The Doom of the New York Yankees

You know, given the concentration of supervillains in the greater New York area, you would think they would be the thing I can’t get away from. I mean, the Hand, a no shit cult of criminal undead Ninja are waging a quiet war to take back the criminal empire that they lost when Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Daredevil and Iron Fist finally got a look at what the Kingpin was hiding so well. It turns out that the fat man wasn’t just a pretty face. For all their magical power and super powered leadership, they lasted a hot minute once they were out from behind Kingpin’s carefully crafted and lovingly maintained cover operation. You wonder if they regretted letting him swing, as a non demonsucking member of their Beast worshipping cult. Honestly, they are not doing so well because Kingpin is hurting them as bad by supporting the “independent” families as the heroes are, even with the fat man in the federal pen.

There are Green Goblins in the sky, Rhinos in the street, mutant Morlocks in the sewers, even the New York Power authority has some sort of maniac turned lightning elemental in it, but honestly, I have to hunting to find supervillains. My problems on a day to day basis are mostly the super power known as corruption. Money talks, and in New York it mostly looks at laws that protect the little people, smiles and said “except for me” and proceeds to subvert every legal protection to pave the way for the rich and powerful to remind us why the French and Russians executed every aristocrat back in the day. The fact is there are so many supervillains in New York because the corruption casts shadows deep enough to hide monsters.

I am a monster, so I know the shadows fairly well. My people, the ones who look to me for protection, they are the little people who try to survive in the cracks they fell between when society chewed them up and spat them out. The street people, the illegal immigrants trying to make a living under the table, the sex trade workers who just want to be safe trading the thing assholes in their past taught them was their only use. My network extends a long way, the homeless who bear my mark, who bear the thorn circle of my tattoo have some of my blood in them. It isn’t a gift I give lightly, but it does allow them a path to learn to control their own madness. I am not a cure all, they will remain by human standards, insane, but they will be functional and they will have the ability to chose how to express their neurodivergence. I give them food they don’t have to beg for, shelter when the weather gets killing hot or cold, and a way off the streets if they want it. Many do not. Those are my best assets. They are so close to all seeing eyes that sorcerers and spymasters around the world have no idea how little it costs to get the same effect. All you have to do is give people back self respect and self control, and you have an army that is loyal beyond the dreams of cult leaders. It is hard to hide from me on the streets.

Sugar and the girls (and boys, and in betweens) who work the sex trade have shifted from street entrenched to escorts. They pay is better, the safety is better, the rewards are higher, and they get me information about other strata of society than the street eyes do. What my circle of thorns tattoo gives them is a little bit of unconscious glamour, they really can become more attractive, and more excited when they think of themselves as hunting. Sex and death are both matters of predation to the Unseelie Fey, so the magic I shared with them makes them both better at it, and allows them to feed off of it, become more excited by the hunt it represents than the honestly underwhelming mechanical bits of the sexual acts themselves. They also get the benefit of my blood’s resistance to disease and poisons. Not anywhere near as strong as my own, but enough that they won’t be getting sick from anything they encounter, and if you rufie them, they will feel it and stay together long enough to send out a cry through their circle of thorns to the idiot who gave it to them.

That would be me.

Goblins are insanely territorial. I am the Goblin King, so my territory is not my hunting ground like a semi rational goblin, my territory is my people. I didn’t choose my people. They just kind of happened. I rescued the first of them by accident, then more of them for expediency, but they saw who I really was, the monster beneath the mask, and they didn’t flinch. Discovering you are not human after you are a grown ass man is a harder blow than you think. When I came here to play a hero, I had a whole lifetime of being afraid I was a monster (because of what I now know are my goblin instincts), made a hundred times worse by both discovering I was a monster (goblin left as a changeling to human parents), and getting the magic and memories of the stolen and now dead human child that was stolen from my parents. The dead boy that should have held my name. No guilt there. Nope. Not a bit.

