Set the scene: I’m being targeted by some techno-mantic psycho-mage that can not only shield his magics from me, but who also just killed one of my friends to send me a message.
Me and the Machine finally crack through whatever’s hiding the sneaky little shit from my vision, and we trace him.
The bread crumbs lead back to Chaz’s place. My Chaz.
The only explanation - the only one that fits - is that the Bone Machine’s finally gone senile.
“No, there’s gotta be some mistake! It’s not Chaz, get the shock outta here.”
“All the mystical signs point to Chaz.” The voodoo priestess tries to calm me. Tries.
“Nope. I call bullshit.”
“Litany, honey, could it be possible that Chaz could be…?”
“No, Chaz didn’t murder Rades.” I say, “Chaz wouldn’t do that.”
“Well, shit. How the hell do you know?” Ken Montgomery, the football coach, butts in.
Geometric equations pop and fizzle around my head pointedly at him. “I know Chaz.”
“For how many weeks, would you say?”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” I yell. My face boils nuclear hot; raw and red with my fire. “I know him. I goddamn know him! He. Would never. Do that.”
“Oh, how cute. She’s so naïve.” Megan the Bitch starts, “Hey Kenneth, you could get into her panties whenever you want. Naturally, she’ll believe anything you tell her.”
My rage boils over. Electrified maces start circling my hand in dangerous arcs all on their own. Lighting fiery orange, I curl my hand into a fist and punch Megan the Colossal Whore in her rotten bleached teeth. The whore’s skull bobs back from the hit, and I laugh as some of the orange electric scorches the spot of her skull where her forehead used to be.
“Oh lovely.” The voodoo priestess mutters. “This is turning out very well.”
“Look.” The Bitch says. “Chaz pulled the wool over your eyes. It’s not hard. Not to be rude, dear, but you‘re not the brightest bulb...”
I hit her hard this time, almost knocking her floating skull out of its orbit.
“Keep pushin’, Bitch. Just keep pushin’.”
“Look, this is getting us nowhere.” The football coach bobs lightly between the stare-down I’m having with the Ultrabitch. “If Litany doesn’t have the rocks to go down to Chaz’s and prove to us that we’re wrong, then there‘s no point in us sayin’ otherwise.”
“Oh, is that what you think?” I growl as my body erupts with violent energy. I’m vapor traveling at the speed of thought through tesseracts and super-strings and I almost managed to reappear in Chaz’s bedroom before I realize that goddamned football coach tricked my n00b-ass.
Might as well try to save face.
“Chaz! I’m back. And if that goddamned bong is still here, I swear to Thor…”
A green flash, and my body reacts before my mind knows what in Shock’s name’s going on. I duck as the techno mantic bolt strikes the wall above my head, sending bits of plaster slapping against my head.
Perfectly good rant, ruined by a techno mantic attack. I’m so mad.
But not as mad as when I see the smoking hand that sent the attack my way.
Smart-ass face turned stone-cold-killer-serious and hair that glowed bright excited blue when we met at that Sonic Gunmetal concert.
Now it’s glowing red with anger.
Chaz.
You unbelievable fucking bastard.
***
My face bleeds heat. My hands fill up with deadly techno magic energies…
“CHAZ!”
“Litany? Whattheshock…” His hair changes to a hazy orange and the wretched little shit gets a confused look on his face. The Bone Machine‘s shouting nonsense in their loose orbit around my head, but the blood pounding around my ears drowns out most of it, thank Thor.
“I can’t believe I SLEPT with you, you goddamned…”
“Jesus, get the hell down!!” He runs at me, looking over my shoulder. My instincts kick in, telling me things are ass-backwards as I look behind me and see a circle of tunneling flame circling at the two of us. Just as I think to think up a shield, Chaz leaps on top of me, pushing me down as the fires of Hell rain above us. I grit my teeth and take the searing of my skin from the hellfire above us like a champ.
Chaz grunts and hisses, getting the brunt of the madness. The fire blast never actually hits either of us; it’s just that damned HOT.
Chaz just saved my life.
“Litany, what the hell are you doing here?”
“What are you getting at, saving my life like that?” I push the manipulative bastard off of me and think up a shield to keep Chaz from getting the wrong idea that I might let him near me again. My eyes try to focus on the person who shot the fireball at us through the haze.
“….what?”
“I know what you are, now.” I stand up, locking my eyes to his. “And after I’m done with whoever this is, I’m gonna kill you for what you did to Rades.”
“…for what I did to…babe, have you lost your bloody mind?”
I roll my eyes at the back-stabbing son of a glitch as he suddenly takes a defensive stance behind me, aura of green surrounding his ripped clothes and bruised face. I look back toward my attacker-at-the-moment and see a pale girl - black hair draped around ghost-white-skin - pointing her fingers at me like its going out of style.
You gotta be shittin’ me. This pile of emo attacked us with a fireball that could sear a hole straight through Thor’s head? Really?
My disbelief shrivels up into nothing as she coalesces more fiery energy than I really want to think about through her stark-white fingers and creates a spiral galaxy of flame with the kind of skill that makes a few members of the Bone Machine jealous. She gently vibrates her galaxy around the tops of her fingertips - just for the effect.
Emo-bitch sends the spiraling galaxy of fire at us at a few hundred miles an hour. I dive out of the way, flipping around and countering with a thoughtful red bomb burst carried to her along a nice vector equation the Zen Master taught me.
Her eyes light up with navy blue fire as she spins out of the way gracefully. Technomantic equations orbit her body in serene arcs and I suddenly hear the huffing and puffing of an out-of-breath asshole behind me. I grab him by his shirt and stare deep into his eyes.
“So what’d you do to this bitch to piss her off at you so bad, huh? You kill some of her friends too?” I yell at him as she sends some kamikaze dragons crashing down at us. He rips out of my grip as we both dodge the explosion. He recovers before I do and sends a flash bang of green energy at the glowing emo, blinding her for a moment.
“Litany, normally you being pissed at me’s kinda hot, but right now, just shut the shock up! You’re driving me battier than you are.”
