FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

1

Few colonizers tell tales more harrowing, more disturbing, more gruesome than those who explored the Feral Islands. The stories don't pair well with your lunch. Neither do the storytellers, who look like Potato Heads missing many of their facial features.

Think of your favorite Italian horror movie or, better yet, your favorite Giallo director. Imagine if they filmed a cannibal movie to end all cannibal movies. It's got offensive native stereotypes, guerrilla filming in protected sanctuaries, animal abuse so brutal it'd give shelters new euthanasia ideas. This film is so vivid in its sadomasochistic hedonism that instead of taking the director to court on snuff film accusations, they take him out back and hang him off Mrs. Romano's laundry line.

This movie wouldn't come close to accurately depicting the Feral Islands. Not because cinema painted too sensational a picture, but because paintings don't have room for all the fleshy bits.

Many tribes within the Feral Islands have been there since the Four Era, back when archaeologists say Three World was called Earth. Skeptics say this is like a basketball's true name being “Rubber", or a small child “Contraceptive Failure", but archaeologists also say the world used to be a scroll unrolled across the backs of four giraffes so nobody pays them any attention.

Wolves wearing bone jewelry prowl the humid jungles. Dragons war over mountain territories daily, trading breath weapons with the enthusiasm of rival nations itching for excuses to go nuclear. Underworld fishmen scour the islands' perimeter, responding to approaching ships the way a Venus flytrap responds to fat caterpillars.

Knowing this, Lain wasn't surprised by what he saw on his cameras while descending toward the islands.

Wrecked ships sprawled behind them as he landed toward a clearing, their moldy guts spilled across beach sands like talkative zombies. Skeletons hung from the trees around them, some whole, some made of different animal parts combined into chimeric effigies. The trees were carved with various warnings. Lain's Wolf was a bit rusty. Roughly translated, they declared the next point they'd get about trespassers being unwelcome would have an arrow shaft attached to it.

"Stowhart," Lain said to the steering console's microphone, his finger pressed on an adjacent red button, "landing procedures will be completed shortly. Suit up and collect the oaf. I shall escort Masamune Kage to the ladder."

"Yes, Brother—"

"What th'fuck did that inbred pound mutt call me?"

"I will meet you there. Hey! Ed, stop!"

"Gimme th'damn mic. Listen you sonofa—"

Lain released the button with a content hum. He flipped every control with an automatic setting and bent to grab several clinking sacks from underneath the console before leaving to fetch Masamune.

"We're here," he said, approaching the large otter's scarred back. He hadn't moved from the ship's bow since their earlier staring contest.

Masamune, arms folded, chuckled without facing him. "We? I'm Masamune. Don't rope me into whatever you call yourself."

"We've landed," Lain reiterated, stone-faced.

"Ah," Masamune said. “I thought it was weird th'clouds turned green 'n leafy all of a sudden."

Lain began counting to ten in his head and stopped at three when his nose reminded him he stood downwind of Masamune's backside.

"You never told me how much you charge for your...services," he said after stepping to Masamune's right.

"My prices vary. Shit like this'll run your pocketbook harder than I would on th'corner," Masmaune sneered in his direction. Lain's face remained an acrylic portrait of unamusement. "That was a joke. I was sayin'—"

"You charge more killing for hire than you do selling your diseased, withered asshole to slovenly commoners," Lain said. "I understood the joke."

"Oh."

"Recall how I said the kidnappers demanded ten thousand gold's worth of credits? Can you count to ten thousand, Masamune Kage?"

Masamune's whiskers perked. "I can learn."

Lain dropped his sacks at Masamune's feet, each landing with a sound like generational poverty's bell curve being smashed flat.

"You count to twenty thousand by counting to ten thousand twice. Practice with these and you'll be ready for your next payment, after we rescue my brother. I assume you'll want to leave your earnings aboard this ship for the duration of our mission, unless you have a bank account with which I may digitally transfer your funds?"

"Uh what huh?" Masamune said. He'd never gaped this hard at another man's sack before.

"I didn't think so. While I'd normally allow you to count your money, if you even can count beyond the physical limits of your fingers and toes, the kidnappers are sure to have seen us land. They'll send scouts."

"I ain't appreciatin' your quips, pup," Masamune said, his tone seesawing between awe and umbrage.

"There I go again, assuming things. I'd thought you were used to your patrons talking to you dirty."

"Now wait a minute you—"

Lain fished another heavy pouch from behind his cloak, shook it, then dropped it atop the pile of sacks. Its landing sounded like a cash register's ka-ching to Masamune.

"—handsome, masculine, well groomed, pedigreed specimen of lupine greatness!"

