Dropping the Bomb
Hey, it’s me, Cal!
So, it’s been a while since the whole affair on Primal Earth.
Duncan International is still out of business, everyone we didn’t kill is in jail, except Huey, who is still missing, probably with Dehak.
And Dino Energy is under investigation since the untimely death of the CEO, there’s been some arrests there too.
No, I wasn’t one of those arrests.
So far, no one outside the ChaotiX or the Cabal knows the true circumstances of Oliver Dinopoulos’ untimely death.
At least, we’re pretty sure that no one else knows I killed him.
As far as the world knows, Oliver died of a heart attack caused by overeating, smoking and stress.
Especially stress. Once the news broke about Dino Energy’s dirty business, a lot of people were like “well, that explains the heart attack,” “who wouldn’t be feeling stressed out if they were hiding something like that,” “fuck that guy, he kept hiking up the rates,” yadda yadda yadda.
There’s a few online conspiracy theorists who think that I did it, but the only people who seem to believe them are other online conspiracy theorists, and they don’t have any proof, anyway.
Those nutters will blame me for everything from climate change to their inability to find girlfriends.
You know, when they’re not blaming that shit on aliens, or the Jews.
I mean, there is a good reason that my grandpa’s parents fled from Finland when he was little, and it wasn’t because they were aliens.
I’m not really religious myself, which, as I’ve pointed out before, is extremely ironic considering the world I live in, and where my eldest brother went for a while. It was really just a weddings and funerals thing when I was growing up.
But let’s get back to the actual topic.
I told Jeff the truth about Oliver’s death, but most of the team figured it out on their own. I all but admitted that I was planning to kill Ollie, after all.
The team’s opinions on the matter are mixed, but they trust my judgement, and everyone in the team at least agrees that Oliver had it coming.
They all know that if I had let him live, we’d just be dealing with his shit again later down the line.
And they’re not telling the public the truth. They’re keeping the secret for me, even Jeff.
I don’t deserve that kind of loyalty.
I hope I don’t have to do something like that again for a long time, and I’m still wondering if killing Oliver was the right thing to do.
Maybe I should just come clean.
I stand by what I said. Ollie was a piece of shit oil executive who would have destroyed two worlds to keep his company afloat. He really DID have it coming, and he's burning in Hell like he deserves. He didn’t deserve sympathy.
Also, Vic would have killed him if you hadn’t, so Ollie was a dead motherfucker walking either way. If you had let him go, it would have bought him like a week tops.
Remember what Lincoln told you, Cal. Sometimes, you have to strike an evildoer down so innocents can live. It is not a sin to wage violence for a righteous cause. You know that well. What you did to Oliver did not render you unworthy of the Sword of Kings.
Yeah, you’ve had to waste bastards like Ollie before. I ain’t sayin’ you’ve gotta go full Punisher and kill every bad guy you find, whether they’re a crime boss or just a mook, and I ALSO ain’t sayin’ you’ve gotta go full Batman and keep letting your enemies live, even while the bodies keep piling up. This isn’t a black and white, save the orphanage full of sick kids and give them all free ice cream or burn the orphanage down with the kids inside and punch a bunny in the face, go full pacifist or go full genocide kinda thing. It would be nice if we lived in a world where going the pacifist route is always the best option, but we DON’T, and there are times when you have to choose between sparing the villain or saving the world. Sometimes, violence really IS the answer, as shitty as that may be. Some people just don’t deserve mercy. We’ve met plenty of people who couldn’t be reasoned with.
And you only killed OLIVER. It’s not like you killed all of his employees too.
Exactly. I mean, oil companies are pretty bad and all, but not EVERYONE working for them is evil. A lot of them are just ordinary folks struggling to pay rent and put food on the table, while their bosses reap the profits of their labor. They’re victims of greedy bastards like Ollie too.
But FauCorp is always hiring, and pays its employees well. Pierre is far too rich to be stingy. Who do you think he is, Scrooge McDuck?
And Doc and Suzy both treat their employees WAY better than Ollie ever did. So did Dad, and Grandpa. Scotty… could have tried harder.
