So after going through the Ordeal of Flames and casting the Ring of Downloads into Mount WOTC Servers I finally got my copy of D&D Next Playtest, though I have been reading a copy I got off rapidshare for the past day so it doesn’t even matter. I read all of it as well as watched an all-day playtest that went on over IRC yesterday, so I feel like I have a bit of a leg to stand on with my commentary below, but we’ll see.

Anyway, here are my early thoughts on D&D Next’s Playtest:

Now back to the stuff I was doing before. I’ll keep you apprised of any developments.

I think It’d be interesting to do some research on the intersection between conservative libertarianism and the “old school gygaxian D&D” crowd. I always get this really strong (and creepy) Ayn Rand vibe from them and their general body of work. It always seems to have the same streaks of this in it, since the ability to completely perceive these traits in a work on cursory inspection, and thus not have each game be “too far” from them and not instantly playable, is a feature they want in their games. Stray too far, and I can’t assume the randian ideal as the default if I travel to another table!

The veneration of the adventurer-as-amoral-looter acquiring, through “rational” (callous) wealth acquisition, a position of leadership reminds me really strongly of the same veneration of the capitalist superman and his own self-interested climb to power. His power derives from his wealth and his wealth circularly attests to his power and fitness to rule. Much of the advocacy from the old school gygax crowd is to promote this game type above any other campaign possibility (“we don’t want heroes, we want adventurers”).

The predominantly wild Sandbox that is so often clamored for is a perfect place for this. It has little legitimate authority nor many social obligations (or even the capacity for them, you can’t think of playing a hero when you’ve barely anyone to aid). It is useful only for the unabated acquisition of wealth, usually in either a thuggish or imperialistic manner, that will propel the character to heights of leadership.

But only if he or she survives the often like-minded predation from every other character (for all characters are cynically Randian).

There’s a lot of support for “gold as XP” which would only make this more obvious when your several thousand bags of gold propel you beyond level 9, and you get to play Castle Builder 2012! Your leadership is approved ipso facto by your wealth.

I know this is somewhat inherent in the medieval fantasy flavor of the games, but then, the fact that other flavors and cultures (and other styles of play) are often (quite vehemently) rejected for this familiar and optimally randian style of game says something as well.

“Could’ve been worse. You could’ve been tazed in the face.”

She could hear the murmur of the crowd rising and falling into a collective drone. The Presidential Plaza was in quite a commotion over the Ladybird’s disturbance. Locked inside a hot, nearly airless portable dressing room, with only the fragrance of various fruity face powders, lipsticks and perfumes for comfort, Ladybird smacked her lips and stuck out her tongue to try to relieve the painful taste of capsaicin foam.

Outside, she heard the more daring journalists arguing over Ladybird access with stoic agents, and the most daring journalists being beaten and having their credentials snatched by the secret service. She overheard various complaints, of 1st amendment rights, of covering up the truth. She snarled, argued over within earshot like she were some kind of public commodity. Her arms were tied behind her back with several plastic cuffs. She could have broken them, but what would have been the point? She would’ve gone from a public enemy to the public enemy.

“I think if you’d have said you weren’t resisting arrest, it would’ve worked out better.” Libel said, trying to work a smile into the video feed on Ladybird’s goggles. “I know when I worked for SENTINEL they trained us that way.”

Ladybird didn’t answer. She didn’t want anyone to notice Libel’s presence in her goggles. They hadn’t snatched them away and she didn’t want them to get the idea to do so. Her broken antennae was no longer quite so sore, returning the full depth of her senses back to her. The window shutters to the dressing room were all pulled down, but she could see a few silhouettes against the door due to a nearby light, and the bickering journalists sounded quite close. Soon another pair of voices and silhouettes originated at the door. One was quite familiar, that of the crying agent. Then another, the politician lady, the heiress on the podium throne.

The door soon opened. The woman and her agent from the stage both entered and sat across from Ladybird on a pair of folding chairs. The woman smiled, and sat straight and proper, legs crossed and hands clapped together. The agent sat on his chair backwards, and leaned forward on it with his fingers steepled and his chin over the backrest. He narrowed his eyes, and twitched his brows, trying to look tough.

Ladybird glared back in contempt, growling.

Beaufort flinched.

“She’s clearly a dangerous psychopath!” He said, “Look at her, look at those killer eyes! She is filled with Abhenian hatred for democracy!”

“I’m not Abhenian.” Ladybird protested.

Cassandra now scowled at him as well. “Have you forgotten your COIN training? Insulting her will only make this less productive.”

“She’s right,” Ladybird said, making a sleepy face, “I am feeling so unproductive now. Nice job messing everything up. And I was just about to cooperate.”

Beaufort stood up suddenly and threw forward his chair, but it bounded back on to its legs. The E.Z. Sit folding chair was a product so well balanced and methodically constructed that Beaufort had to tip it over very methodically to produce an effect. When the chair finally hit the ground it yielded only a dull ringing.

Ladybird smiled, her antennae swaying gently with the sound.

“Listen you!” He said, pointing at Ladybird. “I don’t have time for these games! You will tell me who you’re working for! TELL ME WHERE THE BOMB IS!”

The room was shocked to silence. The silhouettes at the door grew erratic.

“What bomb?” Cassandra shouted, “When was anything said about a bomb?”

Beaufort’s jaw hung, his sharp index finger slowly drooping.

Ladybird burst out laughing, kicking her feet with utter joy.

“Well, there could be a bomb. Who knows what this lunatic is up to?” Beaufort said, shrinking away from Cassandra’s baleful attention.

“Are you trying a good-cop bad-cop thing?” Ladybird asked. “I think you might want to switch to a ‘competent cop’ role at some point.”

Cassandra frowned; Beaufort flushed; Ladybird laughed some more.

* * *

“Listen pal, I have rights! Don’t you know who I am? I’m with Hound News. I elected your goddam president and gave you this job! Do you hear me?”

The Secret Service agents guarding the door to the little makeup room adjusted their thick sunglasses and scowled identically at the reporter. His own scowl back at them was also nearly identical. After all of them had scowled for a few minutes, the reporter withdrew his smartphone and made calls. He had been threatening to make calls, then making those calls, then threatening to make more calls for the past hour.

Threats grew bolder with each round. The first call had delivered 75 pizzas to the home of one Secret Service agent, who almost flinched in response, thoughts of his wife and children buried under unpaid pizza boxes nearly driving him from his duty. Willpower overcame, however. The next call saw to it that several celebrities withdrew their official support from various charities near and dear to the hearts of the Secret Service Agents. The reporter sniggered and wriggled his fingers, feeding off the hidden anguish so palpable within the agent pair’s unchanging military rictus.

Yet, he had not gained access.

Finally, he was dropping the big one. He was going to put the secret service agents on whotube. Their unfashionable, stormtrooperesque jackbooted wardrobe would be mocked by internet denizens across the globe.

They were going viral.

“Sir, we’re gonna have to ask you to put that camera away.” One agent said, his stony voice barely able to contain the anguish so obvious to the reporter’s senses. The Reporter gave a goblin-like cackle and a howl of joy.

“I will, right after you let the public know the truth about Ladybird! My reporting will be fair and balanced to all sides, particularly non-Ladybird sides. Just let me in to talk to her! The public demands to know about this terrorist!”

The Reporter boldly raised his camera.

“Final warning. This is a matter of national security sir.” An agent replied.

The Reporter boldly clicked the power button on his camera.

Twin arcs of lightning as though flashing from the blue struck the Reporter in his shoulder and neck, delivering several megawatts of industrial strength tazing directly into his central nervous system. All organ systems related to cackling like a goblin, recording, and making calls completely shut down, and the reporter crumpled, shaking and twitching and screaming. The Agents kicked him off the steps to the makeup room, reloaded their tazers, and nodded to each other with identical grimaces. Amera was once again safe from embellished reporting.

* * *

“Ma’am,” Beaufort said gravely, “I’m requesting permission to bring this off the record. I believe we need to change tactics, and make this a black op.”

“What do you mean?” Cassandra asked, flustered. “You’ve already done enough you know, you madman! How else do you intend to screw this up?”

Beaufort grinned, and seized his tie with confidence and panache. “Ma’am, I have the Ladybird under control. I just need authorization from the Opal House, i.e. from you, to migrate this operation into advanced interrogation tactics.”