Sure, my people are hookers (all genders), street people, illegal aliens ( funny when I am an actual non human, or Canadian, using a perfectly legal US ID that is legal because it is a fake created by a US spy agency, and therefore a lot less questionable than actual real ID’s as government computers WILL NOT flag it), but they are what keeps me human. For a given green fangy value of human. It is possible that my attachment to them is irrational. I am a literal fairy tale creature walking the earth, not the good kind, the one that eats the children who didn’t get home before dark, and left little bits of Prince Charming nailed to his parents castle gate to remind them the cost of encroaching on our forest. I am allowed a little irrational if it limits the spree killing natural expression of goblin ennui.

Felipe was one of my people. He had come over from the Philippines to study economics for his family, prior to his being married off to another family as part of a business merger. He wasn’t the heir, he was the spare and was expected to be a good little asset and keep both his new family menfolk happy enough with his ability in the office, and wife happy enough with his ability in the bedroom, to allow him to push for more favorable dealings with his blood family in their ongoing partnership. There were so many things wrong with that statement that I can’t even begin to unpack it all. Felipe’s biggest issue with it is that he had always thought he might be gay, and college without parentals and outside of the somewhat homophobic culture of his socio-economic strata in the Philippines had been an eye opener. When his student visa expired, and the family wanted him back to seal the deal, Felipe ran off. They gave him the choice between his sexuality or a place in their family, and guess who lost? Pretty much everyone. Without his parent’s money, he lost his place at NYU, his apartment, and his legal right to stay in the country. To get back at them, and without a lot of really good options, he threw his family the big bird by turning to the sex trade to earn his keep.

He was really good at it. I can’t swear to it myself, as I don’t swing that way, but Felipe had his coming out with the jocks of NYU, and he came to specialize in jocks. His niche market was professional athletes. You would think that anyone who is famous and in amazing shape would never have to pay for sex, but it turns out that if you are vocally conservative and publicly homophobic, but just can’t get through a season without some hot boy loving, you pay for both discretion and the particular type of hunger you have. Felipe was a good earner, and honestly quite enjoyed the game. I came to New York so I could do terrible and violent things to bad people, especially super powered bad people, so I am in no position to judge. On balance, he had more good days, and fewer bad experiences than I did.

Why is this important? I woke up at 0543AM, my blood churning with poison, my heart pounding with fear, and the faint taste of Felipe in the screaming in my head. He was dying. He was mine, and he was dying. Terrified, alone, dumped like a piece of garbage in an alley. He was mine, and someone threw him away to die like a dog in an alley.

I screamed as I shot awake. I leaped from my bed to grab my pants, my shirt and my guns. I chambered a round in each, put the safety on and reholstered. Sugar came through the door with a baseball bat, and Candy the Lizard (a mutant whose ability when it kicked in gave her lizard pupils, eyes, poison fangs, cold blood and decent regeneration. Rescued her from an anti-mutant mob and now she runs our purchasing department) came in claws out and ready to bite someone.

I snarled, barely able to control my rage as I husked out. Someone hurt Felipe. He is poisoned, dying in an alley. Who was his date?

Sugar ran the escorts. They were all independent contractors, but for safety and legal protection, Sugar ran the network that everyone used for scheduling their dates. She had it all at her fingertips for a reason. This reason.

“Anthony Vulp, shortstop for the Yankees, the rookie ReTrumplican” Which was Sugar speak for conservative republican Trump supporter, all of which explains why he couldn’t go to a gay bar and find a date like a normal guy who wanted some no strings attached fun. His kind were rabidly anti-gay, even if the loudest of them had more than a few gay lovers in that closet of theirs.

I opened the window and prepared to jump out.

“Email me everything you can dig up on his residence in town. If Felipe dies, he dies.”

I shut down my mind, I was a Changeling, not a grown goblin. Most of my magic was unconscious. It got better when I hunted, even better if I hunted at night, but it was dawn and that is a weak time for goblins. A true goblin could do a hundred times better at tracking, a trained elven lord even better. Because of my dead Changeling twin’s power that came back to roost in me, I have both goblin and elven magic, but no conscious knowledge of how to use it. I had figured out a bit, but I was a cave man with a slide rule, not as helpless as a cave man with an Iphone, but not exactly able to do nearly as much with the tools I had as a real goblin or elf could.

