Monster Party Book Three: On a blue Sunday morning lies a body just oozin' life.
Chapter Ten : You know the happiest day of my life, I swear the happiest day of my life, is the day that I die.
Callan Wright and James Firecat followed the note's instructions explicitly. They went into the sewers where they were told to, and began to make the necessary twists and turns.
Cal let James lead of course, his genius for spotting traps would make sure that they didn't blunder into a tripwire or something else, while his recovered sense of smell would warn them if a great many people seemed to be drawing near, (a sewer might not be the ideal place for such abilities, but after oil of scallatine James' nostrils were used to much worse).
In short, Cal was as safe as he possibly be while following the instructions of a self professed murderer. On the other hand, why would "Mr. S" have admitted to being a murder if he'd been trying to lure Cal into some kind of trap?
"So you finally came..." A voice hissed as they arrived.
Someone had been "kind" enough to hang up a single lamp to illuminate their host. Cal had never seen something so ugly, say better he'd never seen so many things all of them so ugly.
Cal wasn't sure what he'd expected "Mr. S" to be but this wasn't it. In fact, he couldn't even say for certain that Mr. S was anything, it was more like he was everything.
The longer Cal watched him the more frequently "his" body shifted from one form to another, animal, human, something in between, male or female, there was not one single feature about their host which remained constant.
"Well here I am, so what's on your mind?" Cal inquired trying not to look directly at Mr. S, it was easier on his eyes and brain that way.
"There's a small legal matter that I wished to see resolved, and I want the son of the greatest lawyer who ever lived to serve as my prosecutor." Mr. S explained his voice changing several times over as he spoke the words.
"I don't work for free. What kind of payment can you offer?" Cal demanded out of pure reflex.
"I can show you a way out of Paridon..." Mr. S promised.
"A way out of Paridon?" Cal repeated squinting slightly.
Mr. S tried to say something else but he couldn't, his body changed too rapidly and when he finally regained some modicum of control all he could do was laugh and laugh and laugh.
It was a terrible sound, the sort of noise that monsters lurking under beds and in closets made.
"No wonder you wear glasses... you truly are blind to the world around you! You've been so busy with your little game that you never even tried to leave! Never seen how the streets cycle back upon themselves! I know of a way out, but without my help you and your friends will be trapped here forever!" Mr. S warned.
Cal wasn't so sure of that, "forever" was a long time, but once Bloody Jack stopped killing after two more victims there wasn't much interesting likely to be going on in Paridon.
"Fine, for the moment I'll take that possible payment into consideration. Tell me the details of the case you want me to prosecute..." Cal demanded.
"Theft... heinous theft of an extremely powerful magical artifact. It is a dagger, a dagger with ornate rubies engraved upon the hilt, called the Fang of Nosferatu. It is a horrible thing to have it loose upon the city, because as gruesome as the wounds the dagger can inflict are... the wounds its prevents are even worse." Mr. S 'explained' to him.
"The wounds it prevents are worse?" Cal repeated that made even less sense than seeing the clues that weren't there.
"The dagger has the power to make someone invincible. Not forever, not easily, and not even truly invincible, but still as near to invincible as anyone this side of godhood is ever likely to experience. To enact the ritual of invincibility, six people must die..." He began before Cal cut him off.
"Let me guess, this dagger, in addition to whatever other powers or abilities it has, it also drains the blood right out of people's bodies. Also, I'd be willing to bet the six people have to be killed at the stroke of midnight on six consecutive nights. Oh, and since you said the invincibility doesn't last forever I bet it lasts for... just a stab in the dark here... thirteen years?" Cal predicted.
"How very astute. It seems like when you actually bother to think the results are somewhat impressive. I trust you are interested in the possibility of bringing Bloody Jack to justice and returning the dagger he stole to me?" Mr. S inquired.
"There is nothing I'd love more than to make Bloody Jack suffer, but... the entire him being some kind of... whatever... put a dampers on things.
You can convict a vampire, you can convict a lycanthrope, you can convict a golem, they've all got standard set of finger prints and a standard appearance in human shape after all. How can anyone hope to convict a monster like Bloody Jack though?
If you find a set of prints he leaves in one shape he just has to change to another shape and they're completely invalidated. The same with witness testimony, just keep changing shape, look different after each and every single one of his crimes! It's not possible..." Cal admitted hanging his head in sorrow.
"What if I were to tell you that conviction was not necessary? You simply need to detain Bloody Jack so that he is not able to complete the ritual with two more midnight killings. That alone will be enough for me." Mr. S insisted.
You simply need to detain Bloody Jack so that he is not able to complete the ritual with two more midnight killings.
You simply need to detain Bloody Jack so that he is not able to complete the ritual.
You simply need to detain Bloody Jack.
You simply need to detain Bloody Jack!
Detain Bloody Jack!
All of a sudden it happened.
Cal wasn't sure what exactly "it" was, only that he had seen "it" before.
