So, being the Metalscream has led me on an interesting journey in my life. And I can tell you that I’ve dealt with a lot.
Right now, I’m dealing with being trapped in this terrible shithole of a room, naked, listening to this unending noise that’s just about to drive me out of my shocking mind.
I mean, honestly, how the shock does this guy sleep through his own snore fest?
I’m laying here in this acid-laced nightmare he calls a room, watching his semi-sentient, palm-sized gargoyle bong smoking its own weed, sitting under a patchwork roof I can almost feel want to cave in on me, trying like mad to fall back to sleep and this silly jackass next to me decides he’s going to snore loud enough to wake the dead?
I can feel my shocking eardrums bleeding, and the mother-shocker’s just laying there under the covers passed out. But somehow, he’s still torturing my ass through his dreams.
So why.
The shock.
Am I here?
Oh yeah, that’s right. Because he’s a ridiculously-amazing lay.
Totally forgot.
I met Chaz (I call him Chaz because I like it better than “Chester”) at a Sonic Gunmetal concert a few weeks back. We got to talking about how the lead singer’s latest display of all-black body make-up shines pheromones into the crowd, hidden in reflected light, giving them mini-orgasms during their performance and how hilarious it was we were immune to it. We got to arguing about why Blowtorch Visine does NOT beat Sonic Gunmetal as the greatest fucking metal band of all time, one thing led to another, and we’ve been hooking up ever since.
Although sometimes, it’s a struggle to get myself to come to this pit.
Chaz lives with his parents, which means I get to sneak into a room I keep telling myself isn’t a closet. The spider-web cracks in the ceiling come from the tenants upstairs whose power-surround-sound system was pitched by the super for almost causing a tectonic shift below the building. I trace along the lines above me with my eyes and wonder when the sky’s gonna fall on us.
The bed sheets are backwards-model, like those dusty dead things they slept on back in the twencen. It’s just nothing like the soft living silk that lines my bed in the Dream Zone. My eyes always tear up from the dust and cat dander, since the air-purifiers are “next-on-the-list” for the super to fix.
AND THAT GODDAMNED LIVING BONG IS TRYING TO GET ME STONED AGAIN FOR THE FIFTH TIME TONIGHT! I watch its heat-seeking smoke cloud wash over us, uncoiling pockets of that shocking mary-jane shit into my pores, while it tries to distract me with its glowing red eyes.
Yeah, like I’ll fall for that one.
Chaz is also a technomancer, in case the crazy shit in his room couldn’t give you the tip-off. He’s a low-level, since he’s self-taught and all.
I, on the other hand, am a little higher on the techno-mantic food chain.
I am the Metalscream - techno mystic extraordinare charged with the holy crusade of preventing the misuse of occultechnology. One of my most useful - and unfortunately most infuriating - weapons is the Bone Machine (a hovering collection of three millennia’s worth of very dead and very ornery sorcerers’ skulls) hard-wired into my nervous system giving me both technomantic guidance and one massive headache to boot. Anyone doing harm to the world by mixing science with sorcery has to answer to yours truly.
And since I’m a seventeen year old goth chick who’s physically about as imposing as a teddy bear, I’ve had to develop my own stylish brand of ass-kickery.
Yeah, I said ass-kickery. Deal with it.
So in addition to wiping out the malevolent mystics with my own brand of techno mystical ass-kickery, I also happen to be just about the only magician in existence who still uses a gun to defend herself.
John, the Metalscream before me, used to look down on me for relying on a gun instead of magical strength.
I say, bite off, I‘ll do whatever the hell I want.
Insert smiley face.
Never really spilled the beans on the techno-mantic crusade yet during our pillow talk sessions. The Bone Machine and I agreed it’s none of his shocking business. What our pillow talk sessions do consist of is more along the lines of…
“JUST BREATHE THROUGH YOUR NOSE LIKE A NORMAL HUMAN BEING SO THAT CHINA DOESN’T HAVE TO LISTEN TO YOUR GODDAMNED SNORING!” I scream at him with enough decibels to split open an eardrum. He barely opens his eyes, talking to me in that half-stoned tone of his.
“Fer Thor’s sake, Litany, shut the shock up. My bleeding parents are home.”
“And I’ll bet they hate the fact that their son sounds like an entire goddamned construction crew! Cut it the fuck out!”
“Litany, we have this discussion the same way every time you’re over. I snore. I’ve always snored. Please fuck off and let me get some sleep for once.”
“If you don’t cut out that snoring shit, I will beat you to death with your stupid shocking living bong over there.”
“What…Henry? Don’t do that. He doesn’t like that.”
“Henry? Shock’s-sake, you gave the thing a name?”
“Yeah, course I did. He’s a cool cat.”
“Every time I come over here, he tries to get me addicted to your stupid pot shit!”
“Of course he does. That’s what he’s supposed to do.”
“Stupid shocking sonuva…”
“And besides, don’t knock the weed. I say you could use the calming down…”
“I‘m sorry, what was that? What’d you say? I can‘t hear you right now because I‘m deaf from all the snoring, you jackass!”
“Here we go…”
I scoff at Chaz and give the beady-eyed weed--gargoyle the finger. It’s eyes glow and it decides to puff an extra large cloud of smoke my way.
Big mistake.
Furious equations of magic start dancing around my mind and glowing mini-chainsaws start orbiting my outstretched middle finger. I’m ready to melt the mother-shocker out of existence when Chaz grabs my arm and starts his lip-smacking…
“Litany, stop the shit. Seriously, I paid two hundred creds for that thing. Don’t wreck it.”
