Cal’s sinuses closed because of the perfume elementals, and so he had to breathe through his mouth. Touring with the Illudere Family Singers, he’d come across more than his fair share of fragrances, and what was assaulting his nostrils was the pungent claws of old lady perfume. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, and could only assume that mixed in with the perfume was several decades of cat dander.
Cal couldn’t function, could hardly breathe, or else he would’ve run screaming from the monsters shambling into the room from the first level’s inner sanctum.
What were those things?
The monsters were eight feet tall, bright red, with green and white spots in their hamburger flesh. Instead of clothes, hamburger buns covering their unmentionables.
They hurled handfuls of their own pink flesh at Cal, but he raised a ruby-red shield to protect himself. He didn’t want to get hit with what looked like raw hamburger mixed with tomato paste. Were those chopped onions and green peppers?
Amorfo slid down Gwen’s rope and pulled javelin out of his quiver. He screamed nonsense words, which didn’t help them, until Kronke translated. “He say these are Cardiganna Lowhand’s Tomatoed Hamburger Golems, but she call them by a shorter name. Sloppy Joes!”
A squishy chunk of Joe hit Cal’s shield, and he saw that instead of onions of green peppers there were sharpened pieces of steel and broken green glass.
All that stuff clattered off his glowing red shield wall.
Kronke managed to sit up. His legs were still stone, but he’d regenerated his upper torso. He lifted a hand and with a flourish, sent his Sweet Breezes sweeping across the room. At least five of the perfume elementals were blown against the wall by a windstorm that smelled like cinnamon rolls.
Kronke wasn’t done. He lifted any number of papers and then threw them all the Sloppy Joes, who were soon covered from head to toe with the documents. Cal might be able to clean them off, but it would take some time.
Cal spied Barb’s personnel file, snatched it up, secreting it away in his robes. It might be important later.
Gwen, using her steampunk wings, ferried Hurricane to the ground while Perkle and Helga descended on her rope.
Amorfo was hurling javelins while Helga aimed her musket at the head of one of the Sloppy Joes. She fired a flame bullet into the thing’s skull, and the mouth-watering aroma of cooking hamburger golem filled the room. It was kind of awkward how good it smelled.
Helga pointed at the open door. “Get to the pedestal. If we can retake it, we won’t have to spend our time fighting minions in here!”
But for a second, the doorway was filled with dozens of short potato men with rectangular arms and legs. Their hands were like brown, crusty clubs. They were surprisingly fast and strong, and there were so many of them. It was impossible to tell what the little potato men were thinking because their faces were nothing but the deep-fried potatoes mixture as was the rest of their bodies.
Amorfo shouted something.
Kronke translated. “Little men are Tater Tot Thugs. They bad but might taste good with ketchup.”
The tot thugs threatened to overwhelm them until Helga went riding into the middle of them, in full Destructive Charge mode. The potato men were bowled over for the moment, but immediately several of them got to their feet.
Cal was surprised when Amorfo grabbed his arm. “View and see, Pal. View and see against the pearl. Let’s true it!”
Kronke was lost in the fight, so he couldn’t translate, but the meaning was clear enough. It was Amorfo and Cal against the world.
The new lethal comptroller found himself running with the Dudusa, past the Sloppy Joes, past the Tot Thugs, and into the inner sanctum. It was no longer the Soul Crusher’s Office, no, the cubicle walls had been turned on their sides and now were tabletops with long benches running alongside them.
Those formed natural, if odd barriers to keep them from getting across the room to where a long cafeteria counter formed a blockade in front of an oven, with the Omega Audit Crystal shining on top of it.
Between them and the oven were Cardi’s main minions, Mean Ghouls, sitting at the cubical tables. But closer were the Gym Taters along with a ton of the Tot Thugs.
Amorfo swept off his glasses. “Me handle potato people. You snow and get mast Bean Ghouls. Get to crystal and crash it. Watch out for Lunchladies!”
Cal wasn’t sure he heard that right. Lunchladies? A second later, a piercing whistle blasted Cal across a table.
The biggest of the Gym Taters expanded out of his sweatsuit, becoming even more muscled. On top of his big potato head, he had a crew cut, and fire blazed out of his eyes, cooking the potato skin on his face. The luscious smell of a perfectly baked potato filled the air.
“Snow, Cal! I’ll squeal with the Coach Potato!” Amorfo didn’t have his minions, and he wasn’t in his right mind, but the Dudusa leapt onto a table and then jumped onto the coach potato, ripping his whistle away. Amorfo hurled it away, plucked off his sunglasses and turned the Tot Thugs to stone. He then turned his petrifying gaze on the Gym Taters. He got a few before the Coach Potato picked up Amorfo and threw him across the room.
Cal didn’t waste a second. The faster he broke that crystal, the faster they could pull the plug on the cafeteria madness in front of them.
Cal used his staff to TK Oh! himself up into the air and over the tables.
