Contributing Author: Zeusified
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Somewhere in the Armpit of New City…
It was late in the afternoon. Warm air rushed from the ocean and across the docks, swept past barrels of whisky and wine. The breeze picked up the scent of raw sweat and the smell of hard physical work like they were roasted coffee beans, sent it all out as a fine blend into the waiting arms of New City.
Dockworkers shouted here and there. They sang low baritone ballads about the sea and their dreams as they moved boxes onto trucks that spat out thick clouds of black exhaust. Beetlebub listened in, reveling in how each song seemed to end in a turn where dreams were dashed and hopes were snatched away, reflecting the life he believed they should live.
A life where they tried for greatness. A life where they tried and failed and fell into the dark and horrible depths, where they swam back up to try again only to swallow mouthful after mouthful of water and slowly drown as it filled their lungs.
A life of Hunger, never sated.
Weeds withered beneath the demonic beetleman’s wilting leather shoes. Fissures in the concrete clawed out toward the edges of the wooden docks, forming points of weakness, branching out as spiderwebs of decay. Beetlebub raised a pair of binoculars to his bulbous eyes. As the dockworkers sang, he scanned the horizon, searching for the Red Scare.
The ship entered the channel, flying through the water at a breakneck, nigh-maniacal pace. Its crimson sails–sails he’d enchanted–were full of hot anger as it screamed past a lumbering freighter laden with colored shipping containers.
Beetlebub grinned as the greens and blues and yellows painting the shipping containers rusted away to sludgy, mangled oranges in the Red Scare’s wake. His grin widened as the ship took the life out of its surroundings and converted it into more and more speed as its sails billowed and bulged with more and more energy.
A man stood on the Red Scare’s bow, bold and brash, one foot on the ship’s railing, as his crew bustled about behind him. He had his rusted sabre pointed forward and was slashing it back and forth, laughing as if dancing on the thin line of death in a duel against the wild seas.
Venomous urchins covered his exposed skin. Their spines jutted out from his forearms like sharp hairs, from his chin and neck like a riotous thistle of a beard, from the top of his head like a rock star’s mohawk. A bright yellow tricorne was pinned there, just above his skull, the symbol of his station.
Beetlebub lowered his binoculars. He stepped off the concrete and onto the warped wood of New City’s docks. As his shoes struck the wood, the wood began to rot. It cried out in pain, begged him to stop, but that was just added flavor, like salt on a steak. Beetlebub felt the memories of the felled trees fall away, and he picked them up, one by one, and bit down on them as if they were fluffy kernels of buttered popcorn.
With the dock eroding under his presence, the demonic beetleman clasped his hands behind his back and waited, thinking about his plans and salivating as he struggled to contain his excitement. It felt good to see his plans in motion, despite the failures sprinkled into his successes.
Failure was inevitable in game like this, in a game where billions of lives were at stake. It was what made these kinds of games fun. Balancing on the trapeze between victory and defeat made him feel alive and, as he watched his pieces make their moves and flounder about the playing field, his connection to the concept of Hunger only deepened.
He needed to win. His hunger demanded it. But it was best to play things slow, to send out his underlings as appetizers before the main course.
Mother Plant might be relentless and capable, but he could feel a change in the air. She was growing tired and, soon, she’d falter. When she did, he’d be right there, digging into her flanks, slurping on her intestines, a hyena on the heels of a gazelle.
Minor setbacks, like the destruction of Warehouse 667, were gentle pushes that required moderate corrections. Beetlebub could sense his perfected fuel at this very moment, running amok in New City’s Shoulder, consuming scrap, growing stronger, wiser, Hungrier.
It shouldn’t be there, but it was. If the Mother Plant and her Host hadn’t stepped in, his goons would’ve been on their way to prepare the fuel for shipment. They’d have taken it to the bad doctor by nightfall. He’d have loaded it into his aerosolizer and blasted it out as an infectious haze, imbued by the concept of Hunger, across the entire metropolis. New City would’ve been his by the time the sun came up.
But, plans often need to be adapted. Circumstances change. If his minions couldn’t deliver the fuel directly to Dr. Hugo Hugo, it just meant the hermit would finally need to step outside of his evil lair. He’d get the job done. The question was–the interesting part was–in how he’d decide to do it. What kind of robots and inventions had he developed over the past decade? What kind of destruction and calamity would they leave in their wake?
All Beetlebub knew was that the mad scientist would put on a fascinating show of death and decay, and he’d be there in the front row, watching.
CRAAAACK.
Beetlebub looked down and smirked. The dock had decayed beneath his dress shoes. It was now thin and potted, warn and waned, and Beetlebub could see the choppy waves through jagged, oblong holes in the wood. He stepped aside to an unaffected area and examined the Red Scare as it closed in. The ship continued to gain more and more speed, refusing to drop its crimson sails.