“No!” Cassandra stood up and slapped Beaufort. “Hell no!”

All the while Ladybird cried and hooted and kicked and twisted against her bonds, her lungs struggling to keep air, her neck muscles knotted and seizing up with pain, her jaw in utter agony from the sheer, brutal onslaught of hilarity. She laughed like a lost soul relishing its descent into the big brimstone amusement park far below. Her eyes burned with tears and her voice was ragged and loud like a horn.

Cassandra was near to tears with anger, her face as flushed as Beaufort’s cheek. Outside the reporters bickered, and the Secret Service agents grimaced and the crowd grew restless and confused. The Ladybird jeered and laughed and kicked, and Beaufort’s cheek thumped red with blood as though his very heart were in it. Everything was turning distant, everything was going through a blender. The room spun, and the curtains fluttered, and the Ladybird coughed and cracked, and Beaufort could hardly breathe. That was the sensation. His career had become a funhouse.

He was a clown again. Just like his dad had told him he would be.

“I have this,” his throat seized, and he croaked, “under control.” He raised his index finger, as though to make a point, and then he croaked again.

His knees bent. His feet twisted. Beaufort slowly shrank, assuming a fetal position at Cassandra’s feet. “I’m highly trained.” He croaked again. “I went to paid seminars on this, delivered by key experts in Abhenian terrorism.” He sucked his thumb. Tears flowed with disparaging freedom from his swollen eyes.

Cassandra blinked. “Beaufort, you’re scaring me.”

“I just wanted to be cool.” Beaufort whimpered.

“Beaufort, calm down! We have more pressing matters to–”

“I wanted to prove to my dad that I wasn’t a nancy boy!” Beaufort shouted. “But dad was right, I can’t take the pressure. I’m literally just a chucklefuck. That was his name for me! He dressed me up like a clown for my 10th birthday! A girly clown!”

He reached out pathetically and wrapped his arms around the hems of Cassandra’s voluminous skirt, crying and sniffling and kicking his feet, lamenting the certain end of his agent career. Cassandra started to cry as well, though whether out of empathy, disgust, or having lost her own sanity, was impossible to tell.

She reached out her hand to him, tentatively. “Beaufort–”

“I refuse to use Telepathy!” He shouted back. “I refuse! Do you know what telepathy is? It’s CLOWN TRICKS. It’s something MAGICIANS do at birthday parties!”

Beaufort beat his fists and kicked his legs at the floor in a tantrum.

Cassandra struggled to breathe. She had never witnessed anyone losing their minds and devolving to fetal behavior in her presence, all semblance of reasonable humanity peeling away before her eyes.

She was both embarrassed and horrified.

Behind them, the Ladybird ceased laughing.

“Okay.” Her face was red and her eye sockets looked swollen with tears. “Okay! Okay, you win. I’m hurting everywhere. This is horrible. Just stop. Stop it!” She struggled to speak, her jaws tight knots of pain, “You win! Just stop being so pathetic. I’ll tell you the truth! I come from the future! I come from the 2120s!”

Cassandra’s makeup ran down her face as she wept openly. “I give up.” She murmured. Half her face twitched. “I need some Myemoline, right now.”

* * *

“Overlord, this is Stalker 4-2, clear skies, over–”

A sewer grate flew off the road and a missile followed from it, crashing into Stalker 4-2 and turning the helicopter to slag. The pilot leaped out of the bubbling cockpit and unto the street, breaking his legs while the gunship dropped like an oozing lump unto the hedgerows and set them ablaze. Its molten blades dribbled like liquid flame unto the pavement, trailing to a nearby news van. The burning trickle ignited the truck from underneath and catapulted it in an improbable somersault, spraying DV equipment and festive clip-on ties unto a fleeing, screaming crowd.

The rest of the Eagle Troops’ Stalker unit turned their gunships in unison to the back of the plaza, where they found no visible threat at first.

They couldn’t feel the ground shaking.

Cracks formed slowly in the earth, and the stir caused the crowd to disperse in every direction. People leaped and crawled over another on the suddenly uneven earth. A fire hydrant leaped into the air, and several trees dropped aside as the soil rose under them. The fissure burst in the middle of the plaza, and a whirlwind of blades and steel bits like a giant rock-crunching blender bloomed from the ravaged pavement.

Calls flooded the lines at Cerebral Command and edicts quickly flowed back.

“Stalker this is Overlord, weapons free!”

The gunship pilots gripped their flight sticks and hammered the red triggers. Three six-tubed hardpoint launchers on each of the gunships’ wings blew sparks and smoke as the Eagle Troops’ air-to-ground G.O.D.D.A.M. projectiles erupted from within, descending on the armored hulk six at a time.

Pilots hammered their triggers for over a minute, banking carefully around the orifice as the missiles flew. Flames and smoke from over 72 rockets covered the monster’s escape in every direction – a firestorm of HEAT weaponry in the middle of the plaza. Over the blasts and through the smoke nothing could be heard or seen, but the pilots felt an overwhelming calm from the destruction unleashed.

“Overlord, this is Stalker Actual, reporting solid hits, over.”

Cerebral Command gave an immediate response: “We need visual confirmation, over.”

Stalker Actual flew over the impact site, into the rising columns of smoke.

A sharp crunch sounded and the gunship shot back out in pieces.

From out smoke the worm-like machine rose to meet the gunships, unscathed by the shower of missile. The remainder of its coiled body writhed and wriggled within the cloud, a noise like a chainsaw following each whirl of motion. All along its segmented chrome hull were small round radar buoys with a tiny cannon – as missiles once more descended on the newly-revealed beast, each of these buoys fired a spray of pellets, countering each blast meters away from the hull.

“I don’t want to have to kill you,” said a feminine voice on megaphone, “But if you’re going to keep antagonizing me just for showing up to hear the president talk, well, I’m gonna invoke Stand Your Ground!”

The million-fanged mouth on the machine’s fore-end opened to reveal an autocannon on a turn-wheel, and opened fire. The gunships flew violently aside the shots, trying in desperation to avoid the impossible terror before them, but the head and cannon adjusted for each maneuver with deadly precision. The gunships scrambled like buzzing hornets around the machine, but each rapid-fire string of 5-pound ammunition grew closer and closer to mark. Hardpoints blew off, tail rotors scratched, and finally a cabin blew. The remaining gunships bugged out, diving toward ground with their pilots leaping from the cockpits. Mercifully, the cannon quieted in their wake.

“That’s better,” the megaphone blared, the machine examining the surroundings as citizens poured out unto the adjoining roads, leaving the plaza deserted save for rubble, smoke and flames, and the secret service agents panicking on the vulnerable tranverse, or the obscured backstage. “I will resume where I left off in my broadcast last time. My name is Doctor Anne-Marie Crucierre, three-time PhD. And I have DEMANDS. Your incompetent leadership is to perform the following!”

Thus, Crucierre listed her demands to a confused, frozen public:

•The rendering unto her of all Verdite in the world within 72 hours.

•Monetary restitution for the three unmarked drones lost to the Naval forces of the Chungkuoh military off their Jade Coast, total cost 3,150,600.75 Amero.

•Annulment of all limitations on Stem cell research, advanced robotics, cybernetics, cyborgnetics, organ cloning, cryptozoology and alien sciences.

•A vague and incomprehensible platitude about punishing Ameran stupidity by requiring basic comprehension tests before acquiring any sort of state license, including subjects of biology, geometry, Ameran literature and civics.

•Immediate repeal of all current and future legislation that undermines the use of the Noodle search engine, or unfeasibly regulates internet activity and unfairly enforces corporate copyrights, or restricts internet-based commerce.

•Constitutional amendment promoting Gay Marriage.

“Thank you for your time.” Crucierre said jovially. She cleared her throat and continued in the same cheerful tone. “I will await your official response before I launch an explosive-impact penetrator missile at every notable building in this capital.”

The untold numbers of sharp teeth on the C.S. Asphaltgor whirled rhythmically.

