Xtreme Manly Man Force of Intense Badassery: Book One: The Fountain of Testoserone (8 page)

UDGD quietly places his hand on his
sheathed weapon, DTO casually reaches into his cloak, and IMRM, who
was walking across the bridge over to the wounded man, stops in his
tracks. The three of them are put under the impression that this
group will not last as it is for long.

“Of course, Scroobdoob! Who do you
think I am?!”

“WELL THEN, I BET YOU'D ALSO SAY THAT
YOU COULD BEAT ME IN A FIGHT, THEN?”

“Yeah, Scrub! Anytime!” Mr. Honkers
challenges with a smooth afro-jiggle, foretelling of his imaginary
might. SISY reaches around his back to draw his hideously sized
sword.

“ALRIGHT THEN! LET'S SEE JUST HOW MANLY
YOU ARE, YOU FAT LITTL–” “Gladly, Buttface! After we've found what
we're looking for!” Mr. Honkers sets with a nod. SISY pauses for a
moment, breathing with strenuous excitement, and then calms down,
slowly setting his blade back into its sheath. The others, seeing
that the blood-shedding has been averted for now, do the
same.

“Hehe, alright then. After the
fountain, then we duel,” SISY agrees, that insane, beastly look in
his eye from before begins vanishing to make way for the appearance
of sanity. Mr. Honkers nods again, knowing that he can beat this
big nerd any day of the week.

“Fair enough, you sissy. Shall we be on
our way, then?” the shortest of the men says as he and the others
turn to the bridge to cross. Looking over the bridge, UDGD, Mr.
Honkers, SISY, and DTO spot IMRM, bent on-knee over the wounded
Toll-Lord. Mr. Honkers sighs. The group approaches IMRM, who rises
up and turns to them as they approach.

“What are you doing, you dweeb? You
always do this! Really, he always does this!” Mr. Honkers says,
half way speaking to the others as if to explain his companion's
strange behavior. IMRM tilts his head to the side just a
bit.

“This man's life signs were very weak.
I think he would have died if I didn't patch him up,” IMRM claims,
somehow able to tell if someone is close to dying.

“Whatever, dweeb. You really gotta'
stop being so unmanly.”

“This man is not expressly our foe. I
see no reason not to help him.”

“Don't be a dweeb, dweeb. Why would you
help some random dying guy?”

“I suppose life is something worth
preserving.”

“Yeah!? Well stop it. It looks dumb,”
Mr. Honkers says, correcting IMRM as if he were a child. IMRM looks
to the chasm, looks to the sky, and then back at Mr.
Honkers.

“I see,” he says simply. The two are
silent for a moment, and Mr. Honkers sighs.

“Whatever. Are you guys ready to go?”
the short, chocolate-colored man questions. The group nods and
agrees in their own specific manners, and they press on to cross
the bridge.

As they make their way across, UDGD
notices the downed Toll-Lord. All his wounds are gone.

CHAPTER TEN: THE SWAMP OF SWEAT, FIRE
AND HAVING ONE'S INTERNAL ORGANS DIGESTED BY SPIDER VENOM WHILE
SCREAMING LIKE A TOTAL SISSY (AKA: MANLY MEN ONLY NO SISSIES
ALLOWED)

After about half an hour of walking
across the blasted and blood-splattered wastelands of the Crimson
Kingdom, the group of mostly-manly men reach a ravine, led into by
their current road. The path begins to curve upwards, and proves to
be a steady, exhausting climb for the group, with the exception of
IMRM and SISY, as one is in incredible shape, and the other is
simply designed to be superior. Mr. Honkers, the vocal one among
the five, whines incessantly, and eventually demands to take a
break. The others disagree, and as it happens, IMRM offers to carry
Mr. Honkers, who after justifying his condition with a pathetic
excuse having to do with his huge non-existent muscles, agrees.
This unpleasant uphill climb goes on for about ten minutes until
the group reaches the peak of the ravine, in which they can see
spanning out in front of them is a great mass of dismally-colored
trees, stretching as far as one's eye can see.

“HEY, PRETTY COOL, RIGHT?” SISY
exclaims in admiration of the view as he folds his arms in
awe.

