Art pulled out his secret weapon: a shower handle attached to a mallet. Upon seeing this horrific device, all his enemies ran for it. This weapon was not illegal under intergalactic law only because it was deemed so horrifying that even the worst war criminals would never use it.

Sam walked over to Art.

"Looks like that's the end of that," she said.

"Yes. Now, we need to continue investigating who put those explosives on my spaceship," he replied.

Then, a bearded old man appeared in a puff of smoke.

"Art, I am your cousin and new rival," the old man stated.

"You're my cousin but not my rival," Art replied.

"You are a hairy wizard."

Hair grew out of Art's ears. It extended from them all the way to the ground.

"What the fuck, man?" Art asked.

"Muhuhahahaha! You'll never catch me!" the old man answered.

He opened a portal and ran through it. Art and Sam ran after him.

They found themselves in a large field. There was a large castle in the distance, surrounded by farmland. The old man stuck out his tongue at them as the portal closed.

"Run, run, run, as fast as you can! You can't catch me! I'm the crazy old man!" he declared.

Then, he started running into the distance with Art and Sam chasing after him.

"Get back here and fix my ears, or I'll shove my horrifying weapon up your ass!" Art said.

The old man stuck his tongue out at him again. Then, he disappeared in a puff of smoke.

"Dammit! He got away!" Art groaned.

"We'll need to find out where he went," Sam noted.

"Maybe we should go to that castle?"

"Probably not. Whoever lives in it might not take kindly to the weapon you have. It might be a hyper-advanced sci-fi weapon, but these people have magic."

Art gazed at his shower handle head attached to a mallet.

"Yeah. And for people of the Middle Ages, war crimes are more war dick moves," he noted.

That's when the two of them noticed a canyon. They looked down and saw some sort of stone door in the wall.

"You're a wizard now, right? Can you use magic to get us down there?" Sam asked.

"I'll do my best," Art said.

He mumbled some random words that sounded vaguely Latin. His ear hairs grew so long that they reached the canyon floor. Sam climbed down them. Then, the ear hairs fell off, and new ones grew. These just went down to Art's feet. Art grabbed the old ear hairs before they completely fell off the cliff, tied them to a rock, and climbed down on them.

Sam was looking at the stone door in the wall.

"There's some weird words on it," she said.

Art looked at it too. The words were very strange.

"I think it's Dwarvish," he replied. "At least, I hope it is. I'm just guessing."

"If we're guessing, maybe it's some sort of riddle?"

They were right that the sign was in Dwarvish.

What it actually said was, "Emergency Exit Only."

"Let's see...if we say some word in Dwarvish, it might open," Art concluded.

"I'll try," Sam said. "HOOOOOOOOOOOurghtshlissth!"

Nothing happened.

"Well, I'm all out of ideas," Art shrugged.

"So am I," Sam nodded.

They saw that there was a door without a sign on it just down the canyon. The two walked over and opened it. Inside was a massive room carved into the rocky beyond the canyon walls. There was a chair at the end of the room in front of another door. A seven-foot-tall woman with long, straight black and purple hair as well as pink eyes was leaning back on it. She wore tight leather clothing with a cuirass and armored arms, and there was a greatsword at her side. Art and Sam approached the woman.

"Excuse me, do you know anything about a crazy wizard?" Art asked.

The woman said nothing.

"I think she's sleeping," Sam said. "Try this."

She handed Art a megaphone. He talked through it.

"EXCUSE ME, DO YOU ANYTHING ABOUT A CRAZY WIZARD?"

The woman opened her eyes. They were silver-gray. She grabbed Art's and Sam's hands and pulled them close.

"You shouldn't go fishing for corpses," she stated.

Then, the woman pushed them both back. They tumbled on the ground.

"Since the last Huber Poober, I slumbered here, waiting for his return. But it never came."

She grabbed the greatsword and stood up. Her eyes were cold.

"And yet now, the cousin of Herbert and Ash have come to disturb my slumber," the woman said.

"No, I'm Art," Art said.

"And I'm Sam," Sam said.

A voice came from behind them.

"She's talking about me."

Art and Sam turned to see an ash-haired man with 17 eyes, 3 legs, and a third arm coming out of the center of his forehead. He wore a clown suit. The woman pointed her sword at them.

"I am Briallen, Champion of the Strix King. And out of the 1,489,928 fights I was in, I only lost 507 of them," she said.

"Hah! You're a loser!" Ash mocked.

"Art, kick her ass with your secret weapon," Sam smiled.

He nodded.

"I don't know who you think you are, Briallen," Art stated. "But I've got the world's most brutal weapon!"

