin wore jeans, a Gremtech shirt, and her long green hair was pulled back into a ponytail. The bed of the El Camino was full of tech. “Right, right,” The hellhound sighed, “I’ve just never been to ShortCon before. I guess I’m allowed now since the world all kinda grew around me.” “Huh– Oh, yeah. It’s like some sabbath spell went haywire,” Pin replied, “I’m glad you’re coming with me this year. I’ve never been a real seller at an event like this. I don’t know who else I would have brought.” “Why not Jack?” “I’m always worried about losing it if some sabbath bitch starts hitting on him,” The gremlin admitted, “Nothing to worry about with you here.” “Right,” The minute hellhound nodded, “I get it. Think the boys will be alright without us for a day or two?” “Yeah, they’re just gonna rewatch Gundam or something. Hey, there’s the expo hall,” Pin gestured to a large collection of buildings. The duo had driven three towns over to the convention for a weekend. “Finally!” Kiara breathed a sigh of relief, “I’m tired of being cooped up in this car.” “Hey!” With a huff, Pin got off the interstate, “The Gremobile is cozy…” “It is, you two did a good job fixing it up, but I just hate sitting in a car for hours.” “Right, right… Well, get ready to stretch your legs, I’m gonna need a hand getting set up.” Kiara slipped a blue Gremtech shirt over her jersey before putting the remainder of the shirts on the snap together shelves at the back of the booth. A giant banner with the Gremtech logo hung at the back of the booth, a table with shirts and various tech sat at the front where Pin stood on a little stool. A small TV played commercial-like demos of various tools the gremlin had designed to help the shorter monsters live comfortably during everyday life in a big world. “Done,” Kiara announced as she joined Pin at the front. “Thanks,” The gremlin sighed, trying to get all the nervousness out of her small body, “Only thing left to do is wait for the doors to open.” Kiara looked up and down their aisle. Across from them was a larger booth focused on selling dresses to shorter women. To the left was a product called the “Hubby Harness.” There was a man with a backpack on which had a platform placed on the middle of his back, some handles on the shoulders, and a place to attach a rope in case you fall. The hellhound, totally enamored, watched a little gnomish woman climb up on the step as the man knelt down and grabbed onto the handles. Using a mock shelf, she showed how easily she could grab things off tall shelves and even kiss her husband’s scalp. There was a second man with a harness on the front. There was a goblin tied up in the harness, her feet bound over her head and arms bound together. Had the two been naked, Kiara was sure they would be having sex. The goblin, most likely thinking this, was flush in the face and panting heavily. Kiara looked away and down to the next booth. At the far end there was a massive banner practically screaming “THE BIGGER AGENDA,” and “Meet Alexia Jonesis!” There was a single greasy and busty goblin in a two piece suit sitting with copies of a book all around her. On the other side was a booth with a familiar, a gremlin, and a witch unloading boxes full of what seemed to be bras. Kiara peered at a nearby sign, “B.O.O.B.S.? Enhance your game with our patented biosynthetic optical onii-chan bewitching stimulant?” “Don’t give those flatties any attention,” Pin seethed, “Fake ass boob wearers. I hate these Heretech ladies. Look,” She pointed as one of them put the bra over their clothes. With the press of a button, the breasts expanded, “Lying shits. But I guess the sabbath would have to lie to pull their precious onii-chans, huh?” The gremlin chuckled to herself. “I guess I can understand the boob issue, but what about their butts?” “Exactly! You know what our husbands say, right?” “Uh, big boob fills your hands, while a big butt fills your heart?” Kiara guessed. Pin paused then nodded, “Well, yeah, but Bob says that one. No, the thing where a girl can have a big butt and no boobs and look good, but a girl can’t look good with no butt and big boobs.” “Ah, right,” She changed topics quickly “So what are we selling?” “So, we’ve got these self-folding and rising stools,” She set out the step ladder, “Press here and it raises up,” Just like the gremlin said, the ladder got three feet taller, “Small and compact. Easy to take with you. Just like a shortstack,” She joked, “Over here, we’ve got these grabby arm things.” Kiara picked one up. It had a rectangular handle with a trigger and a robotic hand attached to a small metal pole. The hellhound pointed it at the sabbath booth next to them and pulled the trigger. The arm shot out, the pole part extending impossibly long and grabbed one of the B.O.O.B.S. units before it collapsed the pole on itself and brought the product back to them, “Sorry!” Kiara called as she pulled the trigger again and dumped the device on their table, “Uh, handy.” “These very fashionable ties too,” She put one on and yanked on it, “You can have your man wear it and you can tug and yank on it to bring him down to your level for a smooch without strangling him. And, if you’d rather be brought to his level, I have these plates,” She pointed to the ceiling where they hand hung a smooth blue mana salt marbled panel. Pin put on a dark leather harness and pressed a button. A magical blue rope stretched down from the ceiling and hooked onto the harness. With another button, she was raised five feet into the air, “And then you can kiss or bully him. I know I do both to Jack. Flusters the shit outta him.” Kiara took a turn putting the harness on and lifting herself, “I like it. I didn’t see this the last time I was over, did you just invent it?” Pin nodded, “Yeah. Like, it went into production stage last month. I use similar magic to move heavy equipment, like parts for your plane. There are a few other things, but these are the main ones for our fellow shorties. Like I’m selling those hand warmers and a few bottomless bags.” The ringing of a bell made the hellhound’s ears twitch. A cart was making the rounds through the aisles. A logo on the side said, ‘Shorty’s shortcakes (and other baked treats.)’ The woman pushing the cart was a chubby halfling dressed like a chef looking for buyers for her delicious smelling sweets. Kiara waved her down, “I’ll take two,” She said, handing over some copper coins for it. The two short cakes were covered in strawberries and cream. Kiara was quick to dig in, eating half of the delicious morsel in just a few moments as Pin put hers in her lunch box for later. The gremlin sipped a mimosa from one of a few flasks she kept in her bag. SKRRRPT! </I> A tearing noise made Pin perk up quickly. The Gremtech shirt that Kiara was wearing was tearing at the seams on the sides, “K-Kiara?” She stammered. The hellhound turned to her friend after downing some water, “Huh? Are you… shrinking?” She peered closely. She knew she was about a foot taller than the gremlin, but she felt nearly two feet taller. “No! Kiara–” Pin kept her voice down, trying to not draw any attention, “Shit, I think it's wearing off. Gah, why couldn’t Gordon have shelled out a little more!?” “What’s Gordon got to do with this?” The shirt tore off the hellhound. Thankfully, her Argentina jersey and spats grew with her. Kiara glanced around, “Everything </i> is shrinking!” Pin saw the sabbath heretech group glance over and start talking amongst themselves. The gremlin started to sweat before grabbing Kiara’s hand, “Come on!” She dragged the hellhound off to the side and into a door. An empty tiled bathroom with buzzing lights was a good place to hide, the gremlin thought. She pushed Kiara into a stall, “Just sit tight.” “Pin?” The hellhound had grown to her original six and a half foot height. She felt huge, maybe a little fat too. She fully filled out her clothes as she sat on the toilet lid, “What’s going on?” She whined. The gremlin shuddered, “Well…” She dug through her bag, pulling out an L shaped gadget with a trigger and a nozzle on the business end and a few dials on the top. “Don’t lie to me, Pin. I want you to tell me the truth. Gordon told me it happened the first time due to some research he helped you and Jack with that somehow rubbed off on me, and that stuff made it so I didn’t shrink when everything else did. What really happened? What does Gordon have to do with this?” Pin sighed and leaned against the locked door, “Men are weird, ya know?” “Pin, don’t dodge the question.” “I– Right. Well, I don’t know what was going through his head, but he wanted to help his mana along. You were already shrinking in height really slowly, and he wanted my help speeding it up. I dabble in magic, you know that, but I got my hands on a sabbath spell book. The only thing I was after was a shrinking spell. You don’t know how hard it was to find one that’d keep your assets.” “Did he pay you for this?” “Yeah. We had a deal. Some payment, some trade,” She admitted quietly. Kiara and Pin were both silent for a time, “Why would Gordon lie to me? Why did he want me short?” “He loves you a lot, Kiara,” Pin reminded her, “Everything he gets up to with you he does out of love, I’m sure. Remember when the two of you stole that ice cream truck? Or when he played along after you put him in the hospital and impersonated a doctor? All those times he bailed you out? Men are weird,” She reiterated, “Like, Jack wants to hold me, have me sit in his lap, tease me, man handle me. Then other days I’ve got him tied to the bed and I’m dressing up like a witch. Maybe Gordon just wanted to do the holding for a while?” “I just don’t know why he’d keep it a secret from me,” Kiara sighed. “Maybe he didn’t want to make you mad? Do you… want me to change you back?” Pin loaded a long aether crystal into the nozzle of her gadget, “I can sneak you out and get you a ride home if you don’t.” The hellhound looked down at her big fluffy paws before pulling off the torn up Gremtech shirt. She thought about being big, like when she met Gordon for the first time at that cookout. She could remember man handling him, picking him up, throwing him around, and overpowering him pretty easily. While she remembered enjoying it a lot, she could remember the feeling of frustration from her husband being unable to take charge. While being small, the tables had mostly turned. Gordon would pick her up and carry her around, which she definitely loved. While still stronger, with his size, her husband could overpower her sometimes. She felt like it was fair how it was now. Not to mention how much she liked being held. Kiara nodded, “Do it.” “R-really?” Pin perked up. “Yeah, change me back,” The hellhound decided, “If he wants it, then I want it. Gordon is a knucklehead, but holy hell do I love him.” “More than Argentina?” “Jeez, don’t make me pick… Yes, I love him more than Argentina,” She decided with a little smile. Pin nodded, “Got it. Close your eyes. You’ll be back to your short self soon.” “Thanks, Pin,” Like the gremlin said, after a few moments, the hellhound was back to her shorter form. Kiara stretched, “There we go… We better get back out there, huh?” Pin nodded, “Well, here. Take it,” She offered the hellhound the device. The gadget hummed as the aether crystal glowed a bright red, “If you want to change back, please use this.” Kiara nodded, looking over the knobs and dials as the two made their way back to their booth. When they got there, a few security guards were snooping around their booth as a familiar and baphomet from the Heretech booth stood by, “Excuse me,” Pin growled, “What do you think you’re doing?” “We had reports of a bigger on the premises. Do you two know anything?” The dwarven woman asked. Pin swore at her in dwarvish, “You think I’m harboring the leader of the Mootriarchy here? I’m not a damn bigger lover! Leave us in peace!” While her friend and the guards argued in dwarvish, Kiara leveled the device towards the all too smug baphomet and pressed the trigger in. With a mock gasp, Kiara shouted, “We’ve got a bigger here!” Pointing to the now five foot eight and curvy baphomet. An improvement in her eyes, but not to the legion of shorties now yelling at her and one another as the Heretech sabbath tried to defend themselves. Pin and Kiara watched the chaos together as the opening of the expo hall neared, “You didn’t have to do that, Kiara.” “If my husband wants me tall again, I’ll become tall. But until then, I’m happy,” She smiled softly, “And besides, anything to piss off the sabbath.” “Hell yeah, sister,” The two fist bumps and went back to preparing the booth.
Tag: Gremlin
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“Gimme the five eighths, big guy,” The gremlin barked from beneath the car she was working on. “Sure,” The man replied as he went to the tool bench. It took him a second to find it, but he quickly brought it back to the vehicle, “Here.” “Thanks. Nope,” She took only a moment to test the wrench’s size before handing it back, “Need the twenty one over thirty two.” “Pin…” Her husband sighed. “Just humor me, Jack,” She asked as she slid out on the skateboard, “I think we’re getting somewhere, I just need to tear this part out,” The gremlin was wearing a bright orange jumpsuit that was covered in oil and grease. Round goggles covered both of her orange eyes, and her messy green hair was pulled back into a bun. Jack nodded, “Got it. This thing just looks–” “Like a piece of shit. I know,” Pin finished his sentence as she was handed the wrench she wanted, “This baby is gonna be awesome once I get it working!” The two were in an old airplane hangar turned workshop. The large rounded building had three workbenches, each mid project that had been put on hold by the gremlin to work on the car she had gotten ahold of. Other things in the hangar were a plane owned by her friend, a half built mecha, a few cars that needed work, and boxes upon boxes of tools, parts, and other miscellaneous machinery. Pin backed up and admired the old car she had rescued was an old 1973 Chevrolet El Camino. The vehicle was long, only had two seats, but had a bed in it like a pickup truck despite looking more like a car. It had definitely seen better days. The blue paint was peeling, the windows all needed to be replaced, the interior was a mess, and the underside and engine both needed to be worked on heavily, “Well,” Jack started, “We still need to find a replacement for the center console. That plastic is all chewed up by something. A new bumper. I’m sure you can manufacture some new body parts for it. That hood is rusted through.” “I know, I know,” Pin reached down and picked up her pet rat as it scurried by. The rotund rodent sniffed the air and sat limp in her arm as she scratched its head, “But hey, I’ll let you paint it how you want. Maybe we’ll get a cool sparkly red wrap on it, maybe a matte green with the Gremtech logo for when we haul equipment on site,” She put the rat down and watched it scurry to where the two cats slept on a leather chair and joined them in the cuddle pile. “Past that, we still need to tear out the engine and replace it with a mana reactor,” Jack added, “At least you can do that quickly.” “Right. I’ve got some people looking for parts. I’ve got enough parts for a mana engine,” She replied, “And I’ve got my husband to help. You’ll paint it like those little people and tanks, right?” “Not exactly…” He scratched his head and frowned, “I’ve never painted a car. The last thing I want to do is mess up your passion project.” “Oh, shut up, you’re fine. We can always just strip the damn paint. Speaking of, grab the paint stripper and a brush and get to work on this shit,” Pin ordered as she got back on the skateboard and went under the vehicle. Jack sighed and put on his own dark blue jumpsuit and ran his fingers through his dark brown hair, “I hope this is all worth it.” “It will be! Stop being such a fucking downer!” Pin barked. Jack didn’t reply. Instead the man grabbed some trash bags and painters tape. He taped off the windows and covered them with a portion of trash bag before getting the powerful paint stripper painted on. After a few minutes, the paint and the stripper was scraped off, leaving the metal shell of the car bare. Admittedly, it wasn’t as rusted as he expected. As he started getting the tape off, a buzz rang out from the nearby tool bench, “Phone’s ringing,” Jack called to Pin. “Pick it up for me, would ya?” There was a metallic bang from under the car as Pin tossed a piece aside. Grabbing the phone, Jack answered it quickly, “Yo!” “Ay, Jack,” A gravelly female voice came through the phone, “It's Wik,” The pyrow greeted, “I called Pin’s phone, didn’t I? I wasn’t lookin’ to talk to your ugly mug,” The smile on her lips could easily be heard. Jack ignored the teasing but could practically smell the smoke miasma that always covered the demon and her husband, “You did. She’s–” There was another loud metal bang, “a little busy. What’s up?” “I was hoping to talk to her about whisky, but I’ll cut right to the chase. We found the car she’s looking for. Me an’ Bob spotted one in a yard a way outside of town on a bike ride– Tell Pin that the fixes she made are workin’ great, by the way. The car is just sittin’ out there, plopped down under a tree. Doesn’t look like it’s goin’ anywhere soon. I have the address, if you want it.” “Yeah, of course we do!” “Got a pen? Get ready to write this down.” Jack quickly wrote it down on his phone, “Thank you. I’ll tell Pin to give you a call later. Gotta go, I’m sure she’s gonna want to leave right away.” “No worries. Tell her I want my finders fee in dwarven cigars and liquor. See ya.” Jack put the phone down and made a mental note of that final mention, “Pin! We found one! Get your coat!” “Should be about two miles out then to the right,” Pin explained as she looked up from her GPS. “Got it,” Jack gripped the steering wheel as he rounded a bend in the countryside. The sunshine streamed through white fluffy clouds and made the fields of morning dew covered grass shine. Pin had changed into a wool lined flight jacket, a t-shirt, and jeans. Her emerald hair flowed free down her shoulders and back. Her goggles hung around her neck as she sipped orange juice and champagne from a jeweled flask, “What do ya think they’re doing with this thing just sitting in their yard?” “Dunno,” Jack shrugged, “Think they’ll part with it?” “They fuckin’ better,” Pin grunted as she put her drink away. The duo stared out their windows as they rounded another bend. A quaint little house surrounded by low wiring fencing was their destination. In the front of the house were numerous fruit trees, each one slowly growing its leaves back as the warmth of spring neared. The house was an off white, yellowish color. It was an older building, but well taken care of. Behind it was a red barn, the sounds of cows, chickens, goats, and sheep were all audible in the late morning sunshine. Pin pressed herself against her door, “There!” Off to the side of the building was her goal, an old ‘73 El Camino. The body of it had all been painted over, including the headlights and once chromed bumper. Bottles of wine, suns, and clouds had all been painted on it, “Oh, what the hell did they do to it?” “That’ll all come off, calm down,” Jack turned into the driveway. At one point in his life, he would have been terrified to go and talk to a stranger like this, but with Pin by his side, he felt emboldened as he coasted down the long, rocky driveway. As he pulled alongside the house, he saw the garage behind the house where a man stood working on a tractor. Jack could see the same concentration he usually made when working on machinery on the man's face. To the side of the barn were rows upon rows of grape vines and raised planters, “Looks like a real farm.” “Yeah, I’m gonna go talk to that guy,” Pin pushed her door open as the car came to a stop, “Oi! Tractor troubles?” The man looked over, “A gremlin? On a day like this, you’re more like an angel here to save me,” The man took off a glove and wiped his brow. He had short blonde hair and wore a tanktop and jeans. He was a little older than Jack, but not by many years, “Thing won’t get any power. Darn mana things. I miss gas and oil.” “Got it, let’s take a look-see. Oh, these John Deer things are pieces of shit,” Pin scoffed, “It’s like they built these to be a shitty time to work on. Let’s– Aha! Your engine valves are leaking. Look at these. Those rubber gaskets aren’t doing shit. Wish I had my damn tools,” Despite her grumbling, Pin got to work immediately. “The man calls you an angel and you start swearing,” Jack chuckled, “Sorry for just rolling up on your property.” “Ah, don’t worry. The wife loves company. What brings you both around here?” He extended his hand for a shake which Jack quickly reciprocated. The farmer’s grip was quite strong, “Name’s Kyle.” “Kyle? Jack,” He replied, “Well, we’re out here because of that,” With his thumb, he pointed at the old car that sat on cinder blocks. “That piece of junk? Come to think of it, there were two others who took a quick look at it before driving off,” Kyle shrugged. “Never thought that would be a hot ticket item.” The two men wandered over to it. The old car had no wheels and was only held up by some cinder blocks. In the back of the car were some potted plants, each one growing well despite the late winter and early spring cold. The entire car had been painted a mint green which had become the canvas for numerous spray paint drawings. Jack pulled the door open to find the interior was quite well maintained, like it hadn't been driven in decades, “How’d you end up with this?” Jack wondered. “Found it out in the barn when we bought the property. Knew we’d never fix it up, so Iris decided to make it a lawn ornament. Now it holds some of her plants.” “Iris?” Jack echoed. “The ol’ ball and chain. She should be back soon. Hey! Iris!” He shouted toward the back yard. “Be there in a second!” A feminine voice replied. Her accent was thick, Jack pinned it as some kind of mediterranean, it reminded him of his pal’s minotauran wife’s speech. Sure enough, the woman appeared shortly. With hips that swayed as she walked, her cloven feet clacking on the ground as she went. Her legs were covered in wine colored, curly hairs up to her waist. Said waist had a rope tied around it with gardening tools and a pan flute. Other than the rope, the only clothes she wore was a thick band covering her breasts of a deep purple color with the hem adorned with orange feathers. Her waist length, semi messy, purple hair flowed freely in the mid morning breeze and her plum colored eyes smiled as she spotted her visitor, “Good morning!” She adjusted the large basket she carried as she approached, “A friend of yours, Kyle?” Her large curled horns glistened in the sunshine. “Nah, they’re here about the car,” Kyle gestured to it. “Oh? What about it caught your eye?” Iris asked with a cheeky smile. Jack shrugged, “It looks like it's in good shape. Relatively,” He scratched his head, wishing his wife wasn’t preoccupied. Like an answer to his prayer, the tractor came to life with a quiet groan, “Hahaha!” The gremlin cackled as she drove the tractor around the house to where the group stood. “Well, looky there,” Kyle nodded in satisfaction, “The gremlin really is an angel!” Pin jumped down as she turned the tractor off, “Should last you a while. But you really should bring it by my shop to be serviced,” She grinned. “Thank you so much!” Iris grinned, “If I knew a mechanic was coming I would have prepared a meal!” “It's close enough to lunch for that, right?” Kyle asked, “Jack, this is Iris.” Jack nodded, “Nice to meet you. This is my wife, Pin.” “Heya,” Pin smiled, “So, uh, what happened to this beauty?” “How about we speak over lunch,” Iris offered, “I simply must pay you back for your work and I just harvested some nice looking greens, onions, and garlic!” “Stew, salad, and some steaks,” Kyle decided, “Will ya join us for lunch?” “Can’t talk about cars on an empty stomach,” The gremlin decided, “C’mon, Jack.” Jack slowly munched on the melt-in-your-mouth garlic buttered steak as Pin and Iris went back and forth in their conversation. Kyle glanced at the other man as he finished his salad. The two had bickered all lunch. Both sipped on wine that the satyr had made herself many springs ago, “Bullshit! No way is that center console and bumper worth that much to you!” Pin cried, “I fixed your damn tractor!” “And I made you a wonderful meal to repay you,” Iris indignantly stated, “You asked me my price and I gave it. I’m attached to it.” Pin’s fingers rapped on the hardwood table. The inside of their house was mostly normal. The living room had a long couch, a wide TV, and a few tables. The walls in the living room, kitchen, and dining room were all adorned with tapestries depicting Greek myths, shields, busts, swords, and paintings. Bottles of wine sat in a glass doored cabinet which decorative grape vines flowed off of a stone bust of a satyr, “Is there any mechanical work you need done? Replacement parts for the tractor?” “Money would be a lot more useful. I feel it might just need to be wholly replaced at this point.” Kyle wiped his mouth, “Ya two have been goin’ around and around for an hour.” “We can look somewhere else, Pin. This isn’t the only El Camino in the world,” Jack said, moving on to the last of his salad. The two women stared at their respective husbands. Neither had much of a will to back down. Kyle sighed, “How about ya play that game with her for it, Iris? We don’t need that stuff, really.” The satyr’s eyes lit up, “Oooh. Maybe that would do. Especially since you won’t play anymore.” “Huh?” Jack made a concerned face. “A game of chance, perhaps?” Pin smirked, “Or maybe a good old drinking game?” “One of dexterity,” The satyr corrected, “Come to the terrace.” All four rose from the table and moved to the back door. There was a large tiled and roofed area surrounding a fountain depicting a satyr pouring water from a large bottle. There were four ancient greek styled couches surrounding a tall bronze pole with a dish about halfway down. Kyle brought out a smooth, flat disk and balanced it on the top of the pole as Iris brought out two bottles of wine and four greek styled drinking containers that looked more like bowls to Pin. In the larger of the two, Iris poured the nicer of the two bottles into the larger cups while pouring the cheaper wine into the smaller cups, “The game is called kottabos. We lounge on these couches and take turns lobing wine-lees– that’s the yeast sediment from the brewing process for you non-brewers– at the target.” “The disk on the top,” Kyle added. “Right. You have to knock it down and have it crash into the disk halfway down.” “How much do we play to?” Pin quickly asked as she stripped her hoodie off. “Until the mad satyr decides the game is over,” Kyle scoffed. She smiled in response, “This will not be like the parties my kin would throw! I will not drive these two mad with endless drinking and games!” She laughed, “Though maybe we can get Pin to sacrifice Jack for favor from the gods!” Pin flashed a revolver from her bottomless bag as a humorless response. Jack sighed, “This feels like some weird, old school beer pong.” Iris, still smiling, adorned herself in a toga and tossed one to Pin, “Feel free to take some practice throws!” Pin took her position, laying on her side, propped up on one arm on a couch. She took the smaller cup full of wine-lees and flung the contents at the pole. The wild spray went everywhere, splashing on the ground. Jack refilled her cup every time. It took ten throws before she got it down, figuring out how to move her arm to keep the lees in a clump when she threw it. Pin nodded, “I guess I’m as ready as I can be.” “Don’t sound so disheartened,” Jack pat her arm, “We’ll figure something out if we don’t get these.” “First, a toast,” Iris raised the larger cup of wine and Pin did the same, both of them downing a few large gulps of wine, “I will go first,” Iris declared, “Quite a simple game, isn’t it? All about dexterity and–” The satyr’s throw went totally wide and splashed against the brick, “Ah.” Kyle refilled her cup and brought out the hose to clean the mess that would be made. Pin went next, lobbing a blob of sediment that went a little low. Iris missed again and then Pin managed to graze the disk on top. It shook but stayed atop the pole. Iris threw hers, hitting the disc and knocking it down, but failing to hit the disk halfway down the pole. Both of the mamano drank more wine as Kyle set it back up. Pin, now somewhat inebriated, felt at ease as she prepared another throw. She glanced at her husband before going back to the pole. She lobbed her shot, hitting the edge of the disk and causing it to fall again. Like the crash of cymbals, the brass disks collided before the top one fell to the ground, “Did I do it?” Pin asked. “Yup,” Iris sighed, but smiled about it, “Those parts you wanted are yours, Pin,” She yawned as she clenched her hands in victory, “Thanks for playing with me, I’d keep it going but I’m quite sleepy. It's a good afternoon for a nap.” “No problem,” Pin sighed with relief, “Feel free to bring that tractor over sometime for some service.” “And you are free to return, especially if you wish to humor me with another game!” She chuckled. Pin nodded, “Sure, hopefully we can have a bit more fun with it. Come on, big guy. Lets get that stuff and get out of here, we’ve got work to do!” In about half an hour, Pin and Jack removed the bumpers and some parts from the interior. Soon, the two took off, saying their goodbyes to a couple new friends, “They were nice,” Jack said as he pulled out of the driveway. “She was one of the least insane satyrs I’ve ever met,” Pin stared over the home brewed wine bottle she had been sent off with, “We’ll have to have them over along with the others sometime.”
