by Thomas Duder
Chuckling throatily, the chuckles doing wonderful things to the human bits under her tight robes, she leaned over him and let his gaze pierce the darkness finally, showing him Its true face.
It. There was no way in fucking Hell he could ever consider It anything other than It now.
“My friend, you present a quandary I cannot really abide by. You aren’t an enigma, you’re a time bomb, waiting to go off.
Do you know how many are willing to commit themselves to total war in order to acquire your soul? Do you truly know how many are willing to break the Pact of Pantheons just to acquire your dead ass?”
Frank, about to answer, chose wisely and stayed quiet, listening intently as Death breathed upon his face.
It, It, It was an It…and yet the breath that graced his brown cheek was warm, loving, and scented so nicely.
“I know you’re trying to follow in the footsteps of your mistress, the greatest teacher within your life. She proved your kind can not only die, but can reap what rewards you deserve,” Death leaned back up, running her red, sharp nails over his shirt, “You know which one I’m talking about. Not Silvers, nor any of your other fifty teachers and trainers. No, you know of which one I speak of.
Kraze. Harkonnen Kraze.”
Frank, about to shiver in ecstasy and the inescapable promise of Death’s delights, suddenly went completely cold, almost battle ready at the mere mention of the single most powerful person Frank had ever come across, outside of himself and Dash.
Taking a moment, Frank finally spoke up, “Harkonnen Kraze. The Edge Strider. Walker of the Horizon. She was living proof that we’re not bound to the whims and will of existence.”
Death chuckled, “And in doing so, she also ensured her soul would be removed utterly from any other pantheon’s will. Though she died human, like you, she also ensured that no version of Myself would ever be saddled with the headache of Otherworld War 1, locking her soul away for eternity in a version of Paradisio that lays outside of existence.
You, you annoying little devil, have not.”
Frank shivered, feeling Death squirm against him. For a moment he ran his gloved hands up her legs, his Maximum Gloves activated in this world, leaving streaks of his black aura against her pale, muscular legs. Drawing a moan from her (“When the hell did “she” become “she” again instead of It?” he thought to himself), Frank gripped at her waist and ventured a question, “So…you’ve confirmed what my Overdrive has told me. You say you can’t take my soul, and yet…here we are. Here I am.
If you are not willing to accept me, what are we going to do?”
Death, in a sudden blur of motion, jammed her finger into the spot between his eyes, pinning him to the ground by her mere presence.
“As fun as you are, as fun as you have been, and as fun as you will be, I must abide by the rules. Unless you are in the proper situation and have fulfilled the proper contracts and seals, yada yada etcetera and et-al, then I’m going to have you soul-locked.”
Frank’s chocolate brown eyes widened as he gazed back at Death, the black moon behind It giving it an unnatural halo, “Yes. You will be locked to your own rotting corpse, cut off from all energy sources, completely removed from volition and causality. Even as your corpse turns to soil, to dust, and is gone, you will be locked in that one position until the world is destroyed, and even then, you will never again be a part of existence, all the while screaming quietly, your consciousness continuing without surcease or rest.
This is my only answer to the conundrum that is Frank Todd. The Generalist. If I allow you to return, then you will be living proof that Death is not above dogma. There is no loophole, no exception. Now that you are dead, with no way back, there is no other ending left for you.
Even if I were to throw you into the Void, you would find a way back. I know it. I know you, very well, my child - why are you laughing?”
Indeed, as Death began to talk about the Void, Frank had begun to laugh, then chuckle, then guffaw with body-shaking laughter. Running his hands up her ribs, grinding against her, Frank’s chocolate brown eyes practically glowed with mirth and mischievousness.
“There is, at least, one thing you forgot. There is one thing I have done that is completely wrong in this scenario, yet DOES allow me to return to my body.”
Death stared at him for a moment, and for a second the negative colors of the Dead Lands flipped, looking almost normal as Death exuded Its absolute power in this realm.
The Shrike. Attack, defense, and a power that exceeded the Gods, none could dare lie to Death when this ability was deployed. The ultimate questing, the ultimate answers, and the absolute truth lay within the mysterious gaze of Death itself, and none could thwart Its will, none could lie to it. Not even Higher Gods or those greater could, once in the Dead Lands.
