by Shad N Freud
A shame really, as he’d liked Ink. But, can’t annihilate existence without spilling a little Ink, so he wouldn’t lose any of the endless sleep cycle he found himself in over it. The immense Sleeping God rolled over in his slumber, causing a massive tectonic shift in the City Plane of R’yleh, topographic features in the other planes of the Abyss teetering precariously on the edge of falling.
Including the rocky outcroppings poised over Demogorgon’s palace.
∞∞∞
As Krang’s body underwent its revivification process, repairing any possible damage to the body while he recharged his batteries, so to speak, the virtual avatars of the four spheres met at a table in Krang’s mind. Greggory took on the form of a fat, balding intellectual reminiscent of Benjamin Franklin, a fleshbag he’d be loathe to admit that he’d enjoyed reading about, devouring the long dead statesman’s works as readily as technical manuals about designing and building starships.
Thad, as he’d decided to call himself, took on the appearance of a dark skinned, handsome goateed man with a big bushy mass of curly black hair, wearing a pair of adult sized Osh Kosh overalls, his tongue out as he colored with crayons. The coloring book in question was one about a group of misfits with a paladin that looked remarkably similar to the simple-minded man fighting the urge to eat the coloring supplies like a United States Marine.
Sitting in a chair, wrapped in chains, with an iron mask reminiscent of Hannibal Lecter’s was Incidius. And finally, Krang stood at the head of the table, his appearance similar to that of Humphrey Boggart’s in Casa Blanca.
“So, Krang…deigned to meet with us mere mortals, then? Done rutting around with that…woman of yours?” Greggory drawled as he sat, not bothering to look up from the thick tome on the table in front of him.
Thad smiled sunnily as he ripped the page out of the coloring book and drooled slightly as he shuffled over to the nearest spot of wall that didn’t have one of his pictures tacked to it. He pulled out a nail and punched the nail into the wall, pinning the note to the wall. He then shuffled back over to the table where a juice box appeared in front of him. “How long until we can meet the Allfather?” Thad asked as he looked up from his coloring book. “I’ve waited so long to meet him. Will it be tomorrow?”
Incidius rolled his eyes, murmuring behind his mask. Krang deliberately ignored the evil mind, focusing on Thad’s question. “Not tomorrow, but very soon.”
Thad laughed like a child, then went back to his coloring book after slurping down his juice box.
“How goes our mission to find our…brethren?” Greggory asked as he licked his finger, turning the musty old page with his left hand. “I mean, the sooner you do, the sooner you’ll be able to activate the rest of the subsystems in this body.” Greggory looked up, seeing how tired Krang looked. “Running things all by yourself is taking a toll on you. You could always let…well, you could always let me take a turn controlling us.”
Krang shrugged. “I might take you up on that at some point. For now, though, I can handle it. But that’s not why I called for this meeting. Have any of you ever seen a demon with eyes like the night’s sky?”
Thad looked around the table, a dumb smile on his face. “Nope!”
Greggory looked up from his book, stroking his bald chin as he pondered the question. “No, doesn’t sound familiar. Could be a new player, or something bigger. Wait…I do remember something, the scribblings of a madman. Lovecraft wrote of similar things, about otherworldly horrors. Why?”
“Just a nagging feeling in my core. Like we’re missing something,” Krang said and turned to look at the laughing Incidius. He waved his hand, and Incidius’ gag was removed.
“You want to know about eyes like the night’s sky? I can tell you right were to find a book that’ll answer your question. Try the Yellow King, Sumerian translation, this Earth. It’ll tell you everything you want to know. Now, in exchange for that information, I want a favor.”
Krang looked at Incidius incredulously. “And just why should I let you have anything? Your only desire is to either destroy or enslave this world.”
Incidius’ smile became downright sinister. “Yes, you’re right. But, to be fair, it’s what we’re supposed to be doing. It’s our mission. But this has nothing to do with that. All I want is for you to let me be able to talk. After all, Greggory here isn’t the only one with useful information. All I want is to be-” The gag reappeared on his face, cutting him off mid-sentence. He glared murderously at Krang, who waved his hand and Incidius dropped out of the room, chair and all.
