Alex Reynard
The Library
Alex Reynard's Online Books
She turned a corner and nearly lost her head.
It was only a smudgy white reflection in a picture frame across the hall that clued her in to Nollacero's ambush. She flung her head sideways out of the path of his swing. The unblockable sword sailed frighteningly close past her ear, and shaved off a circle of tail vinyl.
"No further, cheater."
Junella jumped back. Circling around to a guarded position, she saw Nollacero standing at the mouth of a long, wide passage ahead. Artful photographs, mostly landscapes, decorated the walls. At the back was a tall, barred door. Sulilong was backed up against it with a set of keys out. Looking like he knew he ought to be unlocking it, but unable to resist the show about to start.
The hall was perfectly quiet. No echo at all from the pandemonium in the ballroom. They weren't far away, but Sulilong had paid for excellent soundproofing in this area. He wanted his inner sanctum to be an oasis from the bacchanalia he kept his followers stupefied in. The rich carpeting made even their footfalls soundless.
"I don't recall that I cheated," Junella snag softly. "Unless that's your definition of 'beat you fair 'n square in a way you just didn't see coming'."
Nollacero aimed his hilt at the hollow of her throat. "Not one more step," he growled.
The sneer on his lips showed limitless disdain. She could see he was trying to keep his emotions in check, but his inner fire smoldered bright. He would not accept that the fault had been his.
Junella's expression smoothed into a serene smirk of unshakable confidence.
She straightened up. She was not going to be on the defensive again. Taking a step towards him, eyes locked to his, she dropped both her weapons to the carpet with hollow thumps.
He glanced quickly to the fallen gun and cutlass, then back at her cocky little grin. Perplexed. His sword arm did not waver.
She decided to unbalance him with an unexpected question. Pointing past the hare at the qilin behind him, she asked, "So why do you work for a guy like that? Where's your loyalty come from, when he obviously doesn't have any towards you?"
At the back of the hall, Sulilong rolled his eyes.
Nollacero was caught off guard, but quickly recovered. "He is someone in whose service I can become stronger. That's all."
"Have you though?" she purred.
He narrowed his eyes hatefully, then raised his weapon to shoulder-height, preparing for a lunging attack. "Your attempts at mind games are as pathetic as your sloppy, careless fighting. My blade is a realization of my indomitable will. I lost ONLY because I couldn't imagine how low you would sink to win a fight. No one has ever beaten me twice. No one."
Junella slowly enfolded her arms behind her back. Making herself a sitting duck. Still smiling. "I got your number, fancy boy. You don't scare me anymore."
He stiffened in outrage.
She saw his sword arm tremble.
Sulilong saw it too and took a step towards them. "Nolly... don't get stupid on me now..."
The hare's cheeks flushed pink at being spoken to like a child. His breath quickened. He was not used to humiliation and was not handling it well. His lips stretched back, exposing even more of his grinding teeth.
Junella, on the other hand, had been kicked to the curb enough times to accept that sometimes it just happened. Being the best didn't mean having a perfect record. Sometimes you couldn't beat someone until they'd beaten you first. Sometimes you had to see them up close, in action, to understand how they ticked. And sometimes failure was fuel to get back up and get revenge. If it made you mad, then good. But you had to make that anger useful.
She took another soundless step towards him, and saw his offensive stance tighten into a defensive one.
She laughed to herself, low and quiet. "How 'bout I teach you a little lesson?"
His fingers tightened around the hilt. "I could learn nothing from you but vulgarity."
A gentle shake of the head. She dumbfounded her sword and began a casual stroll towards him.
He leapt into a run. Screaming mad. This was no longer a sparring match. This was his job. His means of proving himself. She dared to laugh at him. He would shut her mouth and end this in a single strike.
Junella saw the hilt, envisioned the blade sailing forward to skewer her heart. 'Thank you so, so much for taking the bait.'
Instead of dodging his attack, she leapt into it. His frictionless blade pierced her chest and went clean on through her back. A perfect, bloodless cut. She'd willed her heart to the opposite side of her chest when she noticed where he was aiming.
As he watched his weapon run her through, he realized too late that this was not a victory.
Her left arm shot forward. She sunk her fingerneedles deep in the meat of his hand, nailing it in place. With all the strength of her will, a snap of her wrist broke his.
He managed to not drop his weapon, but bit down a shriek of pain.
"June of all trades..." her other hand spoke.
In a flash, her left leg was crossed around his right ankle, locking them together further.
"...master of none..."
She held up her cutlass, then vanished it away with a magician's flourish. She dumbfounded her revolver instead, and slipped her finger around the trigger.
Nollacero shook his head in a panic and struggled to get away. But he was pinned like a butterfly. He could only watch she she wrapped her arm sensually around him, nose to nose, and snugged the gun's barrel up against his fifth cervical vertebra.
She looked deep into the trapped, panicking eyes of her prey and exhaled, "...but better than a master of one."
BLAM
Tears filled Nollacero's wide-open eyes as his head reflexed towards the ceiling. Everything below went numb. Dead. Useless. He felt himself fall to the floor, a marionette with its strings cut. He saw his outstretched arm, fingers splayed. His hilt had fallen several feet away like a discarded bit of trash.
Paralyzed within and without, he could do nothing but stare and feel the hot salty water trickle down his cheeks.
Junella vanished her gun and wiped his blood off onto her white scarf. She regarded him quietly. No more wisecracks. He'd gotten the message. They were done.
She stepped carefully around him, then raised her weapon and cast her eyes at Sulilong. Her intent was clear without a sound: 'You're next.'
That had not gone as the qilin expected. Sulilong wasted a few more seconds gawking at his bodyguard lying rumpled on the floor like a heap of laundry. Then he started frantically fiddling with his keys to get his bedroom door open. 'You just haaaad to always lock it behind you, so the boys don't sneak in and take the good shit,' he reprimanded himself. If he could get inside, he could run. There was an escape hatch. What castle didn't have one? He'd drop down amongst the treads and squirm his way past them to the open desert. Run off scot-free and-
'And what? Let her stay here and take everything I've built?'