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“This morning, the town woke up to the burnt remains of the beloved, yearly Christmas tree. We now go live to the city center where the story is developing. Molly?” “Thanks, Steve,” An elf woman smiled into the camera before gesturing behind her, “As you can see, I am downtown by the city center. The giant christmas tree that goes up every year has been burnt to a crisp! The reason? Unknown for now! Maybe the Grinch paid us a destructive visit?” The camera man followed the elf as she started up the steps toward where the tree stood. She stopped at the police tape where a few officers were poking around in the snow. A mass of ash and partially burnt branches sat on the pedestal where the tree had been just hours before, “As you can see from all this ash and the burnt remains, it seems like the tree has been burnt down. Was it on purpose? Or a freak accident? Now, the police have not revealed much information as of now, but they did tell me they have spoken to some of the suspects. No arrests have been made. Once we have more information, we will let you know, Steve.” “Thanks, Molly. Such a shame this happened so close to Christmas…” The screen went dark as Kiara pressed the power button. The hellhound’s eye fire went low as her frown deepened. She had seen that tree last night while out shopping with her friends. They even took a picture in front of it. Kiara pulled up the group chat to see the picture they had taken. Pin, a gremlin and her best friend, was in the front holding up two peace signs on her hands. Kiara was behind her with her hands on her shorter friend’s shoulders. Next was Wiktoria, the dark skinned pyrow with glowing piercings and short white hair. Then was Camellia, a taller yeti in a big fluffy coat. Lastly was Angie, a massive minotaur in a plaid coat with her black and cream hair pulled back. The five were all standing in a line from shortest to tallest. “Kiara?” Her husband called, rousing her from the stupor and depression. “Yes?” The hellhound’s tail wagged slowly as she got up, quickly going in for a hug with her man. Gordon froze as the hellhound appeared from the couch and nearly tackled him to the ground. Her big fluffy, and surprisingly strong, hands pulled him close. The shorter hellhound, standing at about four-foot-eight inches, buried her face in his chest. Gordon hugged her with one hand and ran the other across her scalp and down the back of her head slowly, “Good morning to you too,” He chuckled, “Everything okay?” “Something happened to the big tree…” The hound whined, “The one by the mall.” “Ah,” Gordon sighed, “I saw that this morning. Are you sure your friends didn’t have anything to do with it?” He joked. Kiara released him and put her hands on her hips, “They would never burn that tree down!” “Not even Pin or Wiktoria?” “Pin would never do that! She’s too nice for that!” Gordon did his best to hide the grimace he made, “And Wik put her cigarettes out responsibly. At least when I was looking. But there’s no way she’d commit arson on this scale.” “Well…” Gordon gave her a sheepish glance before stepping over to the kitchen to put a pan of milk on the stove and turn it on. “What?” “Jack and Bob both told me that the police arrived at their houses…” Gordon frowned. “What!?” Kiara gasped, “They really can’t think they did it, can they?” Gordon grabbed a couple of mugs and some coco mix, “I don’t know. Jack didn’t say much, but Wiktoria was allegedly involved in that fire a few months back.” “That was never proven!” “Plus you all were there last night and I’m sure they saw you on CCTV.” Kiara, without really thinking about it, grabbed the kettle as it began to whistle. She poured some heavy cream into the milk along with some vanilla extract and brown sugar. Next was the hot chocolate mix that she began to whisk together, “I need to go see my friends today. I know you said you wanted to do a bit of grocery shopping together, but you can handle it, right?” “Mmm…” Gordon didn’t let his disappointment show on his face, “I can.” “I’ll make it up to you tonight, I promise,” The hellhound gave her husband a big smile before pouring the hot chocolate into two travel mugs and topped them with shredded chocolate and marshmallows. She stood on her tippy toes, her claws digging into the wooden floor before kissing her man on his beard-covered cheeks, “See you tonight,” Kiara scooped up a few little boxes she decorated herself and threw them in a bag before grabbing her drink and her keys. After throwing her coat on, she was out the door. Kiara’s pickup truck coasted down the snowy road. Her short trip through the suburbs and past the houses and playing children felt a little more gray than usual. To the hellhound, it felt like the whole town’s Christmas spirit was down from the disappearance of the big tree. The sight of that pile of ashes wouldn’t leave her mind. She needed to get to the bottom of all this, for her own sake. The drive concluded in front of a snow covered home. Snow caked the driveway and path up to the door. The garage door was open past a frozen over little car. Kiara parked next to the sidewalk on the street and hopped out, hot coco in one hand and a little present in the other. The sounds of heavy metal came from the open garage. A slapped together, mishmash of speakers attached to an old sound system played classic metal. A torn up leather sofa sat at the back of the garage with a workbench and some storage boxes nearby. The hellound’s nose scrunched up as the scent of cigarette smoke hit her nose, “Wiktoria?” The ashen skinned hound woman called. A pyrow stood in the garage, wiping a microfiber cloth across the glossy black and blue-flame painted body of an old Harley Motorcycle. Her blue-flaming tail flicked back and forth with her black and blue wings tucked behind her back. She wore a torn up bomber jacket-- olive green over a tight black hoodie. A lit cigarette hung from her lips, the orange glow of the tip matching her hot orange glowing facial piercings. She ran her fingers through her white, blue striped hair, “Huh? Oh! Kiara, what’aya doin’ in my neck a’ tha woods?” “Firstly, Merry Christmas,” She offered the pyrow the present. “A gift for me? Ya shouldn’t have!” Wiktoria grinned as she put it on the work bench, “Some a’ya famous bakin’?” “Yup!” Kiara’s tail wagged happily, “A nice batch of cookies for you and Bob. Speaking of, where is the guy?” “Eh, well… rode hard an’ put away wet, let’s say,” The pyrow grinned mischievously after blowing a puff of smoke in the shape of a heart, “I can get ‘im if ya want. He should be decent enough.” Kiara shook her head, “No, I just needed to talk to you. Um, Gordon told me you had a visit…” “From the coppers. Yeah,” The pyrow sighed as she collapsed onto her couch. The old leather crunched beneath her, “Look, I got a little excited last America day and set off our own, private firework show at Pin’s place. Look, that old vineyard needed to be burnt down. Shit was an eyesore. We put it out anyway, I know. But now I’m suspect number one every time there's a fire. Ya know, ignore the actual fire spirit who lives across town.” Kiara paused for a few moments, mulling it over as Wiktoria grabbed a black electric guitar with a scratched up blue pickguard covered in band stickers. The pyrow played along with the song blaring from the speakers, “Well, I don’t think you did it,” The hellhound decided, “I doubt Pin did either, but I should go talk to her.” “Trying to figure out who dunnit?” “I don’t know… I just want peace of mind, I guess,” The hound’s eyes burned dimly, almost merely a tiny, smoldering flame, “Did you see anything weird when we were at the tree?” “Not really. I was too busy horsing around with Angie,” Wiktoria fiddled with the knobs on her guitar before setting it on the couch, “Lemme come with ya. I need somethin’ to do today and I wanna check on that engine I left Pin.” Kiara shrugged, “Alright, come on then.” Wiktoria fiddled with her box of cigarettes. She flipped the top open and held one between her fingers before sliding the box back into her breast pocket, “You know I don’t like that stink. Especially not in my truck,” The hellhound warned with a stern look. “Sheesh, I know, lil’ doggy,” She gave the hound an eye roll, “Just gotta hold somethin’ between my fingers. Dunno whatta do with my hands.” “Don’t know what to do without your man’s bone to hold, eh?” Both girls chuckled at the crass joke. Their drive took them to the countryside past rolling white hills and snow covered trees. Farms, orchards, and the aforementioned vineyard all passed by in the windows. Wiktoria spun the cigarette between her fingers idly as Kiara’s tail thumped along to the pop music that softly played through the radio. Wiktoria didn’t really get pop music. A lot of it sounded the same to her. She missed the blaring metal in her garage. Kiara turned off the road and onto a cleared gravel driveway. The pickup rumbled as it drove across the rough stones before coming to a stop next to a house. It was a small, one floor house, at least smaller than the ones Kiara and Wiktoria lived in. To make up for that size, a large, snow covered airplane hangar dominated the field behind the home, “Ugh, what an eyesore,” Wiktoria grumbled, “Ya think Pin is compensating?” “You know that hangar is full right? That’s why all these tractors are outside,” Kiara smirked as she pulled up next to another pickup truck. “Looks like Angie’s truck,” Wiktoria pointed out as she stepped out of the vehicle, “How the hell do they remove so much snow?” She saw a path cleared from the house’s back door to the hangar along with some area in front of the hangar’s big door. A man weilding a shovel with a big metal tube strapped to it with a glowing box by the handle glanced around the grounds. With a nod, he scooped up a pile of snow which caused a bright stream of flames to shoot from the tube. The man continued to melt snow with the shovel-flamethrower combo as the two girls watched in shock, “Now we’re talkin’!” Wiktoria cheered before dashing over to him, “Mornin’ Jack.” “Hm?” He pulled his hood and welding goggled off to reveal short black hair and a stubble covered chin, “Oh, hey you two. No one told me you’d be coming over.” “It’s kind of an impromptu visit,” Wiktoria snatched the shovel from him as his guard was lowered. He opened his mouth to speak but just shook his head as she used the pilot flame to light a cigarette. “Good morning, Jack,” Kiara came at the man from behind and gave him a quick hug, “Sorry for dropping in on you.” “Not a problem. I’m sure you can guess where Pin is,” He jabbed a thumb over at the hangar, “Working all day even when it's almost Christmas time.” “She’s a workaholic. You knew that when you got into this,” The hellhound snickered as she made her way over to the workshop. “I was more worried about her rampant dwarven alcoholism.” “So what’s with the flamethrower, man?” Wiktoria nudged Jack a little too hard in the ribs. He grunted, “Pin built it since we can’t be assed to shovel all this white bullshit,” He snatched it back from her, “Check it out,” He put the shovel in front of him and began to walk, the head of the shovel scraping along the ground. As the head of the shovel hit the snow, the flames shot out and Jack was able to melt a line of snow in front of him as he went, “Pretty simple, really.” “I gotta get my hands on one of those,” Wiktoria decided with a grin as she puffed on her cigarette. Jack held it defensibly now, “Go talk to the wife,” He led the two into the hangar, still clutching the shovel. The scent of oil, salt, booze, and smoke all hung in the air. There were work benches covered in projects, each in various states of completion. A mint green jeep sat nearby, past that was a red tractor, and a long looking vehicle covered in a tarp. Beyond those were parts and pieces of Pin’s life's work, a fully completed head of a large mech design she had fallen in love with. Near it was the beginning of a body hung up on the ceiling along with a foot and hand. The dim mono-eye of the mech made Wiktoria shudder. In the main staging area of the work stop was a white van, the hood was up and a chain held a mana reactor engine above it. Sparks and lights flew from beneath the vehicle. On the side of it was a logo: Happy Holistaur, it read. Above the simple all black bold lettering was a simple depiction of a cartoon minotaur or holstaur hugging a man overlaid on a bottle. Angie, wearing a ribbed white sweater and dark shorts, sat on a stool that looked way too small for her. “Hi, Angie!” Kiara greeted. “Hello, friends,” The minotaur smiled softly at them. She looked exhausted. Wiktoria puffed her cigarette, “Doin’ alright, moo tits?” Angie sighed, “I’ve barely slept since my van broke down after we hung out downtown. Been worried sick about the business. The mechanic was going to take way too long so I brought it here. Pushed it the whole way.” “Best mechanic in town,” Jack chuckled before slamming a hand on the van, “Pin! Guests!” The gremlin slid out from underneath the van, a welding torch in one hand, goggles on her face, and a scarf wrapped around her head. She pulled the goggles and scarf off before setting the welder down on the skateboard she had been laying on, “You should have given me a bit more warning, Jack,” She grunted. Standing at a whopping three and a half feet, the fierce, long, green, and messy-haired gremlin stood with her hands on her hips, glaring at her friends, “I’m not much to look at right now,” Her apron and jumpsuit were both covered in oil stains and burns, “Put that damn cig out, Wik.” “Whatever you say, short round,” She dropped it outside in the snow before stepping on it. Pin took a deep breath, “Alright. What’s goin’ on?” She pulled her gloves off and dumped them on the board. “Firstly, Merry Christmas, bestie,” With a fast wagging tail, Kiara gave the gremlin a little box, “And for you, Angie.” “Thanks,” The cow’s tail flicked as her tired smile got a little wider. Jack looked over Pin’s shoulder as she tore the box open, “Oh! Cookies!” The gremlin exclaimed. “Yup! Enough for the both of you!” “You know we never can get enough of your work,” Jack’s eyes went wide as he looked at the cookies. The gremlin picked one up. Gingerbread cookies, each one with a smile, a post stamp mustache, a comb over, and a fancy looking military uniform, all painted on with dull colored frosting. Jack couldn’t help but notice one of the arms was raised in a very particular salute, “Is that…” “It’s Great Grandpapa Adolf!” The argentinian hound looked completely genuine with a smile on her face, “My hubby calls them ‘Hitlerbreadmen.’” Pin shrugged as she bit off the arm, “So why’d you guys come here? Not exactly down the street from you.” “Did ya burn down the big ol’ tree downtown?” Wiktoria asked as she examined the van’s engine. “Pfft,” Pin scoffed, “Hell no I didn’t! They think I’m involved because they found one of these by the tree!” Pin gave the box over to her man and went to a workbench. She snatched up a device familiar to everyone in the room. A brass disk with the Grem Tech logo in the center. The device was split into five parts. A center square with the logo of a wrench and shotgun crossed with the wording over them. The other four parts were near identical half circles. Turning the top one activated the device, making the left and right portions heat up, easily gripped in two hands. The bottom piece could adjust the heat, “Someone discarded it there. They think it might have been the cause but everyone in this county has bought at least one of them! It’s bullshit!” She grabbed a flask from her apron and drank a big swig of the liquor contained. “I get a lot of use out of mine,” Angie piped up as she pulled hers from her pocket. Her hand warmer was a larger, custom size, “Nice and toasty, every time I need it.” “I think I was using mine to light cigs,” Wiktoria smirked, “Did they ask you about it, Angie?” She moved to a dark workbench and flicked on a light to examine a motorcycle sized mana engine. She nodded in satisfaction at the gremlin’s dwarven design. Angular and efficient, just the design she had in mind for the bike. She gave the pyrow a look, “Yes. They did.” “What? You?” Pin scoffed, “What reason could they have? This town loves you.” “No idea,” Angie shrugged, “The feds could not link me to the second Great Chicago Fire four years ago or pnning me as the udderboss of Tortelini Crime Family. But they still think it was me.” Jack nodded slowly, “Ah…” “What’re ya up to, Kiara?’ Wiktoria asked as she joined the hound. The woman pulled the blue tarp off of the far vehicle revealing an old airplane. “Just checking in on my Focke-Wulf,” She replied. “Gordon shit himself when that was dropped off on your lawn,” Jack recalled. The German World War Two fighter was dark gray with a black iron cross painted on it. The propeller had been replaced, the engine swapped with a mana powered one, and the interior reupholstered. The machine guns, unfortunately, had to be removed, but Kiara had put her own flair on it with Hell’s Hound now painted on one of the wings. “When the fuck did you guys get a goddamn plane!?” Wiktoria was awestruck at the sight of it. Kiara’s tail wagged, “A gift from Great Grandpapa Adolf. I think.” “How could you be related to him? You’re not even German. We’re all from the old world.” The hellhound gasped as if deeply offended, “Uh, excuse me,” She opened up her coat and lifted her sweater to reveal the Argentinian jersey beneath, “I am PROUDLY Argentinian.” “That’s not Germany!” “Wik,” Jack shook his head, “Argentina has a huge German population.” “And ‘Grandpa Adolf’ probably fled there,” Pin added, “Just drop it. Cover that back up, Kiara. Gotta keep it dry.” “Alright…” Her tail and flames drooped before replacing the tarp over the remodeled fighter plane. Angie looked at the group of much smaller monster girls and the one man, “Now what? Keep looking and trying to figure out who did it?” “That’s too hard,” Pin shrugged as she put her gloves back on, “If the cops can’t figure it out how can we? And don’t say magic, any of you. I’m the only one that can do some, and it doesn’t apply to shit like this. Big guy, can you go get me another drink?” “Sure, sure,” Jack nodded, “Water?” “Rum and Coke.” “Right… You’re lucky you can magic away kidney stones, Pin.” “Yeah, whatever,” The gremlin gave him a little smile, “What do you want to do, Kiara?” “I wanna save Christmas,” She said, her mind quickly made up, “This town has been so much more miserable and gray since the tree burnt down yesterday.” “Has it?” Pin mumbled, completely oblivious to the world outside her little building. “How do ya plan to do that?” Wiktoria slapped the head of a wrench into her palm before pointing it at the hellhound. “I don’t think we can find a new tree that big…” Angie chimed in, “Or the lights and garnish for it.” “Well… I’ll ask Santa. He should be able to help. I’m sure his place is loaded with Christmas trees!” “Oh come on, do we really…” Wiktoria shut up and cleared her throat as she saw Pin and Angie nodding in agreement, “How ya gonna get there? North pole is a ways away.” “The Focke-Wulf, of course. It should make it with the mana reactor engine, right, Pin?” The gremlin returned to the plane and tore the tarp back off, “Well. I can install a gravity dampener so we can load another mana reactor on the back and put in a second chair so I can work some machinery. Its a good thing that your man wanted that Short Stackifier device, otherwise we wouldn’t fit,” She continued to ramble and mark down changes that were needed. "The what?" Asked Kiara. "Nothing, just some technical jargon you wouldn't get." Pin dismissed. “Why do you need to go?” Angie huffed, “I could go.” “You don’t know how to navigate or use a device that’ll let you past their forcefield,” Pin reminded her as she started to grab a few aetheric crystals and wiring them to a strange brass satellite dish, "Plus I'd have to short stackify ya," The cow woman shuddered at the thought. “You’re telling me ya know where Santa is and know he has a big shield to protect his workshop?” Wiktoria scoffed at them as she fiddled with a power drill. “Of course. You know Maxine, right?” Pin asked as she put the satellite dish in a housing container before throwing it on a cart. She moved on to a set of two smaller chairs and had Kiara help her load it onto the cart. Next was a few panels of nobs, switches, and screens, “Well, Maxine got contracted to help set up the forcefield. And I was subcontracted to build a system to keep it running. Mister and Missus Claus have access to a very special mana that we all call ‘Christmas Spirit’ which we can channel into their generators. It’s also how all of Santa’s helpers can fly and deliver gifts at a crazy fast rate.” The three girls stared at Pin in shock, “How did you never tell me this!?” The hellhound demanded as she stomped a foot. “It's supposed to be a secret. So no telling.” “Weird to think about you getting a contract like that,” Angie whistled. “I’ve worked with Maxine before. She knows I’m more reliable than other goblinoids. It was mostly her design, to be honest, but I built the physical devices,” Pin loaded a few more devices onto the cart and wheeled it over, “Better finish your van first, Angie.” A sigh of relief escaped Angie’s lips, “Thank you. I didn’t want to say anything about it.” “Kiara, I’ll let you know when we’re ready. Oh, and be ready to pack some sandwiches.” “Got it. Hopefully we can get this done before Christmas.” “Sheesh, ya two don’t have much time then,” Wiktoria noted as she picked up a half finished device, the pipes steaming and gears slowly rotating. She decided better than to press a button or pull a trigger. “Put that the hell down,” Pin ordered as her husband reappeared, “Hey, thanks, big guy. Do me another favor and get the runway cleared. Take a line of heaters out.” Jack sighed and wheeled out a modified golf cart. On the back, he put two massive spools of small, aether crystal devices on holders, “Is that all, my compact queen? Or do you need me to feed your rat’s cage too?” He asked as he fed the devices into a robotic hand that moved to place it on the ground. “You know Tilde does that,” She grabbed his arm and pulled him down onto one knee. She kissed his cheek, nose, and softly placed one on his lips, “Thank you.” “No problem,” He gave a little smile before climbing into the cart and driving it out of the front. He pulled a lever as he went, causing the metal hand to place the small heating devices in neat rows up and down the runway. “Good for planting, and good for this,” Pin admired her own handywork, “Alright. Back to work. Feel free to hang out, girls. But I’ll have this van done before dinner.” “Thank you,” Angie smiled softly before sitting back down on the stool and fiddling with a phone that looked much too small for her. “We’d better go,” Wiktoria nudged Kiara, “I gotta make sure Bob wakes up and does his chores.” “And I gotta get cookin’ for Gordon,” Kiara nodded, “Have a good day you two, I’ll talk to you soon, Pin.” “See ya!” Pin was quickly back under the van and working on the bottom of it. Christmas Eve. Gordon drove his truck out to his best friend’s house. Kiara was bundled up in three coats, a scarf, and a hat to keep her dog ears warm, “You’re really going through with this?” The man asked. “I get to fly my plane and meet Santa. Why wouldn’t I?” She glanced back out at the warm looking morning sunshine. “I’m just worried you won’t make it back,” Gordon admitted with a sad whimper. The look in his eyes behind his glasses told Kiara just how worried he was, despite his attempts to hide it. Kiara gently took her husband’s hand in hers, “I have the hopes and dreams of this town on my side. And Christmas Spirit, German and dwarven engineering too! Just give me your faith, hubby.” “Alright, I’ll be praying for your safe return. We’re here,” Gordon’s tone was still full of doom and gloom as he pulled into the cleared driveway. He pulled up along the runway where Jack and Tilde, the automaton, were pushing the plane into position. Pin had a clipboard in hand, checking off tasks with a green pen, “Food, water, some tunes…” She mumbled to herself, “A quick smooch,” She grabbed her husband’s hand and pulled him in for a kiss, “Should be everything.” With a sigh, Jack folded his arms, “Are you sure?” “She has quadruple checked now. Including four kisses,” Tilde interjected as she moved the boarding staircase into position. The long runway was littered with brass devices that glowed in the morning sun. It was a good day for flying without any clouds in the sky. Jack relented, “Right. Your co-pilot is here.” “Pin!” Kiara hurried over, wearing a wool laced coat and carrying a shoulder bag, “How’d the conversion go?” “Well,” The over confident smirk on the gremlin’s face said it all, “I had to expand the cockpit a little, but we had the