Alex Reynard
The Library
Alex Reynard's Online Books
Chapter SEVENTY-EIGHT
We rewind.
Two hours previously, George drops Toby down a rabbit hole. When the mouse opens his eyes, he has the immediate thought that this time will be a little more difficult. He is surrounded by hundreds of strolling visitors in the largest glass-walled exhibition hall he has ever beheld. There are banners, barkers, bicycles, and framed oil paintings tall enough to step into. There are many more dream-people here than in the others he navigated, but their robotic movement patterns set them apart. Toby scales a monumental statue of a man on horseback and observes. After fifteen minutes (minus a break to try a piece of saltwater taffy, which he does not care for) his eyes refocus and he stops searching among the shifting crowd, to behind them. In the shadows he sees a wagging grey tail. A lanky teenage coyote in workman's overalls, keeping out of sight but trying to look at everything. Toby introduces himself. She is brash and bullheaded, and Toby knows less about her than any of his friends. He does not have much success convincing her, until he remembers something Junella said. Hate leaves a scar. He switches tactics. Stops telling her to come back to the husband she loves, and instead reminds her of the rival she hates. The one who locked her inside of herself. Twice now. The young coyote stares across the crowd. Then suddenly crushes her meat pie in her fist and barks at him to get her out of here. 'Right this way,' Toby says.
Going back further, we see a ring of friends following like pallbearers behind a winged bonecuddy who carries a skinless bloodclot to the heights of outer space. Looking at Toby in this condition, the others have a sensation colloquially referred to as 'the creeps'. Their mouse friend's attempts to speak are less articulate than Mister Rippingbean's. He has more success with hand gestures. While the skunk, mutt, and hamsterfly stay hovering above, George descends with Toby as close to Scaphis' citadel as they dare. To the burnished metal spires and the slithering, body-carrying flesh strips. On their initial recon flyover before rescuing the others, Toby had seen smoke coming from the highest chimney. Her flesh would not be inside a functional fireplace, he reasoned. But maybe, if he were very lucky, a fireplace might count as the 'bellybutton' of a building. The doormat, the toilet seat, the footstool. The tower itself is a transformed furson. George lowers Toby down into the smoke and the darkness. While they wait for the festivities to begin, Junella and Zinc teach Piffle how to play crazy pineapple hi-lo, using George's back as a card table. They enjoy their quiet game among the soundless stars, until a gorgeously stupid idea kisses Zinc, and he asks if his partner still has the resizing window.
Going back further, the trio watch Toby's voice come out of two different sources. 'You'll need to be high enough to not get ripped apart by the shockwave, though I'm thinking the vacuum of space will dampen it some.' The mouths of the bloodclot and the robot move in skin-crawling synchronization. 'Three and a half miles up, at least. When it comes, cross your fingers you don't get hit by debris. And go limp. Let it toss you around. Less chance it'll break something.' Zinc nods sickly. 'Sure, sure. Like the difference between falling down the stairs drunk or sober.'
Going back further, we see a skinless automaton run towards the campsite on the bottom of Anasarca. It stops, awaiting orders, in front of its controller. Toby looks at it and makes it salute. Then he makes it bow to his friends. As Piffle has guessed, it is similar in construction to the pigdroid: technology from every time and place. Toby remembered the origin of willwells, that someone simply dreamed up the idea, gathered imaginite, and willed it to be. If that was possible, why not a bipedal anthropomorphic semi-autonomous endoskeleton? Complete with long-range telepathic command, and sockets for living eyes? 'Yes sir' says the imaginite, and voila. Toby is proper zonked from the Fentanyls and barely feels a thing when Junella trades her cutlass for a buck knife. She takes his pelt with care, skill, and as few cuts as possible, then tasks Piffle to play dress-up with the robot. Toby knows this world runs on perception, but it still takes a few tries until Junella can pop one of his eyes out, transfer it to the robot, and have him see out of both bodies at the same time. Once that's accomplished, he asks her to take the other one too. After all, Scaphis might ask questions about an eyepatch. And he won't be able to see anything inside the chimney anyway. When the gruesome work is finished, there stands an indistinguishable robotic Toby that moves and speaks exactly as normal, alongside a furless red abomination. The same furson, alive in two bodies simultaneously. Toby sits cross-legged, reasoning that the less he moves his flesh-and-bone body, the easier it will be to control the wood-and-metal one. He is glad for the searing pain in his skin. It helps him focus.