Several times to be perfectly honest.
One moment his father would all but whimpering on the bench, both his elbows planted firmly atop it, his head buried in his hands, gazing downwards in defeat. It was clearly all over at this point, all that remained was for the judge to bring down the gavel and make it official.
That was how it always looked, and then "it" would happen.
He'd suddenly stand up straight with a manic energy in his eyes, and figure out how to turn the whole case about with just a few questions.
It was as if Cal's entire mind suddenly blazed with fiery thoughts scorching his every synapse, burning trails of brilliance across his brain!
He knew... he knew all the questions now... compared to that finding the answers was almost an after thought.
"You know, if you could hold a bipedal and female form, something vaguely attractive wouldn't hurt either, I'd kiss you! Barring that, Mr. S I can't help but notice that you keep changing shapes. I think it'd be an impossible coincidence to believe that you're not in some way related to the... whatevers Inspector Logan turned out to be and Bloody Jack undoubtedly is. I want you to tell me all your race's powers and weaknesses.
"FOOL!" Screamed Mr. S, shifting so fast that he ended up having a different mouth for every letter of the word.
"Do you truly expect me to give up the secrets of my people to you that easily?" Mr. S demanded before once again letting loose with that horrible laugh.
Cal wasn't phased in the least.
No the fact that Mr. S had out and out and out admitted to the connection was exactly what Cal wanted to hear. Now, now all he needed to do was think this through logically...
Mr. S. is a shapeshifter who can't control his shape that makes him...
1: Paridon's darklord. ←
2: Under a terrible curse.
3: Completely innocent of the Blood Jack killings.
MR. S IS PARIDON'S DARKLORD!
Alexander had been so sure that Bloody Jack couldn't be Paridon's darklord when they'd first gotten here. Everything Cal had seen since then had agreed with that theory, darklords were never allowed to get what they wanted most, and things had just kept going Bloody Jack's way.
The only shred of possible argument against the theory was the limit of only only six murders every thirteen years, but that was neatly explained away by the needs of the dagger rather than some curse.
No, if you wanted to find a realm's darklord you needed to look for who was suffering in the most soul crushing way imaginable! What could be more embarrassing, more humiliating, more horrific than Mr. S's morphological incontinence?
If Mr. S was the darklord and he used to have the Fang of Nosferatu but Bloody Jack stole it that meant...
1: Bloody Jack stole it a hundred and fifty six years ago.
2: Bloody Jack stole it fifty two years ago.
3: Bloody Jack stole it less than thirteen years ago. ←
THE FANG WAS STOLEN AFTER THE LAST ROUND OF KILLINGS!
Even darklords weren't immune to being killed if you tried at it hard enough. There was no way that Mr. S could have survived for long given how debilitating his curse was unless he had something else going for him.
Something else like... being invincible.
It all fit together perfectly, the Bloody Jack that Cal was chasing couldn't be invincible, if he was, why wouldn't he have stood his ground and fought?
No, Jack must have stolen the knife after Mr. S completed the last invincibility ritual thirteen years ago!
But how could Mr. S commit the ritual?
His body changed shape too frequently for him to hold onto a knife for a long and people would have been bound to noticed a creature like him moving around the streets sooner or later...
1: The Fang stabilizes Mr. S' form.
2: Mr. S had the victims brought to him.
3: Mr. S used someone else to do the killings. ←
MR. S WAS NEVER BLOODY JACK! SOMEONE ELSE DID THE KILLINGS!
Any dagger that was mystical enough to have a ritual requiring you to kill people at a particular time of day was mystical enough to grant invincibility via some special manner other than just giving it to whoever did the killing.
Maybe you had to stab yourself with it at midnight of the night after you made your sixth kill?
It didn't matter, what mattered was that the murders might have been completed for Mr. S, but they were not done by Mr. S!
So how could Bloody Jack have stolen the Fang from Mr. S?
1: By impersonating Mr. S.
2: By not stealing it. ←
3: By pretending to be one of its victims.
BLOODY JACK IS AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN BLOODY JACK!
Mr. S. had been using one of his servants to do the Bloody Jack killings, but that servant got fed up with being second fiddle to the darklord.
After all, it was very hard to steal something from someone who was invincible, but very easy to take something they gave you and run away with it!
Then once he was invincible and Mr. S decidedly vincible Bloody Jack would be able to finish the job! That was why Mr. S needed to make sure the killings couldn't go through because Bloody Jack already probably knew most of Mr. S' favorite hiding places!
Okay, just one last piece of the puzzle, Miss Penelope Downing... Mr. S must have visited her in person, he must have been the one who 'killed' her, it was too bizarre a detail for him to lie about.
Yet if he had taken the risks and made the effort to kill her why was she still alive?
1 Mr. S can't kill anyone. ←
2 He never intended to kill her.
3 His mind changes as quickly as his body.
MR. S IS LITERALLY INCAPABLE OF KILLING PEOPLE!