I drag myself up, enraged. I shift my weight to my good knee and glare. “Oh, I’m batty? You just killed a friend of mine.”
“No he didn’t.” The voodoo priestess says.
“Yes he…waitbutwhat…? You just said…”
“Eyes front and center, Lits.” The football coach commands, nodding his skull toward the emo girl. “Doesn’t her energy signature seem familiar?”
I scan the bitch, who’s still reeling from Chaz’s assault, and feel like I‘m scanning a black hole. With the Bone Machine’s help, we hack the haze surrounding her aura and suddenly I feel the same techno mantic charge that we’ve been trying to track the whole time.
And then something just-freaking-FINALLY clicks in my head. This girl; white face buried beneath black lipstick, blue eyeliner and leather digs - she’s the same emo headcase I saw staring at me outside Rade’s gun shop.
Bloody fucking hell.
I shove my middle finger into the nose-hole of his floating skull and pull it toward me, growling mad. “You made me think that Chaz killed him! You shocking sons-of-bitches!”
“Killed who?” Chaz looks at me, confused beyond confused. “What the hell are you talking about? And why are you talking to your weird-ass body alterations like that? Are they alive or something?”
“Yeah, they’re alive. And they’re not body alterations…” I growl as the emo-girl shakes off the blindness and coils up something nasty into her fingertips. “They’re royal pains in my goddamn ass!”
I grab Chaz’s arm and drag him along as we outrun the girl’s nuclear bomb blasts. The floor tiles explode beneath us as I surround us with equations that deflect most of the debris shooting up like shrapnel from the disintegrating floor.
“We need to get out of here, she’s gonna bring the whole damn place down on us!” He shouts at me.
“Gee, you think?” I answer before tossing us out the window.
***
We land hard on the ground, rolling with splintered glass. Grabbing him quickly, I teleport us to the other side of the apartment building, and we sprawl out on the genetically-engineered grass, taking a breath.
Before Chaz’s mouth starts doing something stupid like talking, I say, “Okay, that bought us a few seconds. Now, I need you to tell me every goddamn thing you know about that crazy emo bitch right shocking now!”
“Sif’s Breasts, how in Valhalla did you learn to do that?” Chaz asks. “I didn’t even know you knew how to techno.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.” I smile at the one-up I have on him right now, “Info-dump. Now.”
“You are so fucking hot. We should bang right now.” He smiles like a total ass.
“Ooooo!!!” I clench my fists and get in his face. “Chaz, we’re being chased by a lunatic bitch that sends nukes up our asses for fun, she‘s about a second-and-a-half from finding us and skinning us alive and all you can think about is how you can…”
“I’m a guy. What else do I think about?”
“Chaz, I swear, you are making me sooo mad right now--”
“Shut up for a sec, will you? Can’t hear myself think.” He stands up, dusting himself off and exhaling deeply.
“Shut up? Listen here, you goddamn, rotten, pot-addicted, smart-ass, oversexed little…”
“And besides, what‘s to tell? The crazy skank barges into the apartment, and starts shooting up shit. I mean, I know some techno shit, but I‘m not anywhere near this reject‘s level. I can barely keep her from frying my ass. And then you showed up.”
I slap my face against my palms in frustration. I’m imagining myself kneeing Chaz in the groin over and over, like watching a very funny vid on permanent loop. It almost calms me down.
“So, you don’t know why she’s trying to kill you?”
“Not a clue.”
“Great.” I mutter. “Just great.”
“Just lucky my parents weren’t home when she attacked.” He goes quiet for a moment, “I barely survived myself and I know how to defend myself.”
“Yeah, seriously.”
“Like, we need to hide or something. This bitch is seriously going to roast us both.”
“No point. She’s gonna trace us no matter where we go. This has to stop here.” I say through gritted teeth. “Plus, I got a damn score to settle.”
Suddenly thunder booms overhead.
Chaz and I look up as the skies to see the emo bitch floating there, harsh winds from black clouds whipping against her leather coat. Her long hair lashes across her face like psychotic snakes, but her glowing blue eyes are fixed on us like a hawk fixed on its dinner. Thunder crackles wild along the skies as she screams down at us, energy radiating from her in wide arcs.
We dodge as lava scorches the grass we were standing on, reducing it to a darkened, cracked pothole.
“Stay behind me, while I--” I shout to Chaz as he does the exact opposite, shooting sharp glowing energy at the crazy bitch. She cannonballs right through the mess, sweeping her arms out to shoot projectile corrosive bombs at us. I grab him, cursing the idiot as we zig-zag in-between the acidic bursts.
“Dammit, Chaz! Listen to me when I tell you to do something!” I yell at him.
Chaz grabs me by the shirt before I know what’s what and pulls me out of the way of a pretty nasty lightning strike with swirls of acid cream lined at its tip. I look up to see the emo-bitch smiling down at me. She swirls energy around both of her hands in subtle, beautiful arcs, showing off again.
I keep my eyes on her as Chaz starts whispering into my ear. “Litany, I have a plan. We’ve got to get her closer to the ground, though. It’s the only way it’s going to work.”
“Only way what’s going to work?” I ask, listening to the Machine at the same time. Apparently, her techno magic’s mostly elemental-based rather than the metaphysics that I usually rely on. The Zen Master teaches me an incantation that’ll focus my power and strengthen my attacks.
“Take too long to explain. Just get her closer to me, and I’ll handle it.” He says.
“Yeah, sure. Let me get right on that--”
“Just trust me, Litany.” Not being smart this time; his eyes read dead-serious.
Interesting.
“Alright, fine. Just follow my lead.” I whisper back to him. I light up the Bone Machine with power and turn my full attention back at the girl.
“Is that all you got, you black-makeup-patrol-reject?” I yell to the skies, defiantly flipping her off. She sends another fireball at me that I avoid with ease. Smirking a murderer’s smirk, she rides the currents of the wind straight towards us, bobbing just out of reach.
