Xtreme Manly Man Force of Intense Badassery: Book One: The Fountain of Testoserone (18 page)

“Maybe, what did you lose?” DTO asks
openly, deciding the voice is quite real and worth communicating
with.

“Something very dear. My skull, you
see, was torn from my body in a battle against a fellow Overlord,
destroying my physical presence and technically killing me. It’s a
shame, really, I was sealed away for thousands of years, only to be
released from my prison and be killed the following month. My
spirit lives on; however, and I say that you restore me back to my
old being by simply going inside that room, and placing the skull
next to the rest of my skeleton,”

-the voice says, sounding quite serene
for being dead and all. Mr. Honkers quickly fires off that
annoying, ultimately pretentious look he usually makes when he
realizes he can take advantage of something.

“Aww yeah? Well what’s in it for us if
we do? Don’t think you can just trick us like some sour-butt nerd!”
Mr. Honkers says with a broad, superior grin.

“What’s in it for you? Oh, I see. Well
then, should you recompose me, I will find you and lay upon you
riches and glory unknown to you before. You would all be
compensated more handsomely by doing this than anything else you
have done, or will do in your life. Do you find this fitting
payment? I should hope so, as-”

“HEY HEY HEY HEY! WHAT THE DICK,
DICKWEEDS?! ARE YOU TALKING TO THAT BLOODGODDAMN SKELETON BITCH?
DON’T LISTEN TO HIM! HE’S… HE’S ACTUALLY GAY! YEAH! AND THE MOMENT
YOU RELEASE HIM HE’LL COME OUT OF THE CLOSET AND RAPE EACH AND
EVERY ONE OF YOU WITH HIS KNIFE-PENIS! UH... NOT THAT I DON’T WANT
THAT OR ANYTHING. BY ALL MEANS! GIVE HIM BACK HIS SKULL! SAVE ME
THE TROUBLE OF RAPING YOU ALL TO DEATH IN A NON-GAY, TOTALLY MANLY
WAY MYSELF!” Xavior yells at the top of his lungs, voice
reverberating for miles.

The group takes a quick look at one
another with mocking, condescending expressions.

“Let’s give that dude his skull,” DTO
suggests.

“Course.”

“YEAH!”

“Sure.”

“I feel that is sensible,” the other
four respond as IMRM breaks the lock and opens the door to the side
room. In front of them is the headless skeleton of the voice,
blazing in a fire of blue awesome-if-it-weren’t-for-the-color
coolness.

“Aww HELL Y-... I mean, you have made a
good decision today. Well done. Now throw it here,”

-the voice requests as UDGD throws the
skull at the pile of bones. Suddenly the Subspace Orchestra fires
up with reverberant, deep bass, forewarning the awesome
badass-level might of the recomposing Overlord, unconquered even by
death. Hearing the dramatic music below, Xavior bursts into another
long string of obscenities having been hit with the realization
that the people really did have the lost skull of the Overlord, and
that this Overlord is now complete.

“DICK SHIT FUCK SHIT DICK PUSSY ASS
DICK! I’M OUT OF HERE!” Xavior cries as a strong rumbling emanates
from above the group. “ULTIMATE ESCAPE EXPLOSION XTREME!” Xavior
yells out with Xtreme volume and terror.

“HOPE YOU’RE READY FOR SOME SERIOUS
PAYBACK, XAVIOR!”

-The voice vibrates from inside the
recently unsealed room. Suddenly the skeleton recomposes into its
proper form, bursts into five different kinds of flame, gains
ridged, strong flesh, and causes the Subspace Orchestra to start
cheering frantically in admiration and fear. UDGD and the others
stare in awe as the incredible spectacle of a creature gusts out of
the room, past them, and upstairs. The five pause a moment as they
hear various explosions, crashes, and the screaming of a very-manly
wizard from above. It goes on for a few seconds, and then goes
silent after the sound of blood, spewing from a felled wizard,
passes their ears.

“Good riddance, dumbass,” a voice says
from upstairs. Mr. Honkers, presuming that any dangerous explosion
has finished being dangerous and explosive, gives IMRM the signal
to lead upwards. IMRM and the others ascend the final group up
steps, up to the tower’s roof, complete with a gigantic frozen
throne. Flames are scattered all about, and to the side of the
throne is the large burning, decapitated, emasculated corpse of
Xavior, who apparently was not quite as much of an “ultimate
badass” as he had thought. Quite tragic, really.