There were, of course, a few loose ends. It was still early and variables still existed, out there, that could turn the tide and change the game: the Host’s friends, family, and neighbors. His sense of home, his sense of self. The things he loved.
Beetlebub shivered involuntarily. He spat a ball of acid into the water. It sizzled, boiled, and fish floated to the surface, dead.
Love. What a vile, disgusting word. It was nothing to the Poets, though. The pair had already identified Mother Plant’s landing coordinates, and they’d used those to track down the Host’s residence. In a couple of hours, they’d tie up all of the loose ends into a sordid, grotesque bow.
The Poets were a strange pair, but they were effective. They’d leave the Host bare, isolated, and alone–they’d leave him as a husk of himself, a carefully steamed and withered soul full of crunchy, flavor-filled aphids.
The ideal snack before the end of the world.
Drool dripped from Beetlebub’s mandibles. It ate into the docks, ate right through water-worn wood and disintegrated nails.
The Red Scare was close. The dockworkers had all seen it now. They ran on foot, hopped in their trucks and screeched their tires as they slammed on the gas, they tripped over themselves as they realized that the massive ship was going to run aground and that they needed to get away.
Beetlebub cackled as he waited, as the warm ocean air turned sour and heavy. It’d been too long since he’d sent Captain Corrosion out into the world, and he couldn’t wait to see what the man and his crew would do to the shining apple of New City’s Nexus.
He reached up and wiped away more acidic drool as he imagined all of the humans’ precious buildings and cultural icons rusting away into welts in the world. But there was one project the city’s Mayor was passionate about more than anything else. The Casino.
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That was where he’d send Captain Corrosion first.
The fabric on Beetlebub’s sleeve sizzled and turned to smoke, just as the Red Scare slammed into the docks, smashing through wood and concrete, blasting apart barrels of wine and whisky.
Captain Corrosion leapt from the vessel as it careened onward, ripping and tearing through docked ships. He landed with his knees bent, easily and gracefully, just outside of Beetlebub’s passive aura.
He ripped his bright yellow tricorne out of his mohawk of venomous spines, flashed a smile of algae and barnacles, and dipped into a deep bow.
“Yarr! Captain Corrosion of the Red Scare at ye service, oh Ominous Omnipotent One. What be yer orders?”
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Vice Roid was in pain. He was in the sewers. He was on a stretcher. He was under a bright, horrible light.
And his life kept flashing before his eyes.
He was scrubbing cauldrons in the orphanage’s kitchens, trying to get out the last scraps of burnt porridge.
He was running through the slums in New City’s Armpit–the bad slums–slipping through cracks between buildings, racing across the rooftops, sprinting away and flagging, as the other boys chased him down.
They’d catch him soon.
They’d catch him and break him.
Vice Roid was in pain. He was reeling from a punch. He was still trying to run. He wasn’t getting away.
He was crying in a corner in a puddle of blood and rain water and sewage and the worst of what New City had to offer.
They were standing over him.
Taller, bigger, stronger.
They swung that bat into his legs again.
And again.
And again.
And then they left.
Vice Roid was in pain. He was alone. It was dark. There wasn’t a tunnel that he could walk through. No path to heaven.
He didn’t deserve it anyway.
But there was a hand.
A gloved hand.
A hand that burned as he grabbed it, that tore into the flesh on his palm like a horde of fire ants.
That was okay, because the hand lifted him up. It lifted him onto his broken legs and… he could stand.
A voice.
It hurt his ears. It made him want more. It made him want to live.
“You want to live, don’t you, kid?”
He nodded. Somehow, he’d nodded.
“Good. I can feel it. That Hunger inside you. You want revenge, don’t you?”
He nodded again.
Then, he felt power.
He still remembered that feeling. That rush, when he’d turned from weak to strong in an instant.
It stuck with him. In his dreams. In his soul.
“Go get your revenge,” the voice had said. “When you’re done, come find me. I’ve got a job or two for you to do.”
That bright light again. Brighter this time, searing.
A shadow.
Relief.
Vice Roid opened his eyes. Tried to move. He was tied down to the stretcher. He flexed, but his muscles couldn’t break the bonds.
A face.
A face with circular glasses and a mess of horribly long and stringy black hair and a far-too-large chin.
He knew that face.
Dr. Hugo Hugo.
A voice.
“You want to live, don’t you?”
It was high and mighty, self-assured but nasally. It was grating, but not painful. Not like the Boss’s voice had been.
“Yeah,” Vice Roid grunted. It came out as a cough. A hopeless, hungry cough. “I want to live.”
