“Think, think,” Jer said as he slapped his forehead. “Come on. You can do this.”
After a brief moment of silent and empty contemplation, his fingers began moving the pebbles around into different alignments. He was going to figure this out the old-fashioned way even if it killed him.
23
Gulliver’s Wet Dream
“Okay, this little pebble is Matthias, and you’re trapped inside the most advanced prison cell GenAdvance has,” Jer said to the pebbles. “And you three are Damiana, Evangeline, and me.”
He then grabbed a small twig, broke it into four pieces, and placed it around the center pebble.
“Now, how do we get past the walls and get you out, buddy?”
He slammed one of the outside pebbles against the twig and mocked an explosion with his hands booming outward. “Nope.”
He took one of the pebbles and picked it off the ground. He then pretended to have it leap over the twigs to get inside the prison cell. When it reached the perimeter, he went to break the pebble in half on purpose. To his surprise, it snapped apart and crumbled in his hands. “That…is exactly what’s going to happen to us, no matter how we do this,” Jer said, defeated.
A stench hit his nose. “Ugh,” Jer said. “This place reeks.”
“It wouldn’t if you weren’t playing with rat shit,” a tiny and unseen voice said.
“Who said that?” Jer asked as he recoiled.
“Over here, big guy,” the tiny voice said.
Jer’s eyes darted back and forth, but he couldn’t find the source of the tiny voice. “Uh…”
“Down here,” the tiny voice said.
Jer looked down and to the left. There, he spotted a monster-girl, a fury, the size of a house cat. It was Mira. He’d been worried about her, wondering where she was, despite knowing that she was in hiding to spy on the enemy.
“Welcome to Gulliver’s Travels,” Jer joked. “I’ve never seen you as your true size before.”
“Figured it would scare you off,” Mira said.
She was maybe six inches tall with dragon-like leathery wings that had a span of twelve inches. Her body was clad in ancient mythical battle armor, a v-shaped breast plate over her shoulders and part of her breasts. In her left hand was a golden shield. In her right was a long sword that glimmered despite the darkness of the underground. Ornate and shimmering miniature diamonds lined her leather boots.
Her ears were elven, her eyes were darkened, fangs protruded between her luscious lips, and her fingers were hard and sinewy like a lizard’s. Her claws extended from her fingers and curled outward, longer than the fingers.
“I knew your true form was small, but you’re so small,” Jer said, immediately regretting his words.
“Say that again, and you’ll find which of us is more dangerous, big guy.”
Jer raised his palms, apologizing. “Didn’t mean anything by it. Just an immediate reaction is all.”
Mira glanced at the rat-shit pebbles Jer was playing with and smirked.
“Good thing my spies were listening in on your little plan, or I think maybe you’re cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs,” she teased.
“You’d be wrong,” Jer countered. “If I were psychoanalyzing myself, I’d venture that at this point, I might be on the verge of being a little cuckoo.”
She chortled. “You were having trouble figuring out your goofy heist plan,” she began, “and you decided that playing with rat shit would help you work through your problems?”
Jer nodded. “Pretty much. Unless you’ve got a better plan, we’re all screwed.”
“Do you remember the day we met?” Mira asked.
A smile spread across Jer’s face. “I was going to see Evangeline, and she wasn’t at The Maw. But you were. You were impossible to resist. I felt a bit guilty because I hadn’t mentioned it to Evangeline or Damiana yet, but it all happened so fast.”
“She was there,” Mira said.
“What?”
“It was her idea.”
“I don’t like being toyed with,” Jer sniffed. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because sometimes putting everything on your shoulders, as is your tendency, is too much for one person to handle. Evangeline wanted you to understand the full breadth of our world, the monster world. She wanted you to see that we don’t see ourselves as less than, the way most of society does. Yes, we face injustice, but for every disadvantage there’s an advantage to who we are that goes unseen.”
“I agree, but I don’t see why she or you needed to show me that.”
“You’re not hearing what I’m saying. GenAdvance is afraid of monster-human hybrids disrupting their stranglehold on society, so they spread false rumors that Transhumana Monstrare is viral, making it scary for humans and monsters to copulate. Evangeline emits pheromones that are ten times more powerful than anything a female human could ever create. She can seduce anyone and overcome the fear of being with a monster. Survival. Damiana is strong, powerful, fearless, not just because she’s been through hell, but because she can back it up. How many humans do you know who can rip a steel door from its hinges? GenAdvance lies to the public and keeps everything that could help monsters secret and under wraps, but I can spy in my natural size without their ever knowing it. Being small has its advantages. Life finds a way. Alone is what GenAdvance wants. Alone, we lose. Together, we will defeat them. Whenever one of us lacks, another will step up and provide.”
“True, but it doesn’t always work out for the best,” Jer replied. “I imagine your spies saw what happened with Dakota.”
“It’s my opinion that your actions with her were a good thing and in keeping with what has kept us going. She’s not beyond saving, Jer. Don’t give up on her or yourself. I haven’t.”