space. Most of the internals were gutted and swapped for lighter, smaller parts to allow for two larger mana engines. It’ll take us wherever we want to go and has the tech to get us there. Cloaking from radar, communications array, the works. Did you bring your part?” “It's not nearly as much as all the work you did, but yes, I did bring food as you requested. Freshly made this morning,” She proudly pat her shoulder bag, “Jerky to snack on, some biscuits with jam for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, and, if we don’t make it by dinner… more sandwiches.” “I wish I could eat that well today,” Jack jested as he handed Pin her flight jacket embroidered with ‘CYCLOPS SQUAD’ on the back, “Let’s get you two in the air, gotta make it before nightfall.” “Right,” Pin put on a warm, wool hat that her ears stuck through the flaps of. With Tilde’s help, she climbed into the rear facing seat and turned on the engines. Kiara was next. Tilde held her arm as the hellhound climbed the short staircase. She got into the pilot’s seat, feeling herself sink a little into the plush leather. She set her bag aside and looked back at Pin, watching her tie a flask of liquor with an elastic cable to the top glass, “Ready?” “Checking temps…” The gremlin mumbled, “Low, nominal, our radar jammer is running a little hot, but we should have that cooled when we get in the air. Energy is high, nearly at the max. Emergency las-cannon is also looking fine, as is our radio comms.” “We do have a weapon?” “It’s only got three shots, but you never know if a dragon will think our plane looks like a good treasure to take back to her lover,” Pin’s words rang with venom, “We won’t have my AA’s to scare her off.” “Uh, got it,” Kiara flipped on the propeller and checked her own systems, “Ready?” Pin looked out the window and waved at Jack and Tilde, “Yup. Let’s fly.” “On it,” The hellhound gave her husband a salute before easing the throttle. The plane took off down the runway, rumbling on its wheels. Kiara pulled back as the plane picked up enough speed. In a surprisingly smooth motion, the plane took to the air, easily turning north as it climbed higher and higher. Kiara put on a pair of sunglasses as the sun made the snow below brightly glow. Pin flipped on the jammer, causing magical energies that coalesced into a shimmering, clear sphere around the plane. With a satisfied nod, she leaned back, keeping an eye on her gauges and trackers, “We should be high enough to throw autopilot on. I’ll keep the jammer on until we clear town.” “Gotcha,” Kiara sighed, trying to pop her ears with a fake yawn as she flicked a switch on her left. She could feel the plane list gently to the right, “Is the autopilot working?” “Should be–” Pin gently rotated a knob and pulled a lever down, “The sensor for tilt is a little off, I’ll fix it,” After pulling off the panel in front of her, she fiddled with a few unmarked wires, suddenly causing the plane to adjust its tilt, “Good to go.” “Thanks,” Kiara put her hands in her lap, staring out at the morning horizon, “Breakfast time?” “Please,” Pin gladly took her share of food before settling in for a long trip, “I’ve got some cheese, craisins, and cashews if you want some.” “Glad to hear you eat just like your ‘big guy,’” Kiara teased, “I swear, you two need to pay for a chef or at least those meal delivery kits.” “Or put that chef utility into Tilde. She hasn’t been able to cook since we fixed her up. Her OS has crashed trying to cook. It's like that function is separate from everything else and just needs to be swapped,” Pin sighed before deciding to change topics, “Do you think they’ll find who burned that tree down?” “Who knows,” Kiara laid a napkin out on her lap before taking a bite of her food, “You sound like you’re ready to make a wild accusation.” “You know me so well,” The gremlin smirked, “I’m gonna accuse Angie’s husband of it this time.” “Just like every other time.” “He’s always out to get me in his short hating ways. He could have left that hand warmer there, easily. He knew we were out, he definitely had at least one of those, and their van broke down soon after. He could have done it, easily!” Pin explained. “Yeah,” Kiara shook her head with a sigh, and set down her food, “The only problem was that he was at a work party for Münder. Remember? Angie was talking about it when we were hanging out.” “Ah,” Pin folded her arms and stared at a monitor for a few moments, “Was that company anywhere near there?” “Pin,” The hellhound’s eye flames diminished as she groaned, “Just drop it. I don’t care who did it. I’m just gonna fix this. For all I know, one of us could have done it by accident.” Pin slouched, “Yeah…” The two went quiet for a time before Kiara turned on their radio. Through the static, she could hear some pop music and began fiddling with the dials. Soon, a song by some gravelly voiced goblin came on full of thinly veiled innuendos about getting picked up and plowed on every surface by a husband twice her height. Kiara mumbled along to the music, slightly shaking to and fro with the beat, “Jerky?” “Yeah, gimmie a few,” Pin reached back, also slowly getting into the fast beat of the music, “By Harrak’s holy beard, I can’t listen to this without thinking of my man.” “Pin,” Kiara put her head in her hands, “I really don’t need to hear about your wedding night. Again.” “Fine. Keep us on course, I’ll make sure everything’s good,” She frowned, “Jammer is still hot. I really hope I don’t need to drop it or something. Nothing to worry about now.” “Alright. Thanks,” Kiara brought the plane a little higher and turned the plane slightly, “Should be a direct course. I’ll re-route when we are near that airport to the north.” Pin nodded and fiddled with buttons and switches, “Good call. Last thing I want is for us to get noticed.” The flight continued with little issue. The clouds had rolled in over some of the most northern parts of the world. Darkness was here, the sun was hidden away this time of year, and a light snowfall fell upon the plane. The radio was off, only static came through when it was on. Kiara’s heart pounded, she felt like she was flying blind, but the screen told her to keep on going. Pin had headphones on as she fiddled with dials, “What happens if we hit this barrier?” The hound woman called back. “Well, the mana reactors die temporarily, we pass out, and we would hopefully be rescued from a fiery crash by the North Pole staff,” The nonchalance in the gremlin’s tone made Kiara nervous. “So how do we not hit it!?” “I’m working on it!” Pin hollered over the howling wind, “Where is it… we should be– aha! I can see the generators on this side.” Kiara saw the dome appear on her display. Through the darkness, the hound swore she could see something, “Two minutes till we hit it. Pin nodded, “Damn snow, blocking my comms. Shit,” She flicked a switch and Kiara saw a radar dish open up on the right wing, “Alright, gonna try to get on the same wavelength as it. Cloaking is off.” Kiara could feel herself clench up as her heart started to pound, “Minute and a half…” “I know, I know,” The gremlin fiddled with a dial, “Ugh, Holiday Spirit is on a weird wavelength. Working on it.” The hound’s eye flames started to die as she swallowed nervously, “Pin…” “I’m workin’ on it!” “Pin!” Kiara hollered as the lines on her display got closer and closer. “I know!” She cried back as she fiddled with the knob, “There! Press the button! The red one!” “The red one!?” Kiara gazed around the cabin in a panic before seeing a red button on the right light up with the words ‘PRESS ME’ on it. Kiara smashed it with her fist and recoiled as the dish shot out a green ray that struck the dome. As a hole was torn in it, the lights on the ground became visible in that section of shimmering air. A whole Christmas village and air strips glowed in red and green. “Hurry!” Pin shouted, halting Kiara’s awe filled stare, “The hole won’t stay open long!” She began to flip switches and the static of the radio came back on. Kiara gripped the flight controls with her fluffy digits and pushed them forward, urging the plane to go faster. The engines groaned, pushed to their limits as the wind made the wings shudder. The two held on for dear life as the plane sped up, the turbulence becoming uncomfortable, and the wind howling around them. Kiara tilted the plane as she saw the magical shield start to close, snaking her plane through the barrier and into the airspace above the North Pole. She sighed with relief, “Now what? Can we land?” “Working on it,” Pin grunted, “Access code, H-C-One-Two-Two-Five. Over.” A voice came through the radio, “Copy. Code accepted, but who are you? We don’t have anyone on the ledger for today.” “And how did you get past the shield?” Another voice barked. The gremlin cleared her throat, “Pin Ironstone and Kiara Boga. Sorry–” “We need to speak to Santa! Or Missus Clause? Or anyone else who can help!” Kiara chimed in, “Please!” The more harsh voice sighed, “I see…” She paused, “Pin, right? You worked on our security system. No wonder you managed to get in. Let me– You’ve been cleared. Please land on strip B, north or south.” Kiara looked down and saw a long runway light up bright green and red. With surprising skill, she easily circled around and brought the plane down gently, landing on the runway with the tires screeching as the plane slowly came to a stop near a set of long hangars. A few short elves came out of the open door, running past rows upon rows of red sleighs. The two women used red, glowing lights to direct them off the runway and onto a little patch of concrete. Kiara slid the glass of the plane off and looked around as a little set of stairs was brought over by a centaur. Like Kiara had seen from the air, there was a big village of cabins and even a grocery store off to the east side of the area. In the center was a giant workshop, covered in cheery Christmas lights. Then on the west side, dominating a large part of the grounds, was a surprisingly large airport. There were four hangars, the biggest of the four housed a 747, and the other ones had numerous red sleighs that were being checked and double checked by Santa’s engineers. The two elves looked over Kiara’s plane as the hellhound and gremlin disembarked, very glad to be able to stretch their legs, “We’ll take good care of her,” The elves said as they and the centaur began to push it towards the hangar. “Over here!” A gruff woman called. A tall salamander woman with long crimson hair and tanned skin in three layers of coats waved the girls over, “The boss wants to talk to you.” “The boss?” Pin cocked her head. “The boss!” Kiara gasped excitedly, “Santa!” “Don’t look too excited,” The sword carrying salamander smirked, “The big man himself is real busy. Always is. Missus Claus is our admin. Come on,” Kiara nodded and quickly followed the woman. Pin glanced over her shoulder at their plane then dashed to catch up, “I’m Noel, captain of the guard here. I know the gremlin is Pin, so you must be Kiara.” “Yes I am,” Kiara was beaming, “You really work at the North Pole? Does everyone here?” “I work here year round in my security duties. You would not believe how many people try to come here. Thankfully the shield your friend made knocks them out and we can place them somewhere else. And before you ask, no, not everyone here works here year round. Various contractors like aviators and centaur-like girls to pilot the sleighs, we have various builders come in to help with whatever the elves here can’t build, magically inclined girls to help channel Christmas Spirit, and various other ones. There’s a lot more that goes into this operation than you know,” Noel explained as she shivered from the biting cold. Despite how cold she seemed, there were tall metal heaters dotted around, each one making the arctic weather much more tolerable to Kiara, “I have to ask, why did you two make the trek out here in that old plane? The reason has got to be pretty important, doesn't it?” “I’m here to save Christmas for my town,” She announced, “The Spirit of Christmas is dying after someone burnt down the town’s tree.” “Ah. Arson. We’d have someone’s head for doing that here,” Noel scowled, “Not that we have a lack of festive trees.” Just like she said, the three were surrounded by an abundance of evergreens lit up brightly with festive lights. Each one had its own personality, from different lights, whether they be red, green, gold, silver, or any combination and flashing or not, to the garlands and baubles and ornaments covering them from tip to trunk, “Any one of these would do…” Kiara scrunched her brow as she looked them over with deep scrutiny. “Why not just grab one with that hellhound strength?” Pin jested. Before Kiara could reply, Noel cleared her throat, “We’re here, ladies,” The hellhound and gremlin both stared up at an all wooden building positively glowing with Christmas lights. An elf came out the front of the building through a set of red double doors, “Kiara? Pin? You’re a little late but we can still squeeze you both in, come on, hurry up!” She started barking at the two as she pushed the glasses back up her pointy nose. Her pointed ears were flushed red, her business attire was a red suit jacket, a green tie, and a green skirt, both covered in candy cane print. The elf was somewhere between the height of Pin and Kiara, standing at about four-foot-four. Inside the building was a surprisingly modern waiting room with a small tree in the corner and a reception desk with an elf sorting mail. “Uh,” Kiara felt like she was rushing to keep up with the elf’s long strides. Pin was actually jogging to keep up, swearing under her breath. The elf grabbed a cup of coffee off the receptionist’s desk and led the two to an elevator, “In! In!” She barked. The two women hurried up and stepped in before the elf hit the top button, “What were you saying?” She gave Kiara a stern look as she impatiently tapped her foot. The elevator rumbled as it started to move up. “This is where you work?” Kiara mindlessly said, just trying to fill the air now. “No,” The elf rolled her eyes, “It's just a prop we bring in for visitors. Yes we work here. Do you have a problem with that?” “N-no. Of course not,” The hellhound folded her arms defensibly, “Um, what’s your name?” Kiara asked, trying to be polite. Pin smirked as she leaned against the side of the elevator. The elf slowly sipped her coffee, “Jaqueline. Jacky. Doesn’t matter. If you want to know what I do, I’m one of the assistants of our bosses here. Missus Claus, mostly,” Jacky drank more, “You’d be surprised how calm this side of the operation is this time of year. It’s all on the workshop and Santa now. We’re here,” Jacky took a deep breath before adjusting her outfit. Almost right after, the elevator dinged and the door slid open. The elf stepped out as soon as the opening was wide enough for her to get out. Kiara and Pin were right behind her. They stepped into a waiting room devoid of people, but there were plenty of plush red couches and oak chairs. A single set of double doors was the only other way out of the room. Jacky scurried over on her pumps and pushed one of the doors open on silent hinges, “Enter. She’s waiting.” “R-right,” Kiara suddenly felt her tail between her legs and the pounding of her heart in her ears. Pin nudged her, “Kiara? Come on, we’ve come this far,” The gremlin was obviously rather nervous as well. “Well?” Jackie tapped her foot impatiently, the sound echoing through the large room, “She does not have all night.” “Calm down, Jaqueline,” A kind, older woman scolded gently from within the room, “Come here, dears. I am sure you wish to return home before morning.” Kiara felt a surge of confidence course through her. The two stepped across the middle of the room, out of the dim entry room and into a brightly lit office. It was surprisingly large with a massive, dark wooden desk in the middle, an elderly white horn sitting behind it. The woman wore a festive red coat with white fluff trim. She brushed her long, white hair over her shoulders and pushed her reading glasses up the bridge of her nose, “No need to look like wee babs being handed to a mall santa for the first time,” She chuckled, “Kiara, Pin, how good to finally see you in person,” Kiara quickly looked around. In the corner was a Christmas tree covered in baubles, a dusty ping pong table folded up and pushed into a corner, a fully stocked book shelf, rows upon rows of file cabinets, and a big, framed painting of Mister Claus and this white horn together on the wall. “It's… nice to see you too,” Kiara approached the desk and climbed onto one of the matching stools with a red pillow atop it. Pin did the same, “Missus Claus, right?” “How rude of me,” The white horn’s smile was infectious, making Kiara feel at ease almost instantly, “Yes, I am Missus Claus, wife of Santa Claus. Now then, how can I help you both? It must be important for you to fly all the way here.” The hellhound glanced at her gremlin friend. Pin glanced back and nodded quickly. Despite feeling somewhat at ease, she found it a little hard to find the words, “Well… I wanted to try and save Christmas for my town. We had a big tree in the middle of town, a Christmas tree. It completely burnt down a few days ago, and it was never replaced. I feel like there is a cloud of gloom over the town and I really want to fix it.” “Ah,” Missus Claus nodded and rubbed her chin. She took her glasses off and stood, “I know the gloom you must be feeling all too well. I think this may be an easy fix. Is there anything else you need? Or is that really all you two came out here for?” Kiara scratched her ear, “Um, that was it for me… Pin?” The gremlin shrugged, “Some toys for my pet rat? An electric blanket for my husband? Cat food?” She sighed, “I can’t think of anything as selfless as Kiara’s wish here. I guess a request to not put us on the naughty list.” Missus Claus chuckled to herself, “Is that all? You could have called for all these requests, especially yours, Kiara,” The white horn stood and stretched her legs, “How about we send you two home? It's close to Christmas day and you have family to return to.” “Agreed, you need to rest, Missus Claus,” Jackie piped up from where she stood by the door, “You’re much too busy to have uninvited visitors like this.” “Enough, Jackie,” The older woman smiled, “I love guests. Hopefully the next time we have enough time to sit down for tea and cookies. But the day is late. Come along,” Missus Claus gestured for the three to follow. Through the waiting room and down the elevator they went. Through the reception area and back out into the snow. The precipitation had lessened, making it easier to trek across the freshly cleared grounds to the hangar. Sitting out on runway B was the girls’ plane, now decorated in sparkling Christmas lights. A pair of elves gave Missus Claus a thumbs up before hurrying back to the hangars, “Ah, here they come,” Missus Claus turned as she saw another, much younger white horn with a shining red nose. The white horn carried a brown burlap sack over and gently placed it next to the plane. “Rudolph,” Kiara whispered to Pin excitedly. “Yeah, I’ve seen the movie, dummy,” The gremlin rolled her eyes. “Here, dears,” Missus Claus offered them the sack, “Take this. Save our workers two stops. And this,” Jackie offered the duo a small cube shaped present wrapped in green wrapping paper covered with printed on red baubles, “Open it when you get to the remnants of your tree. But get there before Christmas day or it will be too late.” “Before–” Pin sputtered, “That only leaves us five hours! We’ll never make it!” Kiara saw the sparkle in the white horn’s eyes, “We can make it,” She said confidently, “Come on!” The hellhound took the small sack with her and climbed into the plane. Pin took the smaller present and followed her in. “Thanks for visiting!” Missus Claus waved to the two, “Make sure you give us a call before you visit next time!” “Got it!” Kiara buckled herself in. She looked around, seeing that the interior looked the same except for one, peppermint candy colored button. Pin scrunched her brow at a new gauge. ‘SPIRIT’ was all it said. When the plane rumbled to life, the gauge was fully on ‘F’ for full, “Looks like we’re good to go!” Pin hollered over the engine. Kiara eyed the new button, “Good here too! Taking off! Thanks again!” “Bye girls!” Missus Claus waved again as the plane began to speed down the runway. Kiara eased up the controls, making the plane lift off. A hole in the shielding opened up to let them through. Soon after, a fleet of red sleighs each pulled by a single centaur, white horn, or similar mamano followed in behind the plane and fell into an arrow formation. Pin didn’t understand this magic much, but it was breathtaking to see the lit up sleighs next to them. Kiara saw the pilot of one of the sleighs make a hand sign pointing forward before grinning. She reached forward and pressed a button that made the sleigh speed off at breakneck speeds. One by one, the other sleighs did the same. The hellhound leaned forward, finger hovering over the button, “I hope this old girl holds up,” She muttered. “What?” Pin took hold of the previously empty flask as she heard a sloshing from it. Without another thought, she took a sip of the flask above her. She raised an eyebrow at the peppermint schnapps and nodded, “Good shit… We’ll make it, Kiara. Just keep it steady. Not like we can go as fast as them.” “I think we can!” With her claw, she carefully pressed the button. The plane rumbled for a few moments, “What did you do?” The gremlin shouted. “Uh… Christmas something something?” “You–” Pin was interrupted as the plane lurched forward. The machine groaned as it sped up, much higher than its usual top speeds. Kiara felt herself sink into her seat as a grin spread across her lips. Pin was thankful she had her seatbelt on as she was nearly thrown from her seat. With a grumble, she had more of the schnapps and just held on for the ride. It felt like no time at all before Kiara had returned to the airfield they had taken off from. With the second pressing of the button, the plane slowly returned to its usual speed. With Pin’s guidance, Kiara easily landed the plane, only bouncing off the runway a few times. The plane was hastily parked in the hangar before the two girls ran to Pin’s home. The gremlin burst in through the back door, “JACK!” She yelled. “What?” He groggily called back from the living room. A game on the TV was paused and a few empty bags of chips were strewn across the floor. The fat rat slept on a pile of chip bags while the two cats slept in Jack’s lap. Gordon was laid out on the couch and Jack was on the recliner, “Come on! Get up!” Kiara shook her husband awake, “We only have an hour!” “For what?” Gordon grumbled as he slowly sat up. “The tree! We have to go see the tree! Missus Claus said so!” Kiara frantically tried to get him up. Pin quickly moved both cats to their tall cat tower, “Jack! Get your car heated up!” Jack and Gordon gave one another looks. Despite their weariness, they knew better than to say no, “Glad I didn’t drink, huh?” Jack smirked as he stretched, “Get my keys and coat, Pin,” The gremlin dashed to the master bedroom and quickly returned with a thick coat and the keys. “Come on!” Kiara barked, her tail wagging at rapid speeds as her eyes burned with determination. Kiara carried both the burlap sack and the small present from Missus Claus outside as Pin led the way to her husband’s red car. The two girls climbed into the back seat as the men got up front. Jack quickly left their home and started down the road towards town. The roads were empty and thankfully clear of snow. The bends and long straights were only lit up by the speeding car’s brights. Gordon glanced at his wife in the back seat, “So you two made it? Did you meet Santa?” “We got to meet Missus Claus,” Kiara replied, “And Rudolph too! I wish we could have stayed longer, but we have a mission now, right from Missus Claus.” “Oh!” Pin grabbed the burlap sack, “What did she put in here…?” Pin looked the small bag over, “Magical of course, a bottomless bag for sure,” She determined with a quick examination, “Let’s see,” As she reached her hand in, she raised an eyebrow and pulled a present out. The shining red box was wrapped with a gold ribbon. The sticker on it read ‘KIARA.’ The gremlin dug through the rest, finding one for her, the two men, and even for her pet rat. Pin could tell by the sloshing of her gift that it had to be liquor. Though she wanted to tear it open, she put it back with a sigh, “Guess that’s what she meant by saving them a trip.” “And what’s in that other gift?” Jack asked as he looked at the one in Kiara’s hands through his rearview window. The hellhound’s clawed thumb tore a small line of the wrapping paper, “I don’t know. She said to open it when the time was right.” “My heart is racing,” Pin admitted, “This might be the most excited I’ve ever been for a gift. Think they stuffed a whole tree in there?” “Could be…” Kiara turned the box over in her hands. She could feel something shift inside as she moved it, “I don’t know much about magic.” The passengers all got quiet as the car rolled past the sushi joint on the edge of town, then down the overpass, the gas station, and then into the town proper. Taller buildings flanked both sides of the road, street lights cast the glow of yellow lights upon the street, and small banks of snow were piled on the sides of the road. Disregarding the ‘no parking’ sign, Jack pulled up next to the sidewalk and Kiara quickly disembarked from the warm car and into the freezing cold of the Christmas Eve night. Gordon, Jack, and Pin were right behind her, “We don’t have much time, Kiara.” The police tape was still there and was easily slashed through with Kiara’s claws. The black, charred tree still stood, slowly waving in the breeze. Kiara tore the present open, revealing a small cardboard box. Gordon leaned over and picked up the discarded wrapping, “Something wrong?” “Just… nervous,” The hellhound took a deep breath and grabbed the flap. As it opened, golden light streamed from the package. She reached in and brought out a golden, shimmering star. She turned it in her hands, “It's a tree topper. Gordon, get me up there, please!” “Uh,” Gordon looked at the tree, it wasn’t too high but he wasn’t sure how to do it, “Jack?” “I think the two of us can lift her high enough,” He nodded, “Just like cheerleading, right? Or gymnastics?” The hellhound smiled, “Too bad none of us have done those. Let’s do it.” Gordon and Jack knelt down, hands near the ground. Kiara clutched the shining star and looked around, thankful that the streets were empty. Pin stood nearby, arms folded with an amused expression on her face. The hellhound took a deep breath and nodded before stepping onto the hands, “Ready?” Gordon asked. Jack and Kiara nodded, “One, two, three!” With relative ease, Gordon and Jack lifted the hellhound up. One hand beneath her feet, lift and the other holding a fluffy ankle. Kiara stood on her tip toes and reached to the top of the tree, just missing the top of it and unable to reach it, “Dang it,” She whispered. The star shook, jumping out of her hands and leaping the final few inches onto the tree. The whole tree lit up in a blinding gold light that nearly knocked the three over. They quickly put Kaira down and stepped back, watching the tree’s transformation. First the wood returned to its natural state, the bark growing back in mere seconds, then the limbs and needles returned, shooting out like party streamers. The tree grew taller before numerous glimmering baubles of reds, greens, and gold grew on the limbs of the tree like fruit. Lastly, Christmas lights started snaking down the tree starting from the top. The lights glowed gold just like the star at the top. Kiara leaned against her husband, gripping his cold hand as she stared at the newly fixed tree. Just then, the town hall’s bell tolled as it ticked over to midnight, “Merry Christmas, hubby.” “A Merry Christmas to you too,” Gordon replied with a relieved sigh. “Ooop!” Pin squealed as Jack scooped her up into a princess carry. He rested his head on her and sighed wearily, “Yeah, yeah. I know you’re tired. It's way past your bedtime, big guy. Merry Christmas anyways, you big dummy.” “Merry Christmas,” He mumbled back before a yawn. Kiara giggled at the two, “Maybe we should hurry home, Pin.” “Agreed,” Pin sighed. “And now we go live to downtown, where the story of the Yuletide caper has taken a surprising turn. Molly?” “Thanks Steve,” The image on the TV showed a smiling elf in front of the glowing Christmas tree, “Like you said, this story has taken a very unexpected turn. It seems like someone, a good samaritan or a guilty arsonist, brought a new tree here last night. While footprints in the snow were found this morning, all cameras facing this public area mysteriously shut off around ten PM and didn’t turn back on until one AM. While the arson case has gone cold, the police will not be investigating this Christmas miracle. Back to you, Steve.” Pin changed channels before resting her head on her husband’s chest again. Discarded wrapping paper littered the floor. Two cats played with the discarded ribbon and a fat rat chewed on his new set of wooden blocks that Pin had built into a little house. The duo laid out on the couch, sipping peppermint schnapps, the stuff Santa had sent in her present, together and basking in the warmth of a lit fireplace. Jack played on his phone, eyeing the new model kits that both Santa and Pin had gotten him. Tilde sat nearby, playing with the cats. She had wanted more toys for them and she had gotten some from old Jolly Saint Nick. Angie sipped hot coco along with her husband, Max. The news had been cheerful and uplifting for once and Max wasn’t quoting short woman crime statistics. Angie had gotten a new crock pot from Santa and a few cases of 700 nitro express from her husband. The man had been given a nice fluffy wool sweater covered in cow print from his cow wife and some new pants from Santa. Bob rolled his eyes as Wiktoria strummed loudly on the new guitar he had gotten her. He turned off the news on account of not being able to hear it anyways. In his hands, he held a ‘Your Bitch for a Day’ coupon. His mind raced with the possibilities. Along with that, he had gotten some good liquor from Santa. Wiktoria had thrown the coal she had gotten into the fireplace already. Kiara and Gordon lounged on the couch in matching red and green pajamas. Both had hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls. Gordon had a new Argentina jersey laying across his legs, courtesy of his Argentinian hound wife. Kiara had gotten a thick cookbook from Santa, and a new assortment of spats from her husband in all kinds of patterns and colors, including Argentina colors, “Merry Christmas,” Kiara whispered as she set her drink and food aside and cuddled up to her husband. “Merry Christmas,” Gordon replied. In his hand he held a positive pregnancy test that he set aside to hold the hellhound in a snug hug.
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It was the end of October, the night of Halloween. The dark of evening was soon descending. The sounds of children going out trick-or-treating would soon fill the air along with house parties and delinquents pulling pranks. Candy, monsters, and terror would be in full force. Mamano loved Halloween. Whether they found it endearing that humans would dress up like them and still did or they found it a good excuse to dress up for fun, especially in the bedroom, most had a fun time with it– even the most cold-hearted of undead were enjoying themselves. It had even become such a big deal that most got the first of November off so people could stay up late. In a nice house on the west end of town, a little north of the river and that one weird store you always pass or see next to the pizza place you like, a few small machines were whirring on the floor of a living room. A gremlin stood over it with a tablet in her hands, the machine was automatically carving a face she had drawn into the pumpkin. Newspapers covered the floor to keep the carpet clean of pumpkin guts. The green haired gremlin’s ears twitched under her mauve witch hat as she smiled with delight, “Looks like it's working, just like I knew it would!” Pin was dressed up as a mauve-colored witch, the robes tightly fitting her small, plump body. The witch hat on her head had a wide brim and was almost comically too big for her. The automaton standing over her nodded, “Thankfully. You shipped the latest model with very little testing,” The automaton’s body was ivory white, her green eyes glowed, and she wore a black leotard with fake, black cat ears in her white hair, drawn on whiskers, and a black cat tail. “That’s because Jack was working on it, Tilde,” Pin smugly replied. She passed off the tablet to the robot, “Speaking of, where is my husband?” “Out to grab drinks for you and to grab his costume, remember?” The owner of the house, Gordon, reminded her. He was wearing a set of platemail with the helmet removed and a tabard in the colors of the argentina flag with the sun on the front, “Should be back soon.” “Right. You guys got that fruit punch, right?” The gremlin asked as she moved to the kitchen with the knight. “I think so. Kiara?” He called. The short hellhound standing on a stool turned. She had ‘spooky’ music playing from a phone nearby and was covered in loose wrappings like a mummy, “The juice?” She nodded, “In the garage fridge. Go get it, Gordon.” "Somethin’ smells good~” Pin sang as she climbed up on a chair nearby. A massive plastic tub had been set out for her. “Thanks! The horderves are coming’ along well. I’ll get some burgers and hotdogs going as soon as people start showing up!” The front door opened and closed as a man in a forest green cloak, an obviously fake and long, white beard, wig, and sunglasses walked in carrying four paper bags, “Got what you wanted,” He grunted, “You should have seen the looks the guy at the liquor store gave me. I thought he was gonna call the police.” At the same time, the knight returned loaded down with boxes of juice and soda, “A wizard again, Jack?” “Am I insulting your culture, old man?” He teased. “You know I’m not a wizard anymore,” Gordon frowned, “Kiara made sure of that.” “Pin never gave me the chance,” Jack snorted, “You her white knight?” “Stop fighting!” Kiara hollered from the kitchen, the flames in her dark eyes increasing as she glared around the corner, “Hubby, help me out over here.” “You too. Give me a hand, big guy,” Pin ordered as she opened a bottle of rum and poured it in the tub. Jack nodded and took his fake beard and wig off before cracking open the fruit punch and soda. "What time is everyone getting here?" Asked Gordon as he handed Jack another two-liter of soda. "Should be soon, it's quarter-til!" Kiara smiled widely, putting her finishing touches on the horderves, little 'halloweenies' her own take on pigs-in-a-blanket with spicy sausages made to look like ghosts with ketchup 'blood' on their lower halves. She finished poking eyes and slicing a mouth on the last one when the doorbell rang. “Oh!” Tilde leapt up from where she sat and grabbed the bowl of candy by the door. As she threw the door open, she expected ‘trick or treat’ but was faced with two awkward looking twenty-somethings. One was a rather tall man, while the other was a gargoyle about the same height as Tilde. Her athletic build was contrasted by the two enormous wing arms, whose large, clawed hands rested on her shoulders like a cape. The gargoyle, dressed like a classic vampire, cleared her throat, “Is Kiara here?” “Is that my girl I hear!?” The hellhound’s tail started wagging at mach speeds as she scurried to the door. Tilde stepped aside, allowing the two to enter as Kiara greeted them at the doorway, “Cathy!” Kiara hollered, almost leaping at her as she went in for a hug, “Look how big you are!” “I’ve been this big for four years, Kiara,” Cathy chuckled, “But it's good to see you. Is Gordon here?” “Of course I am,” He smiled as he stomped into the entryway, his armor clinking and clanking as he went, “I’d hug ya since it’s been a while since you went off to become a movie star, but I doubt I’d be good at it while wearing this shit." "Oh, I don't care, c'mere!" Cathy wrapped her arms around the knight with a smile. Gordon looked at her man beside them, "Hey, Owen. Keepin' her out of trouble?” He extended a gauntleted hand. “Evenin,’ Gordon, Kiara, as much as I can,” Owen shook Gordon's hand firmly but briefly. He was dressed as Frankenstein in a purple suit. He hadn’t shaved his bushy brown beard for the costume and his muscular arms were barely contained by the suit. It was apparent that Cathy had picked his outfit for him, “Nice place ya got here.” “Thank you, Owen. Come in, come in! Oh, that’s Tilde. She’s…” Kiara trailed off. “Fully autonomous, mana reactor powered, fully automatic daughter and weapons platform for companionship, protection, and emotional support. Tilde, automaton model eight,” The automaton bowed, “I am also a great dance partner.” “I… see,” Owen made a confused face before Cathy nudged him with her elbow. “Pin and Jack’s daughter,” Gordon added, “Well, kinda.” “Oh, they’re here already?” Cathy inquired as she removed her shoes and moved to the living room. She stood awestruck at the five machines automatically carving pumpkins. Owen nodded, “That’s where all those pumpkins out front came from. Doesn’t this kinda kill the point of it? Automatin’ it and all?” "Nonsense, just imagine how many kids'll be able to carve their perfect jack-o-lanterns!" Pin called from the kitchen. "Ya still gotta draw what ya want on it, so it isn't fully automated." Gordon explained. “And you can set them to randomize designs that you’ve entered into it, so you can still get slightly different pumpkins,” Jack explained further. "Pin!" Cathy cheered, heading further inside. Owen, Kiara and Gordon exchanged nods and followed the vampgoyle while Tilde went back to manning the candy bowl for any would-be trick-or-treaters. In the kitchen Jack and Pin were still mixing up the punch, Pin ladling up a sip every now and then before adding a little more alcohol, "Easy, Pin, there's a couple light-weights here." Jack warned with a smile. "I'm not that much of a light-weight!" Cathy protested. "I meant Gordon," Jack chuckled. "Yeah somehow the fattest guy in the room is the light-weight," Gordon grumbled, "It's like divine comedy." "Oh, quit your whining, not like you drink that much anyway," Kiara teased. Gordon nodded, "True. Just letting you know, Cathy, you get drunk and we'll never let you live it down." “I’ll keep that in mind. Good to see you, Pin,” Cathy gave the gremlin a wave, “And you’re Jack?” “Yes, ma’am. Gotta say, I’m a little star struck,” The robed man gave her a smile, “Is it true? About the last movie?” Cathy and Owen shot looks at one another, “Those first movies cost a helluva lot of money. Studio was over budget and as soon as they realized we might not get to make the third movie, the director vanished.” “That producer lady was probably borrowing money from a real life Junko family,” Cathy joked and nudged her husband with her elbow. “So what was gonna happen, anyways? I’m dying to know,” Jack inquired. “Only if you tell me what was going to happen with that abandoned book of yours, Jack,” Cathy challenged, making his face turn tomato red, “I was reading it between takes after Gordon here sent it to me when I was desperate for reading material. I can’t tell you how bored I was when that writer’s strike happened.” “Ah, Jesus,” Jack rubbed his face before moving to a cutting board, “Well, I assume you mean Stranger in a Strange Land, yeah?” He started slicing up citrus fruit and dumping it in the vat of alcohol. He glanced at Pin. “C’mon. Might as well empty your mind vault, big guy,” The gremlin encouraged as she opened the freezer and pulled out a bag of ice. Gordon nodded, “You and I can’t be the only two to know forever.” “Fine, fine,” Jack sighed, “Where did I stop? Tilde was fixed, the gang was looking for the big villain of the Black Hand group, right? They were headed to the dwarven keep. The keep was going to be overrun by those rat men, the gang would commandeer a steam tank or two and blast their way through. They’d meet up with one of Pin’s adoptive fathers, and activate a defense system using the box Pin was given by the sailor dwarf.” “So that box was important! I knew it!” Cathy pointed at Owen who rolled his eyes, clearly having heard many fan theories from the gargoyle. Gordon nodded, “I think after that it gets kinda fuzzy, right?” Jack shrugged and scooped up some jungle juice, making sure to get some lime slices in his cup, “Curtis maybe would have been able to call home through being on top of the mountain or whatever, had a heartfelt moment with his mom or what have you." "What happens to the dwarves?" Cathy asked. "They fight off the rat men with everyone's help, then they turn on the big plot device magic device. Curtis would then use it to find the key to the Maou’s prison. While the device is powering down, the bard would hop into the machine and find his mom using it. On the way to the keys location, they rescue her since shes being held as a slave in some high class human bar since she’s a musician. I think the reveal with her was that she had gotten a wish at some point and used it to wish to have a son." “And then?” Owen grunted as he got a drink for himself and his wife. He paused for a moment to eat one of the little hot dogs that Kiara prepared. “That’s really all I thought of,” Jack shrugged and hung his head, “Either the Black Hand was located under the human capital and they had to break in or something, or they had a compound they all broke into. A long running idea was Curtis would have to go alone and either shoot the villian in some kind of ‘oh, you’re no better’ ending, but I think Gordon told me to drop that crap. I can’t even recall what everyone would have asked for after they did save the Maou. Pin wanted money for her workshop, Joan wants to marry Eric, Rael gets healed, Rose gets her man, etcetera, etcetera,” Jack sighed and leaned against the counter, “Maybe would have cut when it came to Curtis to decide what he wanted. Sorry to disappoint you.” “No, I’m not disappointed,” Cathy smiled, “Thank you for sharing anyways. What are you and Gordon doing now, again? I haven’t had time to catch up.” Gordon’s eyes gleamed, “Just a little novel together.” “Oh yeah, having a pretty good time with it, to be honest,” Jack agreed, "Maybe we'll send you our first draft when it's finished, see what you think." "Oooh, now I can't wait!" The gargoyle cheered. "What about you? Gonna tell me how the last movie was supposed to go?" Jack asked the gargoyle. "Well, I did manage to speak to the screenwriter quite a bit about it, but it was always up in the air for how the director would… 'translate' it to his vision," She explained with a sigh, "Sometimes they'd disagree on things but ultimately the director would get his way. Did you know I was supposed to have a love interest in the first movie?" "You mean Alex Bones?" Pin wondered. "No, there was another one!" Jack snorted, "What? That's ridiculous!" "That's what the director said, 'Cathy shouldn't have a love interest! She should feel available for the lonely guy watching!' But eventually I managed to convince him to let Owen be my love interest. I didn't like the idea of being thought of as 'available,' not when I only just got married," Cathy smiled at her husband, "Had to talk him up quite a bit to allow it, but the other mamano put the pressure on and eventually it was allowed." Tilde grinned as wide as an automaton could, "Well that's great! How long have you been married?" "Oh, two or three years," The gargoyle smirked playfully. "Give or take," Owen added. "Well anyway, we had just finished shooting the scenes where Cathy defeated the nightgaunt when we ran out of money… I was supposed to have a big fight with Amber, or Amber's ghost, however you wanna look at it. Grandma Catherine would show up, help me one last time and get struck down by Amber for good!" "WHAT?! CATHERINE DIES?!" Jack hollered. "Not so loud!" Pin barked back. "Yeah, dude, spoilers!" Gordon jeered. "Sorry," Jack quickly quieted down. Cathy's smile widened as she thought of what was next. "So then that other wonderlander would have shown up to help me, oh, what was her name…?" "Fayette Alban Hopstead," Gordon answered, to Jack, Pin and Cathy's surprise. Kiara didn't seem the least bit shocked, "What? I liked the movies, too!" Cathy laughed, "Right, right. So, after I managed to kill Amber for good, the audience would have seen a bunch of flashbacks to her past with Jade and some other stuff, like I was reliving her life in a flash, in her final moments. I think I was supposed to have a conversation with her as well. The idea was that the nightgaunt and Amber's deal had backfired and I had actually absorbed Amber into my… consciousness or something like that." "That all sounds very… cerebral." Jack replied. "Yeah, the director seemed to have his cerebral all the way up his rectum," Gordon added before snorting at his own joke. "Ha, you have no idea," Cathy giggled, "Anyway, after that we got to Japan, the gang met up with Migi Junko and I was pitted to fight against other mamano in an underground wrestling deathmatch kinda deal. The idea was that Migi was going to prove that my genetics were superior, or some such nonsense by having me throttle the competition. It was kind of a crossover with that other movie the director did about wrestling." "Oh, Monster Mania?" Asked Gordon, this time no one was surprised. "Yeah, that's the one, I was fighting one of the main actresses for that one but we'd become friends, and the match ended in disaster when we refused to fight any longer. I was taken up to meet the true head of Junko where Migi was going to show off her other project. She was supposed to flaunt that weird portal machine she was working on. The story was gonna tie that loose end with the shoggoth baby being used as some kind of battery to power the thing, and when it opened it summoned… well, the mommy shog.” “Uh oh,” Was the unanimous response. “Yeah. So somehow I was supposed to banish it, or something with the machine would malfunction, or the entire Junko family was going to get sucked in, or all of the above. The director and the screenwriter couldn’t even decide on an ending before the movie got canned…” “Man… that would have been so cool,” Jack sighed, “I wish it could have happened. At least I know now.” “Horderves?” Kiara asked, changing subjects as she plated up the little hot dogs, “There’s soda in the fridge, grown up juice in that massive tub– Pin why couldn’t we drink beer or something normal?” “Beer is for chumps,” The gremlin grinned as she poured a mystery liquid from a rune covered flask into her cup of alcohol. Dwarvish hard liquor, Jack assumed, “And sports. Besides, this is a great party drink!” Kiara sighed as she started to plate up more snacks. A variety of chips were dumped into a few bowls, candy corn into another, and mixed candy into a massive one, “Well. The other guests should hopefully arrive soon. I’ll start hotdogs and burgers," Kiara said, pulling the patties out of the fridge first. "Here, let me help," Gordon offered, putting his gauntlets aside and taking the packages of meat off of the hellhound's hands. Kiara smiled and led him out to the backyard porch where the grill was, Owen deciding to follow after, leaving Cathy to mingle. The doorbell rang as soon as the grill had charcoal dumped in. Tilde grabbed the candy bowl again and hurried over. She opened the door and was face to face with a tall woman in a dark blue boiler suit and a hockey mask stained with fake blood, “Hi, Tilde,” The horned woman smiled behind the mask and spoke in a friendly voice. “Hello, Angie, please come in. Is your husband with you?” The cow-woman put her mask up on the top of her head and nodded. Her eight-foot tall stature forced her to duck down to come inside, being careful of her horns so they could clear the door frame, “Right behind me.” A much shorter man was quick to follow her in, being dragged along by the hand, “Hey,” He greeted, wearing a white jacket with a yellow scorpion on the back. “Hello, Max. You are welcome as well. May I ask what your costume is?” “Costume?” Max gave her a confused look. Tilde looked to Angie who shook her head, so the automaton decided not to press further. Pin was already on her second cup of jungle juice when she saw who had arrived. She nodded at Angie as the others exchanged greetings. As she saw Max, she poured an extra shot of her dwarven whisky into her juice, “Don’t start anything,” Jack whispered as she dumped a little into his cup. “Whaaaat? Me? Start anything with the self described sizeist?” The gremlin put on a fake smile before scowling, “He’s the one who makes allusions to pancakes as short stacks in my presence," She explained to Cathy who nodded, recognizing him from the few stories Pin had shared with her, "Why are you friends with this asshole?” The gremlin asked her man. Jack shrugged, “He’s based and his wife sends us free cheese wheels and butter,” Prompting Pin to shrug and nod in resignation. “Oh! Angie and Max are here!” Kiara practically sang as she spied her friends. She grabbed bags of buns and her husband grabbed condiments, “I forget, do you, uh, eat… beef? Is that weird?” Angie smiled as if she had heard this a million times, “I’ll take two burgers with extra cheese, please.” “Comin’ right up! Can you chop up some veggies, Jack? I think I know what everyone else wants,” The hellhound checked a paper in her pocket while Jack gave a thumbs up. The door opened again after a knock. A yeti covered