I attack with a half-serious spell that grazes harmlessly off her aura as she rains down a hailstorm of glowing bombs that freeze whatever they touch. Chaz and I dance in-between them, trying very hard to make it look easy. When the shower’s all done, I grin and bend over. I point my ass to the sky and slap it to mock her. “I’m right here, girly! Come get me!”
Without warning, her eyes go wide and she breaks into psychotic laughter. The winds pick up and the heavens open up on us, drenching us with a torrential downpour.
She sends an electric bolt riding in-between drops of rain, zig-zagging all across the sky in unpredictable but mesmerizing arcs before suddenly slamming into me hard. The shield I think up protects me from the worst of it as I go flying into someone’s Soilent Nova 250. I sigh, switching off the shield. As I lie here inside the dented remains of the hover car’s front hood, I realize that my brilliant plan is not working out too well.
Change of tactics.
Taking advantage of the fact that Chaz is distracting her with his admittedly weaker spells and blasts, I lift myself off the hood of the hovercar, dust myself off, and give the broken vehicle one last look as I make it disappear.
I make it reappear about one hundred feet directly above the girl’s head. Using more precious magic, I telescope my vision to watch the car’s progress as I pool my energies into my right hand, letting the violent revving chainsaws mingle with quantum physics equations. I let my fury build.
The bitch, preoccupied with attacking Chaz, doesn’t notice the car until it’s picked up some serious momentum. She reacts quickly, shielding herself from its massive weight at the very last second.
Go time.
I teleport directly behind the bitch and blast her in the spine with everything I’ve got. She lets out a howl like a Halo City decred getting mauled by a horde of Red Market vultures. Flailing and bleeding from the spine, she falls down to the earth. I teleport down beneath her - next to Chaz - and watch her tumble end-over-end toward us.
As she topples down, her magic almost seems to be melting away from her, drifting up all on its own. Almost like it’s not hers; as if she’s stolen it and it’s returning to its rightful owner.
She suddenly regains consciousness, and seemingly-out-of-nowhere brings a huge ribbon of furious energy slamming against the car that’s still falling with her, slicing it in half. Son of a bitch…so that’s the attack that killed Rades…
I ready an attack I know is far too weak to matter when I hear Chaz mumbling something Latin under his breath and gesturing his arms to the still-falling girl.
“Sanctus of Sochurra audite mihi,” He begins, and I see his eyes roll back into his head, “Paralyze occisor per meus sanus. Sanctus of Sochurra audite meus votum. Terminus suus vomica mores per meus vires!”
I see his entire spine glow beneath his tattered shirt, and watch his hair glow red with anger. His body shimmers and burns as a white light emanates out from his chest and sails directly into the falling girl’s skull. Her eyes and mouth shine with a powerful white light as she screams bloody murder.
“What the shock…?” I gasp, dumbfounded.
Power like I’ve never seen before radiates from Chaz, completely burning away his shirt to reveal a well-toned chest. I look along his back and for the first time, I see some weird machine wired directly into the nerves of his spinal column uncoil itself from hiding. The tech glows and the connections spark with brilliant energy. The machine hums and glows, sending a data packet along the tether of white light toward the screaming girl. The packet nestles itself deep inside her mouth and suddenly I’m hearing Sonic Gunmetal’s debut song resounding out from her flailing form in heavy, visceral chords until she slams hard into the ground in front of us, sending out spider-web cracks along the pavement.
The light disappates and Chaz collapses suddenly, like a rag doll. I rush over to him and I hear him gasping for breath, barely conscious.
“Cripes, are you shocking crazy?” I yell at him, turning him over to lay face-up. “You almost killed yourself with that little stunt!”
He smiles at me, that same smart-ass smile that I love to hate. “If I let you die, who would take care of my morning wood for me?”
“Ooooo!” I slap him in the face and he winces from the pain. “Ooo, sorry, sorry.”
“Ha ha.” He sits up to regain himself as his laugh turns into a choking cough.
“So what was that you just did?” I ask.
“It’s a new spell I’ve been practicing. A magnifier spell. Used it to amplify the sound of the music deck I’ve got hooked up into my spine and sent the noise directly into her inner ear.”
“Pretty shocking sweet.”
“You bet your sweet butt it was.”
I’m not going to let him get to me…I’m not going to let him get to me…
I hear another groan to my left and turn my head to see the emo girl crawling toward us. I think up a shield to protect me and Chaz but she just continues crawling until she’s close enough to be heard.
“Please….” Her chapped, cut-up lips utter out.
“What…?”
“Please help me….” She drags cracked fingernails along shattered pavement. “I don’t know…how I got here…can’t….feel my legs…hurt so bad…I want to die…please…”
“You killed my friend and now you’re asking for my help, are you nuts?”
“What…what are you talking about….please…”
Suddenly, her eyes light up with blue energy and her voice changes pitch all on its own.
“Litany.” She says, smiling a reddened smile. “I wish to deliver you a message.”
Someone…something’s controlling her now. Probably controlled her this entire time. Whatever it is though, knows me by name. A chill runs along my back.
“I am nothing but the Right Arm of the Savior.” She coughs up blood and pants painfully. “I am the Hand my Lord will use to smite that which would stand in the way of his ascension. Speaking on His behalf, I deliver a divine and wholly generous offer: Give everything of yours over to Him and serve Him till your dying breath. In return, He will not smite you and all you hold dear.”
I glare at the possessed girl with angry eyes. “Go tell your God to screw himself.”
The girl’s creepy smile fades. “You were warned.” She says softly before the light in her eyes goes out and she slumps over.
The thunderclouds above us finally settle down, and the rain stops. I look at the innocent girl before us, dead too young, and I get a lump in my throat.
Chaz stands up and brushes himself off. “So, I’m gonna need you to tell me what the shock is going on here.”
And as we cast spells to fix the damage caused by the battle, I tell him.
***
The Bone Machine gives me shit for spilling its secrets to a guy I just met, so I power them down for the time being. They’re just going to have to deal.
I owed him for all those times that he saved my ass back there. That, and the shitstorm the possessed girl heaped upon him and his life is partially my fault. I’m the reason why the thing possessed an innocent girl and tried to gut us both alive.