Greggory looked up at Krang with a critical eye. “He’s not wrong, you know.”
Krang raised his hand again and Greggory rolled his eyes. “What, you’ll bind and gag me, too? Come now, there’s no need of any of that. Just because I agree with Incidius on a few things doesn’t mean I want to get back to our original mission. Jin has convinced me that some of the fleshies are worth a damn. I just want to be sure that this isn’t a dictatorship.”
Krang rubbed his temples, looking more haggard than before. Greggory wasn’t wrong; the strain of running this body with only four cores was slowly getting to him, causing his crack to widen, a nanometer at a time when stressed. “I’m sorry, Greggory, you’re right. I’m just worried about Sachi.”
Greggory nodded. “She’s strong. Just be there for her. Now then, are we finished? I have reading to do.”
Krang nodded, dismissing the conference room and allowing the other two to go back about their business. He made a mental note to ask about the book in the morning.
Chapter Seventeen
Just after dusk the next evening, the “sail” tower of a large yellow submarine broke the surface of the ocean forty miles off the coast of Japan, specifically the northern tip of Hokkaido. Cenere gave a final salute to Clink and Marcel before joining the rest of the group on the Rigid Hull Inflatable Boat.
Carl stared at Marcel as he turned and sped the boat off, fighting the tears welling up in his eyes.
∞∞∞
-the night before-
Carl viciously thrashed the training dummies with his baton in his right hand and burst firing his 10mm pistol at the ones that tried to sneak up on him from behind with the left. The door to the room opened, and Marcel walked in, a rapier festooned with filigree and small jewels adorning the basket hilt swinging from the belt of his uniform. Marcel removed his uniform jacket and the military style blouse underneath, leaving him in a singlet as he pulled one of the shitty kraut cigarettes from the pack in his jacket pocket. He lit it with his thumb, then drew his rapier, and joined the melee.
Carl signaled a pause, then held his hand out for the canteen of water that fell from the ceiling. “What do you want?” Carl asked as he took a long pull on the canteen.
“Can’t a father train with his son? Besides,” Marcel said, ashing his cigarette, “this’ll be the last chance we get to talk before you and yours go off to meet the, ahem, Allfather.” Marcel took a deep drag on the cigarette. “I…I’m sorry.”
“Oh? Well, I guess that just makes everything better then, doesn’t it? I spent thirty years of my youth trying to clear your name, getting jeered, spit on, and treated like something you’d scrape off your shoe. But, you’re sorry. All’s forgiven then. Now, kindly fuck off. I’ve got training to get back to.”
“You may be bigger than me, but you’ll never be so big I can’t put you over my knee, Marc.” Carl’s eyes flashed red for the briefest of moments. “Oh, what, am I to be intimidated by that little trick? Your mum used to flash me those same eyes any time she lost an argument. It lost its impact about the time I put a ring on her finger. And, I might add, she did it a damn sight better than you do.”
“Don’t you dare talk about-”
“Who? Your darling mum? Who died serving her country? Who died because of the fucking krauts bombing London? Spare me the lecture, Junior. I’ll be seeing her soon enough, and she can go ahead and let me have it. But, know this, you litt
le shit: she may have been your mum…but she was my wife.”
Carl’s baton flew towards Marcel’s face as he snarled in rage. Marcel rolled his eyes, said “On y va encore une fois,” under his breath, then negligently swatted the attack away with the hilt of his sword. He lunged backward to keep Carl at sword-tip, gauging the area behind him and the walls behind him by listening to the echoes of their fight to navigate the room as he danced backwards while he parried, deflected, and ducked away from Carl’s attacks. He was testing Carl’s defenses, to see how well the man fought with weaponry. “You can’t beat me, Marc I’ve got centuries of experience on you with a blade. Just give it up.”
