Dogclad jumped down from his position on the roof and landed on all fours, like some deranged b-movie zombie would, and from behind his Grand Dane hoodie he stared with madman eyes at us all.

Témpera, for her part, had dispersed her teenagers, and was snarling at him.

Without turning his body, he did turn his head, contorting to look at the Doberman.

“I came here for small time acquisitions and look what have I found: Watercolors, the legendary Doberman,” he said, and licked his lips.

“Témpera, my name is Témpera,” she said, disgusted. She barked twice then.

Mariana stared, tail wagging, mouth drooling.

“Can I go play?”

“This” I began, calmly, “looks sort of like a terrorist attack, Mariana.”

“That doesn’t answer my question, Walter!”

“…Just let us take off the dress beforehand”

“Wiiiiiiiiiii”

And after extracting Mariana from the contraption and the contraption from its would be murderer, we let Mariana go free and race for the conflict.

“What do we do with the Golden Retriever?” asked Dogclad as Mariana sniffed each dog butt on his person.

“Fight and ignore her. That’s Walter’s companion,” said Témpera, her eyes leaving behind a halo of blue smoke.

“As you know, I don’t do retrievers. They are nigh useless.”

“Indeed, we are,” agreed Mariana, and kept on prospecting butt scents.

I sat up and began pushing through the panicking masses trying to leave the place, breaking the tide and creating a safe path to traverse for the princesses.

“Why do people don’t shove Walter to the sides, Sab?”

“Because that implies touching him, Flor.”

Repulsive, the general populace considered me repulsive. Delicious sensation, to be despised by the object of your hatred, for the abyss to stare back and scream in terror. To exert power over others just in the same way the poles of magnets repel their equals. Power and despisal, what else could I ask for? What else could I need?

A shower, most likely. Maybe carrying Canaver around didn’t come without a little debuff to general odor.

“Hey, boss, that man has skin of pits around his fists. Maybe we can maul him? in retaliation? A little bitty snippy teethy thrashy fun?” butted in Canaver.

“No, we do not maul people, some people are of more use to us alive.”

“Yes, but I... we… can practice self-restraint.”

“Walter, shut him up, I am trying to play!” complained Mariana.

“Why can you hear his thoughts? This is a Necromancer/summon telepathy channel!”

“I have been a very good girl,” she ventured, and then I felt her connection severing.

While Mariana tried to reconnect her telepathic link (Unsuccessfully), I kept advancing into the stage, until arriving close enough to the two soon-to-be combatants, such that our bodies described the vertexes of an equilateral triangle.

“Témpera, are you an Escapist?” I asked, doing a time out gesture.

Dogclad was playing tug of war with Mariana, using a Greyhound skin to do so. Yes, Dogclad was grabbing the skin with his mouth, drooling all over his black and grey, unkempt beard.

“I owe you no answers, Walter Gallardo. Let me deal with this little nuisance, and then the jury can declare you defeated.”

I intercepted a flying Mariana, and we both quickly met the floor. Half my HP, gone, just like your dad.

“Sorry, your girl is fantastic but I have a job to do. No hard feelings, eh?” said Dogclad, and then blinked an eye. His teeth were so fucking unbelievably white. Like, you could drag the CEO of any respectable brand of laundry detergent in front of Dogclad, show them those teeth, and make him admit that, no, their product cannot achieve that level of whiteness.

“Next time aim at one of the princesses, you may even deliver me from their yapping.”

Florencia proceeded to kick me in the ribs. Sabrina went for the back. Shitty masseuses, they made.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“Still better than diclofenac…” I said with a thin voice.

Dogclad came and kicked me, too. His target of choice was my ass. He wasn’t feeling too spicy that day.

Témpera casted a spell and a whole team of teenaged rugbiers came out of the woodwork, appearing from below the seats, from around corners, from behind the Jury’s table. Each one of them was twice my size, and I had not enough brokeable ribs for the whole team.

When the procession of beatings ended, Fernando teleported in from who knows where, presented itself with Florencia and Sabrina, gave them kisses on their half-breed cheeks, manifested a hot coffee from his mind, and carelessly spilled it all over my groin.

The sounds I made, cannot be described as anything but the wails of one thousand souls trapped in a jar. A jar in which someone introduced an anime figurine into. And now that someone was lowering his pants.

“What if his future wife wanted children?” asked Flor, innocently.

All the eyes converged upon her. Then, laughter broke from everyone else in the room. Me included. Except mine was more like the ear-piercing screech resulting from torturing the voice actors for Alvin and the Chipmunks.

“Okay, okay, disperse, everyone, I have to kill and skin the Doberman,” said Dogclad , getting in fighting stance: all fours all over again. “Maybe doberwoman.”

Témpera began snarling again as I, in fetal position, watched the incoming confrontation.

“I can heal you,” offered Mariana.

“So they beat me again?”

“It wasn’t a question,” And the bitch proceeded to cast her now useless healing spells on me. I wasn’t in danger, she never healed me when I was in peril.