Well, Scotty might get involved with Korkea Airlines again, now that he’s alive once more. Grandpa’s company is owned by FauCorp since Scott and his entire board died, but hey, I’m practically a member of the Faucheuse family, I’m sure Suzy would be willing to cooperate on this.
Scott’s having an easier time sorting out his memories and the Dark Demon’s memories, and suppressing the urge to do that stupid annoying giggle the Demon kept doing, so Scotty has provided us with a lot of Octovirate intel of varying usefulness.
I mean, anything related to the Tower of Tyranny is outdated and useless by now. I shouldn’t have to explain why. If you’ve been keeping up, dear readers, you already know what happened to the Tower of Tyranny.
But anything related to the Octovirate themselves is information we can probably use. Anything about how they think, anything about their plans, anything they discussed with the Demon in earshot is valuable intel that we can exploit to foil Dehak’s scheming.
And hey, there was a lot of room for that stuff in Deedee’s head.
We’re still on the prowl for our enemies at large, and still preparing for our next encounters with said enemies.
Umbra, Shaun and Harvey are still in our custody. We’re making sure Dehak can’t get to any of them.
Or Scott, because all it takes is one Seed of Darkness and Deedee’s back to annoy the shit out of everyone again.
No sign of the Gurus and their shitrat friends, but we’ve all but confirmed that Dehak’s building an army on Magicca, and there have been sightings of Michelle close to San Francisco, so she might be returning there, and there have also been Carnage attacks as far away from San Fran as Cleveland.
Yeah, there aren’t any humans living in Cleveland anymore, not since the whole Spaghetti Land disaster, but there are a good few fluffy herds living in and around the overgrown ruins these days, herds who never personally witnessed the Fall of Cleveland.
Usually, because they hadn’t been born at the time. It was quite a few years ago that Cleveland burned down. And it’s been a few years since we sent a squad to Cleveland to recover the Omega Drive hidden beneath the ruins by Hans.
The refugees from Mitla are still living in their capsule town, on the very site that Spaghetti Land once stood. They weren’t even on Earth when Cleveland fell, and their home planet isn’t really in better shape.
Mallichi reported that a feral herd had been attacked not far from New Altepetl City, as the capsule town has been named. No survivors, as far as he could tell.
The Tennebites are still on Tenneb Island, as are the Kelmu Force, but the only fluffies there are Rocket and the ones adopted by the Tennebites.
Not a lot so far, but hey, baby steps.
The Nerd Squad’s making good progress with the Hermit Bean project, and the Dehak Buster project, and all of their other projects.
I promised Jeff a Dehak Buster, but the kicker is that Electra requested one too.
I saw her point. Being in close proximity to Jeff puts her in Dehak’s sights. She’s in just as much danger as Jeff is.
Plus, those things will be gold plated, so they’ll match her fluff pretty well. Paint Jeff’s to look like the sweater, go on, you know you want to…
No, Niv.
But we are gonna paint those Dehak Busters. Like my X-Shield, we don’t want Dehak to know they’ve been magic-proofed, at least until the dumbass sees his spells harmlessly bounce off and he learns the hard way.
I’ll make sure that the Nerd Squad takes Jeff and Electra’s input into account.
Anything else? Oh yeah, the refugees from the villages burned down by Duncan’s chums are settling in at Ioka Village, and Zaki and his fellow pterodactyl pilots made a full recovery, as did their faithful steeds…
We’ve still got those dinosaur eggs in stasis, and the Cabal are considering Reilly’s suggestion, we might put it to a vote…
We’re talking about possibly moving the ChaotiX’s headquarters to international waters, and work has begun on a project the Cabal has been talking about for a while, let’s just say we might be able to kill two birds with one stone…
The ChaotiX 1,000,000 BC are still working to bring peace to Primal Earth, and we’ve got a few possible names for our Magicca squad…
Kirk has been training with Reilly and Mayday, he adopted Knuckles, one of Erdrick and Aurelia’s hybrid offspring, he started dating Rosa’s sister, and he asked Bellikose if they can set him up with a Klyntar like they did for Taarn…
Ulysses finally joined the team, he’ll be working with Des a lot…
We're doing an experiment with Umbra that may lead to him having more freedom, if he behaves, that is…
I’m planning to go visit the Skeleton Crew soon, and I need to ask Des if there have been any recent breakouts from Hell…
Other than that, though, things have been pretty peaceful in Cetteville.
