RE: Grand Battle S3G1! (Round Four: City of the Dead)
02-24-2015, 09:29 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-20-2015, 02:12 PM by Elpie.)
Around his friends, at barbecues or whatever, it was always “just a job.” During Friday nights out with the squad (always the designated driver, of course), that was always the line. “The job.” As though they were just shuffling papers around. And sometimes—for weeks at a time, sometimes—that’s how it felt. Just work like any other. No different from his old gig as a cabbie, before he had the siren installed and the cage put up between his front and backs seats.
But there were other times when it wasn’t just a job. When everything snapped into focus and the dream became real. When Officer Machen Modelo wasn’t just police—he was a fucking cop. Today was one of those days.
The suspect was a crafty one; he’d managed to escape the dragnet and get ahold of a vehicle. A motorcycle. The thing was in good condition, too—fast and maneuverable. The perfect ride for a criminal on the run, and the suspect warmed to it quickly. Within a minute, he’d left the better part of the squad in the dust, leaving only two officers able to catch up. That was Modelo and Silvia “Sleepy” Holloway, the headless horsewoman on the South End beat. Holloway was something to behold with that siren sticking out of her neck and her head at her hip opposite her sidearm. There were still good police in this department, yessir.
The suspect ran Modelo and Holloway around the city for the better part of two hours. Played them for fools. But they never lost him, and eventually forced him to hole up.
Modelo turned on his radio. Ksssht. “Suspect has abandoned his vehicle and ran into what looks like some kinda warehouse. Officer Holloway is in pursuit.” (This last with an envious sneer in his voice.) Over.”
Ksssht. “Copy that, Modelo. Think this is his hideout? Over.”
Ksssht. “Nah. He ditched his hog in a hurry. Looked like he had some kinda shakes. Probably just picked a building old enough that he could bash in the locks. Over.”
Ksssht. “Alright, Modelo, what’s your location? Over. Oh, and, uh, what’s this warehouse? Over over.”
Ksssht. “It’s on, uh, sixth between Romero and Hammer. Looks pretty run down. Sign says ‘Eurydice.’ Two over easy.”
Ksssht. “Stop. Spell Yuri Dee Say for me? Over.”
Ksssht. “E as in elegy, U as in a lamb’s mom, R like a pirate, Y like a philosopher, and then dice, like craps. Eurydice. Ogre.”
Radio silence for a minute. Modelo strained his don’t-know-how-they-work senses for any sounds from inside the warehouse. Holloway’s horse, stabled up across the street, whinnied nervously. Suspect considered armed and dangerous. And the second the man ran through a door, Modelo was helpless. He hated this part.
Ksssht. “Alright, I got the manager on the line. Nothing but paper products in there, and there’s a crew inside every day. Nowhere for anyone to hole up, they don’t think. Unless he—”
The warehouse’s front door swung open with a creak. Out walked Holloway, the perp slung over her shoulder, her head hanging from her other hand. She was limping. Hurt. The horse brayed.
“Shit!” Modelo opened his front and rear passenger’s side doors. “Throw him in the back and take shotgun! I can get you to the hospital faster than your horse -- no disrespect.”
Holloway handed her head off to the horse (who held her in its mouth by the hair), and the rest of her stumbled over toward Modelo. “Take my body,” the head wheezed. “I’ll cover your rear.”
Holloway’s body threw the suspect in the back seat, tucked his feet in, and then took shotgun. It was a little unsettling, honestly. He didn’t know how to make conversation. The suspect, for his part, was soundly unconscious; an unassuming guy in some kind of shiny fetish gear, looked like tin foil. It made Modelo sick to think about, honestly, if the rumors were true.
He tried the radio instead. Ksssht. “Suspect in custody. Officer Holloway is wounded. I’m taking her to the ER. Over.”
Holloway’s body gave a thumbs-up, which Modelo took as a gesture of gratitude. And a sign that she could hear without her ears. Modelo was trying very hard to be accommodating to a female officer from a different background, just like the sensitivity counselor had told him
“So, uh. What happened in there? Are you shot?”
