“We still have time to decide,” I reminded her as she came to me, allowing me to lead her to the bed.
Lady C. lay down after she took her shoes off, her hands clasped over her chest.
Life left her body, and I just sat there with her humandroid form for a few minutes, thinking about what had just happened.
I had seriously almost slipped, no, I had slipped, and there was a good chance I may have hurt myself had she not been there.
I shook my head.
This was something I’d keep to myself for now; I didn’t want Iris or anyone else worrying about it.
After changing into a pair of dry socks, I put my Vans on the radiator and turned it on, warming them up. I thought about ordering a pair of new shoes, but that really wasn’t my style, and besides, the Vans were made of canvas and they quickly dried. I waited another twenty minutes or so before calling Aya and Lady C. to my world.
Their forms took shape, Aya playfully slapping my cheek with her ghost limb.
“You know, if you die falling off a cliff like an idiot, we can’t hunt for you anymore,” she said.
“You told her?” I asked Lady C.
“Of course I did. It’s a crazy story!”
“Let’s keep that part from Iris,” I said, smiling at the Metican warrior in her armor, her swords sheathed at her sides.
“Your secret is safe with me, Alpha. Now, did we come here to hunt, or did we come here to have a fuzzy warm moment?” Aya asked.
“We came here to hunt. I’ll see where Iris is; hopefully, a mythcrea will poke its head up.”
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
“…And for forty years, this would remain the primary mansion on Bellevue until the completion of Marble House in 1892. Now eventually, this house got completely remodeled by William Shepard Wetmore’s son when he inherited the estate, turning it into a second empire-style French chateau.”
“I have to get in there,” I told the woman at the front.
The Huntresses and I were at a mansion not far from the Breakers called Chateau-sur-Mer, which apparently belonged to a china merchant and famous philanthropist from New England, whose son later became the governor and then State Senator from Rhode Island.
“But the tour has already started,” the woman said, her arms crossed over her chest. “This isn’t a self-guided tour; the next one starts in about thirty minutes. You can take a seat in the waiting area, if you’d like.”
“Look at her sitting there like a fat pig,” Aya said, walking around the woman, baring her teeth at her even though the woman couldn’t see the Thulean.
“Be nice, Lady Aya, maybe she’s overweight because she eats too much healthy food,” Lady C. said. “That’s a thing, right?”
I ignored her as I offered the woman my most sincere smile. “It would really mean a lot to me. My friend and I have been waiting to come here for weeks, and we just happened to get separated because I spent too much time at the Breakers. I will catch up quickly and quietly. I promise, and I can hear the tour guide now; they’re just in the other room.”
“Fine, fine, they don’t pay me enough to work security and check tickets at the door,” she said as she shuffled off her stool and let me into a living room area, where I caught up with Iris, who stood at the back of the crowd of tourists listening to a portly man speak.
“…This is getting into a period called the Ascetic Movement in Europe and America. The Wetmore’s home is a prime example of this, starting off as Victorian and then going through that Ascetic Period up until the beginning of the twentieth century. So there’s a little bit of a history lesson in the design as well. As you can see, this is white oak, quarter sawn, and the balusters you see up there are ash wood…”
“Hey,” Iris said, smiling over at me.
“Are you really listening to all this, Little Iris?” Aya asked with an exaggerated yawn. “Who cares what kind of wood the house is made out of, or the stupid amount of money that the fat rich man spent on it,” she said, nodding her chin at an oil painting on the wall, which I assumed was of William Shepard Wetmore.
“It’s actually pretty interesting,” Iris told her, Lady C. nodding in agreement.
“More importantly, who knew that the balusters were made of ash wood?” Lady C. asked.
“Are we here to hunt, or are we here to get some remodeling ideas for the dojo?”
“You don’t like your cabin any longer?” Iris asked Lady C.
“Excuse me,” said the tour guide, clearing his throat. “If you are going to have an outside conversation, please do so, ahem, outside.”
“Sorry,” I started to tell him.
“I was doing you a favor by letting you in,” the woman from the front door said as she came over to me. “And here you are, causing a distraction.”
A few of the tourists turned and looked at us, others were too fascinated with a wooden carving of an angel to give two shits about the disruption we were causing.
“We will step out then,” Iris said, her eye twitching.
“What is it?” I asked as we made our way to the entrance.
“Check your rare monster locator,” she said under her breath.
I activated it, and as soon as I did, I saw that there was activity in the vicinity, luckily on the grounds of the chateau, rather than inside the home.
We took a left around the home, crossing over the roots of a very strange tree, unlike any tree I’d ever seen before. I hadn’t noticed this when our aeros landed, and just looking at it spawned information on my HUD, telling me the reason the tree was shaped like that was because roots had a tendency to grow upward, which meant we had to go all the way around it to get to the backyard.
“What are you sensing?” Aya asked, her big sword already in hand.
Lady C. also had her two blades drawn.
“Something,” Iris told her. “But whatever it is, it’s a rare mythcrea.”
“That information does not help,” Aya whispered. “Tell us what to expect so we can slay it for you.”
