Carnal Contendership 2023 (Apr '23)

Originally posted by dijo.



Dramatis Personae

Cthulhu's Nephews:
Blazed - one-half of B+D, runs a theater-reviewing YouTube channel
Depressed - one-half of B+D, runs a theater-reviewing YouTube channel
Frodo the Ring-Bearing Gnome - ring-bearer, died in an acid bath, not an actual gnome
Gator Guy - an anthropomorphic crocodile, resents name, Shakespearean fanatic, one-half of the Leviathans, died in an explosion
Harry the Sane Wizard - wizard from alternate reality, has a fake hand
J.J. JAY! - COSMIC HORROR, uncle
La Sobrina Del Horror Cosmico - the niece, and former GZ4 competitor
Maid of Death - caretaker of ь-I, winner of Cosmic Playground II
Megalodon Man - an anthropomorphic shark, food fanatic, one-half of the Leviathans, died in an explosion
ь-I - the avatar, part KAIJU, uncrowned queen
Quiet - symbiote, first official Nephew
Stop Sign #2 - a girl in a stop sign costume, died in an explosion
Thomas West - podcaster, former FWA World Champion, king of the deathmatch, man of 1000 disguises

FWA:
Charles LeRoi - le mec
Jon Russnow - general manager of the FWA, world-famous author
midnight MUSTANG - member of PONI BOI and conPRO, hit k-pop artist
sunrise STALLION - member of PONI BOI and conPRO, hit k-pop artist
weaselperson - looks like an anthropomorphic weasel

Hastur's Niblings:
Alexander Lies - an easily distractible guy
Christina Corncunt - owns an Italian restaurant
Elizabeth Silver - speaks very fast, should take a breath
Crash - pretty negative dude with a nice goatee
Moochelle von Horrosandwich - the dungeon mistress
Sean Spring - wholesome positive dude

Indies, Former CWA, Former FWA:
Afa Seanoa - former General Manager of CWA
Ashley La Bella - former CWA wrestler
Captain Fantasy - former FWA wrestler, superhero
Genevieve Seydoux - former nGw and BWW wrestler, businesswoman
Izaya Snowmantashi - renaissance man, fan of taxidermy, author of self-published novel 'The Golden Theory'
Jermaine Creed - one-half of Murder Inc., #1 contender to CWA World Tag Team titles
Jon Snowmantashi - KAIJU
Kendrick Lethal - one-half of Murder Inc., #1 contender to CWA World Tag Team titles
Liyah Monroe - former BWW wrestler, Twitch streamer
Surtur - former FWA wrestler, one-half of the Big Flippy Giants
Ymir - former FWA wrestler, one-half of the Big Flippy Giants
Zachary Kazadi - former FWA wrestler, wrestling purist & supremacist

Others:
Colossus - former BAOW star, wrestling/strongman/acting legend, ousted for domestic violence allegations
Devilauntie - trainer of Uncle, COSMIC HORROR, former Pseudo-Nephews member
John Duncan - sports management, former representative of Jon Snowmantashi
The Maker - of Meet Your Maker fame
Wanda - weaselperson's mysterious representative
Zom Gip - the Nephews' biggest fan, talented fan fiction writer

The Peripherals:
Barbie
Charles LeRoi's Twitch Chat
Genevieve Seydoux's Business Associates
ь-I's Family

---

[/HR]



Uncle stepped outside the house onto the back porch. Kazadi stood up hurriedly, rake menacingly held, though he eased up ever so slightly upon seeing COSMIC HORROR. The house's backyard was curated with fine attention to detail. A contour of interlocking stones, a pebble moat, and more interlocking stones surrounded a zen garden. A pool-sized sandy plain, perfectly raked, with the occasional island of moss and stone, or cactus, a trio of bonsai trees, a minuscule bridge, a bell, and a temple. Uncle whistled in admiration.

"I know, I know, it's rude to enter someone's house without permission, but I rang the doorbell and you never answered."

"Could've gone around the house."

"True, but this way it's a bit more of an entrance. If you'd answered the door, you would've seen my Octopi behind me, and so, a memorable first encounter and a promise that I am like no man you've met before. But you didn't answer the door so I had to compensate. This is me compensating."

"You don't think the mask and the pink tracksuit did enough to make you stand out."

Uncle thinks it over. "I guess you're right. Entering people's homes uninvited is just a bad habit of mine. Well, in any case, allow me to introduce myself, my name is-"

"J.J. JAY!. I've heard of you."

"You said the whole name. Most people just call me Uncle."

"I've no interest in calling you that."

"That's well enough. J.J. JAY! is a brilliantly underutilized name. I do so cherish any chance I get to hear someone else say it. Still, I'm satisfied to know my reputation precedes me here in late 2020 when I've yet to make my shenanigans a matter of international concern. I never knew you for keeping up with trending topics."

"I don't, and you never knew me for anything."

"On that matter, you're quite wrong. I am well aware of you. Unlike you, I do pay attention to trending topics, and despite your everlasting desire to reject any such attention, for a time, you were very much in the spotlight. Up until you fucked it all up, but even that didn't harm the memory of your name too much. After all, you're usually thereabouts the top 5 names in all those Top 10 Flops In FWA History lists, and I tend to scour those for potential recruits."

"Is that why you're here?"

"Un peu de ceci, un peu de cela."

"Did you brush up on your French to impress me?"

"Hmm. Un peu de ceci, un peu de cela."

"Uh-huh. Right. To be clear, you lost me at the pink tracksuit, and the mask. Separately. Either one would've done the job. Entering my house, however you did so, didn't help matters either. I prefer a more subdued vibe altogether than what you offer. I'm not interested."

Uncle chuckles while walking down the porch into the garden. He stops in front of the sandy zen garden Kazadi had been tending to before his unannounced arrival.

"You're not used to hearing no, I take it?"

Uncle clears his throat dramatically and spits into the sand. Kazadi frowns but makes no move.

"You're a rather angry guy, you know that."

"I do. Hence the garden."

"Oh. That makes sense. Well, then. We're in the perfect scenario to test out the calm-inducing capacity of this garden. Would you relax a little and stop holding that rake like you're ready to impale me with it, and I'll tell you my proposition?"

"I already told you what I think of it."

"Don't be rude. You haven't even heard it."

Kazadi sighs but doesn't rush the incoming expulsion of the man from his household. He leans the rake against a tree and sits down on the porch. "Hurry it up, then."

"Oh, of course, of course. Time is of the essence, gardening to get back to." Uncle squats down in front of the sand, looking closely at it. "How about coming back to the FWA?"

"I quit. I'm done. I won't go back on my word."

"No one cares about your word, not even Devin Golden cares about your word. He's retired twice as it is, bound to do so a third time once his dalliance with Randy Rayman comes to an end, he's got no business telling you about maintaining your word. And it was just a rule for the match anyways. You think he would've quit quit if he'd quit?"

"Doesn't matter what he would've done. Doesn't matter what anyone else would've done. I quit. I quit on my passion. On the thing I loved the most in the world. On my reason for being. I couldn't bear a bit of pain, so I quit. I've already heard all the justifications for why I should renege on my vows, in spite of the fact that I never solicited such justifications in the first place. How many times will I have to repeat myself?"

"You're a rather dramatic one, aren't you? That's okay, I like that in people. Passion is so infectious!"

"Are you done?"

"You said it yourself: I'm not so easily turned away."

"You're saying I'm not trying hard enough to get rid of you?"

"I'll abstain from answering that question in light of the possibility you might take me up on the challenge. Now, putting aside your desires to put me in the rearview of your modest existence, have you not considered the sheer joy of vengeance? Take from Devin the thing he most prizes in the world now, the Golden Shower and those tag team titles."

"Returning for vengeance? There'd be nothing more pathetic. My love of this doesn't need to be stained with personal grudges. All I ever needed was the desire to win. The figure opposite of me will always remain irrelevant to those goals. Vengeance would do nothing for me. I... have no ill will against Devin Golden. I said I quit. I did. If there's anyone I should resent for the fact that I can no longer wrestle, it's only me."

"Then forget yourself. It doesn't have to be as Zachary Kazadi. Remember, you used to go by other names. In fact, I'd say, it's rather pertinent to mine own needs that you DO NOT go by Zachary Kazadi. As I said, it wasn't an ordinary recruitment I came here for. I want you to take on a new identity."

"I thought you knew who I was. I don't do the gimmicks. The swerves. The stories. I'm a- I was a wrestler. A wrestler! Not an entertainer. Not an octopus. A pirate. A corporate shill. I was a fucking wrestler."

"Of course, of course." He rolls his eyes. How many times had he heard - and would hear - that disparaging line about fantastic personalities? He could stomach it though. No one met the standard of a 'wrestler' in Kazadi's books, so there was little point in Uncle being flustered by his exclusion from 'The Wrestler's' narrow definition of such. Not even purists like Truth & Parr would qualify. "I respect the purity of your passion."

"Do you?"

"Certainly! It's to be admired, no doubt. I appreciate the art of wrestling as much as you do. Okay, perhaps, not as much, but surely in my own way." Kazadi snarls as if even the assertion that there's a likeness in their passions is insulting to him. "Allow me to finish, please. I thought you weren't the talkative sort. Sheesh. Look, I don't want Zachary Kazadi per se. But you are quite a formidable talent. I want your skills. What I mean is, this will necessitate a certain suspension of disbelief-"

"I told you, I've heard of you."

"Ah. No need to explain the peculiarities of my being. Good. Well, not very good. I do enjoy talking about the peculiarities of my being, but there'll be other opportunities. Still, here I was hoping I might show you a trick or two. Anyways, I have this friend, he's... you could call him a parasite, I guess, but I wouldn't. It sounds a bit rude and harsh. But he needs a host to survive. Nothing that would kill you, though I suppose there might be some trauma that'd naturally accrue over time, and should you change your mind well- look, I'm not going to list out all the terms and conditions-"

"You're doing a great job of selling me on it."

"Is that a yes?" Uncle beams.

"No."

"Aww." Uncle sags. He drags a finger across the sand. "Well, I didn't expect you to say yes, anyways."

"No?"

"No! I proposed an absurd offer you were unlikely to accept so I could push for a second offer that might be slightly more tempting."

"Should you be telling me the intricacies of your persuasion tactics?"

Uncle shrugs. "A friend of mine has been working on a way to clone people."

"No."

"Oh, come on! Who doesn't want a clone?"

"I don't trust you."

"Why wouldn't you trust me?"

"You're a devil."

"A COSMIC HORROR, actually."

"Doesn't make it any more convincing."

"Still, I'd appreciate you being considerate that there's a difference. How about I sweeten the deal, then?"

"I'm assuming this sweetener is something you already had in your back pocket."

Uncle reaches for his back pocket. "How'd you know? Well, doesn't matter. You've spoken to Izaya, I presume?"

"He's the one who told me about you."

"And he would've told me about you, but alas, I do my own research. I'm certain Izaya's told you his Golden Theory, then?"

Zachary frowns. "He has."

"Unsurprisingly. The thing about conspiracy theorists is they can't help telling people about it. It's never a good look for them really, but like a preacher and his gospel, it's hard to resist the holy calling to tell your 'truth'. Though, in Izaya's case. He is correct. So it would behoove all thirty of us to be cognizant of that."

"There's thirty of us?"

"Well, not yet. Most of them haven't appeared so far." He counts on his fingers. "There's about ten of us right now, I think. But don't worry, I'll be sure to help jack those numbers up. One person does not a loving family make, after all. At the very least you need eight."

"What does Izaya have to do with this?"

"If you are to believe Izaya-"

"I haven't said I do. He didn't do a good job of selling me on it. Bit of a nut job, actually."

"And yet he has a way of making you hear him out, doesn't he?"

"So do you, it turns out."

"Makes you wonder?"

"I'm a gardener now. I don't need to be concerned with any of this shit. I've made my peace."

"You want to be forgotten?"

"I've never cared about being remembered."

"Funny thing that. You know what Zachary means?"

"I d-"

"God Remembers," Uncle quickly says before Zachary can confirm he does. "You won't be forgotten, whether you want to be or not. You still have a role to play."

Uncle stands up and pulls a key out of his back pocket.

"A metadimensional key. Into the... Maker's mind, so to speak. A way to control your fate. This is the sweetener." It looks like an ordinary enough key. Kazadi hesitates to reach out, but Uncle shoves it into his hand. "Hold it out, then twist, like you're unlocking a door." Kazadi inspects the key, and something compels him to turn around and hold the key out into nothing, twisting it. He hears a click. "Then, push." And he pushes against the space where the key had lodged. Another world opens up beyond this door made of 'space'. He takes a step inside, and another, then the door slams shut behind him.
Uncle stands alone in the backyard smiling to himself. He squats down again, in front of the sand.

In the sandy expanses of an undisclosed location somewhere in the greatest country on God's green (or desaturated yellow in this particular bit of America) earth, a lone weaselperson walks through the desert. Their groin begins vibrating and they reach into their trunks to pull out a cell phone. The caller ID identifies it as Wanda. They're unsure about answering, but they decide they'd feel worse ignoring the call.

"Hello, Wanda."

"You've disappointed me, Jonathan."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"By a harmless, little girl. Did you feel bad for her?"

"I don't know. Maybe?" It had also been their second match, and although one might be prone to underestimating Trixie, she still had a few bells-to-bells under her name, more so than weaselperson's sole match before then. If one were to look purely at the facts and ignore the superficial chatter, Trixie had been the favorite.

"..."

"The connection isn't very good here."

"It'll hold. Why are you walking in that direction?"

"I don't know. I was ashamed."

"As you should be."

"Losing sucks."

"Yes, it does."

"It's embarrassing."

"I don't even want people to know we're associated."

"Oh."

"I saw that girl confess to you. Why did you turn away from her?"

"I didn't want to be disloyal."

"And if you wouldn't have felt any guilt over it, would that have changed how you would've acted."

"... This sounds like a trap."

"Answer the question."

"I don't want to."

"Where are you going?"

"I don't know."

"Are you giving up?"

"I don't know."

"Are you coming back to me?"

"Do you want me to?"

"No. Not as you are now."

"I understand."

"You still have another opportunity. A bigger opportunity. And an easier one."

"I do?"

"A chance to become the champion of that entire company. All you have to do is stay in the ring longer than anyone else."

"I think, I think I could do that."

"Do you really?"

"Yes."

"Even after what just happened?"

"I won't let it happen again. I'll learn from my mistakes. I'll be a new weaselperson. The best weaselperson. I can do it this time. I'm motivated."

"It is true that most people do not find immediate success, though losing to that girl was not merely a failure, but an abject failure."

"I should've done better."

"You NEED to do better."

"I will do be-"

A truck runs over weaselperson, turning them into roadkill.

Bones, muscles, flesh, and organs are flattened beneath the weight of it. And then the back wheels take care of any such meat that was still intact. The truck stops, tires skidding in the newly bloodied sand to a quick halt.

The driver exits the vehicle and stands over the mottled remains of weaselperson. They reach underneath the arms of the person and haul them into the back of the truck. They gaze down at some of the innards that fell out and pick it up, tossing it into the back with the corpse. They pull the tarp over, covering it, and head back into the driver's seat. The truck pulls away.

The cell phone remains on the ground. Slightly covered by bloody sand.

"Jo...Jonathan? Jonathan. Jonathan!"


Izaya Snowmantashi whistles as he walks into his newly-minted workshop. On the walls are the taxidermied remains of several creatures, many of them exotic. He wears an apron and dries his wet hands on it.

On a metal table, a body bag sits. He stands over it, a master craftsman in front of his soon-to-be masterwork.

"Many of you aren't familiar with me," he says, to no one in particular, and to everyone. "I should sum up the relevant parts. Hmm. I'm a professional wrestler. I've been around the world. I've wrestled in Palestine, Yemen, the Hollow Earth, Atlantis, Ukraine - though haven't we all -, the ISS - we did not have the broadcasting capacity financing of Stop Sign #3 -, El Dorado, Fortnite. You'll surely wonder why you haven't heard much about me. I haven't spent too much time in the relevant companies that might hold your attention. I've always remained on the periphery, in the sort of companies you might find on a hastily compiled master list. On the periphery of the periphery. Not any time in FWA, and only a fraction of time, not enough to be significant, in the CWA. But you might've heard of my older brother: Jon Snowmantashi. And if you've been here long enough, you might even remember me from one of Michelle's visits to Japan, before she found a healthy outlet for all her misplaced anger in her found family of cosmic rabble-rousers."

He pulls open the body bag's zipper.

"I'm a man of many talents, and many interests, and many hobbies. A renaissance man, if you will."

And removes the corpse from it. An anthropomorphic weasel (or a wereweasel, or a weaselperson, or the weasel) that faced a sad, heinous ending.

"You've heard of my wrestling. And, as you can see," he gestures to the walls, "I also have a side business as a taxidermist. It's not a well-loved art but it does have a generous clientele. Unfortunately, my brother doesn't quite fancy this hobby of mine. But he's hardly ever approved of anything I've ever done. Don't get me wrong, I love my brother dearly, but I have better sense than to seek his approval. Or that of anyone else's. A side effect of the Golden Theory. All of us goldensiblings are rather rebellious in our own little ways. Although this one here proved to be the exception. The most subservient of us all, you could say."

He opens a tool kit with a variety of knives, and instruments of dissection.

"I only bring up my brother in this case because I'm undertaking this contract to help him out, but he certainly wouldn't be very appreciative of it if he knew. He'd try to stop me and probably reject the gift he'd receive as a result too. He'll never find out though, so there's no need to be worried about it."

He approaches the corpse of the weasel person and begins cutting into it.