That thought erased his panic. His hands stilled.
Standing up straight, he placed the keyring back in his pocket and turned away from the lock. "Allright. Fine. Fine. This is okay." He regarded the skunk approaching him with her gun calmly drawn. "What did I need him for anyway?"
Down the hallway, Nollacero choked on a sob. "Please, Sulilong! Kill me so I can get back to defending you!"
"Shut up," the qilin snapped back in disgust. "You're done. My turn now. In fact, you've lost your privilege of saying my name. We aren't on equal terms anymore. I'm your boss; you're my bootlicker, got it?"
Junella shook her head a little. That was cold. Even she wouldn't kick a poor rabbit while he was down.
Nollacero rested his cheek on the carpet, as there was little else he could do. He stared at the wallpaper.
Sulilong reached beneath his golden mustache and undid his tie. He threaded it out from his collar, then dropped it with care to the carpet. He began to walk towards Junella, matching her pace. His iron hands unclipped his cufflinks with the gentle touch of a watchmaker. "What did I need him for?" he repeated, now speaking directly to his challenger. "What's the point of spending decades to craft a perfect body, just to have someone else guard it?" His fingers clinked on each button of his suit jacket as he undid them one by one. He liked this suit. He wanted to make sure it'd still be in good condition, and unbloodied, when he put it back on again later. "Doesn't that seem a bit lazy? Maybe you don't really think I can take care of business on my own?"
Junella stopped. Thirty feet of carpet separated them. About a dozen framed photographs on either wall. She kept her weapons ready and didn't reply. Let him get his yakkin' out of the way, and then she'd take him apart.
Sulilong was gentle with each of the buttons on his white starched shirt. He stepped sideways long enough to hang his jacket on a large picture of Lumbago at sundown, then added the shirt on the opposite side so it wouldn't be unbalanced. He returned to his previous spot to resume their showdown.
He stood about two heads taller than the skunk. Destroying her would feel like kicking a kitten down the stairs. He inhaled deeply, showing off a bare chest built from polished iron panels with a million little gears spinning around underneath. Upon his pectorals was engraved, then layered in gold, an image of a traditional qilin. A mythical stag with a dragon's armored hide. Posed in a noble stance, it gazed far into the beyond.
Junella put a paw to her mouth to prevent a snorting giggle. "You got a tattoo of yourself!?"
He blinked in almost physical pain. "No. You dumb piece of shit, no. I carved myself into this image. Do you even know what it is!? Qilin are arbiters. They decide good and evil. The fates of anyone who stands before them."
"Yup. You're definitely up your own ass enough for that to appeal to you."
A long sigh at her unbelievable tactlessness. "Look, I get it. I was gonna bury you alive. That tends to upset people. Like I've never had someone show up a few years later all pissed off at me over that? C'mon. But you didn't have to mess up my nice ballroom, you and your friend. So what is it you want? To make you go away? Did you just come here to rob me or what? I'll give you a chunk of imaginite taller than you are if it'll get you the fuck out of my life."
Junella put her hand on her hip and cocked an eyebrow at him. "Oh no, buster. You ain't gettin' rid of me that easy." She swapped her pistol for the Certificate Of Access and held it up like a patrolman's badge. "On behalf of Lady Crynight and the city of Coryza, I have been delegated with the authority to enter these premises and break your two-bit Erector Set ass in half."
It was his turn to laugh. His eyes bugged out and he actually slapped his knee. "Oh my god, you weren't kidding about that!? Holy shit! I thought that looked like too good of a COA to be a forgery! And Tessie's not dumb enough to give one out to someone who'd betray her. Jesus!" He guffawed. "You are seriously going to try and arrest me!? All by your little ol' lonesome?"
Her expression didn't falter one bit. "I can do anything I damn well want. Or did you not notice what happened to your boy back there?"
The qilin got sharply quiet. He glanced to Nollacero. He'd personally watched the hare kill over a thousand people. Now he lay limp as a dishrag. He chewed his lip slightly and looked back to Junella. "Okay, okay..."
He let his hands trace down along his arms, feeling for any need of fine tuning. Nope. Everything inside was running smooth as chocolate. He responded nonchalantly. "You sure are a spunky li'l firebrand, aren't you? I should be smart, then, and not underestimate you. Fine. But I'll give you some free advice: Understand what a wasp's nest you have just poked. You came into my home. My home. You broke my toys and tracked in mud. I'm not going to forgive you for that. You have violated the sanctity of what these two hands have built. For me. Do you understand the full consequences of that?"
She narrowed her eyes. "What I understand is that, for someone who snatches up travelers on the regular and shakes 'em down for nickels, you sure as hell do a lot of pissin' and moanin' when the tables turn."
His jade lips pulled back in a sneer.
Hers became a smartassed smirk. "You think the people of Coryza might have the same feelings about their homes, if your flunkies came barging in?"
"It's about strength," he spat at her. "If you can't defend what you have, then whoever can take it deserves to."
She shrugged. "Better defend yourself then."
He stood up straighter. Crossed his arms in front of his chest. "You put a hole in my suit earlier. I think I'll break your hips for that. You poor dumb bitch."
"Poor? Yeah," she admitted. "A bitch? Ha. Double true." Her thumb spun the barrel of her revolver. "But one thing I ain't ever been is dumb."
He grinned condescendingly. "'Ain't' isn't a word."
"After today," her eyes darkened to a scowl, "Sulilong ain't gonna be a name."
And just like that, they both knew. Trading witty insults was over. It was time to shut up and put up. Junella filled her other hand with sword. She and the qilin stood in silence, onyx and emerald, scanning one another to see who would make the first move.