“He started it. You saw it.” I mutter, irritated.
“Yeah, yeah. Just…cool the hell down and get some sleep. Seriously…”
“And listen to you snore some more? Wreck this place, I’m gone…”
I bolt up from the bed in a fury and start collecting my clothes, which are still strewn all across the room. As I pick up my bra off the floor and snap it back into place, Chaz stares at me with those brown eyes of his and I know it’ll be about two seconds before I need to go ahead and punch him in the face.
“That looks amazing on you, Litany.”
Wait, what? A compliment. About my bra. Really? What the shock is he playing at…?
“It looks even more amazing in that pile on my floor…”
Very, very colorful words filter through my mind as I grab the shocking gargoyle-statue from his shelf and hurl it at his stupid smirking face. His eyes flash as a green aura surrounds him and the statue slows its hurtling and eventually drifts calmly over to his hand. The gargoyle’s eyes dim a bit, calmed by its master’s presence. I glare at the smiling asshole as he stands up in all his naked glory. But then he goes and ruins the horny little thoughts going through my head when his stupid gums start flapping again.
“Thor, Baldur and Sif, Litany, I’m just kidding.”
I roll my eyes, trying not to look at him while I grab the rest of my scattered wardrobe off his messy floor. Chaz consoles the gargoyle-bong about its near-brush with death, petting it and cooing at it disgustingly as I get dressed enough to storm out of his stupid room with some dignity intact. My frustration ignites an aura of fierce yellow electricity around my body as a light-show demonstration of how much I want to kick the crap out of him right now.
“I hate you, you obnoxious little bastard. I swear to Thor if you call me again, I will make you eat that shocking gargoyle pet of yours.” And then I grab him and leave him with a furious kiss that negates everything I just said.
My aura surges as I teleport away to my home - the Dream Zone. I start off for my own bedroom, with the living, silky black sheets and gargoyles that don’t spew narcotics in my face every two seconds when I realize how alone I feel.
Shock me! I left the Bone Machine at his place!
It totally slipped my mind that I powered it down and dislodged it from my nervous system before Chaz and I went at it. Three millenia‘s worth of dead magicians, the single most important weapon in the Metalscream arsenal. Of all the things to forget at his place…
I teleport back into Chaz’s bedroom to see him, still naked, proudly holding the Bone Machine in one hand, smiling that devilish smile of his.
“So much for your exit.” He says smart-assedly.
***
Thankfully, I get to go comatose after I get back home, away from the construction noises coming out of Chaz’s nose. I manage to get a few more hours of sleep before I decide to run some errands for myself.
And number one on the agenda? Fixing my favorite weapon: the most beautiful handgun in existence.
Alphaglock Model Twelve.
I’ve etched long ago forgotten techno mantic insignias along the side of the gun that allow it to interface with my magics more easily. So that when I enchant the thing to spew hellfire or gamma rays, I don’t exhaust myself from the strain. My reservoir of magic stays strong for when I need it.
But on its own, it’s just a beautiful shocking handgun you do not want to be on the wrong side of.
Ninety bullets held inside a clip designed to hold six. The clip is folded over fourth-dimensionally and held in place by an electromagnetic charge. The bullets load in the chamber and shoot out through miniaturized, adjustable anti-singularities that line the chamber walls. It fires bullets at snail-speed to stun folks, or at rail gun speed to shock up people’s lives. And you’ll never need to reload in a battle with a ninety-bullet-clip either.
And see, that’s the problem. Last time I did battle, I actually had to reload the Alphaglock after six measly shots. Nearly got myself killed doing it. I can’t let that happen again; I’ve got to be able to rely on the gun when I need to.
Trouble is, I didn’t make the shocking thing. I don’t know the first thing about fixing a handgun. And I’d rather not have to expend loads of magic to keep it from running out of bullets every time I want to fire the bloody thing either.
Unfortunately, there‘s only one person I know of who can fix the fucker. And that’s the weapon smith I bought it from…
Rades Murphy.
His shop in Halo City is a modest affair; boring scrolling signs and square corner brickwork all around the outside.
The inside’s where the good stuff is.
I walk through the glass door and am greeted by piles and piles of sniper rifles, plasma shotguns, glowing neon handguns, shock batons, laser whips…pretty much all the home defense anyone could ever need. And trust me, since Halo City tends to attract all the lawless outcasts, degens and disenfranchised people this country has to offer, the people in this city need all the home defense they can get.
Rades is a quiet, modest prick. He’ll sell you the shirt off his back if he thinks it will help. That’s why he keeps his prices low - the meek of Halo City rarely have two coins to rub together. He could make a killing if he wanted to, the weapons he has.
At least, that’s what he tells everyone…
But I know he’s got some hidden agenda; everyone else in this city does.
And today, I think I’ve finally figured it out…
“Alright, listen you calm, ancient little snot,” I say, strolling up and slapping the broken Alphaglock on the counter in front of him like I mean business, “I need you to fix this thing. And not because you want to get in my pants, but because I asked you to nicely.”
Rades just smiles at me irritatingly and starts talking at me like he’s my dad. “Litany, first of all, I’m old enough to be your father. Second, please don’t slam guns like that in my shop. Last time you did that, it went off and blew a hole straight through the back room.”
I give him a roll of my eyes and am about to lay all kinds of hell upon this smooth, cool motherfucker when he puts up his one finger and I realize he‘s right. Sighing angrily, I back off as he intently stares at the Alphaglock, checking all the parts with that methodical nature of his.