With a grand flourish, Art pointed his shower handle attached to a mallet at Briallen.

"Fight me, Briallen, if you dare!" he shouted.

One minute later, Art, Sam, and Ash were literally thrown out of the room. They were covered in cuts as well as bruises. The three crashed into the canyon wall. Holes in the shapes of their bodies formed.

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

"What the hell was that?" Art wondered.

"Don't worry about it," Ash said. "She's the hardest boss around here. She's also probably mad that you're related to Herbert."

"Who the fuck is that?"

"A crazy old wizard. His family's been rivals with Brillen's family ever since his grandfather turned her grandfather into a newt for fun and profit. Brillen’s also Skarabrae's rival, best friend, and love interest."

"I don't know who Skarabrae is. Anyway, how did she know Art and Herbert were related?" Sam wondered.

"Magic," Ash replied.

"Do you know where this Herbert guy is?" Art said.

"Oh, yeah, everyone knows where he lives. He lives in the wizard tower on A mountain North of here."

"Which mountain?"

"A Mountain."

The three of them crawled out of the holes. Art looked to where he tied up his ear hair, just to see that it was being eaten by a 7-headed toad-human hybrid on top of the cliff.

"What the fuck is that thing?" Art asked.

"I am not a thing. I am a demihuman intellectual, Marquis Felix Dumkoff Esquire," it answered.

"Why are you eating my ear hair?"

"This is ear hair? I thought it was ass hair!" Felix shouted with shock covering his face.

He threw up the ear hair along with the other contents of his stomach. They all landed on Ash.

"I'm okay!" Ash said.

"How are we gonna get out of this canyon now?" Sam wondered.

"That, my dear," Felix stated. "Is not my problem."

He grew normal-sized bee wings out of his eyeballs and flew away.

"Don't worry, we have technology," Art said.

Then, he pulled out a small piece of metal.

"This is the resonance chamber hypersonic drill French pile driver. It can do whatever the plot wants it to do. Now, watch as I magically science up a staircase."

The resonance chamber hypersonic drill French pile driver exploded.

"Huh. I guess the plot wanted it to explode," Art said.

Briallen's voice came to their ears.

"What the fuck are you all still doing in the canyon?"

She literally kicked their asses, sending them flying out of the canyon and onto the ledge above.

"Now, I will guide you to A Mountain!" Ash declared. "Because I have nothing better to do!"

Inside the wizard tower on A Mountain, Hubert observed the travelers through a crystal ball.

"So, my foolish cousin found some aid, did he?" Hubert smirked. "Good. It'll just help my vaguely defined evil plan! I should send them some...entertainment now. Muhuhahahah!"

Back on the ground, Art, Sam, and Ash were talking.

"You're a radiation mutant?" Art asked.

"That's right," Ash answered. "After the bombs dropped, it ripped a hole in the fabric of reality. That's how magic and the demihumans entered the world. Unfortunately, the demihumans are also from a world where they fought a nuclear war. So, about 20% of them are radiation mutants too."

They approached two rocks. Then, a pair of stereotypical ninja jumped on top of the boulders.

"Halt right there!" one ninja said. "I am Ōkī Shitsubō. And this is my brother, Baka O Shiri!"

"Hello," Baka said.

"And we're invisible because we're ninjas!"

"We can see you. You're standing right in front of us," Art stated.

Shock covered the ninja's faces.

"Brother, they can see us! What should we do?" Baka asked.

"The same thing any respectable ninja would do," Ōkī answered. "Fight them in hand-to-hand combat instead of hiding and killing them in their sleep."

With a dozen backflips, the ninja jumped off the rocks. Baka pulled out a pair of shuriken numbchucks. Ōkī drew a kusari-gama. They did a kung fu pose.

"Now, fight us one on one," Ōkī said.

"Why? There's three of us and two of you," Art pointed out.

"No! There's 27 of us!"

The two ninja ran in a circle around them. They were trying to go fast enough to create afterimages but humans can't move that quickly without super science or magic. They had neither.

Then, the ninja stopped.

"I see you've defeated our first technique, but it matters not! You cannot get past our second technique!" Ōkī stated.

They started dancing while a rapper sang a ninja rap in the background.

"Hold on a minute!" Art spoke up. "Are you two actually ninja?"

"Yes, we are," Ōkī assured him.

"Don't question my brother!" Baka said.

"I mean, it just doesn't seem like you're using real ninja moves," Art stated.

"Look, we're legit ninja!" Ōkī replied. "We have degrees in ninjitsu!"

"Where did you study it?"