"Sir will do."

"Yes, Sir!"

"Go kill the scouts."

"Yes, Sir!"

"Good boy."

They left to meet the others to disembark, which went as smoothly as it did when they boarded. Everyone else climbed down the airship's ladder first and waited for Ed to descend as quickly as he could with his eyes shut tight.

A silent breeze fluttered through the jungle like a bated breath. Leaves and vines and shrubs made an impenetrable phalanx hiding anyone who might've been spying on them from within. This would've been the moment in the movie where the audience sees the victims—heroes through an otherworldly stalker's eyes. The cameraman would've sat high up in the trees to simulate an alien hunter's lofty perch, their lens smeared with cocoa butter to give the thermal sensor effect extra texture. A distorted recording of the screenwriter gargling that morning would've played, simulating a grotesque creature's harsh growls. This was a scene destined for cliché dialogue, famous last words.

"This place gives me the creeps," Stowhart said.

"Yeah," Ed said. "Y'think we should split up or what?"

"Aye," Masamune said, stroking his beard, lips pursed. "Let's all go ahead one at a time, then th'next guy'll follow th'last one's trail when we stop hearin' footsteps."

Stowhart, still playing along, almost informed them his cellphone wasn't getting any signal when he saw Lain's scowl.

"This is one of the most dangerous jungles in all of the Three Worlds," he said.

"Aye," Masamune nodded.

"I heard it was th'most dangerous one, if y'don't count th'ones with mountains shaped like skulls, 'n lost temples," Ed said, twirling an axe between two fingers. "Figure some woods 'n a few coconuts can't be too dangerous if it don't got skull mountains."

"And you both want to go ahead by yourselves," Lain continued.

"Of course not!" Masamune said, aghast. "I'm goin' by myself. Ain't gonna let this KS'in little shit hog all my fun."

Ed, who stood a full head taller than Masamune thank-you-very-much, growled. "You didn't even know what 'KS' meant until I told you! Besides, you went alone last time. It's my turn ta fight th'bloodthirsty natives."

Lain steepled his fingers together, unsure of how to feel about these developments aside from knowing to step back when Masamune drew a katana.

"I'm goin' first," he said.

Ed yanked his other axe off its harness, so he held Get Fucked and Or Else at his sides as he stomped toward him. "I'm goin' first."

Stowhart put his left hand and a smile between them, almost certain he was about to lose both. "Do either of you even know where the compound is?"

Masamune and Ed considered this.

"No," Ed eventually said.

“Instead of aimlessly trailblazing through the jungle and attracting unnecessary attention," Stowhart began, "why don't we all go together, following Brother's directions?"

"Your brother's already paid me t'go kill th'scouts," Masamune said, waggling his brows at Ed.

"He paid you?!"

"And where are they?" Stowhart persisted, ignoring Ed.

“I dunno," Masamune said. “I'll mark their graves for ya when I kill 'em."

"We shall go together," Lain said, internally lathered in the buttery ease with which his plan fell into place. He loved it when manipulating feeble minds was as easy as throwing around shiny rocks and telling people to go hit somebody else. "Follow me and stay close. Once we rescue Emil—"

"How do you know where th'compound is?" Ed asked.

Lain's internal sneer spun around so fast it nearly flew off. "What?"

"I said how do you know where th'compound is?" Ed repeated. "It's not like that photograph came with a map. Th'kidnappers gave you directions to their super secret jungle hideout or what?"

Lain cleared his throat, composing himself. Stowhart, not as adept at wearing faces as solid as his armor, began to sweat from something other than the humidity.

"Yes. I mean, no, it doesn't. Well. You see..." Lain began before a certain familiar within him said "I can sense them," usurping his mouth and vocal cords to do it.

"Yes," he continued with a grunt. "Sense them. I can sense them with my...elemancy. Magic."

"Are you alright?" Ed asked.

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"Y'went all jerky for a second there. Eyes rolled back, tongue out. Looked weird as fuck."

"Oh."

Lain cleared his throat again.

"It must be the weather. Anyway, I shall lead the way. Stay close behind me, and don't get lost. Don't lag too far behind. Scouts aren't the only thing we'll need to watch out for in these woods."

"You're bein' dramatic," Masamune scoffed, holding Moon Cutter against his shoulder, Sun Reaver at his side. "How dangerous can some dinky little island be?"

2

Their hike to the compound was as uneventful as any walk through a jungle full of natives who wanted your spleen in their ragout. Arrows were fired. Words exchanged. Masamune prevented Lain and Stowhart from interfering in any way. If Ed couldn't steal his fun, his client couldn't either.