* * *

Backstage, everything was shaking and a raging chaos of explosions and screaming silenced all reason and slew all direction. People gyrated randomly, the secret service tried desperately to assess the situation or impose calm, and the President tried to withhold his excitement that he would see tactical operating first-hand. The little makeup room was forgotten in the commotion, its walls rattling and its stock of makeup and performs falling from shelves and breaking upon the ground. Cassandra took cover under a chair as instructed in elementary school, cringing away from the crashing phials and their splashing contents, while Beaufort cowered in a corner, and Ladybird remained tied to her seat, sprayed with perfumes and powders.

“Let me go!” She shouted in vain over the ensuing madness, “It’s Crucierre, you’re being attacked by Crucierre you nimrods! Your weapons don’t work on her machines!”

Nobody listened. Ladybird felt like tearing herself out, but she just knew she’d be the villain in the end if she just left these idiots here.

The explosions and shaking ceased. Then Crucierre’s address began.

“COME ON!” Ladybird shouted, “Why are you two just hiding there?”

“Don’t judge me!” Beaufort cried back, “I’m emotionally vulnerable!”

Cassandra, her face stained with wet makeup, cried out “I don’t believe you’re from the future, you freak! You’re just manipulating me while I’m vulnerable! I’ll look like an unelectable fool if I fall for your trickery; I can’t trust anything you say!”

Ladybird growled. “I really am from the future! Let me out! I have to kick Cruciere right in that smug face of hers! She’s from the future too!”

“I don’t believe you! If you are from the future,” Cassandra peeked her head out from under the chair, her voluminous skirt (and the tiny, easily ignored demonic wings on her back) making her appear like a bird hidden in its feathers, “Tell me if I get elected! Do I get elected as the first woman President after this nomination?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know?” Ladybird groaned. “Who are you anyway?”

Libel sighed loudly in Ladybird’s goggle camera. “Don’t you know ANYTHING about history Nellidae? Nothing at all? Not the faintest thing?”

Cassandra meanwhile flushed and huffed in consternation at Ladybird’s ignorance.

“Cassandra Ableman!” She replied proudly, “Conservative party nominee for 2016! The oldest daughter of President Ableman! Expert socialite, PhD in World History!”

Ladybird rolled her eyes. “Here’s some history! You lose the primary!”

Cassandra raised the back of her hand to her mouth, and laughed delicately. “I’ve caught you in your lies! The Conservative Party of Amera has no primaries! All of our people vote in lockstep for whoever the former President endorses!”

“YOU BECOME A TERRIBLE PRESIDENT. YOU LEGALIZE POST-BIRTH ABORTION IN OUTDOOR DEATH PANELS!” Ladybird shouted, kicking the ground repeatedly.

“Liar!” Cassandra replied confidently, “My presidency will be revolutionary!”

“There’s some on-the-ground reporting here!” Libel said, switching Ladybird’s goggles from the webcam feed to a whotube video.

The camera shook, the reporter screamed. People ran in every direction as an undulating metal behemoth burst from the ground in the presidential Plaza, trampling over each other, running through hedges and crawling under fences like dogs. The reporter cried at the humanity of it all, and shrieked as the gunships peppered the area with missiles, but had enough conscience to urge others to vote for Dan Raul to end the Fed and drone airstrikes. The camera shook more. The reporter ran out into the city in a throng of panicking, crying, vomiting people and frantically pointed out various bystanders who were doing nothing, crying ‘LOOTERS, THERE IS LOOTING’. Ultimately he succumbed to his baser self, and dove into an electronics shop, licking the largest plasma television to be found in a fit of debased animal lust.

“Wow.” Libel said. “Society is just breaking down all around us.”

“LET ME OUT!” Ladybird cried helplessly.

Cassandra crawled out from under the chair and thrust her gloved finger sharply at Ladybird’s nose. “Give me one good reason!”

Beaufort cried in the background. “SCREW YOU, DAD. I’m not a clown.”

Ladybird sighed. “So I can stomp that guy in the groin.”

Cassandra had to admit, she found this very tempting now.

No, D&D should not be sexist. Nothing should be, preferably.

I said I wouldn’t post RPG stuff here again, but this is sort of important to me, and it’s also an explanation of what I’ve been doing the past two months. Anyway, look forward to more Ladybird and other fictions on this tumblr now that this is done, and maybe enjoy the game! It’s Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 so you can print it out and play it. In the future I hope to perhaps make a version that’s a real product for sale, with artwork and stuff, perhaps based off my World of Adel fantasy setting. For now, enjoy this little gift.

Well, it sure has been a long time coming, hasn’t it? Here it is. Not much to say – it’s the fantasy game I’ve been making. It’s the fantasy game I’d like to play. I was once a huge 4e fan, and now I’m lukewarm on it, but that introduced me to all kinds of other ideas and games, and inspired me to try to make my own happen. This is the culmination of a lot of work and thought for me. It’s 90 pages, it’s got some goofy ideas. It’s mostly a game for me, but I hope you enjoy it too. And as in every other part of the process your feedback is definitely appreciated. You’ll see in this game vestiges of practically every other game I’ve made and declared fallen over the years – Copper Coins!, High Score, and NAA D6. Not Incongruent Future though. I’m sure that’ll disappoint some people. But you can’t have that kind of power in just every game! Anyway, enjoy.

MEDIAFIRE: http://www.mediafire.com/view/?zldy90g8gqehabg

HOSTED: Coming soon.

http://spiritsofeden.com

For every terrible, ignorant and hateful person who owns a gun store, there’s at least a bunch more who are nice about it. Angry as I was before, I called another place, I came back with something, and I’m gonna go take it out to the range at some point. I got excellent service, great suggestions, and tons of help from smiling faces. I’m not gonna let nasty people and awful ideology ruin my days and my hobbies. Thanks to everyone on twitter and tumblr that gave a word of support when I was feeling down. It’s time to get back into the word mines because I have some special stuff I have to do.

It’s pretty amazing how terrible people are.

So I was in the market for a firearm because I’m in Florida and I like guns. I wanted a cheapo 9mm to shoot in the range or something (though honestly, with what’s happened, I don’t even think I want to meet the people who go to gun ranges).

I call up this company, Ocala Wholesale Firearms. The conversation started pleasantly enough, but after I failed to catch something said by the person on the phone, he told me if I couldn’t understand him I was better off not owning a gun, and hung up on me.

When I called again, a different person answered, though not any more mild mannered. I told him that the last employee had been very rude to me and that I had just not heard what he said and asked him. It seemed perfectly reasonable to me.

“He just thought you must’ve been some filthy mexican or some asshole from the North.” He said, quite nonchalantly. At this point I was so stunned I just had no idea what to even say, so I basically just blurted out what a bunch of racist nonsense that was, and how he could possibly let an employee talk to customers that way. His response, poignant as ever was, “okay, I’ll sell you the gun, if you turn it on yourself.”

At this point, I was so floored I took a few minutes to laugh at what an awful, awful person I had just spoken to, and then to start writing on twitter and this post.

(They don’t actually have a website. I guess I should’ve realized that was a bad sign.)

I’m out for the day, because man, this is some ridiculous bullshit.

I’ll be disappearing for a few days to check out a house, and take some stuff from it that was gifted to my family by the previous owner’s son. We don’t really know what we’ll find (he just told us to take what we want), but if there’s nice furniture that could be sold off for any amount of cash that’d be great. I’ll be staying over there from Thursday (tomorrow) through probably Sunday, and it’s unlikely I will have internet access as this was the rural home of a very reclusive old lady with dementia. So, Wyattgone.

I’ve lately lost some of my writing spark but I’m going to try to get some work done on all kinds of blog posts here and at The Spirits of Eden soon. I also am trying my best to finally once and for all finish Expedition Beta and put it out there for people to play and try out. It’s significantly different from its previous iteration.

President Ableman really wanted to be back in the grandness of the Grand Office, playing NeoClassical Musketeers on his Funcube 480. He could practically feel the intense, squad-based 19th century action at his wriggling fingertips, the gripping cinematic storyline of alternate universe fantasy World War 0 Europe. He took his place upon his podium, mind drifting into lands of black powder, as his secret service retinue flanked him, and the plaza filled with gray suits, microphones, and camera equipment struggling to set up around the many raised, sculpted clay garden beds, and statues of his forebears to the presidential office. Everyone watched and waited for what might perhaps be his final public speech before the election that would cast him out.