"We didn't. We bought the degrees from a website."

Art, Sam, and Ash looked at them like they were idiots.

"Do you know what Baka means?" Sam asked.

"It probably means something good," Baka answered.

"Are you even Japanese?"

"Look, you don't have to be Japanese to be a ninja. We have it on good authority (Read: random people on the internet) that there is a powerful ninja clan in Ireland!" Ōkī said.

"Are you Irish?" Sam wondered.

"No. We're from Rhodesia."

A voice came to their ears.

"Ahoy, landlubbers!" it shouted.

Everyone turned to see a very stereotypical pirate.

"I be Drunk Beard the Pirate, and I don't remember what I did last night!" he said.

"A pirate!" Baka twirled his numb chucks. "Time to fight!"

"Time to use our ultimate ninja technique!" Ōkī declared.

Baka ran forward and then jumped in the air. He hit the ground on his stomach and started sliding. Ōkī jumped on his back, using his brother as an improvised skateboard. They completely missed Drunk Beard and crashed into a rock. Drunk Beard laughed. He pulled out a flintlock pistol.

"Now, I be robbin' ye!" he said.

"Time to pull out my secret weapon since Art used his!" Sam pulled out a gun. "This is my disintegrating ray! One pull of this, and you'll disintegrate!"

"That doesn't look anything like a ray, ye landlubber!"

Art and Sam were confused.

"What do you mean?" Art asked.

"Rays be flat and wide. That be a gun, not a ray!" Drunk Beard declared.

"You know what? I'll just make this a surprise," Sam said.

She pulled the trigger. The gun disintegrated.

"I should have gotten the disintegration ray."

"Now, ye be giving me yer loot or I'll shoot ye!" Drunk Beard said.

"You can take that gun and shove it right up your ass!" Art shouted.

"Ye think I can't, landlubber?"

Five minutes later, they were rushing Dunk Beard into a village doctor. They placed him on a table.

"What seems to be the problem?" the doctor asked.

"He shoved a pistol up his ass," Art answered.

"Oh, dear! I'll have to operate immediately!"

The doctor turned Drunk Beard over.

"Will you be able to save him?" Ōkī wondered.

"It all depends on whether the pistol discharges. According to the medical textbook I bought from a drunk hobo in a back alley, if you shoot a human in the ass, they will instantly die."

"Are you sure you're a real doctor?" Art questioned.

"Don't worry, I bought my medical degree online," the doctor said. "Now, get out of the room. I need to concentrate."

The group left. They waited agonizingly for the doctor to go to them. Three hours later, the doctor left. There was a grim expression on his face.

"What's the diagnosis?" Baka asked.

"I removed the pistol from Drunk Beard's ass without it discharging," the doctor answered. "But I wasn't able to save his palmaris longus."

"That isn't anywhere near the ass!" Sam pointed out.

The doctor nodded.

"True, but I decided to use his body for medical science after I removed the pistol. One thing led to another, and now he doesn't have a palmaris longus anymore."

"How bad is it?" Ōkī questioned.

"According to my medical textbook, Drunk Beard has thirty seconds to live," the doctor said.

"Let's have a moment of silence for Drunk Beard," Art stated.

They all became silent for thirty seconds. Then, Drunk Beard barged out of the room.

"Argh, I be feelin' much better now! Thank you, doctor!" Drunk Beard smiled.

"Well, my medical textbook's fucking wrong," the doctor said. "This is a great scientific discovery! Who knew that humans can survive without a palmaris longus?"

"How much will this cost?" the pirate asked.

"Let's see...removing a gun from your ass normally costs 50,000 gold pieces. But the fact that I experimented on your body means I have to divide the cost by two. That means you have to pay 1 copper piece."

Drunk Beard paid it.

"I'm not sure that's how the math works," Art said.

"Don't worry. I bought a math degree online," the doctor assured him.

In the wizard tower, Herbert grimaced.

"I sent those ninjas to kill my cousin, and now they're on his side! So be it. I will have to go onto the next phase of my plan," he said.

Herbert walked over to a series of massive test tubes.

"The perfect combinations of science and magic, horrific beasts created from my own seed!"

Herbert pulled out a bag of sunflower seeds. "They are the most brutal, horrifying creations in the history of the world!"

He then pressed a button. The glass on the test tubes disappeared. Fluid spilled everywhere. Herbert slipped on the liquid and fell on his back. Still, he decided to talk from there.

"Go forth, my creations! Kill my cousin, Art whatever our last name is! Then, bring him to me! I want him alive!"

A horde of abominations marched from the wizard tower. Pure malevolence went with them.