"EUREKA!" Exclaimed Cal Wright as he finally knew how he could get himself into a position from which to extract the information he needed from Mr. S.
"James, I'm about to do something stupid, really really, really stupid. I don't care how stupid any of the stuff I've done since we got here has been, this is even stupider. It's just that stupid, but it's also brilliant. So I want you to promise me, whatever happens, just sit back and watch it. If you absolutely have to, run away. Run back to Boss and tell him what happened, can you promise me that?" Cal pleaded.
"If... if that's what you want." James stammered sounding strangely unsure of himself.
"Great, now then, Mr. S, what would you do if I were to say that you were nothing but a piss poor pile of pathetically powerless primordial protoplasm..." Cal began but never got a chance to finish.
Mr. S leaped across the distance between them his form flickering between various different shapes with each passing moment. The most coherency he was capable of maintaining was that every shape he took had something approaching a vaguely human pair of arms that were soon wrapped around Cal's throat and starting to throttle the alchemist.
Cal couldn't breath, he couldn't get so much as a single ounce of air into his lungs.
He threw his lips wide open and struggled with all his might not to laugh with wicked delight as a sensation of solemnity and delight flooded his body.
Everything went dark.
XXX XXX XXX
Everything went light.
Cal coughed once or twice and smirked at Mr. S who had withdrawn away from him, his body still constantly transforming.
"Yeah... that's what I thought. The Mists really did a number on you... they made it so your own body constantly generates some kind of resurrection field that you can't shut off! That's why you could murder Penelope Downing yet she'd still be alive afterwards!
No matter how hard you want to, you can't murder someone and make it stick!
So, lets review the situation again... it's about only a few days until immortality granted by the Fang of Nosferatu from the previous round of killings wears off. You're utterly incapable of defending yourself in any meaningful way. You're utterly incapable of hiding yourself or blending in above ground for extended periods of time because you change your shape more frequently than a seamstress changes her bedsheets.
You can show us a way out of here, because you're Paridon's darklord, and you can stop sealing the domain borders any time you want! If Bloody Jack manages to become invincible and decides to start hunting me and my friends down while he's invincible, you're the thing that is keeping us trapped in this city with him.
The long and short of it is, if we don't defeat Bloody Jack before he can strike twice more, you're the one we start aiming for as a conciliation prize and a ticket back home.
So Mr. S I think you need to ask yourself, which are you more afraid of... Telling me the secrets of what you really are, knowing that if I succeed then I'll be leaving Paridon and never intentionally coming back again, or the possibility that Bloody Jack will succeed and then both he and us will start hunting you down?" Cal inquired while giving a finger point so dramatic that a sorcerer could have killed someone with it.
"YEAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Mr. S threw back his head and let loose with an bestial scream of pure rage that Cal found much less frightening than his laughter.
"We doppelgangers can read minds you single shaped fool! That's how Bloody Jack knew what you were planning, that's how me and my clan have always been able to take the place of anyone we wish.
Our skin is not all we can change, any item that is kept close to us, within five feet or so, we have the power to change as well. Not as drastically as our skin, we can turn tattered rags in to finest of dress clothes, but not metal armor. Such a change will only last for as long as the items are kept close by though.
Whatever we turn into, it must go upon two legs, we can be any person imaginable, but only with the aid of additional magic can we become animals. Whatever the shape we take it will make us no faster or stronger than we already were.
Do not think that you will survive long in Paridon if you choose to put this information to use outside of dealing with Bloody Jack, I am still served by many members of my own clan, one of them delivered the letter that brought you here. I will know if you start hunting someone other than Bloody Jack.
Finally, be aware that whatever you do, do not lay a bare hand upon the Fang." The Doppelganger instructed.
"I always wear gloves anyway." Cal brushed aside that last bit of advice.
"A normal glove will not be enough. It must be a glove made from the skin of a shape-shifting creature." Mr. S insisted.
Cal's eyes momentarily flicked in James direction then had a much smarter and less insane idea.
"I'll take care of it, and trust me Mr. S you'll get to lay your hands upon your magic dagger within the next 48 hours." Cal promised and this time more than simple bravado backed those words.
End Chapter
AN: There are going to be a lot of different confrontations with a lot of different darklords over the course of these books.
Still, it's worth noting that only Cal Wright could weaponize being an asshole to point that he tricks a darklord into revealing the full extent of his curse, and thus the fact that he needs Cal's help even more than Cal needs him. That, or at the very least if everything goes tits up and Bloody Jack succeeds then it is Mr. S who is going to get an even shorter end of the stick than Cal and his friends do.
Also if you want to get a clear idea of what exactly was happening to Cal as he was making these conclusions, Google up the words (not the phrase) "revisualization phoenix wright" and then check out the videos, though fair warning spoilers for Phoenix Wright Dual Destines will end up happening.