It wasnt the first time I had been inside my lovely wife. It was the first time with two other people along for the ride.
When the water is swirling around you on your one way trip to visit the Tidy-bowl man, you should at least have a good one liner ready. I had several. My mind was racing. It didnt have a lot else to do. Had there been an Abba song on the stereo, it could have been drag racing. Dame Edna with a bunch of logos slapped on her body, running about an oval track while a crowd waits for a fiery crash.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste; so I use mine. I would like to say that I dont use if for evil, but with lines like that, some pain is inevitable. I let my consciousness retreat. There were four of us in here; Cindy, me, Marcus Mac Hine and Misonon. It took some concentration to keep our thoughts from bleeding together. I concentrated. I love my wife dearly; and while I will gladly share my thoughts with her, my mind is my own. There was some gestalt. It was more on the part of Marcus and Misonon; they had been, at least up to this point, fictional characters. Now they were as real as anything could be, and they were discovering things about themselves that they knew. It wasnt major and earthshaking. It was small scale. Marcus had never known if he had preferred chocolate over vanilla. Now he knew.
There was another problem; but it was not internal. Lots of bodies descending on an unprepared host; most of whom were in a highly agitated state; a state exasperated by super powers, sex changes, and multiple personalities playing dueling banjos inside a single brainpan. Okay some of sex changes didnt have the same level of agitation, being distracted by the opportunity to play with a pair of well shaped breasts whenever they wanted to. Social lubrication and relaxation can be accomplished with alcohol; but given the newly super-powered nature of the group, this just didnt seem like a really good idea. That left food. Dog biscuits and Petzyme too; Bolo being somewhat distressed at the various changes in his little doggy world.
So the four of us already piled into one head and body proceeded to cram into a Pontiac wave, which was much roomier than the head. Instructions to the local mass market were provided by Bob, and relayed to Cindy, who in the head, had the best head for directions. I drove. Cindy was very good about not backseat driving. The implications of back head, back seat driving being too horrific to be considered. I relaxed, sinking back away from the other voices in the shared head and concentrated on the road. So much so, I almost missed the turn into the parking lot. Cindy was good enough to remind me gently. I pulled in and found a pull through parking spot, one that allowed easily access to the exit. Its a quirk I have. I never park for convenience to get in. I always park with convenience in getting out. I dont have religion; but I do have ritual. This is one of them.
This is where things went pear shaped. Not in a good way either. This wasnt a J-Lo big bottomed pear shape that allowed for a rather esthetic shaking in the music video format. This was the other sort of pear shaped, like an atomic bomb that exploded from the top to the bottom. The front doors of the mall exploded in a shower of safety glass. The missiles that smashed the doors were human shaped. Well Mall Security Guard shaped, which should be considered human in every sense of the word. Another shape emerged behind them. Human. Badly dressed human. Really big, badly dressed human. Minsonon rose to the surface and through Marcus, moved us to action. Bodily control was wrenched away as the Warshade instincts clicked into full on combat mode. I watched. I spend a lot of time fighting; I also spend a lot of time watching fights. This was a different perspective; but everything else was painfully familiar; including the large sword that the large, badly dressed man held in one hand.
I spend a lot of time around swords. I teach swordhandling three times a week. I practice. A lot. So I was very interested in what was occurring; especially as it was my mind that was being dragged along for the ride. While Marcus and Minsonon unleashed blasts of energy, I was taking stock in the situation. Our opponent was six and a half feet tall; muscled in the manner of a body builder and wore bright red spandex, a black trenchcoat, and a distressing number of skulls and skull decorations. A slight green glow surrounded him, sparkling intermittently. Scrapper. Broadsword. Regeneration. Young. The last one was obvious. The loot bag that hung from the left hand bore the logo of a popular toy store, and the name of a prominent game system was visible through the thin plastic. Incredible power. Phenomenal abilities. No experience. No control. The conch was smashed and the mall guard equivalents of Piggy were strewn wounded about.
Marcus unleashed a blast of dark energy. It slammed into the sword wielder without significant effect. A second blast, more powerful was shrugged off. This was bad news. Marcus and Minsonon leapt upward and the world changed. Multiple eyes are fun, but they take a little getting used to. The same with the tentacles. It is not every day you go from a land dwelling, ape-like, biped to a floating, energy based space squid. A third blast was treated as contemptuously as the first three. Not good. The cretin then leapt and that large sword passed whistling through a pair of tentacles, disrupting the energy that formed them. It hurt. It hurt a lot. Cindy voiced a scream that only we could hear. I expelled a short burst of mental breath, and a thin keening came from Minsonon. We crashed back to the ground, shifting again from squid to human. The sword came at us again, a whistling, overhead blow that would split us in twain. As Woody Allen said, I would not look good in twain, all my suits are made for a whole person.
