I approached the door. It slid apart before I even touched it.
No one was there.
“Burin-Aarrrgh!” My vision suddenly doubled as a pang of nausea threatened to rip my stomach apart. I stumbled back towards the bed I’d woken up in and…and everything changed. Meat. Everything was made of raw flesh. The bed, the walls, door, even the floor I was standing on. And it pulsed beneath my feet, making me fall back onto my butt-
The impact stopped the nausea near instantly. My vision cleared and everything around me went back to normal.
“…Is this Hell?” I asked, eyes narrowed. Had the dream with Hertz been a trick? Emily had mentioned that Nocticula was fond of games like that. Giving hope, letting her victim think they’d escaped, only to yank them back in for another, fresh way of torture.
Something caught my eye. Over on the other side of the bed, my guitar case was leaning against the wall. My breath came out shaky as I got up and slowly walked to it, sure that the bed was seconds from sprouting teeth and pouncing on me. I step kept half an eye on it as I ruffled through my case. Everything except for my rifle and guns were there. Even my bombs and bots. When not activated, I kept my little guys in a case lined with foam. I chose five of them at random and set them down on the floor around them. They’d already been implanted with a special bullet that would allow me to control them. Two of them stretched, one waved up at me, and the last two started fighting.
Attention! I thought down at them. In unison, they all hopped into a single file line and stared up at me, arms straight at their sides.
“Good,” I said. I took our various knives and daggers I kept in my case and gave each of the bots one. The little guys might as well have been carrying broadswords. Without my guns, I looped a few bombs to my belt and took out the Kukri. I sighed down at it. It’s not that I can’t swordfight, but that was always more Persephone’s thing, plus this Kukri made painful memories start to resurface. The only reason I hadn’t traded it away or outright ditched it was out of a respect for a doofus paladin I’d once almost called friend…
“Focus on this story, Terry,” I scolded myself. And so, blades in hand, me and my robotic vanguard approached the door again. It’d closed while I’d been inside preparing. It slid apart again.
“Go out there,” I told the bot directly in front of me. “If there are people on the other side, give me a headcount.”
He nodded and did as told. Dragging the dagger behind him with one hand, he looked back and forth and then turned back towards me, raising four very tiny fingers.
Four. But “four” what? Demons? Enemies?
Well, I wasn’t gonna find out just staying put. So, steeling my nerves, I stuck my head out just enough to see into the hallway waiting on the other side. Unlike in my room, there weren’t any windows, with the walls and high ceiling all forged from polished steel. It was spacious and reasonably populated with humanoids. All of them wore militaristic uniforms in varying shades of blacks and greys. The nearest one, a male with too-wide eyes in charcoal grey, waved at me as he passed by-
“Ah! What?!”
I’d jumped him. I wrapped an arm around his neck and dug the bladed edge of my Kukri against his jugular. Down below, my bots pressed the points of their weapons against they guy’s calves, ankles, or shins.
“Where the hell am I?” I snarled into his ear. Yet, if he offered an answer, I didn’t hear it. Before I could stop myself, I clamped my teeth together and squeezed my eyes shut as the same wave of nausea bubbled up from my stomach and invaded my mind. It lingered as I forced my eyes back open. It took all of my self-control to not cut my hostage’s throat right then and there.
I was no longer holding a man, but a humanoid bug. The face was ant-like, with two bulbous green-black eyes, and mandibles clicking rapidly against each other. I glanced past him and saw that my surroundings were back to being forged from wet meat. Yay.
Suddenly, in my ear, a familiar woman’s voice chuckled, Oh, you’re going for the PG-13 rating. Some scary situations and mild violence. You know, I never would’ve thought a Mighty Ducks and Small Soldiers crossover would work, but I think you’re making it happen.
I turned my head sharply towards the voice. No one was there.
“Did you hear that?” I hissed at my hostage.
“Um, that was the Admirable,” he said, showing me his tiny-barb-covered hands.
I threw him off and grabbed a bomb from my belt. As I did so, I glanced past bug man, to see if the others were coming to help him out. Because of that, I found myself staring across the hallway at fat, tentacle-faced moon beast.
Yep. Bomb Time.
I chucked it at him and prepared to run the other way.
But my bomb suddenly stopped, midair, as if caught by an invisible hand.
And then it turned into an apple. A set of too-white teeth appeared next to it and took a wet bite. They then formed into a wide smile as a face and body steadily unraveled, becoming a pirate. She was tall, wearing a scarlet coat with gold trimming, knee-high black boots, and a horned hat. A six-winged parrot sat on her shoulder. The woman took another bite from the apple and then said through a mouthful, “What? What’re you gonna do? Hit me with that fish?”
I looked down.
Instead of a Kukri, I was now holding a large, freshly-dead fish.