“Good. I can work with that. You want revenge, don’t you?”
He held a syringe high over Vice Roid’s heart in a robotic hand.
Did he want revenge this time?
Vice Roid craned his neck to stare at the tip of the needle. It dripped a multicolored liquid down onto his bare chest. His pectoral muscle came to life and shook a fist at it.
If I say no, he won’t save me, will he?
There’s only one answer then.
“I do.”
“Excellent.”
The needle struck Vice Roid’s chest. It pierced right through his living pectoral muscle, who cried out in agony, between his rib cage, and into his heart.
His heart began to pump faster.
Faster.
Then, it came to life.
Vice Roid heard it call to him.
He heard his own heart call to him.
Its voice echoed in the small, bright room. Raucous, vibrant, Hungry.
“IS IT TIME TO LIFT?” it asked.
Vice Roid let his head fall back to the stretcher and laughed in relief. Dr. Hugo Hugo cackled like a maniac right along with him. A robotic hand reached out and wiped the tears from Vice Roid’s eyes with a tissue.
“Yeah, buddy,” Vice Roid said, grinning. “It’s time to lift.”
I can’t believe I’m still alive.
“LET’S LIFT.”
Then, Vice Roid felt it again. That unbelievable, exhilarating surge of power.
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Autumn Apartments was a six-story building in New City’s Shoulder with a sliver of charm and a turnstile entryway. A gaudy decorative banner hung from its façade, covered in faded yellow and orange maple leaves. A mild-mannered mustachioed fellow paced about beneath it. He had slicked back hair, wore a purple vest, and occasionally would lick his fingers and turn the page of his magazine, Motorcycles for Manly Men, before leaning against the wall and diving in to read.
Across the street, a different man leaned over Cafe de la Mood’s window-side table to stare at the jotted scribbles of his partner’s notepad. It was Tuesday, so they were comparing Haikus.
> His engine yet roars
>
> Despite broken cylinders
>
> The gas light turns on.
She raised an eyebrow as he fell back into his chair and furrowed his. He took a sip of black coffee, considered her poem, and asked, “What’s he love, Valia? That’s what I want to know.”
“Isn’t it obvious, Reese?” the woman said, pointing at the magazine held in the hands of the man across the street. “He loves his bike.”
Reese looked at his own notepad. His handwriting was neater. Looping cursive. He picked it up and showed her.
> Her helmet gathers
>
> dust with his, her heart stopped
>
> He can only coast.
Valia nodded. She went to sip her latte again, but her cup was empty. It was almost time. “A good attempt, if misguided. Your eyes must be growing old, Reese. You missed his tan line.”
“Tan line?” Reese squinted out the cafe’s window. It took him longer than he’d like to admit to see it, but once he did, it was obvious. There was a distinct difference in color between the doorman’s neck and his face. He still rode his motorcycle.
“I see. This is your victory, Valia. I concede. You seem to be correct. His love is for his bike, after all.”
The woman smiled. It was paper thin, like the school notebooks she used to scratch her spoken word into. She stood up and placed a tip on the table, then placed her notebook carefully into her oversized purse.
“We go with my plan, then?” she asked.
“Of course, dear,” Reese sighed, tucking his own notebook into the shirt pocket of his plaid button-up. “We go in guns out, knives out, as always.”
Valia’s smile widened. Dangerous. Predatory. She slipped her hands into her purse, pulled out a sleek modern pistol and a knife sharper than the love they shared. She gave him a caring look, eyes softening, head tilting her tied-up hair to the side. “It’s okay, honey. One day, you’ll write a poem suited for the stars and we’ll go with your plan for once.”
Reese smiled, too. Reckless. Wild. He reached into his jacket and withdrew an old-school revolver. He unsheathed the wide-bladed knife at his thigh, and it caught and reflected the cafe’s warm light.
“I know, Valia. It’s why I write a little more each day. Just you wait, one bright sunrise inspiration will carry me toward my first victory.”
They stepped out from their table and pushed in their chairs.
A small group of people huddled in the back of the cafe, cowering. They’d been there for a while. Valia and Reese waved at the barista, who tried to act like a shadow behind the bar, out of sight and out of mind.
“Please. Please don’t kill us,” the barista asked.
Valia waved at her with her knife and smiled, “Thanks for the latte, sweetie.”
The bell jingled behind the Poets as they stepped out of the cafe’s front door. They waited with guns and knives out for a lull in traffic so they could cross the street.
The doorman looked up from his magazine and spotted them. Shock and surprise widening his eyes. For a moment, it looked like he’d forgotten how to run.
Traffic cleared.
The Poets made their move.