Going back even further, Toby gathers imaginite in Rhinolith. He and George fill sacks of other people's earnings. When they have a sufficient amount, Toby plops down at a stranger's kitchen table and pours out a mound of twinkling nuggets. He sighs. He has done this so many times already, it's all become a blur. The work is never pleasant, but at least now it is easy. Only a moment's concentration transforms the imaginite into three dense slabs of whitish putty. Toby gets to chewing. There is no real taste, but the texture is worse than stale caramel. He chews and chews. Eventually he gets the idea to try flavoring it. Now it is like eating Silly Putty that has a vague association with strawberries. Toby eats pounds and pounds and pounds of it. More than he realizes. Far more than he actually needs. But, after all, overkill is the crux of his plan.
Going back further still, almost to the beginning, we see a small mouse covered in bedsores, sitting with eyes glued to his bedroom television. It is one of his favorite programs: You'll Never Guess. A fascinating parade of trivia and science from all over the globe. It is almost like being able to travel to other places. One episode contains a section all about the explosive cyclotrimethylene-trinitramine, known more commonly to fans of action movies as C4. The program demonstrates its uncanny stability. The host holds up a slab and bangs it on a table. He fires a handgun at it. Nothing will make it blow. Nothing but an electric shockwave from a special detonator. The part of the episode that is just repulsive enough to stick with Toby all his life involves an interview with a Marine sergeant. 'C4 is a miracle,' he says. 'Durable enough to be safely used even around category-five moron shenanigans. One time I actually had to stop my men from holding contests to see who could eat the biggest chunk of the stuff.'
Eat it. You could eat plastic explosive.
And maybe it would stay there inside of you.
Especially if you were dead and it didn't really exist in a normal sense and neither did you. Maybe you could hold about a thousand pounds of it in your guts without it showing on the outside.
Maybe a regular police taser would work for a detonator.
Maybe
she'd never see it coming.
***
A pound of C4 is a hell of a lot. The amount in Toby's stomach at the moment of detonation was equivalent to a nuclear bomb. This meant a debris speed of eight kilometers per second. To attempt to conceive this, imagine you are holding a baseball, then suddenly it is six miles away.
When Toby clicked the taser, a spark set off a chemical reaction. The C4 began to rapidly birth nitrogen and carbon monoxide. For a very short moment, Toby's stomach inflated with fiery gas to five times normal size, until his form was stretched past its limits and lost all structure like a popping balloon. The explosion did not stop there. Oh no indeed. It tore the walls of the fireplace apart. It shredded floors and windows and furniture and gargoyles. It wanted to be as big as possible, yet there was this pesky tower in the way. Though it really wasn't much of an impediment. The explosion had lots and lots of power. It ripped away Scaphis like snot from a sneeze. The ribbons of her flesh that stretched across Phobiopolis spasmed, like grabbing the end of a carpet and giving it a helluva snap. The explosion did not stop there. It encountered the top of a mountain and simply slashed away boulders until it ran out of energy and rested for the day. It left behind a sheared, jagged plateau, streaked with gashes, where the top of the world had been. It was commendably efficient, having accomplished all this work in just a fraction of a fraction of a second.
Toby gave Anasarca a crew cut. And everyone in Phobiopolis felt it happen.
***
Skeeto's eyes went wide as a BOOM from outside shook the video game out of his paws and made all of Kat's pottery rattle.
She was at his door in an instant. "Are you okay!?"
"Yeah, mom." He looked around the room at several action figures that had fallen over. "Was that an earthquake?"
The furless fennec rubbed the back of her neck. "Maybe just thunder?" she hoped.
***
Shopping bags spilled onto sidewalks in Lalochezia. Every head in the market town was pointed in the same direction. Past the sheen of the aurora illusion, they could all see the unbelievably massive dust cloud that had swallowed the top of Anasarca. There had been a flash that caught many people's attention, then an eardrum-wrecking blast that demanded everyone's.