Holloway reached into her pocket and pulled out a bloody knife. Not a combat blade, just cutlery. Suspect coulda nicked it from anywhere served food.
“Right. That’s evidence, then. Glove box?”
Holloway deposited the knife. Ksssht. “Modelo, they’re gonna go ahead and take the suspect at the hospital too. Quarantine, they’re calling it. Precautionary, you know. And both you and Holloway are going to have to stay there at least—“ kssssssssht
“Hello, officer Modelo.” This was not a voice the motorgeist recognized. “And… Holloway, is it?”
A shift in the light reflected off of her siren was the only indication that Holloway had craned her neck in the direction of the radio.
Ksssht. “Yes, hello?” asked Modelo. “Who is this? How are you on this frequency? Over.”
Ksssht. “You can call me Draco. Suffice to say that I am a party with interests—righteous interests, mind—that, regrettably, conflict with those of your superiors.”
Modelo tried to exchange a glance with Holloway. This was the sort of gesture that was imprinted in his instinctive memories, somewhere, but that was obviously impossible in both parties’ present conditions. Ksssht. “Mister Draco, I’ve got a wounded cop here and a fugitive from justice who might be a threat to the entire city. Every second you block this channel, you’re interfering with police work. Over.”
Ksssht. ”Under ordinary circumstances, Officer Modelo, I have a great respect for the law. I’ve had a hand in authoring many of the policies that you enforce, and I do not take that lightly. And I would never contact you in this way if I hadn’t first been satisfied that I couldn’t resolve the problem within the bounds of my normal institutional influence. But, in this case, with all this fearmongering in the media, I find myself forced to resort to… let’s say, laws beyond the law.”
Ksssht. “Mr. Draco, I’ve got to say, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Over.”
Ksssht. “There are laws beyond the law, Officer Modelo, and one of those laws is the law of capital. I may not have the authority of the police, but, simply put, I have more money than they do. The sort of money that could go a long way towards that new sound system I know you want.”
Ksssht. “How do you—are you trying to bribe an officer of the... How much money are you…” Holloway had her arms crossed. “…Over.” Kzzt.
Ksssht. “All I require is that you bring your suspect—and your wounded officer, of course—to my on-site medical facilities at the University. Officer Holloway, we’ll need your help to furnish an alibi. You, too, will be compensated graciously, with no chance of reprisals from within the department.”
Holloway uncrossed her arms. The two officers began the sort of nonverbal negotiation—a nervous feeling each other out, like he was about to ask her to prom—that would have been much easier if either of them had faces to use. Modelo slowed down by about ten miles per hour. Holloway made a sort of wavy motion with the flat of her hand. Modelo adjusted his rear-view mirrors. Holloway tapped her foot. Modelo activated his turn signal. Holloway gave a thumbs-up.
Ksssht. “Okay, Mr. Draco. We’re in, but you’d better make good on this. Just let us know the exact address you want us to—“ Fwoom kssssssssssssssht
And then Modelo’s back seat was on fire, the suspect apparently having spontaneously combusted. Modelo screamed and began swerving erratically in vestigial recourse to his “stop, drop and roll” training. Holloway’s body wrenched hi door open and leapt to safety at high speed, clutching at her gut wound.
One thing with the whole haunted car thing is that you can’t really fall unconscious—not at speed, anyway. But you can easily retreat into that hazy state of agonizing shock—that desperate escape from reality that hits any sort of being in the wake of sufficient trauma. This state, when coupled with a V8 engine, feels sort of like PCP, or being fifteen again.
Which is to say that while Modelo didn’t black out at any point—he lived through every painful moment of burning upholstery—he didn’t precisely remember the sequence of events that led to him hitting the wall. It was like a jumble of photos that had been put through a shredder, eaten by a seagull, and shat out onto his windshield. Only more painful. Things only really started coming together when the water came and put his fire out. The water came from… a snake? A nice snake lady who said she was his friend.
His mind wasn’t really working straight until after his friends at the University got his new leather seats installed.
With the built-in cooler.
In this job, you learn to take the good with the bad.
