The deceased character Tweak has no connection whatsoever to the South Park kid of the same name. He earned his nickname because he was the Demon Guard's sabotage specialist. Tweak's real name was Caliber Affero. Rated slightly for a very brief alcohol reference in the first paragraph. Enjoy.
Here's Chapter 11.
Sergeant Naxx "Roar" Raurun smiled ear-to-ear, showing off the sharp, serrated yellow fangs of a carnivore. He picked up a bottle of coconut rum and took a swig. A successful clandestine raid had produced several cases of it, and one drink had Roar hooked. Evolution and weeding out the weak on Gomorrah had given the Saurian species a high tolerance to questionable substances. The soldier wasn't even buzzed.
"I win again" he stated, setting his hand down on the large, flat-topped stone slab that passed for a table, for all to see. Roar swiped a bowl of potato chips and stuffed a handful into his craw. The five other members of the Demon Guard who were playing Turian Poker with him groaned in defeat, tossing their own cards away, totally broke. Everyone present wore their combat suits, but their helmets and weaponry sat nearby, ready to be used if duty called. "Not my fault I'm the only one that paid attention in math class." Roar laughed heartily and down the remainder of his rum.
Duke, who normally played poker with his troops, was with the Empress outside the cave that served as HQ, relaxing in a hot spring that surrounded it. Thrash and Slug, siblings of the late Tweak, were with them as well, plotting how to enact their revenge. Having lost both her parents in a similar incident, just as the good Lilo did, She-devil considered the Demon Guard to be her family. They are:
Roar was the top-gun pilot of the Demon Guard. His nicknamed stemmed from his T-rex-like battle cry, which could turn the bravest of warriors into total cowards, and that it sounded similar to his last name. He preferred wide open skies and the depths of space over being on the ground, but for the Empress, he would go anywhere.
Bull was Duke's second-in-command; his eyes were claret, or deep purplish red. The soldier was large and powerful for a Saurian, able to take an incredible amount of punishment before going down, and dish it out with little effort. His nickname was coined by She-devil herself, because Bull had an incredibly short temper, and when he got angry gods have mercy on the one he vented it on (except his superiors of course; to attack them would result in a quick and gruesome death). Bull was unusually fond of human females (something frowned upon by most Saurians). Duke had warned him that if he ever laid so much as one scale on his bushi bu, his nickname would have to become Cow, if you get the drift.
Scorch was the explosives expert, and an admitted firebug. His lower left arm, entire right arm (an alien Swiss Army knife far more advanced than Clyde's), and both legs just past the knee were cybernetic, the real limbs having been blown off when he spotted and detonated a defective plasma mine that would have killed She-devil. This action and his sheer will to live convinced Duke to hire him. Scorch became the second member of the Demon Guard. Bull was the first.
Slug the sniper specialist, whose brother Tweak (the sabotage expert) had been killed by Jumba. All three Affero brothers had been hired onto the Demon Guard after Duke read the exceptional service records of their time in the Gomorrah Army. The trio worked flawlessly as a team, and together had killed more people than the Green Death Plague.
Thrash was Slug and Tweak's sibling, and the melee combat specialist of the Demon Guard. He made a vow to kill Jumba as slowly as possible for slaying his sibling. He was a master of numerous alien martial arts, and with She-devil's instruction, Earth ones too. Thrash took a great interest in wrestling, and turned some very famous moves lethal.
The team's medic and interrogator/torturer was called Bonez, because he collected the skulls of his victims. He was officially recruited into the Demon Guard after saving Scorch's life. Despite his position as a doctor, Bonez was far from being a good guy, and his torture and interrogation techniques made even his boss cringe. His most unfortunate victim that died in just good enough condition to be recognizable, was a Plorgian thief. I won't go into detail about what the wicked Saurian did to him, except that it involved the agonizing removal of a very prominent part of the Plorgian anatomy, with a dull, rusty butter knife.
Callisto, or Callie, was a DG-in-training, and Duke's little sister. He chose her to be on the Demon Guard because, despite being quite evil, he cared about his sibling like any big brother should. Callie was skilled with chemicals, venoms, nanotechnology, and poisons. She was the inventor of the infamous 'hemogoblins': a nanovirus which consumed the red/green/purple/pink/plaid/whatever blood cells in the victim's body, faster than they could be produced, effectively starving the body of oxygen or whatever gasses they breathed.
Last was Scars, another trainee whose muzzle was crisscrossed with claw marks, put their by Duke after he doubted that She-devil, a little human girl, could possibly rule the known galaxy. He was young, but what he lacked in experience Scars made up for with courage and ferocity on the battlefield.
Ok, back to the tale at hand.
