Suffice to say, by the end of the night, I had some quality initial product for my brother. With his memories and my nature sorcery, conjuring marijuana seeds was not a problem. The issue was growing the damn things. Apparently, weed seeds are tempermental little bastards, always trying to be ‘male’ instead of the preferred ‘female’ unless you get the temperature of the environment just right and make sure that they don’t cross-pollinate incorrectly. My lack of familiarity wasn’t doing me any favors but the attempts were wearing on my brother.
It’s not that I have anything against the Devil’s lettuce, the good Lord’s little smoke, but for me, alcohol was my drug of choice back in college. I was always rarin’ to go, wanting’ to play drunk indoor soccer or some body-boxing. For me, sitting down and veggin’ out was not my favorite activity. My lazy brother on the other hand, was a connoisseur of the slower things in life. Concentrating on exactly what he wanted was frustrating as he kept going on about the different kinds and the different kinds of highs. Eventually, I gave up going off of his descriptions and refused to work on it until he provided me the memories of the different kinds of weed he had smoked. Thirty minutes later, I had several different piles of seeds for him, all laid out in different categories. It actually felt good to do something fun for a bit that didn’t have the purpose of general violent mayhem for once.
“Please tell me you can grow’em like the last ones?” Andy’s eyes were bugging out of his skull as he carefully sifted through the piles. “I’m thinking brownies, cheesecake bars-”
“Now just hold on,” I said. “Damn, I sound old. Think bigger bro. What if you like this stuff? What if other people like this stuff?”
“Uh uh?” Clearly, he didn’t know where I was going with this.
“Dude, we’re adding experimentation of your favorite pastime to your list of things to do before you go off to Arcane. Guess who else might like to smoke a bit? Who might pay some mighty big bucks in a currency we don’t yet know about down the road?”
Andy’s hands froze for a second, then he gently put down the seeds into their respective piles. “You want me to be an interstellar weed dealer?”
“No, no my friend,” I said in the most comforting of tones as I put my arm on his shoulder. “I want you to be an upscale dispensary, providing only the finest and most delicate of all the euphorics. We could call it ‘Jones’ Jays’.”
“I cannot believe it!” Johnny basically busted down the door and stomped over. “You had the good stuff this whole time and didn’t let me have just a bit? Who the fuck showed you new age Taco Bell? A little reciprocity would be nice! See, I can learn big words too!”
Sighing as the last bit of hope for Johnny went down the drain, I turned back to Andy. “I actually have some people I want you to meet. Probably willing to be on board more than anyone else in the world, seeing as how there aren’t many left.”
Raising one eyebrow, my brother replied, “What about my people?”
“Shit!” Remembering that I hadn’t gone back to New Miami to fulfill my promise of fixing Andy’s squadmates, I quickly conjured a couple small stone boxes and put the seeds in. “Andy, you’re right, fuck me. Ok, you know how this works, plant half of each box in a nice area. Label the area and I’ll work on this when we get back. Johnny, you’re on sparing duty in the morning. Tell Reeanth that she’s on arcane combat in the afternoon and gardening with meditation is reserved for the evening.”
Grabbing all of my gear, I gave Spot and Fuzzy a quick belly rub and took off for Yggdrasil.
[What’s the rush?] Kraken asked. [Whoa! Slow down!]
[Stupid, friggin, good for nothin-]
Shaking his head at me from inside Gungnir, Kraken rolled his eye. [Fine, don’t answer me, I’ll just have a little peek. Oh, stop worrying about that. It’s all good. Go back to the lab, got a surprise for ya.] Following the directions of my familiar, I headed into the main area of the Lab where I left Andy’s upgraded gear and the chest of Forbidden items. [See?! Easy day my friend!]
Off to the side on a table I hadn’t noticed before was a sleek wooden rod about three feet long. The bottom of it had two arms ringed with silver and the top was a four-legged stand, the legs were each about three inches long.
“What am I looking at?” I asked aloud as I picked it up. “Definitely not a weapon even though it has good balance.”
