“I don’t fucking believe this…. It was a Pentium II with only 300 Megs…stupid, stupid, stupid….”
“Amanda, he’s muttering computer speak again,” Austin complained, uneasily.
“Well, resist the urge to beat him over the head, dear,” Amanda responded, coming back into the room with a bottle of bleach, “How’s his bleeding?”
“Not so good, it could be a concussion,” Austin said, gently lifting the compress to gaze at the mangled patch of flesh. He was tired of kneeling on Amanda’s floor, but he didn’t want to jostle Sam by getting on the tiny couch with him. And Amanda had made it deathly clear that the bed was off limits to males. But that was before….
“Keep the pressure on it, but not too hard,” Amanda liberally poured the bleach on a particularly large pool of blood at the foot of her bed.
“Uh, Amanda?” Austin asked.
“What?”
“Why are you putting white bleach on a green carpet?”
Amanda looked down at the bottle in her hands, then at the white patch on the green floor. “So sue me, I’m under the effects of drugs,” she said. She then took the bottle and began making small, random patches of bleached carpet everywhere. “There,” she concluded, “Modern art.”
Austin rolled his eyes. Sam started to mutter again, “Cheap monitor…44X max C drive…Windows 98…not even a scanner…no zip disc drive…. God damn it,”
“Sam, shut up!” Austin had had enough of the computer rant. It was like Geek of the Damned, or something.
“It wasn’t even a Toshiba model,” Sam yelled in sudden outrage, trying to sit up.
Austin put his hand on Sam’s chest and pushed him back into a reclining position on the couch. He winced when Sam’s compress came off and more blood started to drip from the wound. Austin wasn’t very good at handling body-stuff. Amanda’s parents were doctors; she was used to blood and guts, but Austin didn’t like it outside of entertainment.
“I’m going to put him on your bed,” he told Amanda, testing to see if the old taboo was still in place.
“To hell you are,” Amanda told him, tossing her blood soaked bra into the garbage bag that she had brought up to her room. “I have to sleep in that bed, no boys allowed. And I’d prefer not to have it covered in the blood of my crush, not to mention I just changed the sheets!”
“So you’d rather have your crush’s blood on your white leather couch than on your Bambi sheets?”
“I can bleach the couch, not the sheets,” Amanda snapped. “Disney is priceless no matter how crappy the cartoon.”
“That doesn’t fix everything,” Austin said, getting irritated; why was she yelling at him? “Like how do you plan to explain the melted kettle? Clorox attack?”
“Explain what to whom? My parents aren’t home, smart one,” Amanda replied, not looking up from the task of picking up ashes and shredded stuffed animal. She was really upset, Austin could tell, but that was no reason to yell at him; he was just as freaked out as she was. She seemed to sense that she was being harsh, because she suddenly dropped the bag, took a deep breath and let it part way out. She came over to dress Sam’s wound herself, allowing Austin to stand and stretch a little.
“I already put the kettle in,” she said in a much nicer tone, opening the garbage bag for him to see.
Austin sniffed. “Whew, the scent of burning metal is going to stick,” he said, tentatively. Now was not the time for them to fight.
“Shit, you’re right, I’ll get some aerosol,” Amanda turned to leave.
“Amanda, stop! I’m light-headed enough as it is,” Austin said, trying to be playful.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” a voice called. Troy came running up the stairs, smelling of cigarette smoke. He skidded into Amanda’s room and took one huge whiff. “What have you guys been doing?”
“Fighting evil, what about you?” Amanda replied.
“Smoking,” Troy said. “Same difference.”
“Figures,” Austin responded.
“Well, I got here, didn’t I?” Troy said. He then noticed Sam lying almost motionless on the couch. “Oh my God, what happened?” He asked, rushing over to kneel next to his friend.
“We told you; fighting evil,” Amanda repeated, collecting the broken TV and empty Nair bottle.
“And losing, it would seem,” Troy said, surveying Sam grimly. “Is he going to be okay?”
“She doesn’t even have a surge protector, for Christ’s sake!” Sam burst out, sitting bolt up right.
“He’ll be fine,” Austin said, wryly.
The phone rang, or gargled, rather since Amanda had smashed the receiver. Amanda disappeared into another room and came back with another portable phone--her brother’s, Austin assumed. “Hello? Oh, hi, Daniel. Well, I’d be lying if I said everything was ‘peachy keen.’ Yeah…. Uh-huh…. Do me a favor and call Crystal first. Okay, bye.” She hung up. “That was Daniel. He’s on his way over.”
