Blacklisted in Hungary (Story)

[Matteo ((Taed))]

Matteo slumped down into his seat, the recently bandaged wound in his side a sharp flash of pain, lurid against the canvas of his weariness and the dull hum of the aircraft’s engines. The interior of the fuselage was dimly lit by cherry-red lights interspersed at intervals overhead. Two men sat across from him on the opposite bench, garbed in full tactical gear and caked with grime and sweat. One of them also wore a bowler hat stuck defiantly on his head—a terribly incongruous garment when compared to the rest of his appearance.

Matteo reached into a pouch on his Kevlar combat vest and withdraw a small gold pocketwatch. As he turned the watch in his hands its appearance seemed to shift like a dollar store holographic decal or trading card, seeming one moment to be brand new, and to be old and battle scarred the next.

He snapped open the watch’s face to check the time. Only four hours had passed since this operation began. It felt like so much more. He closed the watch once more. An inscription on it read: ‘To my past and future selves. May this timepiece link us together across the ages and make all of our lives less confusing. –From Matteo’.

He replaced the watch in its pouch and awkward silence settled over the three men like a thunderhead. Eventually, Matteo cleared his throat and spoke.

“Well,” he said, before pausing uncertainly again. “That was a doozy, wasn’t it?” Grunts of agreement from the other two. “I guess we can rule out going back to Budapest any time soon, eh?”

“I’d say we can rule out the whole damn country, actually,” one of the other two men finally said. “They’re not exactly going to be happy to see us again. Thank you very much, James.”

The remaining man, James, wearing his bowler hat over orange hair turned nearly black by the red lighting, spun about in outraged surprise. “Excuse me?” he cried in a perfect Oxford accent. “How on bloody earth was this my fault, Peter!? I seem to recall you were the one who opened the crypt in the first place!”

“Oh don’t you dare call me Peter in that voice!” Pete replied. “It sounds so hateful in your mouth. I just know you’re trying to sound like my mother. It could only be worse if you used my full name.

“And yes, I did open the crypt, but in doing so I interrupted the cultists’ ritual and saved most of Eastern Europe from becoming a Dark God’s breakfast. The revenants which poured out were merely an... unfortunate side effect. Besides, you were the one who blew up half of St. Stephen’s!”

“To be fair, Pete,” Matteo chimed in. “That was sort of your idea as well.”

“What? Are you drunk? I was one hundred percent the voice of reason throughout this fiasco!”

“You gave me the C4!” James cried. “You handed me a big bag of C4 and told me to put it where it would do the most damage!”

Matteo nodded. “You should never let James make that kind of decision on his own. We’ve lost so many cathedrals that way.”

“Well what about you, Mr. ‘I’m great at fighting minotaurs’?” Pete said, jabbing an accusatory finger at Matteo. “We had to drag your unconscious ass through just about every hallway in Buda Castle until you woke up.”

“How was I supposed to know the minotaur would be riding a griffon?" Matteo replied in a scandalized voice. "They usually live in mazes. Flying defeats the purpose of a maze!”

The thunderhead of silence fell over the three men once more, now shot through with lightning flashes of anger and the deep rumblings of half-heard insults grumbled from scowling mouths. Minutes passed and the cargo plane moved out over the Adriatic.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Matteo decided to hazard an attempt at extending the olive branch. “Hey … Did you guys see that one revenant--?”

“OH MY GOD YES!” The other two instantly replied, quarrels forgotten, and unrestrained joy in their voices.

“I have never seen anyone more on fire than that guy,” Pete exclaimed like a child on Christmas morning.

“I know, right?” James chimed in. “When his Soul Crystal caught light it was like a bloody evil fireworks display. I didn’t know ectoplasm could do that. Let alone flesh and bone.”

“How about when the Chief Erebomancer tried to turn James’ blood to acid?” Pete cried, practically bouncing up and down. “That was fantastic, the way you rolled around on the floor and screamed a bit before you blasted him. The look on his face was just priceless. You even had me fooled for a minute!”

“Me too!” Matteo added.

“Yeah, I just figured I had to mess with him a bit. You know he must have melted people from the inside out about a million times before. Have some creativity. Everybody knows I’m immune to acid. Everybody. That guy was so asking for it.”

“Good times, good times,” they murmured, settling back into their seats with shining, far-away looks in their eyes, remembering undead combustions and sorcerer shootings of yore.

The moment passed and the three men shared glances, mentally weighing the rigors and stresses of this night against all the good times they had shared.

“Fuck Hungary?” James offered.

“Fuck Hungary.” The other two firmly agreed, as the plane flew onwards into the night.




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Here are the options for tomorrow's story. PM your votes to KAEZ:

Should our intrepid heroes.

• A. Return to their Gentleman’s Club/Secret Paramilitary Hideout for some much needed R&R.
  
  
• B. Receive a mysterious distress call and divert course to investigate.
  
  
• C. Be attacked by Mothra.

[Kaez]

The Adriatic blended into the abyss of the night, its rippling waters only faintly echoing the moonlight that glistened across them. They would reach Pescara within the hour and intended to stop there for the night for some well deserved rest. The three of them were exhausted. Just over four hours ago, an orchestra of swirling red lights and siren alarms rang through the airplane. Yet another high-level alert, sent from their future selves, warning them that they must immediately get to action or the sake of the whole world would be at risk.

The future-trio was always getting into such trouble. Pete wondered, as he handed James a sack full of C4 earlier that evening, just how it seemed that they always had to clean up their own messes before they happened. He didn’t bother to share his concern with James, though. He just said, “Put it where it’ll do the most damage,” and thought about how he’d blame the whole affair on the Englishman later.

In time, St. Stephen’s Basilica was largely destroyed, Buda Castle had been cleansed of its Unholy Army, and one extraordinarily crafty minotaur had been decapitated. As exhausted as they were, the evening had been productive. Their only hope was that perhaps their future selves would stop doing such obnoxiously stupid things. ‘Intergalactic heroin’ or not, there was just no excuse to give a minotaur a griffon.

“I do hope Koji uses that griffon wisely,” Pete said in a tone of slight concern.

“Nothing to worry about,” James replied dismissively. “His bloodline hasn’t been tainted by demonic overlords since… what, thirty, forty years ago?”

“Isn’t Koji about thir—”

“Hey,” James spoke again, interrupting Matteo. “What’s this?” He pointed at a series of small, red LED lights pinned between the armrest of his chair and the side of the plane. It was a particularly inconvenient place for such lights to be located and he could barely decipher the awkward pattern they seemed to alight.

“What’s what?” Pete asked.

“This!” James huffed, pulling and twisting at the armrest to get a better look. There were barely two centimeters between the panel and the wall. “It looks to be... a face? A little red LED face? I really can’t tell at all, this stupid thing...”

Matteo stood up and pressed his cheek against the wall, attempting to get a careful look at the lights. “I don’t ever remember seeing that before.”

“I’ll check the manual,” Pete declared, flipping through a stack of magazines beneath his seat. Mothra Monthly, Japanese Folk Demons, Escaping Hungary: A How-To, The di Gioplane: An Owner’s Manual.

There we are, he thought, and began to scan through the book’s index. After a few seconds, he spoke again. “We have a coffee machine?” Pete inquired. “Why have we never made coffee? I’m going to make coffee today, comrades.”

“The lights,” Matteo sighed. “Get to the lights.”

Nodding, Pete found the appropriate section and began mumbling the contents of it to himself as he read. Details about the large-scale siren and alarm system that alerted them earlier this evening about their vital mission in Hungary. An explanation of the color-coding on the coffee machine. Two full pages on how to operate the on-board air vents so as to not disrupt James’ hair.

And there, at the bottom of the section, was a brief paragraph entitled, ‘Immortal Distress Signal of Doom’.

In the event that the Immortal Ones should rise again, threatening the destruction of the entire world, an LED warning panel placed conveniently on the Row J, Seat 6 armrest’s side panel will light.

“Oh.”

“What?” James, clearly frustrated, asked. “What’s the damn thing mean?” He had finally manage to bend the armrest just enough to widen the slim gap and twisted and tilted his head to decipher the red glow.

Pete replied with a tone of melancholy. “The, uh. Immortal Ones... have... apparently risen again. They intend to destroy the entire world.”

James stared with the cold hatred of a thousand Erebomancers. “Hand me that,” he snarled, ripping the book from Pete’s hands, scanning the pages. “Who in the bloody hell invented this plane?! When Future-Matteo pissed off the Twelfth Snake-Queen of Hungary, it nearly exploded with warning lights! And now some... some horrible sounding, menacing group of some sort has apparently arisen and this is how we’re told?! Bah!” He threw the book onto the floor, its front cover staring up at him: ‘WRITTEN AND CREATED BY MATTEO DI GIOVANNI’

Pete fell back into his seat and sighed. “Just relax. Clearly this is, uh, very bad. But does anyone have any idea who the Immortal Ones actually, y’know, are? Matteo, what’s this mean?”

“How should I know? I didn’t invent it! Or, well... I have yet to invent it.” The cover of the manual concluded, ‘COPYRIGHT 2459 AD’.

“James,” Pete said. “Get Future-Matteo on the phone. Figure this whole thing out. In the mean time, I think we should probably not land in Pescara. Something tells me that’s not going to be very safe.”

“Agreed,” Matteo said, standing up and heading toward the cockpit. “I’ll tell Baldrick to just divert our course north to Britain until I explain this to us.”