I told him about my job as protector of the lands from the perversion of techno magic as I spoke incantations that jumbled the minds of the eyewitnesses in the apartment block, as well as the police that showed up a few minutes after the fight ended. According to them, we were just a couple of scared teenagers that got our apartment shattered by a once-in-a-lifetime rainstorm.
I hid the girl from their vision, though. I thought about making them think she was a suicide case, but she deserved better than that.
“So what’re you gonna do now?” Chaz stands above the dead girl with me, watching the police leave the scene in their rain-soaked squad cars.
“Probably just gonna kick a mad God’s ass for shocking with my friends. Nothing big.” I say, stone-faced. Part of me’s so pissed off I can barely think.
He laughs, and then turns serious once he realizes I’m not laughing. An aura of green light surrounds him as he puts his hands on my shoulders.
“You are fucking batshit mad, you know that? You‘re seriously thinking about going up against a goddamned GOD that almost killed us tonight, you realize that right?”
“I’m not stupid, Chaz. I know what I’m doing.”
“No, I don’t think you do. How many people go up against Gods and live?” He says. His words make nuclear fire light up hot inside my heart.
“It’s not a discussion, Chaz. This shocking piece of crap is going down. Hard.”
Before he can protest any further, I teleport away, dead girl in tow.
We land in Halo City Memorial Falls - the de facto final resting place for the citizens of Halo City. I carve out a hole for the girl with a swirl of indeterministic equations and lay her to rest. The tombstone I cobble together from ambient dirt and rocks laying along the ground. An old spell and suddenly they become a gleaming black monument marking the passing of an innocent from this world.
The complete lack of ID on her makes me etch “JANE DOE” on the tombstone I’ve made for her. But that name’s boring, so I carve a line through it and etch “CLEOPATRA McKILLSTOMPER” under it.
Once all’s said and done, I give her a moment of silence and pay my respects.
It’s during this moment that I realize that I’m shaking so hard, I can hear my teeth rattling.
A GOD.
I’m being targeted for death by a GOD.
Shock me.
I keep telling myself that it’s not true. That some ancient demon or some lowly peon in one of the lesser Hell dimensions is lying to me, trying to shake my confidence.
But something in my gut’s telling me that this thing here - whatever it is - is waaaaay out of my league.
Butterflies whipping around my stomach, I carry the deadened Bone Machine on my back and trudge off to another gravestone I created in this place some time ago. I sigh heavy when I reach it. I haven’t been here since I created it a few months back. I’ve been avoiding it like the plague; avoiding the memories that are flooding back in my mind even now.
The gravestone reads “EDDIE HARDWICKE”, the lead singer to Sk3lterFreak, a poser band that perverts everything that metal music stands for by combining it with easy-listening country. He’s not the one that’s lying beneath the headstone, but I really, really wish he was.
The grave itself is actually empty beneath; just a bunch of dirt that I scattered around to make it look like it wasn’t. When my best friend was killed, the murderers took away his body. They left nothing for me to bury. The only thing I could do was make a headstone as a monument of his life. I crafted it to catch and absorb the light in the most artsy, beautiful ways. I made it a spectacle in and of itself; not that the concealment spell I wired into it would let anyone see its true form of course.
Anyone except me.
My eyes light up with a cool red glow to counter the spell I used all those months ago and read the true name I etched into the black stone. I doubt the locals would know who the shock ‘John Flamel’ used to be, but I can’t be too careful these days…
“John…” I say softly, trying as hard as I can not to cry.
“John. It’s me, Johnny. It’s Litbit. I’m…uh…I’m just here to say hi, I guess.”
I fail in trying not to cry.
“Dammit. I’m…I mean, why in Shock’s name did you entrust me with this thing, huh?” I point my finger at the grave, yelling with a rage so big I can’t keep it bottled up anymore. “You left me to rot with a bunch of senile floating skulls wired into my nervous system, and because of that, my friends are being targeted for death - by a GOD, no less! A goddamned God!
“I mean, what the shock am I supposed to do about that?”
I pace back and forth, letting him have it.
“I mean, you never warned me this kind of thing would happen. You never warned me about shit, dammit!”
I breathe out in panicked bursts, falling to my knees and burying my face into the side of my jacket to wipe away the floodgates around my eyes.
“I’m sorry….I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean any of that, John. I just…I’m just so fucking scared to death right now, and I couldn’t take the Bone Machine giving me any more of its schizoid bullshit. I just…I mean, I could use a good friend right now.”
I sit there, kneeling at the gravesite of the previous Metalscream, looking for guidance. I sit there, kneeling, looking at the final resting place of my best friend in the world, gone far too soon. I sit for a good long time in the moonlit darkness, staring at the sheen on the beautiful black tombstone I laid down for him. For a second, I can swear I hear his old bones calling to me to wire him into the Bone Machine with the other mad technomages and my heart skips a beat.
And then reality sets in, and the wishful thinking dies in my chest.
I sigh, and stand back up.
“Well, Static-Heart….I‘ll….I‘ll see you around, I guess.”
I wipe a tear from my face and sigh, turning away toward the entrance.
And then an explosion of techno mantic fury bursts behind me, hitting me square in the back. I hit the dirt like a champ, rolling just the way I’ve been practicing. I shake the shock out of my eyes and focus on my attacker.
And almost have a heart attack.
John’s grave, it’s torn open - like something burst out of it.
And floating above the empty grave is…
…no…
….please Thor, no….
…not him, can’t be can’t be him he’s dead he died I watched him die I watched him get his brains shot out in the desert there‘s no way he can be here there‘s no way…
“Hey Litbit,” a now-resurrected John Flamel smiles psychotically at me, his static heart engine radiating furious techno mantic power. “You won‘t believe what I‘ve been up to.”
***
TO BE CONTINUED, NATURALLY
BUT JUST SO YOU KNOW, NEXT ISSUE LITANY DIES AND JOHN BECOMES THE METALSCREAM AGAIN. SO, WATCH OUT FOR THAT.