"This will serve a different purpose than the usual sort of requests I get. I'm making a costume out of it. A bit morbid, I know, but a necessity. We've all reached that crossroads where we must decide to carry on as who we are or take on a new identity. The definitive transformative moment of our lives. He lies down one of these paths."

He keeps sawing through, cleanly and efficiently.

"Have I ever told you how this world works? And I use this, and world, loosely, here. The Golden Theory I mentioned earlier. You've surely heard of Devin Golden's theories, or part of it, at least. He's mostly right. Entirely right, even, you could say, as long as you understand that, perhaps, he's not looking at the whole picture. We are all just fragments of individuals in another, 'realer' world. But this one," he looks down at the corpse, "was an anomaly. Rejected by the Maker. But that's the role he was meant to play. A necessary sacrifice for greater goals. And this is the role I'm meant to play. Joseph of Arimathea to the martyr among us."

Izaya places his tool down.

"This is somewhat gristly and lengthy work. I am proud of my art, but I know many aren't fond of it, so I won't subject you to a longer demonstration. Here, one of my former students, Liyah Monroe - you might know her from the Black Widow Wrestling tour the FWA held a couple of years ago - streams on Twitch from time to time. Why don't we watch that instead?"

He grabs his phone and casts Twitch to the television set in the corner. An ad starts to play.

"I'm an independent wrestler, I can't afford a Twitch subscription." He shrugs.


Jon Russnow stands in front of a series of highlights from both King of Deathmatch and The Grand March. He's got his overly enthusiastic and highly punchable smile plastered to his face.

"Ladies and gentlemen, theys and thems, the road to Back in Business is officially beginning! Carnal Contendership is right around the corner, which means we are going to find out who is destined to main event Back in Business against the Golden Opportunity 2022 winner, the man who retired Devin Golden, the FWA World Champion: Disco's Last Warrior Chris Peacock. Everyone who has won a Carnal Contendership has gone down in history, hall of famers like Chris Kennedy, WOLF, Ryan Rondo, Shannon O'Neal, future Hall of Famers like Cyrus Truth, Nova Diamond, Michelle von Horrowitz and Danny Toner. It is the BIGGEST opportunity in the calendar year, a chance for ANYONE to step out from the shadows and etch their names in the history books. Or, to be forgotten, a footnote in those very same books. Who will step up? Who will slip up? Tune in Sunday, April 30th, live from the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee! See you there FWA Universe!"


In the corner of the monitor is Liyah Monroe, while a chess board takes up most of the screen real estate. She's mid-conversation with her spectators, killing the lengthy downtime it takes for her opponent to decide on his next move.

"I haven't really been in talks with any company these days. I'm still recovering from the Torn ACL, and with my wrestling style, there's no guarantee that I'll be able to compete at the same level or in the same way that I used to, so I probably need to try and figure out who Liyah Monroe is in 2023, or maybe 2024 because she's not the Liyah Monroe you're used to seeing clips of. I think I can still be one of the best, I've always loved a good challenge, and the chance to adapt my style to my new limitations is pretty invigorating." The opponent's piece moves. "Finally. Come on, Charles, you can't keep wasting time like that."

A notification pops up in the corner of the screen.

"Thank you, BT, for the 8-month subscription."

Liyah keeps her eyes on the chess board and moves a rook.

"Was I really going to be on GZ4? I was in talks to be in Ground Zero Season 4. I haven't really worn a mask but my mentor knew a few people that would've been interested in passing on their own mask, so there was a possibility I could've been there, but I got the injury pretty early on in the planning for that show and that kinda killed any talks. It might've been for the best, I don't know if I really would've wanted to wear a mask long term anyways so it might've been a bit disrespectful if I dropped the mask as soon as I won GZ4."

Liyah snorts.

"Would I have won it? Of course, I would've won it."

Her opponent makes another move.

She shakes her head, grinning at the ill-thought maneuver.

"Not a smart move, Charles. Maybe you should take your time after all. We gotta keep this going for the charity donations, but it won't last too long at this rate. Couldn't we have got that Trixie chick for this? I heard she was a chess genius."


'Le Mec' Charles LeRoi, on the figurative other side of the screen, in another city, was also streaming on Twitch. Charles had no interest in participating in the Creator Clash Chessmatch Charity Drive but he'd been coerced into the act (as in he was asked and was too nervous to say no) so he had little choice. He would be happy for this match to end as soon as possible.

Le Mec sweat nervously, his eyes shifting between the chess game and the comments in his Twitch chat. He'd yet to hire a moderator, feeling a bit too anxious about addressing the hiring process, unfortunately, his popularity exceeded most expectations, and a recent new dynamic in his life had only swelled such popularity making the lack of moderation a problem bound to erupt.

"Has Miss LeRoi popped up yet?"

"dropped some cookies off"

"lucky bastard"

"What was she wearing?"

"no comment"

"timestamp? clip?"

"01:22:20 to 01:23:01"

"mommy :S"

"legend"

Charles LeRoi's face reddens with every passing comment, and he hardly even registers the development of the chess match. Used to be his mom would handle stuff like hiring a moderator, but she'd started her own OnlyFans subscription and now she was making even more money than he was. On the upside, not relying on her son for survival had made her much nicer. The downside was that his newest assortment of inherited fans never let him forget it.

Often his original fanbase would clash with his newest one, and a war of slurs, doxxing, and therapy speak would overwhelm the bulk of the chat. He'd been banned a few weeks ago for being unable to maintain his chat, and many original members of his fandom were beginning to turn on him for his lack of assertion.
He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. He remembers to go to his happy place. To forget all of the world's troubles. To be at ease.

A concert. In Busan. He smiles.

The stadium is packed - as should be expected - but even so, it's like he's the sole audience member for the performance. The ambiance without the anxious bit of being surrounded. The PONI BOI duo dance their routine set to Carnal Contendahs while thirty or so backup dancers posing as fan girls brawl about on the stage for the chance to date the pop stars. They're perfectly in sync, the raucous cheering from the crowd is nearly deafening yet even so the bars dropped by sunrise STALLION carry on being heard over the adulation. Even the typically meek Charles LeRoi screeches for the stars performing their hit duet.

LeRoi is in bliss.



The curtains close while midnight MUSTANG and sunrise STALLION hurry off to change into the next set's outfits. They're surrounded by crew members who have their own arduous task of getting them undressed and quickly buttoned up into their next costume while the thirty-or-so dancers who'd been faux brawling across the stage leave to relax backstage.

As with every time they have to change outfits, MUSTANG's bout of nervousness and nausea hits him. It happens each time without fail, and although he's done these performances the world over to a collective millions of fans, he never stops being nervous in between each and every one of these performances.
He used to wish he'd be able to just do each performance back to back, no wait between, no outfit switching, and in the producer's defense, these waits were rather brief given the impatience of the audience on the other side of the curtains, but even this brief time was enough to cause MUSTANG to tap his foot nervously and sweat even more than he already had.

Fortunately, all that time spent touring and performing had allowed him to figure out how to work through these issues. He'd found a perfect technique for clearing his mind long enough to forget about every one of his overblown worries. An easy way to put himself at ease before defining moments.

What he does is - he imagines himself in his happy place.

He's his namesake in this happy place. A mustang. The horse, of course, not the vehicle. He stampedes across the grassy plains with the rest of his herd. He doesn't have to think about millions of fans and their expectations. About performing. About his diet. About maintaining his body. His hair. His public persona. His agent. His partner. His leaders. All he thinks about is his mane blowing in the wind as his powerful legs carry him and his fellow horses forward across the plains.

MUSTANG is in bliss.


Alongside the mustang, the stallion does his best to keep up with both him and the herd. He's never been as much of a workhorse as his closest lifelong friend, but he's always worked his hardest not to hold midnight back.

Then his hoof tweaks. Takes the weight out from underneath him, and he falls. His front right leg breaks entirely - the bone sticking out brings with it a sharp sting of pain. He yelps in distress, but the rest of the herd has gone on, unconcerned with their lost member. A distant memory to be forgotten. MUSTANG has gone on. It's not surprising, he's now holding back his lifelong friend, he deserves to be abandoned.
He can't get up. Odds are, he'll never be able to run again. He's lost the only thing that makes him useful.

The ranch owner, a massive burly man who seems to be built of boulders stacked up on top of one another, approaches him. The man's face is reddened, incensed with fury, a vicious sneer on his face.

"FUCK! You useless piece of shit."

He's got a knife in hand.

"What a fucking waste of money? Imagine a horse who can't fucking run without tripping on himself. God fucking damn it."

The man crouches down and slips the knife into the stallion's jugular.
sunrise isn't much longer for this world.

He's sad, but also grateful for the time he was able to spend with MUSTANG.

And focusing on that, in those last seconds, STALLION is in bliss.



Colossus had had to abandon his wrestling career finally, and turned to ranch owning. The allegations caught up to him, and this world was no longer willing to look past his history of domestic abuse. It was bullshit. Luck of the draw. Plenty of people who had done worse than him were revered the world over.
His uncle had given him the farm after he'd lost most of his money being sued into oblivion by his bitch of an ex-wife. Then his own lawyer - former lawyer - had taken him to court for assault. The man had promised him he'd be innocent when the case was up, that his ex-wife's reputation would be the one in tatters. But he'd failed.

He drags Stallion back to the ranch with one hand by the ankle of a back leg. For a time, he was considered the world's strongest man, at least by several strongman competitions out there in the world. He was a household name in the industry. Once a go-to for television and film super mooks. And of course, millions of people had memories of Colossus dominating the wrestling world during their childhoods for the BAOW.
People still lined up to get his autograph, so he could at least book a gig at a convention here and then. Though a fair few of those went up in flames once word got out on Twitter. A lot of people didn't care about what you did back home, they recognized him for what he'd offered to the world for four decades. Unfortunately, that didn't stop most of the ad men from getting cold feet and canceling him.

He leaves the stallion out at the side of the ranch. They could probably salvage it. Horsemeat wasn't too bad once in a while. Still, he'd have rather kept the horse itself.

He shoves the door open and it falls immediately off its hinges. Not the first time he's done that. Can't control his strength.

"Baby, baby. What's wrong," Barbie says.

"Fucking horse broke its leg. Had to put it down."

"Aww, baby." Barbara puts a hand on Collosus's face. "Maybe this whole ranch living isn't for us."

Colossus shoves her away and she falls to the ground. It's not intentional. He forgets his own strength sometimes. And she's so tiny and fragile.

"Not this shit again."

Barbie takes a deep breath, trying to regain her composure.

"It's just that-"

"Shut your mouth. You think I want to be here?"

"No, but-"

"God I fucking hate the sound of your voice. So goddamn shrill."

She stands up, frowning, abandoning her attempts at putting on a happy demeanor.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I can't talk. I can't look. You know they've got pretty good sex dolls these days, maybe you'd be happier with that."

He backhands her. She falls to the ground once again and doesn't move.

"Barbie?"

He falls to his knees. Doesn't even bother checking on her. Comes to a quick conclusion.

"Barbie? No, no, no, no. Barbie?"

He buries his head in his hands. Sobs. He doesn't hear her start to crawl away, not until he hears the rusty cabinet squeak open. He raises his head from his hands.

"Barbie, you're okay?"

She turns around. Her face is already bruising. She holds the revolver out.

"Barbie. Babe, what are you doing?"

"I'm tired of this."

"It was just an accident. I didn't mean it."

"You're a coward. Own up to your actions."

"Babe put it down."

"No. I want to do this."

She offers him a bloody smile and pulls the trigger. It catches him dead in the throat. He puts his hand to it to staunch the bleeding. She pulls the trigger two more times. The first goes through his cheek. The second through his forehead.

Colossus wakes up from his nap on the porch to the desperate cries of a fallen horse. He stands up to look on in the distance. Damned stallion broke its leg. He heads into the kitchen to grab a knife.

"Baby, what's wrong?"

He ignores her. Roughly opens the door to head out into the field. They couldn't afford to lose a horse. For fuck's sake. Imagine a horse who can't run. A creature who can't do the one thing it's good at doesn't deserve to live.

He snarls, staring down at the wheezing corpse of the beast.

"FUCK! You useless piece of shit."



"This is a landmark breakthrough in punitive measures. Some crimes are too big to atone for in one lifetime. Codename: Damnation," she says, stoic and dry.

Alongside her guests, they look at a monitor displaying the simulation Colossus, also known as Ivan Yakanov, is stuck in. He lies helplessly on their plus-sized hospital beds, unaware of his torturous fate.

"So the subject relives this moment of horror over and over again."

"But what's the use if they aren't conscious of it?"

"It's the subconscious that matters. It wears down the soul to nothing. Deep inside, he's aware that he's reliving his suffering endlessly, but he can't get out of the loop. He can't do otherwise. It's who he is. It's a prison of his own making. A hell tailored to him. The most innovative form of imprisonment today."

She gestures for her audience of government officials and executives to follow her.

"You might wonder how we came to discover this method. You will have surely heard of the unique illness afflicting a few dozen people around the world that has left them comatose. Over time, thanks to those amongst them who have woken up from it, for one reason or another, we've discovered that these uniquely comatose individuals have been in what you could say is a multi-user dream world. Essentially, they're all collectively dreaming fragments of themselves within this shared dream."

She stops by another room.

"It was rather difficult getting access to one of these patients, but we were ultimately able to get our hands on a subject." She's lying. The hospitals were rather eager to profit from the helpless vegetables taking up resources in their facilities. As easy as buying a gun at your local department store in the US. Or weed at one of the five dispensaries a five-minute drive from your home in Canada. Or a spare organ at your illegitimate doctor in Mexico. You get the idea.

On the other side of a one-way window, a man lays on a hospital bed with tubes sticking out of him and several monitors displaying various states of his health.

"Most of these individuals only have a fragment or two, particularly at any given time. Though it's quite spectacular, the power of the mind, to make one imagine themselves being something so removed from who they are, and yet so close, too, since they are still fragments of the comatose patient in the end. One could dream of themselves as another race, species, gender, or sexuality. They define their own limitations."

"Is there something special about this one?"

"There are traits that make him distinct from the rest, but many of them have traits that set them apart. All distinct, and the same at once. There are only a few exceptions who have several fragments of themselves, especially ongoing. This particular patient, Patient J, we call him, has over thirty fragments that we're aware of. And almost a dozen are active at any given time. An exception even among those he shares the dream world with. There was only one other individual as fragmented as he was. Furthermore, while we've seen instances of fragments belonging to more than one individual, we've not seen an instance like in his case where several of his fragments have gone on to belong to other individuals. The best case studies for our needs." Seydoux would've made of any subject she'd gotten her hands on 'the best case studies for our needs', but they don't need to know that part. If the shoe doesn't fit, make it fit. That was her motto.

"Have you considered other possibilities for this technology? Eternal punishment is all well and good, but it's hardly the most profitable way to take advantage of this, is it? Besides, being tortured isn't going to get us cheap labor."

"Undoubtedly. But before we can begin selling paradise, we need the people to understand true suffering."

"You're quite a merciless woman, Miss Seydoux."

"I'm simply a businesswoman. There is no room for mercy in our line of work."

The guests nodded in unanimous agreement.

"Miss Seydoux, this is a thought exercise, if you will? Did this world these people are dreaming of come about because they went into comas, or did they go into comas to enter into this dream world?"

"I'll figure out the answer to that question as soon as I discover how to profit from it. Now, why don't we carry on?"

Seydoux leads her companions out of the room, past a ventilation shaft where a pair of curious eyes watch them depart.



Uncle kicks open the ventilation grate and slips through. Harry effortlessly follows behind him. Quiet crawls out next. Thomas has a bit more of a struggle and Quiet and Harry work together to drag him out. Uncle is gleeful to discover the Maker on the other side of the room.

"Here we are, Nephews! Salvation."

Quiet and Harry fall to the ground as they finally manage to pull Thomas West out of the shaft.

"Should've just shrunk us down," Thomas complains.

"You're the only one who couldn't fit," Harry replies.

"Maybe the people who build these ventilation shafts should be more considerate of different body sizes. It's called ableism, Harry. Don't blame me, the victim, for their lack of foresight."

Harry rolls his eyes. "You finally decided which one of us is doing it?" he asks Uncle.

"Why does that matter?" Uncle responds, indignant.

"The world wants Thomas West headlining Back in Business once again."

"Perhaps you shouldn't have declared your sole loyalty to CDW, then?"

"What about me? I can toss everybody out of the ring with my new hand. You saw what I did to Baxter."

"Listen, Nephews. Follow my lead. The matter of who gets to participate in the CC this year is irrelevant, what matters is that one of us manages to participate. And I don't mean the Nephews Us, I mean the Golden Us."

"Usually when you say stuff like that, it means you're setting yourself up to be the one."

"If that's what the Maker desires."

"Hey, that guy looks a bit different than the guy I met," Harry points out, getting a closer look at the patient sitting in the hospital room.

"Well, Harry, that's obviously a matter of Metaphysical Dilution. The Maker you met was just a subconscious fragment of this Maker here. Who may well be a subconscious fragment of some Maker elsewhere."

"What?"

"Explain it like he's five, Thomas."

Thomas snorts, but he's used to the task. "Think of it this way. We only ever see a part of the person we're presented with. There are thoughts and beliefs you never vocalize, and some are buried so deep inside you, you don't know they're there. You only present to us the parts you're incapable of burying down, and the parts you're willing to show us. That's the same for this guy, except, he's also able to control how he looks. Well, control isn't entirely correct either. In the same way, an artist can have a perfect image in their mind but when they put that image to paper, it won't live up to that image they'd envisioned. They've exercised some control over the image, but not as much as they'd like. They're still limited by an infinite amount of other factors we'd never be able to wrap our heads around. Unless you're me."