Frank smiled. Death gasped, almost shivering in orgasmic delight.
“Oh, you wicked, naughty, dirty, filthy man.”
Frank whispered three words to Death then all flashed back to normal as he simply yanked, violently and viciously, back into the ground, the space at his back suddenly hurtled aside as something tunneled through at an unbelievable pace, carrying him back in its wake.
In such a fashion had Death let Frank Todd lie to her. In such a fashion had Frank Todd lied to Death.
In such a fashion had Frank Todd forced his way back to life, his eyes opening and a long, shuddering breath wracking his lungs to torturous limits. Scrabbling at the ground like a squashed bug, Frank coughed and slowly began to drag himself away, intent on not being found by Karsiel when Puck had arrived and, collecting him, spirited him away towards The Shop.
He had lied, and Death had overlooked the one little tidbit that had allowed Frank the tiniest of slivers of an excuse to return. Death surely had him in Its…her?…lovely mitts, and as Frank awakened in his hotel room to look up into the violet gaze of Death, wearing HER face, Frank thoroughly expected her to smite him right then and there.
Kitty smiled up at Death as he took over Frank’s body, not forcing the physical change but the Mind Shuffle forcibly moving Frank to the “backseat” of their shared mind.
“Hello, hello!” Kitty, unrepentant and completely guileless, threw Frank’s thick arms around Death and drew her close, “You’re here, you’re here!”
Death sighed, pulling her hood forward slightly to lean down, obscuring her features as she leaned down to kiss Kitty.
”Yes, yes. I am here. You pretty idiot.”
Ignoring Kitty’s indulgent giggles, Death got off of Kitty/Frank’s body and looked about the hotel with an emotionless gaze, taking in everything and dismissing everything all at the same time. Long, black hair held up a pair of golden chopsticks, her violet eyes hiding her true power. Pale skinned as she should be, a light dusting of freckles nevertheless gave off a comely look across the bridge of her nose, her lips without adornment yet utterly kissable.
She had worn the face of the woman who haunted Frank’s dreams. Unlike those dreams, though, Death’s presence was everywhere and everything within the small room, fashioned as it was as all hotel rooms were.
That was the dead giveaway, the major hint for Frank. In Frank’s dreams, he could never honestly sense the woman. He had made love to ghosts, apparitions, and ethereals of all types, from the infernal to the divine, and yet he had never come across someone who simply…lacked presence.
He told no one, and not even the gods knew of this.
Death did, though. Secrets were their shared thing, after all.
The face of the woman gazed back at him, and Frank felt his heart wrench in his chest. He had long since known that he had fallen in love with that face, but had long since stopped seeking her out, choosing instead his other loves, his livelihood.
Either she would come to him or she would not. Even ramped up to the uppermost limits of his power he could not find nor figure out the existence of this woman.
All the more did it almost wound him that Death chose her f
ace to taunt him with.
Clucking her tongue, noting how Frank had Mind Shuffled himself back to “Front,” Death cat-crawled up his form on the bed, leaning down to kiss him deep, as passionately and privately as he had kissed anyone before.
Death murmured against his lips, “So. You have cheated Death. Will you be Odysseus or Polyphemus?”
Frank groaned, eyes closed as he slipped his gloved hands up her back, drawing her close, “Are you going to ask me these loaded freakin’ questions noooow?”
“Hey!” Death hrmphed, nibbling on the tip of his nose, “Some respect for the Reaper, huh? So. You know the order still stands. If you die with no loopholes or tricks at all, even if you lie to me or somehow cheat me, if you ‘die’ then I’m going to soul-lock you out of existence. Now that you’ve used it at the last second, your Mind Shuffle can never work on me again.”
For a moment Death’s true face appeared, gazing into his eyes with fathomless sadness, emotion far too great for any mere human to ever understand, “I’m…actually sorry for that, Fran-k. You really are so much fun.”
Frank chuckled, gazing back before kissing what approximated Its lips. No mere human could ever understand the anthropomorphic manifestation, the eternal and everlasting power that was Death.
