FIXES FROM THE PYXIS: THE BESTING OF THE BADASSES

By Quillon42

CHAPTER ONE

SOMEWHERE IN ATLANTA

Within an instant of the discorporate Captain's order to the others in his company of conjurer- combatants to "head for the water and swim deep," those adventurers of the occult called the Jericho Squad—those remaining, anyway, after nearly half of them had been seemingly slaughtered in the course of their cruel, centuries-spanning crusade—the slick soldiers had slipped miserably through quavering currents, out of a grotto once occupied by an adversary almost older than time itself.

Where these soldiers of the supernatural were now headed, as they surfaced to what appeared to be an endless ocean overtured by an eerie, ceaseless Kyrie Eleison…even the team's recently-deceased chronomancer, were she still here with the rest of the Squad, even she couldn't be able to calculate, be it temporally or spatially, where in the Dark-Rapture-dastard flying fuck they were.

What the troopers of the transmundane did soon know, a few antediluvian wavelets later, was that there was that same, five-times-familiar feeling that they underwent when they have ripped through an interdimensional rift on this latest mission, one which they had regularly felt full-on-frontal to the torso…though this time the transcendental tingling was issuing from underfoot, even now as they tried so desperately to tread water in the primordial stew into which these witches of warriors were all so tumultuously thrown.

[SWASH SWASH SWASH SWASH SWASH SWASH SWASH SWASH SWASH SWASH SWASH SWASH SWASH SWASH SWASH SWASH SWASH SWASH SWASH SWASH SWASH SWASH]

Many mind-muddling minutes and a single final traumatic timerift thereafter, and the heretical heroes discovered themselves dragging one another out of a ditch that was rather damp, a dank drainage at the edge of a downtown unknown to all but one of their number. The gothically-garbed guerrillas all looked one to the other, each frazzled as per usual following an exodus from one era to that preceding…

…yet at the same time, each found himself or herself pleased to peer upon the piceous apparel of not three other generation-jumping Jerichos…but six once more.

Indeed, now the epoch-encircling battles were joined once again, such that it was not just the surly sniperess, the arsenal-cum-arsonist asshole, the belle of blade and blood, and the philandering priest who were living refugees of Al-Khali. Nay, the freakish foursome were now met once more by the taciturn astral projector, that corporal who was a most obsessive compulsive human calculator…

…and, once more among their ranks of the incessantly-respawning…their Captain and Squad Leader, the Jumbo Jericho in the flesh with them all, inexplicably anew.

A pleasant spell was spent between the seven now, they all allowing themselves laughs and embraces for a stint, each permitting himself or herself an indulging in emotion for a moment without wondering how the three who were taken from them were enlisted back into their most rancorous of ranks.

Then the snazzy, sable-swathed septet caught sight of a motley menagerie of mofos, with one decked in dreadlocks and the keenest of katanas…another with a wicked-kicking crossbow…yet another with a revolver glinting from his waistband, as if his pelvis had grown and boasted the most metallic of phalluses.

Hovering before the disparate drove of survivors was an all-too-familiar infant, a shadowy toddler whom the time-traversing rangers recognized as a child who catalyzed the decimation of humanity wherever he went. For certain, he would have to be stopped one more time.

Amidst the squad, the most licentious of clerics pointed to the people the murderous moppet was now addressing. "Are they Jerichos as well?"

Of them all, the OCD calculatress was able to respond accurately, as the miniature multiverse's motherboard upon her wrist had just now dictated to her where and when the warriors all were. Before she could do so, however, the most pyromaniac of all pricks ever, among them:

"No…they're just jerkoffs."

RICK GRIMES VERSUS DEVIN ROSS

The predicament progressed thusly now: that little yet lethal blotch of a boy had broken it all down to the other gregarious group, who as millions of voracious viewers in the reader's realm had been ad hoc guardians of an apocalypse-vomited-upon Georgia. According to the Satannic scion, the interloping soldiers were to blame for all the incidences involving the afterdeceased—and if they were now routed, in at least a best-out-of-thirteen tournament, then the pestilence of the putrefied persons upon their land would be undone. As such, those survivors now set out to send the Jerichos into boxes that would be more pine in nature than Pyxis.