“Where exactly is it?” Lady C. asked, now crouching low to the earth, Aya next to her, both Huntresses in front of us and raring to go.
“Just up there, to the right,” I said.
“I don’t see any…” Iris frowned. “I thought that was the dirt pile.”
There was some roped-off construction near the back of the estate, a city vehicle not far from the rare mythcrea’s location.
“I see it now,” I said as we got just a little bit closer, a breeze whipping past, scattering some of the leaves.
“What the hell is a Golgothan?” I whispered to Iris, knowing that she liked looking these things up.
“This is so wicked strange,” she said with a cheesy grin on her face. “Long story short, seriously, Golgotha was the place where Jesus was crucified, and was also the place where the Romans crucified anyone else who they deemed criminal. Anyway, as people were crucified, their bowels gave out, and that thing over there is made of the excrement of their bowels.”
“So it’s a shit monster?” I asked, a frown forming on my face.
“It sounds like a shit monster fused with evil and desperate powers,” Lady C. added.
“We have these in Tritania,” Aya said as she took the lead. “In the giant city of Waringtla. They lurk in the sewers there, but they aren’t actually monsters, they’re just tiny fairies.”
“What do you mean?” I whispered to her.
“The fairies like to hunt in the sewers for treasure, because giants apparently shit treasure. Anyway, sometimes they get too much, well, poop, on them and then the poop compounds. And it compounds and compounds until they become a terrible monster. So a shit monster. Anyway, let’s handle this, Lady Cassandra.”
“Don’t go alone,” Lady C. said as she caught up to Aya.
“Relax, a monster like this is hardly worthy of our blades.”
The Thulean stopped dead in her tracks as the Golgothan nearly ploughed her over.
Ev
en though the creature had its back to her, it had noticed Aya’s presence, and as it turned, its body began to loosen up some.
Just as Iris’ origin story suggested, it was covered in crap, more than I’d ever seen in one place in my life. It had two horns on the top of its head, bulging yellow eyes, a fat nose, a terrible maw and sharp claws.
An uncomfortable look on her face, Aya advanced on the creature and sliced the thing in two, only to be taken off guard when two Golgothans formed. One of them swiped at her, sending her off balance.
“I’ve got this!”
Shwerrrp!
Lady C. hit the first Golgothan with a fireball, the shit monster going up in flames.
The other shit creature slipped toward Lady C., growing in size as she pelted it with a fireball, which only had the effect of making it, well, a flaming pile of shit.
Its counterpart continued fighting, regardless of the fact that flames were licking off its body. Aya tried to avoid its swipes, but was barely able to, the look on her face telling me she was having a hard time breathing.
“Aya!” Iris shouted as the Thulean’s opponent brought his arm back and flung a flaming ball of crap at her. It hit Aya in the chest and sent her flying backward, where she hit the wet grass and spun a few times, black smoke billowing off of her.
“I really wish we could do something!” I said as Lady C. engaged both shit creatures now, using her swords to slice through their flaming shit attacks. We were too busy watching our Huntresses fight the shit monsters, both our hands charged up and ready to capture when the time came, to notice that a police car had landed, its lights going but its sirens silent.
With a sickening slap, the two poop monsters merged back into one, the creature opening its mouth and projectile vomiting at Aya as she ran at it with her sword held over her shoulder.
“Argh!” she shouted, the attack blasting her backward, causing her to slip and faceplant.
“Bomb cyclone,” I told Iris. “Let’s freeze it!”
“Bomb cyclone, Lady C.!” Iris cried.
This spell usually took her a second or two to charge, and for it to work, Aya would have to distract the creature. Luckily, the Thulean had been fighting with Lady C. long enough to know this.
Disgruntled as ever, and pushing herself out of a puddle of filth, Aya stumbled toward the Golgothan, waving her swords and shouting at it.
The creature turned to her and was just about to projectile vomit again when Lady C. hit it in the side with her bomb cyclone. Its form started to freeze, a confusing cloud of snow spinning around the shit monster.
“Now!” I started to tell Iris, just as I saw two police officers approaching us.
“Excuse me,” one of the officers said, his hand on his taser.
“Do it, Iris, I’ll take care of them. Hey, guys,” I said, showing the officers my hands. Iris took off toward the Golgothan. I heard the sound associated with her web of light just as one of the police officers cried for her to stop.
“We’re just here hanging out!” I told him.
“Get down on the ground!” the first officer said to me, and I did as instructed. The other one took off toward Iris.
Whew.
A prompt appeared on my pane of vision, letting me know that Iris had captured the Golgothan.
And even though we had other concerns now, I had to laugh.
We had done it, and in the process, it looked like we were about to get arrested.
I immediately disconnected from the Monster Hunt app, still on my knees, my hands behind my back just as I had been instructed.
“What’s going on out here?” the first officer asked me. He didn’t look like the police officers back in New York in his brown Mountie outfit with a wide-brimmed hat.
“Are you going to cuff me?”
“Not if I can figure out what’s going on, and why your friend there took off.”
“I’m so sorry,” I heard Iris say to the other officer. “We just came here to tour the mansions.”