But Frank was no mere human.
“So? What you’re saying is all I gotta do is go beat some sense into that birdbrain, meddle with Morrow Kind’s head, and save the day, right?
Piece of cake,” Frank grunted, letting his hands roam to her delight, “All without dying again. Think you’ll miss me, though?”
Death chuckled wickedly, switching to another of her human guises, this one less a taunt and more a promise as long, light brown hair replaced raven-black, her eyes taking on a greenish cast - a woman he would know on sight, and come to know eventually. Shedding her robes, she teased him other ways as he struggled out of his own clothes, actively stopping him at times in ways he could not deny.
“Ask me again,” she chuckled at his frustration and hunger, far better than he at hiding her own rising desire.
“Okay,” he grinned and instead bit at her neck, sucking hard at her throat as he tweaked one of her nipples between two thick fingers, “You’re gonna miss me visitin’ ya.”
Growling at him, Death swarmed over him in a flurry of frenetic activity.
In his own way, Frank returned the fervor, a part of him already thinking of how he could find a loophole in this newest twinge in his life, the rest of him completely devoted to saying goodbye to one of his truest beloveds.
****
The Hellride screamed through the night, the Pooka marking a trail of everlasting flame that burned bright throughout the Neo Los Angeles night. Frank’s intuition and Dash’s battle strategies had all come to fruition, but there were still several challenges that lay between The Shop and Karsiel, Angel of the Warning Shot.
Dash clucked his tongue, thankful that he was THIS version of Dash upon waking up, dubbed “~THE FOUNDATION~” by the Amerifed government. Perhaps it was fate, perhaps it was mere coincidence, but that his brain had chosen to align with this particular one was certainly an unforeseeable boon for their side.
On the other hand, even this version of Dash wondered at times if there WAS a pattern to his awakenings, one that Frank not only knew but had actively kept from the entirety that was Dash.
Gripping gently but surely at Grimcan’s mane, Dash rode throughout the night. If they were fast enough, IF they were fast enough, they could have possibly bypassed the greatest threat of them all, one who had sided with Karsiel simply with their inactivity, their silence, and the lack of their presence.
Grumbling to his Pooka friend and servant, Dash rode on directly for the Business Sector of Neo Los Angeles, intent on striking at the heart of Babel. Frank, frail human that he was (Dash snickered to himself at that thought), had recharged by now and had come to terms with his near-death experience by once again experiencing Death herself, all according to plan. For a moment, Dash tapped into his smartwatch, nodding at the frenetic synchronized activity of their cohorts.
The Caroline woman had been rescued, their allies none the worse for wear though the Ricketts twins were out of the battle due to drunken disorderliness and Williams was simply out due to running out of gas. Though Jude and Mara had been waylaid by Cipher’s tricks and cohorts, Cipher himself had been neutralized and was on the run, alongside his magic-hacker ally.
The Necromancer had been a surprise, as were the Daggered bounty hunters, but the arrival of the Wormwood Agency and the planned recruitment of Cool Drive had dealt with those threats.
In rescuing Caroline, Jude had not only waylaid the powerful Aristotle but had also dealt damage to Morrow Kind’s true objective, for all that it could not be stopped…it COULD be screwed with. At the same time, Puck’s distraction and their message had reached its intended target and, with it, the hidden dagger they would require in the final battle.
Now lay the last of the challenges, then the Angel itself.
The last of his allies were in place, and now all that had to be done was to DO the damn thing.
The Dash that was closest to Daniel Hopkins chuckled to himself. This was glorious, GLORIOUS! Their plans had, with only a few stumbles, been fulfilled. The heart of the operation, of his glorious strategy, was coming to fruition and as soon as he acquired what building plans he needed, he would be on his way to rendezvous with his friend and partner.
All was well.
All was exactly as it was supposed to be.
“Hell yeah,” Dash laughed as the Pooka barreled through the raucous streets of Neo Los Angeles, dodging would be bounty hunters, unimportant mercenaries, and Tordekian revelers alike, “Hells. Yes. AMEN!
Motherfucker.”