“What seems to be wrong with this one?” He asks.
“Well, it stops firing after six shots. That mod you put on my gun’s supposed to give me a clip of ninety!”
“Which reminds me, what does a young girl like you need with a gun that can hold ninety bullets?”
I hold back the urge to go thermonuclear on him. “Not the issue. What’s wrong with the damn mod?”
“Hmmm…” He mumbles, effortlessly taking apart the chamber and looking down into the clip. “Hmm..”
I watch him for a few seconds, decide I can’t take his ‘Hmm’-ing anymore and decide to browse around the counter displays. I see a nicely-ornamented sub-machine pistol and my hand slides toward it all on its own.
“Look, don‘t touch.” Rades says as the auto-turrets around the shop sense my movements and swivel in my direction.
I purse my lips, cursing colorful while backing off. Figures. Place like Halo, you can’t be too careful about protecting your product.
“I think I know what’s wrong with your gun.”
“You do, huh?” I say. “Spill.”
“Loose spring.” He says matter-of-factly, thumbing the top of the clip chamber. He keeps his eyes toward the gun and I’d almost swear he’s lost in his own little world. “Keeps the electromagnetic charge from forming. Without it, the bullets aren’t pulled from the tesseract and locked into place inside the clip.”
“So, you can fix it, right?”
“Just like new.” He says, flipping the gun around in his hands, utterly fascinated by it. “It’s intricate work, though. I’ll need a couple hours.”
“Whatever it takes,” I say. “I’ll swing by later tonight.”
He gives me a grunt of acknowledgement and carries my baby off through a curtain into the back of the store. As I think about how I can run my fingers along the sub-machine pistol without the automated turret defense system starting its noise, I feel someone watching me through the window. I look up and notice a dark-haired girl dressed in all black leering at me from across the street like I just stepped on her dog.
Nothing seems to be out-of-the-ordinary…just some emo freak with a busted brain. But the vibe I’m getting from her…
…it just screams of bad news.
Just what I shockin’ need…
On instinct, I go for the door as a truck suddenly passes by between us, completely obscuring her from my view. As my hand grabs the door handle, the truck is gone.
Oh, and - big surprise - so’s the girl.
So goddamn cliché, I swear to God…
‘I must be seeing things,’ I tell myself, ‘No one’s that fast…’
Which is good, because if I was imagining the creepy emo girl…
…then, I was definitely imagining the part where she smiled murderously at me before the truck passed in front of her.
Definitely.
***
“Every time I see you / I’m raped again by acid sins / Every time I touch you / I burn until I’m dead!”
I scream the chorus to Blowtorch Visine’s latest single “Your Touch is Like Castration” as the song plays inside my bloodstream. My intravenous CD player is streaming the song through a pirate radio channel it’s picking up in cyberspace and beaming it into my head.
Through the player, I’m also getting visions of their live concert somewhere in the badlands of Arizona. I’m watching the lead singer light himself on fire as part of his pyrotechnics act. Don’t worry - he has a special brand of narcotics that re-grows his skin for him.
I’m screaming the song as loud as I can, pretending I‘m up-stage with Chad Lounger right now. I’m smelling his burnt skin and doing his back-up vocals for him until his larynx grows back.
As I’m doing all this, I’m getting angry looks from the other pedestrians on the street.
Probably because I’m walking down a Halo City street, on the way to Rades’ to pick up my repaired Alphaglock handgun while all this is going on.
But who cares if I‘m getting stared at like I‘ve got nine heads?
I just kicked a trio of demonic brides back to their hell-spawned master and out of this dimension for good. I have a shocking right to be happy with myself.
And I did it all without the goddamned Bone Machine.
I’ve been Bone-Machine-free for the third day in a row now, since I’m finally all healed up. I’d had the Bone Machine bonded to my nervous system by John Flamel - my mentor - as a back-up life support system designed to keep me from bleeding out internally after nearly getting killed when the Mantic Gallery was attacked and again when Paradise City tore its own heart out. The Bone Machine, since it’s a bunch of bodiless and cranky magicians with a schizophrenic bent, naturally drove me up a fucking wall every time I talked to it. Which was every second of every day, since it was attached to my nervous system, remember.
However, ever since I healed up, I’ve no longer needed it constantly attached to my body. I keep it locked away now in its new room in the Dream Zone - The Hallway of Pronounced Echoes. If I do need to take it with me, I usually have it in it’s powered-down form.
But today? Yeah, it’s in the Dream Zone.
You have no mother-shocking idea how freeing it is to be away from those shocking loonies.
So anyway, not long after I left Rades’ weapon store, the telepathic alarm system I’ve technomantically wired into my dreams gave me a four-points-siren telling me that there was some downright-bad-shit going on in the world of the living.
So I ’ported over to the source of the noise, and found myself surrounded by the undead brides of some twelfth-century living gargoyle from Hell named Pry-Tithe the AfterGod. They’d just found a way to resurrect themselves by possessing the bodies of some stupid tween bitches and were using an old-school pentagram to resurrect their dark master.
I’m not an idiot. I didn’t go into battle not knowing what I was in for. I gathered my intel from the alarm-dreams that my techno mantic alarm system was pumping into my head. I knew these demonic brides were half-retarded from all that time they’d spent dead. Their spells weren‘t even casting properly. And besides, there were supposed to be five brides, not three. Without the other two, the pentagram spell was nowhere near complete, and defeating them was a cinch-and-a-half.