A fun fact about hospitals is that everyone avoids eye contact there. There’s a certain onus, in intensive care facilities, to stay out of people’s way and not make any assumptions. So even though Saint Scofflaw had that rosy red flush to his cheeks that differentiated him from the normal clientele, and even though every professional in the building had been in to have a look at him in the past twenty-four hours, no one noticed him in the halls. He’d asked his new nurse friend for some spare bandages in the hope of wrapping his head up – doing the whole Invisible Man look, if not a passable mummy impression – but wound up using the lot of them on his fingerstump. Flowing blood was a pretty good indicator of life – spurting blood was worse – and he was getting enough sniffs and double-takes from the local vampires as it was.
Acting the model of cooperation was still the best plan, he knew, even if it had cost him a finger already. Nobody else in his merry band of thieves had the good sense to allow themselves to become a medical marvel. God knows what would happen if Tor wound up in here, and someone, for instance, had the audacity to tell him not to swallow the entire scalpel, after he’d gotten hold of a scalpel.
Skeleton nerd: Hmmm, errr, we haven’t, um, fully researched the effects of knifeophagia on people with the, uh, life virus
Phoenix jock: DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO I’M FROM THE SPACE FUTURE AND IN SPACE ‘NAM WE ATE SCALPELS FOR BREAKFAST LUNCH AND DINNAAAAGURGGURGGGUHGL FWOOM
What a tool.
This was all well and good from a certain perspective, but Scofflaw still hadn’t decided whether or not he was planning on killing everybody and winning the battle. The idea certainly had its appeal. There was also the long game—kill the Fool, wreak havoc across the multiverse, all that—but, he had to admit, he hadn’t put himself in a great position to wage that particular war. He was better off just being the good little battler, putting his enemies to the scalpel and heading home with some new ideas for doomsday devices.
That was the rational analysis. But there were other factors getting in the way. Scofflaw had certain… preferences as to how he wanted this thing to go down. If these were only whims, he would have no problem indulging them, but these felt a little more… sentimental. The kind of feeling he always got when he met a woman who he knew would one day be his ex-wife. That let’s-have-a-one-time-only-team-up excitement that he associated mostly with self-sabotage.
He realized that he’d liked the hospital plan not so much because it created a high likelihood of a certain outcome, but because it let him lay in bed, passively nudge certain parties in the direction of other parties, and take credit for whatever came of that. And now he wasn’t even lying in bed. Stupid old fool.
The good news was, he found what he was looking for. Deep down in the bowels, where your normal alive-person-type hospital might only have, say, a boiler room and miscellaneous storage, things got a little freaky. The fluorescent lights petered out and the floors and walls got a lot blacker and brickier and moldier and oldier. The corridors themselves got narrower and their crossings took on a certain… labyrinthine quality. This. Was a dungeon. Not dungeon in the literal sense, as in a prison. A Dungeon, as in, a place of power and mystery. The kind of place the living don’t just walk into without a good reason.
And this was what passed for a medical facility around here. Bah.
It seemed that your modern necropolis didn’t have much of a budget to spare for unspeakable horrors around every corner, as Scofflaw didn’t have much trouble finding the small side chamber where an orderly was standing watch over a patient in critical care. He thought of several ways to get past the bescrubsed orderly, ranging from the expedient to the thorough; he opted for the former. After all, he’d already gone to the trouble of taping two tongue depressors together at a ninety-degree angle.
This he brandished as he approached the orderly. “Whoooooa,” said the zombie, seeing the strange man approach with his instrument. “Hey, man. What are you—”
The really important part of this trick was to scream like an idiot. “FOUL, UNGODLY CREATURE!” Scofflaw shouted. “CHRIST COMPELS YOU! BEGONE!”
The makeshift crucifix began to glow with a beauteous light. Scofflaw redoubled his brandishment. The orderly recoiled and backed off a few steps. “Whoa! Whoa, whoa, shit! Shit, man! What the fuck? What are you—”
“I SAY BEGONE! I CONSECRATE THESE STONES IN PRAISE OF THE ONE TRUE GOD! YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE, UN-THING!”
