When giving My Reputation the powerful shape of a giant bull, I didn’t consider the most important of details: Zombies are automatic, and I, a man of tradition, only ever learned to drive manual. So I grabbed onto intestines and other wet, slimy cow-parts for dear life as the hooves of several dead cows clashed against the concrete, trampling anything that got into the way of My Reputation.
Mariana had several advantages: indestructability, higher maneuverability, and being a Golden retriever, which meant nobody would try to harm her. She ran into a pedestrian street and I doubted if I could, or not follow. The sign said “No transportation automatons past this point.” I saw Mariana’s shape becoming smaller and losing herself amongst the crew of busybodies and window-shoppers.
I had to make a decision. I was a villain, but if this was a crime, it would be a step up into the pyramid of heinous evil. Destroying the world was one thing, perturbing a pedestrian street? The sun mocked me high in the sky, lowly crawling towards the horizon. “Time, Walter, you have no time!” the big dumb ball of hydrogen seemed to say. Well, fuck you too, sun.
Out of sheer love for Mariana and convenience, I decided to become he who through shadowth walketh andth sawth dea… death already has th, why does proper English have to foil my glorious crimes against anglophony? Fuck it. Deatheth toth theth faceth, yeteth heth endureth.
I ventured an step of the bull made of cows into the street. Nothing felt particularly wrong about it. I didn’t feel my alignment changing from lawful evil to chaotic evil. Maybe I had always been a devil with a penchant for entropy, for disorder.
We trampled over a grandma, seven street peddlers, three automaton lap dogs, one non-automaton lapdog, another old lady that judging by the cat and wine stench was not a grandma, a religious procession, and uncountable Mariana’s tail’s victims. I also ran over some potted plants and deeply regretted it.
Mariana, on her part, came to be known as the bane of clothes peddlers, food-related street vendors and a local cat that tried to scratch her as she went and ended up tail-batted into a Picasso of a feline against a passing, tall cylindrical building. Things exploded in a rain of splinters and debris when she as much as touched them. In other words, fireworks by she who despises them.
“Mariana, come back here!” I called.
“You are not my dad!”
“How do you know that?” I questioned, trying to keep my composure as I closed in, centimeter by centimeter.
“Your coat is black!”
I couldn’t counter that argument.
Eventually, Mariana got tired of running and began sniffing butt in a serial predator fashion. She used funny teleport to stay ahead of me, always behind a caboose. The one to pass ultimate judgements of any and all bums.
This, by the way, was faster than running for her. So there I was, committing a crime worse than jaywalking, my meat-bull stepping on old hags, and my dog teleporting away while farming butt scents for her database.
Soon enough, we exited the pedestrian street, into the main plaza, and there, I lost sight of Mariana.
“Fuck it.” I pulled the sinewy reins of My repuitation and halted. I looked behind. It was better to stash the zombie into my inventory and blend in with the crowd, just until people stopped screaming and calling for my decapitation.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Behind the trio of half elves, I was kicking the streets with my arms crossed. We had searched on the sly all day, and there was no clue of where Mariana had gone. The nightlights stuck on the sides of buildings began to light up the evening: greens, reeds, orangs, violets, that diarrhea-inspired color nobody knows who made into lights but exists and somehow makes its way into cities anyway. The buildings lumbered to their resting places, where they laid on the ground, resting their overworked legs.
Cornelio, with most of his eyes covered with an arrangement of black fabrics that resembled a hastily done turban, froze in place.
“We are being followed,” he commented. “It’s the castle guy.”
“Castle guy?” I asked the only one of us with eyes in the back of his head.
“The flower weirdo.”
“Ah, our little old Gatorade pirate.”
Florencia scratched her head.
“Who?”
“Fernando.” I clarified.
A crumpled ball of paper was thrown besides us. It was opened to reveal a Forget-Me-Nots. A second later, the flower was gone, and, with mask and robes, Fernando was in its place, right hand grabbing left wrist, arms relaxed to show he had nothing to hide.
“Hello, Walter, did you happen to lose Mariana?” he asked, probably with a smug grin under the mask.
“I unleashed her onto the world to purge it from its sins. Where did she teleport to? Do you know?”
“Yes. Also, hi Sab.”
“Hi cunt.” She said.
Florencia had taken the chair out of her inventory and was slowly approaching him for a swing, as if she were to swat a fly.
Fernando stepped back calmly to avoid a new beating. “For, dear, I am not letting you catch me again.”
“But I want to pound you into the ground!”
“And so does your sister!” Fernando relied, his hands curled into fingerguns.
“You wish Violeta would pound you….” Sabrina replied.
“Right, unlike yours, her man is alive. Sorry, I had forgot.” He stuck the salted knife in the wound.
“I mean, it’s okay you forgot, Alzheimer’s is hereditary after all.” Welcome to Walter’s house of circular salt-stabbing.
“Maybe you can heal my sorry condition using the power of your pet… when you find her.”
“How does it feels to know another man impregnated your crush with twins, Fer?” Pushed further Sabrina. Florencia was covering her ears and leaning against a nearby tree. She was not particularly amused by our behavior.
“Better than trying to make my family tree into a family cobweb,” I barged in.
“Whose side are you on, you insufferable virgin?”
“Listen Sab, I hate both of you equally, then Florencia is slightly less hated because she has the mind of a special-needs child, and then there’s Cornelio, whom I actually like because he is silent most of the time.”
Cornelio nodded along, satisfied with my pyramid of hatred.
Fernando took his mask off and regarded us face to face. “Forget this tomfoolery, I can take you all to where Mariana is if you are willing to stop her. I, not as an escapist, but as a man invested in the wellbeing of this world, offer to help in whatever proves necessary.”
A chance to recover Mariana could not be passed up just like that.
“Go on…”
“She has invaded Planet’s biggest city, licked the president to death and taken control of the government. Instantly afterward, her outer coat exploded in an army of dust-bunnies that covered the whole capital, and slowly crawl and consume the outskirts. People caught have been enslaved and are being aggressively paid to research, and I quote, squared chicken.” He spoke like he had trouble believing his own word. But that did sound Marianesque, so I decided to take the bait.
“Listen, Fernando, if you can teleport us there with your power, we would be thankful. But, lest you leave us to die in some wasteland, I have some security measures that you, if you are so invested in the wellbeing of the world, will accept.”
HE spat to a side and crossed his arms. “Fine, state them, Walter.”
“You will teleport all of us at the same time, and won’t get your hands close to our foreheads without being held in a chokehold by Florencia.”
He pointed at me, I and raised an eyebrow. “Can the chokehold be done with her legs?”
“I’d sell Florencia for three pieces of mint-flavored bubblegum, but not to you, no.”
He sighed. “I had to try.”
“Fine, as an extra precaution, I will summon Canaver before going.”
Canaver growled form inside my inventory. He was undergoing his beauty nap and I would not interrupt it, if I knew what was good for me.
“Okay, change of plans, no Canaver.” I extended my hand towards Fernando. ”Flor, chokehold him. Break his neck if he tries anything dangerous.”
“You better stop you dog, Walter,” he reciprocated the gesture. “Gather round, I need to be touching you to teleport you with my transposition spell.”