***
Me and the Machine finally crack through whatever’s hiding the sneaky little shit from my vision, and we trace him.
The bread crumbs lead back to Chaz’s place. My Chaz.
The only explanation - the only one that fits - is that the Bone Machine’s finally gone senile.
“No, there’s gotta be some mistake! It’s not Chaz, get the shock outta here.”
“All the mystical signs point to Chaz.” The voodoo priestess tries to calm me. Tries.
“Nope. I call bullshit.”
“Litany, honey, could it be possible that Chaz could be…?”
“No, Chaz didn’t murder Rades.” I say, “Chaz wouldn’t do that.”
“Well, shit. How the hell do you know?” Ken Montgomery, the football coach, butts in.
Geometric equations pop and fizzle around my head pointedly at him. “I know Chaz.”
“For how many weeks, would you say?”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” I yell. My face boils nuclear hot; raw and red with my fire. “I know him. I goddamn know him! He. Would never. Do that.”
“Oh, how cute. She’s so naïve.” Megan the Bitch starts, “Hey Kenneth, you could get into her panties whenever you want. Naturally, she’ll believe anything you tell her.”
My rage boils over. Electrified maces start circling my hand in dangerous arcs all on their own. Lighting fiery orange, I curl my hand into a fist and punch Megan the Colossal Whore in her rotten bleached teeth. The whore’s skull bobs back from the hit, and I laugh as some of the orange electric scorches the spot of her skull where her forehead used to be.
“Oh lovely.” The voodoo priestess mutters. “This is turning out very well.”
“Look.” The Bitch says. “Chaz pulled the wool over your eyes. It’s not hard. Not to be rude, dear, but you‘re not the brightest bulb...”
I hit her hard this time, almost knocking her floating skull out of its orbit.
“Keep pushin’, Bitch. Just keep pushin’.”
“Look, this is getting us nowhere.” The football coach bobs lightly between the stare-down I’m having with the Ultrabitch. “If Litany doesn’t have the rocks to go down to Chaz’s and prove to us that we’re wrong, then there‘s no point in us sayin’ otherwise.”
“Oh, is that what you think?” I growl as my body erupts with violent energy. I’m vapor traveling at the speed of thought through tesseracts and super-strings and I almost managed to reappear in Chaz’s bedroom before I realize that goddamned football coach tricked my n00b-ass.
Might as well try to save face.
“Chaz! I’m back. And if that goddamned bong is still here, I swear to Thor…”
A green flash, and my body reacts before my mind knows what in Shock’s name’s going on. I duck as the techno mantic bolt strikes the wall above my head, sending bits of plaster slapping against my head.
Perfectly good rant, ruined by a techno mantic attack. I’m so mad.
But not as mad as when I see the smoking hand that sent the attack my way.
Smart-ass face turned stone-cold-killer-serious and hair that glowed bright excited blue when we met at that Sonic Gunmetal concert.
Now it’s glowing red with anger.
Chaz.
You unbelievable fucking bastard.
***
My face bleeds heat. My hands fill up with deadly techno magic energies…
“CHAZ!”
“Litany? Whattheshock…” His hair changes to a hazy orange and the wretched little shit gets a confused look on his face. The Bone Machine‘s shouting nonsense in their loose orbit around my head, but the blood pounding around my ears drowns out most of it, thank Thor.
“I can’t believe I SLEPT with you, you goddamned…”
“Jesus, get the hell down!!” He runs at me, looking over my shoulder. My instincts kick in, telling me things are ass-backwards as I look behind me and see a circle of tunneling flame circling at the two of us. Just as I think to think up a shield, Chaz leaps on top of me, pushing me down as the fires of Hell rain above us. I grit my teeth and take the searing of my skin from the hellfire above us like a champ.
Chaz grunts and hisses, getting the brunt of the madness. The fire blast never actually hits either of us; it’s just that damned HOT.
Chaz just saved my life.
“Litany, what the hell are you doing here?”
“What are you getting at, saving my life like that?” I push the manipulative bastard off of me and think up a shield to keep Chaz from getting the wrong idea that I might let him near me again. My eyes try to focus on the person who shot the fireball at us through the haze.
“….what?”
“I know what you are, now.” I stand up, locking my eyes to his. “And after I’m done with whoever this is, I’m gonna kill you for what you did to Rades.”
“…for what I did to…babe, have you lost your bloody mind?”
I roll my eyes at the back-stabbing son of a glitch as he suddenly takes a defensive stance behind me, aura of green surrounding his ripped clothes and bruised face. I look back toward my attacker-at-the-moment and see a pale girl - black hair draped around ghost-white-skin - pointing her fingers at me like its going out of style.
You gotta be shittin’ me. This pile of emo attacked us with a fireball that could sear a hole straight through Thor’s head? Really?
My disbelief shrivels up into nothing as she coalesces more fiery energy than I really want to think about through her stark-white fingers and creates a spiral galaxy of flame with the kind of skill that makes a few members of the Bone Machine jealous. She gently vibrates her galaxy around the tops of her fingertips - just for the effect.
Emo-bitch sends the spiraling galaxy of fire at us at a few hundred miles an hour. I dive out of the way, flipping around and countering with a thoughtful red bomb burst carried to her along a nice vector equation the Zen Master taught me.
Her eyes light up with navy blue fire as she spins out of the way gracefully. Technomantic equations orbit her body in serene arcs and I suddenly hear the huffing and puffing of an out-of-breath asshole behind me. I grab him by his shirt and stare deep into his eyes.
“So what’d you do to this bitch to piss her off at you so bad, huh? You kill some of her friends too?” I yell at him as she sends some kamikaze dragons crashing down at us. He rips out of my grip as we both dodge the explosion. He recovers before I do and sends a flash bang of green energy at the glowing emo, blinding her for a moment.
“Litany, normally you being pissed at me’s kinda hot, but right now, just shut the shock up! You’re driving me battier than you are.”