“Yeah, man, sure. Fuck. Fuck.” The zombie took off in a run, shielding his eyes. “Jerkoff.”
“AND SPEAK NOT OF THIS OR HIS ANGELS WILL HOUND YOU UNTIL THE END OF DAYS!” Scofflaw waited by the doorway until he could no longer hear the zombie’s footsteps. His tongue depressors would not stop glowing. He shook them around and they dimmed momentarily before resuming their distractingly angelic brightness.
He sighed and turned the crucifix upside down. “Hail Satan,” he muttered. The cross briefly burst into flame and let loose some electric guitar licks before crumbling into ash. “There we go.” He stepped into the chamber and beheld the patient, held static inside a pentagram. “Bet you didn’t know I could do that, huh?”
The patient did not respond. It was normal, when trapped inside a pentagram, to be conscious of the world around you, so Scofflaw felt safe in assuming that he was properly monologuing, rather than just soliloquizing. “Well, guess again, nerd. ‘He was a brilliant science student, but he was only interested in forbidden experiments! One night, the evil genius went too far, as he brought forth powers which even he could not control!’ FF #5. Basically a bible for people in my line of work.”
Still no response. “The point is, the job’s all about broadening your horizons. Something you wouldn’t know much about. Now, when it comes to holy magic, it’s all about how much you believe. And, I gotta tell you, I believe in whatever, these days. I’ve seen some shit.”
The dude just kept on floating in the circle like some asshole. “Anyway. So now I’m trying to figure out what to do with you. And we should make it quick, cause I only have two more Turns Undead prepped for today.”
Tentacles hanging there like someone trying to eat spaghetti but fucking it up. “You see, even if I’m going to go all hardass rah-rah-rah win-win-win battle contestant, just letting you die doesn’t do me any good. Won’t advance the round. And word around the block is your boy-toy’s getting a power upgrade. So I’m going to have to deal with that at some point.”
Scofflaw sighed and looked around. The chamber had many of the accouterments of a regular examining room, with some unholy shrine paraphernalia mixed in. He could make do. “Okay, TinTen. But we’re doing this my way.”
He pulled a medical chart off the wall, scribbled some runes and notes on the back of it, and rolled it up into two tubes. It wasn’t a scroll exactly, but it would do. Then he searched through a drawer of medical supplies. There was an old pair of clamps that looked like they had a high enough iron content to function as brute-force antimagic.
At the sink he washed his right hand, blessed the water, and washed it again. This would have the side bonus of maybe going a ways toward disinfecting his finger-stump. “Oh heavenly spirit,” Scofflaw begged. “Let this, the holiest of vessels, my non-jerk-off hand, (except sometimes when I feel like changing up), be the instrument of Thy healing will.” His hand started to get those good tingly feelies he always got when he did this.
Careful not to touch anything with his right hand, the Crafty Cleric of Crime gently placed the iron clamps over the holding circle, which fizzled and shot up sparks. TinTen dropped to the ground and resumed his hemorrhaging and writhing. Scofflaw laid his right hand right onto that mess of tentacles and fluids. Holy energy transferred through him into the patient, which had… a marginal effect. The invocation was only good for Light Wounds, after all. But TinTen’s gurgling solidified into a much more healthy sounding high-pitched scream, with maybe an actual expletive or a ”you…” mixed in there. Tough to tell.
The Meipi made a lunging moment that could have been prelude to a hug, but Scofflaw wasn’t ready to take that risk. He kicked the clamp back out of the salt circle and spoke some unspeakable names, and TinTen stopped moving again.
“Gottem,” grunted Scofflaw. A kickback effect from the cure spell seemed to have mostly healed over his finger-stump, which felt nice, but had probably cost him any hope of reattachment. But, hey, at least it wasn’t his primary jerk-off hand. “You’re welcome, by the way. I might have just saved your life. And now for my next trick.”
Scofflaw unfurled the scroll and began to read from it in a language that not even he fully understood. It took him maybe half a minute to get through the whole thing, but as soon as he did, Tinten blooped out of existence.