[It’s mindreaper hacking device I created just for your kin’s squadmates. Shove the four legged part into the city wall, which is the power supply, and then get those prongs around their necks. And bing badda boom! One good jolt of concentrated mana will overpower the programming and drain the bad juju into the wall, completely getting rid of the problem, and then the backwash combined with the newly emptied space will give way to the new programming I stuck in there.]
I twirled it around in one hand like a baton, reading the enchantments set into its core. “That bright packet in the center there, the one with three distinct parts, what’s that?” I asked, peering at it intently. The weaves of mana were far too dense and the runes too small for a casual glance to reveal its secrets.
[Thought you might want them to have a chance at being overpowered in the future, so there’s a bunch of rune and tattoo information in there, basic spellforms with the advanced versions set to unlock when they master the easy stuff, a couple schematics for wards, shields, wands, and a basic outline of some of the geography for their internal maps.]
After making Kraken add in a small info packet about the facts of my actions and future ones, I walked over to Yggdrasil and took a quick trip. The best part about this reprogrammer device, honestly, was the simple fact that I didn’t need to convince anyone of shit. Once I ported over to New Miami the way I did last time, I hunted around the city underground like a sneaky worm, feeling for the auras of my brother’s squadmates. When I had a lock on their position, a quick whammy of overpowered mental magic knocked them the fuck out and then I took them to the wall. Due to the Centauri constitution that allowed them to take more than the usual amount of punishment, I didn’t have to worry about being gentle.
The process ended up being pretty simple. Step one, slam the metal legs of the reprogrammer to the wall, which ended up sticking with no problem. Step two, use my flesh sorcery enhanced body to hoist the Centauri bodies up to the prongs for a minute while Kraken’s creation worked its magic. Step three, deposit the cleansed and reprogrammed soldiers back where I found them. By the time I was done with the initial fifteen squad members, I dropped in on Santa-esque Rolf who was at the top of the wall and tossed the device to him.
“I’m tired of this already, your turn!” The humongous man caught it without even looking, only turning to look at me when I yawned. I knew he’d look. The man’s nature was bearlike, apex predator in his natural environment, and predators always notice signs of weakness or exhaustion. So, said yawn got his attention more than the responsibility I just dropped in his lap.
“Explain.” His tone was less friendly than I expected but maybe he saw what I had been doing for the past two hours.
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“Fixed a few of my brother’s friends. Had to get rid of the magic bombs up in there. It’s real easy, just stick the four legged side in the wall and then their neck between the prongs and boom! Good to go. Your city, your problem.”
Before he even had a chance to protest, I hopped off the wall, extending SAW’s wings and gliding down to the earth where I dirt-traveled to the New Miami Yggdrasil, portaling home. By the end of the second week, all four of us had gotten into a pretty good groove, which was just long enough for me to feel comfortable messing it up. New Miami wasn’t the only settlement on the East Coast, there was a little town not too far away that I had provisioned with more than enough supplies and it was high time my little group got to meet their neighbors.
******
Jamal
The only thing better than having a dragon’s heart beating in your chest is having someone else or elses whos’ sex drives can match that kind of energy. Turns out, there are more than enough dryads in the nearby woods to help a brotha’ when he’s down. Elaine and Kathika’s group of hoity-toity bitches had it in their heads that one man and one woman was the way to go but they can’t even do simple math. It doesn’t work that way when the men outnumber the women on our nice little settlement. Some of us had taken to sampling what Mother Earth had so graciously provided and they certainly were grateful. The fact that they don’t mind groups is another serious plus in their favor, the only downside being the few humans who had solid sticks up their asses.
Is it any wonder that I’d rather spend my time out in the forest hunting and banging hot nature chicks than argue with people who couldn’t get with the times? No more law man, no cop, no judge, no job, no time clock, no nothin’. As my man Nate said before he left, ‘Prepare for the worst and hope for the best’. The worst is that all the women vanish and the best is I convince a couple dryads to have their watery nymph friends join in the fun.