I drag myself up, enraged. I shift my weight to my good knee and glare. “Oh, I’m batty? You just killed a friend of mine.”
“No he didn’t.” The voodoo priestess says.
“Yes he…waitbutwhat…? You just said…”
“Eyes front and center, Lits.” The football coach commands, nodding his skull toward the emo girl. “Doesn’t her energy signature seem familiar?”
I scan the bitch, who’s still reeling from Chaz’s assault, and feel like I‘m scanning a black hole. With the Bone Machine’s help, we hack the haze surrounding her aura and suddenly I feel the same techno mantic charge that we’ve been trying to track the whole time.
And then something just-freaking-FINALLY clicks in my head. This girl; white face buried beneath black lipstick, blue eyeliner and leather digs - she’s the same emo headcase I saw staring at me outside Rade’s gun shop.
Bloody fucking hell.
I shove my middle finger into the nose-hole of his floating skull and pull it toward me, growling mad. “You made me think that Chaz killed him! You shocking sons-of-bitches!”
“Killed who?” Chaz looks at me, confused beyond confused. “What the hell are you talking about? And why are you talking to your weird-ass body alterations like that? Are they alive or something?”
“Yeah, they’re alive. And they’re not body alterations…” I growl as the emo-girl shakes off the blindness and coils up something nasty into her fingertips. “They’re royal pains in my goddamn ass!”
I grab Chaz’s arm and drag him along as we outrun the girl’s nuclear bomb blasts. The floor tiles explode beneath us as I surround us with equations that deflect most of the debris shooting up like shrapnel from the disintegrating floor.
“We need to get out of here, she’s gonna bring the whole damn place down on us!” He shouts at me.
“Gee, you think?” I answer before tossing us out the window.
***
We land hard on the ground, rolling with splintered glass. Grabbing him quickly, I teleport us to the other side of the apartment building, and we sprawl out on the genetically-engineered grass, taking a breath.
Before Chaz’s mouth starts doing something stupid like talking, I say, “Okay, that bought us a few seconds. Now, I need you to tell me every goddamn thing you know about that crazy emo bitch right shocking now!”
“Sif’s Breasts, how in Valhalla did you learn to do that?” Chaz asks. “I didn’t even know you knew how to techno.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.” I smile at the one-up I have on him right now, “Info-dump. Now.”
“You are so fucking hot. We should bang right now.” He smiles like a total ass.
“Ooooo!!!” I clench my fists and get in his face. “Chaz, we’re being chased by a lunatic bitch that sends nukes up our asses for fun, she‘s about a second-and-a-half from finding us and skinning us alive and all you can think about is how you can…”
“I’m a guy. What else do I think about?”
“Chaz, I swear, you are making me sooo mad right now--”
“Shut up for a sec, will you? Can’t hear myself think.” He stands up, dusting himself off and exhaling deeply.
“Shut up? Listen here, you goddamn, rotten, pot-addicted, smart-ass, oversexed little…”
“And besides, what‘s to tell? The crazy skank barges into the apartment, and starts shooting up shit. I mean, I know some techno shit, but I‘m not anywhere near this reject‘s level. I can barely keep her from frying my ass. And then you showed up.”
I slap my face against my palms in frustration. I’m imagining myself kneeing Chaz in the groin over and over, like watching a very funny vid on permanent loop. It almost calms me down.
“So, you don’t know why she’s trying to kill you?”
“Not a clue.”
“Great.” I mutter. “Just great.”
“Just lucky my parents weren’t home when she attacked.” He goes quiet for a moment, “I barely survived myself and I know how to defend myself.”
“Yeah, seriously.”
“Like, we need to hide or something. This bitch is seriously going to roast us both.”
“No point. She’s gonna trace us no matter where we go. This has to stop here.” I say through gritted teeth. “Plus, I got a damn score to settle.”
Suddenly thunder booms overhead.
Chaz and I look up as the skies to see the emo bitch floating there, harsh winds from black clouds whipping against her leather coat. Her long hair lashes across her face like psychotic snakes, but her glowing blue eyes are fixed on us like a hawk fixed on its dinner. Thunder crackles wild along the skies as she screams down at us, energy radiating from her in wide arcs.
We dodge as lava scorches the grass we were standing on, reducing it to a darkened, cracked pothole.
“Stay behind me, while I--” I shout to Chaz as he does the exact opposite, shooting sharp glowing energy at the crazy bitch. She cannonballs right through the mess, sweeping her arms out to shoot projectile corrosive bombs at us. I grab him, cursing the idiot as we zig-zag in-between the acidic bursts.
“Dammit, Chaz! Listen to me when I tell you to do something!” I yell at him.
Chaz grabs me by the shirt before I know what’s what and pulls me out of the way of a pretty nasty lightning strike with swirls of acid cream lined at its tip. I look up to see the emo-bitch smiling down at me. She swirls energy around both of her hands in subtle, beautiful arcs, showing off again.
I keep my eyes on her as Chaz starts whispering into my ear. “Litany, I have a plan. We’ve got to get her closer to the ground, though. It’s the only way it’s going to work.”
“Only way what’s going to work?” I ask, listening to the Machine at the same time. Apparently, her techno magic’s mostly elemental-based rather than the metaphysics that I usually rely on. The Zen Master teaches me an incantation that’ll focus my power and strengthen my attacks.
“Take too long to explain. Just get her closer to me, and I’ll handle it.” He says.
“Yeah, sure. Let me get right on that--”
“Just trust me, Litany.” Not being smart this time; his eyes read dead-serious.
Interesting.
“Alright, fine. Just follow my lead.” I whisper back to him. I light up the Bone Machine with power and turn my full attention back at the girl.
“Is that all you got, you black-makeup-patrol-reject?” I yell to the skies, defiantly flipping her off. She sends another fireball at me that I avoid with ease. Smirking a murderer’s smirk, she rides the currents of the wind straight towards us, bobbing just out of reach.
