The Mighty Milkbone presents
King of the Bungle
Night hung heavily over the jungles of Mundus Magicus, fostering a muggy, tropical darkness that was just shy of intolerable. Here, every tree became a prison, trapping warmth and moisture low; those creatures that couldn't handle such conditions were forced to seek refuge in open spaces, rare islands of tranquility. Worse than this was the fact that the indigenous plants were alive, and not in the sense of 'it uses sunlight to make sugar.' A man had to keep a sharp watch on things, if he truly valued his safety.
Cygnus Garver, Esquire, of the Redoubtable Order of Shoestring Skullduggery, did exactly that from his vantage point atop a crumbling pyramid ruin. Below him, the fires his companions had built trailed oily smoke onto a star-tracked canvas; hooded figures milled to and fro before the flames, preparing for the Great Ritual.
How tiny they all were. From so high up, it was easy to look at people as though they were ants, and given how this complemented Cygnus' world-view, he was quite all right with that. He was meant for better things than all the other sheep, you see.
In fact, he was in many ways like the tomb he was standing on: grand, imposing, an artifact of what had surely been a more enlightened age...and choked by the vines of the plebes. Oh, how the torment he'd endured in the Empire rankled him! They'd mocked his new vampire novels, called him mad! But he'd show them. After tonight, he'd show them all.
The blare of a conch horn drew his attention to the temple's base. At last, all was in order, and he could descend to witness a radiant new beginning.
Cygnus floated to earth, ebon cloak billowing, and surveyed the scene before him. Two columns of totems marked a long path from the jungle's edge to a glittering obsidian altar. Great hoards of cooked meat and grog lay nearby - some for general hedonism, others for the sacrifice soon at hand. Cygnus fell in line as a slow, stooped figure hobbled to the altar; the head of the Order faced his sworn Brothers and began to speak in a high, reedy voice:
"Brothers of our Redoubtable Order, I welcome you tonight with open arms! This time of ascendance marks the dawning of a pure new era...an era in which our kind shall rise up and cast off the shackles of oppression!
"No longer shall we be ridiculed for our love of underage pantyshots!"
Cheers!
"No longer shall we endure strange looks when our Princess Theodora body pillows are discovered!"
Roars of approval!
"No longer shall we need to hide our avant-garde shipping fanfiction from the world!"
200X Mobscream Combo!
"The Great Ritual shall be set in motion, and once complete, it is only a matter of time until all who oppose us drown in a sea of righteous fire! But before our victory, before our justice, we feast! Come, my Brothers, and let your appetites be sated!"
With one final cheer, the members of the Order fell upon their promised meal. Once their arms were filled and their flagons topped off, groups of Brothers broke off from the main gathering to seat themselves wherever seemed most comfortable. Cygnus plopped down alongside a few of those whom he grudgingly deigned to call friends - that is, they were people too much like him to ever disagree with what he said. As he drank, the brown-furred Redoubtable felt his ears twitching in time to a nearby drumbeat.
All of the two-hundred one members of the Order were Hellas demihumans of some sort, and thus most of them had naturally superior senses. It was therefore a surprise when one of their number passed around a gourd of brew from the side, as though he'd been there all along.
"Didn't notice you join us, Brother," said Brother Aloysius with a curious lilt. A decent man, that Aloysius, despite his baffling dedication to the inferior Theo/Seras. "You come and go like the wind, I expect. Not a bad skill for someone like us. I don't believe I know your name, though..."
"Eh, you can just call me Ruckus," said the hooded newcomer. "Joined up at the last recruitment drive, y'know. Lucky for me, I got initiated before the big expedition."
The group nodded appreciatively at his name. 'Ruckus' certainly fit the man well enough; he'd elected for shirtlessness under his cloak, and had the look of one who ate four-dozen raw eggs every morning before going out to fight people. Lots of people.
Cygnus, feeling thoughtful, put his furry hand in his equally furry chin. It was time for a test of taste, he decided. "I see," he said. "That initiation was quite difficult, as I recall. What were your thoughts on the problem of Arika/Eishun, again?"
Brother Ruckus threw a great, bellowing laugh into the jungle air. "Ahh, too boring, too plain! Not enough of an age difference, and the swordsman-and-princess thing's been done to death anyway. Now Arika/young!Takamichi on the other hand, that's where it's at! Gotta ship on the edge, y'know what I mean?"
This statement met with vigorous "Hear, hear"s, and Cygnus felt his esteem for Ruckus shoot into the stratosphere. "Very well put, Brother," he said. "It's hardly any wonder you entered the fold so quickly."
Ruckus shrugged. "Hey, a guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do, yeah? A world where you can have pecs like mine but not scope out lolis ain't any world worth living in."
"Damn straight!"