This was as much of a fight as the fight itself. The chess game beforehand. Seeing who would blink first. Who would show the first hint of weakness.
Sulilong looked down the bridge of his nose at Junella, supremely confident that his win was predetermined. This had been an annoying evening, but it was about to come to a decisive end. In his business, you didn't waste time being surprised when someone wanted to take you out. You dealt with them. It is an unpleasant task, but garbage must be carried out or else it will begin to stink.
Junella was in a more defensive position, but only because her opponent was so much freakin' bigger. He stood before her, immovable as a statue. A comparison enhanced by the artificiality of his body. She thought about how much effort it had taken for her to remain conscious despite losing nearly all her blood to Nollacero. From everything she'd read, there was nothing alive in Sulilong's body below his neck. How had anyone managed to do that to themselves? Uncountable surgeries. Doctors hacking away at him, chunk by chunk. Forcing himself to remain alive as his body was slowly subtracted to nothing. 'Maybe that's what drew him and the rabbit together,' she thought. 'Raw, narrow, infinite bullheadedness.'
It occurred to her to wonder if she might have finally met a will superior to her own.
Nollacero's was, sure. But only in one very specific area. That left plenty of room to maneuver around it once she'd figured him out. Sulilong though... For starters, she had no idea how he fought, and that was worrisome. All she did know was that he wanted to make himself perfect, and had gone to unfathomable lengths to accomplish that goal. How much had a body like that cost? How was he operating it? 'Probly bloodpowered, like Zinc's wrenches.' That made the most sense. But still, unless he had crafted it himself by hand, amassing enough grit to have it commissioned would have been a monumental undertaking.
He could see where her attention was directed. She was admiring his body. And while, yes, there was a bit of sophomoric delight in that, there was even more satisfaction to be had in watching her come to realize that he possessed no weaknesses. He wasn't going to bother making the first move. Let her try first, if she could figure out how. 'Yes, honey, the iron does go all the way down to the floor. All of me. What's your sword going to do against that? And bullets? Oh no! Look how scared I am!' He wondered if squeezing the life out of her would be like crushing candle wax. And if he lifted her up and punched her open like a piñata, would candy spill out?
He'd read her like a book. After acknowledging the maniacal drive that had created his form, she'd gone to work trying to visualize a way to dismantle it. But no obvious strategy emerged. There were gaps between the armored plates, yet they were always shifting. And from the scant peeks she got, it looked like it was 100% iron all the way in. Jabbing her sword in there would just get it chewed up. She'd already bounced a bullet off him. He'd barely reacted. And her tail shards? Yeah, that'd work about as well as bashing them against concrete.
That left only one option. It was actually obvious, once she came around to it.
In a flash, Junella raised her revolver and shot a single bullet straight at his big stupid head.
It struck him above the right temple. Within its circular mount, his head actually spun backwards 120°. He didn't keel over, but she hoped it was just his golem body keeping him upright.
A chuckle.
She felt her ink chill when his head came ratcheting back around again. From the wound beside his eye, she could see blood dripping down.
But also, where bone ought to have been, the gleam of more iron plating.
He grinned broadly, pleased as punch. "That's the best thing about having a bullseye on yourself. Morons always take the same shot."
'Aw fuck,' Junella thought.
Sulilong reached out his clasping hands towards her and broke into a floor-shuddering run.
Junella fled.
His cloven iron hooves made the carpet ripple with every stomping step. Photos fell from the walls like snowflakes. Junella aimed a few more revolver shots behind her back, but it was pure desperation. She put all of her will into her legs. She'd fucked up royally. But she didn't waste time kicking her ass over it. It was a fair mistake. Now she needed to put enough distance between her and him to re-strategize.
He was not going to allow that. The qilin reached out and grasped the end of her tail, scattering record shards like potato chips. With a grinding squeal from the gears in his shoulder, he snatched her clean off the ground and whipped her sideways into the wall, obliterating two paintings and leaving a huge splintered dent.
Junella saw stars. The impact nearly burst her like a water balloon. It had inverted her shoulder deep into her ribs. Dropping to the floor, she felt splintered wood and broken glass embedded in her flesh all over.
"DID YOU DARE THINK THIS WOULD BE EASY!?" Sulilong roared at her.
She had one eye left. The other had a thick triangle of glass wedged deep in the socket. Ichor drained out in more places than she could count. She was facing away, but saw a dozen reflections of Sulilong reaching down to pick her up by the scruff of her neck and do god-knows-what to her.
Only one way out. It was more reflex than thought. She jammed her gun in her mouth and blew her brains across the wall.
When the body he was reaching for suddenly stopped existing, Sulilong stumbled. "Oh ha ha ha! Cute trick. Where are you!?"
She popped back into awareness about four feet away, and jumped to her feet. Then immediately jumped again, barely avoiding a punch that craterd the floor where she'd just been standing.
The hall seemed to stretch on for miles longer than she'd remembered it a moment ago. Sprinting, she tripped on the carpet, went down, somersaulted, and sprung back up. Better than sprawling on her face, but it had cost precious seconds. She could hear from the thunderous footfalls that Sulilong was already catching up.
She whirled around, gun out, and fired six times so quickly she nearly broke her finger. Aiming for his feet. If she couldn't nick his armor, bullets still had force. Maybe enough to trip him and send him down like falling timber.
He felt the impacts. Saw the sparks. He stumbled very briefly, but held on to his speed. She was dead in his crosshairs. Nothing could save her now.
Relishing the trapped, preyish look on his victim's face, he swung his arms overhead like an alligator slamming its jaws shut. His hands landed on her shoulders. He dug in tight with all ten fingers.
Junella's head snapped back in a noiseless shriek of agony.
He mushed the vinyl in his grip: slightly more resilient than he'd expected. Then he began to push. Forcing his full weight upon her. "What's this? You said you weren't stupid, but look where you are now!"