"Yes, yes. I see. I see."

"Glad you understand it, Harry."

"So, uh, quick question how are we logically supposed to incept our own Maker? Actually, maybe a better question than that, why are we incepting him instead of incepting the jury committee like we did last time?"

"The jury committee? You mean the powers that be?" Uncle asks,

"... .....?"

"Yes. You know, The Silv-"

"Don't you recall it did not work at all? 10th place finish, Harry. The absurdity. We didn't even get the right people. And we have no idea who it'll be this time. A different strategy is necessary. Besides, this may well be more important than mere victory. It's like I always tell you, Harry, you gotta look at the bigger picture. The universe is conspiring to ensure none of us, not Nephews, nor any of our goldensiblings, will be in the Carnal Contendership. Our very presence at that event is on the line. We need to incept the Maker into being willing to participate. Who the Maker participates with doesn't matter. We can leave such a task to be decided next year. I fear if we don't succeed this year, we may be irrevocably dooming us all forever to irrelevancy."

"Don't let him get you scared, Harry. Oblivion isn't so bad."

"Don't listen to Thomas. Oblivion is horrible. Existence is everything! Now, put on your glasses."

All four of the Nephews put on their glasses. A wide three-hundred-inch augmented reality screen appears in front of them, although it's only currently static.

"Daring to enter the dream of the plebians we entered two years ago wasn't much of a hassle. They are of simple minds, and there wasn't any reason to worry we'd be in any danger beyond having to be forced to listen to monologues on shit-talking. But the Maker can be rather erratic, there's no telling what we'll see in his dreams. We've got to time our entry right, and make sure we're not entering a dangerous bit. With these glasses, we'll be able to see what he's currently dreaming of. Thomas, press play please."

Thomas clicks a button on his watch and the augmented reality screen begins to play. It shows four individuals: a man dressed head to toe in a black costume underneath a pink tracksuit, a shorter young white man in a pink tracksuit as well, an equally short but significantly thicker man with a tentacled mask and a pink tracksuit, and finally a larger, taller figure, thick, with a buxom buttock, in a pink tracksuit. They all wear glasses and are staring at the one-way window into a hospital room. These four individuals slowly turn around to stare back at their unexpected audience.

The Nephews turn around from the screen at the same time, confused. There's nothing there but the ventilation shaft they crawled (or were dragged) out of. They then turn forward again to look back at the screen.

"Wait, we can't all look back at once. I'll turn around first, you guys keep looking at the screen."

Uncle turns around.

The shorter tentacled figure on the screen turns to look at the Nephews. Uncle turns back to face the screen. The shorter tentacled figure in the screen turns its back again on the Nephews.

"So, he's dreaming about us watching him dream about us?"

".... ....... .. .. ...."

"This is why you don't incept your Maker," Thomas says.

"What we're seeing is from his perspective?" Harry asks.

"Exactly."

Harry turns around, and so does the short white man on the screen.

"Hey Maker, why'd you drop the ball in my X Championship match? I could've gone down in history. There wouldn't have even been a record."

Thomas turns around, and so does the thick tall black man on the screen.

"And you got overly ambitious for my Back in Business match. Now, I have no issue with that, but if you're gonna be ambitious, at least execute. Cost me my damn world title."

Quiet turns around, and so does the fully clothed man in black on the screen.

".. --..-- / ..-. --- .-. / --- -. . --..-- / .- -- / --. .-.. .- -.. / -.-- --- ..- / -.. .. -.. / -. --- - / - .... .. -. -.- / --- ..-. / - .... . / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . / --. .. -- -- .. -.-. -.- .-.-.-"

"What did you say, Quiet?"

"What language is that?"

"Never heard you speak that before."

"We don't have time for this. Thomas, fast forward to the next dream."


"Now that we've finished dinner, we can at last show you what we asked you here for."

Jon Snowmantashi sighs. He's immensely satisfied with the dinner that's been offered to him, but he has little interest in whatever shenanigans these Nephews have planned. This gift, whatever they intend it to be, is unlikely to be good, and especially unlikely to be as fulfilling as the alternative of beating them all down here and now.

"Look, Kaiju, that business a couple of years ago, it wasn't anything personal."

"You blew up my mountain. My school."

"We made sure no one got hurt, at least," Harry pitches.

Snowmantashi places his hand gently on Harry's shoulder.

"Sometimes the effects of our actions in one moment do not present themselves for a long time to come."

Harry gulps and hurriedly backs away to be behind Quiet.

"...... .. ...., .. .. ..... .. ....., . .... ..... ..."

Quiet steps up to Snowmantashi. Snowmantashi steps forward, fist curling.

Uncle steps between though he has a hard time squeezing through the two stiff bodies, especially with Snowmantashi's bulk.

"Now, now. This is a peace negotiation! I admire a good brawl as much as the next, but Kaiju, we are all in this together."

"Didn't Izaya tell him what's what?"

"You spoke to my brother?" Jon frowns, mood darkening.

"Shouldn't have said that," Thomas says, chuckling, all the while hardly paying attention as he taps away at his paddle ball.

"Is this about one of his stupid ramblings? His gold conspiracy?"

"NO! No, of course not." Uncle shoots Harry a glare. Snowmantashi notices it and shakes his head. "Look, like I said, we are just trying to make good on our past disagreement. There are a lot of things we're factoring here. First off, our Dreamer does feel bad about how things turned out."

"And yet, she's not here."

"It's not because she doesn't want to be here. She does! But there's a reason, a metaphysical-"

"A what-"

"Doesn't matter! The point is, Dreamer will make her apologies when the time is right. But the Nephews were the ones who pulled the trigger, we need to do our own part in apologizing and making it up to you."

"How is it you plan on making it up to me, then?"

"Ah! Glad you asked. Follow me, if you'd please."

Snowmantashi turns away from Quiet who hadn't budged an inch and follows Uncle into a warehouse filled with cheap plastic tables, the sort you'd see at a park potluck, with maquettes on top of them.

They pass by the first table, where a cartoonishly, idyllic city can be found, a big rainbow-colored label titled Friendtopia marks a distinct and oddly creepy - of the overtly friendly sort - entrance to the town.

"This here warehouse is where we keep micro duplicate versions of pivotal locations on Earth. They've got plenty of uses. Parodies, mostly. Simulations. Improv. Apology gifts. LARPing. LSD trips. That sort of business. We've got a great manufacturer for these things. They've even got specializations. They can do snow globe versions, and tattoo worlds, for example. We keep it simple. This one here, well, we've been having our fair share of squabbles with the Buddy System-"

"The Buddy System?"

"Tag team that's been killing it for the last year. Baxter, really big guy, is North American Champion. Chokeslammed him once, not to brag. Jeremy Best, really nice guy, beat Uncle a couple of times, kidnapped Krash."

"Krash has been kidnapped?"

"What? Are you going to do something about it?"

"Hmm."

"Yeah, figures, no one else is either. Turns out that naming a PPV after someone is easier than saving them from captivity. We did our part: recruited their boy Scorpane into the family. But let's stay focused, the Buddy System doesn't matter, we're getting sidetracked. Harry's got ADD, can't ever stay on task."

"I understand. Izaya, too."

Snowmantashi observes the Friendtopia maquette and sees cartoonish figures out of a bad parody of Sesame Street walking about. It seems like a Disney theme park in many ways. A world of falsities, pretend, and fake smiles. He sneers at it.

They move forward onto the next maquette. It's a rundown city that mixes yuppies and criminal elements alike, straight out of 70s New York. Empty needles lay on the streets, broken beer bottles litter the sidewalks, and windows are shattered or barred close with wooden planks. Prostitutes solicit. Drug dealers tempt. Pigs tase. The centerpiece of the town is a massive warehouse.

"Ah, Tonerville. We built this a while black. Plotted on blowing it up to make a point, someone else did it first though. A shame."

"At least we found a backup use for all those explosions."

"... ......."

"Shh," Uncle says.

"This is the Warehouse?" Snowmantashi looks closely.

"Heard of it?"

"I've been expecting an invitation."

"Been snubbed? I wouldn't think any of it. Our dearest Chessmaster doesn't like to be upstaged in his own court. Unfortunately for him, I don't take kindly to rejection. If you really want in the Warehouse, you gotta force your way in Kaiju."

"That's not how I do things. Besides, these peers of yours in the FWA, they've disappointed me time and time again when I met them. My interest in exchanging fists has long since vanished. And I have no patience for dealing with Michelle's selfish indulgences either. If this Warehouse wants me, they will have to make the call, I'm not desperate."

"Of course not. Nature is never desperate. It only is. Come on, then. There's Fantasyland, Crowe's Carnival, that big new one is the TORN verse, still ironing out the kinks, we've got the dollhouse from Twitch streamer extraordinaire Nova Diamond's sojourn with Dreamer and GiGi... and here we are, the Nephews gift to you, Kaiju."

In front of them stands Mount Fuji, the mountain that had been the subject of Michelle's petty vengeance, and the school that had vanished at its base in a destructive conflagration.

"You wish to offer me a miniature representation of the school you destroyed?"

"No! No, no. Well, yes. But we will make it bigger."

"How?"

"Well, how much do you know about quantum physics."

Snowmantashi stares blankly.

"We've got like a gun that shoots like sonic waves that make things scale up"

Snowmantashi blinks deeply.

"I'll pass on this offer, I was content with the dinner, and if your friend still wants to fight, I'd be inclined to take him on."

Kaiju walks away, though he stops at the next table, his attention arrested once more.

"What do you mean you're not interested?" Uncle asks.

"I don't wish to reclaim the past, tentacle man."

"Damn. We were plotting a Mono no Aware sequel, too."

Snowmantashi bends over and observes a recreation of Manhattan. He looks inside one of the buildings where a few people sit around a table.

"Michelle?" Snowmantashi says, confused.

"Michelle? What's she doing in there?" Uncle tries to get a good look as well, sneaking in from underneath Kaiju. "Ah, wrong. That's Moochelle. Your confusion is understandable."


Hastur's Niblings sit around the lengthy custom-made table. A maquette of a gothic-like school is atop it with several smaller figurines spread about. There are six individuals around the table.

At the head of the table: Moochelle von Horrosandwich (not to be confused with the similarly named and conceptualized Moochelle von Cowowitz that would have recently appeared on Ground Zero). She has a big divider in front of her, keeping dice and objects, and papers out of sight of the other five players.
Directly to her left is the night's host: Christina Corncunt. A Manhattan native, she runs an Italian restaurant on the verge of bankruptcy. It's a wonder it survived the COVID pandemic, a plague that did not spare their world as it did others (like the FWA's, for instance).

Next to Christina Corncunt is the blunt and harsh guest from Over Up: Crash. The Man with the Goatee that Fills All Others with Envy strokes his facial hair, concerned with the predicament that his player character is currently facing.

On the opposite side of the table are three more individuals.

The daughter of the infamous wrestling executive that goes by the public title of The Silver Zero: Elizabeth Silver.

"HowcouldyouhaveletyourselfgetcaughtbythattrapCrashitwassoobviousyoushouldnteatthat," she says, without ever allowing a singular nanosecond of silence between words.

Next to Elizabeth is Sean Spring. She smiles brightly despite the harsh predicament their players are in.
"I'm sure we'll figure a way out if we work together." Her positivity and warm presence ease the tension effortlessly. She's the reason the Niblings have been able to run countless campaigns without ever falling out with one another. The glue that binds this pseudo-family.

Lastly, is Alexander Lies. The most recent addition to their table. He's not exactly paying attention to his co-players. His short attention span has him distracted by the massive Japanese man looking in from the window, though no one else seems to care or even acknowledge the kaiju-sized human outside the building.

"Alright, Crash, roll a constitution check."

The five players' characters are standing in a field of flowers within a forest behind the institution. They all wear uniforms, cloaks, and pointed hats.

"Why bother? We both know there's no chance I'm passing it."

He rolls it despite his protestations.

"FAIL," Moochelle gleefully announces.

"Big surprise."

"Ymir has completely succumbed to the lotus flower's temptation and has no more willpower. What do you guys do?"


Surtur, The Niece, The Avatar, and Harry the Sane Wizard all stand around Ymir who lies on the ground, completely at peace. The tall Frost Giant plucks another lotus flower from the field surrounding them and chews on it. If there was ever a picture of absolute happiness, it was this happy-go-lucky giant right there.
He imagines himself on his broom, a game between houses, his blue-themed one against the red-themed one, natural enemies. He swerves through pursuers, the heavy leather ball in his hand. He fakes to throw it left and the keeper falls for the bait, diving out of the way of the net. Ymir whips the ball into the hoop and the crowd erupts in cheers for the Frost Giant's latest goal, putting his house ahead of the opponent's by a good margin.

Ymir points to his forearm, explaining that he has ice in his veins and that's why he was so immensely successful. Technically, he's not wrong.

"I'm him," he shouts, and the crowd roars its approval back.


They return to the center of the field where the match can resume again. As soon as the bell whistles for the kickoff, Ymir goes for the ball but he's tackled by his historic rival, Surtur. He nearly falls off his broom, hanging by his fingers. He gazes down at the perilous plunge that might await him if he can't hold on, then looks up.

He sees Surtur, the Niece, the Avatar, and Harry standing around him.

"What the-"

"Wake up, you idiot. Are you that disappointed with your life you so easily fell for these poisonous plants? They're sullying your mind."

Ymir growls. Closes his eyes. And when he opens it again, he's once more hanging onto his broom. He grins, pulling himself back up.

"I'll show you who's the idiot."

The fans cheer him on.



"It's pointless. Ymir was always the weakest one of us. It's not surprising he'd give in this easily," Surtur explains.

"We just have to drag him out of here," Harry suggests.

"I expect I'm the one who needs to be the one doing the dragging in this suggestion of yours."

"Or punch his face in," Avatar offers.

"Perhaps a levitation spell," the Niece says, the first logical solution.

"No," Surtur replies, "I think the Avatar has it right."

He grins to himself. Though the world knew Ymir and Surtur as partners, the two had never liked one another. The feelings they had for each other were nothing less than hatred. Long before they'd become mismatched partners, they'd been blood rivals. They were rather similar, and their differences were the sort of differences that only added to their association with one another. Like how he was a Fire Giant and Ymir was a Frost Giant. Or like he was Red, and he was Blue. Or he was thick, and he was thin. He was hot-headed, he was cool-headed. He was hot-blooded, he was cool-blooded. Those last two mean the same thing, but you get the idea.

Before they'd become known as partners, the two had attempted to foil the other's existence dozens and dozens of times.

But now, this was the best chance Surtur had to put this rivalry to bed once and for all. He pulls out his fire axe and approaches the man in his reverie. He smashes the axe down viciously, lodging into Ymir's chest and hacking through flesh, bones, and organs. His three other companions back away in horror as the blood splashes across the Fire Giant, instantly sizzling, and the field of Lotus. He hacks away at the corpse until the Frost Giant is hardly any blue at all, and he grins and laughs maniacally all the while.

"Surtur, you good?"

Surtur shakes his head, blinks, and sighs, disappointed that it was just his fantasies that had carried him away. But oh, how sweet the reality where he actually goes through with it.

"Yes. As I said, the Avatar has it right."

He's quite tired of playing pretend, of escapism being his only method of doing what he truly desires. He pulls out his axe, this time, he'll make his imagination a reality.

"She said punch not chop," Harry shouts.

He won't listen. He lifts the fire axe high but loses his balance when the Niece leaps onto his back. He tries to throw her off but with Harry pitifully holding onto his leg, the Niece is able to shove a flower into his mouth. He swallows without thinking, and suddenly, he doesn't feel so obsessed with the thought of murder anymore. He drops the fire axe, and his trio of companions cautiously back away. He lays gently on his back in the field of lotus, side by side, with his good friend Ymir. Bliss, bliss, bliss, bliss, bliss.


"I'm not sure why you were so desperate to stop him," Avatar says. "Now we've lost our two biggest members. I guess I'll have to handle an even bigger share of the load."

"If they want to kill each other then they can do it on proper even terms," the Niece replied.

"Ymir is the idiot who decided to eat a flower without thinking. He put himself in that situation."

"Let's just move on. We're down two meatheads, no big deal. Just follow my lead and we'll get through this effortlessly."

"You're not the leader, I'm the leader."

The Niece begins to leave.

"I've got seniority," Harry retorts.

"Where are you going, I didn't say it was time to leave!" the Avatar shouts at the Niece, whose halfway down the stairs at the edge of the lotus field.

She doesn't answer back.

The Avatar hurries after her, and Harry decides he'll take his time and won't be rushed by the Niece.

The Avatar follows the Niece into a subterranean dungeon. They pause in front of a tall, massive rectangular object, shrouded by an equally massive blanket.

"What is it?" the Avatar asks.

"Let's find out." The Niece pulls the blanket off of the object.

The Avatar's eyes lock onto her reflection. Not just her reflection but... her two mothers. Her little twin sisters. Alive. Whole. Her home is intact. She can even smell her mother's beholder pot pie. She hadn't smelled that since she was a child.

She forgets the Niece is even there. She sheds a tear, her heart overwhelmed by the pleasantness of what she sees. They begin to lead her away, through the halls of her ancient family home.

"Where are we going?"

"To your coronation, how could you forget?"

"I'm going to be a queen?"

"That's your birthright, NOE-I!"



"You let her look into the mirror?"

Harry and the Niece stood at the sides of the Avatar who was transfixed by her reflection, entirely ignorant of the companions at her side, even as they waved their hands in front of her eyes or stood firm in front of the mirror. Moving her was impossible. She wouldn't budge.

"I didn't know what was going to happen."

