"I was struck by lightning, Walking down the street. I was hit by something last night in my sleep. It's a dead man's party, who could ask for more? Everybody's coming leave your body at the door, leave your body and soul, at the door." Dead Man's Party, Oingo Boingo
Some people have absolutely no luck. You can always recognize these people when you see them. They're the ones who get hit by a frigid splash of muddy water from the last puddle on the side of the road a day or so after it rains, usually when they're wearing their best clothing. They're the ones who's car always breaks down, or who have to undergo painful and expensive dental surgery right about when they would have had a little extra cash to spend on themselves (in a purely theoretical sense, let us say... a tax refund). In general, life just seems to walk right up to these people and squarely kick them in the jewels (regardless of whether they have them or not. Think of them as metaphysical jewels, floating blissfully around you, unaware of the danger.... and if that mental image doesn't have you freaked out, you have serious problems) then repeat as necessary once the unfortunate has hit the ground. Yes there are people who have absolutely no luck... except bad luck.
Then there's Ash.
Ash is a hero. There is no denying this particular fact. Ash has almost singlehandedly saved not only the present world twice, but the one of the past as well. Ash is not, however, a sterling example of heroism. He is not clever. He is not charming. He can move large crowds to follow him into battle, not so much because he is particularly glib or charismatic, but because he is louder then anyone else. He is not polite, nor is he a particularly charitable man in the strictest sense of the word.
He is not well known for his self-control and vernacular purity.
Ashley's success as a hero stems from one undeniable fact.
He hasn't died yet.
One might wonder exactly what such a mundane, ordinary man such as Ash might be doing saving the world. His job is certainly no indicator of greatness (he works as an employee of the S-Mart chain of supermarkets. Shop smart. Shop S-Mart. It is perhaps a testiment to his character that he is 26 years old, has worked there for 6 years, and is still stuck as a nightcheck housewares attendant). Ash's entire claim to fame is that fate just can't seem to get enough of screwing with him.
Ash's problems are many and varied, but these problems come from a source that, when placed in the right perspective, is really quite simple. He sees dead people.
This in and of itself is not a bad thing. While it's generally accepted that it's a good thing to spot dead people (they can be very easy to trip over, and are notorious for having absolutely no concept of right of way) Ash must deal with a very unpleasant fact about his relationship with the dead.
They see him too.
This causes him quite a bit of head trauma, and not the mental kind. The kind that comes from having one's skull slammed repeatedly against a solid object. Fortunately, Ash has developed an interesting strategy for dealing with this. He gets very mad. Then he throws off a remarkably dense (and usually crude), yet strangely appropriate one-liner.
Did I mention the chainsaw for a hand?
***
"Way to go kid, ya did it." Ash whispered sadly to the woman who clutched that butt-ugly book in her rapidly cooling grasp. Ash felt a small surge of guilt that he'd been unable to prevent his hand from stabbing her in the back with a grotesque sacrificial dagger constructed entirely of human bone, but in his defense, his hand had a mind of its own.
It was also no longer attached to his body.
Wincing as he turned and shrugged his battered shoulders, he glanced about the room warily, a sound intruding into his pain and exhaustion fogged mind. Suddenly, the door flew open-
-and just kept right on opening, fluttering off into the night like a startled, highly nonaerodynamic owl. Ash stared in mild (but rapidly growing) alarm at the vortex spinning in the woods just past the small cabin he currently occupied.
-Oh shit...- he thought glancing desperately at the Necronomicon Ex Mortis. -I wish I'd stayed awake in Kondarian or whatever the hell that thing was written in 101 class in highschool.-
He had very little time for introspection then, as he suddenly found himself dodging numerous kitchen and other less savory appliances. Ducking around what had once been the cabin's stove, he lunged forward, desperately grabbing hold of the kitchen counter with his one good hand. He cried out in alarm, then winced when the board pulled free of its mooring with a groan of tortured wood and caught on the cabin doorway.
"For God's sake! How do you stop this.. AHHHHHHH!" He shouted in fear as the board broke in two and he found himself spinning end over end towards the biggest, baddest metaphysical toilet flush he'd ever seen...
***
There, in a nutshell, is Ash's humble beginning as a hero. Or at least a reasonable imitation of heroism in any case. He had battled zombies and demons only to find himself banished to a place far worse then hell.
A place that did not have cable television. A place that did not have running water.
A place that did not have genuine draft beer.
***
Ash stood up in disorientation, his brain having serious problems with a fifty foot drop into a brightly lit place immediately after the extreme dark of hell induced night. He blinked.
"What... the hell?" he mused out loud, goggling at a dusty, unfamiliar landscape. A large number of armored knights rode up over the hell and surrounded him. He stared at them dubiously.
-Oh Christ... where the hell am I?-
He'd find out soon enough.
***
Yes, Ash found himself transported to the Dark Ages. Banishing the evil into the vortex had sent it to the past, and as ordained in the Necronomicon Ex Mortis, a hero DID arise to purge the evil from man's domain.
Ash sort of became that hero by default when he was banished along with the evil. Of course this was not done without... complications.
***
He turned rapidly and came into a ready crouch, staring at... himself. He blinked.
"Who the hell are you?" He asked, wonderingly.
The other Ash grinned. "I'm BAD Ash." He tapped his chin mockingly. "And you're good Ash." His face twisted into a rictus of hate. "You're goody little two shoes Ash."
He proceeded to caper about Ash madly, chanting this over and over again. Each two shoes comment was followed through with a jab into Ash's already well battered face. Ash watched him incredulously.
Bad Ash suddenly found the barrel of a shotgun pressed firmly into his chin. He blinked and stared in shock at Ash, who nodded grimly as if to say, "Yeah... you know what's comin' next."
A resounding blast later, Bad Ash crumpled against the base of a tree, his face a smoking ruin. Ash nodded grimly.
"Good. Bad. I'm the guy with the gun."
***
Yes, Ash learned several lessons during his time in the past. Most importantly, that dead does not necessarily mean out of action. Bad Ash rose from the grave and led an Army of Darkness to reclaim the Necronomicon, the one book with the power to save the world, or cast it forever into darkness. It was also the only book that detailed how the displaced S-Mart clerk could find his way back home. Once the evil had been cleansed (and Bad Ash had been killed for the second time) Ash returned to his own time... but evil has a long memory... and all is not well for our reluctant champion of light (or more likely, Miller Light)...
***
-Yeah I coulda been King. But in my own way... I am King.-
He ripped off his store clerk apron and leaned down with the girl in his arms, grinning. "Hail to the King, baby." He kissed her deeply.
A sound caught his attention suddenly. He looked up, frowning at the interruption to his big love scene. Someone was clapping.
He narrowed his eyes against the glare from one of the store lights. A man in a longcoat with a widebrimmed black hat walked toward him from the shadows. The man looked up, grinning, his face no longer hidden by the brim of the hat. Ash gasped.
"You! How are you...?"
Bad Ash grinned grotesquely, the lower half of his mouth horribly mangled by the shotgun blast that had killed him so long ago. He shrugged. "You of all people should have remembered Ash... evil doesn't die... it just gets uglier. It took me a long time to pull myself together after you launched me off of that damned catapult. Never did find my hand." He grimaced.
"Still... I should thank you... another old friend of yours found his way to me and solved that little problem." He gripped his right hand and removed it entirely. It gave a stunned Ash the finger.
Ash slapped his forehead. "God Damn it! How many times am I going to have to kill you two?"
` Bad Ash smiled again. If at all possible, it was worse than the first time. "Oh... I think only one more Ash has to die today buddy. Nicole? Sweetheart? Could you hurt him for me?"