I stared at it, and then at her, and then threw the fish at her.
As it flew, my surroundings shifted again, going from flesh to metal. Bug man and the moon beast also changed back. The latter quickly jumped in and caught the fish before it could hit the pirate lady. Kiss-ass.
I sent a mental command to my robots. They formed in a circle around me, knives out, as I started marching away from pirate lady and her goons, down the hallway. “Nope!” I called back. “A whole lot of nope! I’m just noping out of here!”
“Good thinking!” she laughed after me. “Burin’s down that way!”
At the sound of the dwarf’s name, an uncomfortable ringing filled my ears. It took me a second to recognize it. It was the dwarf’s voice but sped up. I stopped dead and tried my best to focus on my breathing. I’d heard his voice back in the room, as well, but he hadn’t been there. Were we still linked somehow? But wasn’t he supposed to be linked to Emily’s body, not me? And did this have anything to do with how everything kept turning into the inside of some monster’s stomach?
Finally, my mind settled. When I opened my eyes, I fully expected everything to be meat-time again, but no. My surroundings were still normal. Ish. Resigned, I turned to regard pirate lady. “What. Is. Going. On?”
She tossed the apple’s core away and clasped her hands together. “Well, you wouldn’t know this, because you were playing Uno the last time they went to the dreamlands? But you’re in the dreamlands.”
“….Okay.”
She nodded. “Good. Let me explain-Er, wait. No. There’s too much. Let me sum up instead.” She raised white-gloved finger. “So the short of it is that Baba Yaga has your kid. And she’s going to eat her soul. I want to help you because Emily getting eaten would make Lyriana sad. But in order to help you, there are some things I need you to do for me first. So,” she gestured to me and then back to herself repeatedly as she said next, “help me, help you.”
I didn’t have nearly enough self-control to keep my left eye from twitching at the sight of the smug grin she had plastered on. “…Who are you?”
“I’m Batman!” she growled, leaning in menacingly. She then burst out laughing near immediately and waved a hand. “Just kidding! But does who I am matter nearly as much as regrouping with Gregor and Burin-who are both alive by the way!-so that you can all save your kid?”
“Uh-”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Or, I mean, if you don’t want to, I could just tell your wife about it…”
That made me blink. “Wait.” I took a few rapid steps towards her. So rapid that me bots struggled to keep up and the former moon beast shot me a wary look. “You have access to Persephone?”
“Not yet,” pirate lady said. “But I’m sure I have something I could trade for it-Er, her.”
“You mean, you can un-demon her demon-ness?”
“I didn’t say that.” She then shot me wink.
I glowered up at her. “…I don’t like you,” I finally said, my eyes narrowed to slits.
She rolled her eyes. “You don’t like anyone.”
“I like…one or two people!” I exhaled deeply. “It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s-Question: Do you know what a ‘comic book’ is?”
She shot me an odd look. “…Yes?”
My memories of Hertz were still foggy, but gradually coming together. “Because I talked to this guy, and he said we were in a comic book. Something about every alternate reality being an alternate comic book or something…” I showed pirate lady my hands. “I was dead at the time-and a robot-so…”
She scratched at her chin thoughtfully. “I don’t know. Maybe you’re just crazy.” She beamed. “But it’s okay. We’re all mad here-”
HONK!
I jumped back at the noise. I looked around. Pirate lady’s goons look similarly taken aback. In contrast, she just sighed while shaking her head. “I knew I shouldn’t have left him alone in the garden.” She then tapped an emblem on her jacket and declared, “Bridge, beam Guiser and me straight to the Goose!”
And then, without warning, both of us were gobbled up by gelatin. It covered every inch of my body. I tried to scream.
Plop!
The gelatin spat us back out in a completely different room. I landed on my side, unsure whether to scream, barf, or cry. Next to me, pirate lady stood, hands on hips, looking both disappointed and amused. Driven by newfound hate for her, I forced myself to sit up. We were in some kind of garden. It was populated with trees, but they’d been planted towards the outer edges of the garden. At its center was a HUGE circular lake. And at the pool’s center was a giant angry goose with a pair of dwarf legs sticking out of its beak.
There was a tug on my jacket. I looked down. All five of my bots had been transported with me. They all looked at me, and then at the goose.
“…No,” I said, horrified, as the goose shook its head like a mad dog, trying to force its meal down its throat. “You don’t have to!”
My bots looked at each other and then nodded.
“No!” I took a knee. “Not for him! I…I…I can make you stop! I-”
One by one, my robots gave my knee one last, loving pat, and then marched off towards the goose. A part of me, the human part, the part that still felt love, fatherly love, screamed at the rest of me to will them back. But I didn’t.
“Farewell, small soldiers,” I whispered, my eyes stinging. “Farewell.”