James spat at the phone. “You filthy, barbaric scoundrel, you listen to me! You’ve gotten us into yet another horrible mess and, by God, you’re going to help us get out of it! Who in the bloody hell are the Immortal Ones and what are they doing back again?”

James grew quiet and solemn, his face flushed pale. “... oh. Bollocks.”







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Here are the options for tomorrow's story. PM your votes to AGRO:

Who are the Immortal Ones?

• A. The race of Ginger Demons from whom James descended have returned to claim him for their own.

• B. The Aspens, corrupted by anger at human logging, have turned their back on Pete, their long-time ally.

• C. The Second Triumvirate, the villainous counterpart to our heroic trio, have enacted their master plan.

[James]

James allowed the words of Future-Matteo swirl slowly through his head, thoughts churning as his stomach lurched from the sudden change in direction. After securing the continuing bickering of Eastern Europe, he wished for nothing more than to return back to their gentleman’s club and read the latest edition of Sherlock Holmes by the captured soul of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. But now this? Fuck this and whoever created it, which if James had to wager on, was probably Poseidon. He hadn’t quite forgiven them for stealing the oceans during a tense stand-off with the Pirate Lords.

“Don’t you hang up!” he suddenly yelled into the phone, Matteo reappearing from the cockpit as his future self said his farewells. “I don’t care if you have fucking pocket aces! I don’t care if it’s the Dalai Lama! Don’t you hang up on…”

“He hung up on you?” Pete offered into the silence.

“Aren’t you meant to be making coffee?” James snapped back through gritted teeth, flinging his bowler hat onto the stand next to him, his hair almost crackling in anger. “Why do you become such a dick, Matteo?”

“That’s an assumption. For all you know I could have been gambling to buy you a new car, and now you just called me a dick for getting you that car. That’s not very nice, next time I won’t bother,” Matteo said, dropping into his seat. “Anyway, did I tell you who the Immortal Ones were?”

“Yes,” James said, his tone softening as he compiled his thoughts. “You remember those three odd chaps who used to follow after us in strange costumes?”

“The Second Triumvirate?” Pete said, placing his chin upon entwined fingers.

“They are, apparently, our Immortal Ones.”

“Umm, isn’t there a problem with that?” Matteo asked, looking up at the small red dot that revealed the plane’s location, swiftly moving north up Germany.

“Such as the fact that they’re not immortal? In fact, they’re the very opposite of immortal, they’re dead,” Pete said.

“The opposite of immortal is mortal, not dead, that’s like basic…” James began, catching sight of Pete’s eyes flashing momentarily the colour of bark in anger, before he changed tact. “Anyway, not important. What is important is that they are the Immortal Ones.”

“But how? They’re dead, we killed them,” Pete said, earning a shared grimace from the others.

“I don’t think we can claim that,” Matteo said. “We hid behind a tree and jumped out at them with the intent to scare them. Not with the intent for them to tumble backward off a cliff in fright. At best that’s a strategic victory.”

“But they’re still dead,” Pete countered, swivelling in his seat to face the Canadian. “We checked, they were definitely lying there in the water… dead.”

“Well,” James interrupted. “It turns out that the water they were laying in just happened to be the third of the seven Forgotten Pools.”

“By the Rising Sun of the Fourth Japanese Empire,” the other two whispered, their face paling noticeably in the reddish glow of the flashing LEDs of the plane.

“Instead of dying they were scattered across the face of the planet, each imbued with an actual power, each with a grudge against us for nearly killing them,” James explained.

“But… we indirectly gave them that power,” Matteo said, his mass of hair bouncing as he nodded along to his words.

“They should be shaking our hands,” Pete said. “And possibly paying us some sort of fee or compensation. Or even copyright actually, a band of three roaming the world. I’m pretty sure that’s our idea.”

“Rowling got their first,” James said.

“Or, you know, God,” Matteo retorted. “Three wise men.”

“But there was actually four, people forget the last one though because he was French,” James nodded sagely.

Matteo and Pete looked at each other, the pair considering pointing out that France wasn’t even a country at the time, before agreeing silently that it wasn’t worth the effort. James’ memories had been slightly muddled for the past week after the incident with the Wolf of Oslo, but the doctor had assured them it wouldn’t last for long.

“So… the Second Triumvirate are the Immortal Ones?” Pete asked, James confirming with a curt nod. “And they all have some sort of power now? What are these powers?”

“Future-Matteo didn’t feel that was a priority to tell me due to his card game,” James answered, glaring daggers at Matteo from across the plane.

“When I buy you that Ferrari Enzo 426, equipped with jet engines and a stealth cloak, I’m going to want an apology before I give you the keys,” Matteo said.

“All he gave me,” James carried on, ignoring Matteo’s comment. “Was their current locations and for the sake of brain functions, I’m not even going to consider how he knows their exact location for this exact time.”

“Locations? They aren’t all together then?” Pete pieced together.

“Nope. They are in different places collecting items for the ritual that they are intending to perform. Future-Matteo didn’t tell me who was who, but one is in Stratford-upon-Avon. Another is in Seoul. And the third is in… Quebec, God know what could be in fucking Quebec?” James finished, looking at Matteo who merely returned a half-hearted shrug.

“Hold the dreaded headless Horseman’s horses, what ritual?” Pete asked, leaning forward.

“Ah, yes,” James said, biting his lip slightly. “They intend to somehow disrupt the time stream, therefore ending the link between past, present and future. We would become far less able than now. We would no longer be able to communicate with our future selves nor would the Machine work anymore. That’s not counting the possibility of time ending. We are in a spot of bother, chaps.”

“Well, umm, fuck them,” Pete spluttered, shocked at what the Immortal Ones were planning, Matteo simply speechless.

“Aptly put,” James said, placing a hand upon his cane-come-sword, the grip a calming comfort. “And therefore I think we should probably attempt to get at each of them before they can link up. So, my companions, where to first?”





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Here are the options for tomorrow’s story. PM your votes to TAED.

Where will Baldrick be told to redirect the plane?

• A. To the dreary thunderstorms of Stratford-upon-Avon?
  
• B. To the constantly threatened city of Seoul?
  
• C. To fucking Quebec?
  

[Matteo ((Taed))]

“Ugh”

“What is it?” Pete asked. He was dressed in an impeccably tailored suit, as were the other two, although James’ tended more towards the Victorian era in style.

“Quebec,” Matteo replied. The trio were on a public subway in Montreal, as they had agreed it was the best way to move about without attracting too much notice. “They think they’re so goddam special. ‘Ooo, we speak with an accent. Can we have our own country now?’ Separatist bigots. It’s just what you’d expect from a load of wannabe Frenchmen.”

“Did you just call a group of people bigots and insult the French in the same breath?” Pete asked.

“What’s your point?” Matteo replied.

“I … Oh never mind.”

“Why did we have to come here first, anyway? Stratford was so much closer. We could have been taking in a Royal Shakespeare Company play instead of rubbing shoulders with these,” Matteo glanced distastefully at their fellow commuters. “Celine Dion-worshipping francophones. Not to mention the poutine stink.”

“Is that what that is?” James cut in. “I thought there’d been some sort of horrible, cheese related natural disaster. Wait, how are we even smelling it? We’re underground!”

“The whole province smells like that. It’s a taint. They had to move the Ontario border to avoid contamination. If only we could have gone there instead! I could have shown you guys the real Canada.”

James snorted. “Yeah, because we all know how amazing that is. What’s Canada ever done, anyway?”

The look in Matteo’s eyes could have curdled milk; probably into cheese that the locals would have then scooped up to fuel their primarily poutine-based economy. “You of all people know, James,” he cried. “That the British suppressed all knowledge of the Third Great and Bountiful Arctic Empire after it fell because it made good ol’ Brittania look so bad in comparison!

“And,” his voice took on a strident, oratory pitch, ringing clearly through the subway interior. “Though the Ice Spires of Kasabonika may have shattered, the Canadian people unknowingly carry on the grand tradition of their forebears, standing proud vigil against the return of the Ice Giant hordes! And lo, through courage, honour, and--”

“All right, all right!” Pete cried, grabbing Matteo and pulling him down into a seat. “What have we told you about monologues that include the word ‘lo’? Come on, this is our stop.”

The three exited the train with strange looks following them all the way. Matteo was almost sure he heard someone say ‘sacrebleu’. He had to physically restrain himself from drawing his sidearm.

Up the stairs they went and out into the chill December air. The other two pulled the collars of their jackets up higher to ward off the sharp wind, but Matteo let his coat flap freely and unbuttoned, the cold barely registering on his perception.

“To answer your earlier question,” James said, through Tom Baker’s original scarf, which was wrapped around the lower half of his face. “We came to Quebec first because of who we think is here. Believe me, I would have preferred Stratford as well. But odds are good that Drall is the Immortal One here in Montreal and he was always the smartest of the three.”

“Well …” Pete said, holding up a hand to forestall his companion. “Not always. He got a lot cleverer after he started eating Mensa-club brains.”

“Granted. But if any of that group is going to listen to reason, I suspect it will be him. We might be able to end this mess quickly if we can talk him down,”

“And if we can’t?” Matteo asked, unconsciously fingering the stock of his pistol through his coat.

“If we can’t … Then it makes sense to take out the brains of the operation first. Shock and awe, as our yankee comrade is wont to say.”

“Oy! Watch it,” Pete said.

“Good, good,” Matteo crooned. “The only good Quebecer is a dead Quebecer, as my grandpa used to say. Come on, this is still my neck of the woods, even if it’s a cheese-curd-soaked wasteland. I have some ideas on where we might find him. Or at least, on who might be able to point us in the right direction.”