The girl next to Ash grinned, her face suddenly becoming a mask of evil that would have made H.R. Gieger cringe. She howled in Ash's face. He waved his hand over his nose, wincing.
"Man... don't know how I could have missed breath like that."
She growled and launched a brutal right hook into Ash's face, throwing him fifteen feet away to land in a display of tuperware. He was lost from view under a pile of plastic containers.
Bad Ash chortled. "Bet that stung."
The zombie-like thing that was Nicole lurched its way towards the display, grinning with a mouthful of blackened razors. "What's the matter Ash, don't you like me anymore?"
The pile of tuperware exploded outward and she warded a few stray containers away. Ash stared at her with a face full of extremely tired anger.
"Honeymoon's over baby."
The Winchester in his hands coughed three times in rapid succession, tossing the hellspawned witch back into the nearest cash register, which exploded like a demented slot-machine, throwing loose change and bills into the air like confetti at a wedding.
Ash racked the lever action as he continued firing into the tangle of bloodied limbs the deadite had become, stopping only when it ceased twitching. Bad Ash looked impressed.
"I see your skills haven't diminished since the last time we butted heads." Bad Ash taunted him.
Ash narrowed his eyes and pointed the Winchester at the source of his discontent. "Yeah well... it's alot like riding a bike. Once you've splattered one deadite..." He let the sentence trail off into a rather obvious threat.
Bad Ash grinned. "Oh I agree... in fact, let me give a little something more to test your skills with."
He snapped his fingers. The aisles, which had been sheltering several scared employees and S-Mart shoppers, suddenly exploded into a frenzy of deadite driven action. Fifty slavering, twisted hellbeasts bent on his dismemberment howled their fury at him and started forward in a rush.
Ash blinked. "Riiiiight."
Then he tossed the empty Winchester at the first of them and ran as though hell were at his heels (which it was) for the employee locker room. Bad Ash chuckled.
"Pussy..."
***
Makoto Mizuhara was a driven man.
One might say that all of his life, Makoto had been driven in some way. In Highschool, Makoto had been a straight A student, a shoo-in at the school science fair, athletic and well-liked by nearly everyone. Makoto was one of those individuals who constantly pushes themselves to succeed, picks themselves up if they fail, dusts themselves off, and tries again. They are the overachievers, and they end up either doing one of two things:
A) They snap like an overstressed twig and either spend the rest of their life muttering quietly to themselves in a dark corner, or become a writer of bad gothic poetry (which some would argue amounts to pretty much the same thing).
B) They continuously succeed, becoming successful, charming, happy people, and bug the rest of us normal mortals to the point of really wishing some horrible thing would happen to them, which of course makes us feel terribly guilty, because THEY, of course, would never stoop to such pettiness.
Still, the indominatable Mizuhara had reached the end of his patience.
"Dang it." He shouted in irritation at the piece of junk he'd been fiddling with for the past four and a half days. He immediately looked around to see if anyone had seen him curse. Makoto had been raised better then that.
He wiped an inordinately large amount of grease off on the battered coveralls he'd been wearing and looked over his notes distractedly. The words faded in and out of his vision, and he blinked.
"Ahem." A wryly amused voice startled him out of his reverie and he looked up, surprised.
"Oh... hello Nanami. What brings you here?"
Nanami pushed into his workshop (a quiet corner of the Roshtarian Palace library) carrying a basket of something that could not be identified but smelled like heaven. She smiled at him. "Hi Makoto-chan! I brought you something to eat. You must be hungry, you've missed so many meals."
Makoto blinked. "Have I?" His stomach muttered in muted disgust. He looked down, embarassed. "Maybe I have. I can't stop now Nanami... I'm so close.."
"So close to what, Makoto?" She set the basket on his worktable and looked in quiet curiousity at the jumble of unidentifiable junk that graced the Hero's table.
Makoto sighed. "I'm not sure exactly. I THINK it's a microportigenesis device, but I-"
Nanami blinked. "A... huh?"
Makoto raised an eyebrow. "A microportigene-" He blinked and rubbed the back of his head. "Oh... I'm sorry... that's the old Roshtarian term for it. I guess the best way to describe it..." He frowned. "The Eye of God is a good example, although on a much larger scale. Each of the Portigenesis devices essentially open up a doorway to another world. The Eye of God, from what I've been able to gather, opens up to a place between dimensions... a sort of empty space. It doesn't really blow things up, it just puts them somewhere no one will ever find them." His eyes turned momentarily sad at this prospect. The moment passed, but not before Nanami saw it.
Nanami looked dubiously at the pile of junk. "Makoto, I don't think Roshtaria would appreciate you building another Eye of God without them knowing."
Makoto sweatdropped. "Well... I said they were similar, not exactly the same. This is a microportigenesis device. It's not capable of transporting anything large enough to be dangerous, just a person... maybe two or three. I'm trying to fix it, that's the easy part. The hard part is getting it attuned to the right place..." He sighed again. He didn't need to explain what he was trying to do with all of this. They both knew he had only one goal in mind.
He sighed. "I'm not having much luck I'm afraid."
Nanami smiled sympathetically. "Well you're not going to get anywhere on an empty stomach Makoto Mizuhara." She wrinkled her nose at his dirty coveralls. "Not to mention... how long has it been since you last slept?"
Makoto blinked and looked upward, concentrating. "Uh... four days ago... I think?"
"Makoto! You are not going to do Ifurita any good if you collapse out of sheer exhaustion! You eat that food, and then you march yourself right off to bed or so help me-"
Makoto sighed. "I guess you're right. I wasn't making much progress anyway. Thanks for the food, Nanami."
She grinned happily. "You're very welcome Makoto-chan, that'll be five hundred yen." She put a hand out in front of him, never changing her sunny expression. Makoto gave her a tired sigh.
"I should have known."
"Hey, a girl's gotta make a living somehow! Besides, I'm giving you a ten percent discount." She smiled brightly.
In the midst of checking his pockets for loose change, Makoto failed to notice the series of lights that flickered dimly on his workbench, then died.
***
Ash leaned heavily against the thin metal door between him and fifty or so slavering deadites each bent on sampling a little Ash sashimi. Judging from the regular blows he felt through the door, these deadites were just as persistent as their Dark Age counterparts. He sighed.
"Well Ashley, this is another fine mess you've gotten thrown into. Someday I'm going to have to have a talk with God, and sort out exactly what it is I've done to piss Him off so badly." He winced after a particularly well-placed blow made a fist shaped dent right under his spine. He took stock of his situation.
"One things for sure... I can't stick around this popsicle stand for much longer." He stared hard at his locker. "If I could just reach..." He planted his foot against the base of the door and reached across the room for his locker, which had the words, "Back off Assholes" stenciled in bold black letters with a crudely drawn skull and crossbones underneath them on the battered metal door. He sighed.
"No good. Just gonna have to do without-" He stopped, spying a mop. It was a pristine example of a mop. In Ash's relieved gaze, it glowed as though showcased by the lights of heaven itself. Reaching out his foot he slid it carefully under the handle of the mop and flipped it towards him. He caught it with his good hand and surveyed the door. It had several fist shaped dents in it, and rattled with every blow the deadites on the other side could throw at it. The door knob was one of the latch-like variety that, when pushed down, opened the door. It did not have a lock, the makers of the S-Mart chain of buildings having deemed it either unnecessary to maintain employee privacy, or too expensive to include (probably a little of both). Ash jammed the mop under this lever, then stuck the other end in the corner. Stepping back warily waiting for any sign that the mop was going to slip, he paused. It shook, wobbled slightly... but held. He grinned.