"Robbery! Yer a blitzacking, cheapskate thief!" snarled Bull, baring his lion-like, razor-sharp fangs in a hideous snarl of fury. His long, deadly tail swished behind him, eager to curl around Roar's throat and squeeze the life out of him. Bull was by far the evilest of the Demon Guard, and his mental instability made his comrades wary. 'Twas only a matter of time until those last few strands of sanity snapped like a suspension bridge wire.
Roar cackled and pulled his winnings towards him: seven thousand galacticreds. "I'm many things: a soldier, a pilot, and a murderer, but I am not a cheater, nor a blitznack, nor a thief…Fierro" he said calmly, using his comrade's first name, which irked the temperamental soldier to no end. "I'm just better than you; hell, a blind plorgling would be a better card player than you."
That cut it. The Bull saw red, and charged.
"Meega nala queesta!!" he howled. The enraged Saurian cleared the table with incredible grace and tackled Roar to the damp earth; a waterfall concealed the cave's surface entrance. The two soldiers rolled around, punching, kicking, growling, and biting.
The other Demon Guards stood back and watched, doing nothing to pull them apart (would you?) Fights were commonplace between the two. They'd be making bets on who the winner would be, if they had any money left. The coins lay there on the table with a wealthy shine, but none desired to take it back. It had been fairly won, and belonged to Roar. Nobody ever cheated at Turian Poker; it was impossible, since the game was designed so a cheater would be easily found out and beaten like a rug.
Bull drove his huge fist into Roar's sternum, driving the air from his lungs and flinging the smaller Saurian up and over. The pilot got to his hand and knees, "Nice one, but my great-granny could hit harder than that" he gasped, standing up. Bull charged, intending to level his opponent. Roar zipped a hand to his belt, intending to leave the psychotic Saurian with a sizzling beam sword gash.
A rapid beeping sound caught everyone's attention, even Bull. Callie flipped open her gauntlet panel. "We got movement near the sensors, I'll go and check it out; " she stated quickly, picking up her death ray. Callie slid her sable helmet on over her head and switched on the HUD.
Stepping through the gap between the waterfall and cave mouth, Callie strode across the stones which formed a path across the hotspring. A healthily burning campfire, surrounded by several logs, crackled merrily. A few pots and pans (stolen from a house) rested atop a grill cover (also stolen). Mouth-watering smells issued forth from them. Breakfast, sadly, would have to wait.
Skirting the edge of the pond, Callie knelt before her brother and boss, patiently waiting for a reply. She inclined her head toward the ground out of respect.
She-devil was reclining in the hot water, which had mysterious healing properties. Such bodies of water could be found only in a few places in the Hawaiian Islands. The twelve-year-old held a plate of bacon, hash-browns, and eggs (all stolen). A black ceramic mug (pilfered from Kiki's Coffee Hut) rested within reach on the shore, filled with a strong brew (also stolen from the popular establishment). Duke sat beside her with his remaining eye closed, submerged up to his neck, looking thoroughly relaxed. Like all lizards, he loved heat. He swiped a strip of bacon and popped in his mouth. Duke's left eye socket (the peeper had to be removed, as it was too badly damaged to repair) was covered by a grey eye patch.
Slug and Thrash reclined nearby, and looked up when Callie made her presence known.
She-devil turned to look at her soldier through half-open, reddish-brown eyes, "Rise and report" she ordered calmly. Callie stood and said, "Milady, I've picked up something human-sized on the motion sensors."
"Go check it out Cal, and take Bull with you; bring the intruder back alive, if possible" said Duke in his gravelly voice, yellow eye now open and fully alert. "Thrash, you go with them, incase whoever's sneaking around needs a good beating." The melee expert gave a thumbs-up, and gathered his armor and equipment. Callie nodded in acknowledgement, and hurried back towards the cave.
She-devil set her chow aside and heaved herself out of the spring. The Empress had acquired an impressive collection of scars in her short lifetime, including nine slash marks crisscrossing her back. How she got the majority of them even Duke didn't know, as his bushi bu didn't like talking about her past.
"We'd best be ready just incase" she grumbled, wrapping a skull-patterned towel around herself. Duke followed suit, sloshing back onto the shore and cringing as the healing plasma burns on his back felt as though legions of Gomorran sand wasps had started a war there.
"Lilo, if we end up slaughtering the other you and her companions…let Thrash, Slug, and I kill Jookiba" said Duke as Bonez arrived and started wrapped fresh bandages around his upper body. He was the only one allowed to call her by her real name. The others called her Milady, or the Empress.
She-devil smiled at her best friend, "Of course, but JJ and my counterpart are mine; we'll let Bonez have that Plorgian, Plaguely or some damn thing" she replied, stepping into her now clean combat suit and zipping it tight. The shoulder guards had been modified with two more duranium spikes, taking the total to eight.