Oh, so NOW we can say the city’s name. Remember when something ALWAYS happened to interrupt whoever tried to say it? Remember all of those goddamn microphone glitches and buggy Tele-Port signs? Now those signs work perfectly. What the fuck HAPPENED?
I dunno. The signs stopped glitching out around the time I had Pierre, Deston and Victor tell me the whole story of the Trinity of Terra, or at least all of the parts they were there for.
They’ve alluded to parts of it in the past, but I felt like it was time for me to know the whole thing.
I didn’t know that their encounter with Shyne and their encounter with that Arachnoid clan were related. I knew that Pierre’s mentor was killed, and that Pierre killed the killer in turn, but I didn’t know the names until recently.
Boy, if only Xilane and Emperor Rhinov could have lived long enough to meet me.
I’d love to meet the guy who mentored my mentor. My… grandmentor? Is that a word? Eh, it is now.
I also didn’t know that the Trinity had met Big Gooroo back when he wasn’t so big, or that they had met Tema and Konba when the latter was a kid.
I wonder how Victor felt when we went to the Ganglion fortress on Vyse, and found Gooroo and all but three of his employees dead? Apparently, Gooroo always considered the Trinity to be his friends, and Voilet and Bleu told me that he had been looking forward to meeting me.
Not just because Gooroo had a hunch that I was the key to defeating Vulcanus once and for all.
But of course, Duwen and Scha killed Gooroo after the Intergalactic Tournament, as well as all of the Ganglion members in the building except Voilet, Bleu and Konba, so Gooroo never got a chance to meet me.
For the record, Duwen and Scha have apologized to those three for that whole mess. Well, Duwen apologized first, and Scha only did so after some very unsubtle prodding from Merlom.
Duwen actually chuckled when the younger Faucheuse brothers confessed that Gooroo had set the Tennebite brothers up to fail their quest to restore the God of Destruction. Scha’s reaction would have been much more profane if Merlom hadn’t been present.
I asked Voilet and Bleu how exactly they evaded the massacre on Vyse, by the way. They said that Gooroo told them to lay low on that run-down space station around the start of the Intergalactic Tournament. They were like sons to him, and don’t forgot that he trusted them to finish his revenge scheme after he died.
But yeah, it turns out that the Trinity had even more connections that I only recently learned about.
Namely, to my own family. I knew that Pierre convinced my grandpa to talk to Nanny at a party, and that he told Annette that my dad had to be raised in America, but I didn’t know that he was more involved in my childhood than that.
That he arranged for my parents to meet at college, that he talked them into having one more kid before Dad had the vasectomy he was putting off, that my vague memory of a dream I had as a toddler about a spaceship flying over the city wasn’t a dream, that Pierre was one of the two people who anonymously sent me presents every birthday and Christmas.
My older siblings were always so jealous about that.
I honestly don’t remember meeting the Trinity when I was a toddler, but it’s touching to finally know that those three have been a part of my life all along. That they’ve been looking out for me, even after my parents, Grandpa Mika, Uncle Felix and even Step-Grandma Akka were dead and buried.
So I know who sent those teddy bears when I was born. Chaos fessed up too, volunteering his own part of the story. He’s the other person who anonymously sent me presents, and the milkman I strongly remember hanging around my parents’ house when I was a toddler.
I was always happy to see Mr. Soak, and I’m kicking myself for not figuring out who he really was sooner.
I still have the card from my first birthday, it makes a lot more sense in hindsight. The bats on that card are all gone, by the way, but the jester is still there, in a different pose every time I look at it.