Junella felt like two skyscrapers had landed on her shoulders. The pain almost drove her unconscious. Her mind's eye saw red fireworks. Both legs trembled, struggling in inevitable futility to keep her upright.
"MY house, remember!?" he screamed in her face. "Home field advantage! Do you think I just stumbled onto this castle by accident!? You naive bitch!! I WORKED for this!! I KILLED for this!! You thought you could stand up to ME!?"
Her cries of agony were silent. Spiderweb cracks sizzled down her arms and torso. Blood was not yet oozing out, but she'd burst like a fire hydrant soon enough. The weight of his arms was tremendous. She knew in her flesh that if she pushed back too rigidly, she'd shatter like an egg. And if she didn't push back hard enough, he'd mash her into a pile of clay.
"I am a man without limits or restrictions!" Sulilong bellowed. "I take what I want, and I break whoever tries to stop me! I am stronger than you can fucking DREAM OF! I AM POWER!!!"
Thinking was so goddamned hard while every single part of her begged for death. There was no way to reach up and shoot herself again. Her shoulders were gunked and her arms were dead weight. There was only one thing left. It wasn't something she liked having to do. There was backspatter every time, and always hearing the same dumb jokes afterwards. But it was just the two of them now. She was in intergalactic levels of pain. And this motherfucker didn't deserve anything but her worst.
Junella let her legs collapse. The sudden slack in what he was pushing against surprised the qilin enough to make his grip slip. A little. She hadn't expected to get off easy. Since the pain was blinding already, what difference did more make? She whipped herself around with all her remaining strength, demolishing both her shoulders, but freeing her fully from his clutch.
He had only enough time to be impressed at the depths of her masochism.
Junella slammed to the floor facefirst, splitting her upper lip. But that was fine, fine, superfine. Because she was on her stomach. Facing away from him. With her tail raised up.
'Make it rain.'
She blasted him with a stinking, burning thunderstorm of skunk musk.
Sulilong tore his vocal chords screaming. This was not like in the cartoons; a little green fart cloud. The odor was only part of it. Skunk musk was clingy stuff. Oily and caustic, if any of it reached one's sensitive mucous membranes, it burned as bad as acid. Sulilong did the absolute dumbest thing possible and tried to wipe his face clean. He only succeeded in smearing the acrid liquid directly in his eyes. He squealed even louder, an indistinct tornado of every curse word he knew.
Junella didn't waste time savoring his suffering. He was kicking up a tantrum and his clumsily-stomping iron hooves were inches away from pancaking her ankles. With arms like wet noodles, the only way to get away was to kick against the floor and scoot backwards on her ass. Thankfully, the high-quality carpet was easy to glide on.
His voice had gone up an octave. "MY EYES!!! FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU!!! I'LL TEAR YOU INSIDE OUT FOR THIS!!! FUCK!!! AAAAAAAGHHHH!!!!"
No way to taunt him out loud, but she could think it in her head. 'Forgot what I was, didn't ya? Everyone always sees my blade and gun and forgets about my tail. Your strength don't mean nothin' if you can't stand your own body! Drink that shit like soda pop, Mister Motherfucker!' Her tail wasn't prehensile, but it was heavy enough to be a counterweight as she thrust herself forward, caught her balance, and managed to stand.
She immediately had to duck a blind punch that came plowing through the air like a wrecking ball. In feral rage, her enemy lashed out with grasping fingers. She knew If he caught hold of her, he'd wad her up like chewed gum.
Spittle flying from his lips, Sulilong spun and lunged, tearing gouges in the walls and floor, scattering photographs everywhere. "I'LL GET YOU!!! I'LL SHOVE YOUR FACE DOWN YOUR THROAT!!! CAN YOU BELIEVE THE SHIT I HAVE TO GO THROUGH!? MY EYES ARE ON FIRE!!!"
Junella backed away but didn't run. This wasn't enough. This was humiliation, not defeat. If she left him like this, he'd redouble his efforts to crack open Coryza, if only to get to her. 'I've got to end him,' she knew. But how? The only weapon she had that wasn't useless against him only made him mad.
First things first, she had to die. All she could do in her current condition was retreat, and not with any grace. With her sword or her gun, she could dispatch herself in an instant. She'd done it hundreds of times to get out of hot scrapes. But her arms were party streamers now. Barely attached. Her hands were rubber gloves. And thus she found herself in quite a briny pickle.
It wasn't too hard to keep dodging Sulilong's flailing, but now she had to scan her surroundings for deadly implements as well. This was a palace, but there were no suits of armor with handy axes she could fling herself onto. Plenty of broken glass lying on the floor, but she'd look ridiculous trying to get down and thrust her neck into it. Her tail was too bulbous to get under her jaw and slash her throat either. 'My best hope is to get back to the ballroom. Assuming Zinc ain't eaten everyone already, maybe one of the goons'll put a bullet in me.' She hated any plan that relied on luck, but it was all she could come up with on the fly. She turned and sprinted off.
Sulilong was blinded, not deafened. He hadn't heard her gentle, sneaking footfalls, but her running steps were clear. She was NOT going to get away. He bent low and sunk his fingers into the carpet. Yanking upward with a growl, he pulled the entire length off its tacks and gave it a whipcrack.
The ripple shot towards Junella and launched her a foot in the air. She was caught completely off-guard. An awkward crash landing: dead center on her left shoulder. It was already so damaged there was no more pain, but her arm was now held on by a tatter.
That gave her an idea.
She looked up to see Sulilong barreling towards her in a bull rush. He had his arms spread low and wide, sweeping the hallways. Anything he caught, he would keep and torture.
Junella stomped hard on her left hand, pinning it to the floor, then stood up with a violent yank. Her arm popped loose in a geyser of blood.
The qilin drew near, fast and loud as a subway train. Junella prepared one hell of a risky move. Keeping her eye on his outstretched hand, she flattened herself against the wall. When her foe was a breath away from her, she arched her back, sending her other arm flopping up through the air, right into his grasp. A perfect handshake. He clamped down reflexively, and Junella tugged with a devil's strength.