“Thanks, Mariana. Extremely Cash-money on your part to force me into health.”

“You are welcome, but we accept debit and credit too,” she promptly answered, and then licked her nose. My little dumb thing.

The rugby players gathered behind Témpera. The eyes of the pit bull skin gloves of Dogclad began to emit a faint red light. He stood, half like a man, half like a meth-fueled creature extracted from the depths of NYC subway. With muscles twitching, with his loincloth made out of … I think it was Bernese mountain dog, hanging unsteady, as if there were wind inside the building. Maybe it was the big hole in the ceiling. Maybe it was Dogclad’s surging power. Fifty-fifty.

Dogclad launched the first attack, a savage lunge aiming for Temperás neck. She rolled to her left to dodge, with Dogclad’s fist digging into the smooth surface of the dance floor. He turned swiftly and like a lumbering bear took some brutal swipes. He could have been a bear. One can never be a hundred percent sure of the sexual orientations of psychos.

A couple of rugbiers tackled Dogclad, and the rest of the team followed, burying him in a mound of manflesh. He stood back with no trouble, the sport players still piled over him, being lifted by the man with no effort whatsoever.

“Do you have more of those, like… Sams? I feel some of them are called Sam. Mike, perhaps.”

“Three of them are Mike and two Sam, yes,” Témpera confirmed, eyes closed as she beckoned for all the children of the wild to foregather and provide her with their aid.

And in her aid they came. From every crevice, from every crack, from every corner, just like the rugbiers, came a tide of young screeching girls. They crawled as they cried the name of their favorite 27-years-old-suicide-candidate singers, they slithered as they slew their parents bank accounts for fake tickets, like cockroaches… no, worse, like teenagers.

Dogclad disembarrassed himself of the rugby players by shaking like his clothes may have done long ago, and then stopped a rabid girl on her tracks, grabbing her face with a single hand.

“Did you know the bully bloodline doesn’t only increase damage against dogs, but also slightly against minors?” he commented casually, before crumpling the girl’s skull like a paper bag and making her flailing body go limp. “Your summons suck, Beast Master Acrylic.”

“Go on, kill another one,” she said, calmly.

Dogclad obliged.

“This… makes me hungry. What would my uncle say about this?” he pondered for a second. “Stop eating my liver, you are not the eagle sent by Zeus to torture Prometheus. Yeah, that’s what he would say, if I hadn’t eaten his liver out.”

And he killed another teen, and another one, and soon they were unable to be spurred into battle by Témpera’s will.

The Doberman let out an ugly, almost villainous laugh.

“Mariana, send her a cease and desist order: I am the bad guy here.”

Mariana rolled immediately, dodging my command.

“Why are you like… I raised you, I know.”

Silence made me know everyone there agreed with me.

Témpera resumed her laughter—in a calmer way now, at least.

“What’s so funny? For you, I mean. For me, killing them is absolutely peak entertainment. Look, squish. Dead teen.”

“When my summons die, the power of my bloodline skill increases, moron!” Témpera boasted.

Sweet, people here loved to dump exposition dialogue about their powers. That was good for me. Maybe my unique skill was having the smallest iota of common sense.

Témpera’s figure blinked white once and again, faster, ever faster, and soon her coat bore the shine of steel. Or silver. A metallic Doberman, down to the teeth and eyes.

“Aren’t you blind like that? your pupils are covered by metal!” I observed.

She responded as it was natural: by repeatedly emitting the Windows XP error message characteristic “tung” in quick succession.

Témpera froze in place. Dogclad tried to move her, and he noticed she left behind an afterimage when dragged around.

A proper error message manifested in front of us:

“Dear inhabitants of Planet: Dobermans have been deactivated from existence until a world-breaking bug with their bloodline power gets solved. We apologize for the inconvenience. If you are having any issues currently, reset your life to return to normality. With love, Demiurge.”

“Dammit, you ruined my quarry, Walter!” Dogclad lashed out at me. He was at least two and a half meters tall, and stared at me from his vantage position.

I scratched my butt. It was itchy.

“Aren’t you going to apologize?”

I stared at him, at then at my nails. I had to cut them, I had to. Too long.

“I doubt there is a torture method in this world that can make Walter behave like a decent person, Dogclad,” butted in Flor.

The collie lady came up to us. “Well, seeing the Doberman disappeared, you could go away now, right, Dogclad, murderer?”

“There are still things to hunt in here. I am sure I can get something else of use if I catch someone trying to be a hero. And you cannot stop me, Felicia.”

“But I can. Give me the prize as if I had won the competition and I’ll beat this motherfucker up,” I said, disrespectfully pointing at the semi-nude bodybuilder in front of me.

“If you can…” Felicia conceded.

Dogclad broke into a hearty laughter.

“You are a weakling, you are not even at the level cap, you are—”

Dogaclad’s own hand betrayed him when the pit-bull skin pulled towards his face. Again and again he hit himself on the nose, making a noticeable dent in his health bar.

“Walter Ignacio Gallardo, necromancer.”