Chaos said that it wasn’t just a “Happy birthday!” card, it was also a “Wish you were here!” card. He’d been looking forward to our meeting at Bran Castle since before I was born.
When the vampires showed up in the entrance hall and Chaos told all of us to have fun, he was being entirely sincere. He genuinely wanted us to have fun fighting the vampires. And it was fun. Well, except for the part where I got bit.
Yeah, that’s, uh, not really MY favorite chapter of that story either…
But it was terrifying to find out how close I was to being abducted when I was three. I always wondered where that Spider-Man nightlight came from, neither of my parents remembered buying it.
Not gonna lie, it was also kinda cool to find out that I was the reason all of that weird stuff happened around the world, the day I was born. It was all over the news, my parents said.
Stuff like that was happening across the universe. But, y’know, most people on Earth didn’t know how crowded the universe actually is back then.
And now I finally understand why I get an odd feeling every time I look at my birth certificate. Maybe I should spend a few years in the Cave of Spirit and Time. Or would that make things worse?
I think we’d have to put everyone in Cetteville in that Cave.
At this point, that kind of thing doesn’t really matter. We’re in the year 6 AX, almost 7 AX, I’m legally twenty-eight and a half years old, and physically twenty-nine and a half, let’s leave it at that and not pull any threads.
Also, now that I know that Vanessa played a part in my childhood tragedies, I have one more reason to kill the bitch again if she somehow escapes from Hell.
Shit, if she doesn’t break out, I might just have Sander summon her for me. Or Deston, if she’s not a demon.
Whether she’s a demon or a ghost, I’ve got her coming and going.
But I still feel like I don’t have the full context. Like there are parts of that story even the Trinity don’t know, and parts that Chaos wouldn’t tell me.
I have enough context that a lot of things about my childhood make much more sense in hindsight.
I vaguely remember a funeral when I was like one or two years old, the first of many that I would attend, but it wasn’t until recently that I learned whose funeral it was.
I, uh, told Scotty about that part, and he was old enough to remember Isabella’s funeral, so he gave me some context too. He said that he and the rest of our siblings were motivated to behave by two things: how unusually well-behaved I was being, and the grin that Victor gave them.
I immediately knew which grin Scotty was talking about.
Doc showed me the photo of me hugging him at Isabella’s funeral, it’s in his cabin with the old Faucheuse family portrait, and he happily arranged another copy of that photo for me, which is now on my living room wall.
He's got friends in the news. Apparently, several members of the Kent family have interviewed him. You remember that brunette reporter from that one time Demon Chris and James framed me and Miles? Yeah, she’s the latest generation of the Kent reporter dynasty. Pretty sure she was one of the reporters at the end of the World Revolution, and at Jeff’s press conference.
I can’t help but appreciate all the effort the Trinity put into making sure I’d be born.
Hey, I like existing. I can’t really complain about what they did.
But for some strange reason, since I heard that story, I feel like there’s something I need to do, and I don’t know what.
Maybe it has something to do with my car? I’m still workshopping names. It’s like every name I come up with is already taken.
Eh, I’ll figure it out.
Let’s see what else we have to cover…
I finally got around to introducing Jeff to Umbra, though their talk ended with Umbra undergoing a rage-induced BSoD, so I’ll wait a while until I try that again…
Venom’s still protecting San Francisco, and Vidunder’s still protecting Tønsberg… and Gaspode and his owners are still stinking up the streets of Manhattan…
Jack’s building his time train, which he’s calling Project Rails of Time, and when he’s done, he’ll be giving the Wings of Time that upgrade to bring the internal hardware up to date…
Oh yeah, and there’s been a big development that I was saving for last…
Jeremy Logan, Mayor of Cetteville, has been elected as the next President of the United States.
Well, president-elect at the moment.
It may be unlikely for a mayor to become the President, but this is a world where at least twelve unlikely things happen between breakfast and lunch.
Hasn’t Jeff told you that? Bless him, he still doesn’t know who he’s been narrating to.
But this is a big win for the pro-fluffy agenda. Another step on the path to equality for fluffies.