That last part was no real problem. Just more free time to get his kill:death ratio straightened out. Everything was already taken care of. The President readied to deliver his speech, with the confidence that could only be wielded by a man for whom everything was already set into place, the puzzle completed before anyone had time to unbox it. He would leave that tedium to others. He had diversions to see to.

He seized the microphone, and then he breathed on it. “IS THIS THING ON?” He shouted. “IS THE VOLUME OKAY– oh yes, looks like it. Sorry everyone!”

Indignant squirming swept across the crowd like a wave.

President Ableman’s spade-ended tail curled around his waist. In his mind he had just done a charming funny thing, and everyone enjoyed it. “Alright, real speech starting now. Technical difficulties!” He laughed, and he adjusted his microphone, and his gaudy gold necktie, and searched his mind for the cliches, his best friends.

“My fellow Amerans,” President Ableman began, “Over the past eight years, I have presided over a great continuation of the status quo in Amera. Nothing has had to change, nothing will change. Our people have grown more moral, more intelligent, more industrious, and per capita less interested in the political process, than they ever have been. I say that is an improvement. Not a change though – an improvement. The Status Quo should improve, I say that is true Ameran freedom, but it shouldn’t change. Change is for the communists! Status quo is the Ameran way.”

Journalists began to frantically update their social media, as well as take down notes which would soon be heavily scrutinized, every word and context thoroughly analyzed and digested across many dozen television news channels. Superficial nitpicks in the Presidential speech were quickly plotted, minor breaks from reality noted. Yet, inclusion into the national narrative was all but guaranteed – there was no time to judge beyond face value in this fast-paced media world. That there were problems was an accepted fact, but these problems were put into tiers and certain tiers were unattended to, unnoticed. Editors scrambled for grammatical perfection, journalists kept a mind to content and delivery, web-masters prepared for barrages of traffic and the dross of reader comments. The politics behind the speech, the references in it, the callbacks present, were all solid secondary. In the far tertiary, nobody quite gave any attention to the small black bat’s wings coming out of President Ableman’s back, or his spade-like tail, because those were just things politicians had in Amera. To scrutinize such time-honored Ameran traditions would be pointless. Headlines had to be made and narratives congested, leaving little time for introspection.

“But of course, due to the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers, and other things I would like to be able to overturn but unfortunately cannot, I am limited only to two terms in office. I know, it saddens me too. This change from being President to not being one is pretty scary. I daresay almost communist-like. But there is a silver lining to all of this. I get to watch someone near and dear to me spread wings and take this country to its bold, unchanging future. I am here today to announce the Conservative candidate for the 2016 election! For the first time ever, we will– I mean we might have a woman president in the Grand House! That’s not change folks, that’s improvement, and you’ll agree when you see her!” President Ableman gestured to the right of his podium, and all across the plaza was heard the clicking of cameras, the slamming of fingers on touchscreens, the hurried gnashing of keyboards.

Up a small set of steps she climbed, the photographers scrambling to get the best possible pictures, the writers hurrying to capture every detail about her into as few words as possible for voracious readers. She was a captivating young lady, her confident stride hidden by the length of her glossy black backless dress. Two little black wings spread free from the pale flesh of her exposed shoulder blades, and her black tail ended in a heart-shape – details unnoticed through depictions of her long shoulder-length blonde hair, her bright green eyes and pearlescent smile, all hitherto mostly unknown to the media. As she took the podium, hundreds of op-eds across news rooms throughout the world were scrapped and hastily rewritten. The reporters were at first stunned by the development but quickly salvaged it, rescinding all previous speculation, editing timestamps, deleting comments threads. Never could they have guessed that the daughter, Cassandra Ableman, would be the Conservative candidate for 2016; but to posterity, they would appear as though they definitely had.

* * *

“Overlord this is Eagle Troops Stalker 3-0, skies are clear, over.”

“Copy Stalker 3-0. Stalker 3-2, this is Overlord, I need a sitrep, over.”

“Overlord, Stalker 3-2, nothing but clear skies, over.”

Joint-Ops cerebral command cleared each sector one by one, meticulously confirming satellite and radar reports with gunship and fighter jet patrols over and around the presidential plaza. On the big screen they had the operational map of Newfork, alternating between the view of the whole city and the map of the plaza and its immediate surroundings. This second map played more often on the personal screens of the Overlord officers, the various communications stations arrayed around the cerebral command like onion layers. Overseeing (and literally overlooking) this operation was Overlord Actual, General Marshal Illiad, the picture of military achievement. Broad and tall, strong-jawed and thick-limbed, his uniform bearing so many awards that they practically kept the cloth together. From the second floor board room, through a one-way bulletproof panel, he watched the intellect behind Amera’s military might focus on today’s mission with single-minded efficiency.

He raised his hand to his ear, and spoke, gruff, stoic, “This is Overlord Actual. Carrier 2-6-2, requesting mochachinos deployed to sector bravo romeo, over.”

On the operations room below, the intern code-named Carrier 2-6-2 rose suddenly from his seat and darted past the communications equipment to the cafeteria. General Illiad smiled broadly, awaiting a care package of silky mochachinos. The board room, bravo romeo, had plenty of buttery scones, but the supply lines of coffee and chocolate drinks were overstretched, and in need of careful extension. General Illiad would need the crucial supplies to entertain his soon expected guest.

“General.”

The board room door opened, and a woman in a brown suit took her place at the table, a perpetual grin upon her face. General Illiad turned to meet her, and sat across the table. Her self-assured expression revealed a few wrinkles around her sharp eyes and delicate, broad lips, but like the streaks of gray within her brown hair, these were easy to ignore. Her almost flippant confidence, the way she seemed near to laughter facing the General, the way her pale green eyes locked onto him, never to lose track – these said so much more about her than any physical feature, however pleasing.

“The family’s secure, Rida,” General Illiad said, before the woman could even ask, “The Secret Service, the Bison Troops and the Eagle Troops are handling everything with ease – even with your planted agents trying to undermine us.”

“I didn’t know we were on a first name basis, General,” the woman replied, “I also did not know your G.I.’s rifles could suddenly penetrate exotic metal plates of kinds we’ve never even seen on this Earth before.” Almost dismissively, American Intelligence Command Director Rida Worthy withdrew from her pocket and threw on the table a small plate of yellow metal, with a symbol of a stylized C and an S. “This Dr. Cruciere made a cannon that purportedly caused earthquakes. It was crippled by whoever this Ladybird is, and then she remote-detonated it before the Corps of Engineers could do much more but collect samples of god-knows-what we’re looking at.”

“Nonsense. You don’t just make up new metals that don’t exist.” General Illiad replied. “This Cruciere and her machines go down to JDAMs like anything else.”

“Aside from Ladybird, Amera’s record against Cruciere stands at a big, fat, zero.” Director Rida said. “And despite all the evidence I’ve carefully collected to the contrary, you still want to believe Cruciere is just a well-funded terrorist.”

“You seem to be laying all the blame on me, Rida. Your spooks have failed miserably to contact the Ladybird, and instead the President’s been a laughingstock of pundit shows for all the anti-Ladybird ordinances the city’s been pushing. I daresay if she was going to work with us before, she probably ain’t too happy about it now. As for Cruciere, she is just a well funded terrorist. You seem to think she’s magic.”

“More like Science, actually.” Director Rida stood from her table, still smiling, “But the way she does it they’re almost indistinguishable.”

The door swung open, and Carrier 2-6-2 arrived with a large tray.

“Mochachinos ready for deployment to conference zone Bravo Romeo, sir!” He called out, a broad, cheek-twisting smirk on his face.

Director Worthy blinked, and General Illiad felt unbridled satisfaction.

* * *

Eagle Troops Pilot Stalker 3-2 overflew the presidential plaza, making sure to move quickly to minimize the effects of his gunship’s gut-wrenching rotor noises on the various newscasts, podcasts and blogcasts taking place below. The gunship mounted a small camera on its underside, scanning the crowd with face-recognition software and cross-referencing with a list of known terrorists, picking up several dozen unique people with each quick fly-by. High on the list today were Dr. Anne Marie Cruciere and the person known only as “Ladybird.”

“HEY YOU!”