Lain led them into the thicket feeling confident, vivified. He led them out knackered and bloodied. The bodies they left behind could've been scouts. They could've been territorial hunters who didn't know they were attacking a demon wearing an otter's pelt. They could've been sweet old ladies and cute little girls prancing innocently through the woods when Masamune jumped them. None of them had time to say otherwise, if you discounted their screaming.

"Are you sure we couldn't bring that boar along?" Ed asked for the third time. "That's good eatin' we left behind."

Lain, who mourned the days when he knew where every meal came from because he ordered them off an app, growled.

"Chill out, Lad. There'll be boar dinners every night for weeks," a gore splattered Masamune assured. Some of the blood was his. No one would attack them if he didn't let his enemies get off a few lucky shots every now and then.

"I'm sure we're close," Lain said, panting. Long hikes through humid jungles were out of his element, but that wasn't why his complexion soured. He'd never seen anybody choke another animal with their own guts before. "The compound should be around this bend."

"Brother," Stowhart said, reaching for Lain's shoulder, "we can take a break if you'd like."

Electricity zapped his fingers and he reeled back, snarling. Ed saw. He knew Lain had a stormy attitude, but he didn't expect to see lightning shoot out of him.

"One Hell of a static shock!" he said, brows raised.

"It must be the air," Stowhart said bitterly.

“Yes, the air…" Lain said. “I am alright. Keep your distance for the time being."

The compound revealed itself as they rounded the bend, dense leaves pulling away like shaggy curtains. The same compound in Lain's photograph, Kage insignia and all, plus a decade or two's tropical exposure. Rundown was too nice a word. This kind of disrepair came from enduring enough typhoons to flood a baseball stadium. Its roof either sagged or held itself together with new planks, the construction equivalent of putting a bandage with little hearts on it on gunshot wounds. You couldn't tell steel from wood because time'd stained both into the color of a moldy boot.

It stood despite this, not because of the architect or builder's good work. Old, dilapidated buildings like these were all over the multiverse. They stood on nothing but the sheer, stubborn need to be an eyesore, because they can't be anything else. A new coat of paint would've shown its emaciated frame, like a jacket on a wire mannequin. Replacing its foggy windows would've accentuated the aging features around it. Its ruinous hue would assimilate new boards into its withered hide. Like an elderly person standing in the middle of highway traffic, nothing short of knocking it down would've fixed anything.

All of this would've been fine, if not for the smell.

Some photographs tell you exactly what the subject smells like. Think of a picture of a fish market. A sizzling steak with compound butter on top. A bedroom overflowing with fast food garbage, soda bottles full of stale yellow liquid, and crusty old napkin balls strewn around a musty mattress on the ground. Lain's photo hadn't prepared any of them for the nasal battlefront they now faced. City breeding facilities, with their health inspectors and safety guidelines, artificially inseminated their slaves. The compound smelled as though the Kage had their slaves breed the old fashioned way, in a sauna, while wearing sweaty gym clothes, without showering afterward.

While everyone either clutched their noses or gagged, Masamune leaned farther out of the bushes to get a closer look.

Loud grunts, moans, and cries came from the forest-shrouded building as though a wild orgy was happening in every room, on every floor. Sword-wielding guards prowled outside wearing armor or, the local custom, nothing at all. The naked guards busily sheathed their “other" swords into attending slaves right out on the lawn, their armored comrades sniggering with approval or grabbing their crotches. They'd apparently gone noseblind to the intense B.O. haze blurring their surroundings in its warm fog.

"Bastard..." Masamune growled.

"I'm sorry," Stowhart said beside him, nose pinched, "this must be hard for you, knowing your family would sully their name by dabbling in slave breeding."

Masamune stared at him like he grew a beetle from his forehead.

"Th'fuck you talkin' about? See that guy over there? He's got two bitches hangin' on 'em like he's a damn King! That should be me!"

Stowhart's expression teetered on and off the ledge of disgust.

"Emil," Lain said firmly, "is somewhere within that compound. God knows what's happening to him right now while you oafs are wasting time with your dribble."

"I know, assumin' any of th'guards are gay," Ed said.

Lain closed his eyes and, after an internal millenia, said, “Masamune, take your pet bear for a walk out front. Stowhart and I shall infiltrate the compound from behind."

"Kinky," Ed said.

"Make a lotta noise, be a big distraction," Masamune nodded.

"Precisely."

"How'll we meet back up?"

"Head to the airship when I give the signal."

"Which will be?"

"An explosion."

"Ah."

"What about th'other hostages 'n slaves here?" Ed asked.

"What about them?"

"What'll they do when you give th'signal?"