Just like that. Bloop. The circle stood empty. It was nice when everything went according to plan.
Scofflaw grabbed a red sharpie and labeled the back end of his scroll SCROLL OF SUMMON MEIPI, then shoved it into his waistband and walked back upstairs.
But there were other times when it wasn’t just a job. When everything snapped into focus and the dream became real. When Officer Machen Modelo wasn’t just police—he was a fucking cop. Today was one of those days.
The suspect was a crafty one; he’d managed to escape the dragnet and get ahold of a vehicle. A motorcycle. The thing was in good condition, too—fast and maneuverable. The perfect ride for a criminal on the run, and the suspect warmed to it quickly. Within a minute, he’d left the better part of the squad in the dust, leaving only two officers able to catch up. That was Modelo and Silvia “Sleepy” Holloway, the headless horsewoman on the South End beat. Holloway was something to behold with that siren sticking out of her neck and her head at her hip opposite her sidearm. There were still good police in this department, yessir.
The suspect ran Modelo and Holloway around the city for the better part of two hours. Played them for fools. But they never lost him, and eventually forced him to hole up.
Modelo turned on his radio. Ksssht. “Suspect has abandoned his vehicle and ran into what looks like some kinda warehouse. Officer Holloway is in pursuit.” (This last with an envious sneer in his voice.) Over.”
Ksssht. “Copy that, Modelo. Think this is his hideout? Over.”
Ksssht. “Nah. He ditched his hog in a hurry. Looked like he had some kinda shakes. Probably just picked a building old enough that he could bash in the locks. Over.”
Ksssht. “Alright, Modelo, what’s your location? Over. Oh, and, uh, what’s this warehouse? Over over.”
Ksssht. “It’s on, uh, sixth between Romero and Hammer. Looks pretty run down. Sign says ‘Eurydice.’ Two over easy.”
Ksssht. “Stop. Spell Yuri Dee Say for me? Over.”
Ksssht. “E as in elegy, U as in a lamb’s mom, R like a pirate, Y like a philosopher, and then dice, like craps. Eurydice. Ogre.”
Radio silence for a minute. Modelo strained his don’t-know-how-they-work senses for any sounds from inside the warehouse. Holloway’s horse, stabled up across the street, whinnied nervously. Suspect considered armed and dangerous. And the second the man ran through a door, Modelo was helpless. He hated this part.
Ksssht. “Alright, I got the manager on the line. Nothing but paper products in there, and there’s a crew inside every day. Nowhere for anyone to hole up, they don’t think. Unless he—”
The warehouse’s front door swung open with a creak. Out walked Holloway, the perp slung over her shoulder, her head hanging from her other hand. She was limping. Hurt. The horse brayed.
“Shit!” Modelo opened his front and rear passenger’s side doors. “Throw him in the back and take shotgun! I can get you to the hospital faster than your horse -- no disrespect.”
Holloway handed her head off to the horse (who held her in its mouth by the hair), and the rest of her stumbled over toward Modelo. “Take my body,” the head wheezed. “I’ll cover your rear.”
Holloway’s body threw the suspect in the back seat, tucked his feet in, and then took shotgun. It was a little unsettling, honestly. He didn’t know how to make conversation. The suspect, for his part, was soundly unconscious; an unassuming guy in some kind of shiny fetish gear, looked like tin foil. It made Modelo sick to think about, honestly, if the rumors were true.
He tried the radio instead. Ksssht. “Suspect in custody. Officer Holloway is wounded. I’m taking her to the ER. Over.”
Holloway’s body gave a thumbs-up, which Modelo took as a gesture of gratitude. And a sign that she could hear without her ears. Modelo was trying very hard to be accommodating to a female officer from a different background, just like the sensitivity counselor had told him
“So, uh. What happened in there? Are you shot?”
Holloway reached into her pocket and pulled out a bloody knife. Not a combat blade, just cutlery. Suspect coulda nicked it from anywhere served food.
“Right. That’s evidence, then. Glove box?”