“Geek number two to the rescue,” Troy muttered.
“Let’s hope he does better than the first one,” Amanda said, indicating Sam before vanishing once again into another room. When she came back, she had a whole new phone ready to be plugged into the wall.
“Kind of a step down from a portable,” Austin said, noting the rotary dial.
“It’s an antique,” Amanda admitted, discarding her old phone, “But it’ll help my argument when I ask my parents for a new one next month, when my brother goes to college. Hey, Troy, do me a favor and help me take the computer monitor to the curb and scrape my stuffed animals off of the lawn.” Austin detected a note of bitterness in her voice.
“Aren’t your parents going to be pissed about your room and stuff?” Troy asked.
“Nah,” Amanda said, “They actually encouraged me to have an active social life.”
“So that’s it? After everything I taught you and it was the one who didn’t have any powers to mortally wound the damn thing?” Kaine glared at all of them sitting on Amanda’s bed.
As soon as he and Crystal had arrived via a pool of light in the middle of Amanda’s living room, Kaine had grilled Amanda like a drill sergeant. Amanda refused to say a thing until Kaine healed Sam as a first priority. The second priority was using his mystical magical powers to weld the shards of Amanda’s window back together and put it back into the frame. As tired as her parents were when they came home, they weren’t going to be that tired. Amanda’s final demand had been that somebody orders some pizza, because she was ravenous. Kaine had ordered Chinese instead just to piss Amanda off, and now all of them, save for Sam who was still on the couch, crowded on Amanda’s bed to listen to more bitching from the fussy priest, while devouring the Eastern delights.
“He’s got powers now,” Amanda pointed out, jabbing some sweet and sour chicken with her chopsticks. She was pissed about a lot of things, but right now the fact that she had to break her bed rule so that her company could be comfortable was particularly annoying. Still, hospitality came before self-indulgence as Amanda had been taught and at least it was easier for Amanda to clean sweet and sour sauce off the bed as opposed to blood.
“Oh, high five, Sam, that deserves a high five,” Austin said, reaching over to slap hands with Sam. He didn’t respond, so Austin just settled for pounding him on the back. Now that Sam was healed, Austin could beat him up again!
Sam was sticking to his motto: When in doubt, don’t say anything.
“How did that happen? Crystal and I are the only ones capable of awakening people.” Kaine paced across the white and green mottled floor, purely agitated.
“Chill out dear, have a fortune cookie,” Crystal offered.
“Ooh aren’t we so important,” Amanda snarled at Kaine, “And if you really want to know, I think I did it.”
Kaine stopped pacing and stared at Amanda. Crystal thought that Kaine might ask how or why, but he said nothing.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“Look, I don’t see what’s getting your undies all in a ruffle,” Troy began around a mouth of fried rice.
“This coming from the guy who wears Yellow Submarine boxers…” Crystal muttered, slapping Daniel’s hand away from her thigh.
“It’s polar bears, today,” Troy said, displaying the hem through his sagging Jincos. “Anyway, all that matters is we’re not dead; we have a new friend in our Society for the Incredibly Fucked-up, and what the hell is the…the…the thing that the demon wanted or whatever?”
“The Crystal Sword,” Kaine said. But nothing else, he offered no explanation or any kind of an answer. He just stared out of the window at the rain that was still falling outside. Austin got irritated with his silence and stood to leave; it was getting near to eight o’clock at night and he had no time for pensive bullshit.
Kaine swung out his staff to block his path. “Wait,” he said.
“Then out with it already,” Austin said. “Food can only do so much to keep my attention.”
“I can’t tell you very much….” Kaine began, resignedly.
Troy scoffed and also got up to leave, abandoning his Chinese food container.
“But I will tell you that it is key to our survival. If we get the Crystal Sword, we can beat this guy who’s trying to kill us and then there will be no more attacks.” Kaine never let his eyes shift from Austin, but Austin got the feeling that Kaine wasn’t really looking at him.
“Who is trying to kill us?” Amanda asked leaning back on her bed only to smack her skull into the wall. She no longer had stuffed animals to prop up against. “Who’s dumb enough to make ketchup attack us?” She asked, rubbing her head.
“The same one who was intelligent enough to infect you with a virus,” Kaine replied.
“Run that by me again,” Amanda said, not really wanting to hear the explanation. This was already too much bullshit for her to comprehend in a normal state of mind.