Sulilong stumbled to a stop. He had her!! Wait... No! What the hell? What he'd managed to grab didn't weigh enough to be all of her. He felt around with his other hand. An arm!? "Real funny, bitch!! If I have to take you apart in pieces, that's A-OK with me!!" He spun back and forth, ears cocked, trying to catch her again on his radar.
Junella leaned back against the wall and let gallons spill out of her shoulders. She was keenly aware of what a perfect reversal this was. Back in the ring, she'd been trying to keep herself alive despite massive exsanguination. Now, she was trying to bleed out at mach speed. 'C'mon, c'mon!' She shimmied back and forth, impersonating a lawn sprinkler. Sparkles of asphyxiation burst into bloom, letting her know it was working.
Sulilong was fed up. His eyes were staring into supernovas. His nostrils burned like a lava flow. Waxy droplets of musk oozed into his gears, getting ground deeper and deeper inside of him. He'd never get the smell out. He'd have to be completely disassembled and scrubbed clean with a blowtorch. It would take MONTHS. But for now, while the pain did not recede, he was acclimating to it. He could think straight again. He was going to catch this skunk and keep her in a box and kill her in the worst ways he could dream up every hour on the hour forever. He heard a sloshing sound.
Junella dodged, barely, as he pounced straight at her and went headfirst through the wall.
It was comically clumsy, but didn't phase him. He pulled himself out in a cloud of plaster dust, laughing insanely and wiping off debris. "I can HEAR you! Still can't see, but that's not gonna stop me from finding you!!"
Cold panic gripped Junella's chest. She was still on her feet, even though hopping out of his path had nearly made her faceplant again. And adrenaline was keeping her mind wide awake, despite the fact that her torso was halfway to empty. 'Die faster, dammit!'. She could feel her heart beating frantically in her pelvis somewhere. 'Wait! That's an idea!'
Sulilong's head swiveled towards the sound of spilling blood. He was in front of her now, blocking her only exit. Fantastic! "You're mine now! Every scrap of your joke of a body belongs to me! Maybe I'll brand you, like a cow! That sound nice?"
To an outside observer, it looked as though Junella was surrendering, suddenly bowing so low towards Sulilong that her forehead scraped the carpet. But her real plan came clear a moment later, when her jet-colored heart came tumbling out of her gushing right shoulder.
She stood back up, seeing triple. On the carpet was a blurry black ruby. That alone was almost enough to put her down, but she never liked to do things halfway. She raised her foot. Nearly lost her balance and toppled over. Just before Sulilong's iron fingers raked into her scalp, she stomped down hard like crushing a bug.
She felt the death of her heart in every remaining cell. A concussive flash of alarm, signaling terminal shutdown. Her consciousness was vacuumed backwards down a tunnel of stars. Just before she vanished, she felt a massive metal tarantula land on her head.
"GOTCHA!!!" Sulilong howled. He bore down and jerked her off her feet, straight skyward. He felt something dislocate in her neck. Exactly his intent. He'd do to her exactly what she'd done to Nollacero.
Junella came back to life in midair. That was a first.
It's amazing the sort of things that go through your mind when you're falling upwards, directly above the head of someone who wants nothing more in life than to make you suffer forever. Junella noticed Sulilong was still holding the ragdoll remains of her previous body, and mused, not for the first time, on why exactly fursons in Phobiopolis would sometimes drop a cadaver, and sometimes they didn't. Was it merely random chance? Sometimes it seemed as though necessity dictated. Or maybe a familiarity and expectation of death? Whatever the reason, it was a question that would have to be studied further some other day when she wasn't currently in immortal peril.
Sulilong cackled triumphant laughter in his captive's face, but only for a moment. She seemed a bit too floppy. His head jerked ceilingward when he heard something above him thunk against it.
Junella hit the arch above and pushed off with her tail. She dumbfounded a gun into her newly-reborn hand. It felt like coming home. She aimed herself carefully. She would only get one chance at this.
"What the-!?" Sulilong barked.
Her other arm darted out and caught an antler. She locked her grip to it with all her might. And before her feet had time to land on his back, she fired her revolver twice, the barrel pressed each time against a jade-scaled ear.
Sulilong's mind exploded with a single high-pitched tone that eradicated all other sound.
Junella swung her legs around and double-kicked the back of his head. It both launched her away from his revenge-seeking hands, and gave her the pleasure of seeing him lurch forwards and fall like a clown on the carpet.
She alighted with the grace a gymnast would have killed for. Sulilong was screaming his throat raw again. She smiled. There was probably something more worthwhile she could do right now, but damn, sometimes it was nice to just take a moment to smell the schadenfreude.
Three of Sulilong's five senses were toast. The double gunshots had driven lightning bolts of tinnitus into his echoing iron skull. He pounded on the floor with both fists, as if trying to burrow away from that mindkilling noise. The stench was still in his nose. His vision was nothing but a watery mess. He was so goddamned angry, he wondered why he hadn't burst into mile-high flames already.
Junella lingered a moment more to watch, the way an artist would regard a masterpiece. She flinched when something snow-white moved near her foot. She'd traveled up and down the hallway, and ended up right back where she'd deactivated Nollacero.
Still floorbound, the arctic hare craned his neck towards her.
She saw in his eyes that his emotions had all frozen into a perfect icicle of obsessive pinpoint hatred.
"I will hunt you," he said, in a voice without life or sanity. "You will never be safe from me, no matter how far you run. I will make you pay in terror for what you've taken from me."
She looked down at him in pity. Honestly, she knew where he was coming from. She'd heard many similar vows. "You'll probably have to wait in line."
He made no reply, but continued to stare with his cold glass eyes.
Junella mentally jotted his name down on her long list of enemies.
