After inadvertently crushing it in the routine training sessions of the Sect of Many Guts, Kalon had been kidnapped from his straw bed at night and taken to the middle of a starry field by a pack of bulky bulls and cows. Jagger had naturally taken notice of the kidnapping, and decided to go along with it, even helping the ruminants carefully remove Kalon from the straw bed and place him onto the pig leather piece they used to haul him away, still sleeping. Waking his owner up, naturally, crossed Jagger’s mind, but letting him get taken —and cooperating with such an act— he deemed more enriching for his soul. Something interesting was bound to happen. Maybe a cow would die. Maybe he could eat the deceased’s liver. Maybe they would come across some precious reservoir of mosquitoed water.
During the relocation of Kalon, he shifted in his sleep and rolled off the leather patch, eliciting a series of gasps and panicked moos as, already outside the barn and under the gaze of moon and stars, gravity forgot how to do its job. The still snoring boy fell skywards, bounced against a parcel of air, and then ended the life of an innocent owl as his ass flew eastwards, trajectory that got interrupted after a bored constellation extended a branch to bat him back west. For a few moments, Kalon opened his eyes, pushed with his arms against empty air, and stood there, confused in the middle of the sky. He grabbed a passing cloud, gave it an exploratory bite, decided it would make a good pillow, and went back to sleep.
The god of tribulations, tempted to interfere, pushed his wheelchair back a bit, inhaled deeply, and whimpered like a scared and feeble rat when he noticed I was writing about him. Yes dear, you. Do you want to become part of the annals of history?
He doesn’t, shame. I don’t know why he dislikes me, really. I never wronged him.
The cows stared at the sky, and they found the activity quite unpleasant. “How do we get him down?”
Jagger did what he knew best. “Heavens!” And so, a piña colada sprouted in front of him, for his enjoyment only. “As for your query.” he lapped up a deep sip of his drink. “No intercoursing idea. Kalon always comes down. Eventually.”
“You are quite the useless thing,” blurted out Ancient Energy Drink Uncle Guttinghorn, who whore a bubbly pink cow-t-shirt.
“Useless is my second name,” Jagger boasted, inflating his chest with pride and air, because pride by itself is quite deficient on the mass and volume departments.
“You shouldn’t be proud of being useless!”
Jagger shrugged and rolled onto his back, scratching it mirthfully against the plain’s grass. “I am a dog. I have been systematically denied a proper pup’s life since the day I first got picked as Kalon’s weapon. I have died; I inhabit both his mind and mine simultaneously. I have been used as a baton, as a sword, as a flail. I have been useful in ways no dog should be. I deserve to be useless once and for all.” Jagger let his body fall to the side, keeping his legs still as he closed his eyes. “I want to be a dog for once, damn you. Nos this sentient aberration I have become.”
The cows didn’t know where to hide from Jagger’s pervading victim role. One of them closed her eyes and saw a land of promises, of cheap real state and lost variety. She took her right hoof to her forehead in a salute and her fur began shining with white light. “I have found my place: I shall live among the branches of the stem group of the therians.” She said, and the light intensified, such that it seemed to burn the cow away before slowly receding into a little speck.
Jagger got up, sniffed the little dot of light with warranted curiosity, and kvetched in disgust immediately after.
“What’s the matter?” Asked one of the cows that didn’t seem to mind the fact that a friend of hers had moved out of existence.
“I am allergic to acts of taxonomical republicanism, such as abandoning a crown group.”
“That’s an ism. I don’t know which one specifically, but an ism,” protested the same cow.
“Listen: I am sometimes racist, sexist, specist, plantist, poorist, purist, cataloguist, dentist, and everything else you may accuse me of. You know why? Because I am a dog. I can afford to be a silently —and sometimes loudly— judging asshole without becoming someone’s steak-breakfast. You cannot, Belinda. I also have a tragic puppyhood to justify it.”
Aeonic Cryptid Uncle Guttinghorn stepped in between Jagger and Belinda, and raised an eyebrow at the Rottweiler puppy. “Behave, disciple Jagger.”
“I’d tell you to suck my dick but there’s only one master of blowing here, and that’s me.” Jagger curled his paw against his chest. “Up. Blowing up. Happens at random. It’s a bitch of a condition.”
The shower of removed dirt and vegetable debris that fell over the group made them realize Kalon had just landed. “Good, Disciple Kalon’s training can begin,” Said the Bodiceattva, that had popped out from under a nearby rock.
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“Where you waiting there all of this time?”
“Yes. I am a piece of clothing, Jagger. I can fit in unsuspected places.”
The dog proceeded to shrug and finish his piña colada. “Whatever, just… try to kill him, okay? I have a suicide pill I am dying to use.”
“You are not a good pet,” Guttinhorn glanced at the Rottweiler puppy.
Jagger put up his best Iberian Spanish YA heroine voice. “I was raised to be a weapon. My mother was a bitch; my father ran off after getting her pregnant: he had to chase that alluring, homebreaking monito del monte…” he began his narration with watery eyes and the waft of alcohol coming out his jaws.
“Blah blah blah justice blah blah blah revenge, yes yes.” The Bodiceattva interrupted him, thanks to the gods. “Wake the subnormal untermensch up.”