But still, regardless of how easy the battle had been, it was me who won it. Not me and the Bone Machine, just good old Litany Kirkpatrick and her techno-mantic know-how.
You have no idea how great that feels.
So I get to my third play through of “Your Touch is Like Castration” when I reach Rade’s shop, and my blood boils almost immediately.
It’s six-thirty and this place is open till eight. And yet, the door’s locked tight and the inside’s darker than a graveyard at night. Are you fucking kidding me?
It’s not like Rades to close the store this early…
That asshole.
I teleport inside to give the prick a piece of my mind. As I appear in the darkened room, I realize the auto-turrets are probably armed and think up a quick shield for the inevitable bullet barrage…
But it doesn’t come.
The place is dead quiet. And as I breathe in, I can almost smell techno-mysticisim in the air.
I send a small beam of glowing math equations in search of a light switch.
The terrible part starts when the lights come on…
Shock me…
Rades…
The whole shop is torn apart. Weapons are scattered everywhere - some in pieces, some whole. The scraps of melted metal that were once automated turrets hang limp in the four corners of the room. The counters look like they’ve exploded from the inside; my leather boots crunch against shattered glass and bent steel rods that are somehow fused into the floor. The walls are littered with bullet holes and uneven tears that look like they were made by super-hot chainsaw blades.
My eyes drift around the room in disbelief. There are broken assault rifles still floating in the air, as well as sniper rifles dripping down from the ceiling in a mess of the surreal. It can only be technomancy, this business. But all the trace spells I’m running come up dry.
Whoever….whatever did this…it’s better at the arts than I am. Far better.
But that’s not even the worst of it.
Rades.
Poor goddamn Rades.
He’s is lying on the counter, his entire torso cut in half vertically, from his shoulder down to his damn groin, entails leaking out of him like noodles leaking out of an over-turned Chinese food box. His clothes are ripped to shit, his skin saturated with nicks and cuts. His face is frozen in a twisted sneer of pain and determination, and a gun lies below his cold, lifeless hand. Whatever got him, he fought with his dying breath.
I look behind him and see a disgusting trail of blood leading from his broken corpse all the way up the wall.
I was wrong. Seeing Rades there, ripped in half was NOT the worst of it.
The worst of it, is seeing a message written in his life’s blood written above the counter.
“MY GOD IS COMING FOR YOU. THERE IS NO ESCAPE. YOU WILL GIVE BIRTH TO THE NEW SAVIOR.”
I puke my guts up all over the shattered store.
What in God’s name could do this?
And why?
***
Teleportation spell lands me back in the Dream Zone as a deep sense of shock takes over my mind.
I’m going to need back-up for this one.
This - I know in my gut - was the work of technomancy.
A kind of technomancy that was immune to the early-warning-system I’ve established in the Dream Zone that warns me when evil shit’s afoot.
A kind of technomancy that my own trace spells can’t even recognize as magic.
And not only that, but this technomancer’s gunning for ME. That message was for me and me alone, there’s no doubt about it.
This is going to be nasty.
Whatever this is, it’s gonna be just-fucking-nasty.
I wake the Bone Machine out of its slumber in the Hallway of Pronounced Echoes. They bitch at me for leaving them turned off.
I tell them to shut the shock up before I kick them in their bony asses. I tell them about Rades and the technomancy that is invisible to my radar. Bonding the Machine to my nervous system again for the time being, we teleport back to the disgusting mess of a scene to look for clues as to what kind of mind-fuck we’re dealing with here.
As we gather the evidence, I realize that the Alphaglock handgun I’d had Rades working on is nowhere to be found. There aren’t even pieces of it anywhere. I tell the Bone Machine this, and it tells me there are more important things to worry about than my damned handgun. But I still can’t shake the feeling in my gut. I mean, why the shock would anyone steal that…?
It takes us an hour and a half. Dr. Maksim Sidorov analyzes the super-string layers inside the blood and tries to find out how the murderer turned gravity off in certain sections of the room. Bartholemew the Elder looks at the guns melted into the ceiling and remembers an old Christian cult spell on how that sort of thing was done. I walk around the room with them, and all I’m able to do to help the situation is continue keeping what’s still left of my dinner down this time.
Together, with their knowledge of science and sorcery, they come up with a couple spells to start making this invisible technomancy visible. They use hexes, probability bends, and some other stuff I really give them credit for coming up with, and even then we’re only barely able to see the techno mantic breadcrumbs in front of us.
But it’s enough, thank God.
We head back to the Dream Zone and cast a hex that can triangulate the murderer’s position. We set it to echo out through my Dream Zone alert system to encase the entire planet. If this murdering psycho’s anywhere on my home turf, his own bread crumbs will lead me back to him.
And I’m gonna take out enough vengeance out on the son of a glitch to make Rades proud.
Rades and I had our fights and our disagreements. But shock me, he didn’t deserve that. Nowhere near that. He was always good to me, no matter how much shit I threw his way.
I’m going to miss that smug schmuck.
My daydreaming’s interrupted when the Bone Machine finally pinpoints the location of the murdering bastard. I take one look at the spot the Machine’s picked out and I recognize it instantly. My breath gets caught in my throat and my stomach caves in.
No.
Nononono.
No shocking way.
No. Shocking. Way.
NO!
SHOCKING!
WAY!!!
The Machine’s pointing me at Chaz’s house.