I moved on pure reflex and the body followed. The key to defense against an overhead sword strike is more about footwork than bladework. Back leg steps, turned slightly to allow a more graceful pivot. Fore leg moves off the line of attack, pivoting the body with it. Balance stays centered and the feet never cross. Ive done it thousands of times. I did it this time, smoothly taking control.
The world shifted slightly again. The energy that makes up a warshades being is malleable, shaped by experience, will and self knowledge. You might think that you could have basketball sized nads and a pecker you could skip rope with, but that is very different from knowing it or being it. Wilt Chamberlain notwithstanding. Minsonon knew the nova and dwarf forms on his being. Marcus knew the human form. I knew my own form and the bastard sword in my right hand was so familiar that it was, for the purposes of my current existence, part of me. What my lovely wife calls my big fat sarcastic bastard sword. The shortened form being Excalibastard.
The kid with the superhuman body and wickedly sharp sword was strong, much stronger than I am. There is always someone stronger, faster, tougher, better and meaner. He was faster and tougher than I was too. What he wasnt, was a sword fighter. He was a kid playing at being at one. His sword met mine and slid harmlessly to the side. His chin was too high to strike effectively, so I slammed the pommel into his plexus. The muscles held for a microsecond then slackened. You dont jab to the plexus, you drive, ensuring effective transfer of energy. My sword turned 270 degrees around its center of gravity, the upper harmonic, the sweet spot if you will, slamming into my opponents wrist. The skin split and the bones cracked. My sword isnt sharp. Or rather it is no sharper than a sword of its period would have been. I dropped back into a guard.
Drop the sword. I cautioned him. He was an idiot. I knew that. He didnt, but I could not in good conscience club him down like a baby seal. He was still a kid. A stupid kid. A stupid kid who could heal damn near any injury. Which is what happened. The bones snapped back into place, the skin closed up and the blood vanished. Not even a scar to mark the injury.
You fuck! I do. He was right. It was the only thing he was right about at that moment. We circled for a moment. I struck at his neck. He blocked it and moved his sword to block the next strike. It wasnt where he expected it to be. Like Wesley and Inigo, I am not left handed. I am right handed. That being said, I can fight with either hand; and am very adept at neatly switching hands mid attack. The empty right hand drew his eye and sword, while the sword in my left hand struck hard, slamming into his right collar bone. Hard. The bone and the pair of ribs under it snapped. He would heal them. Stupid or not, kid or not, he had to rendered completely unable to fight. I broke his right wrist again and struck to his face. He tried to block with his left arm, which is what I had counted on. The ulna and radius snapped. My sword switched hands again and I grabbed his ruined shoulder, fingers digging into the muscles and broken bones, bearing down hard. I drove my knee into his lateral femoral nerve cluster. The knee to the groin was possible, but I didnt use it. Evolution is a bastard. There is a reason why men are so adept at covering their genitals in the face of an attack. We wince, the body pulling in defensively. Why? Because those who protect their nuts are more likely to keep them, and in turn pass on the evolutionary quirk that causes us to do so in the first place. Non-random survival of random mutations. The lateral femoral does not have the luxury of such defense and it will drop someone to the ground just as fast; faster in most cases. I didnt give him that option. A wrist lock accelerated his descent to the ground, the broken bones snapping through the skin. I dropped. One knee on his face, the other in the broken ribs. I broke another rib on the way down and drove the already broken ones into the lung. I took the sword from his unresisting fingers.
No more. Please. No more. Tears rolled down his strong features and long trails of snot was dripping from his nostrils. He was already healing the damage, but the pain would have been more that he had ever experienced; he wouldnt be fighting back any more, the reality of his situation had caught up with him. I had the conch and he knew it. Alarms and police sirens could be heard. I tossed his sword away and turned back to the mall. The body shifted again, my sword vanishing in a cloud of dark energy. I was in my wife again, but this time it was my wife; not Marcus. Witnesses had seen Marcus, me and Misonon; but not Cindy. I went through the door, she emerged in the mall. We headed towards the grocery store.