Keeping a wary eye on the shuddering door, he dialed the combination on his padlock. 6... 6... 6... and the lock opened easily. He frowned. It had been four months since his return to modern civilization, and Ash had gone through this new, mundane chapter in his life half in fear that it would be taken away (like so many of the normal, safe times in his experience) and half pissed off at the rest of humanity for not knowing or caring about the things he'd been through. When he'd tried to tell his story no one had believed him, and quite a few individuals had eyed him as though he might be crazy. To be perfectly honest, Ash himself wasn't entirely sure that he WAS sane. One can hardly face what he'd faced and not go a little nuts. It was even possible that he'd dreamt up the whole incident, (though his missing hand gave him serious doubts about that theory) but Ash had once been a Boy Scout, and the Boy Scout motto was (buy these amazingly tacky, overpriced and slightly melted candybars, at least in my opinion -DT) ALWAYS be prepared.
This explained the contents of his locker.
He removed his battered but heavily customized chainsaw from the hook it hung on and, after digging through the several dirty magazines that camoflagued (RIGHT, and that's ALL they're for. Heh.) the bottom of his locker, found the well-oiled, brand new blade for it and snapped it into position with a click. He then pulled out a large, heavy backpack (this had been the only way he was able to smuggle what he had decided he would never leave home without day after day without gaining the attention of his fellow employees) opened it, and pulled out his trusty sawed-off twelve gauge. Cracking it, he opened one of the four boxes of shells also contained in the backpack and shoved two shells into the shotgun, flicking his wrist to close the breech. He then removed four, and then on careful consideration, six shells from the box and stuffed them into his shirt pocket. Pulling up his left sleeve, he removed the metal gauntlet/prosthesis he had attached to his arm and slapped the chainsaw (if there was one thing he'd learned in his fight against the Army of Darkness, it was that when one had access to a chainsaw, one made damn sure that one couldn't lose it) snugly into place. He then dropped the hand into his backpack, zipped it up and slung it over one shoulder.
Jerking his left arm twice, he finally managed to start up the chainsaw, which purred like an exceptionally loud and sore-throated kitten. He narrowed his eyes at the door. Then he smiled.
***
Just when Bad Ash was becoming bored with the whole cat and mouse routine, the door to the employee locker room exploded outward. While the locker room door had never been intended for much abuse (it's main purpose was to stop people from looking in, not from charging out) it was still an impressive enough show of force to cause the deadites who had been pounding on it to back up in alarm. Ash strode out of the locker room, a hard look on his face. His chainsaw seemed to growl in anticipation.
"Attention S-Mart shoppers." Ash announced grimly, his voice echoing through the entire store. "There is a sale on Ass Whoop in aisle 7. I repeat. Ass whoop in aisle 7. Thank you."
He leveled his shot gun at the nearest deadite and grinned. The shotgun boomed in a voice that shook several cans from a nearby shelf displaying cat food. The deadite collapsed into a twitching heap, its head splattered across an advertisement for kitty litter.
All hell broke loose. Literally.
Deadites came streaming at him from every angle, screaming their hatred for the living. Ash spun easily and turned the first incoming zombie's face to dripping green hamburger with a swipe of his chainsaw. Blood and bits of flesh splashed across his face. He snarled and spun towards the next target, slamming the barrel of his shotgun against this zombie's skull, and forcing it into the path of the first zombie, who still staggered around clutching the ruins of its head. The two went down in a tangle of limbs. A third zombie leapt at Ash and he swung his chainsaw around, growling in fury. The zombie hit the far wall in two seperate pieces, the bottom half twitching spasmodically, the top half coming to a rest in a more or less upright position. It picked itself up on both hands and followed the harried deadite slayer, who had begun charging down aisle seven. Two quick slashes of his chainsaw and two limbs from two seperate zombies flew across the aisle as he passed. He made a beeline for Bad Ash, who stood with his arms crossed, gleefully watching the carnage. Ash grinned.
"I'm comin' for you, ugly!" He snarled, kicking a zombie in the chest, then three times more in quick succession as it hit the ground, snapping at his legs with razor sharp teeth. He booted its head clean off of its body with one well-placed kick. The head bounced off a rack of bubblegum, then rolled across the checkout scanner for one of the checkout aisles.
The scanner appeared to be confused.
Just as Ash approached to within ten feet of the source of all his woes, something with extremely bad breath and, more pertinently to Ash, very sharp claws leapt onto his back. It shrieked in his ear, then attempted to bite it off. He struggled to reach it, swatting at it with his shotgun. It was apparently too agile.
Bad Ash chortled. "The fun's just begun Ash!"
"Get the hell offa me you lousy-" He slammed his back against a display that held kitchen utensils. This proved to be a tactical error.
An extremely hard and flat metal object rang against Ash's skull, which rattled his brain around like a marble in a jar. Ash went momentarily cross-eyed, then snarled and jumped up and fell on his back. He felt the air whoosh out of whatever was on him, then felt the impact of another blow from the frying pan the thing had in hand. He managed to get a leg behind him, then pulled himself torturously up with his knee pressed against whatever it was's abdomen, the thing continued to rain blows on him the whole time. Finally he turned and parried the next blow with his chainsaw, the cutting action of the saw ripping the frying pan out of the things hands (actually it just ripped the thing's hands off. Lower level deadites are not well known for their sound construction) Ash continued downward, burying the chainsaw in thing's chest. He looked up and his eyes widened in horror as another deadite launched itself at him. He dove backwards, catching the thing's chest with his boot and helping it along its forward trajectory past his head. As it flew by, he put the other shell from his shotgun into its chest. Meaty bits rained down on him in a grisly... well... rain of meaty bits.
Standing up quickly, Ash started running in the opposite direction. A deadite clawed at him from the top of the nearest aisle. He taught it the error of its ways by cracking open the breech of his shotgun with its skull. He dumped the shells out of his weapon and held it under one arm, desperately shoving in new shells awkwardly with his good hand as he ran.
His choice of escape venues was probably not the best. As he charged down the aisle, snapping shut the shotgun with a flick of his wrist, he happened to run across a section of highly polished floor that was no longer highly clean as well (it was currently covered in deadite ichor [or worse]). He suddenly found himself in the unenviable position of having his feet where his head should have been and vice versa. Slamming his head heavily against the floor, he stared woozily up at the ceiling.
Bad Ash slapped his knee. "HAHA! Spill in aisle 12! Spill in aisle 12! GET HIM BOYS!!"
"Errrg.." Ash muttered intellectually.
Then he remembered where he was.
Just as six furious deadites dogpiled him.
***
"This is really good Nanami!" Makoto grinned gratefully as he shoveled ramen into his mouth. As usual, when he actually took the time to realize he was hungry, his appetite returned with a vengeance.
The entreprenuer blushed. "Why... thank you Makoto-chan." She grinned.
He sighed happily. "Where would I be without you Nanami?"
If at all possible, Nanami's blush deepened. "I don't know Ma-"
Makoto dropped his bowel of ramen and raised a hand. "Shhh! Shhh! Wait a minute."
She blinked. Makoto raised an eyebrow, obviously listening intently for something.
His face brightened into a triumphant smile. "It's WORKING!! He jumped over to the pile of junk and laid his hands on it, looking intent.
Nanami blinked again. "Are you sure?"
He nodded excitedly, stabbing wires into random locations and turning dials and switches. "All I have to do is focus on her location in nullspace. She hasn't been in there long enough for her charge to deplete too far down so she should be putting out a large amount of energy... it'll be like..." he grinned excitedly, "There she is! It's gotta be her!"