in snow white fluff– more than usual at least, and a dark-skinned man dressed like a mountaineer with a big, fake orange beard both waved, “Looking a little out of season, you two,” Angie joked as she got herself a cup to drink. “I’m the adorable snow-woman from my favorite movie!” The yeti, Camellia explained. “She makes me watch Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer in July…” The man sighed, “The Abominable Snowman and I’m Yukon Cornelius.” "Oh, I love that movie!" Cathy cheered, coming from the kitchen to meet new faces. “How are you not melting in that, Mark?” Gordon scoffed as he headed back to the backyard. “I could say the same to you, Gordon.” “Cooling runes, thanks to yours truly. In both cases,” Pin proudly explained, “Helps Camellia stay cool when she comes down from the mountains too. Is that bed heater working well?” “Almost too well,” Mark plopped down on the couch with his ever cuddly and fluffy wife. The yeti grinned, “It keeps us nice and toasty when we can’t use the heaters!” “Good!” The gremlin nodded, “Who else is comin,’ Gordon?” “Bob and Wik, I think,” The armored man rubbed his chin. “No Liana and Barth? I already knew Boom and Meiya couldn’t…” Kiara’s tail drooped and the flames in her eyes turned to smoke plumes of disappointment. Max shrugged, “Dude’s got three or four kids. I’m sure they’re going trick-or-treating as a family.” “I hope they swing by. Their children are fun to babysit,” Tilde smiled, “What about that… Spider, you three talk to? Is he coming?” Gordon, Jack, and Max all exchanged looks, “He’s uh,” Gordon scratched his head. “Too secretive,” Jack continued as he found the words. “I don’t think any of us know his name and he won’t confirm nor deny if he’s married,” Max finished with a shrug. “I hope he has a good holiday anyway,” Angie smiled with Kiara, Tilde, and Camellia nodding in agreement. The automaton hurried back to the door as she heard a knock. Finally, the trick-or-treaters were out. Mamano and human children were all going door to door in search of free candy. Kiara quickly finished up more than enough burgers and hotdogs for everyone. Most sat around their big dining table or at chairs at the kitchen counter. Everyone was also quickly introduced to Cathy and Owen as well. Shortly after, the final group of guests arrived with the smell of smoke. Crowding with the others into the kitchen was Wiktoria dressed in a pretty revealing nun outfit covered in crosses with a miniskirt and thigh highs alongside her husband, Bob, in a black trench coat, matching black cowboy hat, brown pants and an off white button up, “Hey, all,” Wiktoria smirked. “Late as always,” Kiara offered them plates, “Snacks on the counter and non alcoholic drinks in the fridge. Help yourself to some dinner.” “Thanks,” Bob smiled, “Sorry we’re a bit late. She wouldn’t let me leave on time.” “What’s the fun in arriving on time? Besides, I needed a few more cigs since hosts don’t like smoking,” Wiktora gave a sly grin as she got herself a cup of jungle juice. “Have you met Cathy?” Jack asked. Bob shook his head, “Cathy, huh? Wait… you’re the Cathy!?” “The one and only!” Cathy proudly flexed her wing arms, “Nice to meet ya.” “Likewise. Wik, don’t drink too much of that,” Bob pleaded when he noticed her getting a full plastic cup of jungle juice, “I’m sure Pin mixed it.” “Pssh, chill out,” Wiktoria gave him a grin as she took a sip. Gordon frowned at the tanned demon’s attire, “A nun? Well, I shouldn’t even call it that.” “Oh? You upset over it, Gordon? Afraid I’m gonna turn Bobby-boy into some kinda devil worshiper?” The demon’s piercings seemed to glow even hotter as she got smug. Mark, without smirking, retorted, “He already is. You’ve got him worshiping your ass nightly, I’m sure.” “Mark!” Camellia hollered at her husband. Wiktora’s smug smirk just got even more smug. “We just want you to go church more, dear,” Kiara explained softly, “Anywho, it's movie night, isn’t it?” “Oh, what are we watching?” Owen asked as the group grabbed another drink or snack before heading to the living room. “Can we watch War in the Pocket?” Pin quickly asked as she excitedly went for her bottomless bag. “Oh, god, not more Gundam,” Max groaned, “I deal with that enough online with you nerds,” Mark nodded in agreement. “Gundam?” Cathy echoed with a confused look on her face. Gordon shook his head, “Don’t worry about it, Cathy. It's more of a Christmas movie.” “Christmas movie!?” Camellia perked up instantly as she sat on the floor. Mark put a hand on her shoulder, “Not tonight.” “It’s a Christmas movie like Die Hard is a Christmas movie…” Jack explained, "It's also six episodes long, not really movie length. “Ghostbusters?” Bob asked. “Not much a Halloween movie, but I’d watch it,” Wiktoria agreed. Angie shook her head, “Pass.” “Alright…” Gordon rubbed his chin. It didn’t feel late enough to put on a straight horror movie. He looked to his wife as he tried to think of something else. “How about this?” Kiara pulled a movie off the shelf. Cathy. The first movie in the unfinished story, “We can watch what movies we have and the lead actress herself can regale us in how it was supposed to end.” Eyes turned to Cathy, hopeful and excited. She turned to Owen, “Only if ya guys want actor’s commentary,” The man jested, “Though I don’t have much for the first movie.” “I know Cathy has a lot to say,” Gordon replied, “Got that right when she came home!” “Any objections?” Kiara asked. None raised their voice, “That settles it,” Quickly, the movie started up as everyone settled in. The night had wound down. Most had gone home, but Cathy was falling asleep leaning on her husband. Max and Angie had to leave after the first movie, Mark and Camellia were next, and Bob and Wiktoria had managed to the end of the Cathy movies. With weary eyes, the two had left with Bob almost dragging his totally sloshed wife out of the home leaving Kiara, Gordon, Cathy, Owen, Tilde, Pin, and Jack to watch Gordon’s Halloween favorite: The Thing. Without work the next day, the group decided to put on one last movie, Young Frankenstein to wind down. Cathy looked around, Owen was mostly attentively watching the movie and drinking the last of the jungle juice. Pin was passed out on Jack’s lap with his cloak wrapped around her. Tilde was in low power mode next to them, resting her head on his shoulder. Kiara and Gordon were awake with the man finishing up the last of his wife’s cooking. Cathy stretched and yawned, “Sleepy?” The hellhound chuckled. “A little… I don’t know if we’re good to drive,” The gargoyle admitted. “Take the guest bed,” Gordon offered, “It's still the same as last time you stayed over.” “What about them?” Owen grumbled. Jack’s head rose and he yawned, “No worries. We’re good here.” Kiara passed them a blanket and pillow from a chest in the corner, “Go on then, off to bed.” “Thanks Kiara,” Cathy stretched again as she stood. “Any time. You’re family here, Cathy. I’ll make something wonderful that’ll get rid of the hangover in the morning,” Kiara promised. Owen nodded, “Gonna need that…” He grumbled. The two headed to bed after seeing Jack put his head on Tilde’s lap with Pin still laying atop him. Owen was quick to strip and get in bed, snoring almost instantly as the weariness of a long night overtook him. Cathy had a bit more time as she climbed under the sheets, her mind wandering slowly. She was happy to be home, especially since seeing her family friends. Gordon was a long time friend, even helping her land her lead role. Kiara, as long as she had been with Gordon, was like a second mom. Honestly, she was like a mom for everyone. The gargoyle sighed, thinking about the unfinished third movie. Even if she had taken the time to explain it, she did feel a little unfulfilled. At least it now meant she had time to focus on family and friends, both new and old. As she started to sleep, she began to daydream about playing a role in a movie based on a book that Gordon and Jack had written.
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[A collaboration between IfTheArtistConsents (Minds Newgrounds) and I! He did the art for this little shitpost and helped me write it! Go check him out!
If you aren’t a fan of AVGN you might not get much out of this. You can check out an example of the game here and here]The video starts with the Grem poorly green screened onto skateboard and surfboard footage. She’s wearing a button up hawaiian shirt with her usual pens shoved in the breast pocket along with a pair of black sunglasses, “Woah, dudes, I didn’t see you there! I was just catching some gnarly and radical waves before you showed up!” The Grem pantomimed doing a trick along with the video, the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater point noise ringing out as she ‘landed’ the trick, “Wasn’t that radical!? TOTALLY 90’s BROS!” She gave the viewers the hang loose sign before totally beefing it on the skateboard. “AW FUCK- I mean BOGUS, DUDES- I mean, alright fuck this, I’m going back to videogames.” The Grem picked up her skateboard and went home, walking into her nerd room before sitting on the couch. “Remember back in the late 80s and 90s when everyone was into skateboarding and wearing neon colored bullshit? The market back then would have you believe that back then… skateboarding was the shit! They had all kinds of merchandise, boards - or decks or whatever, t-shirst, toys, videogames, fuckin’ little fingerboard techdecks which also had their own games, movies - did you know Don DeLuise played a skateboard in The Skateboard Kid? No, you heard me right, Don DeLuise played A SKATEBOARD IN A KID’S MOVIE! So anyway, I talked about it a little when I reviewed Skate or Die, but what I didn’t really mention was how many of these fucking games there were! Some I’ve never even heard of, like Awesome Earl in Skaterock, or Thrasher Presents Skate and Destroy - that’s a good name. Skate or Die has about five sequels alone and don’t even get me started on that Tony Hawk shit. There’s more Tony Hawk games than Madden. But that’s not what we’re gonna talk about today, today we’re gonna talk about another game, a shitty one. Wanna know how I know it’ll be shitty? Its a fucking liscenced game on the Nintendo! Wanna guess who it’s licensed to? LJN. I’d be better off busting face on the curb than busting my ass on this shit! I’d rather Fuckman bust a nut in my fucking mouth then cream pie me and--” The Grem looked embarrassed for a second, “Anyway. Back to the game.” The Grem sighed at the game and picked it up, “So here we’ve got Town and Country: Wood and Water Rage. Great. I looked into Town and Country a little bit, and they’re a Hawaiian skate and surf shop established in ‘71. They’re still around and making boards today. Kinda surprised they survived after contacting LJN to make a game for them, anything LJN touches dies by going septic!” She sighed and looked at her consoles, “Now… where's the Nintendo? Oh right, I blew it up in my duel with Fuckman two weeks ago,” She groaned to herself, “Hardly got away from that fucker. Hey, Nestie! Get in here!” From behind a curtain on the far side of the room, an automaton painted NES grey waltzed over to the TV and sat on the floor next to it, “Rather than buying a new one I built this automaton. I call her NEStie, get it? She’s got a goddamn Nintendo built into her chest! Ye-heahhh! Imagine blowing through your games while you’re blowin’ through your wife! That shit would be rad! Too bad playing games like this on her is the equivalent of spousal abuse,” The Grem grabbed some cables and plugged them into the long haired automaton’s back as the robot gave a nervous look. Her spine jolted as her cables connected to the TV inputs. The Grem went back to her front and lifted the robot’s shirt. She pushed some flaps out of the way and put the game into the slot. Nestie breathed in sharply. The Grem rolled her eyes before pressing the power button. Only fuzz and static came through the TV screen, “Goddammit!” She turned it back off and yanked the game out, making Nestie jump. She blew into the game cartridge before she pushed the flaps aside again and blew into the slot, making Nestie moan. The Grem gave her a look and shoved the game back in roughly and hit the power button. The game came through just fine this time, causing the Grem to groan her displeasure. “Right off the bat you can tell it’s shit, because they didn’t even bother making music for the title screen! Just sit back and let your ears be serenaded by the sounds of piss hitting the inside of a toilet bowl over and over until you finally start the fucking game. And what’s with the title screen anyway, it’s boring! I get this is supposed to be promoting the Town & Country brand or whatever, but did they really even try? You got three palm trees and a random body of water with the T&C logo and a yin yang streaming across the front of a boring gray background. What’s worse, is without reading all that legal bullshit at the bottom of the screen, you might never know this was a Town and Country game, unless you’re a big Town and Country consumer or whatever. What’s a kid gonna think when he sees the T&C? Tits and crap? I need a beer…” The Grem grabbed a drink off a table nearby and cracked it open before taking a swig of the Rolling Rock. She pressed start, hoping to get away from the horrible, droning noise of the NES sound chip hissing at her. Instead she was greeted by another screen, “What the fuck is this shit? You’ve got a bunch of assholes at the top of this menu, like Alf, Elvis, a timid gladiator clown, and Donkey Kong in an admittedly cool hat and shades. Below those jack offs you’ve got three options, Street Skate Session, Big Wave Encounter, and Wood and Water… Rage? Sounds like someone’s awful attempt at a sex joke to me.” She said, looking directly at the viewers. “I guess that is the name of the game, but tell me, why do I have to choose one or two players for each of these? Like, why not just pick one or two players first on the start menu like any other fuckin’ game, and then select the game? Pretty innovative, I gotta say. Alright, I’m done nit picking, Street Skate is first. Can I also say this menu looks like some shit outta Sonic? Like I’m about to drop into fucking Green Hill zone! Or maybe Chemical Plant is more accurate because they could process this shit there and-- Alright, I’m playing the game.” The Grem pressed start and the game opened to a character select. “Well this is different,” She remarked, “Instead of letting me scroll through a character select I get to hit either A or B… Why? And where are the other characters, all I get are that gladiator guy and Elvis? Fuck it, give me Elvis.” The game started up, a shirtless Elvis began skating down the road towards a town filled with oil barrels. The Grem stared horrified as she attempted to dodge up and down the street only for her to plow into a roadblock once, twice, gameover! Without warning the game spat her out back to the title screen. She could feel herself melting back into the couch as she ran her fingers through her hair. “What… the fuck just happened. I pushed start and the game just came at me like a bukake of bullshit! Let’s try again.” She huffed, pushing start. This time, she tried jumping over an oil drum and her skateboard was knocked out from beneath her, Elvis eating shit on the pavement. She tried again, only for the same thing to happen, game over. “Okay, so here’s how it works. You have a lifebar, see the cookie lookin’ yin yangs on the bottom right? Those are your hitpoints, you get four, but not really because some things hit you for two, and some hit for three. You’re usually gonna die in two hits, so why even bother giving me four hitpoints? Whatever, let’s actually try to beat this shit.” She managed to dodge several barrels, even a frisbee and jumped a pit. “So there are two ways you can jump, you can jump off your board to dodge the roadblocks, or you can jump with your board, which you need to do to make it over the pits.” She explained while demonstrating. “I don’t even see the point of jumping off your board, it just fucked you up because you have to hold back on the D-pad and press A, but holding back makes you slow down and move backwards, so it goes against your instincts to hold forward and jump. The B button does nothing, so fuck it. Why didn’t they just make jumping with your board the B button, or hell, just make it A and not have the stupid jumping without your board. I don’t get it!” She immediately slammed into an oil drum after dodging a turtle and wound up stuck on a gravel obstacle, which slowed her to a crawl. “Oh my God, I’ve only got thirty seconds left and my character is moving so fucking slow! Come on! Move goddamnit!” She shouted, mashing forward on the D-pad. Gradually her character began to speed up, “Come on, this is bullshit!” She cried, mashing every button on her controller. Suddenly the character thrust forward, catching her attention. “What? What happened?” She tested the B button again, the character speeding up once more. “So… you have to mash B to go faster, like, because he’s pushing the board with his foot. WHY DO YA GOTTA DO THAT?! Why can’t I just hold down the button like in Mario? Mashing the B button makes it harder to time your jumps, and with as many objects on the road you have to be able to jump at a moment’s notice. Whatever, let’s finish this level. Well, that was surprisingly easy, after I had to figure out that load of shit. You only have a minute to finish the level, and without figuring out how to speed up I don’t think I would have made it.” “Level 2 is pretty much exactly level 1, there’s some differences here and there but effectively it’s the same. Level 3 seems to make some bigger changes, a pit right away, a big gravel pit, but fuck, I got hit by an R/C car and died, fuck this game! I’m moving on.” She went back to the game select and chose Big Wave Encounter. “Oh shit, I get to play as Donkey Kong! I guess they only made it so you can play those other two characters for Skateboarding and these two for surfing. Really, instead of just letting you play as whoever you want they split them up between games. May I ask why?” She selected the ape and the game started up immediately on a huge tidal wave that swallowed her up and killed her. “Fuck!” She cried as she tried mashing buttons and the d-pad to stay alive. None of them seemed to do anything as she was moved to the left and swallowed by the massive wave as the shitty wave sound from the title screen screeched through the TV. She was placed back at the beginning and this time she went down the tidal wave, slamming into a man riding an innertube and dying. “FUCK!” She tried again, this time a seagull dive bombed her, knocking her off her surfboard. “AH! Eat a dick you fuckin’ flying rat bitch! Pressing forward makes you go faster, but you gravitate to the bottom of the wave. That makes sense, but how the hell do I get back up? If I go too far down I fall into the water and die! If I hold up, I go back to the top of the waterfall, fall off my board and die, that is if I don’t get drowned by the wave chasing me first! A and B do nothing now, so what the fuck do I do?! And those fucking Seagulls! That noise they make every time they come on screen is like auditory rape, it’s drilling into my ears! What were they THINKING?!” She got up to rip the game out of Nestie but stopped short as she saw the third and final game. She grit her teeth, “FINE! One more, and then I’m sending this game to Hell!” She downed more Rolling Rock as she plopped back onto the couch. “Oh, hey. I get to pick Elvis and Donkey Kong on the same team! Nice!” She smiled but the smile soon vanished when the skateboarding game started up, “It's… just both games together, like why? Who would fucking do that?! Like I get through the skate game easy as shit and then I can’t beat the surfing one! What a load of donkey dick! FUCK THIS GAME!” She jumped up and grabbed the game before tossing it to the ground. She then produced a skateboard and while screaming all manner of profanities at the game she beat it with the board until it split in half. “Thank fuck I’m done with that game, but… there’s another one. Town and Country Thrilla’s Surfari…” She went to the shelf and immediately found it, pulling it out with disgust. “Who the fuck is Thrilla anyway, their mascot? You mean Donkey Kong? That’s Thrilla? Whatever, let’s play the game.” She slotted the game cartridge into her automaton again, the robot letting out a moan of pleasure. “Oh shut the fuck up, you cybernetic clit flicker.” The game started with the same legal text on a black screen before fading to black. Then the next words mystified the Grem: Somewhere in Africa… The screen faded again, this time showing a masked native holding audience with a face on a mountain. “Wazula… to restore your immortal powers, I command you to bring Barbi Bikini to me! Who the fuck is Wazula, was that the gladiator guy? So he’s African? I thought this was a Hawaiin company but now we’re in Africa? And who the fuck is Barbi Bikini? Is it like THE Barbi Bikini? Some kinda swimwear of power or is Donkey Kong-- I mean, Thrilla plowing that plastic bimbo bitch Barbi? At least I assume he is if it's a person, since the game has him on the title. Whatever, let’s get on with this.” The game then showed a title card saying the Grem was now in Maui, Hawaii while upbeat chiptune music played, “Okay? So we’re back in Hawaii? There’s Donk- Thrilla, surfin’ on that fuckin’ sewer tidal wave of shit! ‘Great waves, hot sun, and my babe on the beach’- no… I was just joking before… is this gorilla actually fucking Barbi? Maybe Barbi is another gorilla? OH! NO! She’s just a regular lady with shitty NES baby puke green hair! And then the native african guy, Wazula just pops into existence without any fanfare and kidnaps her. If you blink you’d have missed it! Holy shit, Thrilla is PISSED! Then it goes to the title screen and reminds you who made this - LJN, just in case that intro may have excited you. Anyways, let’s see how this piece of shit plays.” The game then played a cutscene to show Thrilla booking a flight to Africa. “Okay, so I guess Thrilla knows we have to go to Africa or whatever, but what the fuck, look at this! Why is Africa in the middle of the ocean by itself like a green turd floating in a pool? Where’s Europe or Asia, or any other parts of the world? Whatever.” “So… The game play. It's surprisingly good. The physics doing up and down hills are decent, Thrilla goes ape shit with his tricks when he jumps and generally controls pretty easily, for an LJN game. There’s only one problem. There are fucking obstacles EVERYWHERE. There are so many fucking logs on the road and jumps that trick you into thinking you’ll make it over a whole row of them only to hit the last one on the way down. And when he dies, he slides across the ground, unless you fall in a pit where he disintegrates into a pile of dust, God that’s horrible! And when he hits a log while sliding he explodes into a million pieces! A lot of this shit comes at you too fuckin’ fast, too, like you gotta slow down if you even want to stand a chance at finishing a level. One hit from a log or a pit will end you before you can even say fuck!” She managed to get through level 1 and moved onto the next one, quickly getting assaulted by an array of enemies and obstacles. “Believe it or not, you actually have a health bar, not that it fucking matters because as soon as you hit a log you’re fuckin’ dead, and if you’re going to fast an enemy can stun you and you’ll hit the log anyway so what’s the fucking point?! I have to slow my ass to a crawl and I can BARELY beat this level - oh what’s that - HOLY SHIT, THRILLA’S GOING APE SHIT!” As soon as the Grem rode over two gray rocks Thrilla jumped and began to skate while handstanding, completely invincible, “Thrilla’s goin’ nuts, he’s fucking up all those tiny animals! He’s shreddin’ their little heads off! And every time they die they cry out in the most shrill, awful noise I’ve ever heard!” The Grem put her hands over her ears as five shrill cries rang out before Thrilla crashed into a log and shattered like glass, GAME OVER, DUDE. “Goddammit! I gotta do all that bullshit again!” A short montage of the Grem crashing and burning a ton and getting game overs. Eventually, while taking the second level incredibly slowly, she made it, “Oh thank fuck. What’s level three?” The Grem stared, her face turning to dismay as she saw that Thrilla was now on a surfboard going down a river in an african jungle. Thrilla bounced off rocks and shrieked at enemies until he was electrocuted by an eel and fell down a waterfall and died. Silently, the Grem got up and turned off Nestie and took the game out of her slot. She looked at the cartridge for a moment, twisting her face in anger before throwing it across the room as hard as she could, “Fuck this game.” She grumbled, walking off camera.