****
To be concluded in The Angel Arc Part Three!
****
And now for a preview of
The Generalist - Taboo 5: Auger of the Angels!
Dash juked this way and that, light on his feet as he laughed, energized by the violence he had devoured earlier.
“C’mon, C’MON!” He smiled monstrously, row after row of sharp teeth promising destruction as the Angel-gene slowly got to his feet, “It’s my turn to fuck you up! I’m gonna rip that goddamn gimp wing of yours off and feed it to you, jackass!”
“How DARE you! Monster! Trog! Your kind isn’t even supposed to BE here!” the Angel cried out as it regained its feet, slower than before, “God destroyed you, all of you!”
“Hey, Frank?” Dash called out, “What’s this jackass talking about?””Just ignore it, it’s a jackass,” Frank responded, panting as he glowed a myriad of colors - psionic, ki, and mana each flowed through him as he regained everything he could within the few precious moments he had, “Just kick its ass.”
“Hey hey, didja hear that, jackass?” Dash leered at the Angel-gene, lolling his tongue out dramatically as he continued on, “Didja hear, didja hear? I can kick your ass now! Frank said so.”
Gritting its teeth, the Angel realized what was happening and, in a sharp flash Foresight, knew exactly what was going on. Chuckling to itself, its remaining wings throbbing with holy energy, it regained its feet and held both hands out, the grimoire floating between them as it began to prepare itself for true battle.
“Alright! I seeeeee! Fine then, I will give you what you want.
And then I shall destroy you both.”
Craning his neck this way and that, Dash smiled with a fatalistic red-laserlight within his usually green eyes, “’Bout goddamn time. Bring it.
Let’s dance!”
The moment the Angel-gene’s eyes closed, a flash of pristine, clean light erupted from the grimoire, bathing the creature in power. The samite of its loincloth expanded over it entirely, becoming an egg-like shell.
Grunting, Dash surged forward, “Gods, I fucking HATE long transformation sequenc-!”
Between one moment and the next the UnGrimm Troll hurtl
ed himself to the side, narrowly evading the gunshot that broke through the egg. Shattering it to pieces, the Angel stood in a skin-tight black unisuit, the edges lined in glowing white. The pieces of the egg hung around the Angel, floating of their own accord as it held two large versions of the .50AE Desert Eagle. Each golden gun glowed and seethed with unearthly power, and both Shopkeepers knew that this was it.
Judgement Mode, the final combat form of the Angelkind. Each gun, same but not similar, were connected to a wing on the creature’s back, the feathers themselves transmuting into the bullets each gun would utilize. Though each bullet was truly a physical construct, the Holy power that seethed through them could cause wide-scale massive damage against just about anything supernatural as well.
Frank smiled, despite himself. They had caused the Angel-gene to finally go completely all out against them. With this, even the creature’s master had no other trump cards left.
And it was time they started playing a few of their own.
Ignoring the Angel as it brought its guns up to kiss each one, all went dark for it as Dash flashed past it in a burst of cackling motion, wrapping it up completely in his trench coat.
”THIS is what we were so afraid of?!” Dash laughed as he kicked the back of the angel’s knee, bringing it to the ground before flipping over it and grabbing its busted wing, bringing it completely prone to the ground, “This jumped up iiiiidjit finally wears clothes and freakin’ gets some guns?! HAH!”
Spinning on his hip, he jacknifed up onto his fingertips, narrowly avoiding the sudden attacks as Karsiel tore the enchanted trench coat apart, firing where he had been.
Finally shutting up and committing itself to the fight, Karsiel took aim from its prone position only to suddenly fly straight up, torquing through the air as it aimed at where Dash was going to be within the next second.
Instead, Frank appeared directly in its guard, having moved to intercept it and bring the fight once again to super close quarters. Throwing the shot off with his beefy shoulder, Frank hit the Angel-gene with a close range gutshot uppercut before kicking away from the Angel-gene, opening it up for a swift, hard jump-kick from the Troll. Torquing unnaturally in the air, Karsiel narrowly evaded the leaping kick only to feel Dash’s hand clamp down on its ankle, crushing the wing there.