***
WELL, TO BE CONTINUED. OBVIOUSLY.
***
Right now, I’m dealing with being trapped in this terrible shithole of a room, naked, listening to this unending noise that’s just about to drive me out of my shocking mind.
I mean, honestly, how the shock does this guy sleep through his own snore fest?
I’m laying here in this acid-laced nightmare he calls a room, watching his semi-sentient, palm-sized gargoyle bong smoking its own weed, sitting under a patchwork roof I can almost feel want to cave in on me, trying like mad to fall back to sleep and this silly jackass next to me decides he’s going to snore loud enough to wake the dead?
I can feel my shocking eardrums bleeding, and the mother-shocker’s just laying there under the covers passed out. But somehow, he’s still torturing my ass through his dreams.
So why.
The shock.
Am I here?
Oh yeah, that’s right. Because he’s a ridiculously-amazing lay.
Totally forgot.
I met Chaz (I call him Chaz because I like it better than “Chester”) at a Sonic Gunmetal concert a few weeks back. We got to talking about how the lead singer’s latest display of all-black body make-up shines pheromones into the crowd, hidden in reflected light, giving them mini-orgasms during their performance and how hilarious it was we were immune to it. We got to arguing about why Blowtorch Visine does NOT beat Sonic Gunmetal as the greatest fucking metal band of all time, one thing led to another, and we’ve been hooking up ever since.
Although sometimes, it’s a struggle to get myself to come to this pit.
Chaz lives with his parents, which means I get to sneak into a room I keep telling myself isn’t a closet. The spider-web cracks in the ceiling come from the tenants upstairs whose power-surround-sound system was pitched by the super for almost causing a tectonic shift below the building. I trace along the lines above me with my eyes and wonder when the sky’s gonna fall on us.
The bed sheets are backwards-model, like those dusty dead things they slept on back in the twencen. It’s just nothing like the soft living silk that lines my bed in the Dream Zone. My eyes always tear up from the dust and cat dander, since the air-purifiers are “next-on-the-list” for the super to fix.
AND THAT GODDAMNED LIVING BONG IS TRYING TO GET ME STONED AGAIN FOR THE FIFTH TIME TONIGHT! I watch its heat-seeking smoke cloud wash over us, uncoiling pockets of that shocking mary-jane shit into my pores, while it tries to distract me with its glowing red eyes.
Yeah, like I’ll fall for that one.
Chaz is also a technomancer, in case the crazy shit in his room couldn’t give you the tip-off. He’s a low-level, since he’s self-taught and all.
I, on the other hand, am a little higher on the techno-mantic food chain.
I am the Metalscream - techno mystic extraordinare charged with the holy crusade of preventing the misuse of occultechnology. One of my most useful - and unfortunately most infuriating - weapons is the Bone Machine (a hovering collection of three millennia’s worth of very dead and very ornery sorcerers’ skulls) hard-wired into my nervous system giving me both technomantic guidance and one massive headache to boot. Anyone doing harm to the world by mixing science with sorcery has to answer to yours truly.
And since I’m a seventeen year old goth chick who’s physically about as imposing as a teddy bear, I’ve had to develop my own stylish brand of ass-kickery.
Yeah, I said ass-kickery. Deal with it.
So in addition to wiping out the malevolent mystics with my own brand of techno mystical ass-kickery, I also happen to be just about the only magician in existence who still uses a gun to defend herself.
John, the Metalscream before me, used to look down on me for relying on a gun instead of magical strength.
I say, bite off, I‘ll do whatever the hell I want.
Insert smiley face.
Never really spilled the beans on the techno-mantic crusade yet during our pillow talk sessions. The Bone Machine and I agreed it’s none of his shocking business. What our pillow talk sessions do consist of is more along the lines of…
“JUST BREATHE THROUGH YOUR NOSE LIKE A NORMAL HUMAN BEING SO THAT CHINA DOESN’T HAVE TO LISTEN TO YOUR GODDAMNED SNORING!” I scream at him with enough decibels to split open an eardrum. He barely opens his eyes, talking to me in that half-stoned tone of his.
“Fer Thor’s sake, Litany, shut the shock up. My bleeding parents are home.”
“And I’ll bet they hate the fact that their son sounds like an entire goddamned construction crew! Cut it the fuck out!”
“Litany, we have this discussion the same way every time you’re over. I snore. I’ve always snored. Please fuck off and let me get some sleep for once.”
“If you don’t cut out that snoring shit, I will beat you to death with your stupid shocking living bong over there.”
“What…Henry? Don’t do that. He doesn’t like that.”
“Henry? Shock’s-sake, you gave the thing a name?”
“Yeah, course I did. He’s a cool cat.”
“Every time I come over here, he tries to get me addicted to your stupid pot shit!”
“Of course he does. That’s what he’s supposed to do.”
“Stupid shocking sonuva…”
“And besides, don’t knock the weed. I say you could use the calming down…”
“I‘m sorry, what was that? What’d you say? I can‘t hear you right now because I‘m deaf from all the snoring, you jackass!”
“Here we go…”
I scoff at Chaz and give the beady-eyed weed--gargoyle the finger. It’s eyes glow and it decides to puff an extra large cloud of smoke my way.
Big mistake.
Furious equations of magic start dancing around my mind and glowing mini-chainsaws start orbiting my outstretched middle finger. I’m ready to melt the mother-shocker out of existence when Chaz grabs my arm and starts his lip-smacking…
“Litany, stop the shit. Seriously, I paid two hundred creds for that thing. Don’t wreck it.”