"You really should be more careful Captain; I can heal all manner of wounds, cure over eight-and-a-half thousand diseases, but I can't raise the dead…yet" said Bonez, sealing the bandages so they wouldn't fall off. "It'll be a sunny day in deep space before I start taking orders from Bull."
Bull arrived at that particular moment. "Doc, if we didn't need your medical skills, I'd break your neck seventeen ways to Sunday for that remark" he growled, cracking knuckles the size of ping-pong balls.
"Aw dang, I was hoping you'd let me have her" he said to She-devil with a thoroughly lecherous grin that sent chills up her spine. To the girl's relief, the soldier left with Callie and Thrash. For a brief moment her tainted heart felt deep regret for the terrible evils she had committed. Deep in the girl's soul, the faint shred of light that remained grew brighter, tearing away a bit of the darkness. Shaking her head, the Empress went back to her typical cruel state of mind. Mercy was for the weak, and the weak deserved their fate: to be left behind and forgotten.
She turned and flicked her arm out to one side. With a metallic 'shing', curved, serrated duranium blades extended from the side of her gauntlet. Carefully pushing the blades back into their niche, the evil Hawaiian girl applied pressure to a part of her glove, extending a miniature industrial laser. She aimed carefully and fired, blowing an ancient palm tree into so many toothpicks. "I'm definitely going to use that!" exclaimed She-devil eagerly, retracting the cannon. She tapped one of several small buttons on her right gauntlet. A red energy shield surrounded her. "Shoot me with a stun shot Duke, I wanna see if my shield generator works right" asked She-devil.
Duke set his plasma cannon to stun, aimed, and fired. The diluted plasma splashed harmlessly against the shield, dissipating into greenish vapor. The Empress shut it off and pressed another button labeled 'cloak.' She shimmered briefly, and vanished. Smiling evilly, she quietly snuck around behind her friend on tip-toe. Duke looked around for her. "Stealth field generator is operating perfectly; I can't even see the faintest ripple" he said.
Rearing up like an avenging spirit, She-devil got ready to scare the frik and frak out of her captain. Without warning, he spun around and grabbed the girl in a loving bear hug, switching off the stealth device with the tip of his tail. She returned the gesture, laying her head against the Saurian's broad chest. He could sense her presence, such was the strength of the bond they shared.
"So, you're a xenophile now, Lilo?" said a woman's voice, colder that the depths of space and thrice as dark. To She-devil, it was all-too-familiar. But it couldn't be who she thought it was…for that person was dead, right? Duke shoved his friend behind him and set his plasma cannon to kill. "Show yourself" he growled angrily. His helmet lay nearby, and he couldn't stoop to get it, lest the intruder shoot the Empress.
Without warning, a tall, lithe, helmet-clad figure de-cloaked right in front of Duke. "Peek-a-boo!" she hissed. He barely had time to raise his cannon as a strong, gloved fist connected with his jaw, sending the soldier reeling. She-devil activated her wrist laser, but the mysterious woman reached her first, kicking the Empress' hand upward as it fired, sending the laser into the wild blue yonder.
Not one to be beaten so easily, She-devil lashed out with a high kick, striking her attacker in the thigh with one cleated boot. The mysterious woman cried out, and the Empress used this opportunity to knock her gun (a Desert Eagle) out of her hands (It landed in the spring), and leapt upward to deliver a cringe-inducing kick to the vulnerable part under the helmet, but the attacker grabbed her leg and hurled She-devil away. The girl hit the ground and rolled a few times, striking her head, hard, on a rock. darkness quickly overcame her.
The other Demon Guard came running, taking a bead on the one who dared harm their boss. Duke stood and raised his own gun. "Freeze, hands up!" ordered Callie, pushing her cannon into the small of the masked woman's back.
Chuckling evilly the masked woman said, "All I want is for you to hand over that stupid girl, and I'll leave quietly." Callie bared her fangs and whipped her tail into the woman's leather-armored back, knocking her over, breathless.
"Nobody insults my sister and gets away with it!" growled the female Saurian, delivering a powerful kick to the offender's side. Duke being her older brother, and the Empress destined to be his bride someday, Callie considered the little Hawaiian to be her sister.
The woman busted out laughing; wicked laughter only a true servant of the dark side could produce. She got to her feet and looked around at the Demon Guard. "She's not your sister scale-face" said the cat-suit clad attacker to Callie. Reaching up, the tall woman removed her helmet, shaking loose her long, slightly curly brown/black hair. Her deep red eyes, devoid of any warmth, glittered like a snake's.
She-devil looked up, groggy, and her heart froze. It couldn't be…
"She's my sister…my little sister" said Nani Pelekai, smiling evilly.
Well, that was Chapter 11. Stay tuned for Chapter 12, in which we'll meet another good character from the other side.