"Makoto, I don't think..." Nanami looked dubiously over his shoulder at the random dancing of electrical pulses across the cracked screen in front of him. "I mean... how are you sure it's her?"
Makoto smiled. "How many things in nullspace do you think produce enough energy to run a small city indefinitely?"
She blinked again.
***
Ash was in trouble. Not his normal variety of trouble. REAL trouble. The kind of trouble that comes from being held down by six killing machines that not only have the temper of a wolverine on speed, but also have a craving for human flesh. His worst enemy stood over him, grinning (at least, it LOOKED like he was grinning. When you only have half a face, it's sometimes hard to tell) evily.
"Look at you Ashley. You're my bitch."
Ash snarled at him. "Why don't you come down here and say that you son of a-"
One of the deadites punched him heavily in the face. He shut up, glaring.
"Now Ash... there's no need to resort to harsh language. Now, as I see it, I COULD kill you. As much as I would enjoy... ripping... you... to pieces." He shook with silent rage, clenching his fists. "Ahem. As I was saying, as much as I would enjoy that, it would be over so... quickly."
Ash glared at his tormentor in a manner that suggested HE could get along just fine with killing HIS other self.
"No Ashley, what I'm going to do is far far worse. See..." he reached into his coat and pulled out the Necronomicon. "I found this being gaurded by the descendants of the wisemen you left it with. They had NO IDEA what they had been protecting for all those years. Too bad for them. Of course, what I did to them is nothing compared to what I'm going to do to you."
"You seem to like sending my masters to limbo... well, I figure there could be no better punishment then returning the favor."
"You rotten, lousy, decaying son of a bitch! Come 'ere, I'm gonna.. ooo... I'm gonna.." He struggled in the clutches of his deadite captors. Bad Ash opened up the dreaded book and began to recite passages from it.
The lights in the S-Mart flickered. The few electrical appliances running (some display fans circulating air over head) began to turn highly unsafe speeds, smoking beginning to pour from overheated motors. Ash paled.
-Oh crap... this is bad.- He thought to himself. Then he spotted his shotgun. It was just inches away from his good hand. He strained to reach it.
"Veleious, kondar... kondaaar, ghehote..."
The smoke from the damaged fans began to swirl in a menacing and unpleasant manner. Ash gritted his teeth, his fingers touching the trigger gaurd.
"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh..."
A hole of impenetrable darkness opened up at the vortex's center, various pieces of paper and loose bills still fluttering from the combat before circled toward it. Ash got his fingers on the shotgun and began dragging it painfully towards him.
"Catalhu r'lyeh wgah'nnagl!"
The vortex opened up full force, bodies and cans of various produce being sucked into it. Ash began to slide towards it slowly, gritting his teeth.
"Hey asshole... if I'm going to hell... yer comin' with me!"
Bad Ash blinked as he finished the invocation. "Fhtagn! Kondar! Huh?"
Ash grinned tightly at him, leveled his shotgun at his nemesis' feet, and pulled both triggers.
"YEOWOOW!" Bad Ash articulated as the lower part of his right foot and leg disintegrated. He lost his braced position and fell backwards, the book flipping upwards out of his grasp...
All eyes followed it as it fluttered gently upward, the macabre face on it leering down at them. In slow motion it flew into one of the ridiculously fast spinning fanblades....
And exploded in a shower of grisly pages, quickly lost in the swirling hell that was a doorway to another world.
Bad Ash howled. "NOOOOOOOOOO!!"
Ash managed to grin fiercely as the vortex swallowed him and his tormenters... then all was darkness...
***
Flipping through endless nothingness, Ash reflected on his fate. This isn't what he'd wanted. All he'd ever wanted to do was settle down, have a couple of kids, and watch monday night football. That was all. Modest dreams. Fate never seemed to work that way however. Kids had become a distant hazy memory, since every woman he'd cared for in the past few years had become the possession of a nameless evil and forced him to kill them. He didn't LIKE doing it, but if it was him or them, then he'd send flowers, god damn it.
A sudden shape in the distance caught his attention. It started as a tiny speck, then rapidly grew into the last thing he'd thought he'd see in such a place. A beautiful, ethereal woman with flowing grey hair floated serenely in the darkness. He sighed.
"Looks like I ain't the only one with problems. Hey sister!" he called out.
No answer.
"Hey! Yo! Speaka de english?"
Still no answer.
A ray of pristine blue energy struck him suddenly from behind and every nerve screamed in pain. He arched his back (as much as he was able, the deadites around him had apparently died, whatever dark forces that animated them having been cut off when he was sucked into the portal. Still, they clutched him with a strength only death or superglue can impart) and cried out, cursing. He then found himself moving at high speeds toward the motionless woman. Bouncing off of her painfully, he spun sickeningly towards the source of that blue light. As he was currently being electrocuted, he was not at his most observant, but had he been watching the ethereal woman retreating in the distance, he might have noticed that she had opened her eyes for split second.
For a split second, she'd looked confused as hell.
***
Makoto sweated as he manuevered his precious package towards his end of the portal. Nanami hovered over his shoulder, watching the events unfold with an uncharacteristically worried expression. Suddenly, the monitor for the device flared blindingly white for a moment, then died out, smoke pouring out of the top of the jumble of machinery. Makoto did what any good technician would do: he slammed it repeatedly on the bench, hoping for some sort of reaction.
Nothing.
He slammed his fist down on the table in bitter frustration. "So... so close Nanami... I had her. For a moment, I had her but..."
Nanami smiled sadly. A part of her was sympathetic...
A part of her that she was ashamed to acknowledge was a little glad.
***
Ash felt something odd moving across his face. It wasn't unpleasent, just odd. It was also familiar. He opened his eyes, which immediately began to tear.
"Where am I?" He muttered. Then he figured it out.
Oh. Wind. He shielded his eyes with one hand and looked around. He was currently moving at high speed immediately above a jumble of limp deadites, preparing for a high speed and probably fatal impact with what appeared to be an roof out of a bad production of 101 Arabian Nights. He blinked.
"Oh SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-" CRASH. He impacted with the roof, and continued through.
***
"I'm sorry it didn't work Makoto-chan. Maybe you can fix it."
"Maybe." He looked dubiously at the smoking ruin of what was once a piece of ancient Roshtarian technology. His tone suggested that he didn't have much hope.
Then things got a little wierd.
The roof didn't just break, it exploded and bodies began raining from the sky. One of them was screaming rather loudly. It hit the table, broke it and sent microportigenesis parts flying everywhere. It (or rather he) lay in the center of this mess on top of a pile of extremely dead (and very ugly) people. He blinked.
"OW."
He screamed hysterically for a second, causing both Nanami and Makoto to back up against the wall, watching him wide eyed.
He stopped. Started again. Then rolled over and stood up.
He was obviously human, vaguely handsome though his face was covered in several small scratches and bruises, as well as a prodigious amount of blood that may or may not have been his.
The fact that some of it was green suggested the later.
He was clothed in a ragged dark grey shirt, and black jeans whose condition suggested he was a charter member of the Def Leppard fan club. On his back was an overstuffed backpack as well as some sort of sheath. In his right hand was a shotgun, which he held as though he was afraid it would be taken from him.
His left hand... well, his left hand was a chainsaw.
At least, that's what it looked like.
Makoto and Nanami shared a dubiously stunned look.
Ash stopped stumbling around and took stock of his situation. He was in a well appointed (though very messy) library of some sort. Two teenagers stared at him in mute shock, one obviously Japanese in a pair of grimy coveralls, the other... well she looked Japanese, except her hair was bright orange. He blinked.