When the water is swirling around you on your one way trip to visit the Tidy-bowl man, you should at least have a good one liner ready. I had several. My mind was racing. It didnt have a lot else to do. Had there been an Abba song on the stereo, it could have been drag racing. Dame Edna with a bunch of logos slapped on her body, running about an oval track while a crowd waits for a fiery crash.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste; so I use mine. I would like to say that I dont use if for evil, but with lines like that, some pain is inevitable. I let my consciousness retreat. There were four of us in here; Cindy, me, Marcus Mac Hine and Misonon. It took some concentration to keep our thoughts from bleeding together. I concentrated. I love my wife dearly; and while I will gladly share my thoughts with her, my mind is my own. There was some gestalt. It was more on the part of Marcus and Misonon; they had been, at least up to this point, fictional characters. Now they were as real as anything could be, and they were discovering things about themselves that they knew. It wasnt major and earthshaking. It was small scale. Marcus had never known if he had preferred chocolate over vanilla. Now he knew.
There was another problem; but it was not internal. Lots of bodies descending on an unprepared host; most of whom were in a highly agitated state; a state exasperated by super powers, sex changes, and multiple personalities playing dueling banjos inside a single brainpan. Okay some of sex changes didnt have the same level of agitation, being distracted by the opportunity to play with a pair of well shaped breasts whenever they wanted to. Social lubrication and relaxation can be accomplished with alcohol; but given the newly super-powered nature of the group, this just didnt seem like a really good idea. That left food. Dog biscuits and Petzyme too; Bolo being somewhat distressed at the various changes in his little doggy world.
So the four of us already piled into one head and body proceeded to cram into a Pontiac wave, which was much roomier than the head. Instructions to the local mass market were provided by Bob, and relayed to Cindy, who in the head, had the best head for directions. I drove. Cindy was very good about not backseat driving. The implications of back head, back seat driving being too horrific to be considered. I relaxed, sinking back away from the other voices in the shared head and concentrated on the road. So much so, I almost missed the turn into the parking lot. Cindy was good enough to remind me gently. I pulled in and found a pull through parking spot, one that allowed easily access to the exit. Its a quirk I have. I never park for convenience to get in. I always park with convenience in getting out. I dont have religion; but I do have ritual. This is one of them.
This is where things went pear shaped. Not in a good way either. This wasnt a J-Lo big bottomed pear shape that allowed for a rather esthetic shaking in the music video format. This was the other sort of pear shaped, like an atomic bomb that exploded from the top to the bottom. The front doors of the mall exploded in a shower of safety glass. The missiles that smashed the doors were human shaped. Well Mall Security Guard shaped, which should be considered human in every sense of the word. Another shape emerged behind them. Human. Badly dressed human. Really big, badly dressed human. Minsonon rose to the surface and through Marcus, moved us to action. Bodily control was wrenched away as the Warshade instincts clicked into full on combat mode. I watched. I spend a lot of time fighting; I also spend a lot of time watching fights. This was a different perspective; but everything else was painfully familiar; including the large sword that the large, badly dressed man held in one hand.
I spend a lot of time around swords. I teach swordhandling three times a week. I practice. A lot. So I was very interested in what was occurring; especially as it was my mind that was being dragged along for the ride. While Marcus and Minsonon unleashed blasts of energy, I was taking stock in the situation. Our opponent was six and a half feet tall; muscled in the manner of a body builder and wore bright red spandex, a black trenchcoat, and a distressing number of skulls and skull decorations. A slight green glow surrounded him, sparkling intermittently. Scrapper. Broadsword. Regeneration. Young. The last one was obvious. The loot bag that hung from the left hand bore the logo of a popular toy store, and the name of a prominent game system was visible through the thin plastic. Incredible power. Phenomenal abilities. No experience. No control. The conch was smashed and the mall guard equivalents of Piggy were strewn wounded about.
Marcus unleashed a blast of dark energy. It slammed into the sword wielder without significant effect. A second blast, more powerful was shrugged off. This was bad news. Marcus and Minsonon leapt upward and the world changed. Multiple eyes are fun, but they take a little getting used to. The same with the tentacles. It is not every day you go from a land dwelling, ape-like, biped to a floating, energy based space squid. A third blast was treated as contemptuously as the first three. Not good. The cretin then leapt and that large sword passed whistling through a pair of tentacles, disrupting the energy that formed them. It hurt. It hurt a lot. Cindy voiced a scream that only we could hear. I expelled a short burst of mental breath, and a thin keening came from Minsonon. We crashed back to the ground, shifting again from squid to human. The sword came at us again, a whistling, overhead blow that would split us in twain. As Woody Allen said, I would not look good in twain, all my suits are made for a whole person.