“Yeah, whatever,” UDGD says, as the
Subspace Orchestra plays a soft, breathtaking harmony, that would
fit the action of overlooking a giant area fairly well. UDGD scowls
at the sound of the beautiful music; he can't let the others know
that he appreciates something as refined as the classical
genre.

“Heh! That wasn't so bad! You guys
really should stop being such noobs and try tricking people into
carrying you around also!” Mr. Honkers criticizes with a smirk;
somehow still panting from the exercise he made fifteen minutes
prior. The others ignore his comment and move on, having learned
fairly well by now that arguing or defending oneself against him
with words is practically useless, as Mr. Honkers seems to use a
very specialized form of logic that few others are quite rich
enough to share with him.

“Yes, this view is marvelous. Great.
Are you guys ready to go?” DTO says. Mr. Honkers nods and says “Of
course.” IMRM is silent. SISY nods quickly and strongly, clearly
conveying his agreement, and UDGD just says “Yeah.” The group
begins their descent into the great Eastern swamp. The trip down
proves to be far less challenging on the group than the one
upwards, and only takes a fraction of the time. By the time they
get below the tree line, the atmosphere completely
changes.

A swelling, humid heat overtakes the
group, as if they were being enveloped in a blanket of moisture and
warmth. The thick canopy of the swampy trees lets barely any light
through, entirely trapping the swamp in a sort of twilight; not the
stupid kind with sparkling sissy vampires who are unable to
properly convey romantic emotions to underage females, the normal,
light-level-related kind. The group is greeted by a chorus of
chirping, buzzing insects, incessantly screeching and warning the
group of the intensely-high manliness-level-requirement for this
place. Most striking to the group, however, is the total change in
the Subspace Orchestra's mood. Droning with outlandish-sounding,
hypnotic power is a group of didgeridoos, accompanied by a
low-toned banjo, serving as the only hint of form and order in the
music. It is obvious from this change of musical spirit that this
swamp is even manlier than your typical manly swamp, as it is
playing these low toned instruments instead of a reverberant cello,
which is what the Subspace Orchestra tends to use for most manly
swamps.

Making note of these factors, UDGD
realizes that the place they have just entered is definitely way
manlier than the bleak wasteland, and that it probably contains
super-manly foes to kill.

“WELL DAMN! THESE BUGS ARE LOUD!” SISY
yells with a grin, now totally-pumped for an awesome swamp fight.
The others acknowledge him, communicating: “Yes, thank you, Sir.
Obvious,” and press onward.

“So, Robo-Dork,” Mr. Honkers addresses
to IMRM, who is holding him up on his shoulders.

“Yes?” IMRM says.

“We're almost there, right?”

“No, sorry. I estimate that,
considering our current speed and the distance we still have to go,
our trip to our destination should take about two-to-three days,”
IMRM says capably and calmly, as if he were expecting to make this
trip for years. Mr. Honkers looses an epic groan, sounding like an
angry cat in a cage being slowly lowered into a pool filled with
water, as inappropriately-cheerful music plays. DTO smirks under
his hood, glad to hear that Mr. Honkers is not enjoying this
commitment in the slightest. It is not so much that DTO dislikes
the little guy or any– wait no, that's exactly what it
is.

“Three days?! How will we survive?!”
the short man whines over the insects.

“I am capable of food procurement in
every biome that we will encounter. Food will be no problem,” IMRM
states.

“Psssh, whatever... Scrub!” is the last
thing that Mr. Honkers says for the next several
minutes.

Time passes, and the bugs only increase
in their irritating intensity of noise. However obvious it is, it
takes a few minutes for UDGD to realize just how loud these stupid
insects are. As the group trudges through the deep, swampy swamp,
the legions of bugs go on and on like a bunch of stupid unmanly
sissies. Several more minutes of walking (or being carried, for Mr.
Honkers) pass, and UDGD feels as if he’s now hearing things. Among
the choruses of insects, he feels he can also hear them speak, as
if they were all saying “Hey, bitches, you've come to the wrong
fucking neighborhood.” UDGD would, in all honesty, love to punch
each of these stupid bugs in their stupid bug faces, but he doesn't
have the time to smash each of the swamp's three billion insects in
the face.