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Here are the options for tomorrow's story. PM your votes to KAEZ:

Will our heroes find Drall:

• A. In an ancient Indian burial ground?
  
  
• B. At the head of an underground cartel of French Mime Assassins?
  
  
• C. With the help of a sexy private detective from Matteo’s past?

[Kaez]

“That,” James declared, “was not at all what I had in mind.”

Matteo shook his bulging, reddened head that dangled beneath his feet. “Fucking Quebec.”

“Fucking mimes,” Pete added.

As the three of them hung from their ankles in a bitter and cold Canadian basement, blood rushing to their skulls, they stared at the upside-down darkness and pondered just how in the hell this situation had come to pass.

They had been walking through the streets of Quebec, toward a rather bleak, rundown section of the city (which, in its entirety was bleak and rundown, according to Matteo) searching for a possible informant in their hunt for Drall, the first of the Immortal Ones: that jealous, lesser trio that seemed now to be hell-bent on their destruction.

There as the stench of poutine grew ever more potent, they came across a corner where two grayscale-painted mimes palmed invisible walls and reeled fishing lines that ceased to be exist at all (Matteo again remarking that Quebec had exceeded such a level of despicableness that it was robbed of its very color).

“Fucking mimes,” Pete added.

Bored with the sight of the city, Matteo had attempted to step past them. One of the mime pair stepped across his path, pressing his hands stupidly against the air between the two, a black grin painted on his cheeky face. Again, Matteo stepped aside before the other mime in turn blocked him as he stumbled about, reeling in an invisifish. “Oh, come on! What is this shit?” he grumbled.

“Uh!” James announced decisively. The two turned to him just in time to watch as he tipped straight over and fell flat against the pavement, his hair turned into a horrid mess. Not an instant later, both Pete and Matteo had rags of chloroform stuffed into their faces and felt the world silently dissolve around them.

“I have no shame!” James, hung by his ankles a few hours later, said. “One can’t anticipate a mime attack! I refuse to make myself paranoid to street performing assassins!”

“Fuck. Ing. Que. Bec,” Matteo said. “I shouldn’t be surprised! Separatism, Celine Dion, poutine, the French… attack-mimes! If it’s illogical and horrid, they’re the masters of it!”

“Fucking mimes,” Pete added.

“Well, well, well,” came a distant voice, echoing off of the stone chamber. The voice sounded as though it had been drenched in kerosene, burned, beaten, kicked hard in the ribs, and not yet gone through puberty.

“Ah,” James said. “Our gracious host arrives. You’re to offer us hors d’oeuvres, I presume?”

“Oh,” Drall said. “You could say that.”

With a snap of his fingers, three mimes ascended from the shadows, wielding hockey sticks, faces painted as pale as the Canadian snow.

“Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear,” James said.

“I knew Quebec was a bad idea. I goddamn knew it!”

“Fucking mimes,” Pete added.

In the dark of the cellar, unseen by the helplessly suspended heroes as they were silently beaten, fate began to ready an awkward surprise.





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Here are the options for tomorrow's story. PM your votes to AGRO:

Will fate grant our heroes:

• A. Drall’s mom announces that dinner is ready, granting them time to escape.

• B. The Future Trio abruptly goes back in time to kick Drall’s ass with lasers and halberds.


Or will the next entry be:

• C. The newspaper article that describes the obnoxious, mysterious scene the successful trio leave in their wake after defeating Drall.

[James]

“And here I thought you might offer a challenge,” Drall squeaked, the three mimes bearing down upon the helpless and suspended trio. “It seems though that you’ll meet your end at my hand.”

“It’s not your hand,” Matteo spat. “It’s a fucking French hand that you have employed, how can you live with yourself?”

“Also, what are these mimes doing with hockey sticks? Shouldn’t they be… miming hockey sticks, or something?” Pete asked, before the room fell into near silence as the third of the trio burst into action. James grunted in effort as he swung himself back and forth from his ankle restraints, bending his upper body in the air. With each move, momentum built, the Englishmen’s head reaching his own knees.

“If… if you take off your trousers I want the mimes to fucking kill me,” Matteo said, shielding his eyes as James continued to swing from his restraints.

“Honey! Honey!” came a voice, floating down from the stairs as James’s hair finally reached the metal restraints around his ankles, turning the steel to slag. “It’s dinner time, Drall! Will your friends want some?”

“Yes, we shall!” James yelled, a hint of satisfaction in his voice, as he tumbled free from his restraints and onto the floor. “My lad, you really should have used flame resistance steel.”

“You’re still defenceless,” Drall cried, stumbling backward slightly as James pulled his cane from his belt, a sword slipping free for within it. “The cane? I told you to take the Englishman’s cane!”

Swinging the sleek blade over his head, the sword cut clean through the restraints of Pete, and then Matteo. The duo landed gracefully on the floor, eyes locked on the table behind the mimes, where their weapons were carelessly stacked.

“I…” Drall began, drawing in his fleeting courage, rising to his full height. The first pathetic signs of stubble bristled in indignation at the sight before him.

”Drall! Dinner! Now or you’re grounded!” the voice of his mother called from the stairs, taking a shriller tone than before, no longer dipped in honey.

“Yes babe, I mean mum!” Drall cried, face turning crimson at the humiliation of his pet name for his mother being revealed to his enemies. “Kill them!” he cried at the mimes before disappearing back up the stairs, slamming the door behind him.

The three mimes crept carefully forward, cautious to not trigger the non-existence traps or the imaginary frozen ice, with their hockey sticks raised in the air. James stepped in front of his two friends, sword held protectively in front of him, ready for their assaults before Pete fell to the floor with a thump.

“Pete!” Matteo yelled, dropping to his knees. His fingers reached for Pete’s wrist, checking for a pulse, only to find nothing. “Pete!”

“What’s wrong?” James panicked, throwing a glance over his shoulder to see the scene behind him, Pete unmoving upon the floor. “Is he alright?”

“He’s… I think… dead,” Matteo said, meeting James’s eyes, his own beginning to moisten considerably. “I don’t know how.”

James’s sword clattered to the floor, steel ringing in a melody of grief and pain, before it was joined by the sounds of three muffled thuds. The mimes had all fallen to the floor, weapons skittering away from them, as they laid upon the ground in total stillness.

“Ha!” Pete cried, eyes exploding open as he clambered to his feet, not a moment regard for the shocked looks upon his comrades’ faces. “I got you, you filthy French bastards!”

“Pete?” Matteo half-croaked, half-yelled, as he rose from his kneeled position. “What the fuck?

“I out-mimed them,” Pete explained, brushing the dirt off of his still amazingly crisp suit. “Ancient Mime Code, by out-miming them at death, I have caused their hearts to stop beating. Dark magic.”

“Umm,” James muttered, surveying the fallen figures in front of him. “How do we know they aren’t trying to mime back?”

“Are you,” Pete began, an incredulous tone ringing off of every word, “trying to suggest that I could be out-mimed by a group of ragtag Frenchmen?”

James met Matteo’s eyes, suspecting that the same uneasiness was reflected within his own brown orbs, before they sprung into action. James scooped up his sword with a flick of his wrist, rushing towards the mime closest to him, as Matteo leapt across the room, fingers wrapping around the comforting cool surface of his pistol. In a moment of carnage, blood spurted flew the air and moans of pain escaped from the mimes’ mouths as James buried his sword within the first mime’s chest, Matteo peppering the second’s skull with bullets.

The third, realising his façade was over, leapt to his feet and charged the surprised Pete. Arm swinging, the mime threw a wild punch at the American, fist falling a metre short of him. Yet to the others’ considerable surprise, Pete stumbled away clutching his nose. Rubbing his nose, he swung his leg out in a sharp kick, foot missing the mime by several inches. Mouth opening for a silent groan, the mime tumbled backward, clutching at his midsection.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Matteo said, watching the spectacle before him.

The combatants were now wrestling against each other, twisting and turning in the air as hands wrung at each other’s throats… except there was at least a foot of clean air between fingernails and Adam’s apples.

“This is ridiculous,” James said, snatching Pete’s revolver from the table next to Matteo. “Shall we?”

“Yes,” Matteo answered, pistol pointed straight at the heart of the struggling mime. Gunfire ripped through the air, bullets speeding across the room and embedding themselves in the mime who crumpled to the floor, blood splashing against Pete’s front.

“My suit!” he cried, looking down at his bloodied front.

“Not now,” James said, hurling the revolver across the room. “Drall is hopefully still eating, we can get him!”

Suddenly the walls around them began to crawl into life, arms and legs slowly detangling themselves from plaster and wood as an army of mimes appeared from the shadows, dressed as the surroundings behind them.

“Fucking. Mimes.” Pete said, watching the mess of movement around him.








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Here are the options for tomorrow's story. PM your votes to TAED:

How will our adventurers escape from the mime army?:

• A. Fight their way out with steel, speed and guile?
  
  
• B. Up the stairs of the basement and into the household of Drall?
  
  
• C. By using a small instrument of the Machine to open a temporary tear in time?
  

[Matteo ((Taed))]

The mimes swarmed over every surface, scrambling in eerie silence over the ground, across walls, and even upside down on the ceiling overhead. The trio of heroes stood in a clearing at the mob’s centre, surrounded on all sides by leering faces.

“We have to get out in the open or we’ll be overwhelmed,” Matteo said in a normal voice. There was no need to yell for the silent horde produced no din of battle.