Now Blair and Cassandra, those two could wear a man down, and boy did I make them work for it. When they added their magic to the mix, things got a bit weird but damn I rode that high for days.
“Jamal! Get your black ass back here! Chow time!” Mark called from atop the settlement’s stone walls. They were now at least four stories high now; we had to build up another two stories after the crazed monkey incident, and then up one more after the freaking leopard attacked, using the nearby trees to just bypass our walls.
Disentangling myself from the pile of ladies in the center of a large oak, I stretched and quietly made my way out. The two story drop was nothin’ for my legs ever since Nate helped me fix my clumsy attempt to reform my heart into a dragon’s. Every day I felt just a bit stronger, a bit tougher. Lately, I’d even noticed that my skin got a lot tougher and my nails got longer when I went out hunting. The night vision alone was worth it and I can’t complain about the package enhancement down below. Grabbing my sack of odd stones that I’d gathered from ranging out, I took off for home.
“Don’t do that!” Mark yelped as I simply hopped the forty yards from the nearest tree branch to the top of the wall. “I almost shot your dick off, and I know you use that thing way too much. Did you even shower?”
“Jealous?” I asked, grinning as my friend couldn't deny it. “I take it Stacy didn’t like the ‘group’ suggestion?”
“Fuck off,” he growled, turning away to the stairs. “Dinner’s in ten and you’re behind on catching meat! And next time, take Scott with you. He’s been making eyes at a dryad for a while now but is too backed up to say anything.”
Ah yes, meat. It’s almost too easy for me to hunt, in fact it’s a chore because anything and everything is scared shitless of me. One whiff and they fall to the ground, basically begging for me to get it over with. Not sure I want Scott to see me in that state. Some of the kids had somehow gotten their hands on mutated rabbits, twisted chicken-like birds, and some ornery warthogs which supplemented the protein intake of the settlement but it was still fend for yourself in certain ways.
The fact was that too many people were feeding the flesh golem whatever animals they caught so they could have ‘enhancements’. For a while there, a large chunk of the women looked almost cartoonish with how big their assets had gotten until strained backs and body aches set them straight. A few ladies went full on beast-mode a month back and it took them a while to find a nice middle ground. The most fun out of that group was Cassie and her friends which used to be a volleyball team. Each one of them was now a mixed form of magical beast and they consistently came back to the village with big game.
Of course, the men couldn’t be outdone. One of the men had hunted down a bear and now a solid chunk of around thirty of them were now bigger, hairer, and thicker than any normal man, even putting the Centauri physique to shame. You couldn’t walk down the middle of the settlement without seeing some giant version of a man with exaggerated masculine features and a woman that was unnaturally beautiful.
Cassandra’s posse of magic users were at odds with Lovera’s. The first being the group that wanted to expand what they called “New Richmond” into a legitimate city, a bastion of altered humanity, and the latter desiring a more primal in touch with magic approach. Cassandra’s group were all in on the magic front, quickly making lights and stone streets with proper run-off on their side of town. Lovera and her crew went the other way, growing trees to be homes and altering the grass to be soft and short, functioning as a sturdy but natural walkway.
And I loved it, the walk between the modernized forest and magical medieval times was eye-catching to say the least as I walked from the wall to my home. Wearing nothing but a makeshift pair of shorts, I had no issues walking around larger than life, scales going up and down my arms and back, a real life black dragon man. God damn, life is good.
*******
Andy
Life fuckin sucks. My big, I mean older, brother has got me training so hard that farts are literally getting kicked out of me. Just because he can heal me 24/7 so I can fight again does not mean that I SHOULD be fighting 24/7. What makes it worse is that at the end of the day, he fights me with just one magic that I pick and I can’t even touch him. I got so happy when he made the weed seeds so I could maybe relax and have some fun but noooo. One hit of his flesh magic shit later and I’m sober as fuck and it’s time to train.