But my blood was goblin. My blood was in Felipe. I am the Goblin King, and one of my own was dying. The rage of a man, the territorial instincts of the goblin, the malice of the elf lord were all in harmony. Though the dawn waged its eternal war on fairy magics, there is no sunlight in the veins, and the song of the hunt is the song of blood. The song of blood is the song of my people. My blood sang to Felipe’s and the bit of my blood that marked him as mine. His blood sang in reply.

I tore from rooftop to rooftop. I didn’t think of taking a cab. It was rush hour in New York, I could run faster than a police car with lights and sirens could hope to cross half the distance. I did not care about the destruction I caused. Normally I am careful. I am not Spiderman to cling to walls like a freaking bug, nor am I Daredevil with his cute little batons that shoot grappling hooks. My claws dug into bricks like industrial strength drill presses, my legs when I kicked off a roof hit with the force of a stick of dynamite going off. I triggered alarms as I went, but I felt the song of Felipe’s blood slowing, the poison in it overcoming his borrowed resistance, his heart and liver failing, his diaphragm oddly suppressed, no longer urged to breathe even though his blood fouled with CO2 as his heart beat less and less life giving blood.

I smashed into a flat on the second to last rooftop. I had no choice, the damned building had twice the clear space around it as anything else and it took my best leap just to clear the distance. I shattered the pole and the green flag with the black cross on it hit the ground. I almost slid on the flag as it caught under my feet, but I accelerated to the edge of the building at blinding speed as the alarms started to go off and some sort of armoured figure charged onto the roof after me, but I was already in mid leap for the next building.

Some sort of energy blasts shot to my left. I looked over one shoulder and a figure in what looked like black 15th century full plate armour with a green surcoat and full armoured face mask shot bolts of some sort of energy after me. He was missing by a country mile, and I could feel that odd itch of active technological sensors. Technological sensors and fairy magic get along fine. We make tech our bitch and it says “thank you sir, may I have another.” I didn’t even have to think for my glamour to offset my image to robocop the green cloaked black knight so he was shooting empty space while I jumped.

I hit the alley, and saw Filipe dropped in the alley, propped in the doorway with a syringe hanging out of his arm like a junkie. His client, or his clients people, had decided to get rid of the embarrassing gay lover by giving him a forced “hot shot” of fentanyl laced heroin and leaving him to die in the alley as another in the regrettable/forgettable overdose deaths that don’t even make the news. He wasn’t dead yet, but he was not breathing. He was maybe still saveable, but not for long, and not if bozo the roboclown hit him with one of those energy blasts.

I turned and bounced back off the building on the west side of the alley and intercepted the charging flying robot. I grabbed the head, and put both feet on the chest, and ripped the head off. You know, I think I recognize the armour. That looked a lot like Doctor Doom. Come to think of it, that flag looked like Latveria, Doctor Doom’s little medieval wonderland. If that flag post I landed in was the Latverian Embassy, then it would make sense I triggered a Doom-bot, one of his little robot henchmen. He was not a man to piss off, so I made a mental note to send a full Letter of Regret and offer to pay schild (an ancient term that means suffering price) to balance the scales between us. Fairy is a place of clashing powers, you do not live long without respecting the Powers, Thrones, and Dominions that rule there. You respect their territory, and enforce the respect of your own. You offer apologies and reparations if you transgress unknowing upon another’s territory. If they don’t accept, then fuck it, rip out their hearts or die trying. Polite is plan A, but ultraviolence remains plan B. Old world diplomacy at its best. Be polite, until it is time to not be polite.

I bounced off the East Wall of the alley and fell like a sack of wet cement to the pavement. I rolled breathlessly to my feet and charged Felipe. His bronzed Asian good looks normally made him looked like he stepped off a GQ runway as a male model, but his lips and eyelids were a sort of bruised blue, his skin pale and sweaty. The needle hanging out of his arm a defilement. Felipe viewed his body as a temple. He wouldn’t even let a twinkie in it, let alone drugs. The scum that used him and tossed him aside denied him even that dignity. I jammed my claws into his right arm, cutting open the artery, and then yanked the needle out roughly on the left arm to open the opposite vein. Making savage slashes on my own left and right wrists, I let the blood pour out of me as I let my goblin nature rise to the surface and work the magic of the Unseelie, the blood bonding of the dark fey. Old school blood magic.