First up regarding these baneful confrontations was the respective showrunner of each of the sides. Deputy Rick doddered on up with his Resident Evil 1-Refugee Colt Python (it's really the kind he uses—look it up), while Ross palmed his Patrioteer assault rifle. The two toed up in downtown Atlanta, not far from where the eons-spanning Squad had alighted in this reality…not far at all from where Grimes's trusty steed had been downed and devoured, in his initial and lonely first of chronicles concerning the pusillanimous postcroaked.

According to the puntworthy pubescent who prompted this series, rules were ratcheted into place to make matters a bit fairer. One of the most salient was that Barker's bitches and bastards could only use one of their conventional weapons, as most of the wretched from the Ricktatorship only brandished a single signature arm themselves. Second, there was to be no "jacking in" of munitions or of health aids by any of the paranormal personnel involved. Third, defeat was only arrived upon by death of a combatant…but the dispatched one would be revived by a member of the visiting team immediately thereafter.

(So that there can be as complete an audience as possible to witness and withstand my assimilation of this world, thought the terrifying tyke to himself).

Interestingly, the adolescent-seeming emcee said nothing about whether the Jerichos could employ their assorted psychic abilities—perhaps a bit of wild card chaos to be thrown into the mixture, thought the Squad Captain as he prepared to engage the haughty hick of an opponent he faced now.

Mostly the confrontation was a blend of bullets and wry whining about whose cause was worthier, whose people were more important, whom the world needed more than anyone else now. Rick dove and ducked through various alleyways through which he had gallivanted before, his enemy's weapon more powerful but his own familiarity with the environment giving him a distinct advantage. Each of the intrepid leaders sustained his fair share of fire from the other, with Rick railing against shots entered into his side and lower leg, while Ross was racked by wounds to the back and the shoulder. Eventually both men were about spent, in terms of energy and ammunition.

Devin was totally dry, in fact…but Rick still had a shot left in the chamber. And the soldier was now laid up dead to rights, as the sheriff lined him up for a catastrophic killshot, all in the alleyway in which Glenn Rhee first caught sight of the cop. It was just as Rick lifted his powerful Python to purge Ross from this putrid planet, in fact…

…that the jaunty Jericho allowed his consciousness to abscond, it sprinting toward, then springing into the ghouls-beset gendarme of Georgia.

Rick then realized that his canny Colt was arcing toward the insides of his mouth, rather than the innards of his opponent…and that there was nothing he could do to halt it from happening.

[BLAAAMMMMM]

As the plague-weary hero hunkered to the gritty ground now, he headed towards a miserable yet very momentary expiration, he swore he could see and hear the presences of people very close to him, from earlier seasons of his existence.

"You don't gotta worry none about Lori bein' lonely down here…she's as much mine as she was 'fore you came to the camp, at the beginnin' a' all this."

In the beady-eyed boor's arms, the auburn-tressed and ghostly-white-gowned lady sneered at Rick, as the man then noticed a certain kind of cord winding toward his throat.

"For so many weeks in that prison you kept me on the line, Rick," chided the warrior's once-wife, now divorced from him by death. He flinched as the chrome coil from the telephone Lori toted came all the closer.

"Then you stopped answering me. Why was that? You go off now and…chase every skirt and…sword maiden you can now?

"Even in these few instants…before you're brought back, of course, as goodness knows how much the world so needs Rick Grimes…you'll know what it felt like, what I went through in my final throes."

The phone line bit tightly into the man's neck now, harder than any knife held against his jugular by any Hilltop heavy.

"You should never have left that Andrew asshole to his own devices in the pen courtyard, baby…wouldn't have set off the whole, dad-blamed…chain of events that caused me to check out early."

Rick knew the events to which Lori had been referring, which millions of scifi fans had witnessed in the "Killer Within" episode—back well before the show had sprung over the shark, in this author's estimation.

"Here…the party line I'm linking up to you now…it'll extend the connection between us…so that the actual seconds you're out will feel like weeks…as you watch old Shane and I show you how to make a baby…

"…a little bundle just like the Judith that Officer Walsh and I conceived, back in the city limits of Atlanta."

So did Deputy Grimes now endure a pain far more unfathomable than death itself, in the aftermath of his defeat.

VICTOR: DEVIN ROSS

TO BE CONTINUED