A shockwave coursed through the market, ruining everyone's hairdo and sending paper goods airborne. Madam Tif Tif was one of many to experience a tent collapse. Jaziezal shrieked at the unholy mess of crashed jars all over his floor. Poubelle stared with spatula in hand as her burgers burned. For the first time in his proud career, After spilled coffee on a customer. The burly fellow who'd hit George with a map kiosk bit his tongue. A customer of the butcherable triceratops slipped and jabbed his flensing knife into the unfortunate dinosaur's nostril, resulting in an annoyed sigh and a stern glare. Chorizo was so startled he actually jumped into the arms of the bovine lady he'd been pickpocketing. The refugees from Papilloma regarded the cataclysm in silence, not knowing if this was the end of their troubles, or the beginning of more.
***
Bodies flew like hailstones from the blast atop Anasarca. A thousand victims of Scaphis died in a single merciful instant. While most were flung into space, Phobiopolis exists as a magnet for lost souls. Once their momentum fizzled out, the dead souls slowed and began to gently plummet backwards. Many would become meteors impacting the sea around Scarlatina. Boats would rescue a lucky few, while the rest would endure an unpleasant walk to shore. Others woke up in random locations all around the badlands. Some on top of the maze (luckily, not inside it). Some in Papilloma. Some in Dysania. Some in Lalochezia. Some even landed in their own home towns. But a fair portion fell upon the slope of Anasarca itself, banging against rocks, or landing within reach of Scaphis' seizuring, reflexively-grasping flesh. Those that kept their wits enough to hide from her upon resurrection eventually made it down to the mountain's nadir, where they found a pleasant little campsite, and a big, ugly car.
Of all the fursons who were freed, none, amazingly enough, were taken by Dysphoria. The sleeping will of the world itself made sure of that.
***
Though they were among the closest to the event, no one in Phlegmasia so much as turned to look. They were too busy reading.
***
At a ramshackle abode deep within the nightmare-infested woods of Marasmus, a porcupine was entombed alive in PVC. At the moment of explosion, Scaphis flinched. Her grip loosened. Most other fursons would have smashed ungracefully to the cabin floor, then flailed screaming for two seconds before getting themselves scooped up and recaptured. Not Gilla-Gilla. He had been waiting for this. When the plastic uncoiled and he felt himself drop, he wasted only an eyeblink on surprise. Then he flung himself sideways and rolled like a tornado to the other side of the room. Jumping to his feet, he watched beige tentacles slapping at empty space in search of him. He winced at seeing so many of his carefully-stacked supply boxes knocked over. But he was free.
Backing up to the nearest wall, he filled his hands with the first weapons he touched: a hook-headed brush axe and an Uzi. Hoping he would need neither, he stepped in perfect, patient silence backwards through the window she'd smashed, keeping his eyes on her panicked, thrashing flesh. He made no sound when broken glass cut his soles. The soft ash was a comfort. 'You just had to catch me wif my feet up, relaxin'...'
He heard the scrape of bone. Rotating slowly, just enough to keep one eye remaining on what he'd escaped from, he surveyed this new threat.
A white bonecuddy stood ten feet away. Neither the construct or the porcupine moved.
Keeping his grip on the axe, Gilla-Gilla slowly raised his goggles to make eye contact, then twitched his head in the direction of the unholy horror destroying his kitchen, as if to say, 'Are you seeing this shit?' When Scaphis began to pummel the cabin's walls in a frustrated tantrum, the bonecuddy got spooked and ran off. Not as smart as Georgie, Gilla thought, but not dumb either.
He had only two weapons, no armor, no supplies, no mask, and no money. It would have to be enough. He would not risk going back for more, nor would he risk alerting her with the sound of his ATV's engine. Taking his time, remaining absolutely soundless, he pulled his collar up over his mouth and headed towards the woods. He hoped he could find the bathtub without the shrieker beacon. He hoped the market would offer credit. He knew he'd been in worse spots.
And at least he was still alive.
***
Meanwhile, in the bionic bogs of Borborygmus, "Lantern Eyes" Lulu also saw the flash.
The mad queen of the scrapyard jumped out of her chaise lounge so fast she spilled her bourbon. "Wut in th' HAIL!? Somebody tryna outshine ME!?" The tubby possum swiped the Holy Remote out of her pocket and barked into it, "Go investigate that! Now! NOW!!"