"Preach it, Brother!"
Grog-soaked discussion continued on for hours, until another horn blast summoned the revelers to their altar. Silence fell over the crowd as the Head Brother hobbled up, reached his hands into his cloak, and swiftly tossed two pinches of strange powder into the nearby bonfires. The flames surged green with a mighty CRACK, and with that, the Great Ritual was underway.
At a gesture from the Head Brother, a heavy mythril-steel cage floated down the torch-lit path. Inside the cage stooped a tailed, cat-eared girl; though dressed as a savvy reader might expect and muffled with a silencing charm, she wrenched and tore at her prison's bars, indomitable to the last.
"The sacrifice!"
"She comes!"
The cage landed gingerly atop the altar, and the Redoubtables bowed their heads. Reacting to their outpouring of magical energy, a spell circle, poured around the perimeter of the temple with molten gold, flashed to life.
"O long and mighty Tlalpantli," intoned the Head Brother, "you whose paths carve through mountains and whose breath reduces all to ash-"
"-And whose droppings speak at government functions-"
"-Yes, and whose dro-HEY! Who dares speak?!" The Head Brother whipped his head up, searching for evidence of a troublemaker. On finding nothing, he snarled and lowered his head once more.
"We gather here this night, O Tlalpantli, to end your long slumber! At our souls' call, rise to wakefulness! By our offerings, our virgin sacrifice, may you be pleased!"
The catgirl began howling something at this, but went unheeded.
"Dava Garm Bagarl! Gather unto me, spirits of the foundations of stone! From my body, let fly-"
Suddenly, there came a dull snapping sound, a distortion of air, and then:
"-YOU ALL WITH A MAILBOX! I AIN'T A VIRGIN, YOU JACKASSES!"
For a long moment, time seemed to freeze. The bonfires seemed to lose their intensity. There were no crickets in the jungle, but somehow crickets were chirping. Finally, someone spoke up.
"What."
The Order promptly broke into a wave of arguments and accusations. Many shin kicks and wussy slaps were delivered, to no avail.
"Who broke the silencing field?!"
"Not a...damn it, Brother Dolf, I thought you checked!"
"No way! Nudity makes me all nervous and stuff!"
"Who cares?! Good Housevillain Weekly says sacrifices don't have to be pure, and I think Martha Scarhart knows a bit more-OW!-about this business than you do, you Philistine!"
"Well I think-"
"SIIIIILEEEEEENCE!"
Every gaze turned to the Head Brother, whose wrinkled face had squashed up in disgust. "Idiots!" he yelled. "Spell failure aside, did you stop for one second to think that the sacrifice might want to lie her way out of her situation? Well? Did you?"
"But Brother Dolf said he didn't check..."
"Shut up, Brother Poot. Now furthermo-BLASPHEMY! You there! You in the second row! You dare consume magical plants while engaged in the ritual?!"
Brother Ruckus looked down his nose from where he was wringing a wet, squirming root into his mouth; there was a collective gasp at the sight of it.
"What?" asked Ruckus. "So I'm eating my veggies, big deal. It's not like it's sentient or whatever! I checked! Unlike Brother Dolf, apparently. Sure, I may be a handsome, sexy rogue with a healthy disregard for the law, but I'm not Satan! C'mon, now!"
Cautiously, Brother Aloysius raised his hand. "Um, pardon my ignorance, but...what exactly is a 'Satan'?"
"Big red guy with a pitchfork fetish."
"Oh."
"Let me the hell outta here!" yowled the sacrifice. "And y'all better be ready to assume the bitch position once I'm free, 'cause then ain't any drugs or spells gonna be savin' you!"
"...Brother Dolf, wherever did you find this girl? I thought virgin sacrifices were supposed to be all...shaky and crying and such."
"Yeah, she's kind of intimidating."
"I swear," the Head Brother raged, "If you sorry sacks of offal don't shut your mouths this instant, I will turn this fartsparkle expedition around. Is that what you buffoons want? To tramp back across the length and breadth of the Hellmurder Continent without our monster of ultimate destruction? Because that's exactly what's going to happen if you don't pull your heads out of the cavernous death-pits you call your sphincters! Do I make myself clear?!"
Timid nods were his only response. Disgusted, the Head Brother re-cast the silencing spell on the sacrifice's cage and turned back to the matter at hand.
"Good. Now again, from the activation key: Dava Garm Bag-"
In that moment, a legendary sound echoed across the land. It rattled the ancient temple's foundations, overturned both the ritual food offering and the catgirl, and sent the Redoubtable Order crashing to their knees, ears ringing in agony. At last, it rose to a glorious, flatulent crescendo, scaring off every animal in a twelve-kilometer radius from its source.
Its source, Brother Ruckus.