“Agreed,” the other two replied. “Any ideas on how we do that, exactly?” James added.

Matteo pondered a moment; the situation seemed grim indeed. They had only seconds before the mimes gathered up the will to charge. In a moment of sudden inspiration, he stepped forward and filled his lungs in the loudest, most exaggerated way possible. You could have heard a pin drop in the moment that followed, as Matteo stood there, holding his breath, and the mimes watched him expectantly.

The moment passed and Matteo exhaled, huffing and puffing for all he was worth. As he lacked any form of cyclonic superbreath (that would have just been ridiculous) the narrow stream of air that passed from Matteo’s lips did little more than tickle the noses of the closest mimes. However, on cue, every mime in the room suddenly seemed to be walking against a massive gale; falling over one another and holding little black hats tight against their heads like the fucking mimes they were.

“Go!” Matteo yelled, and the trio rushed forwards. The mimes were fully occupied with the foul-weather charade, but that didn’t stop Pete and Matteo from shooting any that stumbled into their path, nor did it stop James from laying about like a madman with his blade.

The three ran up the rickety wooden stairs in a riot of groaning planks and cascading dust. Pete reached the top first and slammed his shoulder into the flimsy wooden door, shattering the moldering wood and bursting forth into the House of Drall.

The house was empty.

The three stood in the atrium of a once-lush mansion, now reduced by the passing of countless years into a crumbling mausoleum of despair. No lights burned in shattered bulbs or tarnished candelabras, and a heavy layer of dust lay over everything, except for a narrow track of footprints that run from the basement they had just escaped, and off down shadowed hallways into the estate’s depths.

“Well this is … not that surprising actually,” Matteo whispered.

“Come on,” James said. “Those mimes won’t stay distracted forever. And we’ve got an Immortal to kill.”

Pete slapped a new magazine into his Desert Eagle. “Lucky that that’s our specialty.”

The triumvirate set off along the path laid out by the footprints, watching all angles for any unpleasant surprises. Matteo paid special attention to the time-scarred statues and rusting suits of armour set regularly into wall alcoves. He had seen far too many such objects come to life in his years.

After what seemed an eternity of traversing the endless warren of fungus-encrusted hallways, James held up a hand and the three men drew to a halt. In the distance, echoing strangely, they could hear voices engaged in conversation. They began their advance once more, this time slow and cautious, weapons at the ready.

Ahead, a sliver of cold, fluorescent light escaped the crack in a doorway and cut a silver razor across the opposing wall. The voices were clearly coming from within the room. Matteo held a finger to his lips as the three clustered about the doorway, and, with painful slowness, he turned the knob and pushed the door open.

What the three heroes saw within would haunt their dreams for centuries.

The scene was lit by the harsh light of a naked, compact bulb. Drall sat at a gargantuan oaken table, facing away from them. In front of him, a steaming Cup-a-Soup sat half eaten. Across from him, a human skull sat in front of an empty chair, to which Drall was happily chattering away.

“Oh, that is just the creepiest-- … We … we heard his mother speak.” Matteo said, his face a rictus of horror. “How did we hear her speak?” As if on cue, the same disembodied woman’s voice they had heard in the basement emanated from the skull’s grinning jaw, continuing the conversation with Drall.

“So … he raised his mother’s ghost?” Pete asked, incredulous. “He’s a Necromancer now?”

“No,” James replied, his voice grim. “Far worse. He’s been trained by street performers. That’s him, throwing his voice.” Matteo began to half-retch, half weep, unsure which was more embarrassing.

Suddenly the skull spoke again, in the same tremulous female voice, and it’s words sent an icy chill through our three heroes. “Darling,” it said. “It would appear we have visitors.”

“Oh God, it sees us!” Matteo almost shrieked.

Drall whirled about, knocking over his high-backed chair. “You!” he roared. “You ruin everything! I won’t let you ruin this! Come, mother,” He leapt across the table and snatched up the skull, darting towards a door that seemed to lead out into the cold winter night.

“Kill them!” he cried over his shoulder, before disappearing outside. The voice of his ‘mother’ could just be heard as he raced away, calling out “So nice to meet you boys.”

“'Kill us?' Who do you think he was talking to?” Pete asked, just as something huge moved in the corner.

“God damn it, Pete.” James said. “You have the absolute worst timing." Matteo was still sobbing uncontrollably, shaken by the extent of the madness they had just witnessed. “Snap out of it, Matteo,” James spat. “Whatever is in that corner, it’s almost certainly French. Are you going let a Frenchman see you like this?”

Instantly, Matteo was recovered. “Let’s lock and load!” he roared, as the Ur-Mime, Master of Silent Damnation, slunk out of the shadows. It was nine feet tall and built like a scarecrow, all spindly limbs and narrow chest under a terrible, black-and-white-painted visage.

Matteo and Pete each opened up with both barrels—that’s four fucking barrels total—but the bullets seemed to strike something unseen before they ever found their mark. The Ur-Mime flung out a gloved hand and both men run into a similar invisible barrier. They both turned to find a way round, but immediately run up against another impediment. They pressed their hands up against the barricade, feeling for a way through, but found nothing. It was almost as if …

“No fucking way,” Matteo groaned.

… As if they were trapped in an invisible box.

James, still unfettered by the busker sorcery, raised his blade and faced the terrible beast. “Matteo may have the most hate for you,” he intoned. “But as an English gentlemen I am the sworn enemy both of Frenchmen and of poor street performers. In the name of my fathers and the Queen … I challenge thee.

“En garde, bitch.”

*****************

“That was un-be-freaking-lievable,” Matteo cried as they raced through the ice and snow after Drall. “I can’t believe you actually made a mime scream! And an Ur-Mime at that!”

“Oh … pish posh,” James said bashfully. “It’s not like it’s the first time.”

The three raced onwards through the night, steadily gaining on Drall’s retreating figure. As they moved out onto the frozen expanse of the Rideau Canal, Pete and James began to fall behind, while the two Canadians, Drall and Matteo, actually seemed to run faster on the icy surface.

“It’s over Drall!” Matteo yelled. “Face us like a man!”

Drall whirled about, skidding to a stop. “You think I’m running because I’m afraid of you!?” he shrieked. “I’ll show you what fear really is!” He thrust the skull which may or may not have been his mother’s into the air and a sickly green glow began to surround him.

“Taste the wrath of the Immortal Ones!”



********************************



Here are the options for tomorrow's story. PM your votes to KAEZ:

What is Drall's hidden power?

• A. Gypsy witchraft, bound to his mother's skull.
  
  
• B. He is a Hulk.
  
  
• C. He can regenerate from any injury.

[Kaez]

Holy shit you guys it was an Ice Giant.

Matteo stared unblinking at the monstrous creature that towered behind Drall. “Kill them!” the little Quebecois bastard roared, thrusting the skull he grasped in the direction of the heroes.

The beast was massive. It dwarfed Drall, standing at a few dozen feet tall, a croissant-shaped club the size of a station-wagon gripped in one of its six humongous hands. It was a genuine Ice Giant, unlike any seen since the fall of Kasabonika and the disassembly of the Third Great and Bountiful Arcitc Empire. And it was pissed.

“What do we do?” James peeped. He and Pete turned to Matteo, hopelessly clueless about anti-Ice Giant combat. The Canadian stared an instant longer, his eyed bugged wide, his face blank and pale.

“Run.”

The noble trio fled pathetically across the great subarctic ice sheets as the Giant took one great step over Drall and began his chase for them.

“Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit,” Pete said with each step. “Shit. Shit.”

James threw a glance behind himself every few seconds, watching as the creature grew slowly closer and closer. “God, this is like that time in Madrid...” he said.

“It’s nothing like that at all!” Pete huffed, leaping over small cracks in the ice. “Summoned angry Ice Giants and summoned angry Sand Giants are completely different things!”

“What about that time in Moscow?!”

Pete whined, “Was that an Ice Giant per-se? More of a Snow Titan, r—”

WHUH-BOOM![/i]

The Ice Giant hurled his massive club like... a Canadian football or some shit... and the ice sheets in front of them utterly exploded, shattering into powder and collapsing into the frigid waters below. James and Pete fell flat on their faces. Matteo, seemingly possessing a superhuman traction, spun to face the Ice Giant.

Quickly James scrambled to his feet, drawing the blade from his cane. “No,” Matteo snarled. “Swords are no more use here.”

He and Pete both reached for their pistols, standing at either of Matteo’s sides, steadying their sites on the Ice Giant’s horrendous face.

Matteo stared it right the fuck down. “I am a servant of the Arctic Empire, wielder of the Flame of Ontario. Dark ice will not avail you, French son of a bitch!

You! Shall not! Pass!”

As if by some crazy Canadian magic, a hockey stick materialized into Matteo’s hand and he pounded it against the ground.

The Giant roared a horrible scream, its frigid breath unleashing a fog of frost around it. Leaning forward, it held its claws outward tauntingly before pounding its fists into the ice.

“You! Shall not! Pass!” Again, the hockey stick slammed downward, small cracks in the ice slowly beginning to encircle Drall’s guardian.

The Ice Giant took a heavy step forward, deepening the cracks. He stood ready to fall, the sheet beneath him barely clinging to the surrounding ice. One more blow, and he would be finished. Matteo grinned a wicked smile and lifted the hockey stick with determination. Memories floated through his mind of all of his ancestors who courageously battled the Ice Giants and his childhood hopes of being able to one day do the same thing. His parents dismissed it as crazy, but something just told him that one day, one day, he’d defeat an Ice Giant himself.