“He was probably trying to look inside of us to see what advantages we had. Find the Sword, he would’ve been able to find the thing that’s going to help us beat him. He finds the priest; he’ll find the princess. He finds the princess and it’s all over.
“It’s like a game. I’m not even going to try to tell you the real story, but to be brief; this guy was like the McCarthy of the Ancient Dynasty. I’m not going to go into detail on that either. The point is, everything that went on all that time ago is going to repeat itself, or already has. War never happens all at once; little tensions set things in motion.
“One of those tensions,” Kaine growled the word, “Is this man. He’s not a fighter, and not exactly a murderer, but one could say he slaughtered thousands without even lifting a hand. As for what he is, however, all I can say is he’s a politician. A trickster, a liar who is practiced at deception, betrayal, intrigue, and all that good stuff that goes on in a political setting. He caused a war. A war to end all wars. He wasn’t just turning armies on armies, but rather religion against science.”
“Whoopee,” Troy muttered. Amanda held up a hand to silence him, wanting to hear more of what Kaine was saying.
Kaine continued; “I’m not really sure how to tell a bunch of teenagers this and expect you to believe it, but basically, the Universe…cracked, I guess you could say. It broke and everything would have collapsed, but then the princess stepped in and managed to avert that fate…after a fashion.”
“How come Crystal’s so important?” Daniel asked.
“Because I’m the princess, damn it,” Crystal huffed.
“You don’t look like no princess,” Troy laughed.
“Shut up,” Crystal snapped.
“What kind of princess wears a jump suit that makes her look like a twelve year old?” Troy continued.
“If you think that’s bad, you should’ve seen the muumuu that she had on before,” Kaine muttered, finally reaching for some of the Chinese. Only a high blood sugar would get him through this argument.
“It’s not a muumuu. And I have no shame, so I can wear whatever I want,” Crystal said, sticking her nose in the air defiantly.
“Go girl,” Daniel cheered, earning a smack.
“So he made Amanda sick because…” Sam prompted, reaching for the dumplings.
“I’m getting there, don’t rush me. Anyway, the princess made everything into a repeating pattern. The Universe will only go as far as a certain point and then start over, unless the princess acts on it. It’s taken this long just for me to find the princess; we-I- have never come this far before.”
“What do you mean?” Crystal asked.
“This has happened before?” Amanda asked.
“Well, yes….” Kaine popped a piece of moo shu pork into his mouth. He took a long time to chew and swallow it. Everyone stared at him while he masticated.
Finally, in a trembling voice, Amanda asked, “How many times?”
Kaine didn’t answer; he rubbed his chin, thoughtfully. Maybe he should grow a beard; that might make them take him seriously. He hadn’t had one since Nixon was in office and go-teas were looking pretty fashionable this time of the decade. The symbol on his forehead, partly obscured by his bangs glowed dimly.
“How many times, Kaine,” Crystal asked. “How many times has the Universe…started over?”
“Twice…not counting the original time,” Kaine answered, not looking at them.
There was a very long silence.
“Okay, this shit is too much for me,” Troy said, trying to leave.
Austin blocked him. Crystal said, standing, “You can’t back out now Troy, we need you!”
“Please, I have a very fragile stomach,” Troy pleaded, straining against Austin to squeeze out of Amanda’s door. “I can’t function with the thought of a reset button on my life, I don’t want to do this again!” He wailed.
“Oh, pull yourself together, drama queen,” Amanda snapped. “No one has tried to kill you yet. It’s me they’re after.”
“And me,” Crystal said, “Wait, that’s not a good thing.”
“And if you back out now, I can’t protect you anymore,” Kaine sighed, his indigo eyes looking very, very tired.
“Some protection,” Sam muttered, staring out of the window. He absently rubbed at the place on his head that had not been there prior to Kaine’s healing touch.
Kaine looked offended, but kept his voice calm when he said, “I have given you each a barrier, in addition to the one that you naturally have. Not to mention giving you access to abilities that could destroy the world. What more do you want?
“Do you really think this guy has no abilities of his own? He’s from the Ancient Dynasty; he has powers the likes of which you guys only see on television. Only he is real, very real, and not only can he pull your barrier down, he can steal your soul. Think of it as murder, but he gets to keep your body, and no one can tell the difference. In the days of the Dynasty, this was a capital crime punished by something a little bit more intense than hell.