“Such flawless combination of degrading terms for the moron, milord. I’ll gladly serve. “Jagger lowered his head in a curtsy and then approached Kalon’s head, that was lower than his ass due to how he had landed: bent at the waist, with one leg curled all the way backwards, the foot resting over his head. “Kalon, Samari found the coffee machine!”
The boy got instantly raised form the land of dreams and jumped to a standing position. “Where! She cannot drink that much coffee! Not again!” He panicked for a second before his brain processed the presence of the cows and the Bodiceattva. “Guh?”
The Bodiceattva had no eyes, but if he had had them, one of them would have been twitching. “Kalon, worry not, we needed to wake you up to test your might.” The Bodiceattva hovered around the boy, appraising his form marred with dirt and grass from every angle. “Get ready to fight against me. I will hold back… just a bit. I don’t expect you to win this fight, just to survive.”
Kalon Raised his hands to his sides, the liquid puppies welling up from his shadow to cover his entire body, except his face, in his battle dress.
“Ready?”
“Whenever you are.”
The Bodiceattva suddenly manifested inside and around himself an ethereal body of green light, an androgynous figure that lost no time before driving an uppercut into Kalon’s gut, breaking through the liquid puppy dress and sending the boy flying southwards.
“He… he should have gone…” The confused master of martial arts pointed tentatively at the sky.
Jagger felt a tingling in his butt. “Oh boy here we go.” And so he followed the Call of Kalon’s hand, Flying tail forward towards his job position as a sword.
With a smirk Kalon grabbed Jagger and got ready to rush towards his adversary and give him a taste of the Road of the Rottweiler, but too late he realized there was no need to. Two cold fingers rested on his back. The boy slowly turned his head to see the master of the sect pulling a leg back to kick his butt. He had no time to react before being sent to crash against the ground, a Kalon-and-Jagger-shaped-hole left steaming on the field.
“He’s too strong,” Kalon blurted out, raising his head as he saw the Energy construct looming over the edge of the hole.
“He’s underground!” Jagger announced with a mix of fear and glee.
“But his whole body is there…”
That’s when the Bodiceattva turned, showing the backside of his energy body. Or , rather , the lack of it: it was as if the butt cheeks had been flawlessly sliced off. “Forbidden technique: Butt civil war.” He announced the instant before Kalon felt the pounding in his own behind. A flurry of hits in the bottom elevated him out of the hole, the pain in his rear unbearable as the severed cheeks of his adversary pummeled his and drove him into the air from the sheer violence enacted.
Kalon’s rear burned in pain, and it coursed through his body as each of his adversary’s buttocks alternated impacts on his. “This is the end, Guh…”
Jagger pulled out a script from gods know where, then a pair of glasses with Pomeranian-shaped frames, and checked it. “Nah, you live to fight Cutbastra in a final showdown. That is the end.”
“Sweet!” Kalon gathered his liquid puppies and coated his butt in them, creating a buttcheek-proof armor there and beign elt to fall back to earth as the Cutbastr’as technique dissipated.
The boy turned midair, aiming Jagger towards their adversary and Summoning the puppies of his soul to birth forth a pupnado from Jagger’s nose.
The animated piece of clothing yawned and extended a single finger. . The pinky one.
The twister of solid and liquid puppies and the sharpness of Jagger contacted with the pinky and the ensuing shockwave ripped off all grass blades in the nearby area. Kalon smirked: now they wouldn’t hurt themselves by running around with knives.
But the pinky defense seemed impenetrable, And soon, as the Pupnado began to wane, Realization dawned on Kalon’s face, as he stared at the featureless, bald head of the energy construct.
“What’s holding you into the air?” The Bodiceattva answered. Kalon looked behind him, at how he had fallen into an acute angle and remained so, with his legs extend far above the level of his head and both his arms holding Jagger as a sword.
The Boy barely had time to cover his face with both hands before a fingle-flick fired from his adversary’s hand, sending him flying away once more.
What followed was… well, pinball. Randomly determined pinball. The Bodiceattva kept moving faster than the eye could see, appearing behind Kalon to backhand him off in a new direction, again and again, until the boy ended up eating dirt, whimpering as his whole body suffered from Pain. Jagger freed himself from the oppressive weight of his owner with a deft crawling, and then spat a pill in his hand. “Eat it, it will ease the pain.”
“Okay, mate.” Kalon quickly took it and bit into the gelatinous capsule, which made him start to foam at the mouth. “Guh!”
Jagger sighed as the cows gasped. “You are killing him! you gave him a suicide pill!” Accused a Guttinghorn that showed an unusual fear in his eyes. “We need to know what the poison in it was so we can get him an antidote!”
“Xylitol and Ibuprofen.” Jagger revealed as his owner rose, the pain being washed away from his battered body. “Tons of ibuprofen,” he said smiling with all his teeth as Kalong called for him to fulfill the role of a sword once more.
“I feel renewed, Jagger. Thanks.”
“Just end this before the gastritis ensues.”
“What? Kalon asked, and didn’t notice a punch from the Bodiceattva was coming in direction to his face.
But Jagger did, and sent a mental message to him. In the last second, a protective layer of liquid puppies formed a shield next to the boy’s face, dispersing the energy from the hit as it broke.
Kalon vaulted backwards and contacted his Avatar inside his head.
“Power?”
“…fine.”
And so he charged against his adversary, determined to impale him with his dog.