I moved on pure reflex and the body followed. The key to defense against an overhead sword strike is more about footwork than bladework. Back leg steps, turned slightly to allow a more graceful pivot. Fore leg moves off the line of attack, pivoting the body with it. Balance stays centered and the feet never cross. Ive done it thousands of times. I did it this time, smoothly taking control.
The world shifted slightly again. The energy that makes up a warshades being is malleable, shaped by experience, will and self knowledge. You might think that you could have basketball sized nads and a pecker you could skip rope with, but that is very different from knowing it or being it. Wilt Chamberlain notwithstanding. Minsonon knew the nova and dwarf forms on his being. Marcus knew the human form. I knew my own form and the bastard sword in my right hand was so familiar that it was, for the purposes of my current existence, part of me. What my lovely wife calls my big fat sarcastic bastard sword. The shortened form being Excalibastard.
The kid with the superhuman body and wickedly sharp sword was strong, much stronger than I am. There is always someone stronger, faster, tougher, better and meaner. He was faster and tougher than I was too. What he wasnt, was a sword fighter. He was a kid playing at being at one. His sword met mine and slid harmlessly to the side. His chin was too high to strike effectively, so I slammed the pommel into his plexus. The muscles held for a microsecond then slackened. You dont jab to the plexus, you drive, ensuring effective transfer of energy. My sword turned 270 degrees around its center of gravity, the upper harmonic, the sweet spot if you will, slamming into my opponents wrist. The skin split and the bones cracked. My sword isnt sharp. Or rather it is no sharper than a sword of its period would have been. I dropped back into a guard.
Drop the sword. I cautioned him. He was an idiot. I knew that. He didnt, but I could not in good conscience club him down like a baby seal. He was still a kid. A stupid kid. A stupid kid who could heal damn near any injury. Which is what happened. The bones snapped back into place, the skin closed up and the blood vanished. Not even a scar to mark the injury.
You fuck! I do. He was right. It was the only thing he was right about at that moment. We circled for a moment. I struck at his neck. He blocked it and moved his sword to block the next strike. It wasnt where he expected it to be. Like Wesley and Inigo, I am not left handed. I am right handed. That being said, I can fight with either hand; and am very adept at neatly switching hands mid attack. The empty right hand drew his eye and sword, while the sword in my left hand struck hard, slamming into his right collar bone. Hard. The bone and the pair of ribs under it snapped. He would heal them. Stupid or not, kid or not, he had to rendered completely unable to fight. I broke his right wrist again and struck to his face. He tried to block with his left arm, which is what I had counted on. The ulna and radius snapped. My sword switched hands again and I grabbed his ruined shoulder, fingers digging into the muscles and broken bones, bearing down hard. I drove my knee into his lateral femoral nerve cluster. The knee to the groin was possible, but I didnt use it. Evolution is a bastard. There is a reason why men are so adept at covering their genitals in the face of an attack. We wince, the body pulling in defensively. Why? Because those who protect their nuts are more likely to keep them, and in turn pass on the evolutionary quirk that causes us to do so in the first place. Non-random survival of random mutations. The lateral femoral does not have the luxury of such defense and it will drop someone to the ground just as fast; faster in most cases. I didnt give him that option. A wrist lock accelerated his descent to the ground, the broken bones snapping through the skin. I dropped. One knee on his face, the other in the broken ribs. I broke another rib on the way down and drove the already broken ones into the lung. I took the sword from his unresisting fingers.
No more. Please. No more. Tears rolled down his strong features and long trails of snot was dripping from his nostrils. He was already healing the damage, but the pain would have been more that he had ever experienced; he wouldnt be fighting back any more, the reality of his situation had caught up with him. I had the conch and he knew it. Alarms and police sirens could be heard. I tossed his sword away and turned back to the mall. The body shifted again, my sword vanishing in a cloud of dark energy. I was in my wife again, but this time it was my wife; not Marcus. Witnesses had seen Marcus, me and Misonon; but not Cindy. I went through the door, she emerged in the mall. We headed towards the grocery store.