“You! Shall not! P—”

James and Pete unloaded relentlessly on the Giant’s face. Gunshot after gunshot after gunshot, the two fired hundreds of bullets, loading new clips into the guns as quickly as they could unload them, pulling new cartridges of ammunition from every pocket and crevice in their attire. An endless stream of bullets poured into the Canadian demon until, indiscernibly mutilated, it collapsed straight backward and faded into the depths of the water.

The two quietly loaded their weapons with fresh ammo, slipped them neatly away, and stood patiently awaiting Matteo.

The man had the same expression on his face from earlier. Unblinking, blank, cold. He was motionless for a long time, staring at the empty void in the sky where the Giant had stood.

“Well,” James said. “Best go find that little bugger before he summons some other foul creature for us to be rid of.”

“Agreed,” said Pete. “Make sure to destroy that skull of his once we’re done. Do you think it’s actually his mother’s?”

“Oh, probably,” James said.

The two walked back in the direction from whence they’d came, casually discussing the situation for a minute or so before Pete stopped and turned around.

“Hey, Matteo. You coming?”

He let out a long sight and whispered, “I fucking hate you guys.”









********************************



Here are the options for tomorrow's story. PM your votes to AGRO:

What will become of Drall?

• A. He’s hiding with Sepheron in Seoul?

• B. He’s hiding with Sensar in Stratford-Upon-Avon?

• C. He flees to beg sanctuary from his old benefactor, Zovo.

[James]

Rain whipped harshly across Drall’s face, egged on by the wind that howled through the deserted and war-torn streets. Windows were smashed, glass strewn across both pavement and carpet of ransacked stores. It had been years since Drall was last in Hawaii, but he couldn’t believe that the damage that had been done to the heart of the town was from the tropical storm alone.

As he passed an overturned bench, Drall made sure to pat the lump within his bag that was his mother’s skull. He had travelled to Quebec firstly to regain that part of his family, but also to find the artefact that would be vital to the Second Triumvirate’s ritual. While he was successful upon the first task, his enemies had stopped him dead in his tracks for the artefact. They would no doubt find his notes within the mansion, his theories and predictions for his various ideals. If he was to succeed in his task, he would need help.

Drall pulled up short as he saw a poster upon the wall, a single stern looking man staring back at him. Five words were printed in gold, gleaming through the thick rain:

The Bridge to Total Freedom

“It’s not safe here,” a voice croaked from the shadows. “It’s not safe here.”

Drall whipped around, hand already moving to free the skull from his bag, ready to destroy what stood behind him. He faltered though as he caught sight of the wizened man before him, ancient lines marring his face, his snow white hair twisted, knotted and erratic. An Elder Scroll fan shirt was bathed in a mixture of grime and blood, the smell of unwashed flesh threatening to break through the storm.

“Not safe, get out of the street,” the man repeated, jabbing his finger into Drall’s chest.

“I… I am looking for a friend,” Drall cried, voice breaking high in fright.

“No friends, only enemies,” the man said, yanking the Immortal One’s shirt and pulling him into a back alley.

“Zovo! I am looking for Zovo!” Drall blurted out, fearful of where the man was taking him.

“Zovo? Ah, he is friend, I will take you to him,” the man said, quickly cutting through a broken fence and onto the unkempt back gardens of the suburbs.

Drall knew that coming to Hawaii could have been a stupid choice after fleeing from his enemies, but he also knew that he was running out of options. He needed advice on what to do next. He needed money. He needed manpower. Most of all he needed a place to hide. His cohorts couldn’t offer him that and he would be slow to ask for their help. But after his renewal from his original death, a kind man had offered him a place to stay and money to launch his new endeavours. Drall hoped that Zovo’s favours would still flow towards him.

“What happened here?” Drall asked, his eyes rolling over the derelict houses that would have previously been the epitome of the American Dream. “This isn’t the damage of a storm.”

“It was a storm. A storm of ideas and vicious brainwashing and then of gunfire,” the man answered, crazed blue eyes cultivating the uneasiness that Drall was feeling. “The organisation that claims to be a Church, they came in the night with their followers, crying the name of Xenu and they took control of the islands. Communication blackout. Nothing comes in or out. We are shadowed by their power.”

“And Zovo, what of Zovo?” Drall asked, afraid for his friend.

“Ah ha, Zovo knows how to hide and fight, oh yes, he does,” the man cackled, clambering over a garden wall. “I will take you to him.”

“And who are you?” Drall asked, cringing at the harshness that mingled with the annoyingly high squeak of his voice. He was answered with a garbled of sounds, melding together into an indiscernible noise. “Ah… sorry, didn’t catch that.”

“It is my native name, in English it means, Red Herring,” the man explained, pushing open the backdoor to one of the homes down the deserted street, the sound of the sea nearby. “And this is the home to the Rebel Resistance.”

“Rebel Resistance?” Drall said, letting the words tumble from his mouth.

“Yes, Drall,” a voice answered, appearing out of the shadows. Black shaggy hair and beard covering large parts of his face, his body covered in makeshift military garb and weaponry. “I don’t appreciate the whereabouts of our home being revealed so easily, Herring.”

“He said he was a friend,” the man explained hastily.

“A liberal use of the term,” Zovo sneered, eyeing down Drall in front of him. “As you can see, Drall, the situation we are in is not a pleasant one. I am about to meet the Council of the Resistance, so speak your piece.”

“Zovo,” Drall began, sweat pouring from his brow, his hands shaking in the warm air. “You were once very kind to me. I was a broken and lost spirit and you took me in. You gave me a chance to live my life once more; you have funded my plans for this new life. I am not ungrateful but I need your help once more.”

“Do not expect it,” Zovo interrupted. “I funded you as a social experiment, I was keen to see what you would do… my mind is no longer interested in experiments, only survival.”

“Perhaps then,” Drall said, lifting the skull into view for the first time, a green mist clinging like pond scum around it, “I can help with that.”






*********************************

Here are the options for tomorrow’s story. PM your votes to TAED.

Meanwhile, what are our heroes up to as Drall pleads his case?

• A. Piecing together Drall’s location from clues within the mansion?
  
  
• B. Travelling to Stratford-upon-Avon to head off the next Immortal One?
  
  
• C. Sitting in a prison cell in Montreal?
  

[Matteo ((Taed))]

City of Montreal v. Peter Crivellaro; Ph.D, Matteo DiGiovanni; Ph.D, James Rowland; OBE, Ph.D.

Case No. 03-619

SUPERIOR COURT. PROVINCE OF QUÉBEC. (CRIMINAL DIVISION). DISTRICT OF MONTRÉAL

Sunday, December 19, 2010, Montreal

The Honourable Judge Louis Girard Presiding.

Transcribed by Martin Renoit

<Excerpt>

(10:03 AM)

Judge Girard: Order! Order! I will have order! Mr. DiGiovanni you will withdraw that last comment or I will find you in contempt of court.

Mr. DiGiovanni: Look, all I was saying is that all Frenchmen are cowards and adulterers. That’s just a fact. You didn’t have to take it personally.

Mr. Crivellaro: Wait, adulterers? Are you talking about that Marseilles chick you dated who cheated on you? Is that what all this French hate is about?

Mr. DiGiovanni: <Bangs his fist on the desk> I was cuckolded!

Mr. Rowland: Is that right? Who’s the subject of a cuckold? Were you cuckolded or was your girlfriend cuckolded by that French dude? And by cuckolded, I mean fucked.

Mr. Crivellaro: Matteo was cheated on. Therefore he is the cuckold. So yeah, I think he is the one who was cuckolded.

Mr. DiGiovanni: Yeah, like if I was on fire, then I was fired upon.

Mr. Crivellero: … What? No, that’s a terrible example. If you’re on fire you weren’t fired. That’s retarded. No, it’s like if you were emasculated. You are emasculated, and someone also emasculated you. So yes, cuckolded was correct.

Mr. Rowland: That’s a good example, not only because it explains my question, but also because it applies to the situation. Since that French guy totally did emasculate you when he drove his manhood into your girlfriend’s—

Mr. DiGiovanni: Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut u—

Judge Girard: Order! Order in my courtroom.

Ms. Adele Besson (Crown Attorney): Your honour, I must object on grounds of irrelevance. Just … so much irrelevance.

Judge Girard: Your objection is sustained, Mademoiselle Besson. Mon dieu is it sustained.

<At this time, Mr. DiGiovanni turned in his seat and began talking to a woman in the gallery>

Mr. DiGiovanni: <Inaudible> … speak English? … <Inaudible> … breasts … <Inaudible> ... more of an ass man, really … <Inaudible>

Judge Girard: Can we pick up now where we left off? Mr. DiGiovanni? Mr. DiGiovanni, please.

Mr. DiGiovanni: Yes dear?

Mr. Crivellaro: Ha. Iron Man. Nice.

Ms. Besson: Your honour I can’t be expected to present my case under these conditions.

Mr. Rowland: What are we being charged with again? I honestly can’t remember.

Ms. Adele Besson: That may be because your outstanding arrest warrants number into the triple digits Mr. Rowland. Mostly in countries whose name I can’t pronounce, yes, but focusing just on here in Quebec we have …

<Ms. Besson struggles to lift and open several enormous binders>

Ms. Besson: … three counts of arson, two counts of breaking and entering, contempt of court …

Judge Girard: Amen.