"Wha... what the hell is this happy horseshi-"
A deadite chose that exact moment to wake up and sink its teeth into his calf.
Everyone started screaming.
***
Some people have absolutely no luck. You can always recognize these people when you see them. They're the ones who get hit by a frigid splash of muddy water from the last puddle on the side of the road a day or so after it rains, usually when they're wearing their best clothing. They're the ones who's car always breaks down, or who have to undergo painful and expensive dental surgery right about when they would have had a little extra cash to spend on themselves (in a purely theoretical sense, let us say... a tax refund). In general, life just seems to walk right up to these people and squarely kick them in the jewels (regardless of whether they have them or not. Think of them as metaphysical jewels, floating blissfully around you, unaware of the danger.... and if that mental image doesn't have you freaked out, you have serious problems) then repeat as necessary once the unfortunate has hit the ground. Yes there are people who have absolutely no luck... except bad luck.
Then there's Ash.
Ash is a hero. There is no denying this particular fact. Ash has almost singlehandedly saved not only the present world twice, but the one of the past as well. Ash is not, however, a sterling example of heroism. He is not clever. He is not charming. He can move large crowds to follow him into battle, not so much because he is particularly glib or charismatic, but because he is louder then anyone else. He is not polite, nor is he a particularly charitable man in the strictest sense of the word.
He is not well known for his self-control and vernacular purity.
Ashley's success as a hero stems from one undeniable fact.
He hasn't died yet.
One might wonder exactly what such a mundane, ordinary man such as Ash might be doing saving the world. His job is certainly no indicator of greatness (he works as an employee of the S-Mart chain of supermarkets. Shop smart. Shop S-Mart. It is perhaps a testiment to his character that he is 26 years old, has worked there for 6 years, and is still stuck as a nightcheck housewares attendant). Ash's entire claim to fame is that fate just can't seem to get enough of screwing with him.
Ash's problems are many and varied, but these problems come from a source that, when placed in the right perspective, is really quite simple. He sees dead people.
This in and of itself is not a bad thing. While it's generally accepted that it's a good thing to spot dead people (they can be very easy to trip over, and are notorious for having absolutely no concept of right of way) Ash must deal with a very unpleasant fact about his relationship with the dead.
They see him too.
This causes him quite a bit of head trauma, and not the mental kind. The kind that comes from having one's skull slammed repeatedly against a solid object. Fortunately, Ash has developed an interesting strategy for dealing with this. He gets very mad. Then he throws off a remarkably dense (and usually crude), yet strangely appropriate one-liner.
Did I mention the chainsaw for a hand?
***
"Way to go kid, ya did it." Ash whispered sadly to the woman who clutched that butt-ugly book in her rapidly cooling grasp. Ash felt a small surge of guilt that he'd been unable to prevent his hand from stabbing her in the back with a grotesque sacrificial dagger constructed entirely of human bone, but in his defense, his hand had a mind of its own.
It was also no longer attached to his body.
Wincing as he turned and shrugged his battered shoulders, he glanced about the room warily, a sound intruding into his pain and exhaustion fogged mind. Suddenly, the door flew open-
-and just kept right on opening, fluttering off into the night like a startled, highly nonaerodynamic owl. Ash stared in mild (but rapidly growing) alarm at the vortex spinning in the woods just past the small cabin he currently occupied.
-Oh shit...- he thought glancing desperately at the Necronomicon Ex Mortis. -I wish I'd stayed awake in Kondarian or whatever the hell that thing was written in 101 class in highschool.-
He had very little time for introspection then, as he suddenly found himself dodging numerous kitchen and other less savory appliances. Ducking around what had once been the cabin's stove, he lunged forward, desperately grabbing hold of the kitchen counter with his one good hand. He cried out in alarm, then winced when the board pulled free of its mooring with a groan of tortured wood and caught on the cabin doorway.
"For God's sake! How do you stop this.. AHHHHHHH!" He shouted in fear as the board broke in two and he found himself spinning end over end towards the biggest, baddest metaphysical toilet flush he'd ever seen...
***
There, in a nutshell, is Ash's humble beginning as a hero. Or at least a reasonable imitation of heroism in any case. He had battled zombies and demons only to find himself banished to a place far worse then hell.
A place that did not have cable television. A place that did not have running water.
A place that did not have genuine draft beer.
***
Ash stood up in disorientation, his brain having serious problems with a fifty foot drop into a brightly lit place immediately after the extreme dark of hell induced night. He blinked.
"What... the hell?" he mused out loud, goggling at a dusty, unfamiliar landscape. A large number of armored knights rode up over the hell and surrounded him. He stared at them dubiously.
-Oh Christ... where the hell am I?-
He'd find out soon enough.
***
Yes, Ash found himself transported to the Dark Ages. Banishing the evil into the vortex had sent it to the past, and as ordained in the Necronomicon Ex Mortis, a hero DID arise to purge the evil from man's domain.
Ash sort of became that hero by default when he was banished along with the evil. Of course this was not done without... complications.
***
He turned rapidly and came into a ready crouch, staring at... himself. He blinked.
"Who the hell are you?" He asked, wonderingly.
The other Ash grinned. "I'm BAD Ash." He tapped his chin mockingly. "And you're good Ash." His face twisted into a rictus of hate. "You're goody little two shoes Ash."
He proceeded to caper about Ash madly, chanting this over and over again. Each two shoes comment was followed through with a jab into Ash's already well battered face. Ash watched him incredulously.
Bad Ash suddenly found the barrel of a shotgun pressed firmly into his chin. He blinked and stared in shock at Ash, who nodded grimly as if to say, "Yeah... you know what's comin' next."
A resounding blast later, Bad Ash crumpled against the base of a tree, his face a smoking ruin. Ash nodded grimly.
"Good. Bad. I'm the guy with the gun."
***
Yes, Ash learned several lessons during his time in the past. Most importantly, that dead does not necessarily mean out of action. Bad Ash rose from the grave and led an Army of Darkness to reclaim the Necronomicon, the one book with the power to save the world, or cast it forever into darkness. It was also the only book that detailed how the displaced S-Mart clerk could find his way back home. Once the evil had been cleansed (and Bad Ash had been killed for the second time) Ash returned to his own time... but evil has a long memory... and all is not well for our reluctant champion of light (or more likely, Miller Light)...
***
-Yeah I coulda been King. But in my own way... I am King.-
He ripped off his store clerk apron and leaned down with the girl in his arms, grinning. "Hail to the King, baby." He kissed her deeply.
A sound caught his attention suddenly. He looked up, frowning at the interruption to his big love scene. Someone was clapping.
He narrowed his eyes against the glare from one of the store lights. A man in a longcoat with a widebrimmed black hat walked toward him from the shadows. The man looked up, grinning, his face no longer hidden by the brim of the hat. Ash gasped.
"You! How are you...?"
Bad Ash grinned grotesquely, the lower half of his mouth horribly mangled by the shotgun blast that had killed him so long ago. He shrugged. "You of all people should have remembered Ash... evil doesn't die... it just gets uglier. It took me a long time to pull myself together after you launched me off of that damned catapult. Never did find my hand." He grimaced.
"Still... I should thank you... another old friend of yours found his way to me and solved that little problem." He gripped his right hand and removed it entirely. It gave a stunned Ash the finger.
Ash slapped his forehead. "God Damn it! How many times am I going to have to kill you two?"
` Bad Ash smiled again. If at all possible, it was worse than the first time. "Oh... I think only one more Ash has to die today buddy. Nicole? Sweetheart? Could you hurt him for me?"
The girl next to Ash grinned, her face suddenly becoming a mask of evil that would have made H.R. Gieger cringe. She howled in Ash's face. He waved his hand over his nose, wincing.