“He started it. You saw it.” I mutter, irritated.
“Yeah, yeah. Just…cool the hell down and get some sleep. Seriously…”
“And listen to you snore some more? Wreck this place, I’m gone…”
I bolt up from the bed in a fury and start collecting my clothes, which are still strewn all across the room. As I pick up my bra off the floor and snap it back into place, Chaz stares at me with those brown eyes of his and I know it’ll be about two seconds before I need to go ahead and punch him in the face.
“That looks amazing on you, Litany.”
Wait, what? A compliment. About my bra. Really? What the shock is he playing at…?
“It looks even more amazing in that pile on my floor…”
Very, very colorful words filter through my mind as I grab the shocking gargoyle-statue from his shelf and hurl it at his stupid smirking face. His eyes flash as a green aura surrounds him and the statue slows its hurtling and eventually drifts calmly over to his hand. The gargoyle’s eyes dim a bit, calmed by its master’s presence. I glare at the smiling asshole as he stands up in all his naked glory. But then he goes and ruins the horny little thoughts going through my head when his stupid gums start flapping again.
“Thor, Baldur and Sif, Litany, I’m just kidding.”
I roll my eyes, trying not to look at him while I grab the rest of my scattered wardrobe off his messy floor. Chaz consoles the gargoyle-bong about its near-brush with death, petting it and cooing at it disgustingly as I get dressed enough to storm out of his stupid room with some dignity intact. My frustration ignites an aura of fierce yellow electricity around my body as a light-show demonstration of how much I want to kick the crap out of him right now.
“I hate you, you obnoxious little bastard. I swear to Thor if you call me again, I will make you eat that shocking gargoyle pet of yours.” And then I grab him and leave him with a furious kiss that negates everything I just said.
My aura surges as I teleport away to my home - the Dream Zone. I start off for my own bedroom, with the living, silky black sheets and gargoyles that don’t spew narcotics in my face every two seconds when I realize how alone I feel.
Shock me! I left the Bone Machine at his place!
It totally slipped my mind that I powered it down and dislodged it from my nervous system before Chaz and I went at it. Three millenia‘s worth of dead magicians, the single most important weapon in the Metalscream arsenal. Of all the things to forget at his place…
I teleport back into Chaz’s bedroom to see him, still naked, proudly holding the Bone Machine in one hand, smiling that devilish smile of his.
“So much for your exit.” He says smart-assedly.
***
Thankfully, I get to go comatose after I get back home, away from the construction noises coming out of Chaz’s nose. I manage to get a few more hours of sleep before I decide to run some errands for myself.
And number one on the agenda? Fixing my favorite weapon: the most beautiful handgun in existence.
Alphaglock Model Twelve.
I’ve etched long ago forgotten techno mantic insignias along the side of the gun that allow it to interface with my magics more easily. So that when I enchant the thing to spew hellfire or gamma rays, I don’t exhaust myself from the strain. My reservoir of magic stays strong for when I need it.
But on its own, it’s just a beautiful shocking handgun you do not want to be on the wrong side of.
Ninety bullets held inside a clip designed to hold six. The clip is folded over fourth-dimensionally and held in place by an electromagnetic charge. The bullets load in the chamber and shoot out through miniaturized, adjustable anti-singularities that line the chamber walls. It fires bullets at snail-speed to stun folks, or at rail gun speed to shock up people’s lives. And you’ll never need to reload in a battle with a ninety-bullet-clip either.
And see, that’s the problem. Last time I did battle, I actually had to reload the Alphaglock after six measly shots. Nearly got myself killed doing it. I can’t let that happen again; I’ve got to be able to rely on the gun when I need to.
Trouble is, I didn’t make the shocking thing. I don’t know the first thing about fixing a handgun. And I’d rather not have to expend loads of magic to keep it from running out of bullets every time I want to fire the bloody thing either.
Unfortunately, there‘s only one person I know of who can fix the fucker. And that’s the weapon smith I bought it from…
Rades Murphy.
His shop in Halo City is a modest affair; boring scrolling signs and square corner brickwork all around the outside.
The inside’s where the good stuff is.
I walk through the glass door and am greeted by piles and piles of sniper rifles, plasma shotguns, glowing neon handguns, shock batons, laser whips…pretty much all the home defense anyone could ever need. And trust me, since Halo City tends to attract all the lawless outcasts, degens and disenfranchised people this country has to offer, the people in this city need all the home defense they can get.
Rades is a quiet, modest prick. He’ll sell you the shirt off his back if he thinks it will help. That’s why he keeps his prices low - the meek of Halo City rarely have two coins to rub together. He could make a killing if he wanted to, the weapons he has.
At least, that’s what he tells everyone…
But I know he’s got some hidden agenda; everyone else in this city does.
And today, I think I’ve finally figured it out…
“Alright, listen you calm, ancient little snot,” I say, strolling up and slapping the broken Alphaglock on the counter in front of him like I mean business, “I need you to fix this thing. And not because you want to get in my pants, but because I asked you to nicely.”
Rades just smiles at me irritatingly and starts talking at me like he’s my dad. “Litany, first of all, I’m old enough to be your father. Second, please don’t slam guns like that in my shop. Last time you did that, it went off and blew a hole straight through the back room.”
I give him a roll of my eyes and am about to lay all kinds of hell upon this smooth, cool motherfucker when he puts up his one finger and I realize he‘s right. Sighing angrily, I back off as he intently stares at the Alphaglock, checking all the parts with that methodical nature of his.