“Don’t you see? If I’m not here, he will find you. He already knows who you are. He has his precious technology do sneaky spy work like that, so he could track you down without me knowing. He only sends his minions, like that Ms. Itemiser demon to test your abilities, to try and find a way to get to you. Otherwise, he would just plant a device in your car, follow you home, come to you, and steal your body while you slept. Then he could just hang out with the rest of us and pick us off one by one without the hassle of the legal system. But he can’t do that, while I live. He cannot overpower me. I keep you hidden from him…. I-”
“Time out, time out,” Crystal said.
“Oh, what?” Kaine snapped, “Can’t you see I’m on a roll, here?”
“Potty break, sorry,” Crystal said. They patiently waited for Crystal to answer natures’ call. All save for Daniel who tried to peak in through the keyhole only to realize that Amanda didn’t have a keyhole to her bathroom.
When Crystal returned Kaine said, “Okay, anybody else? Good, now pay attention. If you’re physically ill, anyone with Power can see right through you if he chooses. Computers can’t do that, at least not that I’ve heard.” Kaine glanced at Sam as if for confirmation. Sam just blinked back at him, absently. Kaine continued, “Everyone has a natural barrier that only they can let down. Illness weakens the barrier. And I don’t know why else your guard was down, Amanda, but you were obviously exposed enough for him to find you.”
Kaine turned to look more at Austin and Troy who were still standing right beside him, halfway to the door, “That is why I needed you to agree to letting me help you. It’s an old taboo that may not be broken; the owner of the soul may only act upon his own soul. Or something very close to it, like a soul mate.”
From where he was on the couch, Sam seemed to be thinking something that caused him distress.
“So, now, we have to be on our guard more than ever. I told you he would strike in any way--”
“Kaine, who is he?” Amanda asked, irritated that she hadn’t gotten her answer within that lecture.
Kaine paused. “He was the one who attacked and killed the princess’ mother and basically set the Universe to collapse. His name is Lord Robert of Exendor. He is a devious man with minimal amount of power but a lot of resources to make up for it. He should be…”
“Heh, his name is Bob,” Troy said, relaxing now that he could mock something of the situation.
Austin laughed, “Oh yeah, I’m scared of some guy named Bob.”
“My villain has a first name…it’s B-o-b-b-y…” Crystal and Amanda sang.
“Guys, shut-up. It’s a very serious matter,” Kaine said.
“My villain has a second name….”
“Oh, Austin, look out! Here comes the threatening and all-powerful Bob!” Troy said.
“Agh! Where?”
“It’s E-x-I- wait, is it I or E? …-N-d-o…”
Daniel jumped off the bed and onto Austin. “Watch out, I’m threatening you! My name is Bob!”
“Never send teenagers to save the world…” Kaine muttered. “Hey, if you guys are worried, you might start looking for poison in your drinks.”
Crystal and Amanda stopped singing.
“Or a family member to sprout fangs,” Kaine continued.
Troy and Austin fell quiet. Daniel fell on the floor.
“Or maybe just a shadow to jump out at you when you’re walking down the street. This man has no care for discretion after a point. And while his technology probably can’t kill you outright, he has ways of tracking you down to do the job himself. And at this point, I can only do so much to help you besides train you and stay present to ward him off. I advise you to be careful,” Kaine said. “And as for you, Sam, I’m sorry you got dragged into this, but now he will be looking for you, too. It’d be better if you stick with us.”
Sam stared at Kaine, bleakly. “Do I have a choice?”
“No,” Crystal said. “It’s not like you had a life, anyway, dear.”
“Crystal, I was trying to be comforting,” Kaine said, cracking open a fortune cookie. Kaine read his fortune silently: You are the master of every situation. He wasn’t even going to dignify the irony of the statement with crumbling the thin strip of paper up.
“Where’s the comfort in being hunted,” Amanda shrugged.
“Knowing that you can be the hunter,” Sam said, quietly.
“I-whoa, Sam, don’t get all sadistic on us, now,” Austin said. Then to Kaine he said, “You know if you add ‘in bed’ to the end of every fortune, it still makes sense.”
“Where have you been,” Crystal asked, “They figured that out like seven years ago.”
“Well, there’s our climatic statement for the evening,” Kaine said. “Now, you said there was a accident with a four-runner and a series 5 BMW?”
“Yeah…” Austin said.
“Come,” Kaine said, leaving Amanda’s room.
“Where are you going?” Crystal asked.
“Did you think this is all for decoration?” Kaine indicated his priestly-like appearance and mystical-ish staff. “Observe as I put Triple A to shame.”
“What kind of priest is he anyway?” Troy muttered, reaching for his own fortune cookie.