Stalker 3-2 raised his eyes from his instruments and found a slim, light brown-skinned young lady in a strange suit, with long dark hair and brown antennae, floating in mid-air outside his cockpit. As dictated by protocol, he brought up the terrorist list on his touch-tablet, and cycled through various grainy photographs. He made sure he had a clear identification before asking, “Ma’am, identify yourself.”

Ladybird drew back and kicked the gunship below its nose, severing a tiny computer from its cone. The stricken cockpit turned skyward and aside, the machine bobbing violently with the force of the blow. The pilot seized the stick and tugged hard against the sweeping motions of the craft, stabilizing the flight.

“I demand to speak with your commanding officer!” Ladybird shouted, pointing indignantly at the pilot, “You people have been stomping on my constitutional rights for too long! I have a right to not be followed by your stupid helicopters!”

“Ma’am, I haven’t been following you! None of us have!”

“Yes you have! It was even you, specifically! I hate you!”

Ladybird couldn’t tell two gunships apart, but she was far too stubborn to admit this. Given that she scratched off the SENTINEL symbols on the gunship that specifically annoyed her, she had simply expanded her retribution to all gunship pilots everywhere. They were probably all deserving of her ire anyway. So diplomacy was out. She kicked the gunship again and watched furiously as it bobbed around some more.

The rest of the Eagle Troops took notice.

The plaza filled with the only tumult worse than a single noisy gunship – several noisy gunships all circling around the Ladybird, rotors rattling, weapons locked, surly poorly-socialized pilots waiting for the command to free their weapons. Ladybird glanced over her shoulder, and around her hip, and overhead. There were a dozen helicopters swarming around her in a metal dance. She felt like a hornet being smothered by bees, the pandemonium of rotors pervasive and drowning out all feeling.

“Shut up!” Ladybird pleaded, holding her head. “Shut up!”

She closed her eyes, shrieked and dove, escaping the blockade of gunships and crashing head-first unto the stage, mere feet away from Cassandra Ableman as she gave her speech. The crowd gave a concerted gasp in response. The press had, in a blindness unique only to them, ignored the madness overhead, until the Ladybird had landed. She was now in public space, and brought into public awareness.

Cameras flashed, pencils scratched, touch keyboards clicked. A photographer from the Newfork Times took a particularly prized snapshot of Cassandra Ableman, staring at Ladybird, completely bewildered mid-speech. Her hands gripped the sides of the podium, and her delicate rid lips paused open, words apparently caught at the tip of her tongue. Ladybird nursed her aching head, one of her antennae snapped in two from the crash, and leaking a viscous yellow hemolymph. Her eyesight and sense of smell were suddenly clouded by the dull pain of her antennae.

Ladybird shook her head. She then saw the crowd.

She glanced at Cassandra Ableman, who flinched in response. Her little black wings twitched nervously, and her tail stood on end.

The plaza was silent. Ladybird stood slowly on stage.

“Alright! I’ve got stuff to say! Stuff you had better pay close attention to!” Ladybird shouted, having to do so to cover the plaza without a microphone.

She pointed at the crowd, half of whom ducked as though sighted for a barrage.

Just off-stage, multiple secret service agents held position in front of President Ableman as he cowered behind a large stereo amp. They kept their service weapons low but ready, treating the stage as a hostage situation. Cassandra Ableman breathed nervously into her microphone. Her own secret service retinue consisted of one slender, soft-looking agent who was actually an AIC plant, but who didn’t think she’d notice. He stood nervously beside her, stroking his ponytail helplessly.

“Okay.” Ladybird said. She raised a hand to her ear. “So what are my demands?” She whispered. Libel appeared on her goggles again, yawning.

“You want the repeal of all Ladybird-specific ordinances.” She said.

Ladybird nodded, to herself for all the crowd knew, and then shouted, “I demand the repeal of all Ladybird-specific ordinances! This is totally discrimination! I can fly over traffic, I don’t need to follow lights! And I break the ordinance that prohibits me from flying too high on a regular basis, because that one is dumb too! I need to fly high to do my job, which is keeping you ingrates from being—”

Libel stopped her. “You’re sounding entitled. Frame it in a different way.”

“Okay,” Ladybird whispered, then spoke up again, “Umm, what if someday, you could fly too, wouldn’t you think these ordinances are stupid? I have a right to freedom of movement! And umm, well, first they came for the Ladybirds, and you didn’t say anything because you aren’t a Ladybird, but then umm—”

Libel brought her hands up to her face, shaking her head in shame.

“No! You’re ruining everything!” She said. “Appeal to them!”

“Umm,” Ladybird started to sweat. Her eyes were wide and her left cheek twitched.  She grew aware of the size of the crowd, the thousands of eyes staring at her, the untold billions who would see the footage and the photographs and read the words. Her body felt hot all over, and she pulled on the high polymer neck of her suit as if to let steam out from her chest. “Umm. So. It’s like in that movie, umm.”

“Try something patriotic!” Libel shouted into her mouthpiece, exasperated.

Ladybird stood up straight, and balled her fists, and struck a pose.

“What country is this supposed to be anyway? I thought this was Amera! Where everyone could do whatever they wanted, however horrible or illegal, because there’s no political agreement behind anything and thus nothing to be done! How did you all even agree to marginalize me, specifically? I didn’t know this was 18th century Britannia, imposing its monarchical will upon its citizens! What would the Founding Fathers say?”

“I give up.” Libel said, sobbing. “We lose. We lose forever.”

The plaza remained silent. Ladybird swallowed a lump. For several minutes she stood motionless, trying to say anything more, anything at all. All of her adult words failed her, and only minor neotenous gibberings made it out.

Nearly in tears with embarrassment, she averted her face from the crowd.

“I’M TAKING THE SHOT SIR!” Shrieked the agent beside Cassandra, ripping his earpiece from his face and advancing from the podium to confront the Ladybird.

“Uh. What?” Ladybird asked, raising her hands.

“Quick!” Libel shouted, “Say you’re not resisting! Say you’re not resisting!”

But it was far too late for protest tactics. Weeping and shaking, the agent raised a black can and sprayed a burning red streak at Ladybird’s face. She was caught right in the face, foam gushing into her nose and mouth, thick spray washing over her goggles, and the agent squeezed the plastic bent atop the bottle, unloading the virulent foam with abandon. Ladybird collapsed to the ground, scratching at her face, her nostrils ablaze, her eyes bubbling, her throat feeling as though peeled of flesh.

Opportunity struck for the secret service agents. From the crowd jumped several agents, from the stage rushed others. The air was filled with burly men in suits, arms spread like eagle’s wings, red-white-and-blue stun gun blasts lighting the stage with patriotic color. The swarm descended upon Ladybird, cuffed her and dragged her backstage, crying feebly about her trampled constitutional rights.

* * * 

After heroically diffusing the situation, Agent Beaufort rushed to the bathroom and wept into a tissue. He had done it again. He’d started crying in a high-stakes super-cop kind of situation. He had even cried in front of her. Some things had gone right — he had ripped off his earpiece, and he had defied his superior officer. But he cried like a small child, denied himself victory. Never would he reach the pinnacle of his favorite movie renegades, like Starch Magnum, so full of hard manly grit and disdain for the rules, so void of human emotion, tolerated only for their ability to get results.

There was an ominous knock on the bathroom door. Beaufort sprung almost off his feet, and nearly started weeping again with fright. He was vulnerable and nobody was giving him time to recover. “What is it?” He whimpered.

“Beaufort? Are you in there?” Cassandra called. “Did something happen, Beaufort? Are you hurt? You just ran off after the arrest, I’m worried!”

Beaufort said nothing, because he knew his voice would crack. It would crack and she’d think him some kind of effeminate child full of feelings. He blew his nose loudly, flushed the toilet several times to hide his sniffling as he recovered his composure. He straightened out his tie, redid his cuffs, undid and retied his ponytail and tried not to look so flushed and broken. When he stepped out of the tiny plaza bathroom, he had cultivated a delicate, brazen smile. He might not have been very physically fit to play the gritty agent, but he certainly could be a silken, suave agent.

“I’m fine, Miss Ableman.” He said, with a surprising smoothness to his voice. “Washing is standard procedure after using the capsaicin foam. It’s agency protocol, for agents, such as myself.” He stroked his ponytail with a flourish.

