Order and Chaos

Yeah I think it's Fogel's turn to update now. Chwoka used his turn.

dragonfogel sat down to write the order and chaos update, farting and sucking his thumb, with his butt.

"phbbbbbbbbbt," said dragonfogel's stinky farts. they smelled bad

"i agree farts," said dragonfogel, pulling his greasy unwashed hair onto a fork he was spinning and then eating his hair with his mouth that he was also talking with. "let's write an update." he laughed. it was horrible

as he began to type he mouthed along to the words he was writing, at first loudly, but then his eyes scabbed over and he started growing new perfectly-square teeth that pushed the old teeth back further and further until he accidentally chewed open his own throat and after that it was mostly gurgling and when it reached to his upper intestines which were literally cooking themselves thanks to the combination of crystal meth and tums he had taken hours earlier his mangy dog feasted on the entrails that spilled forth and still he kept writing and writing and writining and writing and writng and writing and wirnthng and writing and writng and writing and a writing and writing and writing and writing and witing and writing and a writing and writing and writing and writing and writing and writing and witrting and writing and when he was done he had written the whole entire update you are reading right now, including this part here

no wait i bet it was that dude greg. fucker's itchin' for a fight, cruisin' for a bruisin'

Greg stood up from the bushes he was hiding in and spat at me venomously: "Felus!" (I had no way of knowing this, but Greg had been the saboteur.)

"Milton, actually," I said.

"You sure act like a Felus," he said, and threw a pebble at me. It missed. "What's the big idea, spoiling my big fight like that? Someone's gotta take out the young Vindictus!"

"Maybe I'm still upset about the apocalypse! Maybe I still have some sympathy for my caretaker's half-sister, huh?"

"The apocalypse was called off weeks ago!" Greg nearly shouted. "De never wanted it and now she's the Goddess of Gods! Think, man! God, I nearly had my fucking hands around that Mary Lee's little neck..." Greg leaned on a tree, downed the rest of his Miller Lite, crushed the can, and threw it in the river. "You know she killed her soulmate?"

"Really?"

"How fucked-up is that? Chick had stab wounds and neck bruises. Next, you saw, Mary's just gonna straight-up kill 3,053 ex-military citizens in cold blood. Now, it's not exactly my jurisdiction, but nobody's doing shit about shit about shit about this princess gone wild all over De's say-so."

"Queen," I said.

"Hasn't been fucking crowned yet," Greg said, then burped. "If you wanna fucking help, use your comfort powers to trap her so I can finish her off. Just got the lightning beat." What a dumb idea. I saw Mary take out that army, but Mary couldn't have offed her soulmate.

"Look, I'm sure we can head this off without more violence," I said, diplomatically. "Let me try my strategy one more time, with a little more finesse now, and I'll whistle when I need you, okay?"

"Roger dodger," said Greg, who disappeared.

Little did he know, cats can't whistle.

2.

The trail had gone cold. Once Mary was determined to shake me, there was just no way my aged self could have caught up with her, and judging my the footprints, she had abandoned the riverbank leading straight to what-I-don't-know-is-called-Meadowlands and run into the forest, where pine needles covered her tracks.

But if she was so determined to go rally the army and march right into death in her father's bootprints, why did her own veer off that-a-way?

I wandered through the forest, taking in the sights and sounds, but trying to get into the mind of the queen, so as better to find her.

"Oh boo hoo," I heard a woman sob in the distance before too long. "Oh boo hoo hoo!" She cried. "I'm sad! I don't know what to do! Boo hoo hoo!" She blubbered.

I worked my way through the forest towards the young woman's voice, until I finally pushed through some bushes and found her. She was sitting on one stump in a large clearing of stumps, wearing clothes (a full outfit, ostentatiously enough,) and tearing her hair out of her head in large clumps.

"What's wrong?" said I.

Mary suddenly snapped her gaze to me, eyes like diamond-cutting diamonds. Then she slouched. "Nothing," she sighed, letting her hair slip through her hands and mix with the needles. (She didn't actually mean the Celest and was just being cagey, but then, I didn't know of the Celest and took it the way it was intended in the first place.) "There's just ſo much to worry about. I'm ſuch an idiot — nobody wants to be queen. Especially Milton."

For once, I let the pedantic quibble that Milton would be king, not queen, slide. "Don't you?" I said.

Mary sighed again. Damned moody teenagers. "Maybe I'd like the common life." Frustratingly noncommittal. "I juſt want my ſweet Adeline back..."

Adeline? Was that a girl's name? Boy, was she ever her father's daughter. Gods, did this scene ever bring me back to my own teen years, mopey mood swings and all. Still, I needn't jump to exciting conclusions... It could just be a childhood sled or somesuch?

"Adeline?" I pried.

Mary nodded. "ſhe was —"

"Stop," I said. "That's all I need to know." I sat on a stump and slung my bag over my shoulder, onto another stump, and began to rummage through it. "Now, here's what we're going to do, okay? First, you tell nobody else what you just told me."

"What?" said Mary. "I didn't tell you —"

"It was written all over your face. You were extraordinarily lucky I caught it first." I couldn't think of a way to adequately explain just how lucky it was that it was me, not without telling her about her father... "Scratch that, the troops over in what-I-have-no-reason-yet-to-know-is-called-Meadowlands have always been okay with this sort of thing. It's safe. They can keep a lid on it."

"Keep a lid on—?!" Mary huffed.