Holloway deposited the knife. Ksssht. “Modelo, they’re gonna go ahead and take the suspect at the hospital too. Quarantine, they’re calling it. Precautionary, you know. And both you and Holloway are going to have to stay there at least—“ kssssssssht
“Hello, officer Modelo.” This was not a voice the motorgeist recognized. “And… Holloway, is it?”
A shift in the light reflected off of her siren was the only indication that Holloway had craned her neck in the direction of the radio.
Ksssht. “Yes, hello?” asked Modelo. “Who is this? How are you on this frequency? Over.”
Ksssht. “You can call me Draco. Suffice to say that I am a party with interests—righteous interests, mind—that, regrettably, conflict with those of your superiors.”
Modelo tried to exchange a glance with Holloway. This was the sort of gesture that was imprinted in his instinctive memories, somewhere, but that was obviously impossible in both parties’ present conditions. Ksssht. “Mister Draco, I’ve got a wounded cop here and a fugitive from justice who might be a threat to the entire city. Every second you block this channel, you’re interfering with police work. Over.”
Ksssht. ”Under ordinary circumstances, Officer Modelo, I have a great respect for the law. I’ve had a hand in authoring many of the policies that you enforce, and I do not take that lightly. And I would never contact you in this way if I hadn’t first been satisfied that I couldn’t resolve the problem within the bounds of my normal institutional influence. But, in this case, with all this fearmongering in the media, I find myself forced to resort to… let’s say, laws beyond the law.”
Ksssht. “Mr. Draco, I’ve got to say, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Over.”
Ksssht. “There are laws beyond the law, Officer Modelo, and one of those laws is the law of capital. I may not have the authority of the police, but, simply put, I have more money than they do. The sort of money that could go a long way towards that new sound system I know you want.”
Ksssht. “How do you—are you trying to bribe an officer of the... How much money are you…” Holloway had her arms crossed. “…Over.” Kzzt.
Ksssht. “All I require is that you bring your suspect—and your wounded officer, of course—to my on-site medical facilities at the University. Officer Holloway, we’ll need your help to furnish an alibi. You, too, will be compensated graciously, with no chance of reprisals from within the department.”
Holloway uncrossed her arms. The two officers began the sort of nonverbal negotiation—a nervous feeling each other out, like he was about to ask her to prom—that would have been much easier if either of them had faces to use. Modelo slowed down by about ten miles per hour. Holloway made a sort of wavy motion with the flat of her hand. Modelo adjusted his rear-view mirrors. Holloway tapped her foot. Modelo activated his turn signal. Holloway gave a thumbs-up.
Ksssht. “Okay, Mr. Draco. We’re in, but you’d better make good on this. Just let us know the exact address you want us to—“ Fwoom kssssssssssssssht
And then Modelo’s back seat was on fire, the suspect apparently having spontaneously combusted. Modelo screamed and began swerving erratically in vestigial recourse to his “stop, drop and roll” training. Holloway’s body wrenched hi door open and leapt to safety at high speed, clutching at her gut wound.
One thing with the whole haunted car thing is that you can’t really fall unconscious—not at speed, anyway. But you can easily retreat into that hazy state of agonizing shock—that desperate escape from reality that hits any sort of being in the wake of sufficient trauma. This state, when coupled with a V8 engine, feels sort of like PCP, or being fifteen again.
Which is to say that while Modelo didn’t black out at any point—he lived through every painful moment of burning upholstery—he didn’t precisely remember the sequence of events that led to him hitting the wall. It was like a jumble of photos that had been put through a shredder, eaten by a seagull, and shat out onto his windshield. Only more painful. Things only really started coming together when the water came and put his fire out. The water came from… a snake? A nice snake lady who said she was his friend.
His mind wasn’t really working straight until after his friends at the University got his new leather seats installed.
With the built-in cooler.
In this job, you learn to take the good with the bad.