But right now Sulilong was her top priority. Was this enough? Robbed of his senses and screeching like a baby? Could she leave him like this and call it mission accomplished? She shook her head. Not hardly. She had to bring him back to Coryza with her to face justice. Somehow.
One moment the kneeling qilin was pounding the floorboards into popsicle sticks, then with eerie abruptness, he popped upright and went silent.
Junella froze too. She flashed her weapons out. Her quarry looked like he'd just gotten an idea on the same level of craven desperation as hers.
He assumed she could hear him, though he couldn't hear himself. "I didn't want to do this," he said with perfect, calm clarity.
She backed up a step. Her danger alarms were going off.
Without warning or hesitation, Sulilong flattened his hand into the shape of a garden spade, then drove it straight through his face and out the back of his skull.
Junella's jaw dropped as she beheld green scales and grey matter arc through the air.
The qilin collapsed. Reflexively, the body's arms cranked forward and caught itself. It rested on all fours like a man bowed in prayer. Loose contents of its destroyed controller spilled out onto the floor before it.
Sulilong's back was to Junella. She could only see the curve of his iron spine and the tips of his antlers.
Then the two prongs suddenly tilted, like a dog cocking his head towards a strange sound.
They began to move in an erratic, lurching, twitch. They quivered. They clattered.
Iron fingers began crawling their way across the carpet, rotating the body to face the one who had forced this action upon it. The metal was not alive, but it retained enough of its master's blood to follow through autonomously on the last commands it had been given. And he'd wanted her to see what he was truly capable of. How much his will towered over hers. How much more he was willing to endure than her, to secure victory.
Sulilong's head was a shipwreck. The ears and antlers were still in place but the rest was utterly gone. Nothing but a crater dripping chum on the floor like an overturned pumpkin. She could see the gleaming iron inside (and couldn't begin to fathom how he'd managed to replace his own skull). The head kept flinching around within its mount. And then something was moving in its center. Glimpses of bubbling meat, or a reflection overlaid upon the original. Flashes of a mouth pulled open in cosmic agony. In awestruck horror, Junella beheld something she had never before seen in all her fearsome years in Phobiopolis.
'Oh, god... He killed the only part of him alive, and now it's trying to come back.'
Except the corpse was still in its way. Yet the living head was forcing a return to existence nonetheless.
Junella saw multiple lips flapping like batwings. She saw eyes splayed open, seeing nothing. She saw gold and green and red and grey. White teeth spinning in their sockets. It was a sight so unspeakable that it froze her to the spot.
Finally, her rationality smacked her in the face. 'When this horror flick gets to the end of its reel, he's gonna be good as new again!'
Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. Shaking, she stiffly backed away. Her inner voice was dead on. Despite her enemy's head looking like a whirlpool of iron and meat, it could coalesce into a brand new noggin at any second. And when it did, he would have his senses fully restored. Her stink would still be on his body, but that wouldn't slow him down enough to stop him from grinding her to dust.
She took off running.
As she turned the corner, she heard a voice calling out to her from a shifting wet tunnel that wasn't yet a throat. "COme baAAACK! We'LL Have FUN!!!"
Junella's mind tried frantically to remember the route back to the ballroom. She could not do this again by herself. She'd already given her everything, and her enemy had taken it and reset to normal. She couldn't even be upset at him for it. She was awfully fond of the same trick after all. But her tank had run dry. Her bag of tricks was upended and empty. She followed the bloody footsteps and chunks of canine meat, back to where this fight had begun.
A part of her rebelled. A part of her screeched in outrage that Junella Fucking Brox was a superstar of murder who needed no help from anyone, ever. But she socked that voice in the jaw. People too vain to learn got killed. Necessity was the mother of epiphany sometimes, and something very important had finally drilled its way through her thick skull after years of trying to keep it out. And despite paying lip service to it for the past day and a half. She'd said it with her mouth but not her actions. Not yet. Not fully. But now, in this moment, with her bare feet pounding on carpet and her breath scorching hot in her lungs, she accepted humility. This had always been a two-man job.
She reached the ballroom entrance and screamed out desperately, "ZIIINC!!!"
She saw only a crimson blur, more bodies and blood than any sane mind could make sense of, before an iron hand clutched around her neck.
Sulilong whirled with his catch and slammed her, spine-first, into the nearest wall. He saw her head jerk back and her mouth spray saliva. No scream, which was a bit disappointing. Though he'd made a big black stain on the grey concrete behind her though, so that was nice.
Her hands pried uselessly at his fingers, like trying to unlock a shackle with no key. Her back was a shattered pane again. Ink ran down her legs. But she could feel the restraint in his grip. He was being much more careful now. He had aimed to hurt, not kill. Death would not save her this time.
The qilin's emerald scales gleamed as he scraped her body up along the wall until her eyes were even with his. Gold irises drilled into her soul, the same glinting color as his mane. His lips drew back so wide they seemed to split his skull. His teeth were pearls. His face was immaculately symmetrical.
"I am perfect," he said to her.
Then he drew his arm back like a pinball machine's plunger. She flopped limply forward, and could only hold on tight as he pistoned her again against the concrete wall.
Her skull rebounded off of it. Galaxies danced in her vision. She bit her tongue hard enough to fill her mouth with the taste of copper.
His other hand snaked in to hold her dangling head up, eye to eye. He didn't want her to miss an instant of this. "Do you see now, little firebrand? You didn't listen to me. I told you, I told you, that this would happen. You have no idea how many enemies I've buried in the sands out there. I've killed legends. I've backstabbed friends. There is nothing I wouldn't do, and have not already done, to claw my way to where I am standing right now. And you thought you could take that from me?" He shook her roughly, like a terrier with a rat in its mouth. "HUH!? YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE BETTER!? ANSWER ME!!!"
Her eyes rolled loosely in their sockets. She'd returned in a brand new body not long ago, but had still endured a nearly-unprecedented amount of physical trauma for a single night. It was beginning to take its toll mentally. And yet she had to dig beneath her limit and find willpower enough to hold on.