“You guys passed through the public safety line,” the police officer said, pointing at a space about three yards away from us. I hadn’t noticed it; I’d been so focused on the battle between the Huntresses and Golgothan.
“This wasn’t part of the tour?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I’m going to have to write both of you a ticket, and if we suspect anything else, we may have to bring you in for questioning. I want to warn you of that now.”
“We weren’t doing anything else,” I told him. “We are just kind of explorers. We do that in New York too. We just, um, like to explore.”
“You wanted to explore a big hole in the ground at the Chateau-sur-Mer?” he asked skeptically.
“If I told you ‘yes,’ would you believe me?”
“Maybe. People do some pretty weird things out here. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve caught people having sex in one of the mansions.”
“Hi,” Iris said as she was brought over to me.
“You’re not supposed to run away from police officers,” the second Mountie told Iris.
“My mistake, I just got scared when I heard you guys yelling for us. Sorry.”
“Well,” the first Mountie said, “as I was telling your friend here, you two are both going to have to pay a fine. It’s considered trespassing if you cross over the public safety line while this part of the property is under construction…”
“That’s fine,” Iris said, “we’ll pay it.”
“And you’re sure there isn’t anything else going on here, ma’am?” the second Mountie asked.
“No, we were just exploring. Sorry.”
“You weren’t doing anything illegal, were you?”
“Aside from exploring, no, we weren’t.”
“And nothing like using a Monster Hunt app?”
“No, sir,” we both said at the same time.
“Okay, wait right here,” the first Mountie said as he nodded his companion over. They stepped away from us and talked for a moment. Iris shook her head, her cheeks red. “I can’t believe I ran from the cops,” she said under her breath.
“But you caught the rare mythcrea, that has to count for something.”
“This is so stupid,” she whispered, concern tracing across her face.
“It really is, but what else would we be doing in Newport, Rhode Island?”
“Exactly,” she said as the first Mountie came back over to us.
“Both of you are free to go, and you should get notification of your fine within the next twenty-four hours. Look, we don’t need any weird stuff here in Newport, so if you’re going to go on the mansion tours, do it the right way. Either stay with the guide, or follow the directions on the self-guided tour. Got it?”
“We’re sorry,” Iris said with a big smile, “it won’t happen again.”
Epilogue: Trollin’ in the Name Of
Iris and I took in the views, both of us high above William’s dojo, fire blazing from all the buildings.
Mitchell trolls ran around, coughing and sometimes farting huge plumes of flames, Hiccup and Spew Gorge somewhere in the fight as well, but not visible from this high up.
“I’m ready whenever you tell me,” Mirror the former phantom kangaroo said, flapping her wings, keeping her form steady. “And by the way, I know I haven’t said this yet, but no cowboy shit.”
“We weren’t planning on any cowboy shit,” Iris said loudly enough for the dragon to hear.
“What’s that even mean?” asked Lady C.
“It means don’t be like a cowboy,” said Aya. “Which is the name for someone from Hyperborea who raises horses for food.”
The four of us were on Mirror’s scaly back, our ride a bit bumpy every time the dragon flapped her wings.
“Look at him trying to send his mythcrea to fight!” Aya pointed at William, or who we assumed was William. While there was a lot of fire, he had pretty shiny armor, so he wasn’t hard to pick out of the bunch.
&nbs
p; And I had to give it to him for trying to fight back, even if it was useless. What he couldn’t see, and what we could see from our nosebleed height, was all the Mitchell trolls lined up and ready to run in and light more things on fire, Altsoba directing them.
“Why do I feel like we’re going to get in trouble for this?” Iris asked.
“Relax, Little Iris,” said Aya. “You are champions now, lightning disciples, or whatever honorary title they’ve given you. No one will say anything about this, trust me.”
“I don’t know,” said Lady C., “it might make some people angry.”
“People’s anger? We Thuleans consider that more fuel for the fire! Aye! Aye! Aye!” Aya shouted, pumping her sword in the air.
I grinned over at Lady C.
Her humandroid body was lying next to mine back in Newport, Rhode Island, in a hotel room overlooking the sea. We had already agreed to spend some time on the balcony later, both of us just relaxing and listening to the waves, but for now we had a little revenge to see to.
Glorious revenge.
Even though we were high up, I could feel the heat of the fire below, the dancing flames hypnotizing me for a moment.
What a last couple of days it had been.
And almost in a poetic way, it had ended with fighting a flaming pile of shit before being caught by the cops, a reminder that the real world still existed. Then revenge on a rival Alpha’s dojo, a reminder that there were alternative realities.
“My turn!” Mirror said, sweeping up into the air and divebombing toward William’s dojo. Silver fire sprayed out of her mouth, instantly taking down several of the buildings that were set off from the main quarters.
As we jetted back into the air, I looked down to see William trying to fight off our Golgothan, the shit monster we’d just caught, who we had yet to name.
Explosions all around the creature signaled that it was releasing some of its, um, explosive fumes, that these gases were mixing with some of the flames, causing mini-mushroom clouds all around him.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Monster Hunt NYC 3 Page 24