* * * * *
A fun fact about hospitals is that everyone avoids eye contact there. There’s a certain onus, in intensive care facilities, to stay out of people’s way and not make any assumptions. So even though Saint Scofflaw had that rosy red flush to his cheeks that differentiated him from the normal clientele, and even though every professional in the building had been in to have a look at him in the past twenty-four hours, no one noticed him in the halls. He’d asked his new nurse friend for some spare bandages in the hope of wrapping his head up – doing the whole Invisible Man look, if not a passable mummy impression – but wound up using the lot of them on his fingerstump. Flowing blood was a pretty good indicator of life – spurting blood was worse – and he was getting enough sniffs and double-takes from the local vampires as it was.
Acting the model of cooperation was still the best plan, he knew, even if it had cost him a finger already. Nobody else in his merry band of thieves had the good sense to allow themselves to become a medical marvel. God knows what would happen if Tor wound up in here, and someone, for instance, had the audacity to tell him not to swallow the entire scalpel, after he’d gotten hold of a scalpel.
Skeleton nerd: Hmmm, errr, we haven’t, um, fully researched the effects of knifeophagia on people with the, uh, life virus
Phoenix jock: DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO I’M FROM THE SPACE FUTURE AND IN SPACE ‘NAM WE ATE SCALPELS FOR BREAKFAST LUNCH AND DINNAAAAGURGGURGGGUHGL FWOOM
What a tool.
This was all well and good from a certain perspective, but Scofflaw still hadn’t decided whether or not he was planning on killing everybody and winning the battle. The idea certainly had its appeal. There was also the long game—kill the Fool, wreak havoc across the multiverse, all that—but, he had to admit, he hadn’t put himself in a great position to wage that particular war. He was better off just being the good little battler, putting his enemies to the scalpel and heading home with some new ideas for doomsday devices.
That was the rational analysis. But there were other factors getting in the way. Scofflaw had certain… preferences as to how he wanted this thing to go down. If these were only whims, he would have no problem indulging them, but these felt a little more… sentimental. The kind of feeling he always got when he met a woman who he knew would one day be his ex-wife. That let’s-have-a-one-time-only-team-up excitement that he associated mostly with self-sabotage.
He realized that he’d liked the hospital plan not so much because it created a high likelihood of a certain outcome, but because it let him lay in bed, passively nudge certain parties in the direction of other parties, and take credit for whatever came of that. And now he wasn’t even lying in bed. Stupid old fool.
The good news was, he found what he was looking for. Deep down in the bowels, where your normal alive-person-type hospital might only have, say, a boiler room and miscellaneous storage, things got a little freaky. The fluorescent lights petered out and the floors and walls got a lot blacker and brickier and moldier and oldier. The corridors themselves got narrower and their crossings took on a certain… labyrinthine quality. This. Was a dungeon. Not dungeon in the literal sense, as in a prison. A Dungeon, as in, a place of power and mystery. The kind of place the living don’t just walk into without a good reason.
And this was what passed for a medical facility around here. Bah.
It seemed that your modern necropolis didn’t have much of a budget to spare for unspeakable horrors around every corner, as Scofflaw didn’t have much trouble finding the small side chamber where an orderly was standing watch over a patient in critical care. He thought of several ways to get past the bescrubsed orderly, ranging from the expedient to the thorough; he opted for the former. After all, he’d already gone to the trouble of taping two tongue depressors together at a ninety-degree angle.
This he brandished as he approached the orderly. “Whoooooa,” said the zombie, seeing the strange man approach with his instrument. “Hey, man. What are you—”
The really important part of this trick was to scream like an idiot. “FOUL, UNGODLY CREATURE!” Scofflaw shouted. “CHRIST COMPELS YOU! BEGONE!”
The makeshift crucifix began to glow with a beauteous light. Scofflaw redoubled his brandishment. The orderly recoiled and backed off a few steps. “Whoa! Whoa, whoa, shit! Shit, man! What the fuck? What are you—”
“I SAY BEGONE! I CONSECRATE THESE STONES IN PRAISE OF THE ONE TRUE GOD! YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE, UN-THING!”
“Yeah, man, sure. Fuck. Fuck.” The zombie took off in a run, shielding his eyes. “Jerkoff.”