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IfTheArtistConsents got bored and made this too
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[A collaboration between IfTheArtistConsents (Minds Newgrounds) and I! He did the art for this little shitpost and helped me write it! Go check him out!
If you aren’t a fan of AVGN you might not get much out of this. You can check out an example of the game here]“What a bunch of shitty games!” The Angry Video Grem Nerd shouted as she looked at the shelves around her little basement. She grabbed a ladder and set it up to look at the wall of games. She glared at her massive Super Nintendo collection. She had tons of games, an almost innumerable amount along the shelves from a multitude of consoles. Everything from the Atari 2600 to the PlayStation Two and even a few modern games in their own little cursed corner of the room. She looked at Super Nintendo games today, “This one’s shit,” She growled as she threw Terminator Two to the floor, “Another piece of shit,” Mario is Missing fell to the floor with the satisfying clunk of plastic on tile, “What a fucking piece of fuck,” She threw Dennis the Menace to the floor, “What’s this?” She grunted as she grabbed a game, “Megaman X? Haven’t touched this in a while,” She carefully climbed down her step ladder, making sure to step on Mario is Missing as she made her way to the couch, “Capcom made some good games back in the day, Streetfighter, Final Fight, and even Goof Troop just to name a few,” She pulled the Super Nintendo from where it was hidden and slotted Megaman X in, “Oh, I almost forgot. I need a fucking beer,” She told herself. The Angry Video Grem Nerd was a small creature named Jamie. A gremlin with short blue hair, long ears, a pair of glasses, brown slacks and a white button up shirt with a chest pocket which she filled out wholly with her bosom and wide hips. “God, I’m fucking thirsty,” She swore to herself as she opened the fridge looking for her iconic Rolling Rock. A fresh, unmolested six pack of the alcoholic drinks sat on the bottom shelf of the fridge surrounded by other products that didn’t matter at the time. She went for one but as soon as her skin touched the cool glass, it vanished from her hand and was replaced with something warm and plastic. She looked down, a confused expression on her face, “A note?” She asked herself as she glanced at the sticky note covering the label of the game cartridge, “If you want your precious liquor, you must collect all six of the ancient rune stones! Signed, the Warlock. Who the fuck is the Warlock!?” She looked back at the six pack. It was gone, the only thing that remained was the game in her hands, “That FUCKING asshole!” She cried, ripping the sticky note off and shredding it angrily in her hands, “What is this shit?” She glanced at the cover, Warlock, it read. “Beware the ultimate evil of...” She started to read the title on the cartridge, “LJN!?” She cried as she saw the name of the publisher, “Aw, fuck!” The grem hurried downstairs, back to her Super Nintendo, “Guess I gotta play this shit. Fucking warlocks and their shitty fucking magic,” She hissed as she tore Megaman X out. She glanced at the cover once more, “Beware the ultimate evil of Warlock,” She read, “A bit of a mouthful, but whatever, Laughin’, Jokin’, Numbnuts,” She put the game in and turned on the console. “Wait... Warlock?” She tilted her head at the TV as the word Warlock flashed on the screen with the sound of thunder, “So what the fuck is it called? Ultimate evil of bullshit or just fucking Warlock!? Leave it to LJN to get the fucking title wrong. Whatever, what's the story of this shitty game?” The Grem set the controller down and listened to the music, “Well, this title screen music is nice enough, I guess,” Eventually, the story cutscene started. Slowly-- Arduously, red and orange text was burned onto pages, “What the fuck is this!? Why’s the text gotta appear so SLOW!?” The grem shouted, “Alright, fuck, what is this shit? ‘Once every millenium,’” She started to read, pausing as the words slowly appeared on the screen, “‘When the sun aligns,’” She paused again, “‘With the moon, druid guardians summon-- DRUIDS!?” She cried in mock agony, “First fucking dick ass warlocks and now I gotta deal with druids? God I hate those tree humping furries.” She went for a bottle of beer, quickly remembering that she had to play the game to get any liquor, “Damn it all! Fuck, lets just see the rest of this stupid story. ‘Druid guardians summon the magic of their sacred runestones.’ Right, those things I’ve gotta get if I want my booze back. ‘To prevent the rebirth of the ancient Warlock...’” She sighed and paused as she waited for more text to appear, “Oh thank god,” She sighed as the text never came, “Okay... Oh there's the sun and the moon aligning, and a graveyard, and-- OH SHIT!” She screamed as the Warlock flew from the ground, “What the fuck!? Was that Doc Brown!? And he turned into a fucking raven or crow or perhaps some other kind of copro-corvidae!? Or in other words, a shitbird,” The Grem shook her head, “Anyways, can I play the game now-- Oh, fuck!” She groaned as more text began to slowly crawl across the screen. “You think I’m joking!” The Grem pointed an accusatory finger, “But I timed it, and this shit goes on for two minutes and twenty seconds. Anyways I better finish this shitty story so I can play this shitty fucking game and get my shitty fucking beer back,” She sighed, “‘The six sacred stones are scattered through time and across the continents. Using the powers inherited from your druid ancestors--’ Aw fuck, I’m a druid myself! Fuck druids! You know, a druid fucked my dog once. Okay, they didn’t, I’ve never had a dog. But a druid WOULD do that given the chance. Can’t trust those fuckers. Anyways let’s just finish this. ‘You must find all six before the Warlock...’” She sighed again, “HOLY FUCK ITS STILL GOING!” She shouted, “What's this shit!? A bridge? The woods? A tree and-- Oh god, there they are! The druids! I see they’re wearing their ceremonial brown bathrobes to their little get together. They’re brown so you know they roll around in animal feces, which is what I’d rather be doing than playing this shitty game. Okay, and they give this guy with the mullet, which I assume is me since I’m in blue bathrobes and not brown ones since I haven’t rolled in fecal matter yet, they give him an... Orange? A flying magic orange? Or maybe a giant flying ballsack. And he points and the ballsack leads me somewhere.” “So, can I play now?” The Grem just blinked, dead inside as more text appeared on the screen, “I guess I can’t yet. ‘This is the most desperate hour. Find the stones and kill the Warlock, or we shall forever live in darkness...” She hardly registered when the title screen came back rather than giving her more story, “Oh thank god. Finally something good from this game. Zelda fucking Two did an intro better than this load of donkey diarrhea. Wanna know what's just as long? ‘Warlock: The Armageddon’s’ intro! Yeah, this is a MOVIE GAME! Bet you weren’t expecting that, huh!? Well, maybe you were since pretty much all of LJN’s games are licensed games! And here the title is different AGAIN, so what the fuck, now we have three! Warlock, Beware the Warlock and Warlock: The Armageddon! How did they fuck that up so bad? And guess what? The movie’s just as bad, if not even WORSE than this game! Why does LJN keep making shitty games out of shitty movies, I’ll never know. I guess the map of the States written on skin was kinda cool, I guess, but does that ever happen in the game? No, of course not… This has next to nothing to do with the movie other than the villain’s face appearing on the game over screen. There's not much worth talking about, so let's get back to the game.” “At least you can just skip the intro. Unlike the movie, so the game already beats it there. Alright fine, enough about that awful movie. Okay so I’m in the game. Here's my guy, mister mullet un-shitted bathrobes. I can jump, piss magic missles out of my fucking fingers and make the ballsack waggle around when I shake said pissfingers at it. At least I can make him hump the air when I mash Y,” The gremlin said, demonstrating by quickly tapping the Y button. “And it looks like... The dog isn’t an enemy for once. How kind of you game; to throw me a bone before you rail my ass like Fuckman! But you know, you can shoot the dog if you’re an asshole. And it keeps my druid from giving the dog his bone if you know what I mean,” The Grem continues playing. She jumped as she neared a bridge, still getting a feel for the controls, “There he is! Doc Brown-- I mean the Warlock! That fucker just blew up the bridge, right under me!” She shouted as her character plummeted into the water and died, “Great. Water kills you. And the Warlock-- I mean Doc Brown turned into a crow again! Okay so, dogs are friendly but Doc will kill you with a bridge. Good to know. At least in the game I’m not waiting an hour and twenty minutes to actually fight the fucking Warlock unlike that pussy in the movie! Alright, for real that's the last comment about the movie. Bats! Its always fucking bats! Ever since Castle-fucking-Vania One! Every side scroller HAS to have goddamn shitty fucking bats! Another bridge and-- Oh you cocksucking video game! Doc Warlock blasts another bridge out from under me and I’m dead. The same fucking trick! I won’t fall for that shit again you cum slurping alp.” “So I go back, dodge the bridge, the bats and the second fucking bridge. I’m not falling for that shit again you fuck stick fellatiator. Okay, what's next. A dog. Oh, and the fucking Warlock Brown turns him into a goddamn werewolf! And its fucking raping me, holy shit! It won’t stop railing my ass! GET OFFA ME! Cum at it with my magic spells! Well, it beat the shit outta me and my portrait at the top is turning into a spooky skeleton man, but I scared it off. Oh shit! Another one!” The Grem pushed down and right at the same time and watched in shock as her character tactical rolled right into the werewolf, “I just rolled into his cock! Why in the seven fuck hells can my fucking shitty mullet having, animal cum sucking, druid DODGE ROLL!?” With a sigh, the Grem accidentally pressed X, “Looks like my guy is summoning some lightning and doing the Y in YMCA. Oh, I consumed that second picture of my face I had and healed. Nice. And the werewolf was kind enough to drop me a magic potion. I continue, blast another werewolf and go inside. There's some text about the quest for the first Rolling Rock and now we’re inside. So there's a guy in here, so of course I shoot him to make sure he’s not evil and-- Jesus Christ I turned him into a zombie! Fucking kill that shit! At least he went down easy enough,” The Grem walked a single step forward and the zombie got back up, “Oh shit!” She exclaimed as she took a hit and finished off the zombie, “They get back up after I kill them once. Great. Imagine if you were playing Mario Three, and you jump on a goomba. As soon as you walk a few steps forwards, that fucker gets back up and knocks your dick off. Wouldn’t that be fun!?” She pauses as she settles back into the couch, “Fuck zombies. I hate ‘em. I keep going forward and see Cocksucker Brown floating and he shits out a zombie for me to fight.” “I’m gonna give the ballsack a try. To use the nutsack you gotta press the Y button, but not just PRESS it you gotta HOLD it. Once you do that, you wait two seconds for your druid to do some jazz hands, then the thing is ready to go. You press a direction on the d-pad and the ball flies that way, doing some damage or picking up items for you. The problem is, it takes forever to use and the ball is waving all over the place like one of those fucking Medusa heads! And you know how I feel about those fucking Medusa heads,” She scowled, “The worst part about the flying fucknugget, is that it takes forever to use and does just as much damage as my hand pissing! I’m better off hitting enemies with an actual ballsack than to use this piece of shit. Fucking druid magic objects. Okay so I keep going, taking hits and getting fucked by wolves-- Only figuratively of course, this is a kids’ game just about as much as this is a kids’ show,” She said, staring directly into the camera. “So I keep going. I’ve taken a bunch of hits so I use my blue magic druid potion. Turns out that heals me too. So what's the point of the OTHER item that heals me!? Fuck me. Speaking of fucking my ass, these stairs. Tap dancing Christ on Christmas, I can’t get up these stairs my first try! I’d rather slide my massive fucking gremlin ass up and down Fuckman’s massive fucking cock than keep trying to go up and down these stairs! Speaking of sliding my ass up and down, what the fuck is the point of crouching!? It’s not to shoot lower, because mullet fuckhead drops that low when he shoots normally! Let’s just get this first fucking level over with. This library fucking sucks. Oh fuck! There’s the Warcock! We start fighting see, and this fucker, get this, to dodge he just HOISTS himself up like a fucking marionette on strings and just goes right over my cum blasts! And he shoots even bigger ones that destroy mine! Whatever, I’ve got three health potions so I just tank it and shoot him when I can. I win, and this fucker just turns into a shitbird again and flies off!” “Hey! But I won!” The Grem put her fists in the air triumphantly, “There’s the first runestone! Blast open its dumb glass case and grab it! I do the Y again and pick up the purple Froot Loop. ‘This rune will allow your return... G R K K L.’ Oh thank fuck the password is only five characters. This game does SOMETHING right! Now I got another book telling me I’m goin’ to the past and to beware the Warlock. Whatever. Second quest for the runestone begins.” Suddenly a bottle of Rolling Rock appeared beside the gremlin in a puff of smoke. She eyes it longingly before shaking her head. “No… I’ll save it for when I really need it.” “Level starts, I’m in some grassy fucking area that looks like dog shit. There's some vines popping out of the ground so I avoid that and shoot some bugs. I keep going and some more vines shoot up and grab me! They pull me underground for a bit, presumably to fuck my ass before shitting me out. Before long, I get to a cliff. Where do I go? The camera can’t look down no matter what I press! Leap of fucking faith I guess!” She safely landed on the ground and groaned, “What the fuck were they fucking thinking with this? This is bullshit. I keep going right, shooting bugs and vines and making leaps of faith because this camera can lick my cunt. I get to a bug that I shoot, and this little fucker drops a gem. When I step on it, it makes me fly like I’m goddamn Mary Poppins! So I figure out I gotta make another leap of faith with it and keep going right. I kill a bug for another gem and get some pickups. Another picture of me and a skull. Okay. But where do I go? There's nowhere to go now! So I leap of faith again and-- I’m dead. Drown in the water. I go back to figure it out again, jumping down a different pit this time and I die again to the water! And I’m out of lives! I see a quick close up of the shitty fucking Warcock and then back to the title screen!” The Grem sighed and grabbed her first Rolling Rock that she recovered and twisted the top off, downing a big swig before letting out another sigh. “This is just gonna be one of those games, huh? I put the password in and go back to the second level,” She blinked as the inbetween level cutscenes played again, “God, fuck,” She groaned as she mashed every button on the SNES controller to skip it, “Oh thank fuck I can skip this stupid shit. So the level starts, I dodge all the bullshit, and instead of going right, get this, you drop off a cliff then go LEFT into a cave that you can’t even see! How the fuck was anyone supposed to figure this out!? The only way you’d know it was a cave is if you see the spider crawl out from behind the foreground! Anyways, I keep going though this stupid bat infested cave that looks like the inside of my asshole and I get to a part where rocks are hanging down and I can’t walk past them! It takes me a few minutes of blasting them with my cock hands, but I finally figure it out. You have to dodge roll under them!” She sighed, “What the fuck is the point? The dodge is just in this game for this shit? It certainly doesn't help you dodge jack or shit!” “Fuck it, lets get this shitty cave over with. I keep going and cum drips from the ceiling, damaging me. Great. Just great. Everything but the fucking dogs hurts you in this shitty game. I blast some cum monsters then I try to jump up to this ledge and another cum monster hits me making me fall all the way to the ground which fucking kills me. Fall damage kills you. Its like I’m playing fucking Bubsy here, only here you can take more hits, which you’re definitely going to need to get through this fucking cave. I keep going, getting hit by fucking everything, bats, spiders, cum monsters, big black uncut fuckin’ dick heads on the ceilings, oh and cumdrips, because this cum kills you. These spiders are way to fucking small to hit consistantly especially on slopes and the bats are always just a pain in my cunt. So of course, I die. Then I go back, and I die again, getting lost in these fucking caves.” She stopped to down the rest of her beer, happy to have drank it, but sad to see it go. “I gotta put that code in again, go back into the cave, trying not to get my ass molested by these vines. Then I get back in, get hit by some cum dripping from the ceiling and the cum men punching the shit out of me, I pretty much have to take hits with these assholes. Pretty much the entirety of my existence.” She said, once again staring directly into the camera. “Anyways. I use a potion in here after taking a bunch of hits, turns out that shit doesn’t heal you all the way, only the pictures of mullet man does. So the potions are trash, but you’re gonna need them just to get through this level. I also learned you can scroll through the items you have with L and R, which is nice at least. At this point, I’m so fucking fed up with these bats and spiders that I just start taking hits. I’ve got a billion health so I might as well and whenever it gets too busy I just kill everything with the skull item or use a face when I take too many hits. I find the magic stone, it looks like a gargoyle’s kidney stone. I take it and I run to the end. I get another password, S H P J L and I move onto level three,” The Grem put down her controller, a second fresh Rolling Rock appearing in her hand as she beat the second level, “Thank fuck there are only six levels.” “Level three. Looks like I’m running through a rainy garden towards a castle that holds two more of these dumb fucking stones. I go through, get a potion and Dicksucker Brown shows up and brings a gargoyle statue to life. As with everything in this game, there is no strategy, just shoot it until it dies. Sometimes it freezes but you just walk towards it then away to wake that fucker up,” The Grem grunted, “Y’know, I knew a gargoyle once and she was a nice person.” “So I keep going and the fucker brings an archer to life now, and hes a good fucking shot! Same as before, no strategy here, just shoot him until he turns to dust like your grandmother’s dried up womb. I fight more gargoyles and archers while Dick Brown locks me in the area. Then, I fight the Red Devil from Ghost n’ Goblins and of course, he kicks my fucking ass, rails me with his demon cock. I make it through with one hit left, wheres this fucking castle? Oh, I get to fight another Red Devil! And he kills me! Out of lives! Go back to the beginning!” The Grem groaned loudly and opened the second bottle of Rolling Rock, “Fuck this piece of shit game.” “My second time through, I’ve got some strategies figured out. Blast the first one, duck at the archers sweet spot, all that shit. The worst part about the archers is that their arrow destroys our druidic cum spurts, but not their arrows, no, they go through and hit me! Anyways I beat all them and both Red Devils and I got to a bridge with a gap in it and thank fuck I made the jump. I don’t want to redo this shitty level. Now I’m in the castle. I fight some ghost assholes and some knights that fall apart when I shoot them. I go into the sewers, dodge some traps, then I get locked in a tiny room over water. So what do I do? I guess wrong and I jumped in the fucking water and died,” The Grem drank from her alcoholic beverage and sighed, “This game is an assload of fuck. I get back to that room and I just start blasting with everything to try and progress. Turns out all I had to do was knock a chunk of ceiling down to jump on. Of fucking course, I should have known.” “The platforms I make sink when I jump on them, so I gotta hurry my ass up and knock down more platforms, but I can't see the platforms since they’re in the shitty sewer water! Thank god I made it through on my first try. I go over more water then find another Mary Poppins gem and a lever which when I hit makes a little platform for me. I Mary Poopin’ my way up there and move onto the next level.” “Next level I see--” The Grem sighed, “Another dumb fucking Warlock. This one looks more like Billy Mays in a purple dress. What’s his story? Does he also come back every millenia to sell me oxyclean? Maybe he’s the wizard of Big City Sliders, more like big shitty ciders. He throws torches at me and flies away after making me pay his toll. What is his toll? Some of my fucking life, that’s what. This game isn’t hard! It just whittles you down constantly and pulls cheap traps that take lives making you replay it!” She half sobbed before taking another swig of her booze,“The worst part is, I’m not having fun! The attacks you get are slow and clunky, the movement is shitty and the levels are basic! All in all, a very subpar game, in my opinion at least.” “I keep going, taking hits as I hit a switch, fail to dodge a dumbass spinning blade trap and I go to another level. And I’m STILL looking for the third runestone! I’ve got no potions or lives left now! The thing is, those self portraits that you can use, the ones that fully heal you? Those are your LIVES too! So do you spend your lives to get full HP? Or do you save them in case you die to a bullshit trap!? Fuck me… This is harder than Fuckman’s cock when he plows my gremlin pussy. Of course, I fall down a pit and die because I misjudged a jump. Now its back to the fucking garden where I gotta kill all those fuckers again,” She downed the last of her second Rolling Rock, “Fuck this shitty fucking game.” “After I make it back and make those jumps, I’m in the castle doing stupid fucking lever puzzles and dodging the easiest traps in the world. This game is a whole lotta fucking nothing. And at the end, I run into Doc Cock and the fucker turns himself into a demon! I kick his ass, duck low when he shoots high and jump high when he shoots low. The game gives me another password now, C D J H L and I guess it's onto the next level. Ho-lee Fuck, I’m still in this castle. Billy Mays is back from the dead and he makes me pay his toll again, this time he’s selling me swords that he just fucking shoots right at me out of his cock. Every fucking thing in his Peewee’s playhouse looking castle is out to get me too, taking bits of my life as I struggle to dodge them. I make it to another demon, this one looks like a fucking horse, or maybe even an ass. Of course he fucking kills me, taking my last life. Thank god I had that new code.” “I make it back and fight the demon again. I beat him and--” She watched as the horse turned into a man, Billy Mays, “Why the fuck was Billy Mays wearing a blue fucking horse fursuit!? Fucking hell. I keep going and I hit a switch which makes a platform come down, I get on it and nothing happens and to hit the switch again I have to get off it, so I do and then the platform LEAVES without me! Thankfully it comes back to get me, now automated. But why did I have to hit that lever TWICE? Imagine if you had to do that in real life, like if you were in an elevator, but you have to get out and hit the switch across the hall, only for the door to close on you before you could get back in, so you gotta hit the button again and - fuck it, you get what I’m saying. I keep going and get my shit kicked in by a knight with a flail, everyone knows that if you have a flail instead of a sword you get five times the normal health points!” She complained, popping open her third Rolling