"Perhaps exercise just a bit of caution, don't you think?"

"I don't, but I can think about it if you want me to."

"Classic magic mirror shows you what you most want trick. She was a bit mentally fragile. Figures she'd fall easy prey to it. Not like me, I'm perfectly content with where I am."

"Maybe I should look into it, I've always wondered what I wanted, deep inside."

"I'm not getting you out if you do it."

"Harsh."

"Anyways, I've decided that I'm done with this whole thing?"

"Because we're down to two?"

"No, because it's wrong."

"I feel like we're the good guys this time."

"That's not what I mean."

"We saved Ymir from getting killed. I think that's pretty good guy-ish."

"By our standards, yes, but what I mean is - this... all of this is wrong. We're in a fake... world. Reality. Whatever you want to call it."

"When you say a fake world-"

"Consider it a dream. Or a simulation. Or playing pretend with your friends. Or eating a flower that makes you think everything is perfect. Or looking into a mirror that makes you live out the life you wish you were living. All fake. We aren't the real us. There's an end goal here, bigger than we realize, and we're just bits and pieces in it."

"So, you're saying nothing we do matters."

"Exactly."

"That doesn't change a thing."

"I mean, nothing matters even more ... less... more or less than it usually does. There are no consequences. You can do whatever you want."

"I don't believe you. If nothing matters... use one of those killing spells on the Avatar."

"No problem." Harry pulls out his wand. A green neon light billows out of it and strikes the Avatar. She drops lifelessly. The Niece remains expressionless. "And heck, why don't I go back up and take care of Ymir and Surtur too, for being absolute idiots."

He hurries up the stairs into the lotus field. "You're dead," the green neon light strikes Surtur. "And you're dead!" The green neon light strikes Ymir. They lay unmoving, still smiling. "Who's next? Harry's gonna kill you!"

He rushes off back to the dormitories to commit crimes that need no elaboration.



The Niece stares a bit longer at the Avatar's corpse.

"Shit, he really did it."

She's not sure if she should leave now, or what she should do, period. Maybe she should just look in the mirror and take whatever false happy reality it was willing to give her.

None of these revelations Harry had made had changed much for her, so she decided she'd keep doing what she came here to do even if she wasn't sure what that meant beyond keep going down the path. She moved forward past the mirror and through the door into the next room.

She's stunned by a massive wall full of masks. No exits out of the room though. A dead end.

"Flowers that make you think everything is wonderful, a mirror that gives you the world you most wished for, and let me guess, a mask that makes you think you're someone else." She sighs. "The smart thing to do here would be to just walk away, probably."

She observes the countless mask layered across the wall. Donny Toner. Alyster Black. Whyte Thunder. La Muerte Blanca. Cusos. Occisor. The British Kid. The Octopus. Vampyra. Death Walker. Leather Boys. Stop Sign & Traffic Cone. Captain Fantasy. Fantasy Girl. El Demente. Eclipse. The whole collection of Ground Zero masks, including her own. Smaug. Tyranus. Konchu. Epsilon. And it goes on, and on.

It's hard to pass up on the opportunity to spend your day in someone else's shoes, although there was no certainty what the effects of wearing one of these masks necessarily were and how long they would last.
She would have to take a safe bet. That automatically ruled out a significant portion of the masks. Deranged people tended to hide behind other identities, it made sense when you think about it.

Her eyes wandered ever further.

She recognized the chrome helmet of Captain Fantasy. Being a superhero couldn't be all that bad, and Captain Fantasy looked like he was chiseled out of stone. He kept his body in shape about as well as she did.
She grabbed the chrome helmet and put it on, eager to live out her captain fantasies.



"I heard Caesar ain't interested in the Crown of Thorns. That's cool, he can say that, but we all know damn well lil' boy is scared of what's gonna happen if that X title of his is within my reach. Same shit with Black Jesus. I woulda crucified that boy if he put the belt up against me. He's lucky Danny Toner took him out before I did, because I wasn't gonna play around."

"Yeah, yeah, you talk a big game, Tommy. But you ain't never on the card."

"Because I got principles, Afa, former CWA General Manager, and Enforcer, I've got principles. I beat Chris Peacock's ass left and right when he came after my Crown of Thorns. Yet that boy ducked any time I wanted that Golden Opportunity he had his hands on, and he's ducking me with the FWA World title he got his hands on. Do you know why? Because when he faced me, he knew that there was an S-tier level of skill, which is where he's at. There's Kennedy there. There's Rondo. Devin."

"Come on, man. You're just trying to poke the bear."

"No. I'm giving him his props. S tier's better than most. Legends in there. I put him in the hall of fame category, man. I got a certain level of respect for him. But after that there's S+-tier, that's that MvH territory. That Danny Toner when he tries territory."

"He beat both of them, Tommy."

"And then, there's S++-tier, that's Uncle when he ain't fooling around, which is never, mind you. There's the POWER-!. You know, there's Lilith. Cap. Ladette. And then, Afa, and then, there's S+++-tier. That's me. Only me. You seen what I did to MvH."

"Saw what you did to Danny Toner, too."

"..."

"..."

"I turned him into a star."

"Yeah, sure."

"Anyways, the point is, I'm boycotting that company. I ain't stepping into any of these dumb tournaments, these massive battle royals, until Chris Peacock gives me the title match I'm owed. He gotta stop being a bitch, and man up. Of course, that's left me with a lot of free time. So I've gotten back into the podcasting game."

"So, you have."

"Back into the superhero game."

"Superhero game?"

"Captain Fantasy stuff. Saving people's lives and shit. Teaching moral lessons. Doing my part for the community, you know."

"Come on, man. You ain't Captain Fantasy. That's a white man. Quit playing with me."

"I am Captain Fantasy. Listen! Listen: I. Am. HERE!"

"Oh, so similar. So you've been saving people?"

"Oh yeah, absolutely. You know, right after I stole... I mean, took back, the Crown of Thorns, since I basically finished up my commentating shift early, I decided to do some superheroing."

"Uh-huh? Who'd you save?"

"Well, this guy accidentally ran someone over..."



Captain Fantasy soars through the skies, parallel to the endless desert, two fists outwards, eyes looking through chrome dome eye slits over the sandy fields.

"Remember, Cap. No unnecessary detours. You hear someone screaming for help, you ignore it. You see a starving dog, you ignore it. You see your friend being choked out by a monster, you ignore it. Witch at the stake? Ignore it. You see a grandmother about to cross the road-"

"It's in the middle of nowhere," Harry points out.

"I don't care if it's in the middle of nowhere. You expect Quiet to commit mass murder if you don't give him precise instructions, and you expect Captain Fantasy to be a helpless-person-nearby magnet if you don't give him precise instructions. The universe bends itself to exploit these traits. We can't underestimate it. You understand, Cap?"

Captain Fantasy well understood the instructions and had no plans of being distracted. It did not occur to him that people don't generally make plans to be distracted. Still, he was sure he'd fly straight to his destination, determined in his duty.

"Hmm, what's that?"

He sees a vehicle stalled in an oddly muddy patch of desert and lands with a thud next to it, cracks unraveling beneath his feet. The man in the vehicle jumps out, slightly panicked.

"Who the hell are you?"

"I'm Captain Fantasy. You seem to be in a bit of a spot, but don't you worry for I. Am. Here!"

"But... why? We're in the middle of nowhere."

"I had an errand to run, but I saw you were in danger."

The man shakes his head. "This can't be real. What the fuck did I smoke today?"

"I assure you, it's very real. What's your name, young man?"

"Uh, Jay. Jermaine, I mean. Jermaine Creed.

"Everything is going to be alright, Jermaine. Here, I'll take care of this for you."

Captain Fantasy approaches the pickup truck and strains to pull it out of the hole it had driven itself into. When he gets the vehicle out completely, his superhearing alerts him to an odd sound under the drape in the back of the truck. An odd sound, but an oddity he'd recognized plenty of times in his community service.

"Shit, you actually got super strength? Is this for real? Like, really real?"

"I wouldn't celebrate too early, citizen." Captain Fantasy has a stern look. He pulls the drape off and Jermaine's eyes widen.

"Wait-"

"Interesting. You may have some explaining to do, sir."

"It showed up out of nowhere. And there was a random massive rainfall. Then the road got cut off by a valley that wasn't even on the map. Just, hear me out."

"Citizen, it just so happens that this creature you've found was the subject of my errand. Tell me exactly what happened."



"You got it, man. See, I was supposed to be one of the mystery entrants for this wrestling show. FWA. Prolly not the sort of thing a superhero cares about. It was in the middle of nowhere. And I mean that almost literally. Like where the fuck are we? Nevada? Arizona? I don't know. But anyways, I got lost on the way there. I was coming up on Longinus, that's my truck. Got the name from NGE, you know. Learned later on that's the name for the spear that killed Jesus Christ. Ma' didn't like me calling my truck that, but whatever. Anyways, I missed the whole first half of the tourney so they took me out of it. Got the call on my way there. So I'm obviously pissed off I missed a paycheck, and a chance to become a wrestling star after the whole CWA World Tag Team Championship match never happened. That's a long story. I go for a drink, someone offers me some weed. I'm not gonna say no to that, you know. Or maybe you don't know. Whatever. So I get back in my car, crossfaded as fuck. You're not like legally a superhero or anything, right? Not like a glorified cop? More a vigilante, I bet. I ain't that out of touch with the news that I wouldn't have heard about superheroes flying around. You gotta be doing all this shit illegally. Whatever. I get into my car and I start driving back home from the middle of nowhere. And you know, I got Spotify on, listening to the Thomas West podcast. He's a wrestler. Heard it's some good shit, you know. Decide to check out the latest episode since my old boss from the CWA is on it. And this Thomas guy's talking his shit, arrogant as fuck, and then he starts talking about the King of Deathmatch. Which, come to think of it, doesn't make sense since the shows aren't even over yet. Gotta be like, main event time right about now. But anyways, I don't think about that too much. And he starts talking about how he's also a... superhero. I forget the name. And... how he saved this guy stranded in the desert. Guess, you don't care about that part. Well, like I said, a giant fucking wave of water drops down on me out of nowhere, and between that and this weird-ass podcast, no shit I lose control. Flash as flash can be rain. Fucks me up. Like a fucking lake's worth just dropping down on me. And when I can see again, there's a big ass valley in the middle of the road. Like someone just grabbed a massive stick and drew it across the land. So I don't see this coming, Longinus jumps across the valley onto the other side, and before I even manage to get back control of it, I run over this animal in the middle of fucking nowhere. I could barely recognize it, don't even know what it is. Mostly because my truck fucked it up pretty badly. So I get out of Longinus, and I grab the thing, it's all fucking mangled and shit, barely holding itself together, and I put it in the back. It's dead as fuck, for sure, but I don't know. I kinda felt responsible. Wasn't sure what I'd do with it, really. No use bringing it to a vet. Maybe find somewhere to bury it. Didn't think that far ahead. I start driving away, trying to figure out a way to civilization because I felt like I was driving in the exact opposite direction of civilization last time. Never had a good sense of direction. But I'm fucking nervous as fuck you know. This has been a life-changing day. Usually, I'm not really on my own. I've got my best friend and we're always together. He mans the GPS and the aux, I man Longinus. But I don't know, I wanted to see if I could do something on my own for once so I was gonna enter this shit. That tournament. At this point though, this is like a sign from the universe that it was a big fucking mistake. I'm ready to call my best friend Kenny. His name's Kendrick, but I call him Kenny. Like the rapper. So I call him so I can tell him, you know, I fucked up. I wish I'd never even thought about going through it on my own. I wish I hadn't been greedy like that. So I hit him up. And he answers, and I try to tell him this epiphany I just had, but he says, he's just had his own life-changing moment. I'm like, wow, that's fucking crazy. We're always in sync like that. I really want to tell him about mine but you know since I've rekindled my appreciation for him, I feel like I should hear what he's got to say because I value him so much. So I tell him, go ahead, man. And he says..."



"You know how I had nothing to do today since we weren't hanging out? Someone rang the doorbell and they had this pamphlet for an art gallery. Free ticket. We pay for these art galleries who get grants through our taxes, so we might as well take advantage, I feel like. Plus it's good community building, y'know, because you're supporting other people around you pursuing their dreams and their artistic drive. And ma' always said you gotta give back to the community. I ain't never been to no art gallery before but I got time to kill. I don't know what I'm gonna do today, so I decide, I'mma just be adventurous. So I get on Bumble, and I start mad right swiping till someone drops me a nice one-liner. This cute brunette chick drops this line, she's like "Hey darling, I must be in Infinite Tsukuyomi, cause you’re like a dream come true." Bro, what? She cute and she like anime. Goddamn. Girl's called Eowyn, says her parents were big Lord of the Rings fans but she hates it, I kinda agree it's lame to name your kid after a fictional character but I don't tell her cause that'd be like saying her name is garbage, and I ain't tryna risk that on a first date even if she thinks that. Anyways, she's down to go to the art gallery, so there we go. We hit up the art gallery, and we're walking around, shooting the shit you know, then, my eyes lock on this fucking beautiful, gorgeous painting. Man, I kinda wish I had an art degree so I could properly explain to you what it looked like, how it was done, you know. The intricacies of it. The right verbiage. The way Shake Meltzer talks about wrestling. The way B & D talk about theater. I ain't that much of an expert though. But anyways, this painting, I'm so absorbed in it, I don't even notice bae left me. I don't even care either. The whole day passes. I'm just staring at this painting. Like man, Mona Lisa ain't got shit on this. It's out of this world. On it, it's this like creature with tentacles on its face. Like that dude from Pirates of the Caribbean. But he's real unhappy. There's like a heavenly backdrop to it. So it's a big contrast. Like you can be in a perfect place and still be miserable as fuck. But see, that's not what got me. We were walking past it, and then, I glanced at it again, and it felt like it was a new portrait. Same dude, except was a dudette now. And you know, now it seemed like she was in hell. But she was happy. I don't know how they did it. But that angle I was seeing her by now, I was fixated on it. Couldn't look away. There's just something about seeing someone completely at ease with themselves that makes you feel different. Don't matter that she was in hell. She was fucking happy. Not gonna lie, I'm still staring at it right now, dawg. Fucking transcendent experience."



Devilauntie used to rue seeing her own reflection. Used to rue much of everything. She'd been a villain, with pure unadulterated hatred for existence. She was a criminal wanted across most of everything. And she'd gone to hide on Earth for a while, masquerading as a wrestler, and collecting infamy berating everyone and everything while the feds and the bounty hunter gig workers were left dumbfounded as to where she'd gone. Earth, after all, was a minuscule planet in the grand scheme of everything, and so she was largely able to pass by unnoticed.

That lasted a good while. Eventually, she'd picked up a prodigy. Or she should say, her prodigy picked her up. One of her own kind. A HORROR. Hard to say how he'd found her, but he did. And he blackmailed her into teaching him everything she knew. And when he was done with her, he snitched. The bastard snitched.

Devilauntie had been on the run for a while, but oddly enough, it was being trapped as she had been, on the run, that she began to rediscover herself. She abandoned her old identity, somewhere, on the run. The identity that had never properly fit. The identity that had always felt ill-suited to her.

She abandoned Goduncle, and became Devilauntie.

Eventually, the bastard student of hers, whom she now bitterly acknowledged as an ally after he alleged that his scheming had been deliberately done to help her obtain the fulfillment she'd longed for, as a gift for her lessons, found a way to take her off her pursuers line of sight.

She'd been free for less than a year now in the aftermath of all the Pseudo-Nephews affair Thomas had dragged her into. She'd since taken up a new hobby as an artist, refining her skills of the Art of Duality from the Realm of Binaries, to make her inherently punk art that rejected the entire culture that had birthed such a style. This had been her first self-portrait, and it could be found distributed across the galaxy now.

Unfortunately, her worry-free days seemed to be coming to an end. The bastard had called for a meeting with one of his agents. Devilauntie had always expected he'd renege on his agreement, and find a way to blackmail her again. She'd long prepared for the call, even if she'd tried to keep it in the back of her mind.

She arrived at the Citadel's 8-Star cephalopodfood restaurant 'Chez KAITADESU' to meet with the Nephews' agent.



"Devilauntie."

"Maid of Death."

"I'll be curt, I'm sure you have little desire to see me."

"You're not someone I'd send with good news."

"Really? Then you must realize why Uncle would send me of all people."

"Oh, right. His sense of humor."

"Exactly."

"Then I can rest easier."

"Of course. You think too little of him. I know he's an idiot, and a manipulator, and an instigator, but he tends to be reliable."

"I've known him for longer than you have."

"All the more reason why."

"No. I can't risk that. Better to be weary of him till I die."

"Even if it means you could be living the rest of your life without that burden weighing you down. It adds up through attrition."

"I can bear with it."

"Very well. I won't try to convince you. As I said-"

The explosion turned the restaurant into an active furnace, throwing both Devilauntie and Maid of Death off their feet, and sending limbs, pounds of flesh, tentacles, hoofs, and snouts of all sorts of alien species that had been dining here hurling this way and that.

The Maid pushed the debris off her and stood back up but already lost sight of Devilauntie. She momentarily wondered if Devilauntie had returned to her wicked ways, but decided that was rather unlikely. There were plenty of reasons why both she and Devilauntie might be targeted. And this wasn't exactly a restaurant with a moral clientele in the first place. They may not have been going after either of them, just the wrong place at the wrong time.

She stumbled into the kitchen, coughing through the smoke, ignoring the ringing in her ears, and avoiding the survivors who screamed and scrambled all about her.