Sure, Jeremy can’t just ban fluffy abuse nationwide on his first day in the White House, but he can still do a lot more for fluffies once he’s sworn in.
And Cetteville will be holding a new mayoral election once Jeremy and Mr. Fusspot move into the White House.
Jeremy was the Mayor for a rather long time, so it’ll take a while for everyone to get used to the new guy. Or girl. Say, maybe YOU could run for Mayor, Cal?
I’m a superhero, not a politician. The skillsets don’t really overlap, Niv.
I know I call myself a king a lot, but I see myself as more of a defender than a ruler. Spending all day sitting on a throne would drive me mad with boredom.
You’re certainly not like Anti-Calvin. Remember that crown he wore at the Citadel?
He’s still recruiting, seems like a ZJ and an Ursula have both joined him, according to CQK-1.
But yes, I see your point. I think that hard light crown Calward wore was an idea that came from his Eddy side.
When are you and Eddy gonna merge again?
We’re saving that for when he masters his draconic powers.
And don’t forget the possibility of Mar merging with Erdrick, Niv.
Y’know, people on the old website might have been more excited about that.
Eh. Most of ‘em weren’t really fans of fluffies with superpowers to begin with.
Yeah, they prefer their fluffies easy to abuse.
And they don’t like the idea of a fluffy who can give as good as he gets.
They can dish it out, but they can’t take it.
They’re EXACTLY the kind of people who would detest Jeremy’s plans to outlaw fluffy abuse.
So let’s just forget about them, and move on to more important matters.
Right now, me and Marley are at the School’s training facility, in one of the training rooms.
We’re here with Bomber, who recently developed a new power.
You remember Bomber, right? The mohawked fluffy who can explode and reform. He’s got a blipper collar, but we designed it to have a little cartoon bomb trinket like his regular collar does, at his request.
He's a pretty chill little dude, but he has the expected explosive temper when his buttons are pushed. Like me and Mar, really. We’ve both copied his power.
We didn’t have any humanoid members with that power to train him, but his power is pretty easy to get the hang of.
It's not that hard to explode, but most people can’t recover from that.
A reusable suicide bomber. Terrorists would be all over that.
Which is why I’m glad that we haven’t dealt with X-Positive terrorists yet.
Still, more and more people are crossing Threshold X. Only a matter of time until more evil X-Positives show up.
But we’ll be ready to deal with them.
And as for Bomber’s new power?
Let’s just say that his new power is just as explosive.
You’ll see what it is in a minute.
Bomber grins up at me.
“Yu weddy fow da deh-mon-stway-shun, mistah Caw?”
“I’m ready, Bomber. Go right ahead.”
“Yu too may wanna take a stepsie back.”
Me and Marley do so, and Bomber points at an empty spot a few feet away with his hoof.
PLOP
Where he points, something appears.
Something glowing the same shade of yellow as Bomber’s fluff. Slightly orange-ish.
It’s spherical, about the size of a beach ball, and has what appears to be a fuse on top, fizzing red like Bomber’s mohawk mane and tail.
All it all, it looks a lot like a glowing yellow cartoon bomb.
Bomber flashes another grin.
“Wotch cwose-wee, nao.”
He points his hoof at the bomb.
BOOM
It explodes, in a burst of yellow and red light.
“Bombew can onwy du wunna doze at a time wite nao, but Bombew am wowk-in awn dat.”
Marley shrugs.
“Stiww, yu pwetty much gutta end-wess supp-wy of dem boms. Mebbeh yu cud du boms wif diff-went shapesies.”
Bomber raises an eyebrow.
“Wut du Mawwey meen?”
“Weww, da fing abowt a wound bom am dat it woww wike a baww, but wut if yu nu wan it tu woww?”
Oh, I see what Mar means.
“Yeah, a cube-shaped bomb wouldn’t roll as well. You know what, this is probably a question we’ll answer eventually. I think you and me could make good use of this power, Mar. But I’ve got a couple more powers to copy on my to-do list. Kirk’s energy spears, for one. And Kyle and Niek’s illusions.”