"Man... don't know how I could have missed breath like that."
She growled and launched a brutal right hook into Ash's face, throwing him fifteen feet away to land in a display of tuperware. He was lost from view under a pile of plastic containers.
Bad Ash chortled. "Bet that stung."
The zombie-like thing that was Nicole lurched its way towards the display, grinning with a mouthful of blackened razors. "What's the matter Ash, don't you like me anymore?"
The pile of tuperware exploded outward and she warded a few stray containers away. Ash stared at her with a face full of extremely tired anger.
"Honeymoon's over baby."
The Winchester in his hands coughed three times in rapid succession, tossing the hellspawned witch back into the nearest cash register, which exploded like a demented slot-machine, throwing loose change and bills into the air like confetti at a wedding.
Ash racked the lever action as he continued firing into the tangle of bloodied limbs the deadite had become, stopping only when it ceased twitching. Bad Ash looked impressed.
"I see your skills haven't diminished since the last time we butted heads." Bad Ash taunted him.
Ash narrowed his eyes and pointed the Winchester at the source of his discontent. "Yeah well... it's alot like riding a bike. Once you've splattered one deadite..." He let the sentence trail off into a rather obvious threat.
Bad Ash grinned. "Oh I agree... in fact, let me give a little something more to test your skills with."
He snapped his fingers. The aisles, which had been sheltering several scared employees and S-Mart shoppers, suddenly exploded into a frenzy of deadite driven action. Fifty slavering, twisted hellbeasts bent on his dismemberment howled their fury at him and started forward in a rush.
Ash blinked. "Riiiiight."
Then he tossed the empty Winchester at the first of them and ran as though hell were at his heels (which it was) for the employee locker room. Bad Ash chuckled.
"Pussy..."
***
Makoto Mizuhara was a driven man.
One might say that all of his life, Makoto had been driven in some way. In Highschool, Makoto had been a straight A student, a shoo-in at the school science fair, athletic and well-liked by nearly everyone. Makoto was one of those individuals who constantly pushes themselves to succeed, picks themselves up if they fail, dusts themselves off, and tries again. They are the overachievers, and they end up either doing one of two things:
A) They snap like an overstressed twig and either spend the rest of their life muttering quietly to themselves in a dark corner, or become a writer of bad gothic poetry (which some would argue amounts to pretty much the same thing).
B) They continuously succeed, becoming successful, charming, happy people, and bug the rest of us normal mortals to the point of really wishing some horrible thing would happen to them, which of course makes us feel terribly guilty, because THEY, of course, would never stoop to such pettiness.
Still, the indominatable Mizuhara had reached the end of his patience.
"Dang it." He shouted in irritation at the piece of junk he'd been fiddling with for the past four and a half days. He immediately looked around to see if anyone had seen him curse. Makoto had been raised better then that.
He wiped an inordinately large amount of grease off on the battered coveralls he'd been wearing and looked over his notes distractedly. The words faded in and out of his vision, and he blinked.
"Ahem." A wryly amused voice startled him out of his reverie and he looked up, surprised.
"Oh... hello Nanami. What brings you here?"
Nanami pushed into his workshop (a quiet corner of the Roshtarian Palace library) carrying a basket of something that could not be identified but smelled like heaven. She smiled at him. "Hi Makoto-chan! I brought you something to eat. You must be hungry, you've missed so many meals."
Makoto blinked. "Have I?" His stomach muttered in muted disgust. He looked down, embarassed. "Maybe I have. I can't stop now Nanami... I'm so close.."
"So close to what, Makoto?" She set the basket on his worktable and looked in quiet curiousity at the jumble of unidentifiable junk that graced the Hero's table.
Makoto sighed. "I'm not sure exactly. I THINK it's a microportigenesis device, but I-"
Nanami blinked. "A... huh?"
Makoto raised an eyebrow. "A microportigene-" He blinked and rubbed the back of his head. "Oh... I'm sorry... that's the old Roshtarian term for it. I guess the best way to describe it..." He frowned. "The Eye of God is a good example, although on a much larger scale. Each of the Portigenesis devices essentially open up a doorway to another world. The Eye of God, from what I've been able to gather, opens up to a place between dimensions... a sort of empty space. It doesn't really blow things up, it just puts them somewhere no one will ever find them." His eyes turned momentarily sad at this prospect. The moment passed, but not before Nanami saw it.
Nanami looked dubiously at the pile of junk. "Makoto, I don't think Roshtaria would appreciate you building another Eye of God without them knowing."
Makoto sweatdropped. "Well... I said they were similar, not exactly the same. This is a microportigenesis device. It's not capable of transporting anything large enough to be dangerous, just a person... maybe two or three. I'm trying to fix it, that's the easy part. The hard part is getting it attuned to the right place..." He sighed again. He didn't need to explain what he was trying to do with all of this. They both knew he had only one goal in mind.
He sighed. "I'm not having much luck I'm afraid."
Nanami smiled sympathetically. "Well you're not going to get anywhere on an empty stomach Makoto Mizuhara." She wrinkled her nose at his dirty coveralls. "Not to mention... how long has it been since you last slept?"
Makoto blinked and looked upward, concentrating. "Uh... four days ago... I think?"
"Makoto! You are not going to do Ifurita any good if you collapse out of sheer exhaustion! You eat that food, and then you march yourself right off to bed or so help me-"
Makoto sighed. "I guess you're right. I wasn't making much progress anyway. Thanks for the food, Nanami."
She grinned happily. "You're very welcome Makoto-chan, that'll be five hundred yen." She put a hand out in front of him, never changing her sunny expression. Makoto gave her a tired sigh.
"I should have known."
"Hey, a girl's gotta make a living somehow! Besides, I'm giving you a ten percent discount." She smiled brightly.
In the midst of checking his pockets for loose change, Makoto failed to notice the series of lights that flickered dimly on his workbench, then died.
***
Ash leaned heavily against the thin metal door between him and fifty or so slavering deadites each bent on sampling a little Ash sashimi. Judging from the regular blows he felt through the door, these deadites were just as persistent as their Dark Age counterparts. He sighed.
"Well Ashley, this is another fine mess you've gotten thrown into. Someday I'm going to have to have a talk with God, and sort out exactly what it is I've done to piss Him off so badly." He winced after a particularly well-placed blow made a fist shaped dent right under his spine. He took stock of his situation.
"One things for sure... I can't stick around this popsicle stand for much longer." He stared hard at his locker. "If I could just reach..." He planted his foot against the base of the door and reached across the room for his locker, which had the words, "Back off Assholes" stenciled in bold black letters with a crudely drawn skull and crossbones underneath them on the battered metal door. He sighed.
"No good. Just gonna have to do without-" He stopped, spying a mop. It was a pristine example of a mop. In Ash's relieved gaze, it glowed as though showcased by the lights of heaven itself. Reaching out his foot he slid it carefully under the handle of the mop and flipped it towards him. He caught it with his good hand and surveyed the door. It had several fist shaped dents in it, and rattled with every blow the deadites on the other side could throw at it. The door knob was one of the latch-like variety that, when pushed down, opened the door. It did not have a lock, the makers of the S-Mart chain of buildings having deemed it either unnecessary to maintain employee privacy, or too expensive to include (probably a little of both). Ash jammed the mop under this lever, then stuck the other end in the corner. Stepping back warily waiting for any sign that the mop was going to slip, he paused. It shook, wobbled slightly... but held. He grinned.