When she entered the kitchen, it did not seem a fit for 'Chez KAITADESU'. She recognized one of the queens - mother of Avatar - and one of her infant twin daughters - younger sister to the same. It was the Pink Fortress's kitchen, as the Maid remembered it then. The two had volunteered with the staff to make a special pie for the queen-to-be. They had hardly a moment to react when the Maid stepped in with her soldiers and they were riddled with lasered holes.

"Stop, don't shoot," the Maid says, to her imagined subordinates.

But it was far too late for that.

She turns away from the grisly sight and leaves the kitchen in a hurry to forget those awful memories. She returns to the dining room where the explosion happened. It's still a hazardous mess and she can hardly make out anything, especially through the endless ringing in her ears.

She sees the partial remains of a massive anthropomorphic shark.

"What happened?" It asks. "I can't feel my fin. Hmmmmm. Calamari? It smells delicious. I'm... hungry."

"Megalodon Man," she says, caught off-guard by the sight of her dismembered old friend.

"Halt, Maiden. Whither art we?"

She turns around to see the mouth of a crocodile laying in a bloody pool.

"Gator Guy. You're dead. You're not real. I'm just... imagining this. Concussion. And bad memories. It's all in my head."



"In thy headeth? Doth not forswear to me: I'm dead? Nay! How can I beest dead? I still hadst so much to doth. I'd just did finish mine own first playeth"

"..."

"Peradventure, lief Maiden, thee couldst publish it, on mine own behalf? Just asketh SS10000, they can findeth. Oh, tis a wonderful playeth, Maiden. I'm certain coequal Uncle would love it, though he's nev'r been fond of theater. I desire one day the Coen Brothers might coequal maketh a movie of it. Like Macbeth. 'R Hail, Ceasar! they'd beest the perfect directors"

"You're not real. I doubt you wrote the play. There's no way you could be telling me about it if I didn't already know you'd written it."

"Is yond how t worketh? Haply thee might not but've seen indications yond I wast working on it. Peradventure thee wenteth through mine own diary. 'R did see me typing in the corner of thy eye? 'R thee recall a future reality whither mine own playeth becameth infamous, and thus, thee kneweth yond I doth eventually wend on to becometh a playwright, coequal if 't be true, post-humously. Can thee rule all of these things out? Coequal if 't be true thee didn't register such facts at the time, it's quite possible thee subconsciously hath understood I wast writing a playeth and yond thy brain collat'd this information to beest hath used at the most pivotal and relevant point, such as at which hour thee'd hallucinate me"

"It... could be true."

"And I assure thee, Maiden, it is. Besides, what's the harm?"

"SS10000 will realize there's something wrong with me."

"Oh, dearie, thou art a Nephew, everyone knoweth thither's something wrong with thee. Alloweth me bid thee about this playeth, it's quite brilliant if 't be true I sayeth so myself. It stars the original creation of our Maker, the first Nephew to kicketh the bucket, 'r at least, the mistress beneath the mask, Ashley La Bella"

"Who?"

"Stop Sign #2."

"That was her real name?"

"Aye, forsooth. Quite the striking gal too. Shame the lady tooketh on yond stand ho sign shtick, but the lady wast quite wonderfully nice, and Uncle putteth that lady up to it anyways. I did want to writeth an ode to that lady. I didn't count on the fact yond me and mega sir would kicketh the bucket ere mine own ode would wend out"

"Frodo died too."

"Who is't?"

"He joined after you left."

"Ah, so apace did replace."

"That's how Uncle avoids dealing with tragedies."

"Aye, aye, but alloweth's not receiveth distract'd from mine own playeth to speak of Uncle's perverse methods of dealing with grief. If 't be true thee wanteth a social conversation, thee shouldst very much wend maketh a cousin instead of relying on a hallucination. Speaking of hallucinations, our dearest Ashley La Bella is putting on a playeth within mine own play-"

"Uncle is going to love that."



The day had been rather hectic for Ashley La Bella. During rehearsal, one of the set pieces had fallen off and taken one of her lead actors clean out. He'd have to be replaced and she'd have to be the one to handle it. This was Broadway though, there was bound to be someone who'd take an opportunity like this.

"It's a sign from the universe, sweetie. It says STOP! Forget about this play. You know Uncle has been calling, he wants us back."

Ashley La Bella does her best to ignore the woman clothed in a bizarre stop sign costume. This was the same outfit that had defined the most successful time of her life, and she resented it.

"What's so fun about being taken seriously? It's so boring and stuffy. Let's go back to being Nephews, go on adventures, and see worlds unlike anything this meager planet has to offer."

"No. I want to leave a legacy behind. I want to be respected. I want to be viewed as an artist. Someone who doesn't have to rely on cheap tricks-"

Stop Sign #2 gasps at the assertion.

"Why am I even entertaining this? Did he do this? Did he put you in my mind?"

"I'm afraid not. This is all you, sweetie. You should know you're not normal enough for this. There was always something off about you, that's why you belonged with the Nephews. You shouldn't turn your back on who you really are."

"Of course, there's something off about me. It's what makes me an artist, but it doesn't have to make me a joke."

She notices one of the production members catch her one-woman conversation and sneers.

"Don't act like you don't talk to yourself. Everyone talks to themselves. It's healthy," she says, her tone manic.

The crew member keeps her head down and hurries out of sight.

"They're going to think I'm crazy, that the stress of this play is getting to me."

"Well, you are hallucinating."

Ashley closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Grounds herself. She opens them again and smiles.

"No, I'm not."

"Mrs. La Bella!"

Ashley recognizes the classically British accent immediately and turns around to see the quintessentially British representative she'd hired.

"Mr. Duncan."

"You're looking ravish-"

"Careful. You won't be the first man I've fired for hitting on me."

John's frustrated by the threat but decides against questioning the over-dramatic reaction.

"In any case, the two interviewers from B plus D are here."

"Seriously? I should fire you for making me go through this. I told you I didn't want to do it."

"I understand you're not enthusiastic about catering to the sad stoners of the world, but you need to trust me on this, they're bringing theater to a modern audience. You don't want to do things other people have already done, Mrs. La Bella, you want to be remembered, you need to innovate. You need to reach new ears."

"Fine, they're already here, I'd rather not risk ruining my reputation. Too late to turn back now."

"That's the spirit!"

The two namesakes of the hit theater reviewing YouTube channel B + D are trading bowls before cutting their ventures short when Ashley steps in.

"Who is this?" Ashley asks, looking at the third individual in the room. A nearly decrepit-looking young man who seems to have come straight out of a The Walking Dead set.

"Oh, right, forgot to mention it. He won a prize to interview you. He's a big fan. His name's Zom."

Ashley's spirits are briefly livened. "A fan?"

"The name is Gip, Zom Gip. You might've seen some of my fan edits on Twitter. I've been in love with you since your Nephews days."

"Nephews days," she barely manages to say, her spirits instantly dampened.

"Oh, big mistake," Stop Sign #2 says, suddenly appearing once more.

"Nephews days?" Blazed, the B in B + D, asks.

"Like Cthulhu's Nephews?" Depressed, the D in B + D, follows up.

"She was Stop Sign #2," Zom declares, proudly.

B + D take a good look at Stop Sign #2.

"Daaaaaaaamn."

"You was hiding all of that under all of that?"

"Wait, is this a Nephews play? I didn't know we were doing a Nephews play. Damn, Nephews in the theater business now. We kept trying to get Uncle to bite but he always passed up. Says he hates that shit. Almost got Croc to do it, then he kicked the bowl."

"See, this is what the people want, and you're depriving them of it."

Ashley snarls.

"You ain't gotta worry, Ashley. Nephews solidarity for sure. Easy Pink Flannel," B declares.

"That's what they wear in their video reviews when they think a play is really good. 8 out of 10 minimum, usually," John Duncan chimes in.

"Course, we're Nephews too! Like C-team Nephews, but it still counts."

"We would've gotten a pink flannel. Nephews color! We gotta just switch the whole script into a Stop Sign #2 Nephews script."

"Shut up!" Ashley snaps at Stop Sign #2.

Stop Sign #2 shakes her head. "They're going to think we're craaaaaaaazy."

The outburst subjects Ashley to a foursome pair of staring eyes.

"By any chance, Miss La Bella, are you seeing something that we aren't, something in your head?" Zom asks.

"No, no. I'm sorry. It's just..." she sighs, "the stress of the play. So uh, how did you win this interview anyways."

"I wrote a story."

"About me?"

"Well, it's a fan fiction story, about Frodo."

"Oh."

"I mean, he reminded me of you in a way. I feel like he didn't get enough of a chance to shine bright with the Nephews. So I sort of wanted to imagine what happened to him after... you know... he died."

In an attempt to unburden herself of her budding rage, she says "Well, why don't you tell me about it?"



Frodo the Ring-Bearing Gnome had hardly made a name for himself amongst the Nephews, hardly even passed the qualifications to become one, before he met his tragic death, a dip into a tank full of acid. It had been incredibly painful, he believed. Thomas West had been certain about the particulars of the acid. Had a few live test subjects. Dissolved a few McClones. He was worried there might be a chance Jason Randall - or whoever had the misfortune of falling into it, in this case, Frodo - would be transformed by the acid in some way or another, and come back more crazed and villainous than ever with a bit of a misguided thirst for vengeance on their minds. Thomas had a history with vengeful people. As a result, there was literally no way for Frodo to survive the acid bath. Every skin, muscle, tissue, and bone, down to the smallest microbe had been dissolved. The tanker had been exit-proof - magically, technologically, and metaphysically. Whoever fell into it and had the top sealed, was done. Gonezo. Too bad it hadn't been Randall instead.

Frodo wasn't exactly sure where he was, but Thomas had called these the Undying Lands.

"Now, to be clear, Frodo, you are not Frodo, well, not the Frodo that died in the acid."

It was true, Frodo hadn't remembered that part of his death. Though he'd had it replayed to him by the podcaster just to tie up loose ends and could imagine the pain he would have felt if it had been him. Still, there was the bit between when his brain had been uploaded and the time he popped up on the camera to help out Thomas West that was missing but Thomas assured him there was little of import in that time to be remembered.

"They were still my last moments, don't they all count."

"Really, they weren't technically your last moments either. Honestly, I simply wanted to show you how a version of you died, I didn't mean for you to start interrogating me. You're not at that level in the Nephews' hierarchy yet."

"Uncle said there wasn't a hierarchy."

"Uncle doesn't know shit. That's why I'm taking care of you. Seeing a version of yourself die, it's a humbling experience. Seen it a few billion times myself. Anyways, there's no need to be sour about being dead and all, these here are the Undying Lands, my dear Frodo, where the mightiest of Nephews go when they've fulfilled their duties in the prime planes. An idyllic, utopian world. Custom-made by yours truly."

"So Stop Sign #2 is here? And Mega Man? And GG #2?"

"Well, not exactly."

"You're saying they... failed? I'm the only one who fulfilled my duties? Am I... the greatest Nephew?"

"No, I'm not saying they failed. Look, Frodo, you're asking too many questions. Once again: not an interrogation. I was just trying to make you feel important. You're actually bottom five in terms of all-time Nephews."

"Oh... Sorry."

"Probably bottom three."

"Okay. I get it. What do I do here?"

"It's a beautiful garden you can spend the rest of your life in. Your very own Eden. Just make sure you don't eat from the apple tree?"

"What will happen if I eat from the apple tree?"

"Nothing. But I figured too much peace and tranquility might make you feel unfulfilled so the threat and the temptation of the apple tree would keep you somewhat entertained."

"Oh."

"But more importantly, if you see a snake around here, don't listen to its words."

"There's a talking snake?"

"Not as far as I'm aware, all the more reason you shouldn't listen to one if it pops up. Definitely an anomaly. Best to stomp it till it stops squirming."

"Okay."

"But, above all else, you have one duty you must maintain no matter what." Thomas handed him over a cheap-looking ring. There was a gem held in it. At first glance, one might mistake it for blue sapphire, though upon closer inspection, one might notice the water that can be found inside this clear crystal container. And upon closer inspection, one could see so much more. Though this latter closer inspection would require an immensely powerful, technologically advanced magnification glass... or simply the right perspective and state of mind.

"Is this actually important or are you just trying to give me something else to keep me busy?"

"Frodo. If anything should happen to destroy this ring, the entirety of everything will come apart in the blink of an eye. You would have been responsible for omnicidal destruction unlike anything that has ever been done."

"I don't think I want this responsibility."

"Too bad, can't refuse the call. Anyways, I gotta bounce. You want me to like, take out one of your ribs and make you a girlfriend with it or something."

"That'd be somewhat incestuous, wouldn't it?"

"Hmm. Never thought of it that way. Still... no?"

"Can I think it over?"

"That'd require me to check up on you, which I won't be doing. This wasn't a negotiable offer. Reject my gift if you want to. What do I care? Like I said, gotta bounce. Have fun!"

Frodo hadn't had many options when it came to entertainment. He spent most of his days lying in the sun which only ever went down when he was tired, which he never was, but sometimes he felt like sleeping and taking a break from consciousness, and the Undying Lands somehow knew. He'd found a weed plot and with ample food, and water, none of which he really needed -though he carried on out of habit -, and so he found himself quite content with this new existence. No real responsibilities. Besides keeping the existence of everything safe. No work to be done. This wasn't too bad a life.

Occasionally, when he'd had one too many magic mushrooms, he'd take a glance at the ring, and the water-containing crystal, and would wonder what was so important about it that it held the fate of everything, or if this was merely another one of Thomas's elaborate and malicious ruse. He decided he wouldn't let himself be tempted into figuring out the truth of that question, and did not risk looking long enough for the mushrooms to make his mind wander.



The Quantum Water Kingdom had been an attempt to make an amalgamation of Earth's most revered and mythological water-centric empires: Atlantis, Ys, Kitezh, Vineta, and Dwarka (and some copyrighted ones that should not be mentioned). There were fishfolk of all sorts down here, though that wasn't the true purpose of the Quantum Water Kingdom. It had been a side project its engineers had found themselves woefully distracted by. A lack of project management had made it so that the engineers had forgotten the actual purpose of this world, momentarily, before they eventually got back on track.

Megalodon Man's consciousness had been uploaded into it, and now he spent the bulk of his time hunting down all sorts of exotic fishes and often being a terror to the inhabitants of the underwater empire. Unlike all of them, he was immortal here. A god, more or less. He tried to avoid abusing his power too much, only eating as much as he could handle at any given moment. He did eat a lot more these days, to fill in the empty hole in his heart that his once platonic life partner had filled. And true, since he did not actually ever feel 'full' - and not just in the exaggerated manner of it taking literal tons of food to satisfy him in his past life - he had to try and create his own boundaries. He decided that eating a nuclear family's worth of fishfolk at each of his six meals throughout every twenty-four-hour cycle would be a fair compromise.

In any case, 'full' for the moment, Megalodon Man returned to the library. The Library. THE Library. THE Library was the actual end game of the Quantum Water Kingdom, a hyper-cuboctahedronic structure that he'd been made in charge of, and which he must guard with the life he no longer had. A 5th Dimensional Tesseract in which visitors to THE Library could affect every one of the Maker's fragments. Ultimate power. Thankfully, Megalodon Man lacked the ambition to make use of it.

There was little chance of there ever being a genuine threat to THE Library, no one really knew of its existence, and to try and access it would result in the most convoluted journey that had ever been walked by a hero before. It was unlikely for anyone to manage it, not without a shortcut, or forgetting why they'd undertaken this quest in the first place.

Megalodon Man had never liked books, especially when Gator Guy had become consumed by them in his educational pursuits and let it come between them, but now that the ole scaley friend of his was long gone, Megalodon Man had come to appreciate books in his own way. THE Library had plenty of children's tales to be found. He was particularly fond of one book series starring a food critic shark-man who would threaten his chefs with being eaten alive if they did not satisfy his palette. Mega Man especially appreciated the letterer's expert ability to convey the horror of the chefs in onomatopoeic form as they were devoured by the apex predator more often than not. The author, whoever it was, knew what its audience wanted, and consistently delivered the gorn. Gator Guy would probably hate it, but Mega Man loved that this author stuck to his fangs.

He was quite eager to read the twenty-eight volume of the long-running series as he entered THE Library.
Those ambitions were put aside when he did enter THE Library, for he was dumbfounded to discover another man there.

"You're not supposed to be here."

The man looked up and snarled at the sight of Megalodon Man. He closed the book he was holding shut. Megalodon Man squinted to see the bookbinding said 'The Book of Zachary'.

"Are we really related?" the man asks.

"You're not a sharkman. Are you a Nephew?"

"Fuck, no."

"Then I don't think we're related."

"I meant as - what did he call it? Goldensiblings. Ridiculous name."

"I'm not sure what that means. What are you doing with that book?"

"Some necessary edits."

"You're not supposed to change anything here. Only Uncle is."

"He's the one that gave me this." Kazadi holds up the metadimensional key.

"Hmm. He should've warned me."

"He didn't warn you when you were about to get blown up."

"He needed me to be here."

"No, he didn't. He needed the drama. The attention. He does all of this just for attention. He could've found a way around your death if he wanted to. Found someone else to stay here. If anyone even needs to. But I get it, I do. None of you guys actually care about that. You're the perfect sort of broken for him. That's how you were made."

"I'm not going to trust a man I just met over Uncle. Plus, this place is fun. All-you-can-eat buffets every day."

"Sure. Simple man, simple pleasures, I guess. I'm not that much different when it comes down to it. That's what I've come to realize. The patterns start to stand out, eventually. Far too much to keep denying it. Anyways, that's why I'm here. You know how to read?"

"Books with pictures."

"Do those books have words in them?"

"A few."

"Then you can read this too. Here, skip to the end. Don't worry, it's not long."

