Warning/Contains: Violence, gore, and some light, unethical sexual content. For more on my warnings policy please visit my user profile. Do not take this story home to meet your parents. Manufactured in close proximity to a nut.
Acknowledgments: I would like to thank my beta readers grammaguy and Venomous Woe for all their hard work and valuable input on this story.
we see it too late:
after the cock gets swallowed
the heart follows
-a killer, Charles Bukowski
Returning Favors
Chapter One/Three: Heathen
(*_*)
The black horde of Game & Watches swarmed from the cover of the surrounding jungle in such numbers the electronic clicking of their seamless bodies flooded out every other sound. Mines and death traps killed only a few frontrunners. The uncountable ranks skittered onwards, oblivious to the fractured corpses of their fallen comrades trampled underfoot.
They charged the steep slope of Base 6-4's outer perimeter in a solid undulating wave, just as Lucario had foreseen in his death dreams. The sight of it. Goddess. He was too terrified to close his eyes. The Gray Master – the Great Game Over as some named him in midnight prayer – locked his icy claws around Lucario's throat.
The sharp crack of Ivysaur's fifty cal. from the sniper's perch overhead snapped Lucario back into waking reality. Through all his life he had never hesitated in the face of approaching violence. Now, he warmed with shame that sapient thought had slipped away so quickly, rendering him into nothing but a frightened animal, wide-eyed and transfixed within the burning glare of doom's own headlights barreling down upon them. Lucario bared his fangs at the horde and pulled back the heavy machine gun's slide lever, careful this time that his fur did not catch between the moving parts. He confirmed the ammo belt had loaded correctly.
Ivy's rifle fired again and again. The vile ear-drilling clicking of G&W movements crawled into his ears and gnawed on his depleted store of sanity like fire ants attacking a sugar cube. Sensitive as his ears were, it came as a relief to pull the trigger and bury the noise beneath a machinegun's roar. The gun was bolted into the cement, no need to worry about recoil. Only a belt jam or overheating could stop him now. Here in hell loudest was strongest, and with this machine gun he was the mightiest badass around.
"Suck it down!" he screamed telepathically at their calm oil slick minds. The mindscapes did not so much as ripple in response.
G&Ws died in double-digit numbers by the second. Their bodies splintered under the withering gun fire, little pieces jumping off their shattered frames like black fleas. Some yards away Squirtle was doing the same, sweeping their lines behind his own stationary machinegun.
Even so, the horde's vanguard bulldozed through the razor wire fence that marked the halfway point up the slope. The cold hand of the Gray Master squeezed tighter around Lucario's windpipe. Goddamn, how could there be so many?
In the corner of his vision a hunched figure hustled by. Lucario snapped his head around. It was only Private Popo, the Ice Climber, racing to his post. He wore his jungle-camo parka, M16 in mitt. "Hey," Lucario shouted telepathically. "Go get the Captain!"
Popo staggered to a halt, eyes white with horror. "But —"
"Don't give me no shit, soldier. The Captain is the only one who can save our asses now. Go! Go! Go!"
After a few irreplaceable seconds of fidgeting indecision, Popo sped off towards the central bunker. Lucario looked back to the slope. Some of his platoon mates: Psyduck, Charizard, and the other Pokemon had taken their positions behind the sandbags and cement battlements. They opened fire with their assault rifles and whatever bio-electro-chemical projectiles nature had gifted them. Lucario counted less than thirty rifles sparking muzzle flashes. We are too few. The Gray Master has already claimed our best.
The platoon blasted the surging enemy lines with a continuous stream of bullets, rockin' and rollin', forgoing the short controlled bursts of fire required during basic training. In their panic they threw their ammunition away. Lucario couldn't blame them. This is what Pokemon were bred for. Attack with everything. Hold nothing back.
For a minute, their combined firepower pushed the surging tide of enemies back over the razor wire. JigglyPuff waddled up to the sandbag pile to his left, spat out her cigarette, and squinted down at the Game & Watches. She took a second to adjust her bandanna, then hoisted her grenade launcher up and lobbed a volley of explosive rounds up over the slope. The grenades arced down into the enemy ranks and exploded shrapnel or flaming jelly amidst the massed bodies, punching holes in the jostling sea of bodies. Holes that flowed shut as soon as they opened. Lucario wished Game & Watches screamed because they'd surely be making some sweet music now.
