Xtreme Manly Man Force of Intense Badassery: Book One: The Fountain of Testoserone (37 page)

UDGD nods, looks to HTO, IMRM, and
SISY.

“He may have the fountain, but it seems
we won our lives,” he says, surprisingly sober about his mortality
for just a moment. UDGD The Axe Lord pauses a moment more, decides
that Chaos cannot be ranked on a manliness scale, takes a deep
breath, and returns to his pretentious, manly self. “Good job,
everyone,” he says, turning to leave.

SISY by this point bursts in excitement
of their pseudo-victory, and embraces IMRM and then HTO.

“WE DID IT!”

“We certainly did,” IMRM
answers.

“Y-yes, yes we win! Put me down!” HTO
replies himself, struggling under SISY’s bear-like grip for a
second time. SISY releases the two, and steps up to UDGD to give
him the same.

“No,” the Graveman says as he continues
to walk away. SISY grasps him anyway and hugs with the strength of
a hundred men, while somehow not coming off as being totally gay.
UDGD sighs.

“Yeah... thanks,” he adds, again
turning from the group to get his thoughts together. The three
watch as he disappears into the keep’s castle, prompting HTO to
turn to the other two.

“Wow, I can’t believe it. You’re
alright.”

“I am a bit damaged, but nothing a bit
of rest won’t fix,” IMRM answers, looking fairly stupid without
arms.

“YEAH! YOU WERE SO DAMN BRILLIANT! I
HAD NO IDEA YOU COULD JUMP THAT HIGH!” SISY responds, still cooling
himself down from seeing a person get smashed through a
tower.

“Thank you; and you as well. I must
say, though we failed to achieve our original goal, I feel as
though we will all walk away from this as better men.”

“HELL YEAH!”

“I guess you’re right... so what will
we do next?” HTO asks. The three are quiet a moment.

“I suppose that is for each of us to
decide individually,” the tall one says.

“Right, true,” DTO replies with a shrug
and a nod.

“Hey, Ace,” SISY begins.

“Yes?”

“How was it?”

“It?”

“Fighting Chaos! How was it fighting
him?”

“It was... I’m not sure,” IMRM tells
truthfully, and simply, looking towards the mountains. SISY hums
and nods, assuming that IMRM’s fairly blown away with the greatness
of the fight and needs some time to get it all together before he
tells people about it in any detail.

“Well, alright then! I gotta say, all
that fighting’s made me hungry. You guys wanna come with me?” SISY
asks, pointing over to the castle of the keep. HTO
smiles.

I’m starving. Yeah let’s
go.”

“I think I’ll stay here a bit if you
don’t mind,” IMRM answers, staring out below to where Chaos was
standing last. The two are fine with this, certain that, even
armless, IMRM will have little problem getting around. They leave
IMRM alone as various workers begin clearing out the rubble from
the turret-fire. IMRM stares into the distance for several minutes,
and then speaks.

“You’re wrong,” IMRM says, as if Chaos
could hear him.

CHAPTER THRIRTY TWO: DEALING WITH
THINGS LIKE A MAN

Half an hour passes for the five in
their floating castle of relative manliness. The coordinates have
been set back to Crimland, the location of the nearest space gate
by thousands of miles. UDGD, HT, and SISY, (mostly just HTO and
SISY really,) have been reflecting on their adventure a bit, both
marveling at their incredible adventures in the span of only a few
days. UDGD just listens, deciding to not lighten up until he gets
home. IMRM has been spending all of his time alternating between
checking up on Honks in the infirmary and looking over the edge of
the fortress, watching those snowy mountains pass by as they make
rapid progress back to where they started. Honks is still
unconscious, by the way; not really good with taking hits as one
would probably imagine.

“Well I’ll be right back, friends. I
need to use the ol’fighter’s room,” SISY says with a smirk. HTO and
UDGD presume that this is slang for the lavatory, or as the two of
them would call, “the shitter”. The Swordsman, ever with his sword
towed about, walks to the nearest servant, asks for directions, and
steps away. The two are, for all practical purposes, alone. HTO,
previously quite talkative, joins UDGD and falls into silence. A
bit of time passes, and the younger of the two takes a
breath.