From all around her, a hundred identical voices replied from tinny speakers, "Your wish is my command, my Empress." Uncountable trinket-bearing, warpainted parasomnic constructs turned and began dragging their metal limbs towards the mountain.
"Not ALL of you, ya brainless buncha road toads!!" Lulu screeched, jumping up and down so violently the candles in her eye sockets nearly blew out.
The electrosavages halted as one. Woolly manes of coiled copper wire jiggled in the breeze.
Carefully into the remote she spoke, "Only three or four go. The rest of ya's, get back to scavengin'! Time is money!" Her minions mindlessly obeyed, splitting off a delegation to inquire about Anasarca while the rest returned to their eternal labor of combing the bog. In much the same way Scarlatina collected bodies, Borborygmus regurgitated an endless stream of consumer goods from Earth dreamers' collective consciousness. A possum could get rich selling the stuff. Especially with a brainwashed nightmare workforce to claim it and clean it up.
Lulu snagged the shoulders of the two 'bots who were about to zombie their way off the porch.
"Ohhhhh no ya don't! Did I say my footrub was done yet!?"
"Your wish is my command, my Empress."
***
A trail of wheel ruts and insect footprints snaked on and on for miles in the blue soap desert. A peddler, who had been going from town to town looking for a small mouse he needed to apologize to, looked up at the flash, and gasped.
"He did it... By Mammon's wealth, it could be nothing else."
L'roon began to jump up and down in celebration, which was not easy considering his bulky bottom. When the slower-traveling shockwave caught him off-balance a moment later, he was laughing too hard to care that his cart had popped open like an egg, spilling years of treasure across the dunes.
***
Jamais Dreamsicle was getting her fur powdered and her transparent joints buffed in the Channel 909 makeup room when Cameron burst in forcefully enough to shear the door lock off the wall.
"Get your ass to the edge," he panted. "NOW."
She did not normally react well to being ordered around, but her reporter's instincts sent a shiver down her spine at his tone. Shit had just gotten real. "Later, girls," she told the makeup artists as she vaulted out of her chair after her cameraman.
He did not have to tell her where to go. Floods of Ectopians were all heading in the same direction. Jamais caught up to Cam. He tapped his headset, listened, nodded, then called back over his shoulder, "This is big. Newsroom says Anasarca just erupted."
"What!?"
He mimed an explosion with his hands. "Bwoosh. They said a rando called in a second ago; got a perfect shot of it happening."
The vixen's posture stiffened like a hound en pointe. "Run faster."
They did indeed. Jamais felt her blood turn cold when she saw the massive congregation of onlookers clustered at the edge of Bigwheel Twenty-One, all of them slowly walking in the opposite direction of the spin to keep their eyes glued to the dust cloud in the distance.
A paw waved frantically above two day-glo ears. "Ooh, ooh! Miss Dreamsicle! Over here! I got the whole thing!!"
Cam was already filming when he and Jamais struggled through the crowd towards the black-and-green wolf. Shi held up hir cell phone like the tablets of Sinai. Zhiral introduced hir friends, Ludu and Javi, and said shi'd been filming them having a friendly eye-gouging fight. By sheer luck, hir lens was pointed directly at Anasarca when its top was suddenly engulfed in a light that turned night into day. Shi'd managed to keep her paws steady, continuing to record the subsequent ash cloud and shockwave. Shi said that, on the video, you could actually see the Veil Of Tears ripple. Jamais and Cam wedged in close to watch the footage on hir tiny screen. Cam began uploading it to HQ and said it was the clearest he could have hoped for. Zhiral was tickled pink.
Jamais bit her lip. "Should we send it out unedited? Main show's in half an hour. Is eye-gouging 'safe' for dinnertime viewing?"
Cameron looked at her like she had brain damage. "Jammy, I'll bet my own teeth they break it live. This is major history happening. It wouldn't matter if the clip started off with these three gang-banging."
Zhiral and her friends snerked.
Jamais bit her own tongue. "Right, right. Thank you, Cam. I'm not thinking straight." She began looking around for the nearest support column. As the only things in EC that weren't constantly moving, they were the premium choice for a static backdrop.