"Second," I pulled out a dagger, "you're going to shave since you hate that royal-white hair so much. We'll mud up your eyebrows." Mary accepted the dagger and set it aside next to her. "Then," I pulled out my fingerpaint and brush, "you're going to stop running around naked everywhere." Mary was a little more confused by this, but obligingly applied the fingerpaint. "Then you're gonna take off all your clothes. I'll disguise myself and —"

"Now YOU ſtop for a ſecond," said Mary. "Doing my nailſ and cutting my hair is one thing, but a queen ſimply doeſ not debaſe herſelf like that!"

"Exactly, didn't you say nobody wants to be a queen? Didn't you say you wanted to try the common way? The Commun way, huh?"

There was that icy glare again. I had said something, somewhen, and we were right back at the old Mary. (Maybe it was the pun.) Shame. I could teach her so much if she'd only let me...

"And pray tell, why ſhould Her Majesty hide her love and grief, besides from irritating know-it-allſ like you? Hm? Who doeſ ſhe have to be afraid of? My authority is abſolute!"

"You really like throwing that around when it's convenient," I said. (Now it was just getting nasty.) "But it's not that simple. There's a social contract, a give-and-take with the populace and easily-scandalized nobles that must be appeased, not just threatened, or else you'll be screaming about your authority into a void. It's called FINESSE. You can't just throw a hammer down on every problem and do whatever the hell you like, especially without the manpower to back it up. Even with! Even Malcolm understood this." With my help, naturally.

Mary chewed on nothing. "Malcolm underſtood... what, exactly?" She raised an eyebrow. Shit.

"Politics," I dodged. She laughed. I cringed.

"You're hiding ſomething of your own," she said. "Give it up. Give it up or I won't finiſh painting my nails." She sat down the brush and paint, smirking.

I rolled my eyes.

"Give it up, or I won't go along with the plan," she smiled.

I calculatedly raised my eyebrows, then glanced over to the side nervously. Then, I spoke. "You died a short while ago, no?" I had to give up SOMETHING now.

She nodded apprehensively and slowly.

"And yet, you're not quite UNdead now, are you? Don't you feel better than ever, physically? Even stronger? Have you gotten tired? How long can you hold your breath? Have you even thought to eat in all the days we've been traveling? Have your wounds not healed more than can be ascribed to youth, besides that one on your neck?"

Did I ever have her attention now! "No, no, you're no zombie, no ghost, no animated corpse... Mary, you're one lucky ghoul."

"Doeſ that mean I have to... what, ſuck blood, return to my reſting place, what?"

"No, there are no drawbacks of any kind," I said, telling the complete truth. "Unless you think not aging or dying ever is a curse, but if you asked me if I wanted to be almost-20 forever — ha!"

Mary leaned back. Then, she shot up like a bolt with that glazed-over-yet-determined look in her eyes. "Put away your thingſ," she declared.

"But the plan!" I said.

"That waſ your plan," she said. "This is THE plan." I really ought to have seen that coming. But my distraction had been pulled off so flawlessly I wasn't even mad sweeping the fingerpainting kit and with it another broken promise into my bag.

---

Milton finally caught up with Commun and Mary when they got to Meadowlands.

"I am Mary Vindictuſ, heir to Malcolm! And I have come to lead you out of the falſe comfort of theſe Meadowlandſ, ſo that we may fight for a better world for uſ all. A world where no one haſ to be aſhamed of who they love, or the color of their hair. A world where there is nothing to fear but the name of Vindictuſ. A world where you people have ſome actual clotheſ to wear, goddammit."

The speech went over with a resounding thud. "What's clothes?" someone hollered, to no response.

"The firſt ſtep of any journey is alwayſ fraught with confuſion and trepidation, and thiſ one, more than many. Ladieſ and gentlemen," Mary drew herself up. "I ſay this in all earneſtneſſ: I want you to hit me aſ hard aſ you can. Even if I look dead, keep going. Hack me into an unrecognizable ſlop, you hear? I want to ſee how you work."

Everyone looked at everyone else. A wave of confusion swept through the ranks. Commun broke through the baffled crowd and hustled up to Mary's ear.

"What are you thinking?" he whisper-shouted.

"ſhortcut," Mary whispered. "I forget where I learned thiſ, but in momentſ of tranſcendent pain one becomes cloſer to the godſ."

Commun gave her the side-eye and stepped back.

"Now get to that church!" Mary loudly whispered. Commun obeyed.

"Well?" Mary shouted. "Are you afraid to fight? I promiſe thiſ iſ no manner of trick! The wool haſ not been pulled over your eyeſ! You have been neither double dealt nor played for a fool! Whether you believe you have been ſwindled or miſled, bamboozled or hoodwinked, the fact remainſ that you haven't been taken in, nor taken for a ride. Nobody haſ deceived you, defrauded you, and deluded you by giving you thiſ idea. You believe that I am being duplicitouſ, but inſtead I am being forthright. It iſ thiſ notion to which I have been ſtating plainly inſtead of the ſubtext that you thought that you were ſcrying. The reaſon for thiſ iſ that you have neither been caught nor thrown by a hoax.

Whether you feel flabbergaſted by how you've been flimflammed or dumbfounded by how you've been duped, rocked by how you've been rooked or confounded by how you've been conned, now that you've been outwitted, you muſt admit that you have been neither ſet up nor had one put over you!"

Eventually, the citizens of Meadowlands could be stirred into action. Don't you forget, though, that there were two more non-citizens there other than the gay ones. Milton was excited by his plan working in spite of himself and sabotage, even if not TOTALLY (as was in plain evidence from the half-finished fingerpainting job,) but something deep inside of him cried to protect Mary, even from her own requests for pain without death. His new job, or his old affection? And of course, there was the lurking Nothing, always scheming, probably wishing to make Mary suffer more than pain could...

How were those two going to influence the ensuing bloodbath?