“AND SPEAK NOT OF THIS OR HIS ANGELS WILL HOUND YOU UNTIL THE END OF DAYS!” Scofflaw waited by the doorway until he could no longer hear the zombie’s footsteps. His tongue depressors would not stop glowing. He shook them around and they dimmed momentarily before resuming their distractingly angelic brightness.
He sighed and turned the crucifix upside down. “Hail Satan,” he muttered. The cross briefly burst into flame and let loose some electric guitar licks before crumbling into ash. “There we go.” He stepped into the chamber and beheld the patient, held static inside a pentagram. “Bet you didn’t know I could do that, huh?”
The patient did not respond. It was normal, when trapped inside a pentagram, to be conscious of the world around you, so Scofflaw felt safe in assuming that he was properly monologuing, rather than just soliloquizing. “Well, guess again, nerd. ‘He was a brilliant science student, but he was only interested in forbidden experiments! One night, the evil genius went too far, as he brought forth powers which even he could not control!’ FF #5. Basically a bible for people in my line of work.”
Still no response. “The point is, the job’s all about broadening your horizons. Something you wouldn’t know much about. Now, when it comes to holy magic, it’s all about how much you believe. And, I gotta tell you, I believe in whatever, these days. I’ve seen some shit.”
The dude just kept on floating in the circle like some asshole. “Anyway. So now I’m trying to figure out what to do with you. And we should make it quick, cause I only have two more Turns Undead prepped for today.”
Tentacles hanging there like someone trying to eat spaghetti but fucking it up. “You see, even if I’m going to go all hardass rah-rah-rah win-win-win battle contestant, just letting you die doesn’t do me any good. Won’t advance the round. And word around the block is your boy-toy’s getting a power upgrade. So I’m going to have to deal with that at some point.”
Scofflaw sighed and looked around. The chamber had many of the accouterments of a regular examining room, with some unholy shrine paraphernalia mixed in. He could make do. “Okay, TinTen. But we’re doing this my way.”
He pulled a medical chart off the wall, scribbled some runes and notes on the back of it, and rolled it up into two tubes. It wasn’t a scroll exactly, but it would do. Then he searched through a drawer of medical supplies. There was an old pair of clamps that looked like they had a high enough iron content to function as brute-force antimagic.
At the sink he washed his right hand, blessed the water, and washed it again. This would have the side bonus of maybe going a ways toward disinfecting his finger-stump. “Oh heavenly spirit,” Scofflaw begged. “Let this, the holiest of vessels, my non-jerk-off hand, (except sometimes when I feel like changing up), be the instrument of Thy healing will.” His hand started to get those good tingly feelies he always got when he did this.
Careful not to touch anything with his right hand, the Crafty Cleric of Crime gently placed the iron clamps over the holding circle, which fizzled and shot up sparks. TinTen dropped to the ground and resumed his hemorrhaging and writhing. Scofflaw laid his right hand right onto that mess of tentacles and fluids. Holy energy transferred through him into the patient, which had… a marginal effect. The invocation was only good for Light Wounds, after all. But TinTen’s gurgling solidified into a much more healthy sounding high-pitched scream, with maybe an actual expletive or a ”you…” mixed in there. Tough to tell.
The Meipi made a lunging moment that could have been prelude to a hug, but Scofflaw wasn’t ready to take that risk. He kicked the clamp back out of the salt circle and spoke some unspeakable names, and TinTen stopped moving again.
“Gottem,” grunted Scofflaw. A kickback effect from the cure spell seemed to have mostly healed over his finger-stump, which felt nice, but had probably cost him any hope of reattachment. But, hey, at least it wasn’t his primary jerk-off hand. “You’re welcome, by the way. I might have just saved your life. And now for my next trick.”
Scofflaw unfurled the scroll and began to read from it in a language that not even he fully understood. It took him maybe half a minute to get through the whole thing, but as soon as he did, Tinten blooped out of existence.
Just like that. Bloop. The circle stood empty. It was nice when everything went according to plan.
Scofflaw grabbed a red sharpie and labeled the back end of his scroll SCROLL OF SUMMON MEIPI, then shoved it into his waistband and walked back upstairs.