They were there and set up within seven minutes. Cam double-checked his equipment. Javi, Ludu and Zhiral were fidgeting nearby, waiting for their live interview. Jamais stood on her mark with the billowing mountain framed just behind her left shoulder. She fussed with her hair and teeth in her compact mirror.
Then a thought struck her.
She turned around. Her expression changed.
She suddenly saw what was happening on Anasarca as more than just breaking news. Luxy had been gone for nearly two weeks. And sure, Deputy Mayor Algo Lagnia was thoroughly competent (and had given her a blessedly easy interview at the reopening of Praxus Pammer a week ago), but he didn't have the raccoon's magnetism. This was the longest Luxy had been away from the city in at least a decade.
"This is why he left."
She couldn't bring herself to believe that Scaphis Tarrare was actually back from the grave. Their mayor was just shutting down a rumor, that was all. But what if he wasn't? What if...
It slowly dawned on her that this truly was history unfolding. A moment that might shape all of Phobiopolis for all of future time. And she knew nothing about it, beyond the chilling sight of the world's most dependable landmark now vomiting ash and smoke.
'This is one of those moments,' she felt in her bones, 'that is going to divide all our lives into before and after today.'
It took Cam five shouts to get her to realize she was live.
***
It would be hours until Coryza's mighty walls were raised for the night. If they'd been shut already, the city might have slept right through the explosion, finding out only when envelope-bearing mice began flooding out of holes. Instead, like the rest of the world, they saw the flash and heard the boom. They climbed stairs and fire escapes to stand in cramped masses on rooftops. There were whispers in the air that the light had been Aldridge's return, or his death. Spiretto Bronze, the lizard who had been saved by Zinc's harpoon, stood with his arms wrapped around his husband and his two adopted boys, eyes frozen to the omen on the horizon. A few buildings away, the wings of Dorster the blacksmith were protectively sheltering his own son.
"What does it mean, Dad?" Alfonzo asked.
The old, scarred bird looked down just long enough to peck affectionately at his boy's headfeathers. "I hate saying 'I don't know', kid, but I don't. And neither does anyone else. There's gonna be rumors for days, mark my words. But until we know anything for sure, don't let yourself get too scared. It's okay not to know yet."
As a fledgling scientist, Alfonzo nodded in complete agreement.
On the street below, a gunsmith made of gleaming brass gears rushed into his shop and started checking inventory. Red Velvet knew from experience that, in times of crisis, citizens always felt a little safer with their hand around a weapon.
***
In the thick of Teratoma, a gleaming red piloted mech was being knocked back and forth by a snarling living carpet of blood-maddened Tunnelroars. Within the cockpit, Maxo Mattik stopped punching them to death so he could lift up his targeting helmet and gawk. The canary-yellow cel-shaded cat shouted over his shoulder, "WHOA!! Mini, did you SEE that!? That was radical!!"
Mini Maul, his constant cybernetic companion, was seated in the backpack turret. She checked her video monitor, rewound a bit, scrutinized, and nodded. She replied in her customary robotic monotone, "Agreed, sir. Might even qualify as 'totally tubular'."
A tunnelroar leapt up and suctioned itself to the windshield like a stick-on Garfield. Maxo raised the Drag-Starr's arm to squish it between thumb and forefinger. Its blood was electric blue. The windshield wipers took care of it so he could keep bugging his eyes out at the mountain. "Wowww! All that smoke! Betcha it's something exciting happening up there. Adventure! Or a barbecue!"
The hot-pink otterbot felt the need, yet again, to reign in her fellow bounty hunter's enthusiasm. "Odds are it's as likely to be something bad and dangerous."
Max squirmed. "Yeah, well, but... Could be adventure too."
"I have insufficient data to be certain either way," she said. "In the meantime, the targets are climbing up our legs. Soon their fur will clog the intakes."
"Ooh, right." Maxo slammed the Spin Dry lever and the mech whirred at the waist like a top. A dozen 'roars got a free trip to the atmosphere. Then Maxo worked the foot pedals to make the Drag-Starr leap twenty feet in the air, swooping back down in a bug-gooshing stomp. A brief bit of breakdancing flung the gunk off the roboboots. Then he fired up the laser sword. "I'm feelin' like pizza for dinner tonight, Mini. Howzat sound?"