“Hey, I... I’m-”

“It’s...” UDGD attempts to put it to
rest, but the fact still stands that Phillip tried to kill Rick
just an hour-so ago.

“I’m sorry, Rick. I was really angry
and... I guess you can figure out why I followed you and
all.”

“Yeah. Th’money was that important,
eh?”

“Well, yeah, we sort of agreed, and I’m
not exactly what you’d call wealthy.”

“Right. Alright then, Heart Tearer
Ou-”

“You can just call me Phillip, I
guess.”

“Yeah fine, Phillip. I’m sorry for
cutting you like that, I just need every cent I can get, pretty
tight right now.”

“Drinking?”

“No.”

“Magic?”

“No.”

“Drugs?”

“No.”

“Girls?”

“Heh, no.”

“Just debt?”

“No.”

“... Guy-”

“Hell no!”

“Then what is it?”

“Jus’ some... family matters is
all.”

“Huh... Is that why you wanted to find
the fountain?”

“Yeah, thought there’d be something I
could sell, b’ turns out that Overlord bastard swooped in n’ ruined
everything.”

“I gotcha. So what are you going to do
now, after this?”

“... ‘Spose I’ll just go back to
mercenary work. Not much else I’m good at, an’ th’money’s five
times ‘round what I’d make smithin’.”

“Right, suppose I’ll do the same.
Sorry, again. You’re actually a pretty cool guy.”

“Yeah, you too.” At that, the two are
quiet until SISY steps back into room, and takes his
seat.

“Ahh! Feels good to get rid of all
that-”

“Nice to know, thanks,” UDGD notes
crassly. The swordsman shrugs.

“Yeah, well, so where was I?” he asks,
about to finish up his story of the time he beat four men in an
out-bleeding competition. Phillip smirks.

“The part where you bled into that one
guy’s eyes.”

“OH RIGHT! Yeah! So ba-”

“DWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEB!”
squeals a voice from the direction of the infirmary. SISY stops
immediately, quickly gaining a stupid grin across his
face.

“Sounds like someone woke up from his
beauty sleep,” HTO says with a light smile.

“Beauty being a relative term,” SISY
adds with a chuckle. The two share a light laugh, just waiting for
Mr. Honkers to burst into the room and give UDGD a stern, humorous
talking-to. To their surprise, it is a whole half-minute until Mr.
Honkers calmly enters the room, carried carefully by the
Honk-Squad. They place him on the “Swag throne” different from the
other chairs as it has an extra cushion and a nice little drink
holder.

“Swag,” he says again, expecting it to
be put into quote books for decades to come.

“Yeah, welcome back,” SISY says with a
wry grin.

“Yeah, apparently I was pulled into the
dream realm by some butthole scrub. I had to kill like a billion
million things just so I could wake up again. I pretty much just
saved you all, so maybe try thanking me,” Honks proclaims with a
notable bruise on his face.

“Heh- thanks!”

“Yes, thank you,” SISY and HTO say with
sharp irony. Mr. Honker shrugs.

“It’s not even a thing, noobs. So, what
all happened with that Chaos nerd? Did he have to go change his
diapers or something?” The three are quiet, realizing that either
Mr. Honkers does not remember getting crossed in the face by UDGD,
or else he’s acting as though it never happened; they decide to
play along.

“Yeah pretty much. Ace was pretty
helpful with that,” HTO claims with a nod. Mr. Honkers grumbles as
he looks about the room.

“And where exactly is this ‘Ace’? Dead,
right?”

“No just lost an arm... or two.” Upon
hearing this, Honk’s expression sharpens a little as he is handed a
tall glass of strawberry milk by one of the servants.

“Oh, he is, is he? Well, maybe that’s
sorta’ cool,” he decides, not really caring enough to talk about it
anymore. “So, guess we’re done, eh? We couldn’t get it?” he asks,
changing the subject the moment before he takes his first sip of
milky, sissyish delight. The three are not all that surprised Mr.
Honkers would be so lax about the near-death of his loyal, capable
servant of sorts, as they haven’t really seen Mr. Honkers care
about anything other than himself, and his ego. The genius-fool
yawns, and addresses the other three as if by right.