Keeping a wary eye on the shuddering door, he dialed the combination on his padlock. 6... 6... 6... and the lock opened easily. He frowned. It had been four months since his return to modern civilization, and Ash had gone through this new, mundane chapter in his life half in fear that it would be taken away (like so many of the normal, safe times in his experience) and half pissed off at the rest of humanity for not knowing or caring about the things he'd been through. When he'd tried to tell his story no one had believed him, and quite a few individuals had eyed him as though he might be crazy. To be perfectly honest, Ash himself wasn't entirely sure that he WAS sane. One can hardly face what he'd faced and not go a little nuts. It was even possible that he'd dreamt up the whole incident, (though his missing hand gave him serious doubts about that theory) but Ash had once been a Boy Scout, and the Boy Scout motto was (buy these amazingly tacky, overpriced and slightly melted candybars, at least in my opinion -DT) ALWAYS be prepared.
This explained the contents of his locker.
He removed his battered but heavily customized chainsaw from the hook it hung on and, after digging through the several dirty magazines that camoflagued (RIGHT, and that's ALL they're for. Heh.) the bottom of his locker, found the well-oiled, brand new blade for it and snapped it into position with a click. He then pulled out a large, heavy backpack (this had been the only way he was able to smuggle what he had decided he would never leave home without day after day without gaining the attention of his fellow employees) opened it, and pulled out his trusty sawed-off twelve gauge. Cracking it, he opened one of the four boxes of shells also contained in the backpack and shoved two shells into the shotgun, flicking his wrist to close the breech. He then removed four, and then on careful consideration, six shells from the box and stuffed them into his shirt pocket. Pulling up his left sleeve, he removed the metal gauntlet/prosthesis he had attached to his arm and slapped the chainsaw (if there was one thing he'd learned in his fight against the Army of Darkness, it was that when one had access to a chainsaw, one made damn sure that one couldn't lose it) snugly into place. He then dropped the hand into his backpack, zipped it up and slung it over one shoulder.
Jerking his left arm twice, he finally managed to start up the chainsaw, which purred like an exceptionally loud and sore-throated kitten. He narrowed his eyes at the door. Then he smiled.
***
Just when Bad Ash was becoming bored with the whole cat and mouse routine, the door to the employee locker room exploded outward. While the locker room door had never been intended for much abuse (it's main purpose was to stop people from looking in, not from charging out) it was still an impressive enough show of force to cause the deadites who had been pounding on it to back up in alarm. Ash strode out of the locker room, a hard look on his face. His chainsaw seemed to growl in anticipation.
"Attention S-Mart shoppers." Ash announced grimly, his voice echoing through the entire store. "There is a sale on Ass Whoop in aisle 7. I repeat. Ass whoop in aisle 7. Thank you."
He leveled his shot gun at the nearest deadite and grinned. The shotgun boomed in a voice that shook several cans from a nearby shelf displaying cat food. The deadite collapsed into a twitching heap, its head splattered across an advertisement for kitty litter.
All hell broke loose. Literally.
Deadites came streaming at him from every angle, screaming their hatred for the living. Ash spun easily and turned the first incoming zombie's face to dripping green hamburger with a swipe of his chainsaw. Blood and bits of flesh splashed across his face. He snarled and spun towards the next target, slamming the barrel of his shotgun against this zombie's skull, and forcing it into the path of the first zombie, who still staggered around clutching the ruins of its head. The two went down in a tangle of limbs. A third zombie leapt at Ash and he swung his chainsaw around, growling in fury. The zombie hit the far wall in two seperate pieces, the bottom half twitching spasmodically, the top half coming to a rest in a more or less upright position. It picked itself up on both hands and followed the harried deadite slayer, who had begun charging down aisle seven. Two quick slashes of his chainsaw and two limbs from two seperate zombies flew across the aisle as he passed. He made a beeline for Bad Ash, who stood with his arms crossed, gleefully watching the carnage. Ash grinned.
"I'm comin' for you, ugly!" He snarled, kicking a zombie in the chest, then three times more in quick succession as it hit the ground, snapping at his legs with razor sharp teeth. He booted its head clean off of its body with one well-placed kick. The head bounced off a rack of bubblegum, then rolled across the checkout scanner for one of the checkout aisles.
The scanner appeared to be confused.
Just as Ash approached to within ten feet of the source of all his woes, something with extremely bad breath and, more pertinently to Ash, very sharp claws leapt onto his back. It shrieked in his ear, then attempted to bite it off. He struggled to reach it, swatting at it with his shotgun. It was apparently too agile.
Bad Ash chortled. "The fun's just begun Ash!"
"Get the hell offa me you lousy-" He slammed his back against a display that held kitchen utensils. This proved to be a tactical error.
An extremely hard and flat metal object rang against Ash's skull, which rattled his brain around like a marble in a jar. Ash went momentarily cross-eyed, then snarled and jumped up and fell on his back. He felt the air whoosh out of whatever was on him, then felt the impact of another blow from the frying pan the thing had in hand. He managed to get a leg behind him, then pulled himself torturously up with his knee pressed against whatever it was's abdomen, the thing continued to rain blows on him the whole time. Finally he turned and parried the next blow with his chainsaw, the cutting action of the saw ripping the frying pan out of the things hands (actually it just ripped the thing's hands off. Lower level deadites are not well known for their sound construction) Ash continued downward, burying the chainsaw in thing's chest. He looked up and his eyes widened in horror as another deadite launched itself at him. He dove backwards, catching the thing's chest with his boot and helping it along its forward trajectory past his head. As it flew by, he put the other shell from his shotgun into its chest. Meaty bits rained down on him in a grisly... well... rain of meaty bits.
Standing up quickly, Ash started running in the opposite direction. A deadite clawed at him from the top of the nearest aisle. He taught it the error of its ways by cracking open the breech of his shotgun with its skull. He dumped the shells out of his weapon and held it under one arm, desperately shoving in new shells awkwardly with his good hand as he ran.
His choice of escape venues was probably not the best. As he charged down the aisle, snapping shut the shotgun with a flick of his wrist, he happened to run across a section of highly polished floor that was no longer highly clean as well (it was currently covered in deadite ichor [or worse]). He suddenly found himself in the unenviable position of having his feet where his head should have been and vice versa. Slamming his head heavily against the floor, he stared woozily up at the ceiling.
Bad Ash slapped his knee. "HAHA! Spill in aisle 12! Spill in aisle 12! GET HIM BOYS!!"
"Errrg.." Ash muttered intellectually.
Then he remembered where he was.
Just as six furious deadites dogpiled him.
***
"This is really good Nanami!" Makoto grinned gratefully as he shoveled ramen into his mouth. As usual, when he actually took the time to realize he was hungry, his appetite returned with a vengeance.
The entreprenuer blushed. "Why... thank you Makoto-chan." She grinned.
He sighed happily. "Where would I be without you Nanami?"
If at all possible, Nanami's blush deepened. "I don't know Ma-"
Makoto dropped his bowel of ramen and raised a hand. "Shhh! Shhh! Wait a minute."
She blinked. Makoto raised an eyebrow, obviously listening intently for something.
His face brightened into a triumphant smile. "It's WORKING!! He jumped over to the pile of junk and laid his hands on it, looking intent.
Nanami blinked again. "Are you sure?"
He nodded excitedly, stabbing wires into random locations and turning dials and switches. "All I have to do is focus on her location in nullspace. She hasn't been in there long enough for her charge to deplete too far down so she should be putting out a large amount of energy... it'll be like..." he grinned excitedly, "There she is! It's gotta be her!"
"Makoto, I don't think..." Nanami looked dubiously over his shoulder at the random dancing of electrical pulses across the cracked screen in front of him. "I mean... how are you sure it's her?"