"What an unbelievable surprise, sir."
***
Not far away on a densely green hilltop, a scout for the Kasheesties sat upon a six-legged cattacuda.
Through the slit in his rusted clamshell helmet, the lithe warrior spied the flash on Anasarca. He held up his binoculars and silently observed.
The cattacuda whined, twitched, and salivated. Its pelt showed many bare patches.
The scout felt a hunch that the beast was thinking of escape. It applied another dose of voltage via the paincage bolted around its head.
The construct yowled. Then it ceased all movement, bearing its master like an unliving piece of furniture.
The scout put away his binoculars and resumed sentry duty. Whatever had happened, it was far away. And not an intruder. So it was of no concern.
***
Tinder Fingers went right on about his business setting empty houses on fire. Most other constructs paid little notice either. Doctor Dacryphilia's operation was far enough below the surface that only a fraction of his captive workers felt the rumble. Though, of the small number who did, a few shook off the fog of monotony long enough to run away from their toil and attempt escape. The Doctor screamed and cried.
***
In Stoma, the tiny village's defense system turned all their caged eyeballs in the same direction. Weary people raised their heads, but not many spoke of what they were seeing. Billawhi did though.
For the first time in her long afterlife, she had ventured beyond her home in search of her foolish wayward foster child. She made it all the way to the small trading town. The journey was so easy, it made her feel embarrassed for all her decades of staying put. Though she wasn't about to admit it. Nor would she confess her grateful relief at finally showering, and having Stoma's lone physician scrape off most of the mushrooms from her body.
She squinted into the distance. "That's my Piffle up there, I'll bet. Making trouble as usual."
***
At the very beginning of the world, young raccoon Louise had no idea where she was. She had been in the car, on the freeway. The wind was loud. A tanker truck ahead of them tipped sideways. Then there were dreamy, fading images of a hospital. Now she was here in a forest full of frightening sounds. She thought there might be monsters in the forest. Her back was against a tree with unfamiliar bark, and she'd tried to conceal herself in a pile of card-suit-shaped leaves. She wanted her mom and dad. She wanted to go home.
But then a sparkle caught her eye. Far in the distance, there was a mountain. Someone on top of it had heard her distress and shone a bright flashlight for her to see. Now she knew where to go.
Grateful to whoever it was, Louise steeled her courage, picked up a stick to hit monsters with, and headed towards the direction of the light. If she was lucky, and brave, she would reach Stoma within the hour.
Afterwards, she might decide to travel farther.
***
From Rhinolith, the flash was bright enough to be blinding. Luxy had been clipping his toeclaws. He popped up, shielding his eyes and blinking the greenish afterimages away. A smile of unbounded joy tapdanced across his face.
"Gracias, Toby. I was getting tired of waiting."
He turned and giggled at the awestruck expressions of his fellow expeditioners. "Whassamatter, guys? Ain't you never seen a mountain asplode before?"
Rippingbean clutched Woofingbutter's lapels. "Zhuh mouffse puwwed it awff!! Juhhzt az pwohmisshed!!"
The gorilla patted his partner's shoulder fondly. "We shall soon have to fight. Are we ready?"
The fox straightened his posture and smiled. "Iht wuwld be ah embuhwwessmenght ef weh weww nogt."
Tía Lopez understood that the expanding dust cloud was a countdown timer. While everyone else rubbernecked, she doubled her speed, measuring out ingredients by experience alone and tossing them into her pot. They had enough potion already, but there was no harm in having more.
Mrs. Xenoiko was used to the tugs on her garments that signaled her miniature husband was climbing up her body like a ladder. The marmoset perched himself on her shoulder and lovingly kissed between her ears. "This'll be easy, muffin. Barely a bother," he whispered to her.
She reached up her tiger paw to cradle him. It nearly covered his entire back. "I do not think so, my sweet darling. But sometimes it is pleasant to be lied to."
He grinned and gave her a wink. "You might be surprised. I used to fight demons fer a living, if you recall."
She was always grateful for the gifts of laughter he gave her.