I pulled the blood from his right artery into my own veins as I raped his own vessels with my own blood pumping into his left vein. My blood surged into his heart, taking control, forcing it to beat at MY will. My blood filled his lungs, and when my blood reached his diaphragm, I forced it to spasm, pulling it down as I forced the muscles of his ribs to rise. He drew a breath of life giving air in, then pushed it out. The blood I forced into him held oxygen from my lungs, but it would not be enough to save him if his own lungs did not restart, if the heart I forced to beat starved for oxygen and died while purging the poison.

My head swam as I pulled the narcotics into my own body, my own cells breaking it down. You cannot poison a goblin, I have to be careful not to poison anything I touch. If I wanted to, my body can produce a pharmacopeia that can provide stimulants, aphrodisiacs, pain killers, paralytics, clot formers, clot blockers, nerve poisons, blood poisons, and some enzymes that simply dissolve their targets into black sludge. That is easy. Pulling poison out of somebody else blood, keeping my body from killing human blood that is foreign to my system while running it through my own system to purify his plasma and heal his damaged blood cells is hard. Like brain surgery level hard. Have I mentioned, I am kind of new to this goblin gig? Brain surgery for a resident hard. Brain surgery for a mediocre medical student in his first surgical rotation hard.

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That is when the purple fire began to run along the ground behind me. My senses began screaming that more power than I ever wanted to feel was raging behind me. The elven knight who was my shadow self, the memory of the dead child stolen from those who thought they were my parents stirred in its sleep and muttered “Sorcerer, magus, one of the wise. Power mortals rarely achieve. I would have needed another century to reach that far I think. I should have wished to live to face such a foe.” My shadow self was impressed, and then went back to sleep, to dream of whatever former human now dead elven knights dreamed of.

I could not stop what I was doing. I was purging the poison from Felipe’s blood, but I was transfusing it at a rate he could afford to supply, and I could clean. I could not stop. Well I could. Felipe would die if I did.

I felt the magic form a single circle around me, a binding circle. One would not hold me. Not even Manannán mac Lir, not Morgan LeFay could bind me with one circle.

I looked up and there stood the real thing. Not a Doom-bot, but Victor Von Doom, right-wise King of Latveria, sorcerer, scientist, warrior. Some called him hero, others called him villain. It took all four of the Fantastic Four to match him, he had managed to fight the Hulk, the whole of the Avengers, and I had heard whispers that he went into Hell to fight Mephisto and came back again. There was purple fire blazing from summoning circles in the air before both his gauntlets, and purple lightning crawled up his armour and bled from his eyes like his armour contained a dark star not a man.

A second circle began to form around the first. Hmm, could I break a second circle? If I tried to run now, then Felipe would die. No. Felipe was mine. He would live, my own fate was my problem. Felipe was owed my protection. If I couldn’t survive delivering it, that was my problem. The Unseelie Fey have no sympathy for the weak. A king stands before his folk, if he dies there, he didn’t deserve to be king.

I rose, the lines of blood magic still linking me to Felipe. Doom prepared himself for my attack, but I bowed instead, the words of the Elven Knight flowed from me as often happened when matters of etiquette arose. It is almost like my inner goblin took a look at social situations that were not intended to end in bloodshed and just surrendered and let the elf deal with it.

“Hail to thee, Lord of Latveria. I have debt to thee this day. One of my liege folk lay poisoned and dying. In my haste to save he who is owed my protection, I have transgressed upon thy territory. For this I owe you my apology, and a schild set by you to balance the scales between us.”

A third circle of purple fire flared about me. Well that was it. I couldn’t break a thrice circled ward set by a newbie Wiccan pre-teen, let alone what my inner elf described as a sorcerer the equal to what he hoped he could have been in another century.

“Your glamour doesn’t hide you from my sight, goblin. Do not try to pass yourself off as human before Doom. Name thyself and thy purpose before I destroy thee for thy affront.” Doom’s voice was impressive. He didn’t boast. He simply pronounced fact. He wanted answers, and if I lived or died was entirely up to him. His belief was so unshakable that I found it hard to not accept it myself. Was I a goblin, I would have simply acknowledged the presence of a greater predator and allowed myself to die as nature intended. I was not a goblin, I was the Goblin King by my will and by my own deed.