Ms. Besson: … disturbing the peace, drug possession …

Mr. Crivellaro: I told you, it’s not cocaine, it’s ground unicorn horn. The fact that it gets you high is purely incidental.

Mr. DiGiovanni: Yeah, I’m sure calling it ground unicorn horn will convince them you aren’t a smack head.

Ms. Besson: … grand larceny, grand theft auto, grand theft elephant …

Mr. Rowland: You’re making that up. Besides, the Cirque de Solei guys were cool with it.

Ms. Besson: … identity theft, kidnapping, forty-seven counts of manslaughter and murder in the first and second degrees …

Mr. DiGiovanni: Mimes aren’t people.

Ms. Besson: … possession of an illegal firearm (6 pistols, 3 assault rifles, 1 flamethrower and 24 kilograms of high explosives), public intoxicantion, rape …

Mr. Crivellaro: We told you! The Cirque de Solei people were into it!

Ms. Besson: … shoplifting, vandalism, and wire tapping. I believe that about covers it.

Mr. Rowland: You did that in alphabetical order. Is the report written that way or are you obsessive compulsive?

Ms. Besson: Your honour, upon restating of the accused’s offenses, do you even need me here? I believe their records speak for themselves.

<At this time, the courtroom doors open loudly and two unidentified men in suits enter>



Man #1: We’ll be the judge of that.

Mr. DiGiovanni: Finally!

Judge Girard: What is this!? You are not the judge! I am the judge! That is literally my job!

Man #2: Not today it ain’t.

Judge Girard: Who are you!?

<At this time, the two men each produced six separate sets of identification, including FBI, CIA, RCMP, CSIS, NATO, MI5 and a Costco membership>

Man #1: Take your pick.

Man #2: It’s all the same to us.

Man #1: Although I am partial to the name Leopold Kurtzwattle.

Man #2: And I accept that, even though I find it a bit weird. Come on boys, let’s blow this popsicle stand.

Man #1: And then let’s blow each other.

Man #2: Not the time or the place, Leopold.

<At this time, all three defendants get up to leave>

Judge Girard: Hang on just a minute! These men are being charged. They can’t just leave.

Man #1: Let me put this in a way you fruity Commonwealth bastards will understand.

<At this time the first man withdrew a heavily worn document from his breat pocket and began to read.>

Man #1: Let it be known that these men have rendered valuable services to the Crown of England and are therefore granted amnesty from all past and future breaches of the Law. In all legal matters, their innocence is beyond contestation, up to and including crimes against the Crown itself.

<At this time, the first man threw the document on to Judge Girard’s bench>

Man #2: Stick that in your ass and smoke it, Frenchy. Let’s roll.

Judge Girard: But … Wait. Wait! This is signed by King George III!

Man #1: Your Lord and Sovereign.

Man #2: Should’ve checked the fine print in the ol’ constitution.

Man #1: You’ve only yourselves to blame.

Judge Girard: You can’t do this!

Man #2: Take it up with President Eisenhower’s reanimated head.

Man #1: You should probably assume he’s joking. Otherwise we have to put a bullet in your head. And yours won't be brought back in for round two.

Man #2: Make that several bullets. My hands shake on account of my hyperthyroid.

Mr. Crivellaro: I thought you were going to get that checked.

Man #2: Oh who has the time? ...

<At this time, all five men exited the courtroom.

Ms. Besson: … What just happened here?



********************************



Here are the options for tomorrow's story. PM your votes to KAEZ:

What will be the destination of the awesome government private jet in which our heroes are currently flying?

• A. Hawaii
  
  
• B. Seoul
  
  
• C. Stratford upon Avon

[Kaez]

“What an airplane!” Pete exclaimed. “The seats are just so comfortable! Everything is cuddly and warm and the windows are so big! You can see so much.” He took a long sip of coffee. “And they have a coffee machine! Can you believe that? Right on the plane! I’m never flying in our stupid piece of shit again!”

Matteo stared blankly.

James, on the other hand, had his face pressed flat against the window, even at the expense of his precious hair. His voice, muffled against the glass, came out something like: “Egund!”

“Yes, James,” Matteo said. “We’re going to England.”

“Engsh cuntysi!”

“Hah. He said cunt.”

“Yes,” Matteo said. “The English countryside. Just charming. Now sit the hell down.” He reached over and pried James’ face from the glass.

The man was left with a big, stupid grin on his face. “It’s so good to be home. I can already feel it.”

“Right,” said the Canadian. “Nothing like that great feeling of overcast and undeserved superiority.”

“I know!” James squealed. “Oh man oh boy. Stratford-upon-Avon! We haven’t been here since… since…”

Pete answered: “Last Thursday, when you insisted upon digging up Shakespeare’s grave to finally prove once and for all that he was a ginger and that history had done your people a grave injustice.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” James muttered. “I dug him up for purely… scientific reasons. To prove that… with he… he wasn’t… because… SHUT UP.”

One of the men from the court room walked back from the cabin and flashed his variety of badges at them unnecessarily. When none of them reacted, he did it again.

“Yes…” Matteo said. “We saw.”

“Well then,” he said. “We’ll be landing shortly.”

The pilot’s voice came over the speakers. “But there is one little thing.”

The man slipped away his badges. “Stratford-upon-Avon doesn’t have an airport.”

“Doesn’t mean we can’t land,” said the pilot.

“Just,” the other man said. “It’s going to be miserable and illegal and we could all die.”

James glanced back from the window. “What was that last bit?”

The plane abruptly jerked and shook and wobbled about like a flaming paraplegic on ice skates.

“He said,” the pilot spoke in the middle of the horrible ruckus, emergency alarms ringing and red lights flashing from every direction, “That we could all die.”

James looked out the window again only to see the English countryside coming straight for him at a few hundred miles per hour and his hair squealed and ran to hide behind his hears.

“This is extremely unpleasant,” Pete huffed, trying to steady his coffee that spilled and splashed all about. A plethora of suitcases came tumbling from the upper holds and papers and valuables and a variety of weapons fell out, many of them going off. Gunfire echoed through the whole chamber and Pete leapt backward, his coffee flying straight onto Matteo.

“The fuck!” he roared and stood up abruptly, his head slamming against the metal holds above them, his outstretched arms knocking the other man straight backward and his head smacked the ground with a heavy, ‘clank!’.

With one final jerk, everyone’s spines snapped backward and they were thrown down as the windows of the plane became filled with a variety of foliage and the ride felt more like an uncomfortable Land Rover than an airplane. Within a minute or two, finally everything came to a slow, smooth stop.

With a pop, the oxygen masks deployed.

The three of them sat there in complete silence for a long while, occasionally glancing at each other before Pete stood up and stepped over an obnoxious amount of submachine guns and the man’s dead and bullet-riddled corpse to reach the cabin. The pilot, too, was dead.

He stepped out of the cabin and looked at the other two. “Yeah,” he said. “They’re both dead.”

Matteo scratched his chin. “Suddenly that whole affair in the court room and the gun battle in the airport and the escape on this plane feels extremely dues ex machina…”

James, on the other hand, was trying to calm his hair after the event. “There, there,” he said. “It’s going to be alright.”

Matteo sighed. “Let’s just get the fuck out of this plane before the Templar show up… or whatever it is the English use as police.”

“Police,” Pete said, finding his way to the plane’s airlocked door. “I think they use police for police. And not the kind on mooseback.”

Matteo blinked. “What other kind are there?”










*********************************

Here are the options for tomorrow’s story. PM your votes to AGRO.

Meanwhile, what’s going on with Drall and Zovo?

• A. They are conquering Hawaii under their rule with the help of Drall’s skull?

• B. They go to meet the Council of Resistance and its eccentric members.

• C. In exchange for using the skull in Hawaii, Zovo and Drall embark together to Stratford-upon-Avon.

[James]

Scurrying to keep up with Zovo’s strides, Drall jogged at his flank down the long hallway and towards the green door. He had managed to attract Zovo’s attention with his power, enough to overcome the now freedom fighter’s natural distrust and disinterest in all things Second Triumvirate. As the History Channel once said, “war breeds necessity”, although they also said “while I’m not saying there’s any evidence for this, I do think the prospect that Nazis used time travelling Romans as a human shield warrants a two hour long special.”

“Right,” Zovo said, standing in front of the door, turning to look down at Drall. “I’m one of five members of the Council of Resistance, and well, the other four are a bit strange. So be careful in there, don’t mention anything about your powers yet.”

“Okay,” Drall answered, moving towards the door.

“And nothing about my social experiment funding for you,” Zovo added, holding Drall back.

“Okay.”

“And you probably shouldn’t mention anything about the two Triumvirates.”

“Ah, okay.”

“And dear God, nothing about you being from Quebec… and don’t say a word about Frodo and the ring.”

“Huh?”

“In fact, it’s probably best if you don’t speak at all.”

“Now… now you’re just taking lines directl-”

“Excellent,” Zovo finished, pushing open the door and ushering Drall into the Council’s room.

The room smelt of richly scented perfume, a haze of colour and life across the room as plants grew along wall and carpet. Within the middle of the organised chaos stood a long bench, five seats spaced out behind it. One, on Drall’s right, was vacant. The other four were filled by the oddest group of people he had ever seen collected together.

Within the middle sat a beautiful, tall, haughty, dark-skinned, native, descriptive-filled woman, her brown eyes staring in royal intensity at Drall as he entered. To her right sat an impeccably dressed man, a crisp black suit and red tie hanging off a slightly aged body. To the woman’s left sat some man of military standing, garbed in camouflage, expect from a row of medals stuck to his shirt. Finally, to Drall’s left, sat… a postman.