“What was all the toilet flushing for?” Cassandra asked, hands on her hips.

Beaufort twitched slightly. “Plaza bathrooms are nasty ma’am.”

She smiled. “Fair enough. Beaufort, I wanted to thank you for saving my life.” Her wings fluttered and her tail curled around her hip. The little heart at the end of it wagged freely. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if that Ladybird person had gotten violent! I thought she was getting ready to do something crazy, talking to herself like that!” She took his hands into her own, giving him a firm squeeze.

She touched his hands. They were linked. She was even squeezing them a bit. Beaufort thought he would choke. He thought he would die. Nonetheless, the facade propelled him forward. “It’s all part of the job ma’am.” He said, with some subtle effort. He felt his head fill with air, felt a tension in his limbs and spine, a fluttering in his stomach. It was hard not to turn to jelly at her touch.

“I hope you really haven’t been hurt.” Cassandra said. “You were looking a little pale there when you jumped in. That was very brave of you.”

“High stakes situations make me sweat. I’m sure they would make most agents sweat.” He said quickly. She had not looked at his face and seen him weep. “It’s part of the job. Adrenaline, and all that good stuff, you know? Our bodies make it, it’s perfectly natural, and it’s just another tool for a good agent to use.”

“Right, right.” Cassandra said. Around them, stage crew and other agents busied themselves with the situation. She looked over her shoulder at the little room set up backstage for dress and makeup, and nodded as a pair of agents left it. “I should go check on my father. I’ll be back in a moment.”

Beaufort acknowledged, spreading his fingers as her hands left his. He left them hanging in mid-air as though to savor the afterglow. Cassandra turned gracefully around, and he admired her bare, winged back as she went. Into the little room, out of sight – and yet he saw her looking back once before going through the door. Maybe he imagined it, but it was nice to consider. She would stop at the door just to give him a last romantic glance at the hero of the day.

Being an AIC plant in the secret service was a hard job, but seeing her smile made it all worthwhile. Beaufort nodded to himself. That was a great internal monologue. Perhaps he couldn’t be a Starch Magnum – but he could be a Graves Frond, lady’s man and man’s man and all-around silky-smooth agent man.

Thoughtlessly, he slipped his earpiece on again.

Violence erupted from it.

“GOD DAMN IT BEAUFORT. JUST. GOD DAMN IT.”

On the line, Agent-Coordinator Harding was furious.

“I’m sorry sir, but I had to do it.” Beaufort said. He grit his teeth, awaiting a hard, movie-like chewing-out. “I had to save the president’s daughter, sir!”

“You’re out of control Beaufort!” Harding shouted. “You’re a loose cannon! You don’t play by the rules! If it were up to me, I’d have your badge for this!”

Beaufort smiled broadly, closing his eyes and hopping up and down. Everything was panning out. Everything was perfect. He could hardly believe it. He was going to get to say it again. He was really going to do it! He took a deep breath.

“But I get results, sir! I saved the daughter, handbook or no! I even captured the Ladybird!” He said triumphantly. “You can’t argue with that!”

“God damn it kid! You had so much potential at the academy! But you always have to live on the EDGE. You always have to get things your way!”

Beaufort fluttered, face turning red. This was all he hoped it would be. All of his movie fantasies were coming to life before him. He almost felt in love with Coordinator Harding. “Please tell me more.” He whispered carelessly.

Harding paused. “What did you say, Beaufort?”

“Nothing sir!” Beaufort replied, shaking slightly.

“Damn right! Nothing is what you always say! You are nothing! And next time you disobey my orders I’ll–” Static cut suddenly into Harding’s diatribe.

Beaufort tapped his earpiece twice. “Sir?”

Harding gave no response – his frog-like tone was replaced by the icy voice of AIC Director Rida Worthy. “Beaufort, where is the Ladybird?” She asked.

Beaufort shook up and down. His earpiece nearly fell off again.

Rida Worthy was on the line. The Director was on the line! He couldn’t do the movie cop spiel with the Director of the Ameran Intelligence Command! She could make him disappear for all he knew. This could very well be his final conversation, the final five words he ever hears, the end to his young, suave career.

He chose his words carefully.

“I’M SORRY MRS. WORTHY, PLEASE DON’T KILL ME.” He shouted.

“What? Calm down boy. Don’t start crying again. And it’s Director Worthy.”

“You’re not going to make me disappear for outliving my usefulness?”

“Stop watching that Helwingwood crap.” She said. “It is rotting your brain.”

“Yes ma’am.” Beaufort muttered. He spoke up once he was past his momentary bitterness at the insult. “The Ladybird is being kept in one of the improvised powder rooms they were using for Cassandra’s makeup.”

He could almost feel the sniggering at the other end of the line.

“Oh, so you’re a first-name to her now?” Director Worthy said. “You devil of a boy, going after the President’s daughter like that.”

Beaufort’s tie suddenly felt a lot tighter. “I assure you it strictly professional!”

Director Worthy sounded inordinately disappointed with his reply. “I see. I guess I can no longer ship you two. And it seemed like it would be fun, too.”

“Ship?” Beaufort asked, feeling an instinctual discomfort.

“Nevermind. I can still do it anyway.” Director Worthy replied, a mischievous edge to her voice. “I want you to gather some intel from the Ladybird.”

Intel was one of those code words that brought vivid Helmingwood movie sequences to Beaufort’s eyes. He saw whole rooms packed with teams decoding cyphers. He saw good cops and bad cops beating and abusing perps to get results like the loose cannons they were. Drones flying overhead, spying on the terrorists as they unknowingly led the agent to their secret lair. Many such words existed, each with associations, scenes, setpieces, even soundtracks. Some words were things that Beaufort acquired, like packages and intel. Some were things he did, like exfils and sitreps. Some were people he interacted with: Femme-Fatale was one he’d use for Director Worthy. Debonair Agent was one he’d use for himself.

Acquisition of intel pleased Beaufort. It was something he could go rogue on.

“Am I cleared to use enhanced interrogation on her, ma’am?” He asked.

There was clear, loud groaning on the other end.

“Of course not, you moron. You’re on a public stage! Just do your thing.”

“Oh no. Not that. That’s just so, so– No! I hate doing that.”

“You’re being a child Beaufort. You are only useful to me because of your thing.”

“I hate my thing!” Beaufort whined. “Telepathy sucks!”

Beaufort struggled with his powers all of his life. Telepathy was incredibly out of character for a suave, debonair secret agent. It made things too easy, too orderly. He wanted to get his intel and give his sitreps and perform his exfils using his incredible training and expertise and dogged grit. He wanted to break the rules and be a loose cannon on his own terms, not with inexplicable magic. Telepathy was one of the chief things ruining Beaufort’s life. Right up there with emotions.

“Telepathy sucks, just listen to yourself, you manchild!” Director Worthy replied.

“It’s inappropriate!’ Beaufort said.

“What’s inappropriate?” Cassandra asked.

Beaufort nearly jumped.

Cassandra was right there, leaning against one of the heavy stereo amps with a grin on her face. She had her arms crossed and her little heart-tail swishing back and forth. When had she come back? How had she returned so stealthily? He should’ve seen her coming up the backstage. He seized his tie again, and tried to smile and deflect everything. He hoped she hadn’t heard too much. He liked Cassandra – the last thing he wanted was for Director Worthy to make her disappear.

“My dinner reservations! I am being downgraded to a cheap table when I asked for the expensive balcony table!” Beaufort hastily replied.

“Dinner reservations, and a balcony table? How romantic!” Cassandra smiled. “Is there a lucky Miss Beaufort somewhere that you’re treating?”

“No, I’m dining alone because I’m pathetic– I mean because it’s the anniversary of my graduation from agent academy, and I wanted to treat myself!”

Cassandra laughed a bit. “Well, that’s unfortunate. If you’re not busy, I’m going around asking what’s up, so come watch my back.” She winked at him, perhaps on to his lingering eyes by now – and on to who knows what other things.

Beaufort’s earpiece cracked. “You are pathetic. Follow Cassandra, she’ll probably go to the Ladybird at some point. Then just do what I tell you! Worthy out.”

The Director’s line went silent then. Beaufort suppressed a sigh, and followed Cassandra as she went around the stage asking for status updates. He wondered just how many scenes in the movie of his life were now irreparably wrecked.