“I am the Goblin King. You will forgive me, Lord Doom, but the needs of my retainer outweigh the needs of courtesy. Basically, fuck off Doom while I save this boy. He is sworn to me, he has done you no harm, and I am exactly half way through saving his life. If you wait until I have done that, I will let you claim your schild, including my life if you choose to set the cost of one flag pole and one security robot as high as my life, but if you cause this boy to die for your ego, I swear by the Moon and the Tree that I will fill the streets of Latveria with the blood of a thousand of your subjects for the death of mine.”

I felt the bolt hammer into my chest. A living whip of lightning that blazed pure pain down every nerve of my body. He could have killed me with it, yet he did not. He hung me upon a blazing blade of lightning so that every nerve of my inhuman body blazed with pain. Pain my power could stop, could silence, could banish with a flick of my will. All it would take was stopping purifying Felipe’s blood. I could save myself, if I just let him die.

I locked eyes with the scarred face behind the mask. Blue eyes met blue eyes. Two monsters faced in an alley filled with inhuman screams and forbidden blood magic. Two wills clashed, and neither yielded.

Ten minutes, I hung on that blazing bolt of living pain for ten minutes while I cleared Felipe’s blood of the poison, and healed the injuries from the beating that he had also been given. The marks of strangulation at his throat made me wish for a meeting with a certain shortstop that would end in long periods of screaming, and require a total repainting and carpeting of whatever room I found him in. I didn’t think I would get that chance, as when Felipe started awake with a gasp, I flicked my own power to break the bolt that connected Doom to my poor abused nervous system.

I fell twitching to the ground, but gathered Felipe to me and looked into his eyes.

“Hey, Felipe. Are you okay now?” I asked gently, trying to ignore the three burning circles of magical power that sealed me in, and an angry Doctor Doom that loomed (if there was an Olympic event called looming, Doom would bring back the gold, probably the silver as well.) behind us.

“Boss, it’s my fault. I am so sorry. The date went well, just when I told Anthony it wasn’t unusual for more macho guys to need to bottom to balance out, and that he gave amazing enough head that he could totally go pro in my line of work too he kind of lost it. He beat me so bad I couldn’t think. He started to strangle me, then his ‘handlers’ broke in and decided that the best way to cover it up was to dump me in an alley and give me a drug overdose. No one is going to ask any questions about a dead faggot overdosed in a back alley.” Felipe said bitterly.

I gripped the back of his head and made him look up at me.

“You are mine. Sugar and the rest know your date went bad, they know who tried to kill you to cover it up. Even if I hadn’t been in time, that bastard would not walk. You belong to us, and we belong to you. No one harms me or mine. I am the Goblin King, and those who hurt my people die screaming. That is the meaning of that circle of thorns tattoo you bear. You have a place, you have a home, you have a folk and you are protected. ALWAYS.”

I rose and faced Doom.

“This boy has no part in the business between us. He has been a victim of an unworthy man already this night. He walks out of here.” I said, it wasn’t a question.

Doom looked at the boy. He snapped his fingers, and a car pulled to the end of the alley. Turning his voice boomed in the dawn alley, not an amplifier, just the voice of command. “Take this boy where he wants to go. See that he gets in the door safely. If any try to stop him, deal with them.”

I nodded, one king to another. Felipe crossed the three burning lines of power, too human for them to be a bar to him, scooted past the floating Doctor Doom like you would a blood covered polar bear that seemed to be friendly at this moment, and scooted for the limousine that had duplicates of the flag I had smashed through on its front fenders.

We stood, observing each other. He allowed himself to settle to earth, facing me. He reached out a hand, and clenching a fist, broke the three circles that bound me in place. The gesture was unnecessary for the magic, but holy fuck did it look cool. I may have full on memorized it to copy whenever I figured out how to make that spell work myself.

I bowed to him, not taking my eyes off him, as we were gentlemen at war. Proprieties must be observed, but caution is the way that killers show respect for the power of their foe. I gave him respect. I didn’t expect to live through this, but on the off chance I did, I had zero intentions of remembering this fight with any sort of shame. I would treat him with the courtesy owed my senior as a warrior, as a sorcerer, as a noble, and as a paint the walls with blood predator. If I came out of this fight alive, I wanted the memory to be clean, for I would probably never know its equal.