The blazing Overlord, looking like a
super-cool, not-sissyish rainbow, bows his head with a slight smirk
across his face.

“Not bad, kiddies, thanks again for
making me whole again,” he says as he steps off the burning corpse
of the wizard. The group, for a moment, is silent in a kind of
confused awe, until Mr. Honkers decides to be Mr.
Honkers.

“Pffft, yeah, whatever. It’s not as if
we wanted to, except for that you were going to give us stuff,
which is why we did it, ‘course,” the short Mr. Honkers says,
quickly re-railing the subject to their reward.

“Oh, yeah. Well, I guess this tower
would be cool. Would you like it? I know the user’s manual is
around here somewhere,” the colorful Overlord says as he looks
about.

“Why would a tower need a user’s
manual?” DTO asks as he watches the fiery oppressor search a
well-organized pile of small pamphlet’s in the wizard’s personal
desk.

“Well, were this a regular tower, it
wouldn’t. However this isn’t a regular tower, it’s one of my mecha
towers. This wizard was one of my minions once, you see, and after
I died he simply sealed most of my body away and threw away my
skull, presuming I’d never be reco-”

“We don’t care, noob,” Mr. Honkers
says. The Overlord raises an eyebrow in intrigue.

“You’re certainly the ballsy one,
aren’t you? Very well, I’ll skip my story for now. Here,” he says
as he hands the operation manual for the mecha tower over to Mr.
Honkers. While handing the pamphlet to him seems like the
perfectly-reasonable thing for the Overlord to do to Mr. Honkers,
the others in the group find it a bit funny, and SISY shoots a
smile over in UDGD’s and DTO’s direction, who both reply with their
own looks of humor.

“Thanks,” Mr. Honkers says, bluntly .
The tall, radical Overlord grins.

“Any time. Should you need me, just say
‘I’m a stupid weakling and need the real High Overlord’s help’ five
times; or just yell ‘Chaos sucks’ five times- either one, really.
You got it?” the Overlord says to Mr. Honkers.

“Eh, whatever, yeah, sure,” the rude
genius says, too busy with the manual to care about the
Overlord.

“Excellent. So I’m out, then; see you,”
he says as he turns around and waves, walking straight for the
ledge.

“Hey,” UDGD says, cutting through the
heroic and badass exit music for the Overlord.

“Yeah?”

“What’s your name?”

“My name? Oh, I probably should have
told you beforehand. I’m the real High Overlord- name’s Torment.
Chaos is just a weakling in comparison, I’ll have you know,”
Overlord Torment says with an entitled breath. What he fails to
tell the mercenaries; however, is that it was Chaos that sealed him
away for so long in an alternate dimension.

“Hmm, yeah, see ya’,” UDGD responds,
deciding to pay his proper respects to the man who is obviously a
serious badass. Torment jumps off the tower to go and, yet again,
attempt to raise an overlordship.

“SO NOW WE HAVE A MECHA TOWER,
AWESOME!” SISY exclaims with a sweet-looking victory pose. There is
a short pause as Mr. Honkers flips through the pages of the small
booklet. “So, exactly what is a mecha tower?” SISY questions,
having never heard of such a thing before. Mr. Honkers chuckles at
the stupidity of his companion, and reads just a moment more so he
can sound like he knows what he’s about to talk about.

“As expected of a scrub like you. A
Magical-Mechanical Siege Tower, or Mecha Tower for short, is a
tower that, when inactive serves as a standard stronghold from
attacks, however when active it uses arms and legs, either already
created or manifested with magic, to walk, travel, fight or pick up
things. You know, things that inanimate buildings generally can’t
do. It’s pretty barbaric, but I suppose it’ll be of some use to us.
All I really need to do is figure out how it works and we can move
it around with us in tow. It’ll speed up the pace, if nothing else.
Good enough, you bent-anus ignoramus?” Mr. Honkers explains with a
lengthy description, mostly just paraphrasing what he found in the
booklet. SISY smirks a bit, and nods.

“Yeah, good enough for me,” he says
simply, wondering just how red Mr. Honker’s blood is.