The machine gun's belt ran out. Heat crinkled the air above his machinegun. Lucario poured a mosquito larva-ridden bucket of water over the barrels and tried not to trip on the spent bullet casings as he hurried to load another belt.
This wasn't how he'd pictured combat when he first signed up for a tour in Her Majesty's Imperial Army. Battle was supposed to be thing of honor, of skill. Bitterly he recalled the fantasies, of one-on-one duels with Tabuu's elite janissaries, fighting with no weapons but their bodies. Yet here he was, stinking of fear and probably worse things, about to die a million miles away from anywhere in a nameless jungle for a cause whose creed he could not longer recall. Some honor. The under-handed, the stupid, and the skillful died alike.
Locked and loaded, he stared down the barrel sights and found the battlefield changed. Primid marched from the jungle, and unlike the G&Ws, they carried weapons. Lights like camera flashes glittered among the swaying branches and shadowed spaces between the trees. The enemy had learned to properly return fire. Standard ballistics pinged against the cement fortifications, bursts of gray dust and cement flakes erupting from starfish craters.
But that was nothing compared to the lasers. One instant a Pokemon might sniff the scent of something burning, swinging its head back and forth to find the source of the smoke tendrils coiling up around it. The next… fur, scale, and clothing alike burst into flame as flesh sloughed from bone and organs exploded into steam.
Such was the fate of Psyduck. The others picked the mess from their eyes and nose, and hugged the pavement. Lucario hunched further down behind the machinegun's bulk.
A few of the Primid followed Jigglypuff's example, lobbing explosive ordinance up over the battlements. Sandbags disintegrated as grenades detonated. A well aimed round cored out a pillbox and turned its insides into an abattoir.
Fewer guns returned fire than before. Too few guns to drown out the wailing of dying Pokemon. Tabuu's grim harvest reaped its first crop of the day from a field already ravaged nearly bare.
A bullet split the air close enough to make Lucario duck again. He heard the loud pop and hiss of pressurized air decompressing over the din of war, and turned his head in time to see Jigglypuff deflate into a sad puddle of rumpled pink skin.
He unleashed a wordless scream into the hazy morning, not with his mind but with his throat. The machinegun vomited hot death, but only for a moment. A hard metallic thud told Lucario that the belt feed had jammed.
No time left for repairs. Below, the G&Ws massed for a charge. And this time they would breach the walls. He didn't need a college education to see it coming.
The Gray Master's frozen fingers spidered into Lucario's mouth and slipped down his throat, clenching into an icy fist as they pushed their way inside until there was only jagged cold beneath his bones. He swallowed and accepted the gift, grateful. The old ways remained dead to him. No more would the calm power flow from a core of quiet harmony. No more yoga and no more kata. No more would he balance poised on a mountain peak, one with the lofty stone. The cherished myth of the warrior's honorable death was just that – myth. This war, with its hundred thousand pointless last moments writhed out amid the damp moss and reddened mud, had carved away the sacred mystery of death by slivers until only cheapened reality remained.
No, the zombie numbness Lucario felt then as he picked up Jiggly's grenade launcher made a fine replacement for all that. At least Tabuu could not take this from him.
Below, the Game & Watches finished mustering and swept aside the pitiful remains of the razor wire fence under the rolling crush of their advance.
Popo found Yoshi slumped against the sandbag wall outside the foxhole. He shook the green dinosaur, and receiving no response, slapped its chubby face. "Wake up, man! The base is under attack. It's bad, real bad. C'mon, man, get up!"
Yoshi mumbled and lolled onto his side. It was no use, the syrup had a hold of him now. Yoshi's glassy, unseeing eyes meant the dino would remain like this for another hour at best. Popo peered down into the foxhole, the underground storage room Wario had converted into a syrup den. The dim forms of a dozen more soldiers slouched among the shadows, lost in a syrup-fueled daze.