With a heavy heart, I watched them jump into the pool, swim over to the oblivious, monstrous goose, latch onto its legs, and-
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Despite its size, the explosions knocked the goose around, sending blood and feathers flying through the air. Because of that, I nearly didn’t catch sight of the emerald fighter flying towards it. He struck the goose in the back of the head, knocking Burin out of its mouth. The feathered behemoth slammed forward, face-first into the lake. A wall of water rose up and carried both Burin to the dry land.
And, at the sight of his stupid face, my vision went red.
Back during the span of time where we didn’t have much to do but wait for the hut to shunt us to wherever we had to go to set Baba Yaga free, Lyriana recommended that Persephone and I have a “date night” to try and ease the lingering tension between us. Percy put on a civil face in front of Emily and the others, but there was a…wall between us now. So much had happened since she’d died. To me it’d been more than three years, but she said it was like waking up from an intense, but short, nightmare for her. Waking up into the body of a monster. Thankfully, her sparring matches with Greta were helping her vent out the excess aggression of her manticore self. Before all of this, she’d been the only person in the world I trusted, who I could talk to. Now it felt like all the sex was more so that we wouldn’t have to talk. And then, inevitably, Emily would go to sleep. Persephone then blinked out of existence, like a bright but painfully temporary light.
So, Lyriana promised she and the others would keep the kid awake (this was after the whole Nocticula ordeal, by the way) while Persephone and I set up shop in the library. She showed me how to use my magic mirror to project images across the far wall. She then sent me a list of Earth movies she thought that we might like.
“So, what are we watching?” Persephone asked. Burin and Gregor had dragged in a couch from one of the other rooms for us to sit on. She’d ditched her armor for a simple tan sundress and sandals. She still wore the magic tiara that allowed her stay in human form for prolonged periods of time. Back in the day, being around her all of the time, I’d gotten desensitized to how beautiful this stubborn princess was. The person inside-as much of a pain and monster magnet as she could be-mattered far more to me than the pretty face and big tits. But looking at her now, Lyriana was right. A guy like me didn’t deserve to be with someone this hot.
“Don’t know,” I said, cycling through the list. Both Lyriana and Emily had bullied me into taking a bath and ditching my usual gear for something called a “tuxedo.” They’d even confiscated all of my guns and bombs! “How about…this one. This lady’s got a sword and, judging by the title, gonna murder some guy called Bill.”
I hit play and sat back.
…I’m not saying I ignored Persephone the entire time the movie was on. But at one point I was just hunched forward, hands tented under my chin, unable to look away from this bloody masterpiece of intoxicating violence. Our hero, an assassin, hunts down the other assassins who betrayed her, all with the ultimate goal of taking down her old boss, Bill. Every time she sees one of her old “friends”, her vision goes red and horns start blaring through her ears.
So, back in the present, all I saw was scarlet and those same horns screamed through my skull as I watched soggy Burin Frostfist get to his feet. He pushed his wet hat out of his eyes and looked around.
Every fiber in my being seemed to vibrate with rage as I walked towards him
“Oh!” He perked up at the sight of me. “Hello, Terry!”
The horns became thunder as I bent forward and placed my hands on his shoulders. I then whispered, only loud enough for him to hear, “I want to hear why you did what you did.”
He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, towards the dying goose. “I was looking for a way to take this ship out of the dreamlands and into Baba Yaga’s realm, so that we can ram it into her. And then the goose ate me.”
I dug my fingers deeper into his shoulders. If it hurt him, he didn’t show it, and that just infuriated me further. I felt the corners of my lips pull back into a painful smile. “Listen, I am all for ramming metal objects into old ladies, but that is not what I’m referring to, Burin. I’m talking about the part where we all died. The part where Baba Yaga said you traded away my daughter’s soul.”
“No!” Burin cried. “I traded a life. Though, I, um, likely misspoke while making the deal…”
Both of my eyes were twitching uncontrollably by this point. “And you didn’t think to run it by the rest of us?!”
“Like you informed everyone else when you tried to kill yourself?” he shot back.
“That was my life!”
“Yes, and I was giving up my life.” He looked down at himself. “…I was willing to die for her.”
Eventually, you reach a point where you’re just so angry, so enraged, that your brain and body just give up. They just can’t sustain it. You go hollow. I shoved him away. What else could I do? I could throw all kinds of bombs at him, shoot him all day, and he’d probably survive. So, face hurting, my insides feeling cleaned out, I took a step back. I glanced past Burin and saw Gregor approaching, sipping from his flask. He sniffed it and then told me casually, as we both hadn’t just come back from the dead, “This cranberry juice tastes a bit off.” Pirate lady approached the fighter, sniffed it herself, and then told him, “It’s not cranberry juice. It’s milk. Trust me. You don’t wanna know which kind of creature it came out of.”