Janie Jing stood with wide eyes and a twitching bunny nose. She clutched at her necklace. "When it begins, Ike," she said to the hyena standing next to her, "can I have your word you'll leave me to my business and not waste your silly time antagonizing me?"
He heard the quaver in her voice. They were all so old, and it had been a lifetime since they'd left their tricks on the shelf to gather dust. "Not a chance," he told her. "The madder you get, the better the show you put on."
She blushed.
Glancing down at Rhinolith below, Luxy snaked his way around the people and gear on Red's carpeted back, over to where Waxacada and Driuwej were continuing their shared game. "So, ya rusty coupla beard-buckets. How many'd you get?"
Two eyebrows slowly raised in a simultaneous withering expression of 'Have some faith in us, will you?'
Cracked lips that had not passed forth words in decades slowly parted. "Nearly all," said Driuwej.
Luxy clapped his paws. "That's ducky. Great work, fellas. Try not to fall asleep when the fun starts." He gave them a trolling grin and a wave, then scooted off.
In unison, the two old wizards rolled their eyes. Luxy was at least as old as either of them, but refused to act like it. Ah well. No time to waste on the immature. Wrinkled fingers moved towards the two handheld games' power buttons and switched them to off.
Moving like a glacier, Waxacada smiled impishly. "I would have won."
A barely-perceptible shake of the head from Driuwej. "I could stall you till the end of time."
A nod, conceding that the statement may have had merit. "Do you think we'll die this time?"
A moment of consideration. "I certainly hope so. It will end this cramp in my leg."
Waxacada gave his longtime friend a look that said, 'that's what you get for sitting in one place for several centuries.'
Down below, in the wide, bare space where she had spent days and nights killing weeds, Vienna Tusk clutched her paws to her muzzle to keep from screaming in overwhelmed joy. At the moment of explosion, Scaphis had flinched. Her grip had loosened. The two ancient ones had prepared for this moment. Four days ago, one thousand, two-hundred and thirteen spectral hands had been willed into existence above the heads of every single captured citizen in Rhinolith. Then, when the mountain shuddered and the plastic recoiled, they all swooped down in precise harmony. All throughout the waiting, Vienna and the others had walked through Rhinolith, telling the Bargeld what had happened and letting them know what would be needed from them when the time of their freedom came. Now the marten watched as over a thousand disoriented neighbors and kin came floating through the sky, borne by translucent hands of pure thought. They were set down with the utmost care in the barren field, each one in front of a shiny new weapon from Rippingbean and Woofingbutter's Survival Emporium. The spectral hands patted the rescued Bargeld's heads gently, then dispersed.
Vienna scrambled through the dazed, muttering crowd, knocking people to the ground in her haste. If Chief Ghummin himself had been in her way, he would have gone down. Finally, she spotted her husband and sons. The wizards had been thoughtful enough to group them together. And though the trio was still reeling from their month-long confinement, Vienna tackled them in a rib-crushing hug. She poured out her love as tears poured down her face. Never had any sound been sweeter than Cale and Ronnie crying out in desperate happiness, "Mommy!!"
Luxy noticed this unfolding scene from his perch high above. He'd given the marten a pretty hard time, and murdered her quite a bunch, but his smile now was genuine. He internally debated giving her two seconds of kurushimeru, just to let her know he was there. Nah. It'd be funny, but she'd earned her happy ending.
The raccoon knelt for a moment to give Red a skritch. "Yeah, Fido, I know you've been restless. Just a little while longer, then you'll get to play with your new chewtoy."
The big red rustbeast murbled anxiously.
Luxy felt a brief worry. He couldn't resist looking over the construct's side to make absolutely certain.
Just as ordered, on the side of Red that faced the Bargeld, Mr. Xenoiko had painted in immense white letters:
NOT HIM
HE'S WITH US
Luxy nodded, satisfied. He'd had the idea just hours ago, after coming to the unpleasant realization that folks from Rhinolith were jumpy by nature, and seeing a sixty-foot nightmare on rollerskates a few yards away might make them behave irrationally.