“What seems to be wrong with this one?” He asks.
“Well, it stops firing after six shots. That mod you put on my gun’s supposed to give me a clip of ninety!”
“Which reminds me, what does a young girl like you need with a gun that can hold ninety bullets?”
I hold back the urge to go thermonuclear on him. “Not the issue. What’s wrong with the damn mod?”
“Hmmm…” He mumbles, effortlessly taking apart the chamber and looking down into the clip. “Hmm..”
I watch him for a few seconds, decide I can’t take his ‘Hmm’-ing anymore and decide to browse around the counter displays. I see a nicely-ornamented sub-machine pistol and my hand slides toward it all on its own.
“Look, don‘t touch.” Rades says as the auto-turrets around the shop sense my movements and swivel in my direction.
I purse my lips, cursing colorful while backing off. Figures. Place like Halo, you can’t be too careful about protecting your product.
“I think I know what’s wrong with your gun.”
“You do, huh?” I say. “Spill.”
“Loose spring.” He says matter-of-factly, thumbing the top of the clip chamber. He keeps his eyes toward the gun and I’d almost swear he’s lost in his own little world. “Keeps the electromagnetic charge from forming. Without it, the bullets aren’t pulled from the tesseract and locked into place inside the clip.”
“So, you can fix it, right?”
“Just like new.” He says, flipping the gun around in his hands, utterly fascinated by it. “It’s intricate work, though. I’ll need a couple hours.”
“Whatever it takes,” I say. “I’ll swing by later tonight.”
He gives me a grunt of acknowledgement and carries my baby off through a curtain into the back of the store. As I think about how I can run my fingers along the sub-machine pistol without the automated turret defense system starting its noise, I feel someone watching me through the window. I look up and notice a dark-haired girl dressed in all black leering at me from across the street like I just stepped on her dog.
Nothing seems to be out-of-the-ordinary…just some emo freak with a busted brain. But the vibe I’m getting from her…
…it just screams of bad news.
Just what I shockin’ need…
On instinct, I go for the door as a truck suddenly passes by between us, completely obscuring her from my view. As my hand grabs the door handle, the truck is gone.
Oh, and - big surprise - so’s the girl.
So goddamn cliché, I swear to God…
‘I must be seeing things,’ I tell myself, ‘No one’s that fast…’
Which is good, because if I was imagining the creepy emo girl…
…then, I was definitely imagining the part where she smiled murderously at me before the truck passed in front of her.
Definitely.
***
“Every time I see you / I’m raped again by acid sins / Every time I touch you / I burn until I’m dead!”
I scream the chorus to Blowtorch Visine’s latest single “Your Touch is Like Castration” as the song plays inside my bloodstream. My intravenous CD player is streaming the song through a pirate radio channel it’s picking up in cyberspace and beaming it into my head.
Through the player, I’m also getting visions of their live concert somewhere in the badlands of Arizona. I’m watching the lead singer light himself on fire as part of his pyrotechnics act. Don’t worry - he has a special brand of narcotics that re-grows his skin for him.
I’m screaming the song as loud as I can, pretending I‘m up-stage with Chad Lounger right now. I’m smelling his burnt skin and doing his back-up vocals for him until his larynx grows back.
As I’m doing all this, I’m getting angry looks from the other pedestrians on the street.
Probably because I’m walking down a Halo City street, on the way to Rades’ to pick up my repaired Alphaglock handgun while all this is going on.
But who cares if I‘m getting stared at like I‘ve got nine heads?
I just kicked a trio of demonic brides back to their hell-spawned master and out of this dimension for good. I have a shocking right to be happy with myself.
And I did it all without the goddamned Bone Machine.
I’ve been Bone-Machine-free for the third day in a row now, since I’m finally all healed up. I’d had the Bone Machine bonded to my nervous system by John Flamel - my mentor - as a back-up life support system designed to keep me from bleeding out internally after nearly getting killed when the Mantic Gallery was attacked and again when Paradise City tore its own heart out. The Bone Machine, since it’s a bunch of bodiless and cranky magicians with a schizophrenic bent, naturally drove me up a fucking wall every time I talked to it. Which was every second of every day, since it was attached to my nervous system, remember.
However, ever since I healed up, I’ve no longer needed it constantly attached to my body. I keep it locked away now in its new room in the Dream Zone - The Hallway of Pronounced Echoes. If I do need to take it with me, I usually have it in it’s powered-down form.
But today? Yeah, it’s in the Dream Zone.
You have no mother-shocking idea how freeing it is to be away from those shocking loonies.
So anyway, not long after I left Rades’ weapon store, the telepathic alarm system I’ve technomantically wired into my dreams gave me a four-points-siren telling me that there was some downright-bad-shit going on in the world of the living.
So I ’ported over to the source of the noise, and found myself surrounded by the undead brides of some twelfth-century living gargoyle from Hell named Pry-Tithe the AfterGod. They’d just found a way to resurrect themselves by possessing the bodies of some stupid tween bitches and were using an old-school pentagram to resurrect their dark master.
I’m not an idiot. I didn’t go into battle not knowing what I was in for. I gathered my intel from the alarm-dreams that my techno mantic alarm system was pumping into my head. I knew these demonic brides were half-retarded from all that time they’d spent dead. Their spells weren‘t even casting properly. And besides, there were supposed to be five brides, not three. Without the other two, the pentagram spell was nowhere near complete, and defeating them was a cinch-and-a-half.