"I don't know, I'm not really in the mood."

"Ever eaten a kraken?"

"Uncle said they don't exist."

"In this place, they could."

"Wouldn't I have seen it?"

"If you read that book, I promise you'll find a kraken for your next meal. And I'll get out of here, to where I need to be."

"I don't trust you."

"Fine. I guess you won't get to eat a kraken. And all you had to do was read just that little passage."

"Okay, okay, okay. You've convinced me, I'll read it. Give it to me."

The man hands him the book.

"Out loud, please."

While Megalodon Man began to read, the man grabbed another book from his table, The Shark Tale, and began to make some minor changes that would be sure to satisfy Megalodon Man's pursuit of new fine dining pleasures.



Quiet sat hidden behind the door, unbeknownst to the Vagabond King who left the room after making one of his trademark long-winded locker room veteran speeches. If he'd tried it with Quiet, Quiet would've punched him in the throat.

As the locker room's proprietor closed the door to her unwanted visitor and turned about, she struck the masked figure's bag off the bench. The brown fur material sticking out had undoubtedly rang some bells in the Dreamer's mind, but Quiet brought a finger to his lips, and he was more or less sure that Dreamer, in her typically self-interested fashion, would push that to the back of her mind and leave it there to be forgotten. She didn't have the sort of inquisitiveness that would have required Quiet to be cautious, not that caution is something he'd ever been associated with.

He left the arena before the main event would begin, after all, the Nephews wouldn't be getting involved in this one, a way to ensure she saved face in momentum-killing defeat. Quiet believed that the Nephews' involvement at least would've given her someone to point fingers at, but perhaps she hadn't considered that possibility, or maybe she feared that it would inevitably lead to Russnow pulling the trigger on the split between Dreamer and the widely derided and simultaneously beloved faction of Nephews.

And where would that leave them?

Quiet got to his hotel room, a myriad of eyes tracing his every footstep, as they always did for the fully costumed man. He pulled open his laptop, already connected to the hotel wifi and opened up the wrestling forum he'd begun frequenting as of late. He logged onto his wrestlingsmarks account, always forgetting to stay logged in. Enter username: weaselperson. Enter password: eatshit42_.

He's got nearly the entire forum adblocked except for one section, the BTB section, where he's been running a unique FWA BTB focusing only on a singular wrestler who just joined the FWA, and crafted an ultimate tale of redemption he hoped would one day give him one of those infamous monthly awards, and perhaps even legend status, should they ever deem the bookers worthy of having one.

Today, he planned on posting the story's pivotal twist before the most career-defining annual Carnal Contendership match. This was his perfect outlet for the disastrous booking both he and his fellow Nephews were often subjected to by the out-of-touch brass.



Zachary Kazadi stepped out of the portal and back into his garden. The sun was just starting to come up. The zen garden was completely intact, not a sand of grain out of place, which reassured him.

"You're finally back."

Izaya Snowmantashi stood on the back porch, leaning on the door frame, drying bloodied hands with a paper towel.

"Thanks for taking care of my garden."

"Not a problem, you can always rely on me."

"Not so much a fan of you using my home as a butcher's house."

"It's not for everyone."

"It's not for most people."

"That's what makes us who we are though, isn't it? No one is as much of a wrestling zealot as you are either, not even my brother."

"Let's not compare me to him."

"Not yet?"

"Not ever. Not unless there's some twist in the universe that puts us on opposite sides of a ring."

"If the Nephews can have a civil war-"

"Stop, I'm not interested in talking about them."

"Nearly thought this journey of yours would end with you joining them."

"Nah."

"Didn't change your perspective?"

"Maybe I'd been misguided in the past. Fascistic in my vision of what wrestling should be. Maybe I'd missed all the little pleasures that made me fall in love with it when I was young. Maybe I forgot all about dressing up like Mr. Terror and dumb-ass Steve Frosting for Halloween. I'm not saying it'll change my way of wrestling, but perhaps I need to allow some leeway for others instead of denigrating their styles."

"Ha, they'll turn you into a Nephew soon enough.

"Shit. They wish."

"You've waited long enough. Want to come see my gift to you?"

"Not really. But I guess I better get it over with."

Izaya smiled and went back inside the house. Kazadi briefly glanced over to his zen garden, pleased at seeing it once again, then followed the taxidermist inside. He was led into the gym room which had been completely redesigned save for the television screen he'd installed in the corner of it. It was filled with taxidermied animals, many he'd never seen before, and some he was certain didn't exist. On the table was a full fur-body costume. It did not smell as he expected. Smelled like lavender, in fact.

"I'm pretty good at my art if I do say so myself."

"This... is wrong. Ethically bankrupt, I'd say."

"Too late for second thoughts."

"No, it's not."

"No, I guess it isn't. Do you know what his real name was? Jonathan Snow. Not an unbelievable name, taken on its own. Though given the John Duncans, Jon Russnows, and Jon Snowmantashis we find ourselves linked to, one might question our Maker's creativity. Do you know what Jonathan means?"

"Let me guess: another biblical name? Something else to do with God?"

"Haha. We've got quite a few of those, don't we? Jonathan means God Gives. I think it's rather fitting. Jonathan Snow giving himself to you."

"Not voluntarily."

Izaya shrugs. "Do you know my name is biblical too?"

"No, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised."

"It means the one who watches over the crowd. Equally fitting."

"Yes, yes. We all have perfect names. None of that matters to me. I stomached all of this for one reason."

"To make good on those promises you made yourself so many years back."

"I was supposed to prove I was the best. I was young and naive enough and met with a sustained amount of success to think that was within my immediate reach. Six years have gone by, and I'm a footnote. I never took myself to be a liar."

"Proving yourself the best is a tough task, for anyone. Quite the abstract goal too."

"Who's to say who's the best?"

"Well, I hear there's this guy called Jeremy."

"Shut up."

"Haha."

"I needed to prove it to myself. I don't know what it would've taken to reach that goal, but if all I can do is laugh at myself in mockery then it's a pitiful state I find myself in. My younger selves would be disappointed to see what became of me."

"You believed that staying true to your word and rejecting your biggest love was the greatest expression of it thereof, but it wasn't. To prove your love for wrestling, you need to turn your back on your own values. To prove that your love is even greater than your pride and self-respect. Some people say if you really love something, you gotta be willing to let it go. But I think that's nonsense. If you really love it, then who else will be in a better position to get the most out of it."

"You're trying to make this out to be romantic, but it's not."

"Everyone loves a good comeback story, there's always romance in that."

"Is there any romance in wearing a dead man's skin?"

"Only when they shed it once more."

"No. Don't really plan to. When I do what I've set out to do, it'll be the name of weaselperson that's remembered."

Zachary pulled out the metadimensional key and placed it on the table.

"I'm assuming you have a crowd to watch over."

Izaya picks the key up.

"Thank you. Though I prefer to watch it from up close."

"Yeah, whatever. Make sure you get all this crap outside my home."

Izaya smiles and begins the diligent task.

"And thank you for being daring enough to tell me about all this bullshit."

"Don't worry. If it wasn't me, it would've been someone else. You were never going to be forgotten. God Remembers after all."

Zachary grabs the costumed remains of the late Jonathan Snow and enters the living room. He strips down to his trunks and awkwardly puts on the outfit. It's a snug and warm fit, the added zipper helps though trying to forget he's wearing someone else's skin is the key to not going instantly insane. Just pretend he's wearing one of those onesies.

He heads into the bathroom and looks at himself in the mirror. weaselperson born again. Don't need to be handsome to be a champion, he'd have to keep that in mind. Whatever name he had, whatever costume he wore, Zachary Kazadi or weaselperson, he was a wrestler. The Wrestler. That's all that mattered.

"First: Carnal Clusterfuck. Second: Man of 1000 Insecurities. Time for that belt to be passed around one last time."

Originally posted by Dubb.

Originally posted by SupineSnake.

Friendship, Indiana.
April 20th, 2023.
Universe 486DΣΔ-A2ΦΩ, Multi-Verse Substrand 6Ξ.

We open in a small, dank room. There is a single bed propped up against the wall, which is painted a drab shade of brown and sporadically stained with mould. These discolourations are only another shade of brown, and are visible despite the large number of pictures stuck onto every available surface. These images, everything from postcards through headshots to posters, each depict a ghoulish looking figure, cloaked and hooded and masked. All in black. The only other items of furniture in the room are an old, rickety wardrobe, an empty wooden chair, and a tall cheval mirror that is currently covered with a black bedsheet.

Standing with his back turned to the camera, next to the drawn blackout curtains in-between the bed and the wardrobe, is a short, frail, weedy gentleman wearing a dark, tailed (but not tailored) suit and a tall stovepipe hat. After a deep breath, as if steadying himself for the day to come, he pulls open the drapes, the afternoon sunlight streaming into the small room. This withering dandelion of a man - worn, hunched, almost malformed - recoils from the light, staggering backwards with his hands over his eyes. For a moment, he has the look of a Nosferatu ready to melt, though he eventually steadies himself. He is human, and only unprepared for the sudden adjustment to daylight.

When the small man turns around, we see a furry, black moustache bristling on his upper lip. It throws a shadow over his weatherworn frown. He walks with a pronounced limp towards the empty chair, taking a seat and looking at the camera with a meek, painted smile.

???: “It’s nice to let some light in, whenever I get the chance. Which isn’t all that often. I’m ready when you are.”

The response comes from behind the camera.

Director: “Why don’t you walk us through what you do between now and nightfall, Krash?”

Krash: “Well, there’s no rest for the wicked.”

We cut away from the room and to a shot of the documentarian’s subject waking up, his Nokia 3310 playing a monophonic version of Bobby Pickett’s Monster Mash as an alrm. The moustached man rolls over and puts a stop to it, wiping the sleep out of his eyes and sitting up on the edge of the bed.

Krash (v.o.): “I work through the night, for obvious reasons, so I sleep through the morning for as few hours as my infernal biology will allow. There’s a lot of work to be done in the afternoon. I start with cleaning up after the night before.”

The malformed maverick is shown struggling up a narrow, stone, spiral staircase, his hands full with various items of cleaning apparatus.

Krash (v.o.): “Other than the cleaning, everything else that happens here happens at night. There’s a feast here at the Manor almost every moon. Such extravagance invariably causes a reasonable amount of mess.”

He arrives in a banqueting hall, a long and low table wrought of stone the dominating feature. At one end of the table are two regular-sized plates in front of two regular-sized chairs, mostly empty but for the remnants of a thick, red sauce that oozes on the china. At the other end, before a huge throne, is an equally gigantic trough swimming in ruby red blood, the end of a femur protruding from the barbaric broth. In the middle of the table is a ribcage, the flesh torn clean from it and candles arranged thoughtfully within its hollows. The floor and walls around this peculiar, culinary altar are splattered in the same dark red as the table itself.

Krash, looking over the scene with a sad recognition in his eyes, lets out a deep sigh before reaching for his mop.

Krash (v.o.): “But it’s not just cleaning up after the feast. There’s a lot of thought that goes into the preparation, too. It’s becoming more and more difficult to find food that my Masters will enjoy nowadays. Deteriorating morals, I guess. Fact of the matter is that there are just a lot fewer virgins in Indiana in 2023 than there were when I first took this job. And the old woman who taught me how to whip up a good meal for the Masters - my predecessor, if you will - had her pick of whole churches of them back in the seventies, when they first arrived from Europe and she was their familiar.”

As the voiceover continues, we watch as Krash spends his afternoon snooping around locations that might serve up a good meal. He is spotted talking to an anxious young man at the library, lingering around the gates of a church at afternoon mass, and buying a ticket to a local independent wrestling event. Everywhere he goes, he is friendly and amiable and does his best to ingratiate himself with anyone curious and gullible and (most importantly) lonely enough to be convinced to take a trip to the Manor.

Krash (v.o.): “And then there’s the pigs.”

In the back garden of the Manor, Krash is shown entering the gates of a large pig-pen.

Krash (v.o.): “There’s Old Major, Napoleon, Snowball, and Squealer. Squealer’s a pest.”

Four huge sows scurry around him, more reminiscent of excited dogs than what they actually are. The moustached servant scratches them behind their ears affectionately.

Krash (v.o.): “To be honest, the pigs are one of my favourite things about the job. Except for my Masters, of course. I guess I just enjoy service. Devoting oneself to another, y’know? Taking care of people. That’s what I’m about.”

With the pigs sedated, the proud servant sits next to the creatures and four ‘trima’ machines. The blood being withdrawn from the animals is pumped into huge, cylindrical vats. With the miracle of a jump cut, the pigs are revived and scampering around happily in their pen, Krash filling their troughs to the brim. The vats of blood are stacked nearby, ready for transportation to the Manor.

Krash (v.o.): “It’s a symbiotic relationship. They can’t exactly go to the store and buy their own grain. And I don’t have a supply of virginal human blood on tap. And it saves them a trip to the slaughterhouse, too.”

A montage of Krash fulfilling his described, manifold chores.

Krash (v.o.): “I open the mail, which is mostly junk except for a few key correspondences from the old communities back in Europe. I do the regular housekeeping, the stuff that doesn’t rely on the removal of ribcages and the like, such as vacuuming and polishing and dusting. Make sure the prisoners are poorly fed. An hour or two of study just before sundown. And then it’s nightfall, and time for wake-up.”

We are back in Krash’s bedroom. After describing some (but not all) of his daily duties, there seems to be a sense of weariness and fatigue about the moustached and malformed miscreant.

Director: “Sounds like you’re a busy man.”

Krash cracks a smile.

Krash: “That’s just the warm-up. The real work begins when my Masters are awake.”

A shot of the sun disappearing over the horizon. Darkness settles. The shadows grow until there’s nothing but.

Inside the Manor, the servant walks into a dark room decorated by dust and cobwebs. He is holding a candle and has an excited look about him as he stands between two coffins. One is about the size you’d expect for a regular human, the other maybe twice as wide and thick and deep. Both are made of black Hungarian ironwood with leaden lining. Krash sets his candle down on a low table next to the larger coffin, and - after ceremoniously staring out at the ascending moon in the purplish-black sky - he begins to heave open the lid. It sits perpendicular to the base as the servant steps backwards and bows deep.

Krash: “Behold!”

Slowly, a huge, hulking, pale, and pallid figure rises from the shadowy depths of the casket. When he is standing erect, a dominating and mysterious presence, he lifts both of his arms into the air so that his cape billows and spreads, knocking Krash’s candle to the floor. The large man speaks with a thick, Nordic accent.

???: “Quick! Out! Put it out!”

The servant is indeed quick to stomp on the flames and smother them with a nearby vat of water. The large, mysterious figure looks down at the damp ground mistrustfully.

???: “Not holy water?”

Krash: “Evian.”

We cut back a few hours in time, the afternoon light shining in through the servant’s window. Krash still sits in the hot-seat, shuffling uncomfortably as his talking head continues. Another question comes from off-screen.

Director: “Can you tell me a little about your Masters?”

Krash: “The Friendship Coven numbers three, not including me. I’m just a familiar, of course. First of all, there is Brjánn Baxbjarnarson… also known as Brjánn the Bastard, Lord Brjánn of Hellissandur, Icehammer, Virgin’s Bane.”

Cut to an altogether different room, where the large, pallid figure we saw rising from his casket sits on a colossal, black throne.

???: “My name is Brjánn Baxbjarnarson… also known as Brjánn the Bastard, Lord Brjánn of Hellissandur, Icehammer, Virgin’s Bane.”

The large man smiles, showing his pointed cuspids, accentuated and highlighted by his pale skin and his high, black collar. Behind him, on the wall, is a painting of him in his youth, standing in front of a burning castle and posing with a pair of stolen wives.

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson: “And as for how I came to be here? Well, for the good of my people, of course. The furtherment of the vampire species. And fame and fortune are a nice side hustle, too.”

As further audio from Krash’s talking head plays, we see a montage of various primary sources - newspaper articles, extracts from novels or plays, paintings (and later photographs), sculptures, etc - created by those affected by the bloodthirsty travails of the great Brjánn Baxbjarnarson.

Krash (v.o.): “Lord Brjánn was, for at least three centuries, one of the most revered and feared vampires in Northern Europe, for a time second in stature only to the great Nosferatu himself. That’s according to all reputable sources that I could dredge up. I’d like to consult the Council’s archives in Rotterdam at some point. But in the blink of an eye - after three hundred years of domination, with Virgin’s Bane using a terrified and awe-struck Iceland as a base for his operations - the Lord of Hellissandur traded Northern Europe for North America.”

Lord Brjánn sits in his throne, both casual and imposing, his pointed canines bared. It is difficult to tell if this is posturing or a threat.

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson: “Why did I leave? A new challenge, of course. That and to do something with Jeremy again. Iceland is my home and my kingdom, but it is an isolated place. When he asked me to come, I came. Although, I’m not really sure if he ever really did ask.”

An animated map shows a ship marked with B.B. leaving a port on the west of Iceland, travelling southwards and around the United Kingdom to London to meet another line. This one is marked J.B. and has snaked across Europe from the Middle East, and now the two lines cut swiftly across the Atlantic Ocean to port in New York.

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson (v.o.): “It was the 1970s. An exciting time for everyone. Especially for us. A new frontier and the idea that we would populate it. We were the New York Coven for a while, and we dreamed of many others sprouting up, from sea to shining sea. A few hiccups, though. The New York Blackout wasn’t great. A power outage should have been perfect, but an angry mob chased us out of the city.”

On the map, a campervan drives across the U.S. to Friendship, Indiana. When the animation ends, we’re in a different room with a different guest. This one is narrow and wiry, his pale skin outmatched only by his luminous white teeth. His smile is sharp in more ways than one.