“So, I guess we’ll be spending the
night here?” DTO asks, thinking back if there were any beds in the
tower they were rushing up.

“I would presume that is the case. Mr.
Honkers, do you think you’ll be proficient enough with the tower’s
controls by tomorrow that you will be able to use it?” IMRM
says.

“ ‘Course, dweeb. You go ahead n’ find
some food and eat up. Then you can tuck in the babies and go to
sleep under my watchful, super-awesome eye.” Honks says, raising
his vision from the pages of the manual just long enough to look at
the others as if they were stupid baby children. IMRM nods his head
and gestures the others to come down with him. In all honesty, the
idea of food is not unwelcome to the other three, so they come
along. Only two minutes of searching need to pass before DTO finds
an exceptionally-large storeroom of delicious raw food, most of it
in enchanted refrigeration containers to retain
freshness.

Finding this, DTO volunteers to be the
cook, a position which UDGD and SISY are all too happy with giving
him, as cooking for others is an obvious sign of sissy-weakness.
DTO, who has gained a good deal of skill in cooking for himself is
all too thrilled to make a meal that he would actually enjoy. Only
twenty minutes pass before he has prepared a fine dish of
Agrahalian beef with cheese and various healthy greens. By this
time; however, UDGD and SISY have already gotten their fill, just
eating various uncooked meats, as they really don’t
care.

After this, they all each claim their
own bedroom out of the thirty available in different floors in the
tower, and are left to their own devices until Day Cycle again
comes to greet them.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:
“TEAMWORK”

DTO wakes up at an early hour, right
before day cycle. The fire he made in the room’s fireplace has died
down hours ago, and he was unmotivated to get up and rekindle it
throughout the night. That said, he is quite cold and, once he gets
out of bed, dresses himself very, very quickly to fight off the
chilled air of the late night cycle- leaving only few hours before
the world is again embraced in light. He exits his room out into
the warmer center of the tower. There is a quiet ambience from
below, sounding like the quiet humming of mana coursing through
matter- the sound is unfamiliar to him. He does not recall hearing
it last night, and only now is it loud enough that he’d notice it.
He decides to take a look downstairs, from where it seems to be
coming from.

DTO steps down a few cases, getting
nearer and nearer to the source of the noise, he eventually finds
the engine room. It’s funny, when they ran up this room he thought
it no more than a large metal art piece. It is now vibrating and
humming powerfully, as a bright blue light shifts about the various
circuits and pathways.

“I presume you haven’t seen one of
these before,” a voice says from the other side of the large craft
of metal and magic. A chill hits DTO for just a moment until he
realizes the voice belongs to IMRM, who is just now walking around
the generator and approaching him.

“Oh, you. No, I haven’t seen one of
these, should I?” DTO sheepishly enters a relaxed pose that he
would proclaim “cool looking”.

“It wouldn’t be a surprise for me if
you had or hadn’t. I’ve simply been surprised how unknowing some
cultures are to the ways of other dimensions or places in subspace,
and thought I’d ask.”

“Right, this is the engine, then?” DTO
asks, looking over the large contraption pulsing blue between its
metal plates.

“Yes, but ‘generator’ would likely be
the more proper term. It has fallen into serious disrepair. I
suspect it hasn’t moved for many decades. It’s taken all night, but
I’ve finished about half an hour ago, and it should now work
okay.”

“Oh, I didn’t know you were savvy in
this sort of stuff.”

“I wasn’t. I read the
manual.”

“That huge book that Honkers had his
nose in? All in one night?”

“Yes, I decided I’d take it upon myself
to learn how it all worked considering the moment we left Mr.
Honkers rolled up into a ball and fell asleep.”

“Ha, not a surprise.”

“Not particularly, no,” IMRM answers as
he looks over the generator a bit more, making sure that none of
the warning signs appear that were labeled in the troubleshooting
chapter of the handbook. DTO is quiet a moment, watching IMRM watch
the engine.

“So, I’m curious, why are you and Mr.
Honkers together? I wouldn’t really think you the kind of person
who would be ordered around by... someone like him, you know,” DTO
begins again, taking a seat next to the generator, radiating a
magic, sissyish warmth. There is a slight pause.