I’m still firmly against copying Jack’s powers over time. Remember, Omegas with time powers cause more problems than they solve.
“And I’ve still got a few more sword moves to learn from Skeleton Guy. I’ll probably head out to Fairy Hollow for the next one soon.”
At this moment, I hear the door open, so I turn around, seeing Victor walk in, wearing his own battle suit, holding a sealed white envelope.
“Sup, Cal. This just came in for you.”
“A letter? Who’s it from?”
“Dunno. No return address. I haven’t opened it, but I had Pierre and Des take a look at it, doesn’t seem to be booby-trapped. Go ahead and open it, Cal.”
Vic hands the letter to me, and I open it as he said, creating a hard light construct of a letter opener to do so.
You haven’t forgotten about that power, right, dear readers? It’s not an X-Positive power, it’s one of the light powers I got thanks to Pax, like my eye lasers, the sunbeam blasts, the solar flare, Luminaire, and Luminary Form Levels One and Two.
That dumbass is gonna regret giving me that Sphere of Light. Especially if I can figure out how to make those.
You could have used the Sword of Kings as a letter opener, y’know.
Well, yes, he could have, but I don’t know how I would feel about it.
Maybe FauCorp could make novelty letter openers that look like little Swords of Kings.
…I suppose I could live with that…
I’ll add talking to Susan about those letter openers to Cal’s to-do list.
There’s a single page of white paper inside, a message of ten words spelled out by clippings of letters from various newspapers glued to the page.
When I read the message, I gasp in shock.
In San Francisco, a feral stallion watches from an alleyway, as Venom the symbiotic fluffy swings past on black webs.
thwip
When the stallion hears gutteral snarling behind him, he turns around.
SHUNK
And a white sword impales his brain, killing him instantly.
Elsewhere in America, a shipping truck drives down the freeway, heading from Ohio to California.
The destination city is San Francisco.
And clinging to the underside of the truck, a red and dark blue symbiotic fluffy who happened to overhear the driver say which city he’s headed to hitches a ride, unbeknownst to the driver.
“San Fwan-siss-koh, hewe we come.”
Elsewhere in Ohio, Carnage frantically scurries through the woods, his slimy face bearing an expression that is 33% confusion, 33% fury, 33% desperation, and 1% fear.
This is the true Carnage, his restored fluffy body underneath the red Klyntar, not one of his extensions comprised entirely of Klyntar biomass, spread across multiple states.
He was busy building his strength back up after his second round against his “father” when something unexpected came to his attention.
By now, he has sensed the presence of another Klyntar on Earth, not far from him.
He remembers when he was feeling strange not long ago, and how the strange sensation passed after devouring a feral herd not far from the ruins of Cleveland.
And he remembers his empowerment in San Francisco, back when he was just Woody the ousted, bleeding smarty of his herd, happening upon the newborn spawn of Venom by pure chance.
So, Carnage has put two and two together, and he has also figured out where his own newborn spawn is headed.
Back to San Francisco, where the family feud began, most likely to seek assistance from the sire of its sire. Carnage doesn’t know who his spawn’s host is, but he has accurately guessed that they are a fluffy.
Probably a survivor from the recent massacre in Cleveland. He was so sure that he had left no survivors.
Now, Carnage is racing to beat his spawn to San Francisco, so he can get to them before it gets to Venom.
Because the spawn of Carnage may prove to be even more powerful than Venom or Carnage, and if Carnage can’t convince his spawn and whoever it’s bonded with to join him, they’re a threat to him.
The Klyntar… don’t really have much in the way of parental instincts.
And neither did Woody.
Meanwhile, a few miles west of Atlantic City, New Jersey, a burning entity stomps towards the Monopoly City, leaving blackened footprints in his wake.
He's over ten feet tall, and very bulky. His body is made of black volcanic rock, with big, gargoyle-like wings, currently fueled, and two long horns.
His face is just two burning eyes and a mouth, curled into a sinister smile.
And his body glows with a red-hot aura of heat.
His eyes are fixated on the city up ahead.
“It’s not Las Vegas… but it’ll do.”