The Mean Ghouls, though, all opened their little purses, and pulled out oversized weapons—swords, battle axes, and the like. Cal was reminded of an Aldaleeran anime he’d seen about high school girls with medieval weapons murdering each other on some island somewhere. They leapt onto the table.
They glared at him, sneering.
One opened her huge, fanged mouth. “Oh, look. The nerd thinks he can sit with us. Not in this life, nerd!”
Cal didn’t point out the fact that he was flying. Nor did he tell them he would never sit with them because the cubicles made for terrible tables. What had Cardi been thinking?
And why were all of her minions high school themed? This cafeteria-like inner sanctum was a lot like the schools that Cal had visited when the Illudere Family Singers first started out, doing PSA skits and songs for the local middle and upper adolescent academies.
Cal didn’t need to say a word. He let his new Data Storm skill do the talking for him. He threw it down onto the collection of Mean Ghouls, and he felt the Apothos leave in a rush. It took a huge amount of power, and there was no way he’d ever be able to do that spell back-to-back. The results, though, were worth the energy expenditure. Suddenly, the world exploded into pie charts, bar charts, line graphs, scatter plots, histograms, and even some funnel charts.
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One of the Mean Ghouls saw something in a Venn diagram she didn’t like. “What? Mean Ghouls aren’t where ugly and stupid intersect!”
Another of the minions grimaced. “Cardiganna Lowhand’s stupid quotient hasn’t increased that rapidly during the last eighteen months.”
Most just stood there, mouth agape, and then the true insidiousness of the Data Storm spell took over.
One of the Mean Ghouls dropped her ridiculously large sword, jumped on her friend, and ripped out her throat with her huge fangs. Then she leapt onto the next unsuspecting victim. It wasn’t long before all of the Mean Ghouls had forgotten all about their Aldaleeran anime gear and were ripping each other apart with their huge fangs and long, red fingernails. Blood, hair, and school uniforms littered the ground.
Cal flew over the tables, and then he realized why Cardiganna had used the cubicle walls as tabletops. They started flipping over, creating a maze, and adding obstacles. For those who couldn’t fly.
For a second, Cal thought that Cardiganna hadn’t thought she’d be facing off with raiders who could fly. Then the explosions started.
The elven accountant was pelted with burning hot macaroni, covered in sizzling hot cheese. There were flying pieces of pepperoni around him. Then, yes, some Sloppy Joe mixture. A rock-hard hamburger bun hit him in the face, and he felt the blood drip down his face.
Below, at the buffet line, were several cannons, and they were shooting at him.
There was also a creamed corn cannon, and a gusher of hot creamed corn rose into the air. It melted through the tables and set the cubicle walls on fire. Smoke filled the air.
Tot Thugs were operating most of the food cannons, but there were two figures there, two very large women. Those had to be the Lunchladies that Amorfo had warned Cal about.
Cal was forced out of the air. He lowered himself to the ground immediately used the Ruby Staff to grab cubicle walls, flinging them out of his way. Moving forward, he felt like a god. How did he have so much power? How could he be doing so well in an inner sanctum by himself? The answer was easy. He was an Azure Branch champion with a B-Class, Rank-10 Funk Soul.
Once he reached the buffet line, he tossed the cubicle wall into the creamed corn cannon, destroying the weapon and covering several Tot Thugs in lava-hot creamed corn. Their shrieks were oddly satisfying as was the aroma of their little potato bodies cooking in the corn sludge.
He then tried out his new ranged attack, his bullet points. He wasn’t going to get fancy as far as the font went. He went with round dots. He flung out a hand and sent one bullet point into a meatball cannon, right in the barrel. The end exploded taking out several other cannons and their Tot Thug operators.
With all eyes on him, Cal cast both Bored Meeting and Advanced Apothos Analysis. His Triple A spell showed him where all the energy was coalescing, brought into sharp focus by his Spectacles of Awareness. He began his Bored Meeting presentation by clearing his throat. “Yes, now, it’s interesting to the see the two-man Apothine energies coming out of the Celestial Node, there in Figure A, because in essence, Cardiganna’s minions are a very particular shade of Morta. Now, let me show you figure B, so we can talk about the various strategies that Ms. Lowhand could’ve used in creating this inner sanctum.”
One after another, the Tot Thugs stopped what they were doing and then settled down on the ground, falling asleep because yes, the data was overwhelming them.
But not the Lunchladies.
Through the smoke and pools of creamed corn, the two women stayed back, eyeing Cal, as he walked forward.
One of the ladies was eight feet tall and bean-pole thin, with a terrible complexion, and a very large mole on her chin. Her hair—underneath her hairnet—looked like steel wool. Her weapon of choice seemed to be dual fryer baskets, one in each skeletal hand, leaking sizzling grease onto the floor.