She knew: you didn't win your battles if you dreamed you could walk through them unscathed. Sometimes you had to trade pain for triumph. Like before at the ramp, when the goons had pointed their painlaunchers at her. She knew she had to take a jolt. It was an acceptable trade-off for getting inside.
Pain faded. Wounds healed. But when you failed your mission, it lasted as long as your memory. Any other consequence was worth it.
Her shaking hand brushed across her thigh. "You ain't nothin' but another assignment to me. Ain't nobody knows the troubles I seen, bitch."
"THEN HAVE MORE!!!" He flexed his grip tighter and bounced her skull off the concrete like a tennis ball. "Keep it up!! I've got forever to break you! Pile on the sassy quips! Talk back! Run your mouth! It's MY hand around your skinny neck! Your life is OVER!!" He dragged her close, till their muzzles were nearly touching. "But I won't let you die. Even though you'll beg for it, I'll keep you alive and suffering for as long as I goddamn choose to. And I'll keep you on display. Wheel you out as an example to anyone else DUMB ENOUGH to set foot in my house thinking they can take me on!!"
A shadow fell over the doorway.
Junella tried with all her remaining strength not to look. She had to keep her attention on Sulilong. Let him rant. Let him get deep in it. And trust in her partner.
The qilin pressed the ball of his thumb against the space between her eyes. He savored her squirming. "What'm I doing now? I said I'd brand you. I'm putting my thumbprint right HERE. Right on the bullseye! I'm digging it in! Deep! Permanent! Indelible! So whenever you look in the mirror again for the rest of your hellish life, you'll SEE who really OWNS YOU!!!"
From behind him came a voice like a cauldron of boiling bones.
"Yoink."
Two massive metal paws, shot through with bloody strips of sinew and extra fingers, clamped down on either side of the qilin's head. Before he could even manage a single scream, they wrenched it clean off his neck.
The iron body spasmed for a moment. Its master had given it no further instructions. It leaned, then tilted, then crashed to the floor in an ear-bleeding racket.
Junella had gone down with it. She landed sideways, still in its grip. It was not painless. She was worried she'd be stuck until she could manage to reach her gun and pop her balloon again, but thankfully the iron fingers went limp a moment later. She jerked herself away from them, clutching at her throat and gasping.
The shadow loomed over her.
She took only a second for basic inventory of her bodily state. Nothing life-threatening. Good. Now to assess if she'd just jumped from the fire to the frying pan. She dared to look, already seeing tree-trunk legs with half a dozen gnarled feet growing out of them in random directions.
Raising her eyes, they traveled upwards across the ugliest road in Hell. The beast in the doorway barely cleared its height to fit inside. Vestigial arms and faces protruded from its heaving, lopsided chest. Its arms were an entire scrapyard's worth of twisted, melting metal, intertwined with pulsating muscle; every horrid chunk in squirming motion. The shoulders were broad as a boat hull. The muzzle had more teeth than a chainsaw. Instead of a cluster of yellow eyes, they were back down to two. But a skin-crawlingly bloated pair, full of clover-shaped pupils and throbbing red veins.
Junella eased backwards till her heels hit the wall. Her fingers quivered, making her stutter. "Z-zinc? Izzat you i-in there? C-can you speak?"
The black, mottled lips drew up in a puppydog grin. "Oh sure, Junebug. Whaddaya want? Habla español? Sprechen sie Deutsch?"
An involuntary bray of laughter escaped her. She nearly collapsed from relief.
Sulilong's eyes were rolling around. The pain had been monumental for a few moments there. His flesh was deeply incorporated with the inner workings of his ironworks, and separating him from them was not like doffing a hat. He gulped in air and felt it whistle out of his exposed esophagus. "Let go of me! Goddammit, put me down! I'll-"
Zinc made a motion like a baseball catcher punching his glove. Except he was still holding a head. The THWACK of metal on teeth was wince-inducing. "You can shut the fuck up, kemosabe. You bore me." He wrapped his mutated mitt around the qilin's bruised jaws just for insurance. Then looked back at Junella and beamed. "So, how was your night? I had a blast! God only knows how many people I killed! Plus I just found out, the more of me I eat, the more I get my smarts back!"
The skunk arched her back and ran her paws along her curves. She did not feel rosy, but she didn't think her injuries were bad enough to require another death. And to be honest, three in an evening was pushing it. What she wanted more than anything right now was a lungful of fresh air. "Glad to hear it. I suggest you getcher mitts on as many other yous as you can and let's book it. You're holding exactly what we came here for."
Zinc saluted. One of his fingers sloughed off. He turned towards the ballroom, then glanced back and noticed her wince of pain when she tried to follow. "You, uh... need any help down there?"
She waved a hand at him. "I'll walk it off. Let's motor. I wanna get the smell of blood outta my nose before I urk."
The eldritch abomination nodded in understanding, and turned back the way he'd come.
To say the ballroom lay in ruins would have been putting it charitably. Junella and Zinc's footsteps made ripples in the inch-deep lake of blood the floor had become. Plenty of Zincs still scurried around, committing fiendish deeds and giggling. Tearing off scalps and guzzling down intestines. Half-dead bodies abounded. They laid with unseeing eyes, begging for release from their nightmare. Tripping hazards. A few dozen henchmen were huddled in a pileup at the west corner, defending themselves with any poky implement they'd managed to get their hands on, while a pack of Zincs circled around, gnashing their teeth. Luckily for the survivors they were spared. The main Zinc gave no outward signal, but all at once, all the rest of him turned their heads and pricked up their ears. They dropped the ribcages they'd been chewing on. Let go of whoever they'd been dismembering. On feet or hands or flabby pseudopods, they all converged towards their alpha.