* * *

Dr. Cruciere refrained from considering the origins of the laboratory complex under Hillberry. Thinking about it invited troubling questions about Amanda’s hobbies; or the possibilities of some kind of time leapfrogging where a future self of hers that had gone back in time even further than she had, established the laboratory with the knowledge that a past self of hers (the future self) that had jumped back in time sooner than her (the future self) and would need the laboratory in the future (the past self). Even the most careful dip into this turgid puddle of time logic could send one’s mind careening into the abyss. She was teetering on the edge as it was.

Nevertheless she was thankful that a strangely well-stocked laboratory full of her trademarked “C.S.” logos existed under Amanda’s mansion.

“It was in the plans my landscapers downloaded from the internet.” Amanda said, whenever pressed for details. Accessing the lab was not very intuitive – one descended the mansion basement, turned off the lights in the unfinished underground laundry room and crawled into the large, dusty, unused tumble dryer set into a forlorn corner. The dryer would come to life, attempt to tumble a bit, and then deposit the visitor into a chute slide that ended on a cold steel floor. Spotlights would click in rapid succession, illuminating a vast open workshop with sturdy steel walls, filled with tools, materials, a hazard room, various computer terminals for quick, accessible calculation, and a comfortable sofa, with a rack of timely and engaging magazines and a candy tray.

“You did that, didn’t you?” Cruciere asked. Amanda smiled and nodded.

The door to the hazard room slid open, releasing a thin green mist. Asmodeus stepped out of the room in an amorphous plastic suit, holding a green, semi-transparent crystal out in front of her. She stopped a few feet away from Cruciere and Amanda, her eyes blinking through the protective glass face-slit.

“Oh come now, it’s not dangerous.” Cruciere swiped the verdite stone from Asmodeus’ hands, seizing it in her own unprotected grip. “This rock is part of the reason you even exist! You should have more faith in it.”

Asmodeus nodded her head and began to crawl out of her hazard suit.

On the other end of the workshop was a vast hangar space, the size of a pair of football fields. Metal struts and conveyors held various vehicles in different stages of completion. The floor had sealed gaps through which the vehicles could be deployed directly into the old Newfork tunnels. It was an ingenuous design, which Cruciere was glad she, at some point, through whatever unthinkable paradoxes, had come up with it. Some of the designs were barely more than skeletal hulls, while others needed only a bit of polish and a big gold C.S. logo to reach completion. Cruciere wondered which she would take to meet the President today. Time was running short!

“Grover Cleveland,” She called, hailing her all-purpose artificial intelligence program, “What is the status of the Cruciere Systems Asphaltgor?”

Lights dimmed across the hangar, save those around one network of struts. The spotlights shone upon a massive, cylindrical machine separated into a dozen long segments. A mechanical arm began to spray-paint the Cruciere Systems logo on the side of the machine. “Ready for your approval, ma’am.” Grover Cleveland replied, overseeing the slow release of the struts and the locks.

“Anne-Marie, I will be cheering you on from the television room!” Amanda said. She gave Cruciere a quick kiss for good luck and departed, skipping up the slide and back into the tumble dryer. Asmodeus watched her go with blank curiosity, of the sort only a creature with near to no facial expression could muster. Once the unlocking processes were completed, the machine stood on its own power, ready for inspection.

Cruciere grinned. Inspection was hardly necessary.

“I definitely approve.” She said. The verdite stone in her hand glowed green as though anticipating its place at the machine’s drive core. In turn, the machine’s segment divisions and various recesses glowed their own reflecting green. The segment just under the pointed head slid open. The various terminals within the machine and throughout the hangar displayed a recurring message.

Welcome back, Doctor Cruciere.

Out of the deadly waters of the Samanon river thrust a massive fish, jaws snapping as though piston-driven, twisting in mid-air, its muscles engaging pockets of gas along its tail that propelled it toward the hunters’ riverboat. It ricocheted off the engine block, back into the water, and swept around for a second leaping blow.

Gartruck Killshuck cartwheeled aside the fish’s scythe-like tail, the razor-sharp blades grazing a fold of wrinkled skin along his jaw. Undershooting the side-rails, the fish found itself grounded, flopping menacingly on the floor of the river-boat. With a great bellow, Gartruck withdrew his peppermace and began clubbing at the flopping, fiendish creature with the weapon’s burning, crystallized capsaicin head. In a killing frenzy the fish blew its gas jets and whipped its tail, man and beast suddenly caught in a furious exchange; but each slicing sweep delivered by the fish merely ripped into Gatruck’s flak jacket, while his blows pounded the beast, taking its tail, disfiguring its gills, and finally smashing the pulp out from its chainsaw-like rows of teeth. It twitched in its death throes, issuing acid and noxious bile, before coming to rest upon the deck.

“Lancing Shotfish. One hundred pounds,” said Surly, the digital hunting organizer. “Encounter recorded into memory. KillSlate uploading to Hunt-Tube now.”

“That was a big’un!” Gartruck exclaimed, pumping his meaty fists. “Jeff, you need to get in the game, son! Team human is still down at the half-time, I can’t carry this whole expedition myself! I’m sixty-five years old for chrissakes! If you really want my money so bad, you better start pulling your weight on the boat!”

Jeff Wallbloom could hardly reply, fixated on the hundred pounds of weaponized man-eating beast stomped dead in the center of the boat. Its eyes, even in death, met his own and foretold a savage end. He suppressed a shriek, and tried to get his own KillSlate 6G-KOS do normal things like post about his cats to Chirper, or check on his stocks, or anything unrelated to the slaying of brutal, hyper-evolved jungle demons. But a KillSlate offered no respite from the subculture that created it. The best Jeff could do to take his mind off the hunt was pray and hold back tears.

“Oh hey, you’re checking the Hunt-Pedia?” Gartruck asked, sizing up his kill, “Smart, good initiative. Look up for me the uh, the Shrieking Spinetiger. That’ll be our prize for this trip. I’ll crack its spine wide open and drink the fluids. Oh those delicious monster fluids.” Gartruck’s barrel-like body seemed to palpitate with ecstasy.

“Right.” Jeff said. He pressed his finger against the Hunt-Pedia icon on the touchscreen, taking some effort, as the screens were always calibrated for ridiculously strong hands. He scrolled past the Lovecraftian horrors section, through the Cryptids, and into the section on jungle demons, represented on the very first page by the black and purple knot of quills and muscle that was the Shrieking Spinetiger. The Hunt-Pedia had quick access to amateur videos, documented encounters, informative episodes from Kill Channel, as well as historical asides, such as Maggie Woodslayer having been the first person alive to kill a Shrieking Spinetiger with her bare hands.

“Could you play that there sound file of its roar? I want to be ready for it.” Gartruck said. “When I was a child, Jeff, I dreamed of killing a Shrieking Spinetiger, just like my dad had back in the Beast Wars of ‘52, right here in the Samanon rainforest. I worked hard all my life Jeff, I worked hard to own all the necessary equipment, to get my college edumacation, and become rugged enough for this very moment.”

Jeff smiled nervously, tying around his fingers a long lock of hair loose from his ponytail and trying not to cry. Back in Newfork, Jeff sometimes dealt with roaches in his high-rise apartment, mostly by shrieking and and chasing after them ineffectually with a shoe. That was the height of his conquest of mother nature. He gave a forlorn look at the sound clip of the Shrieking Spinetiger. Bracing himself, he pressed his finger hard on the PLAY button. For a few seconds there was a whistling noise.

Then the Kill-Slate blasted the surroundings with the Dispersion Roar of the Shrieking Spinetiger. The noise worked its way through every tissue of the body, agitating the flesh on a sub-atomic level. Jeff twisted around the edge of the boat and vomited copiously into the jungle waters, his stomach sub-atomically upset.

“Yup. Just like Papa said it would be.” Gartruck said. He wept a single tear. “May you rest in peace at the bottom of the pacific abyss, old man.” Ambling to the side of the boat, he saluted, cleared his throat, and then joined Jeff’s copious vomiting.