“Councilman Zovo,” the woman spoke up, her accent thick and exotic. “Red Herring says you have a friend?”

“An acquaintance,” Zovo replied, pushing Drall to stand in front of the table. “Drall, this is Kate Waterstone.”

“Queen Kaimiaa,” the woman interjected.

“Well, one would have to look at the facts that are being presented in this situation to truly decide whether or not you might be allowed to be wanting to call yourself Queen and whether the people will take to the crowning of a Queen in these God-created lands of the United States of America. And if they do not wish to have a Queen, even in such drastic times such as these times that we find ourselves in at this very moment in time then I must ask you to politely desist calling yourself that as it could seriously hamper my chances of re-election,” the man to Kaimiaa’s right said.

“Congressman David Edward Mores,” Drall heard Zovo whisper.

“Elections? ELECTIONS? Sir, this is war! There are no times for elections! Just like there were no elections in the Stone Age, which is where we will be bombing those assholes to!”

“Sergeant George Oliver Paric,” Zovo added to Drall’s benefit.

“Christ! Will you lot please shut up,” the postman cried suddenly, earning the wide-eyed looks of surprise from everyone in the room. “We are battling for our freedoms and our homes and you three are arguing over titles and elections, it’s sickening. What about the people who are currently enslaved by the Scientology administration?”

Drall thought that the question the postman had added was quite reasonable, and yet as soon as the man had spoken his words he slumped from his chair and walked dejectedly from the room, shoulders slumping. A moment passed before there was a knock upon the door and a young woman walked in, dressed in a Burger King uniform and took the seat vacated by the postman.

“And the voice of the Silent Majority,” Zovo said, finishing his introductions.

“Before he resigned his post, out of complete free-will and with no pressuring from external forces I might add, the Silent Majority had a point. We can finish these important and crucial arguments later after a five month Winter Recess where we can return to the debate with fresh minds and ideas,” Congressman Mores said. “Now though, now we should listen to Councilman Zovo’s report upon the state of our islands.”

“We have lost all major settlements,” Zovo started bluntly. “We do not stand much chance of lasting till the New Years. But, I think I might have something that can help,” Zovo added, glancing at Drall beside him.








*******************************************

Here are the options for tomorrow’s story. PM your votes to TAED.

Where do we currently find our heroes?

• A. In the The Pen & Parchment pub, enjoying a drink, a cooked meal and a moment of relaxation?
  
  
• B. The theatre, taking in a performance by the Royal Shakespearian Company of Macbeth?
  
  
• C. A guided tour of Anne Hathaway’s Cottage?
  

[Matteo ((Taed))]

“James, dear?” Matteo asked pleasantly.

“Mmm?” James replied back absently.

“May I ask you a question?”

“Go right ahead.”

“The current situation, as I understand it, is that three of our oldest and least predictable enemies have been returned from the grave to seek vengeance against us, yes? These clumsy, bumbling, hateful fools have been granted near-godlike powers and are now amassing forces on a global scale with the ultimate intention of upsetting the very causal nature of all time and space. Would you say that was a fair assessment?”

“Um … yeah, that sounds about right.”

“Then why, may I continue to query,” and as he spoke the rancor began to rise in his voice. “Are we currently standing in a tasteful fifteenth century Tudor home in Shottery, made available to the public by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust!? A public which, in this case, consists of a young couple from Devon, three old ladies from Brussels, and an inbred Texan family with bored children who are woefully out of their intellectual depth.”

“Do you know that there’s a full-size replica of the cottage in Odessa?” Pete asked. “If they wanted to seem cultured you’d think they could have just gone there. Spared themselves the flight. Curious.”

“As if a replica could ever be a substitute for the real thing!” James exclaimed. “Come on chaps, this place is a part of Shakespearean history. His wife was born here, her family lived here, it was probably like his second home!”

“James … Shakespeare lived most of his life away from his family, in London. His home was like his second home. That makes this like his third home at best. Do you what my third home is? The bus. Or McDonalds. Or any other place I have visited more than ten times. Besides which … we’ve met Shakespeare! We’ve gotten drunk with Shakespeare. We helped Shakespeare write Twelfth Night and we stole Love’s Labour’s Won when we realized it would raise the Chaos God Baxvotlaan when read backwards. We don’t need to hang around in a reconstructed home where he may or may not have had Christmas dinner once or twice! We need to go deal with Sensar.”

“Eeeeeee!” James squealed, oblivious. “The tour is starting! The tour is starting! Come on, we don’t want to get left behind!”

“Left be--? The house has twelve rooms! I’ve been in hardware stores that are easier to get lost in!” But James was already gone, prancing ahead like a twelve-year-old girl to a Justin Bieber concert. Matteo immediately regretted this mental comparison, as he was reminded of his time in the torture chambers of Bieber’s Penumbral Citadel; the heart of the pop singer’s accursed empire which rose unexpectedly to power in 2123 after the ritual suicides of half his fans, under threat that the other half would share a similar fate unless Bieber was given full control over all American military assets. Such evil. Such terrible evil in one so small …

“Are you coming?” Pete asked shakily. Matteo could tell by the haunted look on his face that James’ uncanny resemblance to a pigtail-wearing, Facebook-loving preteen had triggered the same memories in him.

“No, no. I’m going to see if I can find something to drink around here. Preferably something that could double as drain cleaner.”

Pete nodded and Matteo tromped off in search of a concession stand. He eventually found one, offering only lemonade, unfortunately, and dug in his pocket for change.

“Uh … do you accept Roman denarii? Or can you change a $1000? Wait, that doesn’t look like Grover Cleveland. Is that … Liberace? Man, we fucked up the 1860s but good.”

“Fresh lemonade, one pound,” the man behind the counter said in a bland, lifeless voice.

“Alright, alright. Do you take credit?” Matteo asked, looking at his open wallet. “I can’t find anything else.”

“Fresh lemonade, one pound.”

“Yeah, I bloody know that. Can that pound be from a credit card, is what I’m asking.”

“Fresh lemonade, one pound.”

“What are you, a wise guy? Or did your mother just drink a lot when you were in the womb?”

“Fresh lemonade, one pound.”

Matteo finally looked up at the vendor and stared into one of the slackest, most vacuous faces he had ever seen, and a pair of eyes which were so dull they could barely be distinguished from the grey skin of the rest of his face.

“Mist cultists!” Matteo hissed, and reflexively smashed the man’s face in with an electric juicer from the counter. He vaulted over the concession stand, silently praying that the man’s behaviour really was the result of Cult of the Mist brainwashing, and not of fetal alcohol syndrome as he had originally expected.

Matteo went over the man’s unconscious body with the clinical professionalism of a face-smashing veteran. There were no tattoos or ritual mutilations visible, meaning that the man was likely not in thrall to a Mist Cultist. He began to worry about how ‘Billionaire Bludgeons Spastic Shopkeeper’ would look on the front page of the Daily Mail.

A rustle of cloth from behind him announced the arrival of another person. Panicking at being found over the body this way, Matteo immediately attempted to cover his ass.

“Oh thank God you came,” he cried. “There been a terrible accident. This poor man took a terrible fall … into his juicer. I only just arrived.”

“Oh dear, oh dear,” the other person, who Matteo now realized was a middle-aged man, said in a slow, quiet voice. “What a dreadful shame. Not to worry, not to worry. No harm done.”

Matteo breathed a silent sigh of relief. The guy had bought it. “Yeah, I think he’s going to be all right. Just a crack on the head.” He chuckled, loosening up somewhat. “You know what I think? The fall had nothing to do with it. This place probably bored him unconscious! Am I right? Haha. Ha. HaaaaaAAAggggh! Ghhhaaaggghhh!”

Matteo’s laughter was cut short as the older man’s surprisingly strong fingers closed around his neck. As Matteo took a better look at him, he saw that the man had the same dull eyes as the stall vendor, although he seemed somewhat livelier and more capable.

I really need to pay more attention to peoples’ faces. Matteo thought to himself.

The thrall’s grip tightened and he spat words through the foam that was gathering around the corners of his mouth. “Not boring, not boring!” he half-shrieked. “Shakespeare never boring! Hail Shakespeare! Hail Sensar!”

Oh. Matteo thought. Sensar got mind control. Nice.

Picking up the electric juicer, which had fallen next to its first victim, Matteo calmly switched it on and rammed the spinning cone into his assailant’s eye. The thrall fell back, screaming, as his grey matter was pulped and separated from his blood…onade.

Matteo momentarily considered pouring himself a glass of his murder cocktail, but decided there was only so far he was willing to go in pursuit of dramatic effect. He settled for a quick one-liner: “Freshly squeezed, bitch!” and sauntered off to find his two companions.



*******************************************



Here are the options for tomorrow’s story. PM your votes to KAEZ.

Will our heroes

• A. Attempt to confront Sensar directly?
  
  
• B. Undercut his power by eliminating his supply of mind-controlled, Shakespeare-loving sleeper agents?
  
  
• C. Buckle to Agro's whining and attend a showing of Macbeth instead?

[Kaez]

Matteo glanced about the area for anything else that might be immediately useful. Unfortunately, the various instruments required for manufacturing lemonade were not very well designed for attacking villainous swine and he made a quick mental note to be sure to fuck around with the Machine until they found the man who invented lemonade in the first place and convince him to add ‘blades’ to the ingredient list.

Just then, Pete announced his presence with a loud, “You sure did kill those two people.”