“I thank you for your courtesy towards my liegeman. I offer my apologies again for the destruction of your property on the embassy roof, and the security robot. My discourtesy was inexcusable, but it was my life, not my retainers that should be forfeit. I am prepared to offer schild equal to both my own rank, and your own in this matter.” I finished the formula. This was not something I could say lightly. Fairy magic is a stone bitch. I cannot lie. When I gave my word, and I spoke as the Goblin King not only my power, but the power of the world itself listened, heard, and wove itself into my words. I had given to Doom the right to set his price.

He could ask for my life, and I would stand there and let him take it. He could demand a duel for satisfaction and honestly that didn’t look like a different ending than the first. He could demand my service, basically slave contract. I had been in the wrong and if I wanted to finish saving Felipe there was no room for half measures, if I wanted to get Felipe out alive, I had to literally place myself in the hands of Doom.

I faced him without fear. I mean, I was fucked, but it was my choice. Whining about it wouldn’t help. I was my father’s son. I would face my consequences without fear. I was my mother’s son. I would protect those I cared about, and worry about the cost after they were safe. For all that I was never human, they made me wish to become the man they tried to raise. That is the hill I choose to die on.

Doom spoke. “This retainer of yours, he is a prostitute?” His voice seemed to have two modes, outright threat and Shakespearean actor, right now it wasn’t threat.

I nodded. “He is. His clients are professional athletes.” If Doom had a problem with my liegeman being gay, or a sex worker, then polite would go downhill fast, but I would remain in his power until he chose to set the suffering price. Fairy magic was a bitch that way.

Doom asked another question. “His client chose to beat this boy, then leave inject him with lethal drugs to be found overdosed in an alley. His parents to be told that their son, rather than being murdered, overdosed and died in a garbage strewn alley?” Doom asked, again sounding like he was building up to a full on Shakespearian monologue.

I snarled, my own emotions too raw to fully contain. “He did. Anthony Vulp, shortstop for the Yankees.”

Doom raised his hand like a Roman senator giving the speech of his career. Power leaked from his eyes and crawled over his armour. He rose in the air and his words beat at the air like thunder. The Voice of Doom sounded, and it echoed beyond this world, shaking the realms that bordered this one as he wove his will and magic into the Fairy magic of my debt.

“Then let this be the price of your transgression. This worthless dog chose to murder a boy and dump him beside my own embassy as if he was free to murder the innocent in my sight without reprisal. This is a shame to my name before the whole of the city. It is not enough to kill him. His death will be gone in an instant, but the insult will linger. Let his punishment be more public than the shame he offered me. I do not want him dead. I want him unmade. I want his dreams stripped away, I want his wealth stripped away, his fame stripped away, and I want it all to be by no hand but his own. Let him become a failure and a mockery. Let his name become a joke, his fate become a joke. Let his shame become the only thing his name will ever invoke.”

The power of the oath slammed into me, and black lightning shot with blood crimson flared around me and bled from my eyes as I answered. “SO MOTE IT BE!”

I fell to the ground, consumed by the magic wrought under the dawn sky that loved the Unseelie not and hates goblins the most. Doom soared off majestically. I kid you not, you can tell a Doom-bot from Doctor Doom because Doom-bots robes and cloak flutter in the direction of the wind, and at the direction of the wind. Doctor Doom soars on wings of drama, uplifted by waves of badass, and his cloak full on flutters majestically because he is Victor fucking Von Doom.

I wrapped myself in my human glamour, walked three blocks away and called for a cab. I was all superhumaned out. I needed a nap, about a ten pounds of meat and an entire cheesecake. I also needed a plan. I stopped at the bakery and got three cheesecakes. If I wanted to eat an entire cheesecake, I needed two others to offer to my liege folk or the fearless bastards would eat mine. I swear, you eat a pimp’s heart out in front of someone and you used to get respect, fear and awe. Now you just get patted on the head as they steal your cheesecake. Humans are not as normal as they used to be. I blame Disney.