But still, regardless of how easy the battle had been, it was me who won it. Not me and the Bone Machine, just good old Litany Kirkpatrick and her techno-mantic know-how.
You have no idea how great that feels.
So I get to my third play through of “Your Touch is Like Castration” when I reach Rade’s shop, and my blood boils almost immediately.
It’s six-thirty and this place is open till eight. And yet, the door’s locked tight and the inside’s darker than a graveyard at night. Are you fucking kidding me?
It’s not like Rades to close the store this early…
That asshole.
I teleport inside to give the prick a piece of my mind. As I appear in the darkened room, I realize the auto-turrets are probably armed and think up a quick shield for the inevitable bullet barrage…
But it doesn’t come.
The place is dead quiet. And as I breathe in, I can almost smell techno-mysticisim in the air.
I send a small beam of glowing math equations in search of a light switch.
The terrible part starts when the lights come on…
Shock me…
Rades…
The whole shop is torn apart. Weapons are scattered everywhere - some in pieces, some whole. The scraps of melted metal that were once automated turrets hang limp in the four corners of the room. The counters look like they’ve exploded from the inside; my leather boots crunch against shattered glass and bent steel rods that are somehow fused into the floor. The walls are littered with bullet holes and uneven tears that look like they were made by super-hot chainsaw blades.
My eyes drift around the room in disbelief. There are broken assault rifles still floating in the air, as well as sniper rifles dripping down from the ceiling in a mess of the surreal. It can only be technomancy, this business. But all the trace spells I’m running come up dry.
Whoever….whatever did this…it’s better at the arts than I am. Far better.
But that’s not even the worst of it.
Rades.
Poor goddamn Rades.
He’s is lying on the counter, his entire torso cut in half vertically, from his shoulder down to his damn groin, entails leaking out of him like noodles leaking out of an over-turned Chinese food box. His clothes are ripped to shit, his skin saturated with nicks and cuts. His face is frozen in a twisted sneer of pain and determination, and a gun lies below his cold, lifeless hand. Whatever got him, he fought with his dying breath.
I look behind him and see a disgusting trail of blood leading from his broken corpse all the way up the wall.
I was wrong. Seeing Rades there, ripped in half was NOT the worst of it.
The worst of it, is seeing a message written in his life’s blood written above the counter.
“MY GOD IS COMING FOR YOU. THERE IS NO ESCAPE. YOU WILL GIVE BIRTH TO THE NEW SAVIOR.”
I puke my guts up all over the shattered store.
What in God’s name could do this?
And why?
***
Teleportation spell lands me back in the Dream Zone as a deep sense of shock takes over my mind.
I’m going to need back-up for this one.
This - I know in my gut - was the work of technomancy.
A kind of technomancy that was immune to the early-warning-system I’ve established in the Dream Zone that warns me when evil shit’s afoot.
A kind of technomancy that my own trace spells can’t even recognize as magic.
And not only that, but this technomancer’s gunning for ME. That message was for me and me alone, there’s no doubt about it.
This is going to be nasty.
Whatever this is, it’s gonna be just-fucking-nasty.
I wake the Bone Machine out of its slumber in the Hallway of Pronounced Echoes. They bitch at me for leaving them turned off.
I tell them to shut the shock up before I kick them in their bony asses. I tell them about Rades and the technomancy that is invisible to my radar. Bonding the Machine to my nervous system again for the time being, we teleport back to the disgusting mess of a scene to look for clues as to what kind of mind-fuck we’re dealing with here.
As we gather the evidence, I realize that the Alphaglock handgun I’d had Rades working on is nowhere to be found. There aren’t even pieces of it anywhere. I tell the Bone Machine this, and it tells me there are more important things to worry about than my damned handgun. But I still can’t shake the feeling in my gut. I mean, why the shock would anyone steal that…?
It takes us an hour and a half. Dr. Maksim Sidorov analyzes the super-string layers inside the blood and tries to find out how the murderer turned gravity off in certain sections of the room. Bartholemew the Elder looks at the guns melted into the ceiling and remembers an old Christian cult spell on how that sort of thing was done. I walk around the room with them, and all I’m able to do to help the situation is continue keeping what’s still left of my dinner down this time.
Together, with their knowledge of science and sorcery, they come up with a couple spells to start making this invisible technomancy visible. They use hexes, probability bends, and some other stuff I really give them credit for coming up with, and even then we’re only barely able to see the techno mantic breadcrumbs in front of us.
But it’s enough, thank God.
We head back to the Dream Zone and cast a hex that can triangulate the murderer’s position. We set it to echo out through my Dream Zone alert system to encase the entire planet. If this murdering psycho’s anywhere on my home turf, his own bread crumbs will lead me back to him.
And I’m gonna take out enough vengeance out on the son of a glitch to make Rades proud.
Rades and I had our fights and our disagreements. But shock me, he didn’t deserve that. Nowhere near that. He was always good to me, no matter how much shit I threw his way.
I’m going to miss that smug schmuck.
My daydreaming’s interrupted when the Bone Machine finally pinpoints the location of the murdering bastard. I take one look at the spot the Machine’s picked out and I recognize it instantly. My breath gets caught in my throat and my stomach caves in.
No.
Nononono.
No shocking way.
No. Shocking. Way.
NO!
SHOCKING!
WAY!!!
The Machine’s pointing me at Chaz’s house.
***
WELL, TO BE CONTINUED. OBVIOUSLY.
***