???: “My name? Jeremy Best is what my friends call me. All of my friends now. Here. In Friendship, Indiana. Less mod cons means less craziness in a blackout. People don’t know what they’re missing.”

He smiles to himself, perhaps imagining the cheap pop upon saying his chosen home city’s name. Behind Jeremy’s chair is a portrait of four men: Lord Brjảnn, Jeremy, and a third we’re yet to meet, and then - stood a little to one side like the black sheet begrudgingly allowed into the family portrait - is Krash.

Jeremy Best: “I used to go by many names, though. I’d say I was at my peak at, oh, I don’t know…”

Best hesitates, already slowing the pace of the documentary down to a halt with his monotonous drone.

Jeremy Best: “I’d probably say it was about… 1AD, maybe. Or perhaps 1BC. Certainly around that time. That was when I was living and feeding in the Middle East, until that whole crucifixion thing. Not a huge fan of crosses. Anyway, what did they used to call me?”

Another pause. The camera crew is forced to wait as their subject engages in silent thought, tapping his chin as he dredges up the memory.

Jeremy Best: “Jeremiah Afdil was one, if I recall correctly. Or IIRC, as the kids are saying. Did I get that right? There was הטוב ביותר, also, though I’m not quite sure how I’d transliterate that for you. But those days - the wild days, the carefree, bloodthirsty days - are long behind me, really. I’d love to stay and tell you more. I’ve got quite a lot to tell, and it’s a long and thoroughly enjoyable story too. But I’m afraid I have to go to work. Maybe some other time.”

We watch as Best, dressed in a long, grey trenchcoat, white shirt, and black funeral-ish tie, arrives at the Fantasy Diner for his nightshift.

Krash (v.o.): “Mr. Best doesn’t really need as much taking care of as Lord Brjánn. He mostly keeps himself to himself. His eating habits are a lot less indulgent, too. There was a time, from what I gather, where his legend was as great and as terrible as Icehammer’s, but he’s long since settled into life as an energy vampire.”

Jeremy is behind the counter at the empty diner, sapping the energy of a co-worker.

Jeremy Best: “And that’s the great thing and friendship really, isn’t it? Don’t you think?”

He pauses for an answer that isn’t forthcoming, his young and tired co-worker yawning as he continues.

Jeremy Best: “It’s something so implacable, and yet so universal. I read this great quote once. How did it go…”

The energy vampire engages in thoughtful silence. His colleague almost drops off, awakes with a startle, blinks rapidly, shakes her head, squints, etc.

Jeremy Best: “Oh, that was it… Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.”

He smiles. The woman is too tired to notice his teeth.

Jeremy Best: “Great quote, huh? You know who said that, Elena? Hey, Elena, do you know who said that?”

Co-worker Elena: “I don’t know who said that, Jeremy.”

Jeremy Best: “That was Muhammed Ali. Who’d have thought it? Pretty wise for a pugilist. I got some other great friendship quotes, too. There’s one from Tennessee Williams, Audrey Hepburn, Charles Darwin, St. Francis de Salles, Herodotus, Maya Angelou, a few from the Bible. Lots of great quotes. I’ve got them all memorised, if you want to hear any of them. You’ve just got to ask.”

Finally, Elena relents, slumping over the counter, completely sapped of her energy. Jeremy’s grin is wild and frantic, his eyes wide as he satiates his hunger.

Back at the Manor, in the afternoon sun, Krash continues his interview. We revolve around the other subjects as they speak in turn.

Krash: “The other person in Jeremy’s photos? That’s Mr. Astor. William. I’m not really sure how he came to be part of the Coven. I don’t think he was with Lord Brjánn and Mr. Best back in Europe.”

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson: “William? No, I didn’t know him until I came here. He’s originally from England, apparently. But I don’t know much more than that. He came with the house.”

Krash: “Mr. Astor calls himself a financial vampire. I’m not sure if that’s an official subspecies. I can’t find anything in the records. At the very least, they’re daywalkers. Mr. Astor leaves for his day-job at the inland revenue every morning at a little before eight.”

We see a shady figure scuttling out of the house, his briefcase under his arm, drinking an Irish coffee laced with pig’s blood to get him going.

Jeremy Best: “He’s human. I’m almost sure of it. No vampire is that shady.”

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson: “No matter what he is, he’s not worth dinner. Would taste foul.”

With the sun now hanging low in the sky outside of his bedroom window, Krash sits in his chair, the preliminary, introductory interview (finally) reaching its conclusion.

Krash: “It is a busy life. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m the familiar for the biggest and most feared vampire coven in North America! The only vampire coven in North America, in fact! That’s something to be proud of, when you think about it.”

He smiles nervously.

Director: “Is that why you do it? For pride?”

The familiar shuffles uncomfortably under the weight of the question. It’s obvious there’s something more. He promptly decides not to bother hiding it.

Krash: “That, and an unspoken promise. The greatest gift that my Masters could ever offer me.”

With that, he stands from his chair to draw the curtains, shaking his fist at the sun theatrically as he does so.

Over breakfast, Krash announces that the Friendship Coven has received a letter with a European stamp, which he holds out to Lord Brjánn deferentially. The Lord continues to eat his blood sausage.

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson: “Well, go ahead. Letters generally don’t read themselves.”

The familiar opens the letter and, his hands ever-so-slightly but noticeably shaking, scans the sheet within. The other three residents at the Manor - the Lord of Hellissandur, Jeremy Best, and the Scorpion - sit around their long stone table (only recently cleaned but in need of another) and tuck into their dusk breakfast (for Brjánn and Jeremy), late lunch (for Krash - not that he ate anything), and time-appropriate supper (for William).

Krash: “It’s from Rotterdam. From the Council.”

All three of the vampires react to this proclamation in their own way. Lord Brjánn simply cocks an eyebrow. Best stops chewing, stares up at the familiar, and gulps down his food ominously. The Scorpion stands up from his chair, rather suddenly and as if ready to defend himself.

-----

[for the following sequence, cthulhu’s nephews kindly allowed the filmmakers to access nephew-familiar-body-cam footage and record an e.v.c. council meeting, as well as assisted in collecting cctv footage from surrounding municipalities.

this was done under the proviso that the footage was kept with alphonse in the swiss vaults until such a time that all other filming for this documentary is completed.]

***

Paris, France.
April 13th, 2023 [ONE WEEK EARLIER].

CCTV footage from the Pont d'Iéna. Chaos is erupting on the bridge. It is difficult from these pictures to pinpoint the exact cause of the commotion, but a huge amount of people - tourists, students, locals alike - are throwing themselves out of the way of, well… of nothing, really. One young man, wearing a pink tracksuit and with a frantic look of concern upon his face, strides with purpose through the clearing mass of people. He is crying out but the footage is silent.

Footage from the young man’s body camera. Most of the scene is the same, but from this new angle we can see the Eiffel Tower rearing up in front of him, and beyond that le lune… as well as three brawling figures - invisible on the CCTV pictures shown previously - that scramble in a ball of limbs across the wide road. A family of tourists scatter as the three fighters bundle into and through the railing.

???: “Oh shit…”

The filming follower hastens to look over the newly formed gap in the bridge’s railing, just as the figures plunge into the Seine below. The young man leans over, looking down into the water as the three plunge deeper and disappear beneath the Pont d'Iéna. The young man takes a deep breath, seemingly considering diving in after them, but apparently he thinks better of it.

Back to the CCTV footage as the young follower - along with a hundred or so bystanders now embroiled in the ongoing drama - stares down into the river. Until, all of a sudden, they turn in unison, water thrown up in geiser-like columns from the Seine, the disruption not apparent on the silent and static picture.

From the young man’s perspective, though, we see the three figures emerge from the river and land on the Pont d'Iéna again. One of them, a youngish looking pale woman with short and untidy blonde hair falling in tangles to her shoulders, strikes one of the others with a knee in the sky. The stocky man lands with a thud on the concrete in front of the follower, and across the road the pallid woman comes down atop her second assailant, driving him deep into the tarmac with a vile and vicious footstomp. The pale woman stands, her black cloak unfurling and gently wafting in the Parisian wind, and dusts herself off. The other approaches.

???: “They’ll be awake again soon unless we cut off their heads. Did you bring my sword, Gerald?”

The servant looks down, his body camera following his gaze, as he unsheaths a long katana, the cold steel glimmering in the pale moonlight.

Gerald: “Where did they come from? Not European, if they were that unfriendly to the Council.”

The other has already walked off, the sword in her hand, approaching the larger of their two foes.

Gerald: “Michelle?”

The familiar scurries after her.

Gerald: “Lady Dreamer? Did you hear me?”

The Dreamer: “I’d say they were American, tulip. Pretty undisputed. Judging by the cologne, the clothes, the general thuggish demeanour. The smarmy one’s flirting. All those crotch chops. All of it points to the new world.”

Gerald: “Someone’s making new vampires in the States?”

Michelle hacks off the head of the felled savage, Gerald lingering nearby but a little too perturbed by the preceding chaos to help with the clean-up.

The Dreamer: “Seems that way. And, seeing as there’s only one brood scratching out a living out there, I have a pretty good guess as to who that is.”

She turns towards her familiar, holding up the severed head of the American vamp.

The Dreamer: “Open your bag.”

***

Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
April 13th, 2023 [LATER THAT DAY].

Within the chambers of the European Vampire Council, the Lady Dreamer and her familiar, Gerald, arrive just in time for an emergency summit. The meeting is well-attended, with almost all of the pale and ghoulish beings present dressed in a mixture of black and pink, the coupling of tracksuit and cape apparently in vogue amongst this unit. The returning envoys to Paris take their place in the chamber, the meeting’s randomly assigned chair - Thomas West, in this instance, who was dressed in a plush indigo cape with a high, black collar atop his hot pink tracksuit - opened up proceedings.

The Host: “Thank you for coming here today, from your own disparate corners of the continent, to discuss two great and pressing issues that come to us from the new world. To get down to business, as they say, the first issue is the annual ‘Canine Contendership’ Mass Hunt, which the organisers have again insisted on hosting over in the States. Some place called Nashville, allegedly. Sounds frightful.”

The Maid: “I went once. To Nashville, I mean. I’ve been to the Mass Hunt a lot more than once.”

The Silence: “.... … ………. ….?”

The Maid: “The same as the rest of the country. New and shiny and graceless. Every time I go, I’m glad to come home.”

The HORROR: “Couldn’t have said it better myself, Nephew!”

The meeting’s chair shuffles in the centre of the horseshoe, clearing his throat in an attempt to bring the Council back to some sort of order.

The Host: “Then I’m sure, Maid, that you won’t wish to put your name forward to be our representative at the hunt?”

The HORROR: “Representative? Singular? Nonsense! We’ll all go!”

There’s an affirmative murmur amongst the rest of the Council. The chair, however, shakes his head, his pointed cuspids visible as he grimaces.

The Host: “Not this time, I’m afraid. The organisers are insisting upon each brood sending at most one representative to this year’s hunt. They’re capping the field at thirty.”

General outcry and uproar.

The Host: “I know, I know… I think it’s ridiculous, too. It’s meant to be the biggest virgin hunt of the year, and they’re capping it at thirty? But that’s the ruling. No reason we can’t go as moral support, though. My initial thought was that the Lady should go.”

Dreamer is sitting at the edge of the horseshoe, her familiar looming above her in his attentive, almost lapdoggish fashion. It is unclear at first whether she is even listening, until slowly she shakes her head.

The Dreamer: “I’ve got my own business to attend to. Though it’s in the same place. Gerald, if you would empty your bag.”

The familiar walks into the centre of the horseshoe, the chair standing aside to give him the floor, as he pours the contents of his rucksack onto the white-stone floor. Two heads roll around at his feet.

The Dreamer: “This alliance came to our shores to wreak havoc and challenge our claim. As you can see, we have since put them in their place, but this affront throws up some interesting questions. They shared our blood, though it was younger and warmer. And they came from the new world, where the only known coven is our slack-jawed brethren in Friendship.”

The HORROR: “You think old Baxbjarnarson’s been siring?”

The Silence: “.....’. ……. …”

The Dreamer: “Not sure. But I’d like to find out. I’ll take Gerald with me, of course. But I could use more hands. No offence, Harry. The Maid and the Avatar would be my first choice.”

The HORROR’s familiar clenches his artificial hand and narrows his eyes.

The HORROR: “Wounded that you wouldn’t take me, Nephew. But perhaps you’re right. My inherent glowing warmth is perhaps not right for this specific context.”

The Maid and the Avatar nod in Dreamer’s direction, the party set and the mission laid out before them.

The Host: “That leaves only the small matter of the hunt.”

From the other edge of the horseshoe, the sound of two knives being scraped against one another - sharpening each other in the process - punctures the ensuing silence. All eyes (and eye-like organs) are drawn onto her: the sullen and sombre huntress, staring down at the floor with a dull and passive countenance. Her black and white scales shimmer under the chamber’s dim candlelight.

The Huntress: “I’ll go.”

She thrusts her daggers - silver-bladed, a rare tool for one of their kind to call their ally - back into the sheaths at her sides. The act seems somewhat decisive.

The Host: “I guess that’s decided, then.”

Before their departure from the meeting, the Lady von Horrowitz turns to her familiar, a determined expression on her face.

The Dreamer: “Send a letter to the Friendship ‘Coven’ and tell them to expect us. Inform them that our visit is to inspect the progress they’ve made in the conquering and colonisation of the new world. Sign my name but in your blood. Pack bags for the Huntress, the Maid, the Avatar, and myself, and then meet us at the harbour. Understood?”

The familiar nods, feeling the moment’s urgency stirring compliance within him.

The Dreamer: “Okay, bat!”

The Avatar: “Bat!”

The Maid: “Bat!”

The Huntress: “Bat!”

With this sudden, synchronised, simultaneous outburst, the four women transfigure into four black bats, and take off into the night in the direction of the Atlantic. Gerald takes a deep, calming breath, before disappearing to begin his work.

-----

We return to the dining room. Our traditional, emotional, and financial vampires still staring at their familiar with mouths agape at his sudden, unexpected declaration.

William Astor: “The fuck do the Council want?”

Jeremy Best: “Doesn’t seem like any time at all since we last saw them. And, for once, those are friends I’d rather leave un-reunited.”

The Lord’s tone was hopeful.

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson: “Maybe they’re coming for an orgy?”

We are back in Brjánn’s private quarters, where the Lord of Hellissandur sits in front of his self-portrait, delivering his talking head interview.

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson: “I am excellent at orgies. I was renowned for it back in Iceland, but unfortunately I don’t get much opportunity to sharpen those talents here in Friendship. Maybe back in New York City. But that was part of the reason we were chased out. But I’ve made a name for myself in clusterfucks.”

As he speaks, illustrations in pencil (taken from A History of the Orgies of the Nordic People, written by Baxbjarnarson himself) depicting decadent and debaucherous acts flash up on the screen. When Icehammer has finished blowing his own trumpet (and showing his doodles of other people blowing it for him), we are back at the breakfast letter-reading.

Krash: “It says they’re coming to the States. To Friendship. They want a progress report. On the forty-sixth anniversary of your arrival in the new world, tulips, the European Vampire Council seeks an audience for an update as to your progress pertaining to the conquering and colonisation thereof. It’s signed by Dreamer herself. Not that she needed the signature, what with all the tulips.”

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson: “Good job we already ate that Reagan kid before we got this letter. Would’ve hated it.”

Jeremy Best: “You ate him. We just drank a little of his blood.”

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson: “Philosophical difference.”

William Astor: “When are they coming? How long do we have to prepare?”

Krash: “Tomorrow.”

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson: “Tomorrow?”

Krash: “April 21st. Apparently, the postal system isn’t the most efficient way to send word from Europe in 2023.”

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson: “Well, that settles it. A strong meal and then to bed. I’ll be rested for their arrival, at least. Maybe I’ll have those two Korean boys we captured for dinner.”

Jeremy Best: “I’ll feed at work.”

William Astor: “I’ll feed myself.”

All of a sudden, the familiar was left in the dining room with the hungry Lord.

Krash: “I’ll go and fetch the Koreans.”

***

Part Two.
”What We Do In The Shadows.”
or: ‘Gerald Grayson: familiar with match focus.’
or: ‘The Meat of the Matter.’
or: ‘The Travails of Lord Brjánn Baxbjarnarson of Hellissurdor, Jeremiah Afdil, הטוב ביותר, and William Astor the Scorpion as they skirt the circumference of conquering and colonisation.’
or: ‘This Title Was Too Long (So Now It’s Shorter)’.

The next day, a UPS truck arrives outside the Manor, and then a short time later a motorbike. The late afternoon sun is high in the sky. The biker, wearing hot pink leathers, steps off his vehicle and removes his helmet, receiving the arriving moustached, malformed familiar on the Manor driveway.

Krash (v.o.): “The Council’s familiar was exactly as I expected him to be. Daring and diligent, in equal measures. I guess there’s a lot I could learn from him. Gerald is essentially the leading familiar in the whole of the western world, which has to count for something.”

We see Krash and Gerald shaking hands, each of them shielding their eyes from the unfamiliar sun, and then - in montage - they go about removing a trio of coffins from the back of the van and hauling them into the Manor.

Krash (v.o.): “They arrived at a little after one, which meant that my Masters were resting. William was at work. But, fortunately, the same was true of Gerald’s masters, too. The Council would wake from their slumber when the moon was in the sky, an arrangement I was grateful for. Hosting the familiar was an intimidating enough experience in itself.”

The three coffins are brought down into a windowless basement room hitherto (ostensibly) used for storage. Gerald and Krash carefully position the third and final casket next to the other two and, on the other side of it, a disused stairmaster that William bought but never really got into.