A cold shadow fell across the back of Popo's neck. The warning stench of garlic came too late. Wario grabbed him by the parka collar and threw him hard into the wall.
"Glad your faggot ass showed up. You gonna pay back what your egg layer owes me?" Wario's breath bathed Popo's face with the wet stink of garlic and tooth rot and worse things. The stench made it easier to ignore the searing pain of the fat man's knee jabbed into his belly.
Popo's blood might've boiled if terror hadn't already chilled it down to ice water. "I'll tell the Captain," he squeaked. Wario drew nose-to-nose and the Ice Climber regretted his hollow threat.
Something hard and rusty pressed against Popo's windpipe. A shameful, itchy wetness trickled down his thighs. Wario laughed; the ugly sound fell on Popo's ears like a club. The fat heap of a belly jiggled free through the breach between shirt and pants.
Then Wario stopped laughing and smashed his face in closer. Popo gazed into the sunken pits of bruised skin that were Wario's eye sockets; he sank into the burning, veined whites and swallowing pupils and knew the wheezing wreck of the fat drug pusher's mind had at last spun off a cliff. One too many hits of crystallized fire flower. Or maybe this reeking tropical hell had at last finished its horrible work on one of its most faithful servants, as it eventually did for them all.
Popo's unique nervous system did not feel the jungle's swelter any more than the sub-zero winds of his beloved arctic homeland. Only the blood coursing through his veins seemed to change temperature. He had watched at a remove as the heat and pestilence drove everyone else insane. Is this how the jungle will finally take me? By proxy?
The distant clangor of battle crept closer. The perimeter defense line was taking a real beating. Someone has to talk sense here. Everyone else nearby lay in a puddle of their own drool, so that someone looked to be him. "This is pointless, man," Popo croaked. "There's a battle going on."
"There's always another battle. Going down here. Going down in the jungle. Don't try changing the subject – my profits."
"But they've got us surrounded! We're all gonna –"
Wario pressed the flat of the knife harder against Popo's adam's apple. The edge nicked him and a tiny spot of liquid warmth pooled there. "One or both of you pays me what I'm owed, or I'll carve it from ya, piece by piece. I'll grind up your spines and sell 'em as aphrodisiac."
One meaty hand throttled Popo's neck and shook his head until his ears rang. "Make no mistake. I never liked you, you yellow snow eating pansy. I'll make you scream in thirty-one different ways. The difference is a few minutes or a whole day of it, depending on if I get what's owed in full. I'll start on those ears of yours since you always have a hard time hearing what I say. Twist the tip of old Rusty here in through the canal, work through the drum. Fish out all those little bones and soft parts I can't remember the names for."
Wario tossed Popo's shuddering body away. "Now get outta here. You disgust me."
Popo desperately wanted to take Yoshi with him. But Wario didn't budge. He stood guard, cleaning his fingernails with the knife. Deep under the syrup, the dino wouldn't be easy to move. Popo swore silently that he would return for his friend and rushed as fast as his suddenly rubbery legs could take him to the central command bunker.
The time shortage forced a shortcut past the overflowing latrines and their unspeakable stench. As the drone of a million fly wings grew louder, he squeezed his eyes shut, suddenly unable to bear the sight of the black insect clouds. But it was the sound that could drive a man insane if he listened to it long enough. Countless bugs, crawling over the outdoor toilets, shivering in undulating black lumps. The same way the G&Ws and Primid would soon crawl over all their corpses.
For an insane instant Popo wished Wario had pierced his ear drums, if only to spare him this pestilence symphony and the aural reminder of final battle looming ever louder from the background.
His foot splashed into a puddle of foul smelling liquid. Eyes still clamped tight, he wheezed a curse between clenched teeth, shook his soaked leg, and ran until he couldn't hear the flies over the invasion.
The bunker's guards had left to fight on the perimeter. The entrance stood unlocked. For the thousandth time, Popo took out his picture of Nana standing outside their home and kissed it for luck, then put the picture back in its hiding spot and ripped open the door.