“Fuck you!” Carl shouted, flinging his baton at Marcel who smirked as he knocked it away again. His eyes widened slightly as Carl followed the attack a heartbeat after, his fists missing Marcel’s face by a finger’s breadth. The elf spun away from Carl, lashing out with the flat of his blade and swatting Carl on the rear. Carl roared in anger as he rounded back on Marcel, only to see Marcel sheathe his sword, his left hand open and palm up to show his submission as he rubbed the growing bruise on his cheek. “Impressive! Didn’t even hit me, and you still left a mark! Who was your teacher? Jorgensen? Mercado? I know you've got the tattoo, so you've been trained by a Fist as well. So, who was it? I mean, you do drink a lot-”
“Yi. Sifu Yi of the Infernal Fist School. Damned old bug beat me every day for eight years with that damned blindfold on,” Carl growled as he let the room heal the small wound in the crook of his elbow. “
Marcel nodded. “Never met the thri-kreen myself, but I know him by reputation. Mark…Carl. I…I can’t apologize enough for what you went through-”
“No shit.” Carl snapped as he retrieved his baton.
“Can I finish?” Marcel asked acidly as he ignited his thumb, lighting a cigarette. “I can’t apologize to you enough for what happened. But I can give you something that should help you. I know it’s not a cudgel like you seem to prefer…but, I have this sword for you.” Marcel removed his sword belt and tossed it to Carl. “That blade was once the sword of Jeromino Sanchez de Carranza. He had been my fencing instructor when I was still a young elf, no more than a century and a half old. I was still a brash young ruffian back then and had not yet taken up the Satanic cause. He…died in sixteen hundred after a duel against a powerful demon. He slew the beast, but it dragged him to the Abyss.”
Carl drew the blade and stared at the craftsmanship in awe.
“The blade can channel multiple forms of energy, including the Baneflame. The enchantment for that last bit has been lost for centuries, as so very few are willing to do what’s necessary to master the black fire.” Carl felt immense power course through the blade, almost “hearing” the dark melody that flowed through the blade. “Carranza was a poet, an arms master, a brilliant mathematician…and he died a hero, saving a stupid young elf from his own foolishness,” Marcel said, hanging his head as he remembered that night in Carranza’s salon.
“I…I took his blade as he lay dying, before the demon grabbed him on his way back to the Abyss. I never told anyone that, not even your mother.” Marcel smiled sadly, holding up his note from the future. “I’ll be going down with this boat. I have a message to carry to Lucy, and I won’t be needing that sword anymore, Carl. But you might find a use for it.” Marcel opened his locket, stared at it for a long moment, then took it off before tossing it to Carl.
“Your mum gave me that the night I left for the Nazis. She knew, Carl. I made her swear not to tell you, and clearly she kept her word.” Marcel reached up and wiped away a tear from his eye. “Give those bastards Hell for me, would you? I wish I could go with you, but my fate is sealed. I’m for the oven after I sink this tub.” Carl watched as his father made his way to the door and looked at the note again before incinerating it. “By the by, you wouldn’t happen to have any extra plastic explosives in that coat of yours, would you? As well as a ‘remote detonator? I can only guess as to how that works…but the note said I needed to ask.”
Carl smiled, snapped his fingers, and his coat appeared around his body. “How much do you need?”
∞∞∞
-now-
Carl wiped his eye and turned to stare straight ahead towards land. The pair had spent the remainder of the night getting piss drunk and laughing about their misadventures. Before readying themselves to depart, Carl had hugged his father in the mansion and wished him a quick trip through the line when he got to Purgatory. Then they’d walked through the ship, said goodbye to the idiot captain and his moronic first officer, and boarded the boat.
The weight of the new sword on his hip was something he wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to. He looked up when he felt a hand on his shoulder and smiled sadly at Camilla, who nodded and took over piloting the boat. He looked back and saw Marcel smoking a cigarette topside before going back inside, saluting the boat as it sped towards shore.
∞∞∞
Marcel took one last drag on his cigarette as he watched the boat disappear into the gloom, then flicked the butt into the water below. He felt the absence of his sword and smiled sardonically. He wasn’t going to need it for much longer anyways, might as well put it into the hands of someone with a use for it.