“Johnny is here to teach you how to fight without magic. What will you do when you’re all tapped out? What happens when you’re exhausted and the only thing between you and death is your body?” Damn, even when my brother’s voice is calm as he oh so nicely explains why he’s doing what he’s doing, there’s still an edge to it. As if Nate has ever had to work without magic. Fighting Johnny is like tangoing with a living hammer. His body is harder than steel and if he gets one grip on you you’re finished. Uhg, what’s up with Nate, pushing me this hard? Probably something he’s not telling me.
“Reeanth’s job is to teach you how to fight as a whole, blending magic and fighting techniques together in a seamless dance of death. When is a fireball the best response? Can what you’re trying to kill die just as easily with a stab or punch? Thinking while fighting is the hardest thing any warrior can do.” This bitch is an exercise in sheer viciousness. I’ve lost count how many times my bones have been broken and if I think that a bit too loudly the stupid A.I. will chime in to remind me. Over two hundred times was the last count I can recall.
My older brother stood in front of me as sweat dripped down my body. Even though I’ve fought and lost so many times today, I still had energy to spare. The runes of rejuvenation and matter-breakdown efficiency were more than enough to keep me going. Pooping was a rare occurrence now. All of that waste matter was broken down by the runes and turned into actual mana, kicking up my healing factor almost up to the level of a werewolf or vampire. Anything worse than a simple break, one minute of Nate squinting later and I’d be good as new.
“And I am here to teach about learning when to run.” Dick. Me actually getting near him was impossible. If we agreed that he could only use earth sorcery, I either got buried in the ground or had to fight through pools of mud that grabbed me with living arms. If he used water, then he just cut my limbs off or used high-intensity blasts of water to grind away my organs. The last time he just covered the clearing in ice and skated away while my feet kept literally freezing to the ground.
The one time I asked for him to fight me with his mind sorcery and I just woke up ten minutes later as he was eating some fruit from what he called his ‘Smoothie Jungle’. Over-powered son of a bitch. It was frustrating to experience this level of helplessness, especially when my body kept telling me that I could easily squash this short, skinny, under two-hundred pound pipsqueak. Sure, he’s around six foot two, but I’m a seven and half foot tall, three hundred and fifty pound Centauri warrior with battle runes and over five years worth of combat experience fighting insane bugs from the Hive!
“No. I’m not fighting you anymore, this is fucking torture bro.” I had had enough. All I wanted to do was relax for the last two weeks before getting shipped off to some magical alien school, even though the weed part of that adventure might not be too bad. Chicks dig weed, and I dig chicks.
A slow clap interrupted my split-second of internal musing. “Took ya long enough,” Nate said with that classic smirk on his face. My brother is a smart man, not always wise but definitely book-smart. “Know when to back off. You’re not always going to meet someone you can take down. This is where you use every other trick in the book, poison, diplomacy, deception, anything to level the playing field.”
“Oh come on! I’ve been giving Johnny and Reeanth decent fights for the past three days!” My whining didn’t go over well.
“Because both of them are in your weight class! What you should have done when fighting me is CHEAT! Bring your armor and weapons! Attack before the match begins, catch me by surprise! Get Reeanth and Johnny to help you out, or maybe Fuzzy!” Wow, he’s really gettin’ worked up. “What was the goal this entire time?”
“To beat you in a fight?”
“No dumbass. We never set a goal. It wasn’t to first blood, to first bone break, to get knocked outside of the clearing, it was just a fight. What was to stop you from fighting with a sniper rifle a mile away, or setting up magic bombs in the clearing beforehand?”
Huffing in frustration even as I rolled up a joint and lit it, I planted my butt against a small willow tree. “I get it. Think outside the box, and honor is for losers.”
“Honor is for the dead.” Nate’s face was stone. The last time he was this cold is when I was getting bullied in grade school and still it chilled me to the core. “I already have scores to settle with the Centauri for mom and dad. And Heaven and Hell won’t stop me if that school does something to you.”
Yup, still a drama queen.