“Right, so I guess you all are leaving,
then? Back to your scrub holes?” Honks questions. The three pause a
moment, unprepared for the question, though it’s been creeping on
everyone’s mind.

“Well, yeah, I guess,” HTO
responds.

“If there’s nothing here for me, then
yeah,” UDGD grunts. SISY is silent as he scratches his chin
sheepishly.

“That might be a problem. You see if I
spent even a full day in Crimland I’d get hauled off by a few
people that were looking for me. You could say I’m sort of a
criminal,” SISY says, failing to hide his obvious pleasure of
referring to himself as a hardened convict. UDGD raises a
brow.

“A good guy like you? What’d y’do, kill
someone’s pets?” UDGD asks with obvious sarcasm.

“I’d rather not say.”

“Suit yourself,” UDGD grunts, not
actually interested at all. SISY coughs.

“Yeah, so, I sorta need a place to
st-”

“No,” UDGD cuts.

“Only babes chill at my pad,” Honks
states with an authoritative squeal. SISY puffs in disappointment,
and looks over to HTO. The thin lad thinks on it a moment, and
smirks at the side of his face, careful to make certain SISY does
not notice his pleasure. IMRM walks in, still very without arms,
and quietly takes a seat just in time to hear a long, hopeless sigh
from HTO.

“Yeah, fine. It’s a dump, and you’ll
have to pay your side of rent and food, but I guess you can hang
with me,” HTO says, really, really hoping SISY says yes; he’s sick
of lifting Liuil’s stupidly-inflated housing bills by himself. SISY
strokes his manly stubble, and grins.

“Deal!” he agrees, not caring even a
bit about how much it is. HTO nods in turn; he suddenly likes SISY
much, much more, but knows he shouldn’t show it.

“Hmm, alright, it’s settled. Just don’t
bleed all over the place, kay?”

“Heh, yeah, okay,” SISY confirms,
making a promise he won’t keep very well at all, considering how
bleeding is one of his favorite hobbies.

Moments later, the food comes in, and
the group enjoys a well-deserved meal on their way to
Crimland.

During the trip to the space gate, time
passes slowly for Rick. This trip took him longer than he had
expected, and he’s eager to get home now that there’s no reason for
him to be there. Honks and SISY banter about humorously, and Laivok
almost brings up the duel that the two had agreed on at the
beginning of their journey, though in the end decides Honks is,
while obnoxious, a friend now, and thus worth valuing to some
degree. Phillip is mostly quiet, reflecting on the trip as a whole,
and off and on considers asking IMRM about what all happened with
Chaos, and how exactly a person can survive with so many wounds and
no arms. IMRM, now certain of Honks’ health, is outside in the
air-fortress’ courtyard, staring at things.

The Crimlandian border in sight, the
fortress slows to a halt, and Hokair steps into the dining room to
greet his commanders.

“Sirs! This is as far as we can go
without violating our kingdom’s border policies. Do you wish to
advance into Crimland?”

“We’ll do it on foot, thanks,” UDGD
says after finishing his fifth cup of coffee. Hokair
nods.

“Of course, do you want us to give
cannon support?” he asks, still not quite on the same page. Mr.
Honkers sighs.]

“No, scrub dweeb, we’re leaving via the
space gate,” he says, inebriated on strawberry milk. Hokair draws
back in shock.

“You, you’re leaving? But you’re
Smashlandian officers!”

“Yeah, so give us all the loot and
we’ll be on our way, chop chop, minion,” Honks says with a shooing
of the hand. Hokair pauses a moment in thought, trying to wrap his
head around all this.

“So, to get this straight, sirs, you’re
not really interested in campaigning against our Crimlandian
enemies?”

“Not at the moment, sorry,” SISY says
with a bit of a smirk.

“Oh, I see. Well you’re perfectly free
to leave, but you may not take any supplies with you. Though you
are officers of our nation, the fortress is only to be used for
travel and official Smashlandian business in most cases. If you’re
all leaving, we’ll have to drop you all off here and return to
Smashland. Do you understand?” Hokair says with an abashed smile,
unsure as to how his superiors will take the news. The others nod
in surprising unison.