Further downriver, the hunters left their boat anchored to a sleeping Samanon Cannon-Turtle, a massive, docile, human-friendly beast with an exploding head, which it launched at its enemies, regrew, and then launched several more times. They loaded their titanium rifles with armor-piercing ammunition, donned new flak jackets and camouflaged helmets, and stalked into the thick jungles of the Samanon. Gartruck raised his vibro-machete and chopped the vicious overgrowth out of their way as they walked, swinging with such force that they kept quite a speedy pace.

“So Jeff, given that every jungle creature in the Samanon has some kind of echosense, or x-ray vision, or psychic powers, we might as well just talk openly. What’s this startup of yours you want me to fund, and what’s your deal?”

Jeff beamed, and would’ve jumped had he not been weighed down by his equipment. “I thought you’d forgotten all about it, sir, due to the excitement of the hunt.”

“What? Of course not! I planned this whole trip just to listen to your idea. I’d be willing to put up some huge cash if you wow me with this.”

In that instant, Jeff felt himself drift, far from the Samanon rainforest, miles removed from the jungle demons, all the way to a hundred-story industrial office building on Gilded Street, where he and fellow CEOs would routinely partake in daredevil skyscraper diving with golden parachutes. This was his future. He was nearing it, he could already feel the air go by, feel the luxuriant silk of the golden parachute and its associated severance package. Wallbloom Incorporated. He liked the sound of it. He put a brief pause to his daydreams and began to explain his idea.

“This is a million dollar internet idea sir. Imagine this sir – millions of teenagers out there are looking to put together and share their own memetic videos, but they lack the tools to truly craft them. This is where Marygold comes in. A web site where you can upload videos, remix existing videos, edit your videos, and add all kinds of basic effects, right on the cloud, sir. Then you can share your videos in all the major forms of social media, without anything more than your camera, and a browser. Marygold can become the memetic video factory of the world.”

“Memetic videos? You mean like all those kooky cats doing crazy things? Wow! So I could just upload my cat video right there, add cat sparkles and text highlights and other doohickeys and send it right to Chirper?”

“That’s right sir. Not only that but you could remix the cat videos other people have made, to make fun of their cats, or add your own cat with them! Any cat meme that you see, you can remix, upload and share with minimal hassle.”

“My god. That is amazing. Technology has come so far– WATCH OUT.”

Gartruck hooked Jeff around his arm and leaped sideways into a shallow pond, as a massive hook-footed, quill-backed bird soared overhead and broke the speed of sound, slicing through trees, causing giant insects to burst into flame. He smothered Jeff with his own body as hundreds of beetles and mosquitoes exploded in a dazzling fireworks display. The rainforest was thankfully too humid to catch flames.

“God damn. Woodraking Drill-bills. Silent and deadly.” Gartruck said.

Jeff struggled to time his swallowing of mud so as to not choke on it.

They waited several minutes for the Drill-bill to perhaps break light-speed and go back through time, if that was its intention. Gartruck then gave the all-clear and they advanced. The thick jungle soon gave way to a broad clearing of gray, jagged, perpetually bloodied glass-weed over rolling hills that in the distant past might have been the giant nests of killer ants. The hunters wove carefully around the grassland.

“So Jeff, what do you do? What’s your deal?” Gartruck asked.

“Umm, I’m an ideas-man, I guess. I just need some money and a team, and I’m sure I can pull off some incredibly profitable web products.”

“I don’t mean that. I mean what’s your deal as a person? Even on the phone you just talked about your profitable web doohickeys. I want to know you as a fellow ravager of nature’s champions. I don’t know – what was your dad like?”

Jeff felt a phantasmal bowl of uneaten food strike his face. “He was not very nice.”

Gartruck nodded sagely. “What was your mother like?”

“She really liked money. And people with money. A lot of it.”

“Where did you go to school?”

“I went to private school, at Saint Mayberry. It was a boarding school.”

“Ah!” Gartruck said, raising his fist to shade his eyes as he stalked forward, “I went to boarding school too. Ironhold Boarding School for boys! What kind of shenanigans did you get up to with your lads at umm, Mayberry?”

Jeff seemed suddenly alert. “No shenanigans whatsoever! Just you know, guy stuff.”

“Ah, that’s boring. I had two big firsts at Ironhold Boarding School. Killed my first man, and loved my first man. I think those are two big firsts every well-rounded man should experience in boarding school.”

Jeff blinked and looked at the ground. “I learned to ride a horse.”

“Did you kill when it inevitably failed you?” Gartruck said. “Nature always fails mankind. And I believe when it does, you really oughta kill it.”

“I’m suddenly, no offense, really uncomfortable about this conversation.”

Gartruck suddenly stopped. He held up his fist. “Spinetiger. 20 meters out.”

Leftover sub-atomic tingling wracked Jeff’s body.

“On my signal, we move out of the grass, and quadruple-tap that monster.”

Jeff’s teeth started to gnash, mostly sub-atomically. “Okay.” He squealed.

“Okay. Signal.” Gartruck said. Jeff was stunned. Was that the signal?

Gartruck burst from out of the grass, raising his gun and locking the iron sight unto the Spinetiger, a sleek beast, little more than muscles and bristling natural weaponry, with diamond-like fangs that could crack steel. Jeff heard a multitude of shots, and in a panic, leaped out himself. He rammed his finger against the rifle trigger, aiming at nothing particular, and felt feedback but no shots – the safety was on. The Spinetiger suddenly found itself flanked with Jeff’s appearance, while round after armor-piercing round from Gartruck’s rifle cracked hopelessly against hard quills and thick flesh.

The red gas pockets on its back suddenly inflated, and it raised its ear into the air like an alley cat. It turned its eyes and fangs on Jeff, and from ten meters away it released its Dispersion Roar. All Glass-weed out to thirty meters shattered in its wake. The Spinetiger blew Jeff off his armored feet and face-first into a now barren hillside, all manner of sub-atomic horrors being waged against the particles of his flesh.

“Gotcha now you little bastard!” Gartruck shouted, as he squeezed the trigger and unleashed the remainder of his magazine on the inflated back of the Spinetiger. Multiple rounds drilled into this softer flesh, causing various pressure leaks. The bags of gas with which the Spinetiger maintained its Dispersion Roar became its undoing.

The beast found its back suddenly erupting into shockwaves of gore. Its body lurched and twisted, each bursting pocket jerking the unwilling beast in a random direction. Its knee shattered as it blew right, its leg bent as it was forced seated, its claws twisted double when it blew forward, its face was driven into a nearby mound. Blood oozed from its exposed spine, the flesh peeled completely off by the violent convulsions.

“Is it dead?” Jeff immediately cried, extricating himself from a fossil killer ant mound, still full of fossil killer ants. He had vomited again, mostly in mid-air.

“Yup! You did it boy, you got it to expose its weakness! Tactical genius, I say. A little bit too tricky for my taste, but you know, I can’t fault the method.”

Gartruck laid down his weapon and advanced greedily on the body, pulling back flaps of skin and tearing out thick fibrous muscles from the spin.

Jeff felt he would vomit again at the sight. He averted his eyes, and focused on becoming sub-atomically correct again. “Sir, have you given any thought to my proposal? I’d really like to know before I commit to any more hunting.”

“Sorry Jeff,” Gartruck replied, pausing once as he snapped open the vertebrae of the spinetiger, and took a long, heavy slurp of the creature’s toxic spinal fluids. “I’m gonna pass out in a few minutes from all the deadly poison I’ve just ingested. I want you to know: I love your startup, and I think you’re a shrewd kid. But I make all of my business decisions based on whether or not the guy I’m investing in, is a guy I’d go killing acid-spitting flail-slugs with. And you just ain’t that guy. You’re just not hands-on enough, I feel. You’re a bit distant. Some people might say this is bad business on my part–” Gartruck stopped talking then. He seemed like he had something more to say, mostly because his muscles had tightened, paralyzing him in a statue-like position, arms raised, eyes crossed, mouth open, drooling.

Jeff kept waiting for at least a moment of pity, but eventually just sat down atop the fossil mound, watching the sky go dark. He opened the chamber of his hunting rifle and withdrew a round, running his fingers along the smooth exterior. He could see his distorted reflection weeping openly, his face shaken. The dream world of the social networking CEOs, in their dot-com pools, seemed to be fading in the wild, monster-filled horizon behind him. Perhaps he would return to college and teach macro-economics. Nobody appreciated the ideas-man anymore.