Rock and downing half of it. “There, I beat him and... now I’m stuck. No way forward since the magic druid ballsack doesn't flip levers. I finally figure out you’ve gotta jump through a wall into a new area. I pick up a bubbling cauldron which makes my cum blasts bigger now! They explode too! Badass! Haha, actually no they still fucking suck. No extra damage. In this secret area, I hit another switch and that lowers the barrier that was blocking me earlier, now I can keep going. I go up a lift and to the next level. There's not a lot to say. I dodge traps, usually dying to them because this game is an ass load of fuck. Its just boring corridors, knights and these dumb lifts. I’m taking hit after hit because I just don’t care anymore. Why’s this game gotta be so fucking long!? And I go to ANOTHER level after the castle! I’m outside now! I’m fighting more four armed demons and horse fursuits now! Some of them are the Warfuck and others are just dudes!? What the fuck is going on!? And this first jackass I gotta stand on top of or he knocks me back into the pit! So I’m eating hits because I fucking HAVE to! I don’t have any time to dodge! Then, the second one is Billy Mays! And I’m BACK inside the castle! This fucking asshole!” “I’m in a lab now, fighting reskins of the cum monsters from earlier now they’re snot monsters. Or green shits. I dunno, I don’t even care anymore. You know what would be really nice? Being able to shoot while standing instead of going into that stupid crouching shot. Every other game I complain about not being able to shoot enemies on the ground but in this one I can’t even shoot enemies on a table right in front of my fucking face! The only other game that does something remotely like this is Terminator One on NES, and you all know how much ass that game sucks. But hey, I shoot an owl and he drops a potion, so that’s cool. Fuck owls. I keep going, ignoring items out of my reach and just taking hits constantly. I'm low on health, potions and lives but I’m making it somehow. I feel like there's secrets all over the damn place but I can’t find a single one! Now furnaces are trying to kill me. Impossible to dodge so I of course take more hits. So I just happen to walk into a secret and boom! There's a runestone! I take that shit,” The Grem nearly cries as she received a Rolling Rock, “Thank the heavens. Gotta keep going for the other three.” “I keep finding items and they all either do damage or make triangles fly around me. But why? Just give me more potions and lives! It’s not like these items do enough damage to actually help, and most of them don’t even damage the bosses! Well, I beat Billy again and moved on, B R S H T. Now let’s take a second to talk about the text in this game, specifically the T’s. These T’s look like fucking C’s. I get they were trying to go for an ancient text look but fuck it! How is it that no one has ever made a straightforward password system?!” “Quest four. First level is me fighting some fuck ass specter that takes my health and is annoying. Then it's just more castle! There’s more castle in this fucking game than in Castlevania! Now these booger assholes throw shit at me! And they take more hits to kill! They take a fuck ton of my life too! I hate these guys. THEY’RE FUCKING EVERYWHERE! You jump here and one snipes you with his shitballs, you jump there and one comes out of the ground and gets you. They even hid one right next to the fucking lever to go up this elevator! He doesn’t appear until you jump to the lever, so I’m forced to take a hit.” “And now I pick up a fucking sundial? What the shit does this do? I go a little ways and I use the sundial, thinking that it would time stop! NO! It Teleports me BACK to where I picked it up! It’s not like the other items are back so why the fuck would you do that!? I’ll tell you why, because you’re a sucker, a real shit sucker! WHAT WERE THEY THINKING!?” She cried before drowning her sorrows with the rest of the third beer, “I would quit, but I have to keep playing, I HAVE to. I NEED more beer. I get to a part with a gem, and I’m like, alright, I get the fourth one. But get this, it ATTACKS me! Kicks my ass! Turns out it was just one of the warlock’s blue balls! Both of them are in the same room! Oh god, now his balls are touching MY ball! Thank god the next level comes soon. H B L S T.” “Oh my God damn holy mother of fucking shit fuck there are even more blue balls mixed in with white balls, and there’s a magic wall keeping me locked in here with them. That sums up this entire fucking game, it’s balls and I’m trapped here if I want to get my beer back. Then, after the first room, I get trapped in ANOTHER room with MORE of these balls! But the game has some mercy, once I beat these I get two extra lives!” “Guess what happens in the next level? Billy cocksucking Mays lights his asshole castle on fire! Now I gotta run up the stairs before I get fucking torched! They also put more of those cumslinging shitballs on the stairs just to stop me. Just gotta run past everything, if you touch that fire even once it fucking annihilates you. This is the first time the orb actually comes in handy, because the cumblasts are just not fast enough and the orb can actually hit these guys multiple times in a row. It takes me a million fucking tries but eventually I power through it, only to find Billy Mays and Doc Brown killing each other at the top of the castle in their fursuits. Billy gets killed and- wait, NOW I’M IN A FURSUIT?! SEE? SEE WHAT I TOLD YOU ABOUT DRUIDS?! I need a beer, except now I have to fight the Warlock for it!” The gremlin mashed the buttons on her controller, her horse-headed character firing lightning blasts at the four armed warlock demon. “That’s all you do, you just mash buttons until one of you is dead. So I beat him, after he takes like nine-million fucking hits and get the big red anal bead.” She holds her hand out and a Rolling Rock covered in shit appears in her grasp. “OH GOD, YOU FUCKING NASTY ASS SHITLOCK!” She shrieked, getting up and taking the bottle to a sink to wash it off. “What? I’m not wasting a perfectly good beer. Now where was I?” She plopped back down and opened the beer, taking an extra moment to pour it out into another non contaminated bottle while throwing the other one away, “I go through the portal and I get another code, T H K T H. Only two more to go. Go now into the realm of the damned? Oh fuck, I’m going to hell!” The level started and the Grem readied herself, “There's Doc Brown! Oh fuck! Skeletons! Good thing they fall apart just as easy as they do in Castlevania. Only these fuckers can block cum blasts and they’re too short to get hit by the orb! Anyways, I’m onto this games bullshit now and I dodge some bridge destruction caused by Doc Shit-Brown and keep going. I fight crows, rape vines, skeletons and vultures. All of them are easy, again, this is just tedious as all hell, really, which I guess is fitting since this IS the realm of the damned. So I get to the Warlock and I notice he doesn’t run right away if I don’t get too close. Like, what the hell is he doing, driving a car? Turns out he’s just summoning two skeletons. I make it underground, into the mausoleum. Its like I’m back in the fucking castle. The cum monsters are back too! And look, this fucker is invincible! How the fuck do I kill him? Get this, you knock down a chunk of the ceiling down on him and crush him to death. That’ll show ya, you fuckfaced cum sucker.” “Level ends after a fight with three skeletons in a dumb arena. Next level is outside and I’m fighting that toilet hand from Majora’s Mask. Zombies too but fuck those assholes, they die easy. I make it through that pretty easy. Whole level is just a boring graveyard. Man, if that Warlock asshole didn’t have my beer, I would have quit this game ages ago. I’d rather Fuckman break through my wall, tear off my clothes, and fuck me ass to mouth. I’d rather suck the dried semen out of a bogey’s cotton cooter than keep playing this fuckheap of a game! I’d rather tear my hymen on a manticore’s whole tail bulb while a bicorn shoves my head up her asshole!” “Anyway, next level. Another underground mausoleum, god, this game just keeps fucking going man, it’s like that two and a half minute intro was just the icing on the shit cake. I get some staff, apparently I can get them infinitely, so that's fucking cool, I guess. I ride a stone raft on a tide of green goo and shoot an irradiated giant skeleton to death with my cum blasts. Another code, D C T F F, and I’m back outside. I’m honestly running out of things to say, I keep running around this graveyard, into mausoleums and back outside into the fucking graveyards. Can’t this level end? HOLY SHIT IS THAT A SKELETON HORSE?! Okay, that’s kind of cool, - OH SHIT! He came back with a skeleton horseman! The guy just keeps clobbering me but I just keep blasting him because neither one of us will fucking die. Finally kill his ass. Then I get to fight another! The lag after I shoot plus the general delay in attacking and ducking makes it impossible to NOT take hits!” “Time for another mausoleum level. This bitch is full of traps but nothing really to talk about, really. I make it to the end and get my fifth beer and a runestone,” The Grem got the aforementioned beer and set it down, “I haven’t even touched the fourth one… Should I really keep going? I’m already so numb. No… I have to. B S T J K! New code! Last stone, I’m gonna kill this fucking Warlock! I don’t give a shit about this story! To the mountains! Quest for the final fucking stone!” I’m on a bunch of cliffs surrounded by bandits and - IS THAT A FUCKING METROID?! What the shit - whatever I don’t give a fuck anymore, I’m just running through everyone, getting chased by a gargoyle and… I’m dead again. Fuck it, I’m gonna cheat, lemme just look up some codes here... “ The Gremlin says, going over to her Commodore 64 before typing loudly. “I’m just gonna skip to the last level, which looks the same as the rest and there’s already shit flying at me from every direction. Metroids, cum monsters, gargoyles, bandits, UV rays from the fucking sun, everything is out to get me. All that’s missing is Fuckman and his fuckstick.” She sighed longingly before going back to her game. “So there’s the warlock again, jumping around like an asshole and I kick his ass the same as before. Thank fuck, there’s the final stone. Now I’m… going down to hell? Oh there he is again - and he turns into the fucking yellow devil, not the yellow devil from Megaman but a devil who happens to be yellow. I finally fucking beat that fucker after he spits fire and jumps all around like an asshole. I get beamed up as I do the YMCA pose one last time. Lets see that ending! I get some text that says ‘you fulfilled your destiny and bested evil!’ And then my guy flies out of a well. And that’s it. Roll credits. What a shit load of fuck,” The grem said as she picked up all three remaining beers and dumped them all into her mouth at once. Beer flew everywhere as she lapped at the precious nectar. “You’ve done it!” She heard, as three druids appeared in front of her, their arms raised in the ‘M,’ ‘C,’ and ‘A’ poses. The gremlin wiped her mouth before eying her empty beer bottles, “So, you assholes put me on this quest?” “Yes, of course! You were the best suited to defeat that evil Warlock!” One answered. “We had to do it to save the world!” Another added. “But now that you’ve done it, the world is saved!” “You pieces of shit! Fuckin’ with my Rolling Rock!?” She screeched as she smashed a bottle over one’s head and stabbed the broken glass into his gut. The second and third hardly have time to react before the Angry Grem leapt at them, biting into the second one’s jugular and tearing his throat out. The last druid cowered from the gremlin, his hand cum blasts bouncing off her skin, “Go fuck a horse somewhere else, you shitsucking dendriphiles!” She growled as she pulled out an NES zapper, exploding him entirely with a single trigger pull, a diamond falling out of his ashes onto the floor. “Ya poopy heads,” She spat as she went to walk past the druid remains, looking to grab Megaman X, only for the diamond to shoot her up through the ceiling with a shriek. She looked around the living room, her head comically sticking through the floor. One of the lenses on her glasses was cracked and there were bits of wood and drywall in her now messy hair. She looked the angriest she had been all day, turning to face the camera, “Wanna know something? The worst part of all of this? The fucking awful LJN game was better than the movie! Imagine that! LJN made a game better than their source material! What a shit load of fuck. Don’t play this shitty game and for fucks sake don’t watch the movie. I just wasted a total of five hours on this shit. LJN, more like L-A-N! Standing for Laughin’ Alpin’ Numbnuts, of course...”
-
Raffle reward for Robbob. Thanks again!
The gremlin stood still as the machine stretched the black skintight suit over her small, lithe frame. Her decently sized-- for a gremlin, at least-- breasts were accentuated by the glistening outfit as were her thighs, hips and ass, “Damn, I look good,” She grinned to herself as she looked down. She shook herself as the anticipation made her shudder. She took a moment to do her messy hair up in a just as messy bun. Ashe, the gremlin, tested the connection between her and her gundam, one of the many gundams in the tournament from the various factions of mamano powers. It was a feat of gremlin engineering, a somewhat short and stocky green and blue-green colored machine covered with some of the best armor the Maou’s Legion of monsters can produce. It was equipped with a small shield and a sword as well as a few ranged weapons that didn’t see much use. The gremlin checked whatever incoming feeds she had on her screens as she started to strut across an abandoned town, “Looks like that dumb windmill is out,” Snickered the gremlin. She wished she could have done it herself, but was still glad that Neo Hollands prick got what was coming to him. Looks like whatever mamano knocked him out also took him as a husband, “Good for her,” The gremlin hissed, still searching for her own man. For most mamano, this whole tournament wasn’t about glory or winning, it was about finding a man. The gremlin didn’t care much about being the victor or ruling space. Her country didn’t care much either. The dragons would probably win again anyways but its not like the human factions ever really won. Most mamano governments would govern the exact same way anyways, they all listened to the Maou. The humans whined that it wasn’t really fair, but its not like they could win and change anything. The gremlin blinked as the fighter from the powerful dragon nation contacted her, “Oh, Ashe darling, would you be a dear and throw a match between the two of us? My hubby is watching and I want to look good. I am sure we will make it VERY worth your while~” “Yeah, yeah...” She grunted, “I’m still looking for someone.” “Your special man?” She chuckled, “Well... I heard he’s... A few klicks north of where you are now,” She winked, “I mean. I definitely DIDN’T lure him there.” With a smirk the gremlin took off in that direction, “Thanks. I’ll contact you when I’m done.” “You wouldn’t consider this as your payment, would--” “Hell no! You might be in a massive gold plated gundam but I could still kick your ass if I cared to,” Ashe threatened, “I’m hanging up,” And she did, before the dragon could respond. The dragon’s gundam was in fact plated in shimmering gold. Creeping coin gold melted down probably. Ashe’s gundam stomped through the town. Her superior sensors picked up the Homo-Sapien Gundam♂ before it could pick up her. He was already damaged, probably from his fight with Shimmering Dragon Gundam that led him here. Zero had caught her eye this year, a handsome man in a sleek giant fighting robot, everything that Ashe wanted. Zero’s gundam was a standard white body with red and blue details and was covered in the male symbol (♂). The usual human design. Zero fought for a new human only nation. It was made to prove humans could stack up to monsters, “Hey, hey, big guy!” Ashe called out to him, “Ya come here often?” “Stop cat-calling me, monster,” He growled back. Ashe swooned, he was absolutely adorable, “I already scared off Shimmering Dragon, I’ll fight you off too. I’ll defeat you, here and now. Even if I am damaged, my human spirit won’t be defeated!” “Whatever, Zero,” She stood a handful of klicks away from Zero and his Homo-Sapien Gundam♂, “Your Homo-Gundam♂ is no match for me and my Stout Gundam,” She knew this was being televised and she wanted to play it up. “Stout Gundam. I know your weapons and abilities, monster,” Zero hisses as he fires a missile at Ashe. She took the full brunt of it, her armor absorbing the blast. As the smoke cleared she saw Zero charging towards her, polearm drawn. Ashe yawned as she dropped into a combative pose. Homo-Sapien Gundam’s♂ weapons were easy enough to block. Wide, powerful swings that any other gundam might have had trouble dealing with these attacks, but Stout Gundam was built for this. Ashe blocked a powerful over head strike that surprisingly shook her machine. She responded with a sword slash that Zero failed to dodge most of. She left a gash along the lower body of Homo-Sapien Gundam♂, “Come on, Zero,” Ashe chuckled as he fired mostly useless machine gun fire in Stout Gundam’s hull, “Is that all you got? Where’s that human spirit?” She fired a missile back at him that he narrowly avoided. He dodged away from the cluster explosives, “Guess you do know my moves!” Ashe laughed, “At least some of them!” She dashed forwards and delivered another slash. He attempted to block with his polearm only to have it sliced in two by the energy blade. Zero dropped the halves and prepared for hand to hand. “H-how? That shouldn’t be possible!” He gasped. Ashe grinned at him through the display, “Superior gremlin technology. Looks like your Homo-Gundam♂ can’t handle it.” “I’ll show you! Human♂ Power!” He cried as portions of his gundam opened up to take in more air flow and move quicker. He dropped low and started to fly at Stout Gundam. Ashe was only a little surprised at this. She dropped her weapons and prepared to grapple with him. She swung, ready to bring him to the ground. He went under it, bowling Stout Gundam over. They fought on the ground, trading blows and knocking over a few buildings. Homo-Sapien Gundam♂ managed to get on top of Stout Gundam and land a few blows to its shoulders and head, “Give up! I’ve won!” He demanded. “You forget one thing,” Ashe grinned, still cocky. “What? What are you talking about?” He got up, nervous and wary of what the gremlin would do. “This pussy of mine throbs with an awesome power. Its burning grip that tells me to defeat you! Take this! My love, my lust and all of my horny! Shining Vulva!” She cried as Stout Gundams loins flew open and a laser blasted out, shooting straight through Homo-Sapien Gundam’s♂ head, “Article one of the Gundam Fight International regulations, a unit whose head section has been destroyed is disqualified.” “No!” Zero screamed as his gundam started to fall over. It landed with a thud and small quake on the ground. Stout Gundam rolled Homo-Sapien Gundam onto its back and used a specialised tool that shot out of its finger to crack open its cockpit. Another tool from another finger delicately removed Zero. Ashe placed him within her own cockpit as she licked her lips with anticipation. She activated a device, standard in most mamano gundams that restrained Zero in an adjacent chamber. With a smirk on her face, Ashe powered down her gundam and hurried to the room Zero was restrained in. He was starting to wake up, “I-I won’t let you have me,” He growled and struggled against his binds. “Can it. Or are you a homo-man? You know what the rules are, Zero,” Ashe grinned as she tore away the crotch of her skin tight outfit. He swallowed nervously, “A-article eight. Any man defeated by a mamano may be subjected to a raping, if she pleases.” “Right!” She removed the netherregions of his outfit, “And, oh boy, do I please.” “N-no,” He pleaded as Ashe started to rub her wet pussy on his slowly hardening cock. “Oh, come on. You love it. Can’t beat the monster pussy, huh, babe?” He gasped and moaned as Ashe grinded against him. She was right, he couldn’t beat it. Ashe stroked her man’s shaft and kissed the tip sweetly. She got a little taste of his pre, furthering her excitement as she fondled his balls and teased the tip of his penis by rubbing his glands with two fingers. He moaned and writhed at her touch, completely defenseless and unable to fight back in this combat. Ashe climbed atop her man, “Lick until I say to stop,” She ordered as she climbed atop his face and placed the lips of her pussy against his face. He started to lick, her pussy quivering as his warm tongue slipped between the flaps and into her pussy. She moaned loudly, relishing in the feeling of the man she loved being completely at her mercy. She grabbed his hair with one hand, forcing his face deeper into her snatch. His cock throbbed and leaked with precum as he excitedly licked at the gremlin’s loins. The long nights laying awake, dreaming of being dominated by a monster after she overpowered him. The thought of it excited him, though the thoughts were nothing compared to the real thing. He greedily lapped at her, he wanted to taste more of her, he wanted to taste every bit of her now, “Stop,” She demanded, taking away the thing he desired most. He craved more of her delicious pussy, but could do nothing to get it now. Ashe, now somewhat satisfied, grabbed his shaft and held it straight up. She wanted the real thing. She slammed her hips down, piercing herself on the man she had fallen for’s manhood. Zero cried out in pleasure, the intense hot, wet and tight feeling of the gremlin’s pussy was too much for him. She groaned with a big smile on her face. She took a moment to adjust herself, shuddering and panting at every small movement and throb of his knob. She looked down at the man under her, moaning and gasping at the slightest touch and grinned again, “This is where the REAL fight starts,” She rose up on his member only to slam herself back down, her thigh fat slapping against his and echoing a lewd sound throughout the chamber. Both moaned and gasped as their loins rubbed against one another. Zero’s hips desperately tried to thrust into Ashe’s pussy, causing him to cry out and beg for more from her as she slowed down. With another grin, she sped up once more, slamming herself against him. Zero could only lay still as the gremlin had her way with him. All the way up his shaft with her hot pussy and then sliding back down. The feeling was too much for him to bear, with another cry, the man signaled he would burst soon. Ashe, while a little disappointed he was so close so soon, relentlessly fucked him, her hips pounding against his as she tried to forcefully yank the orgasm from his loins, “I-I-I’m--” “Shut it and cum,” Ashe growled as sweat poured down her brow from the exertion. Doing as he was commanded, the sperm spewed forth, filling the gremlin’s womb. She sighed loudly as the warm feeling reverberated within her. Zero panted and groaned beneath her, his member still firmly lodged in her. He went limp, his once pleading face now smiling softly at her, “You think we’re done? No, no. You don’t get off that easily after losing to me twice. You’re done when I say so,” Ashe grins at him. He whimpered in response as the gremlin started to fuck him viciously once more. Zero collapsed, completely spent as he came for the fourth time. Ashe’s pussy shuddered as she orgasmed once more. She sighed and pulled the man out of her. Her womb was completely filled, a bit of cum pouring out of her mixed with her natural pussy juice. She grinned and crawled up her new man, planting a firm, wet kiss on his cheek, “There ya go. Had fun, babe?” She asked as she got up and wiped herself off. Awkwardly and sheepishly, he nodded, “Wh-where are you going?” He asked as the gremlin returned to the cockpit. “Gotta make some cash so we can live comfortably. I hate those damned dragons, but I gotta bring the bread home for my man,” She explained as she fixed up her clothes, “Just be a good boy and stay in there. I won’t be long,” She called. Zero nodded and let himself fall asleep, too exhausted to move much. Ashe glanced at him and smiled softly, happy with herself and very pleased with the man she had caught.