He descended the sail tower into the bowels of the submarine, stopping by his stateroom to grab the nexus bag full of explosives he’d been gifted by his friends from the future. He smirked as he went about the ship, pretending to perform spot inspections as he planted small blocks of the material around the ship. For the next week, he would spend hours in the engineering spaces “inspecting” the various subsystems in the midships area.
That Sunday, when the ship was right in the center of the Sea of Japan, Marcel smirked as he watched one of the technicians for the Enigma II open the door to the cipher room. He drew his pistol and pressed it to the back of the young man’s head. “My apologies, technician, but I need you to open this door.”
The technician swallowed heavily, then shook his head. “I cannot. You do not have clearance, Herr Beaumont. It would be treason.”
“It’ll be a bullet in your skull if you don’t.”
“It’ll be the rope if I do,” the technician said, scrunching his eyes shut tightly.
“If you just give me the passcode, I can open the door, and you can pretend you didn’t know,” Marcel offered, pulling the hammer back on his silenced luger, the click causing the young man to clench his eyes tighter.
“N-no passcode, j-just a key in m-my pock-”
Marcel’s pistol made a quiet thump as he shot the young man in the back of the head, catching him before he hit the deck. He then opened the convenient cleaning closet next to the cipher room and put the body in there after relieving him of the key. He then carefully cleaned up the area before opening the door and throwing in a flash-bang he’d been gifted by his son.
Marcel then entered the room, mercilessly emptying his magazine into the stunned and deafened men within, putting in a fresh magazine as he carefully deactivated the Enigma II. He reached into the nexus bag and produced a water, fire, and explosion proofed box designed to float, and carefully sealed the Enigma II within.
His primary objective secured, he went to his quarters and changed out of the Nazi rags he’d been itching to dispose of, opting instead for the robes and duster commonly worn by the Inquisition. Putting on the Black and Red again made him feel…complete. He rummaged around in the bag of goodies his son had left him and produced a chemical mask as well as a couple canister grenades that read “Oleoresin Capsicum.” It was better known to the Inquisition, the US Military, and anyone ever exposed to it as “Devil’s Piss,” a potent irritant used to take the fight right out of all but the most stalwart fighters, attacking the eyes, nose, and throat of one’s foes.
And, as this ship had an enclosed air system with a filtration system that he’d seen how to disable during one of the inspections.
Marcel smiled sadistically as he popped o
ne open after donning his mask and put it under the air intake. He then pulled out the MP5 and the belt of magazines Sachi had been willing to loan him, attaching the last of the C-4 to the receiver of the gun, cued up to the same remote detonator as the explosives he’d planted throughout the ship.
“In Dublin’s fair city,” Marcel sang as he walked through the passageways, gunning down the Kraut halfwits he ran across on his way to the wardroom. “Where the girls are so pretty.” Another short burst as he crept through the submarine, the unsuppressed machine pistol causing an alarm to sound and the ship’s security to get caught with their pants down when Marcel tossed another OC grenade where they were gearing up before spraying the group with lead. “I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone.”
His MP5’s firing pin hit empty air causing him to duck into an alcove and swap magazines. He tossed another flashbang, causing the Nazi’s in the space he was headed for to curse darkly before he poked his head around and gunned them down. “She wheeled her wheel barrow, through streets broad and narrow, cryin' ‘Cockles! And Mussels! Alive, alive oh!’”
He cursed as he felt a 7.92x57mm Mauser boat-tail round tear through his calf, then ducked into another alcove and pressed his ungloved hand against the wound, smiling ferally as the green flames burned the wound away. He tossed his last flashbang then dipped back around the corner and aerated the remaining security thugs on board before kicking the wardroom door in.
He juked left in time to avoid a hail of gunfire that would have ruined the mission. He grabbed his detonator and flipped the red cover upward, pulled out the last good cigarette he’d ever have, a Blackjack from Carl, and lit it with his thumb. He took a long drag, then walked into the room. “I surrender! I’m out of ammo anyways.”
Clink glared murderously at the Inquisitor who had shown his true colors. “So, a traitor to the end, Herr Beaumont?”