Krash: “It’s been a bit of a whirlwind: finding out you were coming, and then the battle to make sure that everything was ready. It hasn’t really had a chance to settle in. It’s always been a dream of ours to host you here at the Manor.”

Gerald: “A dream?”

The Council’s familiar was smiling. It appeared he approved of the moustached man’s choice of words.

Krash: “A dream, and - of course - a nightmare. The Friendship Coven and the European Vampire Council are each respected upon their own continents, ruthless and revered. Some would say they are the two most feared groups in the world: the most powerful broods in North America and Europe respectively.”

The other continues to smile. The tone of his response is polite, but this gentle manner does little to conceal the thinly veiled barbs present in his words.

Gerald: “Europe is where the Council is based, but the fear and respect that it commands is not confined by lines on a map. North America is different in many ways now to when you first came here, but in the most important way it is the same. Your purpose here was conquering and colonisation. Remaining the largest brood in North America without every adding to your numbers isn’t all that hype.”

Krash shuffles uncomfortably, his posture growing ever more hunched and weighted.

Krash: “Well, there’s William.”

The other familiar pauses. His smile turns into a sneer.

Gerald: “Yes, the daywalker. I’m sure that the Council looks forward to meeting him when they wake.”

Krash: “Let me show you to your room.”

Gerald, still holding his helmet beneath his arm, shakes his head furiously.

Gerald: “No, I’ll sleep here. Protection is part of a familiar’s duty.”

The moustached man smiles weakly. Double thumbs up. Finger guns. When he leaves the room, the other climbs up onto the middle coffin, curls up into a ball, and then falls into an uneasy sleep.

***

Jeremy Best: “Of course we should wake them! I don’t think they’d be too happy if we didn’t.”

The three Friendship vampires are garrisoned in the Lord’s chambers. Brjánn is lounging in a relaxed and nonchalant manner in his black throne, in front of his portrait of himself. The familiar is standing at his shoulder, his arms folded, fretting, a nervous edge upon him. William sits by an open window, the moon rising in its frame, a cigar perched in his lips.

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson: “Leave it to their familiar. I’m sure he knows their plans. Stop worrying.”

Jeremy Best: “I just want to make sure that we make a good first impression. This is a big opportunity for us.”

With a sigh, the Lord rises to his feet, cutting a hulking figure as he gives orders to his brood.

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson: “Okay, fine. Krash, go and fetch seven glasses of blood. The freshest batch. The pigs’ will have to do. I’m sure they won’t even be able to tell the difference. Then we’ll find the familiar and see if the Council is ready to be welcomed. Sound good?”

The familiar nods his head dutifully and limps across the room, but as he opens the chamber door he is greeted by three pale women and their already-familiar familiar.

Krash: “Um, I think they are ready to be welcomed, sire.”

A short time later, the Council sit alongside the Friendship Coven around the stone table in the Manor’s dining room. The moustached servant arrives with goblets for each of their guests. Jeremy seems nervous and, for once, is unable to formulate small-talk with these potential new friends. Instead, he simply glances at each of them anxiously as they sniff and then sip at their ruby red drinks.

The Maid: “Pig’s blood, of course.”

The Avatar: “A shame.”

The Dreamer: “Yes, but a lot of broods on our side of the Atlantic are having to find creative ways to stay hydrated now, too. The world has changed.”

She shrugs, and takes a long pull from her glass.

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson: “We have dinner planned, too, of course. A special something I’ve been saving for quite some time. But we wanted to oblige your request for a progress report at the earliest possible opportunity, if it should please your leader.”

The Dreamer: “The Council has no leader.”

The Avatar: “We are an anarchist collective with no appointed first.”

The Maid: “The Council opposes hierarchical systems.”

The Coven recoil at their bristling guests. Jeremy’s sweat glands are active for the first time in a couple of centuries. He manages a pair of short, stuttered sentences.

Jeremy Best: “We can eat first. If you’d prefer.”

The Dreamer: “The blood will do for now. Please, go ahead. We are interested to know how the conquering and colonisation has been going. It’s been nearly fifty years, after all.”

Jeremy Best: “Well, how far do you want us to go back? Do you want to hear about our friends Nathan and Jack?”

The Lord’s response is perhaps a little too quick.

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson: “I don’t think they want to hear about our friends Nathan and Jack, Jeremiah.”

The Dreamer: “Well, tell us something we would want to hear about, Icehammer.”

After a moment of thought…

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson: “I don’t think I have to remind you of the H1...”

As the H1 is mentioned, we cut away from the gathering and to Krash, sitting in his room and giving another talking head. This time, the hovering moon has replaced the sinking sun in the sky.

Krash: “The object of the Hunt was simple.”

We cut to a series of puppets, dancing amongst a huge expanse of forestland around a small town. These marionettes, two of them instantly recognisable when they appear on screen, act out the familiar’s description of the H1. We are informed in the corner of the screen that this is only a reconstruction and not the real deal.

Krash (v.o.): “Capture as many targets as you could in the forty-eight hour timeframe. There were other hunters too, though, and if - by a cruel twist of fate - one managed to snare another, they added their captive’s collected souls to their own total. Brjánn performed in a predictably admirable and brutal fashion, though he was felled in the final hours of the competition by Dreamer herself, who would go on to win the Hunt with his scalps on her belt.”

Back at dinner, Michelle sips at her pig’s blood with a wry smile on her face.

The Dreamer: “I’d have thought you might’ve needed the reminder. That didn’t turn out so well for you, in the end.”

The Maid: “A little honour earned, maybe.”

The Avatar: “Honour in defeat, though.”

The Dreamer: “Worst kind of honour.”

It’s clear that the Lord regrets bringing the whole affair up, and attempts to re-seize control of the dialogue.

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson: “Say what you will, the H1 propelled me into that business with Little Lizzie. And that is what really won me the respect of the North American people.”

As Brjánn the Bastard tells the tale, the events are re-depicted in claymation, text in the corner again reminding us that this is a reconstruction. The sequence begins with a gargantuan kaiju-Brjánn towering above the tallest skyscrapers in a modern, nameless American city. From over his shoulder, we see a young woman marching towards him with her fists clenched at her side and a face like thunder.

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson (v.o.): “I might have had the size advantage, but Little Lizzie had a black hole heart. That thing weighed as much as a thousand suns. She’d earned herself a bit of a reputation fighting monsters in the past. The continent’s champion, they called her.”

Little Lizzie’s eyes glow red, fire roars from her mouth, and she leaps up towards her foe. Her attack is thwarted, though, and the girl finds herself caught in the pincers of a scorpion.

We return to the dining room.

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson: “I couldn’t have done it without William, of course. But that’s what friends are for.”

Jeremy Best: “You do listen.”

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson: “No choice, a lot of the time. Anyway, I punted Little Lizzie into another universe and left the continent without a champion. I became its champion.”

The guests don’t seem overly impressed.

The Dreamer: “A champion indeed. Beating the people’s hero on the people’s turf is always admirable, Lord Brjánn, but this story essentially amounts to you frightening and overcoming a little girl named Elizabeth. You weren’t sent here to become the continent’s champion, Icehammer. You were sent here to conquer it.”

Another stony silence. Jeremy now sits in a puddle of his own sweat. He reaches around in desperation for something to say.

Jeremy Best: “Well, there’s the prisoners.”

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson: “What about them?”

Jeremy Best: “The caves below this place are full of prisoners. Most of them caught on one night, too.”

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson: “The carnival was quite special. The moon was so large…”

We cut to a huge animated moon hovering in a purple sky. One more reconstruction, according to the text in the lower right corner of the screen.

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson (v.o.): “They had a boxing ring at the carnival and a cash giveaway for anyone that could beat this dancing strong-man over three rounds. We watched a whole host of them try. There were the Koreans, the carpenters from north of the border, the ones that went crazy after capture, spouting about alternate realities and other such garbage, the Wiccans... quite an oddball collection, really.”

As Brjánn continues to narrate, we see animated representations of this peculiar collective entering the boxing ring and attempting to overcome the travelling strongman. The professional also has a moustache, and makes short work of his enterprising opponents with his gloved and fast hands.

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson (v.o.): “The rest, they say, is history.”

In the dining room, Jeremy cocks an eyebrow in the Lord’s direction.

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson: “You’re not going to tell the whole story? About how we ended up with all the contestants and the strongman in the caves beneath the Manor?”

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson: “I don’t like long stories.”

Jeremy blinks. It’s clear that he disagrees. All good stories can be longer.

The Dreamer: “A minor success, but limited in scope. I have to be honest, gentlemen. This isn’t very much at all. The only thing you’ve managed to achieve of note, as far as I can see, is William, here. Who is pretty impressive for a daywalker, but hardly a sufficient return for fifty years of toil.”

It is the Coven’s turn to bristle. A flash of anger passes over Brjánn the Bastard’s pale face. His pointed canines flare.

Brjann: “Posturing. That’s all this is. What have you ever done, to feel so confident in passing judgement on us?”

[/b][/color]

Dreamer smiles. She enjoys the outburst immensely. Some fire to warm her cold blood, finally.

The Dreamer: “You mean besides capturing you at the H1?”

Icehammer quietly seethes. Gerald and Krash both shuffle uncomfortably, uneasy around the tension. Jeremy continues to sweat. William lights a cigar.

The Dreamer: “Well, there were the Tag Wars, of course. I’m sure you’ve heard of them. Eight weeks of bloody battles, with myself and my familiar standing alone at the end of it. And then there’s the bloodbath that I believe they call the Mile High Massacre. Word gets around, doesn’t it? And that’s only the last half a year, gentlemen. We’ve been doing this sort of thing for a long time.”

She sips at her drink, comfortable in her hosts’ discomfort.

The Dreamer: “Now how about some dinner?”

***

The camera is left in the corner of the dining room. It is still turned on (perhaps accidentally) but is discarded for the moment, as we hear two muffled voices speaking to one another. One is clearer than the other.

Director: “Where’s the camera?”

Cameraman: “I left it inside.”

Director: “Okay. Hopefully they don’t try to eat it.”

Cameraman: “You got a spare?”

Director: “You started smoking, Jon?”

Cameraman: “It’s pretty tense in there.”

The sound of a lighter sparking a few times is heard, and then - as the two filmmakers slowly inhale from their smokes - the camera is somewhat unexpectedly picked up. The Maid looks down into the lens, smiles at the viewer, and then points the camera out of a nearby window. The cameraman and the director - along with a silent sound guy - stand at the end of the driveway, staring at the enlarged, pale moon. The latter still has his microphone switched on and we can hear their conversation as a result. The cameraman shakes his head.

Cameraman: “You certain we don’t have enough stuff filmed already? Between this and the Europe trip, I think we got it.”

Director: “We need to see them feeding. We came all this way. We’ve got to get the money shot.”

Cameraman: “I don’t know, Joe. The young ones keeps looking at me. Licking her lips.”

The director lets out a nervous chuckle.

Director: “You’re imagining things.”

Cameraman: “The Indianans were bad enough, but I sort of got the impression from them that their bark was worse than their bite…”

Director: “Like you were never really in danger, so long as you kept your wits about you. Yes, I felt that too.”

Cameraman: “But the council has me spooked. I have to keep looking up from the viewfinder to check nothing’s taken a bite out of me.”

The director looks his cameraman up and down. He’s shaking but it isn’t that cold.

Director: “Get a hold of yourself. I thought you said you were going to hug them?”

Cameraman: “I don’t remember saying that at all.”

Director: “What do you think, Jam?”.

The sound technician says nothing. He continues to look at the moon. After one last, long, thoughtful drag, the director throws his cigarette into a nearby drain.

Director: “Come on. Let’s finish up.”

As the two filmmakers walk back up the drive, the Maid places the camera back into the corner of the room.

***

We return to an image of Krash, sitting in his room to give one last talking head. It is still dark outside, and the intermittent bumps and bangs that we hear emanating from downstairs suggest that the tense dinner party is still transpiring.

Krash: “We shouldn’t be gone too long. They’ll probably need me downstairs.”

The director speaks from off-camera.

Director: “How do you think it’s going?”

Krash: “Could be better.”

The familiar smiles awkwardly.

Krash: “Look, this isn’t exactly new territory. My masters aren’t the best at first impressions. There’s a whole list of people who get the wrong idea about Lord Brjánn when they first meet him. Sometimes, whole villages can get up in arms about him before they really get to know what he’s like. Who he really is. They hear the nickname Virgin’s Bane and they run a mile. Even my own family…”

A pause. Krash’s voice trails off.

Director: “Does your family know you’re here?”

He nods his head.

Krash: “They know I’m here. They aren’t too happy about it. Every day I get letters pleading with me to come to Australia. They think I’ve been brainwashed or kidnapped or something. They don’t really understand that I want to be here. Or maybe it’s why I want to be here that they don’t understand. Is what it is. They don’t know what’s at stake.”

More bumping and banging from downstairs.

Krash: “They’re getting restless. I think it’s dinner-time.”

We cut to downstairs, where Jeremy and William remain with the Council and their familiar. Lord Brjánn and Krash have disappeared into the caves to fetch the food. Dreamer looks around at the drab and minimalistic interior of the Manor. She seems uninspired.

The Dreamer: “Do you have a library here?”

Jeremy Best: “The Lord isn’t really much of a reader.”

The Dreamer: “Unsurprising.”

Jeremy Best: “I have my own personal collection. You’re welcome to take a look. Have you ever heard of Barbara Cartland? I have lots of her books.”

At that moment, Icehammer and his familiar return, leading a naked, tired, and confused man on a chain into the dining room. He has the look of one who was once muscular and athletic, but has spent a period of time on the shelf and let himself go. His untidy hair is wild and untamed, his moustache ragged and fibrous. But still, despite the disrepair that his apparent captivity has allowed his body to slide into, there is a vague, distant glow about him that even the camera picks up.

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson: “Please, tuck in.”

[thirty minutes later.]

The dining room has quickly been transformed into a vomitorium. This is not a voluntary arrangement. Both the Council and the Coven sit around the low, stone table, having turned from a ghoulish white into a ghoulish pale green, massaging their stomachs and intermittently adding to the puddles of sick that have accumulated around them.

The Dreamer: “This meat is bad.”

The Maid: “Infected.”

The Avatar: “Was this guy even a virgin?”

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson: “He talked like one. Danced like one. Certainly fought like one.”

Dreamer’s eyes narrow.

The Dreamer: “Looks can be deceiving.”

Gerald: “My grandfather used to say that you should never judge a book by its cover. And that’s how he lost his job as chairperson of the Raleigh Annual Book Cover Awards.”

The Dreamer: “Sometimes, though, a cover can tell you enough. Like in the case of our conquerers and colonisers, here. I think we have certainly seen enough, even if we haven’t eaten enough.”

Here, Michelle gives a side-eyed glance to the cameraman, the sound technician, and the director. When she turns back towards the Friendship Coven, the filmmakers take a nervous step away.

The Dreamer: “It’s clear that your mission has failed. Your successes are trivial, and your failures are evident in the meek and submissive way that you hide in this Manor. You’ve brought shame to the underworld, and the name that you carried with you from the old world to this new one.”

As she speaks, Dreamer seems to grow in size until her shadow swallows even the Lord whole. He sits next to Jeremy and, fear beginning to smother the pair of them for the first time in centuries, they slowly recede from their accuser and into a nervous hug that brings with it only false comfort. The Lady smiles. And, when the Friendship vampires attempt to relinquish their embrace and recede further, they find that they cannot. They are held in place, their arms folded around one another, by an invisible force that - judging by their perplexed expressions - neither can immediately explain.

Jeremy Best: “Are you doing this?”

Brjánn Baxbjarnarson: “Of course they’re doing this.”

The Dreamer: “Just a little something that Uncle’s familiar whipped up. He’s a dab hand with potions. We put it in your drinks. You should be more comfortable.”

Out of nowhere, the Lord’s familiar sprung into action, diving at Dreamer in a silent and swift motion. She met him with a forearm so hard that, as he flew through the air, his soul left his body and floated into an alternate dimension. Visions swirled around him of Dreamer pinning him, only a much stronger, more athletic, more virile version of him, in a wrestling ring in a rundown warehouse.

In Friendship, he hit the ground hard and was knocked out.

The filmmakers have backed up into the corner of the room, and only now - with the familiar unconscious and two of the three vampires unable to move a muscle, struggling impotently against each other’s arms, tied around them like thick rope - do the Council’s eyes settle on the two men behind it.

The Dreamer: “Are you still hungry, William?”

We realise that the Scorpion still has full control of his limbs and his faculties.

William Astor: “I could eat.”

She smiles, approvingly.

The Dreamer: “The food is much better over in Europe. Gerald, start gathering our things. We’ll leave after dinner.”

The dutiful and diligent familiar nods before removing himself from the room. The three women encroach on the cameraman, who drops his tool in fright as the Council pounce like hungry predators. The camera watches listlessly, motionless, as they feed for a second time. The Friendship Coven struggle helplessly as three more human bodies are reduced to stripped piles of bones.

Eventually, the Maid picks up the camera.

The three women, the Scorpion, and Gerald the familiar assemble outside the burning Manor. The Council nods to the masked man sitting in the driver’s seat of their van, which is still parked outside of the building. As the Lady and the Avatar climb back into their coffins, loaded into the back of the vehicle, Gerald mounts his motorbike and kicks up the stand. He gets a head start, turning his bike around and heading for the Atlantic. The Maid climbs into the back of the van, sitting on her coffin and filming out of the back window as the flames lick higher and higher into the penetrating night. She feels safe in the shadows.[/center][/font]