-
“Did you hear?” Ashe the baphomet asked her witch underling, “Another sabbath group got attacked the other night.” The witch, Blue, nodded, “T-the survivors said Fuckman did it.” The familiar, Wolfe, spat, “Pfft. Fuckman. What a goddamn joke! He’s just a guy in a panty mask! If he came here I’ll bet even Gizmo there could overpower him!” She looked at me with a smug look, “Or Tipp. Her green ass would absoultely DESTROY Fuckman!” The goblin nodded proudly, “I’d have him between my thighs, licking my gash and BEGGING for more!” The familiar and goblin laughed. “This is serious!” The gremlin, other than me, Jay, growled, “Fuckman is going after sabbaths now! He could come HERE! He beat up those HELLHOUNDS last month!” “Pfft,” Ashe shook her head, “Those girls pushing the ‘white men fuck dogs’ agenda? Or the ones going on and on about white boys being built to breed hellhounds?” “BOTH!” “What I’m saying is, even without onii-chans, we’re way stronger than those hellhound skanks,” Ashe was right, all six of us were single. I smiled, “Don’t let our fearsome Big-Fukker hear that,” We all snickered at the mere mention of our small and timid hellhound friend and sabbath member. The nickname was given with love, but we couldn’t help but tease her. I put the finishing touches on another B.O.O.B.S. unit and set it aside. [Biosynthetic Optical Onii-chan Bewitching Stimulant. See ‘Fuckman Versus the Loli Menace: Volume 3’ for more information!] We were in a pretty decently sized once abandoned warehouse. It was pretty common for mamano groups to take refuge within once abandoned buildings like this. The sabbath had set up shop here and brought us gremlins and goblins in to work on the B.O.O.B.S. The warehouse was full of boxes full of various tech along with cabinets and gremlin sized workbenches scattered around. I touched my own chest. My breasts weren’t that big right now. But I, along with these other shorties, wanted big boobs. It might be heretical in most sabbath groups to do something like this, but we gremlins and goblins weren’t sabbath. These fake large breast devices would surely get us our own men! I wasn’t sure why the sabbath wanted them, probably just for their own personal agenda. “W-What happens to the girls that Fuckman... gets?” Blue asked as she shook in her little boots. She clutched her staff in fright. “That's just it!” Jay shouted, “Fuckman takes them, they stop showing up to whatever group they were a part of and they’re eventually found with a loving husband! But there's no way these guys can be Fuckman! One of those hellhounds that got fucked into submission was found with a pretty chubby lookin’ dude a few weeks later!” “And?” Tipp sighed. “Its a conspiracy to keep mamano down! He’s been around just as long as we have but he shouldn’t be able to live this long! Its like the Liliminati! Or the Flufferburgs! Or that the portal event was an inside job! Or bigfoot. A-and ignis flames--” “Jay, we get it,” Wolfe groaned, “But Fuckman was last seen on the other side of the country. We’re fine.” “We could take him, easy,” Ashe scoffs, “He’s just a human.” “A really big human, with big oiled muscles and a dumb mask,” Tipp pointed out with a shrug, “But a mask and oil won’t save him from your sabbath magic.” Wolfe smiled smugly, “That's true. But what of your tech? Surely that can stop a human man just as easily!” “Could hold one down too,” I smiled as I picked up a H.U.M.P. [Heavy Utility Mover Pack. See ‘Fuckman: The Odds are Short Stacked Against Him’ for more information!] I put the backpack on, and used the controls to move the big metal hands around. They were three pronged clamps that could easily hold the average man down with a single hand. We used them for heavy lifting as well as ensnaring cute boys. “I’d use a paralyse spell on him,” Ashe put simply. Blue nodded, “Perhaps infuse him with various venoms as well?” “Good idea!” The baphomet cackled. Wolfe laughed haughtily, “Well, I’d just move earth to keep his feet in place then just stroke that cock till he begs me to fuck him! I’d tie him up and keep him as my little pet! For revenge for all of mamano kind!” “Okay, Wolfe,” Jay wretched, “We know you’re a freak and wanna be some hunk’s dommy mommy,” She snickered. Wolfe’s face immediately lit up bright red as her rage surfaced, “FUCK YOU, YOU BITCH--” “Shut it!” Tipp groaned, “I don’t want to listen to your shouting! We’d all beat the shit out of him and one of us would fuck him. Let's all talk about something else!” I chuckled, “Yeah...” I trailed off. As the other girls’ conversations turned to other topics, my mind stayed on Fuckman. Could his ‘killcount’ really be 410,757,864,350? Has there even been that many mamano in history? Even with human women included, that would be a LOT of fucking! I could hardly imagine a single man fucking that many wombs. Even someone like Fuckman. A muscular, masked and oily man. Somewhere deep inside of me, I wondered what it would be like to be pinned down and fucked like that. I was almost afraid I would enjoy it. Another day of working with the sabbath. I sighed as I walked in the front doors. It was just me and the same five other girls again. I greeted Blue as she gave me a fresh stack of blueberry pancakes. I had already eaten but I couldn’t turn down that sweetheart’s cooking. I made my way to my station next to Jay and started working on more B.O.O.B.S. units, “Y-you don’t think Fuckman would come here, right?” Jay asked in a low voice. “Dunno why he would. That other sabbath was gonna use their magic at a big metal concert to enthrall all the onii-chans they could,” I reminded her in a disgusted tone. I shuddered, “Fucked them all backstage and kidnapped them before they went on for their set. We’re just making these chest things to get big boobs,” I shrugged. “Y-yeah but... These are made to BEWITCH! That could be seen as bad, right?” “Can it. We’re not bad,” Tipp growled, “Mamano are the ultimate good! Fuckman is the antagonist you dolts. Next we should make something to kick his smug ass and prove mamano are the strongest!” “Like what?” Ashe butted into the conversation, “Some kind of trap with live bait?” “We could just use the B.O.O.B.S. unit,” I reminded them, “Its got one of those aether crystals to power your spell, right?” “Well, yeah,” Wolfe frowned, “But that's no fun. We should do something with venom like Blue said!” “Its simple!” Ashe cackled, “We fuck the Fuckman!” I started to ignore them as I returned to my work. I just wanted this contract between sabbath and tech group to end. I was getting tired of baphomet antics. Their grand baph was especially annoying. I just-- “Did you hear that?” Blue suddenly asked, snapping me out of it. All six of us looked around slowly. Blue was right. We could all hear weird noises. Something thumped across the roof. Tipp gasped as her eyes grew wide, “Santa!?” “You dumbass!” Jay snapped, “Santa is an RIN spook!” [Ratatoskr Information Network. See Jay’s book: ‘Robotic Harpies and Why the Maou Can’t be Trusted!’ for more information!] “He’s real! I know it!” Ashe growled, “Shut up! I need to--” Everyone stopped as the ground shook slightly. We all turned towards the main entrance with dread and fear. The sabbath members grabbed their staves and spell books while Jay grabbed a H.U.M.P. and started putting it on. I reached for a hammer but changed my mind and grabbed a B.O.O.B.S. unit. I started fumbling with it and trying to put it on. Just then, the front door burst open with a loud slam. I turned in horror as I heard moist stomping on the concrete floors of our little warehouse. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be him. But... It WAS him. I could only watch in horror as the legends came true. The man entered, muscular body, cock at full mast, messy black hair and a mask on his face. It was like a Deadpool mask but the black stripe in the middle was panties and the red was skin color. The eyes were the same though. It was the dreaded Fuckman, here to rape the ‘evil’ from us, “Girls!” Ashe ordered with a firm voice to rouse the other two casters. “Right,” They said in unison. Ashe, Blue and Wolfe all lept into action despite their fears. They all began to shout in their ancient, forbidden tongue as the room grew cold and dark. The wind picked up and papers flew off the desk as the trio casted their terrible dark magic. At once they stopped and the ball of energy flew at Fuckman and struck his pristinely oiled skin. The spell bounced off his muscular body and struck the wall with enough force to shake the building. I gasped as Fuckman kept walking towards the trio, all of them paralysed with fear. Jay came to the rescue with her H.U.M.P. and attempted to strike our attacker with one of the robotic arms. He easily parried and grabbed the arm, pulling the gremlin into his grasp. She shouted and struggled as she tried to get away from him. Fuckman easily tore the H.U.M.P. from her back before pushing her to the ground and removing her clothes. Tipp began to cry for the gremlin as she was held down on her stomach. Fuckman forced his throbbing member into her without a sound. Jay was already wet so he easily slid into the hilt. The sabbath members started to scurry as the fucking began. I expected her to scream in terror, in pain even; but no, she moaned. And she moaned LOUD. Within a few thrusts, her eyes rolled up into her head and her mouth became involuntarily agape as her tongue rolled out of her mouth. The dreaded ahegao, in only a few seconds flat. The entire room was silent except for the lewd wet slapping sounds of Fuckman’s oiled hips slapping against the gremlin’s plump ass. I could only stand and watch as Fuckman relentlessly pounded Jay’s tight cunt, “Oh my god,” I suddenly realised, “He’s raping her! Then he’s going to rape me! Oh my gooooood!” There was a loud noise as Fuckman grunted violently and Jay gasped. I covered my eyes with my hands as Jay arched her back and grabbed Fuckman’s hands, making sure he didn’t let go. I peeked as I watched Fuckman blow a massive load inside my friend’s gash. He even pulled out and got some on her back, “You fucker,” Jay growled as she went limp, “That’s ALL supposed to go in there...” Fuckman stood, leaving Jay to nap on the floor. He looked around at the room, his now wetted cock already throbbing once more. His gaze passed over me and focused on the sabbath girls. They huddled in a corner, desperately trying to think of a spell. There was a pounding on the front door as Tipp desperately tried to get out of the building, “PLEASE! I HAVE A BOYFRIEND!” She screamed as tears rolled down her cheeks.. “You lying bitch!” Wolfe shouted at the goblin. Tipp had never said she had a boyfriend before. Fuckman grabbed Tipp and flipped her upside down as she screamed and cried. He took a long whiff of her vagina before nodding and bonking her on the head with his hand. The goblin was out instantly. Fuckman, with Tipp under his arm, vanished behind a tall stack of boxes, “Where is he!?” I cried. I heard Wolfe shriek. I ducked behind the workbench and peeked over it. Fuckman had grabbed her and the other two girls were dashing to the other side of the building. The familiar blushed as she was gently laid upon her back and her shorts were torn open for Fuckman’s member. Oddly he didn’t look like his cock had already violently nutted inside of Jay. No trace of either of their love juices on him. Maybe he had cleaned up? I was more in awe than I was afraid of Fuckman. He was like a cryptid, one of those things that Jay kept going on about but here he was! I watched as he put Wolfe in a mating press and went to town. He was more gentle than he had been with Jay. He grabbed her hands and interlocked fingers with her. She smiled at him as the ecstasy overcame her. She looked happy as she was intertwined with the man violating her body, “Come on, big boy,” She teased, “Give mommy your cummies,” Fuckman nodded and grunted as he began to pick up the pace. Wolfe gasped and writhed from the pleasure before gasping loudly. He grunted as he filled her up, only a little bit of his cum got on her shorts. Wolfe happily rolled onto her stomach as Fuckman released her. She curled up as she took a post fuck nap. Fuckman vanished again. “Unhand me!” Ashe shouted as she was grabbed, “I will keep my--” She shut up as Fuckman tore a hole in her leotard. He held her up against the wall as he gave her a one way ticket to pound town. She moaned and gasped as the lewd slapping increased in volume. Again I only watched as Fuckman ‘punished’ her, “Please! Oh! More!” She gasped and pleaded as she ahegaoed. Her arms wrapped around his neck and her legs wrapped around his hips as she forced him to completely cum inside her. She went limp and slid to the floor with a big smile on her face. Fuckman wasn’t done with her. He grabbed his shaft and used her love fluids as lube as he began to jack off. Ashe smiled at him and fondled his balls gently. With a single grunt, Fuckman gave her the Bukakke Burial technique. [See Jay’s book ‘Bitcoins are a Tanuki Scheme and Why You Can Only Trust Gremcoin’ for more information!] Ashe was absolutely coated in it, inside and out. Fuckman vanished once more. I looked around, more curious than afraid as to where he would strike next. I spotted Blue. She was sitting on a box of B.O.O.B.S. units. Fuckman approached her, “The hat stays on,” Blue ordered as she grabbed the brim of her witch’s cap. Fuckman nodded and gingerly removed her panties without any struggle and left it hanging from one of her boots. He gently touched her pussy with two fingers, teasing her. She moaned and gasped before grabbing him and trying to kiss him through the mask. He kissed her back before easing her back into the missionary position. He was incredibly slow and gentle with her as he pushed the head of his penis in her. She grabbed the brim of her at and pulled it down over her eyes as she gasped. Slowly and methodically, Fuckman pushed himself deeper and deeper into her with each thrust. They were like a loving couple fucking for the first time, so passionately and sweetly, “I-I’m gonna--” Blue was cut off as she involuntarily moaned and gasped. Despite her orgasm, Fuckman kept going. She moaned underneath him as he sped up and aggressively crashed his hips against her. He came, mostly in her, but he made sure to give her the 21 Cum Salute. [See ‘Demofaps and Recumlicans Volume 46’ for more information!] Fuckman helped Blue to the floor before glancing at me and stomping behind a wall again, leaving my vision. I was the last one. It was my turn. I climbed up on the workbench and adjusted the B.O.O.B.S. on my chest before I took off my overalls. I left the panties on for Fuckman. They were striped of course. He appeared at full mast, same as every time before. He stomped towards me menacingly with wet stomps. I was intimidated of course. An oily, muscled man with a panty mask and a fully erect cock can do that to a girl. I gave him an impatient look causing him to speed up slightly. He was a bit shorter than any other Fuckman that had taken those girls and didn’t have any kind of after sex residue on his still erect cock. I glanced at Jay, still sleeping peacefully on the floor. Guess she had been right about one of those crazy conspiracies after all. I wondered if she would write another book, I could see it now: ‘The Dreaded Fuckman and Why Gremlins are Built for Human Cock.’ I glanced back at Fuckman. He was before me, cracking his knuckles. I adjusted the B.O.O.B.S. unit again to try and charm him, “Just be gentle, alright?” I instructed nervously. He took hold of my shirt and pulled it off of me. He gripped the B.O.O.B.S. unit in the back and easily tore the binds. He pulled it off of me and threw it to the floor where it crunched on the ground. I gulped nervously as he touched my real breasts and played with my nipples. I grabbed his wrists, praying he wouldn’t stop as I moaned and whimpered at his mere touch. Unfortunately, he did eventually stop when my panties were thoroughly soaked. My breathing was already ragged as my panties were removed. My panties hung from one of my ankles as Fuckman gently pushed my legs apart. I grabbed his shaft and guided it in. Even as just the tip penetrated me, I threw my head back and moaned. The scent of that oil was clouding my mind and making me incredibly horny. It had to be. He grunted quietly as he moved one hand to my hip and the other to my shoulder. He thrust slowly at first. We both lost ourselves in the ecstasy pretty quickly, “Come on you dumb ape, show me what you can do,” I demanded dumbly. Taking the challenge he grunts and suddenly slams himself in me all the way down to the hilt causing me to howl loudly. I tried to grip him to hold his body close but the oil made it nearly impossible. He was like an animal, wildly pumping into me with his throbbing cock, “Come on! Give it to me-aaaah!” I cried out in pleasure again as he slammed himself down to the base of his cock within me. He grunted loudly as he suddenly came inside me. My body shook as I orgasmed, a natural reaction to his cum hitting my womb. We both panted as I leaned on him, my eyelids feeling heavy. I assumed it was that oil again. I could only wonder what was in that oil. Fuckman scooped me up in a princess carry before stepping past my fallen comrades. He said something garbled to another masked man in a robe who nodded and picked up Jay after finishing writing on the wall. Three more masked men all came in through the front door and handed the guy carrying me robes. He set me down on a box and quickly put the robes on before picking me back up. I caught a glance of Tipp in the corner, tied up, gagged, and still unconscious, “Don’t like goblins, Fuckman?” I pretty gently and playfully slapped his chest. He chuckled, “Go to sleep,” He urged. “If I pull that off, will you die?” Even with the mask, I know he’s rolling his eyes, “It would be extremely painful,” He gives me his best Bane impression. I grinned giddily despite my brain and body wanting to shut off and go to sleep, “You’re a big guy.” “For you,” He finished. I smiled and finally closed my eyes as he walked out into the morning sunlight and towards a big truck. I woke up slowly and groggily. A pair of arms were wrapped around me, not very strong looking arms but still familiar. I could still smell trace amounts of that oil on his arms. I pushed the arms off of me and rolled over. He was definitely the same size as the ‘Fuckman’ that fucked me yesterday, minus the huge muscles. He was a little scrawny and younger than I expected, but that didn’t matter much to me. I kissed him on the cheek and wrapped my arms around his neck. He stirred and rewrapped his arms around me, “Sup, stud?” I asked. “Hey,” He groaned, “They didn’t tell me I’d ache this much.” “Was that magic or what?” He shrugged, “They just gave me the mask and told me to strip. You kept mumbling about Fuckman in your sleep.” “Okay, yeah,” I playfully slapped his chest, “Maybe I WANTED to get boned by Fuckman! And now I’ve got my own Fuckman! You got any more of that oil?” I quickly added, wanting to feel that exhausting, erotic sensation again. “The horny oil? I dunno I put the mask on, got huge and suddenly I was covered in the stuff. It was mostly instinct from there. I really wonder what kinda magic was in it. Oh, and we can’t really tell anyone about the whole Fuckman thing and give away the secret,” He shrugged apologetically. I frowned, “Well, I guess I can try to reverse engineer it. Gotta be some trace amounts on your skin... So what secret society put you boys up to it?” He scratched his head, “Not really sure, they really only sent one guy and he was really secretive. I just remember him having a face that looked kinda hairy because of his beard and big ass shoes.” My mouth hung open, “B-Bigfoot?” He gave me a weird look, “Bigfoot? Really? Did I get the crazy one?” “No,” I quickly tried to recover, “The other gremlin, Jay, was the crazy one. I-I was just joking.” “My brother got her,” He scratched his head, “So I hope you two were friends.” “Your brother doesn’t have a clue what he got himself into. My name’s Gizmo by the way,” I pushed him onto his back and straddled him. “Mines--” “Doesn’t matter,” I interrupted him, “Right now, you’re my Fuckman,” I licked my lips as I ran my hands down his chest, “Come on, just try to defeat me, Fuckman!”