Inside, an old desk fan made tak tak tak noises as it stirred the fetid humidity. A thin cloud of old cigarette smoke still hugged the ceiling. Not many officers of any rank remained. Just the Major, the Captain, and a small handful of non-coms. The officer's desks were empty, save one. Pokemon Master Sergeant Red rocked back and forth in a creaky chair, eyes closed and fingering a rosary as he mouthed prayers. He wore the unique crimson uniform that signified his specialist rank.
Red's eyelids snapped open as Popo snaked between the desks. "By Palutena's holy shining tits, where do you think you're going? Turn your whale blubber ass around this instant, get back to the front line. Slay those goddessdamned abominations!"
"I w-will, sir," Popo said. He was always unable to keep from stammering around the officers. "But first I've got to –"
The wooden rosary met the desktop with a sharp crack. Red shot up out of his seat, face fulfilling his namesake. "You dirty ice licker! You're thinking about deserting, ain't cha'? Cowardice in the line of duty earns you a gutting, Private. Hold on a second." The sergeant yanked open a drawer and rooted around inside for a good gutting tool.
More aggravated over the delay than terrified of Red, Popo found his tongue. "We need the Captain to coordinate the counter attack. Where is he?"
As if in answer a soft moan drifted downstairs from the Captain's 2nd floor office. Red rolled his eyes and sank into the chair with a tired sigh. "The reprobate is in. Where else would he be during our final hour but hiding in his hole? Best go get him before he takes his afternoon nap." The sergeant picked up his rosary.
"Uh, sir… the men could really use your… well, your guidance right now," said Popo.
Red shot him the stink eye. "You'd all like that, wouldn't you?"
"Uh, yes?"
"I've got more praying to do, Private. Praying for a death quick and clean. Praying for the Goddess's loving arms around us all in the world to come. And for Her luminous bosoms against my face. Hallelujah and amen!" He waved Popo off. "Go on and collect your monster. If you hurry, he might have time to give out swimming lessons."
"Swimming... what?"
"The lessons you'll need for paddling through the spilled blood of our comrades." Red pulled a bottle of caramel-colored liquor and a shot glass from the drawer and poured two fingers. Popo licked his lips.
"Maybe I could help you pray, sir."
"The cries of a dirty heathen like you would never reach sweet Palutena's ears." He chuckled, low and mean, then drank.
Popo went upstairs. A low muttering trickled through the half-open door of the Captain's office. Popo peered inside the room and froze in place.
A woman's head, crowned with a dingy blond wig, worked up and down between the Captain's great scaly legs, fake hair swaying to her rhythm. She made exaggerated sucking noises while the Captain muttered the word peach over and over, occasionally hissing encouragement. It was common legend that Captain Bowser Koopa made all his prostitutes wear the same wig, though everyone had a different theory as to why.
Soldiers dealt with long distance separation from loved ones in different ways. Popo held onto the photo of his sister like a good luck charm, Yoshi hit the syrup, and Bowser role-played during sex with local hookers.
Now that he had a second to reflect on it, Popo felt a small measure of regret over not expanding his choice of coping mechanisms.
Bowser leaned back in his chair, eyes closed in studied bliss. The pretend Peach's pistoning was hypnotic. Popo swallowed and sharply rapped his knuckles on the door. One crocodile eye slid open and regarded him coldly.
"In case you can't tell by looking, Private, I'm busy enjoying my last few moments alive," he growled.
"Sir, it's an emergency," Popo whispered. Why am I whispering? "Things have gotten about as bad as they're going to get."
"You don't say." Bowser cradled the hooker's chin in his mammoth hand and tilted her head up, establishing eye contact. He muttered a few words in her language. She freed her mouth and answered back in kind.
"Says she's only been paid enough for me. You want in, you have to pay the same. No group discounts."
Popo licked his lips. "I mean, sir, there's a battle for the walls and we're about to be overrun. They've got us outnumbered by ten-to-one. If you don't do something, we're… we're going to…"
The Captain let out an exasperated sigh. "I swear. Bigger babies than my old koopa troop, the whole freaking platoon of ya. If you really need someone to wipe your own ass for you, then be a good peon and hand me the M60."