Over three cheesecakes, Sugar, Tomas, Felipe, Candy and I brainstormed about how to make a man destroy his own status, destroy his own fame, and destroy his own self. I mean, I mostly did ultraviolence, subtle was not really a goblin forte. It turns out three sex workers and a lizard girl mutant combine to be a thousand times nastier than a murder spree goblin. They came up with a plan, and you know what, I could do it. It was a variation of the protection spell I had given my people. Basically a bit of my blood into his body to root the spell in his own flesh, to use his own power to shape and run the spell. It turns out that leaving a sperm sample on the person you try to kill is unwise both from a CSI standpoint and a magic one. Sperm is a funny thing magically. It is better than blood. It is bloodline. It is your seed, the part that holds the essence of a man’s potential. He left it on Felipe, an Felipe was more than happy to offer it willingly to me. Got to love Fairy magic, I can’t take things like that and use them. Anthony Vulp, gave it enthusiastically all over Felipe’s shoes while demonstrating throat singing skills the like of which could support an Onlyfans account of the highest tier. Felipe gave me the shoes with absolute joy to do with as I chose.

After the committee of “let that bastard lose everything for what he did to Felipe!” had defined the terms of the spell, I wove it with my blood into his seed, and through it, into his balls. Yes ladies and gentlemen, if he chose to find a sorcerer who had the power to do anything about this, they would cheerfully point out that the best anyone, including Doctor Strange the Sorcerer Supreme, could do about the spell was cut off his nuts and thus free him from the spell.

Cut off your balls, or deal with the curse that was now written in your very seed.

Such a lovely curse. We cursed him with glamour, a glamour he would cast upon himself. Just a little glamour, almost unnoticeable. He would see everything that moved slowly perfectly normal. The faster something moved, the farther off where it actually was he would see it.

A slow game of catch he would not notice a thing. His glove would catch the ball, not dead center, and not off in any consistent direction, but always just a little off where it should be.

However; if he were to step into a batting cage, he find at the slowest speed the best he could do was graze the occasional ball enough to foul it off. At normal speed, he would whip that bat no closer than an inch away. At the speed of a major league pitcher, he wouldn’t get close enough to hit a basketball. He could take a throw from a five year old, but he would drop a fast throw from an infielder on a squeeze play about one time in three, and from an outfielder about two times in three. He could put his whole body in front of ground balls hit towards him, and while he could mostly get his body to stop it, it was at least the second attempt to get a grip on the ball and throw it to the other infielders.

He tried to murder Felipe for telling him that he sucked well enough to turn pro. Now he sucked as a pro.

His batting average went from one of the top in the league to below the average pitcher. His error rate was something that belonged in the beer leagues, not the American League of major league baseball. As a side effect, I swear this was not intentional, but is funny, the proximity of his penis to the balls anchoring the curse, and his own weird equating his penis with a baseball bat, he became unable to pee in a toilet or urinal without splashing at least half outside. Before he was put on waivers, he was brought into the managers office and forced to sign a written agreement to sit down when he pees or face ten thousand dollar fine per cleanup.

Anthony Vulp, was a broken man. Everything that made him special was stripped away, and once he began to fail at the only skill he had, his own mind turned against him and he became incapable of performing any task with success. His addiction to drugs followed, and in a cruel bit of irony, his death by drug overdose followed within four months.

On the day his death was announced, the Latverian Embassy delivered one hundred and twenty roses, a case of champaign, and an assortment of Latverian soaps, herbal face masks, shampoo and conditioners that were the sort of “traditional herbal” that pushed the boundaries between good chemistry and witchcraft hard enough to be the best of both worlds. There is peace between us, the debt is paid.

I have to say, if Doctor Doom was a measure of the villains in this city, the heroes had better up their game. There is talk of a group vacation there next summer. I am honestly not against it.

There you have it, my epic battle with the Yankees probably cost them a shortstop, and possibly a pennant. I did not fight Doctor Doom, which you can tell because I am still alive to go on to perhaps less terrifying adventure. Felipe is back working, but this time only with Mets. He has sworn off Yankees altogether. Life goes on. New York is a city that has seen stranger things, and this little goblin had best learn faster if he is going to survive them.