I attack with a half-serious spell that grazes harmlessly off her aura as she rains down a hailstorm of glowing bombs that freeze whatever they touch. Chaz and I dance in-between them, trying very hard to make it look easy. When the shower’s all done, I grin and bend over. I point my ass to the sky and slap it to mock her. “I’m right here, girly! Come get me!”
Without warning, her eyes go wide and she breaks into psychotic laughter. The winds pick up and the heavens open up on us, drenching us with a torrential downpour.
She sends an electric bolt riding in-between drops of rain, zig-zagging all across the sky in unpredictable but mesmerizing arcs before suddenly slamming into me hard. The shield I think up protects me from the worst of it as I go flying into someone’s Soilent Nova 250. I sigh, switching off the shield. As I lie here inside the dented remains of the hover car’s front hood, I realize that my brilliant plan is not working out too well.
Change of tactics.
Taking advantage of the fact that Chaz is distracting her with his admittedly weaker spells and blasts, I lift myself off the hood of the hovercar, dust myself off, and give the broken vehicle one last look as I make it disappear.
I make it reappear about one hundred feet directly above the girl’s head. Using more precious magic, I telescope my vision to watch the car’s progress as I pool my energies into my right hand, letting the violent revving chainsaws mingle with quantum physics equations. I let my fury build.
The bitch, preoccupied with attacking Chaz, doesn’t notice the car until it’s picked up some serious momentum. She reacts quickly, shielding herself from its massive weight at the very last second.
Go time.
I teleport directly behind the bitch and blast her in the spine with everything I’ve got. She lets out a howl like a Halo City decred getting mauled by a horde of Red Market vultures. Flailing and bleeding from the spine, she falls down to the earth. I teleport down beneath her - next to Chaz - and watch her tumble end-over-end toward us.
As she topples down, her magic almost seems to be melting away from her, drifting up all on its own. Almost like it’s not hers; as if she’s stolen it and it’s returning to its rightful owner.
She suddenly regains consciousness, and seemingly-out-of-nowhere brings a huge ribbon of furious energy slamming against the car that’s still falling with her, slicing it in half. Son of a bitch…so that’s the attack that killed Rades…
I ready an attack I know is far too weak to matter when I hear Chaz mumbling something Latin under his breath and gesturing his arms to the still-falling girl.
“Sanctus of Sochurra audite mihi,” He begins, and I see his eyes roll back into his head, “Paralyze occisor per meus sanus. Sanctus of Sochurra audite meus votum. Terminus suus vomica mores per meus vires!”
I see his entire spine glow beneath his tattered shirt, and watch his hair glow red with anger. His body shimmers and burns as a white light emanates out from his chest and sails directly into the falling girl’s skull. Her eyes and mouth shine with a powerful white light as she screams bloody murder.
“What the shock…?” I gasp, dumbfounded.
Power like I’ve never seen before radiates from Chaz, completely burning away his shirt to reveal a well-toned chest. I look along his back and for the first time, I see some weird machine wired directly into the nerves of his spinal column uncoil itself from hiding. The tech glows and the connections spark with brilliant energy. The machine hums and glows, sending a data packet along the tether of white light toward the screaming girl. The packet nestles itself deep inside her mouth and suddenly I’m hearing Sonic Gunmetal’s debut song resounding out from her flailing form in heavy, visceral chords until she slams hard into the ground in front of us, sending out spider-web cracks along the pavement.
The light disappates and Chaz collapses suddenly, like a rag doll. I rush over to him and I hear him gasping for breath, barely conscious.
“Cripes, are you shocking crazy?” I yell at him, turning him over to lay face-up. “You almost killed yourself with that little stunt!”
He smiles at me, that same smart-ass smile that I love to hate. “If I let you die, who would take care of my morning wood for me?”
“Ooooo!” I slap him in the face and he winces from the pain. “Ooo, sorry, sorry.”
“Ha ha.” He sits up to regain himself as his laugh turns into a choking cough.
“So what was that you just did?” I ask.
“It’s a new spell I’ve been practicing. A magnifier spell. Used it to amplify the sound of the music deck I’ve got hooked up into my spine and sent the noise directly into her inner ear.”
“Pretty shocking sweet.”
“You bet your sweet butt it was.”
I’m not going to let him get to me…I’m not going to let him get to me…
I hear another groan to my left and turn my head to see the emo girl crawling toward us. I think up a shield to protect me and Chaz but she just continues crawling until she’s close enough to be heard.
“Please….” Her chapped, cut-up lips utter out.
“What…?”
“Please help me….” She drags cracked fingernails along shattered pavement. “I don’t know…how I got here…can’t….feel my legs…hurt so bad…I want to die…please…”
“You killed my friend and now you’re asking for my help, are you nuts?”
“What…what are you talking about….please…”
Suddenly, her eyes light up with blue energy and her voice changes pitch all on its own.
“Litany.” She says, smiling a reddened smile. “I wish to deliver you a message.”
Someone…something’s controlling her now. Probably controlled her this entire time. Whatever it is though, knows me by name. A chill runs along my back.
“I am nothing but the Right Arm of the Savior.” She coughs up blood and pants painfully. “I am the Hand my Lord will use to smite that which would stand in the way of his ascension. Speaking on His behalf, I deliver a divine and wholly generous offer: Give everything of yours over to Him and serve Him till your dying breath. In return, He will not smite you and all you hold dear.”
I glare at the possessed girl with angry eyes. “Go tell your God to screw himself.”
The girl’s creepy smile fades. “You were warned.” She says softly before the light in her eyes goes out and she slumps over.
The thunderclouds above us finally settle down, and the rain stops. I look at the innocent girl before us, dead too young, and I get a lump in my throat.
Chaz stands up and brushes himself off. “So, I’m gonna need you to tell me what the shock is going on here.”
And as we cast spells to fix the damage caused by the battle, I tell him.
***
The Bone Machine gives me shit for spilling its secrets to a guy I just met, so I power them down for the time being. They’re just going to have to deal.
I owed him for all those times that he saved my ass back there. That, and the shitstorm the possessed girl heaped upon him and his life is partially my fault. I’m the reason why the thing possessed an innocent girl and tried to gut us both alive.