After running his hands through his hair, reluctant to acknowledge that there was still hope, Jer met Mira’s eyes. Every time they’d been together, Mira had used fury dust to make herself larger. It was strange, to say the least, seeing her like this. She still looked fierce but so small. She would be the perfect ninja assassin, able to sneak in anywhere and disappear without the target ever knowing she’d been there. The thought sent a chill down Jer’s spine.
She was right about not giving up. The problem was that as soon as Jer accepted it, he’d have no choice but to be affected by the potential fear of losing. If he gave up now there would be nothing to be afraid of. They would have already lost. Then again, what was the point of a life full of safe choices and no risks? Life was meant to be lived, and nothing worth having was going to be easy. It was time for a dose of his own medicine.
“Deal,” he said, and reached out his hand, forgetting for a second that Mira was in her natural smaller form.
Mira stepped forward anyway and swiped at his hand, drawing blood with her sword.
Jer pulled his hand back and clasped it. “What the hell was that for?!?”
“To remind you.”
“Of what?” Jer asked as he nursed his bloody hand.
“That this will end in blood, either yours and the ones you love or the enemy’s,” Mira answered. “You need to get yourself in a place where you’re ready to go all the way and finish this, or you will fail. You need steel your mind and be ready to do what’s necessary.”
“You could have just said that instead of cutting me,” Jer said.
Mira chuckled. “Maybe, but I do like it a little rough. Wanted to see what it felt like.”
Jer smirked. “Okay, fine. We can try that, but only when we’re the same size.”
“Your wish is my command,” Mira said and blew purple dust into his face.
He coughed and sputtered, gasping. “W-what the?”
“Relax,” Mira said. “Open your eyes.”
“What? No. The dust’ll burn. I won’t be able to see.”
“Just open them.”
With hesitation, Jer opened his left eye first. The dust didn’t sting at all. His vision, however, was masked in a purple haze. �
�What’s happening?” Jer asked.
“You’re adjusting,” Mira answered. “Don’t take too long. We’re short on time.”
Jer opened his right eye. He startled and scooted back on his ass, startled at what he saw. Mira was before him, and they were the same size.
“You made yourself big?” he asked.
“Nope,” she replied.
Jer squinted and looked around. His eyes fell on the rat shit pebbles. They were almost as large as he was. They looked like boulders.
“Oh fuck,” Jer said.
Mira chuckled. “You see what you need to do yet?”
“Borrow your magic pixie dust and shrink Matthias to rescue him?”
Mira groaned. “No. And it’s not pixie dust. That’s offensive. I’m a fury.”
“Okay, well, I’m in uncharted territory here. Maybe a hint.”
“Go and move the shit pebble that you called Matthias now,” Mira said.
Jer pushed off the ground and marched over to the stick perimeter, which looked far more daunting from this lower angle and perspective. He knelt down and slipped under a curve in one of the twigs, which looked more like a massive oak tree branch now.
Inside the twig prison, he tried to pick up the shit pebble but barely nudged it. When it slammed back to the ground, dried shit dust stirred up and got into Jer’s mouth. He spat it out.
“Got any water?” he asked.
“You need to figure this out first,” Mira said.
Jer threw his arms into the air. “Making us small will help us get in, but we’d need you there to use the…fury dust you used on me to make Matthias small enough to get him out.”
Mira shook her head. “No can do. The humans can’t know about the Haze. And you need to rescue him, not us. We can’t risk exposure.”
“Why not just tell me?” Jer asked as he peered over the twigs at Mira, who was her beautiful and fierce self now that they were the same size.
“Because the plan might encounter unexpected obstacles,” Mira said. “You need to think through it, so you can adapt if things go sideways.”
Jer turned back to the shit pebble and crossed his arms as his eyes narrowed. Think, think, come on!
A speck of the shit pebble fell off, and Jer’s eyes alighted. “It’s so obvious. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it.”
“You have it?” Mira asked from the other side of the twigs.
“I think so, yeah,” Jer answered. “Matthias is a symbiote. You knew that, didn’t you?”
Mira shrugged and smirked. “Maybe.”
“Remind me never to lie to you,” Jer said. “You’re the perfect spy.” He stepped closer to the shit pebble.
“Now you’ve got it. Just need to make him what he already is,” Mira said.
“This could work. We’d have to convince him. He’ll be reluctant of course. But, it’s a good plan. Any idea how to get him into his natural state?”
“No,” Mira admitted. “You’ll have to convince him to tell you how he separates from his host. Keeping that secret is one of the ways he’s stayed alive for so long.”
“You’re right,” Jer agreed. “On a different note, is my reduced size permanent?”
Mira chuckled. “You’ve got an hour before you revert. But it’s your turn to help me.”
“Gladly,” Jer said.
“Come!”
24
Monster Villa
Following Mira across the rough ground proved more difficult than Jer expected. Each step was a potential disaster waiting to happen. Small crevices in the ground tripped him up more than a few times, and he slipped on a puddle of liquid that would be no more than the size of a tear drop ordinarily, almost falling off the edge of what appeared to be a cliff.
In reality, the drop-off was only the result of a buildup of dirt and small rocks over the top of an abandoned amusement park crate used as a bridge across a gap in the path forward. The drop from Jer’s normal height would have been three feet at most. He wouldn’t even sprain his ankle. At his current size, though, his body would impact as if he’d fallen from a three-story building.