Makoto smiled. "How many things in nullspace do you think produce enough energy to run a small city indefinitely?"
She blinked again.
***
Ash was in trouble. Not his normal variety of trouble. REAL trouble. The kind of trouble that comes from being held down by six killing machines that not only have the temper of a wolverine on speed, but also have a craving for human flesh. His worst enemy stood over him, grinning (at least, it LOOKED like he was grinning. When you only have half a face, it's sometimes hard to tell) evily.
"Look at you Ashley. You're my bitch."
Ash snarled at him. "Why don't you come down here and say that you son of a-"
One of the deadites punched him heavily in the face. He shut up, glaring.
"Now Ash... there's no need to resort to harsh language. Now, as I see it, I COULD kill you. As much as I would enjoy... ripping... you... to pieces." He shook with silent rage, clenching his fists. "Ahem. As I was saying, as much as I would enjoy that, it would be over so... quickly."
Ash glared at his tormentor in a manner that suggested HE could get along just fine with killing HIS other self.
"No Ashley, what I'm going to do is far far worse. See..." he reached into his coat and pulled out the Necronomicon. "I found this being gaurded by the descendants of the wisemen you left it with. They had NO IDEA what they had been protecting for all those years. Too bad for them. Of course, what I did to them is nothing compared to what I'm going to do to you."
"You seem to like sending my masters to limbo... well, I figure there could be no better punishment then returning the favor."
"You rotten, lousy, decaying son of a bitch! Come 'ere, I'm gonna.. ooo... I'm gonna.." He struggled in the clutches of his deadite captors. Bad Ash opened up the dreaded book and began to recite passages from it.
The lights in the S-Mart flickered. The few electrical appliances running (some display fans circulating air over head) began to turn highly unsafe speeds, smoking beginning to pour from overheated motors. Ash paled.
-Oh crap... this is bad.- He thought to himself. Then he spotted his shotgun. It was just inches away from his good hand. He strained to reach it.
"Veleious, kondar... kondaaar, ghehote..."
The smoke from the damaged fans began to swirl in a menacing and unpleasant manner. Ash gritted his teeth, his fingers touching the trigger gaurd.
"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh..."
A hole of impenetrable darkness opened up at the vortex's center, various pieces of paper and loose bills still fluttering from the combat before circled toward it. Ash got his fingers on the shotgun and began dragging it painfully towards him.
"Catalhu r'lyeh wgah'nnagl!"
The vortex opened up full force, bodies and cans of various produce being sucked into it. Ash began to slide towards it slowly, gritting his teeth.
"Hey asshole... if I'm going to hell... yer comin' with me!"
Bad Ash blinked as he finished the invocation. "Fhtagn! Kondar! Huh?"
Ash grinned tightly at him, leveled his shotgun at his nemesis' feet, and pulled both triggers.
"YEOWOOW!" Bad Ash articulated as the lower part of his right foot and leg disintegrated. He lost his braced position and fell backwards, the book flipping upwards out of his grasp...
All eyes followed it as it fluttered gently upward, the macabre face on it leering down at them. In slow motion it flew into one of the ridiculously fast spinning fanblades....
And exploded in a shower of grisly pages, quickly lost in the swirling hell that was a doorway to another world.
Bad Ash howled. "NOOOOOOOOOO!!"
Ash managed to grin fiercely as the vortex swallowed him and his tormenters... then all was darkness...
***
Flipping through endless nothingness, Ash reflected on his fate. This isn't what he'd wanted. All he'd ever wanted to do was settle down, have a couple of kids, and watch monday night football. That was all. Modest dreams. Fate never seemed to work that way however. Kids had become a distant hazy memory, since every woman he'd cared for in the past few years had become the possession of a nameless evil and forced him to kill them. He didn't LIKE doing it, but if it was him or them, then he'd send flowers, god damn it.
A sudden shape in the distance caught his attention. It started as a tiny speck, then rapidly grew into the last thing he'd thought he'd see in such a place. A beautiful, ethereal woman with flowing grey hair floated serenely in the darkness. He sighed.
"Looks like I ain't the only one with problems. Hey sister!" he called out.
No answer.
"Hey! Yo! Speaka de english?"
Still no answer.
A ray of pristine blue energy struck him suddenly from behind and every nerve screamed in pain. He arched his back (as much as he was able, the deadites around him had apparently died, whatever dark forces that animated them having been cut off when he was sucked into the portal. Still, they clutched him with a strength only death or superglue can impart) and cried out, cursing. He then found himself moving at high speeds toward the motionless woman. Bouncing off of her painfully, he spun sickeningly towards the source of that blue light. As he was currently being electrocuted, he was not at his most observant, but had he been watching the ethereal woman retreating in the distance, he might have noticed that she had opened her eyes for split second.
For a split second, she'd looked confused as hell.
***
Makoto sweated as he manuevered his precious package towards his end of the portal. Nanami hovered over his shoulder, watching the events unfold with an uncharacteristically worried expression. Suddenly, the monitor for the device flared blindingly white for a moment, then died out, smoke pouring out of the top of the jumble of machinery. Makoto did what any good technician would do: he slammed it repeatedly on the bench, hoping for some sort of reaction.
Nothing.
He slammed his fist down on the table in bitter frustration. "So... so close Nanami... I had her. For a moment, I had her but..."
Nanami smiled sadly. A part of her was sympathetic...
A part of her that she was ashamed to acknowledge was a little glad.
***
Ash felt something odd moving across his face. It wasn't unpleasent, just odd. It was also familiar. He opened his eyes, which immediately began to tear.
"Where am I?" He muttered. Then he figured it out.
Oh. Wind. He shielded his eyes with one hand and looked around. He was currently moving at high speed immediately above a jumble of limp deadites, preparing for a high speed and probably fatal impact with what appeared to be an roof out of a bad production of 101 Arabian Nights. He blinked.
"Oh SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-" CRASH. He impacted with the roof, and continued through.
***
"I'm sorry it didn't work Makoto-chan. Maybe you can fix it."
"Maybe." He looked dubiously at the smoking ruin of what was once a piece of ancient Roshtarian technology. His tone suggested that he didn't have much hope.
Then things got a little wierd.
The roof didn't just break, it exploded and bodies began raining from the sky. One of them was screaming rather loudly. It hit the table, broke it and sent microportigenesis parts flying everywhere. It (or rather he) lay in the center of this mess on top of a pile of extremely dead (and very ugly) people. He blinked.
"OW."
He screamed hysterically for a second, causing both Nanami and Makoto to back up against the wall, watching him wide eyed.
He stopped. Started again. Then rolled over and stood up.
He was obviously human, vaguely handsome though his face was covered in several small scratches and bruises, as well as a prodigious amount of blood that may or may not have been his.
The fact that some of it was green suggested the later.
He was clothed in a ragged dark grey shirt, and black jeans whose condition suggested he was a charter member of the Def Leppard fan club. On his back was an overstuffed backpack as well as some sort of sheath. In his right hand was a shotgun, which he held as though he was afraid it would be taken from him.
His left hand... well, his left hand was a chainsaw.
At least, that's what it looked like.
Makoto and Nanami shared a dubiously stunned look.
Ash stopped stumbling around and took stock of his situation. He was in a well appointed (though very messy) library of some sort. Two teenagers stared at him in mute shock, one obviously Japanese in a pair of grimy coveralls, the other... well she looked Japanese, except her hair was bright orange. He blinked.
"Wha... what the hell is this happy horseshi-"
A deadite chose that exact moment to wake up and sink its teeth into his calf.
Everyone started screaming.
***