Time passes with the party moving
through the sludge, and as many groups of people do while walking
for long periods of time in rough, dark, rather dangerous terrain,
they enter a kind of walking trance, concentrating more on
navigating their way through the marsh than anything else. The
group for the most part loses track of time, with the exception of
IMRM, who is always on top of things. However, like many things
that bear no tactical interest to IMRM, he decides against letting
the others know that they have been walking for forty-five minutes.
However, IMRM shortly notices something that should definitely be
of interest to the others.

Somehow, the others are so busy
navigating the swamp, they have neglected to notice that the
insects have not only stopped chirping as a whole, but are gone, as
if they are forbidden to enter this deep into the swamp. IMRM
guesses because they were gradually becoming more and more quiet,
that none of his comrades noticed the transition.

“Pardon me,” IMRM says, ever so polite
and thoughtful in action.

“Eh, yeah?” DTO returns, rather glad to
have a reason to speak after all the intense silence; it was
spooking him out.

“I feel I should bring to your
attention that the insects are not in this part of the swamp, as
there are none to be heard.” IMRM says.

Suddenly the group becomes aware of
this reality and is broken from their trance. Quickly drawing
comparisons, UDGD has realized that not only is there not a single
sound in this part of the swamp, but it is also far darker, and
reeks of decomposing flesh.

“The hell? You're right,” UDGD says,
noting the eerie silence in the middle of the thick
marsh.

“Big deal! What does it even matter?”
Mr. Honkers questions, kicking IMRM in his cloaked back as he hangs
on his shoulders.

“WELL, MR. GENIUS, IT OBVS MEANS THAT
THERE'S SOMETHING SUPER MANLY NEARBY, AND WILL TOTALLY TRY TO KILL
WHATEVER GETS TOO CLOSE!” SISY says, half-mocking Mr. Honkers. The
small man with purple-tinted goggles grumbles under his breath,
sounding something similar to the phrase “truck poo, rub,” and then
speaks up again.

“Naw, they probably just went to go
surf the net. Bugs are into that sort of lifestyle, you noob!” Mr.
Honkers asserts to his own teammate. SISY looks at Mr. Honkers with
an expression of interest.

“NOW WHAT MIGHT THIS 'NET' THING BE?
LIKE A SPIDER WEB?” SISY questions Mr. Honkers with a large grin.
Truth is UDGD and DTO would also like to know what this “net” is.
Mr. Honkers sighs, and smiles back at SISY like a parent to a
child.

“You'll find out one of these days,”
the small man says, condescending gauge set at “Xtreme.” SISY
shrugs, interested, but not enough so that he'd ask into it
further, and looks forward.

“Fine then, Mr. Genius. You guys ready
to go on?” SISY states, ready to press on to see whether or not if
there are creatures to fight. No one seems to have a problem with
moving on, and as such, the group moves forward.

The deathly, dark, dim, doomingly-dead
silence becomes only more dark and dim as the group presses on, the
only sanctuary of the absence of sound being their movement through
the murk.

The Reader, hearing this, may ask how
it is possible that silence can become more silent, to that the
Author would like to remind the Reader that this is subspace, the
space between true dimensional spaces, so the lines of reality to
which the Reader (should he or she be from a dimension with
perfectly-defined laws of physics) is likely accustomed do not
fully apply. The Author would also like to remind the Reader to
please be more sensitive to those who do live in subspace realms,
as they can be easily offended if one were to bring up the quality
and continuity of their realm. That said, please be nice, Reader;
subspace folk are not all that bad of people, especially when you
get to know them.

The Reader's insensitivity to others
aside, the group pushes on through the silently-quiet swamp, until
SISY, who is at the front of the group, takes one step into the
real manly swamp. In the next moment, the Subspace Orchestra fires
up with deep, strong bass guitars and industrial themes, smartly
woven together with the previous ethnic instruments that many would
think appropriate for a swamp. The orchestra blares on for several
seconds, telling of the area's intense badass levels, and then
cools down to retake the eerie, thick silence. It is obvious that
they are in some seriously-manly waters now, and they will have to
be Xtremely careful, or just Xtreme, if they want to get by
alive.