It was time for his own preparations. The raccoon shivered in bliss as he let his hands be drawn to the twin chromium-plated guns at his side. His favorite gals. His fingers slipped around their grips like honking the sweet, firm tits of Aphrodite herself. He chittered. He heard the pleasant soft 'click' of the needles emerging. Luxy was a firm believer in rewarding hard work, and he'd paid Red Velvet a fortune for them. The mechanism pierced the ulnar artery of each of his wrists with barely any pain. Like Zinc's wrenches, the guns were bloodpowered. So long as Luxy Bleeder's heart pumped red, he was never out of ammunition.
He gave each pistol an obscene kiss, right on the words tattooed on their barrels: GOOD and TIME. "Time to live up to your name, babies," he cooed to them. Then he raised his arms above his head and pulled both triggers.
This startled everyone.
"Good! Your attention's on me, where it always belongs."
Luxy beheld his army, beaming with pride. He stepped right to the edge of Red's back. "Hi, Bargeld!" he shouted down at them. "I hope you remember what we drilled into your heads for the past few days! Now, I know you're all discombobulated, and probably plenty miffed at being grounded for so long. But hold down your bile for just a squidge. We gotta give Toby time to do his thing and rile her up." He glanced at Woofingbutter. "Your watch?"
The gorilla clanked closer in his new combat exoskeleton. "Yes, Mr. Bleeder. I was not so agog that it slipped my attention. Just after the eruption, I set it for exactly eight minutes." He held up a gorgeous golden pocketwatch, merrily ticking down the seconds.
Luxy gave him a crisp nod. "Good show, old chap. Simply smashing." He called out again to the masses below. "Give yourselves a moment to recover! I need you sharp and deadly! No sleepyheads! Pinch yourself. Do some stretches. Tug your prick. Whatever it takes!"
He pointed to the gorilla beside him. "When this nice man's pretty watch goes 'ding', we are going to enter the fight of our lives. Nothing you will ever do will be as cool as this. Or as important. Take that rage you've felt at being paralyzed, beaten in your own city walls, and unleash it on my signal. Give it your everything. We will too."
A vast armada of pure, coiled wrath, the Bargeld nodded and grunted their willingness.
Luxy picked at his teeth. "There's this thing I like to say to my audience alla time: 'Against the night, we are united.' Now, you guys might not be Ectopians. But we all dream under the same dark sky, so that's good enough for me." He thrust a fist skyward. "AGAINST THE NIGHT, WE ARE WHAT?"
"UNITED!" the Bargeld shouted.
"Naw, c'mon, you gotta punish my eardrums! Again! AGAINST THE NIGHT...?"
"WE ARE UNITED!!"
He raised his arms to conduct them like an orchestra. "One more time my fellow Phobiopolans! Because three is traditional! Whole thing now!"
The voices in solidarity were a swelling tempest. "AGAINST THE NIGHT, WE ARE UNITED!!!"
Just what he wanted to hear. "Fuckin' A. And remember, my friends, I am not asking the impossible of you. Just what you are already the best at. We do not have to be surgeons here today. Your aim doesn't have to be William Tell's. LOOK at her, for chrissakes! She's as big as Ike's mom!!"
The hyena facepalmed.
Luxy stood up to his full height, calling upon all his years of leadership and persuasion. "But still, this will not be easy work. Fire everything you've got! Everything! Every bullet in your guns and every ounce of your sweat. Shoot and stab and bash and scream and let her know your fury!! Let her feel everything you've felt! Let her regret the lives she stole in your city! And Papilloma! And Cachexy! And all the others she will take if we don't put a stop to her today!!"
A bellow from the crowd. They shook their provided weapons in the air. A forest of mayhem.
Luxy made each and every one of them feel like he was speaking to them directly. "I don't have much more time for speeches. Get yourself ready, however you have to. Today we're standing at the ocean and pushing back the tide. Show me why the Bargeld has a reputation as the biggest, baddest bastards in all the world. Show her. Make legends happen today."
Another cheer, as if from the halls of Valhalla itself.
That frisky smile again. "And have fun," he told them. "Obviously. There's no better reason to be alive."
***
At the epicenter of the explosion, underneath the mountain, one of the catatonic patients in the campsite's three beds grunted and rolled over in his sleep.
***
Logdorbhok did nothing. This was very good for everyone.
-***-