I told him about my job as protector of the lands from the perversion of techno magic as I spoke incantations that jumbled the minds of the eyewitnesses in the apartment block, as well as the police that showed up a few minutes after the fight ended. According to them, we were just a couple of scared teenagers that got our apartment shattered by a once-in-a-lifetime rainstorm.
I hid the girl from their vision, though. I thought about making them think she was a suicide case, but she deserved better than that.
“So what’re you gonna do now?” Chaz stands above the dead girl with me, watching the police leave the scene in their rain-soaked squad cars.
“Probably just gonna kick a mad God’s ass for shocking with my friends. Nothing big.” I say, stone-faced. Part of me’s so pissed off I can barely think.
He laughs, and then turns serious once he realizes I’m not laughing. An aura of green light surrounds him as he puts his hands on my shoulders.
“You are fucking batshit mad, you know that? You‘re seriously thinking about going up against a goddamned GOD that almost killed us tonight, you realize that right?”
“I’m not stupid, Chaz. I know what I’m doing.”
“No, I don’t think you do. How many people go up against Gods and live?” He says. His words make nuclear fire light up hot inside my heart.
“It’s not a discussion, Chaz. This shocking piece of crap is going down. Hard.”
Before he can protest any further, I teleport away, dead girl in tow.
We land in Halo City Memorial Falls - the de facto final resting place for the citizens of Halo City. I carve out a hole for the girl with a swirl of indeterministic equations and lay her to rest. The tombstone I cobble together from ambient dirt and rocks laying along the ground. An old spell and suddenly they become a gleaming black monument marking the passing of an innocent from this world.
The complete lack of ID on her makes me etch “JANE DOE” on the tombstone I’ve made for her. But that name’s boring, so I carve a line through it and etch “CLEOPATRA McKILLSTOMPER” under it.
Once all’s said and done, I give her a moment of silence and pay my respects.
It’s during this moment that I realize that I’m shaking so hard, I can hear my teeth rattling.
A GOD.
I’m being targeted for death by a GOD.
Shock me.
I keep telling myself that it’s not true. That some ancient demon or some lowly peon in one of the lesser Hell dimensions is lying to me, trying to shake my confidence.
But something in my gut’s telling me that this thing here - whatever it is - is waaaaay out of my league.
Butterflies whipping around my stomach, I carry the deadened Bone Machine on my back and trudge off to another gravestone I created in this place some time ago. I sigh heavy when I reach it. I haven’t been here since I created it a few months back. I’ve been avoiding it like the plague; avoiding the memories that are flooding back in my mind even now.
The gravestone reads “EDDIE HARDWICKE”, the lead singer to Sk3lterFreak, a poser band that perverts everything that metal music stands for by combining it with easy-listening country. He’s not the one that’s lying beneath the headstone, but I really, really wish he was.
The grave itself is actually empty beneath; just a bunch of dirt that I scattered around to make it look like it wasn’t. When my best friend was killed, the murderers took away his body. They left nothing for me to bury. The only thing I could do was make a headstone as a monument of his life. I crafted it to catch and absorb the light in the most artsy, beautiful ways. I made it a spectacle in and of itself; not that the concealment spell I wired into it would let anyone see its true form of course.
Anyone except me.
My eyes light up with a cool red glow to counter the spell I used all those months ago and read the true name I etched into the black stone. I doubt the locals would know who the shock ‘John Flamel’ used to be, but I can’t be too careful these days…
“John…” I say softly, trying as hard as I can not to cry.
“John. It’s me, Johnny. It’s Litbit. I’m…uh…I’m just here to say hi, I guess.”
I fail in trying not to cry.
“Dammit. I’m…I mean, why in Shock’s name did you entrust me with this thing, huh?” I point my finger at the grave, yelling with a rage so big I can’t keep it bottled up anymore. “You left me to rot with a bunch of senile floating skulls wired into my nervous system, and because of that, my friends are being targeted for death - by a GOD, no less! A goddamned God!
“I mean, what the shock am I supposed to do about that?”
I pace back and forth, letting him have it.
“I mean, you never warned me this kind of thing would happen. You never warned me about shit, dammit!”
I breathe out in panicked bursts, falling to my knees and burying my face into the side of my jacket to wipe away the floodgates around my eyes.
“I’m sorry….I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean any of that, John. I just…I’m just so fucking scared to death right now, and I couldn’t take the Bone Machine giving me any more of its schizoid bullshit. I just…I mean, I could use a good friend right now.”
I sit there, kneeling at the gravesite of the previous Metalscream, looking for guidance. I sit there, kneeling, looking at the final resting place of my best friend in the world, gone far too soon. I sit for a good long time in the moonlit darkness, staring at the sheen on the beautiful black tombstone I laid down for him. For a second, I can swear I hear his old bones calling to me to wire him into the Bone Machine with the other mad technomages and my heart skips a beat.
And then reality sets in, and the wishful thinking dies in my chest.
I sigh, and stand back up.
“Well, Static-Heart….I‘ll….I‘ll see you around, I guess.”
I wipe a tear from my face and sigh, turning away toward the entrance.
And then an explosion of techno mantic fury bursts behind me, hitting me square in the back. I hit the dirt like a champ, rolling just the way I’ve been practicing. I shake the shock out of my eyes and focus on my attacker.
And almost have a heart attack.
John’s grave, it’s torn open - like something burst out of it.
And floating above the empty grave is…
…no…
….please Thor, no….
…not him, can’t be can’t be him he’s dead he died I watched him die I watched him get his brains shot out in the desert there‘s no way he can be here there‘s no way…
“Hey Litbit,” a now-resurrected John Flamel smiles psychotically at me, his static heart engine radiating furious techno mantic power. “You won‘t believe what I‘ve been up to.”
***
TO BE CONTINUED, NATURALLY
BUT JUST SO YOU KNOW, NEXT ISSUE LITANY DIES AND JOHN BECOMES THE METALSCREAM AGAIN. SO, WATCH OUT FOR THAT.
***