The other woman was shorter than Cal, but about as wide as she was tall. Her cheeks were bright red, and she had enormous red lips. She had a huge hairnet and bright blue gloves. Around her expansive belly were shish kabob skewers loaded onto a belt. From Gwen’s collection of silverware, Cal thought they were throwing skewers.
In one hand, she had a whisk like mace. In the other, she held tongs, but when she clacked the tongs together, there was the crackle of electricity. Great, she had electric tongs and some kind of spectral whisk mace. Good thing Cal was wearing his sweater vest because it would protect him from the lunchlady’s lightning.
Cal hoped her weapons were exogenous manifestations. He wanted to give them to Gwen. Lightning Tongs would really add to her armaments.
The elven accountant took a second to analyze the Apothos coalescing around the two lunchladies. He could see they were powered by a mixture of Morta and Toxicus coming out of the Omega Audit Crystal, but that was only because the crystal was daisy chained to the other four Celestial Nodes, one of which was Cardi’s down on the fourth level.
Cal noticed time slowing as a message popped into his vision.
<<<>>>
Ultra Audit Tipline Message
Foe Type: Minions
Foe Name: Ella Shigella Salmonella (the tall one) and Jill Jillardia (the round one)
Forecasted Foe Level: C-Class, Rank 1, with a margin of error of two to three levels.
Suggested Foe Elimination Tactic: Micromanage
Foe Note: I wasn’t sure this was going to work, but you had the Triple A spell activated, and I thought I might give it a try. Not super happy with the margin of error, but with more Apothos, levels, and practice, I think I can fine tune this feature. As for Ella and Jill, you don’t want to fight both of them at the same time. Ideally, they’d fight each other, though you don’t have the Apothos for Data Storm again. I’d risk Micromanage because you need to win this fight, and sometimes a Comptroller needs to take risks.
<<<>>>
Cal read through the message, struck by how personal the message was. Someone was talking directly to him, and it seemed to be the same person who’d given him information before.
Before he could ponder the situation more, time sped back up, and he was back in the moment. He took a second to try and grab the Omega Audit Crystal with his telekinesis, but he wasn’t strong enough to pull it away from the oven pedestal.
He then cast Micromanage on the tall and horrific Ella Shigella Salmonella who had the big hairy mole on her chin. It worked! He had that odd feeling of being split, like when he’d been in a Dungeon Meld.
He felt the weight of the fryer bins, and he immediately turned, and smacked the other Lunchlady with one of the fryer baskets. Jill Jillardia responded by using her tongs to electrocute her partner. Cal shrieked through Ella’s mouth because being zapped hurt. He then started bashing Jill with the fryer basket, throwing boiling-hot grease everywhere.
With the two lunchladies beating the heck out of each other, Cal dropped the micromanage spell, hoping Ella Salmonella would keep fighting. She did.
He then used TK Oh! to lift himself up and over the two squabbling lunchladies.
When he landed in front of the oven pedestal, the door opened, belching fire and smoke. Something was burning in there, and it smelled like fish sticks. The smoke seemed toxic, but Cal entered the field anyway, knowing he was going to spend the next twenty minutes coughing his lungs out. If he were lucky. If he wasn’t, the fish stick smoke might kill him.
He leapt forward and pulled the Omega Audit Crystal off the pedestal. The minute he pulled it away, the oven crumbled into dust, but the smoke remained. Coughing and sputtering, he fell to his knees. He kept the crystal clutched to his chest.
He then must’ve lost consciousness because the next moment, he was being healed by Kronke, who Perkle had wheeled over on the steampunk sled.
Cal coughed out more smoke and wiped the blood off his face. He glanced around, and the room was in shambles. Cast-off, half-destroyed cubicle walls laid in puddles of creamed corn and pizza stains. Crumbled Tot Thugs lay near the corpses of Mean Ghouls who were slowly disintegrating, their Apothos returning to the Celestial Node. The cafeteria counter was gone along with the Lunchladies.
Gwen grinned at him. “Look at you, Cal. Look at you.”
Helga, atop her goat, nodded. “Aye, Calcannis. Ye won the inner sanctum nearly single-handedly.”
Kronke only sighed happily and massaged his stone legs.
Light flooded the room as Amorfo took control of the Celestial Node. With the oven gone, a generic stone pedestal had risen from the floor.
The Dudusa stood near the pedestal, smiling. “I have blue shoes.”
“Good news,” Kronke translated with a grin.
Perkle stood with a gadget that included an audio crystal and a long antenna. “Gosh, I think I have good news too! I think I’ve found a way to contact Harvey directly! But I have to get back into the ductwork to do it!”
Cal was relieved, and he was hopeful, though he still couldn’t believe he got the Ultra Audit Tipline Message during the fight. Maybe it would have some ideas on how capture the four Celestial Nodes below them.
They only had so much time before Barbara Starmyst became a god.
Then? No amount of Bored Meetings or Micromanagement could stop her from exacting her Vengeance. Capital V.