“Yes,” Matteo said. “Thank you for your narration.”

Pete paused. “I should’ve done Attenborough. The wild Matteo…”

“Okay, okay, I get the point, let’s just move these damn bodies, uh…” he inspected their surroundings for anything that might serve as a reasonable shield from view and saw nothing but, of course, the awkwardly located lemonade stand that he now suspected wasn’t intended to be there at all. Also, wasn’t “lemonade” in Britain something entirely different from the North American variant? He distinctly recalled a conversation about this and, before he got lost in thought, Pete spoke loudly again.

“So where do we put the dead bodies so that nobody realizes you made them that way?”

Matteo stared. “Did something snap in your brain this morning? Oh god, this isn’t another one of your black days, is it?! Not those again! God, not those again!”

Pete shook his head. “No, no. I’ve moved on with my life since The Great Amish Catastrophe. I’m just… I can’t take it, man. I just… I can’t take it.”

Matteo began to shove one of the corpses behind the lemonade stand. “Can’t take what?”

“YOU GUYS YOU GUYS YOU’RE MISSING THE WHOLE TOUR OH MY GOD YOU GUYS.”

Pete shed a single, solemn tear.

Matteo stared into the blank eyes of the dead older man and longed for sweet release.

James rushed over to the two looking like a pasty white balloon that had been pumped full of red smoke and rubbed violently against a carpet. “DID YOU SEE THAT STATUE OF BRUTUS? DID YOU? YOU GUYS?! YOU GUYS?!”

Quietly, Pete began to weep. Matteo just stared, emptily, hopelessly, blankly into those foggy, cold eyes. More tears rolled down Pete’s cheek, the echoing, distant words of James’ “YOU GUYS?” passing over him like thunder over the horizon, looming in the back of his mind. Matteo stared until his consciousness dissolved away.

_____
_____
_____

“You guys!” James eagerly whispered. “You guys!”

Blackness faded into the dim orange glow of stagelights. Pete took a time to adjust himself, swallowing down a horrible taste in his mouth. The air felt thick and dense and he wiggled his arms about to feel the hard edges of armrests at his sides. He blinked a few times to remove the fuzz from his eyes and glanced all about him. He was sitting front row in a rather fancy, modern theatre. To his left, James’ grin was wide and the man literally vibrated with excitement.

To his right, Matteo swung his head about stupidly in confusion.

What in the mother of god had happened?

“When shall we three meet again; in thunder, lightning, or in rain?”

“When the hurlyburly’s done; when the battle’s lost and won.”

Son of a fuck, it’s Macbeth, Pete thought.

“Son of a fuck, it’s Macbeth,” Matteo whispered.

“How in the hell did this happen?”

“Don’t ask questions. Never ask questions.”

“SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”[/i] James erupted with a wave of spittle and big, bulging eyes.

Don’t ask questions, Pete kept reminding himself. Don’t ask questions.

The two of them sat there, uneasy, somewhat nauseous, and with the peculiarly distinct aroma of emu feces tingling their nostrils and the taste of putrid nihonshu on their tongues, desperately trying to convince themselves that any inquiry into their unconscious time would lead to nothing but sorrow.

And so the play went on, its well-known lines delivered with mediocrity, James eagerly watching and listening with all of the attention of a cat in front of a fish tank full of canned tuna shouting anti-felinic obscenities.

“I can’t take this. I’m going to be sick,” Matteo said just as Macduff entered the stage.

The actor spoke: “Let us rather hold fast the mortal sword, and like good men, bestride our down-fall'n birthdom: each new morn. New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows strike heaven on the face, that it resounds as if it felt with Scotland and yell'd out, like syllable of dolour.”

And Malcolm delivered the responding verse, to which the actor very strangely, and incorrectly, again began, “Let us rather hold fast the mortal sword…”

James gagged to the point of nearly vomiting.

Matteo searched his memory for the bell that rung at this event. Jovian Astral Tortoises? The Great Amish Catastrophe? The Quest for Genghis Khan’s iPad? The lemonade stand?”

Booyah.

By the time the actor had gotten to “strike heaven on the face”, Matteo had punched the man straight across the face and pinned him to the ground, his hands around his neck. Assuming Matteo knew something he did not, and assuming he didn’t actually give a shit either way, Pete felt around for the pistol on his belt – but it was nowhere to be found.

“James!” he huffed. “Where’s Shaniqua?!”

James cocked his head back. “You don’t wear a gun to see Macbeth, you barbarian! They’re in the lobby.”

“Fool of a Took!” Pete shouted.

Matteo cried from the stage as he strangled Macduff, “My gun! Where’s Sweet Baby Caroline?!”

The audience at this point was in quite an uproar. After all, it was a very silly name for a gun.

“James is an ass! I’m on it!” Pete darted straight back up the hallway and burst through the lobby doors. There, though, he met someone he did not expect.




*******************************************



Here are the options for tomorrow’s story. PM your votes to AGRO.

Will Pete encounter:

• A. Sensar, in the flesh!?
  
  
• B. Shakespeare the White, the reincarnated ghost of the playwright sent through to the future by the Past Trio?
  
  
• C. Doppleganger Matteo and James -- are they real or are they the imposters!?

[James]

Pete arrived within the lobby, eyes flashing along the various posters of upcoming plays, as he searched for the guns. He had no idea where James could have put the blasted weapons, the guns strictly speaking illegal in the country, before he caught sight of a small tray labelled firearms. Next to it was a richly smelling green tray, the word sandwiches glinting across the side.

“Who… who would take a sandwich to a Shakespearian play?” Pete exclaimed aloud, grabbing the pistols from the tray.

“I really don’t know, although what are you doing here anyway? You played Birnam Wood in the original,” a familiar voice said from behind him.

Pete slowly turned to face the two men behind him, spitting images of his two comrades who were currently battling in the theatre. James was still dressed within his Victorian-esque suit, Matteo now mostly hidden in a duffle jacket.

“Ah guys, aren’t we meant to be punching some failed actors for some reason I don’t really understand?” Pete asked, staring at his two friends in front of him.

“What on earth are you talking about?” James said, stepping forward, eyeing Pete with concern.

A witty retort rolling up from his throat, Pete found himself interrupted as James and Matteo tumbled from the theatre’s doors, landing on the floor beneath themselves. While James hurriedly patted out the part of carpet that had caught ablaze, Matteo scrambled to his feet.

“Son of a bee sting! Not again!” Matteo roared as he stood in front of himself.

“Oh this is just great, a fucking clone!” the other Matteo said, swinging a punch at the man in front of him.

“Fuck!” James aptly put, launching a kick at the midsection of the other version of himself.

“LOUD NOISES!” the other ginger yelled, rolling away from the kick.

“In the name of the Abusive Father, Sacrificial Lamb and the Holy Toast, everyone… don’t fucking move,” Pete cried, cocking his gun, which is a good trick for a pistol. “If any of you move, I will shoot you all.”

“Whoa,” James said, standing over himself, hands flying into the air. “Let’s not be hasty.”

“Okay, test time,” Pete said, signalling for the other ginger to stand alongside his counterpart. “You, the one who was in the theatre with me, sing me the English national anthem.”

“Easy,” he said, stepping forward. “God save our Gracious Queen, God Save…”

“Ha!” the other James interrupted, pumping his fists into the air. “Pete tricked you, that’s the British national anthem, not the English!”

“Exactly!” Pete grinned, swinging his gun at the James with his fists in the air, the bullets narrowly missing his head as the Englishmen fell to the floor.

“What the fuck?” James screamed, looking up at Pete from the floor. “I figured out your question!”

“Exactly!” Pete said, directing the gun downward. “The real James would never have outsmarted me!”

“Wait!” James cried, staggering to his feet. “Give me a chance to prove my real…ness!”

Pete’s eyes narrowed, his head nodding an inch as James scrambled to his feet. Eyes searched the room, desperately grasping at a way to prove that he was no clone when Fate intervened. Appearing from the reception she pointed at the man who was making his way to the toilets, an Australian rugby shirt proudly on displayed. A flash of triumphant passing across his eyes, James sucked in a deep breath and began to sing, his voice carrying across the lobby:

“God save your gracious Queen
Long live your noble Queen
God save your Queen
You're a convict!
Send her victorious
Happy and glorious
Long to reign over you!
God save your Queen!”

Pete waited until the final syllable passed between James’ lips before turning his gun onto the other ginger, peppering the doppelganger with several bullets, blood spurting across the floor. James rushed across the room, grabbing his own pistol from the tray and swung it around at one of the Matteo’s, Pete’s gun trained onto other.

“I guess this explains your odd behaviour at Anne Hathaway’s cottage,” Pete muttered out of the side of his mouth. “Since it wasn’t actually you.”

“Yeah, I guess… wait, you went to Anne Hathaway’s cottage? Was it good? I always wanted to go there,” James muttered excitedly.

“No, no you fucking don’t,” a Matteo cried across the lobby.

“Silence! Not a word until we figure out, which of you is our friend!” Pete ordered, shaking his gun wildly.

“Set another test, something that only the real Matteo would be able to achieve,” James whispered.

“Yes. Yes,” Pete agreed, stepping forward. “Listen closely, you blasted Canadians.”












****************************************************

Here are the options for tomorrow’s story. PM your votes to TAED.

What will be the Matteos’ test?

• A. To recite the Arctic Empire classic of the Final March of the Ice Giants?
  
  
• B. A Harry Dresden Quote Battle?
  
  
• C. To fetch Pete a shrubbery?