Junella tried hard not to freak the fuck out and run very far away from all this. Despite the main mutt seemingly back to his usual happy-go-lucky self, all the rest looked indiscernible from the nightmare constructs that roamed the wasteland. No light behind the eyes. Groaning gurgles instead of speech. And they seemed... loose now. Sagging. As if maybe the magic potion was wearing off.
As he ran, the central Zinc snatched up whatever malformed duplicates were closest and crammed them down his maw. He didn't seem to really chew them, so much as they reverted quickly to a slime-like state and commingled down any available orifice. The others were cannibalizing themselves too. Junella held her mouth closed as she watched leg-Zincs and mouth-Zincs and dick-Zincs all slam themselves together in gleeful mutual devourment. By the time she'd crossed half the ballroom, Zinc1A had grown to thirteen feet tall, with hordes of his bloodspawn trying to catch up. Several blobs of melded random parts rolled alongside like flesh boulders.
Junella could feel the fissures in her back starting to seal. Running felt good. And especially with the knowledge that they'd actually won. Sulilong was still blaring mumbled curses into Zinc's steel palm, but was otherwise wrapped up in a bow. They had their goal in-hand. Literally. They'd succeeded. It seemed impossible to believe.
'Don't get too bubbly too soon,' she warned herself, remembering one of her most reliable mottos: 'You haven't gotten away with it until you're safe at home.'
Zinc was talking a mile a minute, even with his mouth full. Like a kid on a sugar rush, he described the frenzied carnival of slaughter he'd been enjoying while she was elsewhere. He didn't even pause when he shoved slabs of him-meat into his mouth and reincorporated it.
More Zincs merged together till a rolling tidal wave of grinning faces and writhing limbs met them at the opposite end of the ballroom. Zinc Prime gave a happy yelp and leapt headlong into it, like diving into a pile of Fall leaves. Junella turned away and continued trying not to ralph. The sounds were unspeakable. Like someone trying to jam nine hundred pounds of lard into a single trash can. She tried to feel useful by sweeping her revolver around, keeping an eye out for any of Sulilong's crew who might try to stop their escape. But it was crystal clear at a glance: the one thing the survivors wanted was for her and Zinc to leave and never come back.
That was an issue though. Junella glanced back at Zinc as he inflated with meat to the size of a post office. From his window-rattling giggles, he was definitely having a good time. But the doorway leading back to the car was only ten feet high. No way in hell he was gonna squeeze through.
Whether he'd planned it, or was coasting on pure luck as usual, the problem soon enough solved itself.
The vast wobbling waterbed of Zincflesh consumed more and more straggling clones. Littler Zincs just ran straight at it and jumped into its jiggling mass, swallowed up instantly like disappearing in quicksand. There wasn't time to gather every last one of his scattered selves, so when he felt himself reach critical mass, he quietly closed his hundreds of eyes and let it happen.
Though he did retain enough final awareness to shoo away Junella with every assorted limb close to her. She caught the message just in time to start running, but not quickly enough to avoid the ensuing tsunami.
As if gearing up to win the Universe's Biggest Belch competition, Omega Zinc engorged to his widest diameter, held steady for a moment in trembling tension, then RELEASED. His skin tore open and unleashed a tidal wave of guts, tall enough to accommodate surfers. It rolled out and deluged everything within five hundred feet.
Junella ended up petrified in revulsion, covered head to toe in slithering red jam.
This was so much worse than Conrad's place. Hell, she woulda gotten on all fours and drank that slime of his rather than be where she was now.
Thankfully for her already-peaking stress levels, the blood soon began to shrivel. Like water in a skillet, it jittered and dried, then all of it began turning into dust. Junella watched the goop fall away from her arms, leaving them black and clean once again. The stuff falling to her feet was like coarse red sand. 'Maybe it's the drybleed reverting to what it started out as,' she guessed. And maybe that meant she'd be leaving behind a few thousand pounds of the stuff for anyone to lick up and turn into a monster too. 'Oh well.' She'd bomb that bridge when she came to it.
Turning around, she saw one final Zinc stepping out from a towering mound of crimson sand, smiling like it was just another sunny afternoon. He shook himself off and gave his legs a stretch, almost entirely back to normal. Almost.
Junella tried to look stern but failed. "Will you stop clowning around?"
Zinc looked at her with bulging eyes as big as cauliflowers. His body was back to its usual proportions. His wrenches were steel, not fur-infused. He'd even somehow reacquired his leather jacket and jeans. But his head was quadruple its normal size, with a mouth he could have scooped up watermelons with. He giggled. "Nah. I'm keepin' this for now. You'll see why in a moment."
She rolled her eyes and groaned. "Fine. At least one of us is having fun tonight." She swept her arm towards the exit. "I think I remember the way back to the car. If not, I guess you can chew a path through the walls."
"Probably!" he agreed. He started for the door, then abruptly skidded to a halt. "Oops! Damn near forgot, didn't I?"
He ran back to the hill of dried marrow. Scanning around, he saw a slight indentation. He plunked in his wrench and pulled out a prize.
Dangling by his mustache, Sulilong sucked in an absolutely enormous breath, then coughed it back out with a mouthful of red. "You RAT BASTARDS!!! I nearly asphyxiated under there! Do you have ANY idea what I'm going to do to you!? Both of you! Just for starters-"
Junella sauntered over to make direct eye-contact with the dangling head. She let him see the severity of her 100%-done-with-your-bullshit expression.
"You lost, Jack. Take it like a man. We're hauling you back to Coryza, and I'm sorely tired of your voice. So lemme make it clear. I can either carry you by the antlers..."
Then she held up a paw full of fingerneedles. They took positions directly in front of his eyeballs and nostrils.
"...or like a bowling ball. Savvy?"
The qilin clamped his jaw shut, physically holding back all the hellacious threats he wanted to hurl at her.
She patted him on the head. Then gave Zinc a nod, snatched their prisoner by the handles, and headed out.
~~*-*-*~~