“Watch it,” Mira warned.
After the close call, Jer stayed just behind Mira as close as he could get without being awkward, making sure to follow her footsteps exactly. When he looked down, he noticed that the path they were taking was well-worn.
Up ahead, they reached a circular steel gate. When Jer stepped in close, he saw that it was made of a piece of bullet proof armor with large lettering on it that read, S.W.A.T. The furies must have burnt a chunk off and retrofitted it as a gate to their world.
“Impressive,” Jer said.
Mira ignored his comment and made her way to a keypad, punched in a passcode, and the door spiraled outward, opening to reveal cacophonous noise and teeming activity on the other side. The furies were preparing for war.
Jer wasn’t afraid, though. He rushed up alongside Mira and entered with her.
Once they passed through, a crack-team of fury defenders swarmed the walkway with weapons in tow. They took aim with varied weaponry at Jer, careful not to threaten Mira.
Jer threw his hands in the air. “I’m with her,” he declared.
“Are you ready to repay the favor?” Mira asked.
Jer nodded as quickly as he could.
“Good,” Mira said and faced the fury defenders. “Lower your weapons. He’s not a threat. He’s here to help.”
They did as commanded, and Jer got a better look at their weapons. Several of the furies held crossbows with threading needles as arrows, built with rapid-fire loading devices below the bows. A few held pens with sharpened tips. Others carried what looked to be taser guns, likely set at extremely high settings for large-sized humans threatening them and their domain. All of them held gold shirt buttons, retrofitted as shields with leather straps on the backsides. And all of them were female warriors.
“What is this place?” Jer asked as he began to look around and notice large objects adapted to use as weaponry on a small scale, built for use by furies but deadly for full-sized humans. “I’ve always known you were the fury leader, but this…this is something altogether different from what I expected.”
“The monsters have an underground to protect against the humans,” Mira answered. “We furies have our own underground to protect against our discovery. Unlike our sisters and brothers up top, Transhumana Monstrare hasn’t been suppressed among the furies. We’ve continued discovering our development and strengths without inhibition.”
“That would explain the pronounced claws, horns, and enhanced musculature,” Jer replied.
Mira smirked. “You seem to like it.”
“In every way,” Jer said.
“Uh huh. Think maybe that you help monsters so you can get some.”
Jer sneered. “Can you blame me?”
“At least you own it,” Mira said.
Jer smiled. “I’ll take it.”
Mira then led him to another guard station with more Amazonian female warriors on watch. At the wave of a hand from Mira, the warriors cleared a path.
Jer followed her past them and into a large boot retrofitted with peepholes for keeping watch and a full-sized credit card functioning as a door. He couldn’t help but think of the fairy tale rhyme, There was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.
“She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do,” Jer began humming. “She gave them some broth without any bread. Then whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.”
He chuckled a little, remembering his father singing the rhyme to get him to sleep as a young boy.
“What’s that you’re going on about?” Mira asked.
“It’s a rhyme. A fairy tale. You’ve never heard ‘There was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe?’”
She shook her head. “Sounds like a silly human fairy tale. Another one of their lies to paint us as dangerous.”
“It’s actually quite useful for teaching kids to…” His voice dri
fted off. He wasn’t actually sure what the moral of the rhyme was. It always felt like it had a point, though. “Uh, never mind. You’re right. Silly but fun.”
“Glad you’re having fun, but we have serious business to tend to,” Mira said, urging him to continue forward.
On the far end of the boot resided another door, made out of a coffee shop loyalty card. Mira pushed through, and Jer followed.
The second door led to a large auditorium that possessed the smell of an all-too-familiar hospital room. Sardine tins transformed into beds lined the walls.
On the beds, patients, all female, lay quietly as fury doctors, all female as well, checked their vitals and took blood samples. A nurse dipped a towel into a thimble cup and soaked it in water, then rubbed the foreheads of the patients.
“Has something happened?” Jer asked. “Are they sick?”
“Something has happened, but it’s something we never could have predicted,” Mira answered. “It’s not a virus. Our best scientists are convinced it’s the result of overdependence on technology by humans.”
“You do realize that I’m not the kind of doctor who helps patients who are physically ill. I’m a psychiatrist. I help with emotional challenges, psychological issues, and personal well-being.”
“The problem is exactly that,” Mira replied. “Our emotional, psychological, and personal well-being is threatened if we don’t have the wherewithal to continue our species.”
“That may be true, but it doesn’t mean I have the skills necessary to help.”
Mira looked down at Jer’s bulge. “You seem fine to me. Besides, I kept a sample from you and tested it. You check out.”
“Check out? Just tell me what the problem is already,” Jer said. “This is getting strange.”
A nurse strode by while carrying syringes and blood samples on a penny that had been repurposed as a hospital tray. She snuck in a glance at Jer’s bulge as well, then winked at him.
Jer squinted, confused.
Monster M.D.: A Monster Girl Harem Mystery Thriller (Monster M.D. ) Page 20