"...My bad. Must've been something I ate, heh."
With a crash like thunder, the roof of the temple caved in, and an inhuman roar sounded from deep beneath the earth.
"Y-you swine! You've botched the ritual irreversibly! None of our restraints and protectives are in place! What the hell were you thinking?!"
"Aw, relax, y'old geezer. You wanted a monster, and now you've got one. Deal with it."
"DAMN YOU! Brothers, seize this impudent wretch! Secure the sacrifice!"
"What sacrifice?" asked Brother Ruckus cheekily. "I don't see one, do you?"
The Head Brother blinked. The catgirl was standing at Ruckus's side now, looking even more feral than she did enthusiastic. Flabbergasted, the Order leader made a double-take from his sacrifice to the cage, which now had a gaping hole in it, and repeated the action.
"I...this...when...I just...you...I just wanted...buh."
Brother Ruckus grinned and pulled back his cloak's hood. "It gets worse," he said.
"...Oh no. No. No no no. Oh god oh god oh dog AHHHHHHHHHH! RUN! FUCKING RUN!"
One good look at their 'Brother' convinced the Order to flee, their bowels loosening and legs shaking, and it was in the midst of their panic that Tlalpantli emerged.
Mundus Magicus is an old, old place, and its dangers are built to last. Centuries upon centuries ago, a civilization thrived in the jungle, but it was not quite as glorious and enlightened as Cygnus Garver had thought it to be. In fact, they regularly tore out and sacrificed their own magic cores in commendably ballsy but ultimately misguided attempts to receive divine protection. Protection from Tlalpantli.
Only near the collapse of the civilization did anyone have enough common sense to lure the beast into a trap.
Great destroyer and last of the fabled Yavimaya wurms, Tlalpantli burst from his prison of old and launched himself down the broken temple stairs. He was big. He was long. He was pink. He was also embarrassing to look at. If anything, Tlalpantli suggested that the Lifemaker is the greatest pervert in the history of forever.
It was enough to make a guy feel wholly inadequate...as long as that guy wasn't a fabled mercenary who wouldn't die when you killed him.
That very mercenary tore off his cloak with a flourish. "So, girlie," he said, "You wanna take down the goons in the tacky clothes?"
A gleeful smile. "You got no idea."
"Then they're all yours. Best stay clear, though - gonna be a lot of air pressure to deal with."
The catgirl nodded and leapt into the fray. Alone but hardly powerless, the Magic World's Hero of Blades slipped into an old, familiar stance. His time had finally come. But before any of his thousand Finishing Moves could be unleashed, a final obstacle presented itself.
Cygnus, pushed past all fear and sweeping into his full beast form, struck out at the man who had ruined his dream.
"For Nightlight! RRAAAAAAAA-"
An offhand blow sent him skidding into the jungle.
"Cut that out, kid. Now then:
"RAKAN STYLE..."
Tlalpantli opened his gaping maw, and an inferno blazed within.
"SOMETIMES A CIGAR IS JUST A CIGAR KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICK!"
When order was finally restored, Mali - for that was the catgirl's name - found herself lugging a pocket-dimensional sack through the undergrowth with her savior's help. The sack was the cheap kind and didn't properly transfer all of its weight (two-hundred one metric douchebags, to be exact), but she decided carrying the load was worth it; anything to see those punks squirm in a Hellas tribunal.
Something else was nagging at her, though. Mali looked over her shoulder, her gaze critical.
"I ain't usually the sorta girl what goes around questionin' her good fortune," she said, "but I gotta know - did you really just come outta nowhere to help me out?"
Jack Rakan, formerly Brother Ruckus of the Redoubtable Order of Shoestring Skullduggery, just chuckled as he did around anything he thought funny enough. "Nah, you shouldn't think too highly of yourself, girlie. See, I've been on training sabbatical the last couple weeks, so you know how it is - handsome devil wandering around in the sticks sees a party and thinks, 'Hell yeah, free food!' And things sorta snowball from there."
"...Whatever."
Rakan smiled. It was sort of refreshing, he thought, to see someone who didn't let world-class heroism stop them from thinking a little. Emphasis on 'sort of.' He wouldn't have minded an autograph request, to be honest.
Whistling a jaunty tune, he crumpled the police report in his slacks pocket to oblivion and back, then spared a moment to stuff a certain pair of panties (for tracking purposes, honest!) deeper down - right next to a wad of reward money.
Tonight, as it has been many nights, life is good.
Notes: We have wurm sign!
- Tlalpantli got kicked clean into a nest of hungry cliff wyverns. He was delicious.
- Rakan could be bothered to teach you his renowned "Breaking Wind Technique," but be warned: tutoring costs 30,000 drachma, it has an obscene charge time, and you can't skip any of the cutscenes.