"That will depend on if they're caught in the blast, most likely."

The brothers left to circle the compound behind the bushes, leaving Masamune and Ed behind.

"Asshole," Ed grunted.

"Since when did you grow a soft spot for animals in cages?" Masamune asked. "You think all them whores we fucked in brothels were there 'cuz they saw a lucrative career in gettin' their backs blown out by sloppy drunks?"

"Yes."

Masamune gave this the consideration it deserved.

"I just don't like his vibe. Somethin's off about him. Aside from th'smell I mean."

"You caught it too, eh? Like chlorine or ozone."

"What?" Ed asked. "I meant his fruity ass cologne."

Masamune stared ahead without acknowledging him.

Ed sighed heavily. "What's ozone?"

"It's a gas. Remember when lightnin' struck our old wagon 'n burned up all our shit?"

"It burned up all of our stuff too," Ed nodded.

"That stink hanging' around was ozone. Only there ain't no storm clouds hanging' over 'em that I can see."

"He's got a storm clouds so far up his ass they're thunderin' in his head." Ed said, unaware of his sentiment's accuracy. “This is a big place…why haven't th'natives dealt with 'em yet?"

Masamune pointed towards the right, at a row of spikes near the clearing's other side.

Ed looked. “Oh," he said. “It don't seem sanitary to keep that this close to a breedin' facility."

“Neither does gettin' blowjobs from three whores in a row, but, as y'can see, these assholes are economical with heads," Masamune said, still jealously watching the guards.

Ed stepped out on cover, axes in hand. "You take th'ones on th'left."

Masamune stepped out beside him, his swords still dripping, still thirsty for more. "I want th'ones on th'left."

"You just want th'ones on th'left 'cuz they got th'most women with 'em."

Masamune sneered sidelong at him. "You don't?"

"You like men too. I only like women. Seems fair I outta get th'left side."

The blood-spattered pair strolled leisurely toward the compound as guards and alarms cried out.

"Maybe it's time ta broaden your horizons," Masamune said, watching Ed as the first guard ran up to them. He parried their sword with Moon Cutter without looking, then stabbed the space between his clavicle and throat with Sun Reaver, burying it to the hilt. The guard made a wet, raspy noise as Masamune unsheathed his katana, a kebab of red-glazed organ meat, and kicked him aside.

"Guys are more fun," he said while stepping through the red mist spewing from his victim's neck. It was hot today.

"You know it's against my religion," Ed said while slamming Get Fucked through the skull of the second guard charging them. His meteoric strike not only split their head down the middle, sending brains and bone flying everywhere, but folded his body inward like an accordion as it smashed into the ground. Guards and slaves fucking on the other side of the compound, too absorbed in their own orgasmic chorus to notice the alarms, heard the wet impact of the second guard's body hitting the ground and mistook it for somebody slapping a jiggly, fat ass.

"Not that I've got anythin' against anybody who don't believe in th'Mettled Warlord. And homophobes piss me th'fuck off in general. Like, who cares who people wanna love? Live 'n let live, y'kno?"

Ed shook his axe until a scraggly piece of scalp slid off.

"You've fucked guys in th'ass before."

More alarms went off. People were screaming now.

"That's different. I was provin' a point. Sendin' a message."

“That fuckin' guys up th'ass felt great?"

“I was assertin' my dominance. It ain't like I enjoyed it 'cuz they were a guy or nothin'."

"Aye," Masamune gave him a look like a wolf eyeing a lamb platter. "Y'did a great job of assertin' yourself alright. I got jealous. Y'can assert yourself around me whenever y'like. Just sayin'."

Ed rolled his eyes. "There you go, makin' it weird."

It's impossible to tell if the guards outside the Kage compound were well paid or underpaid. A well paid guard might see their friends getting turned into corned beef, pick up a sword, and run boldly at the opposition in a show of valorous professionalism. Guards like these all end up dead. Inversely, a well paid guard might figure they have more to live for than a funeral in a tin can with an annoying turn key on the side. Underpaid guards are either too stupid to know this or come to this realization moments before being ground into paste. Whichever kind of guards the Kage employed, they all ran into the compound like their asses were on fire. The naked ones didn't bother grabbing their pants.

“Y'kno, there's this stereotype online," Ed said.

Masamune blinked at him. Internet was a thing when he was a boy but Father didn't approve of electronics, saying they impeded a boy's mental growth. Masamune hadn't seen a real computer until his twenties. Anytime Ed brought up “onlines" he did a quick look around for laundry.

“It says queer characters in fiction tend to be portrayed as homicidal psychopaths or deranged maniacs," Ed continued, looking at Masamune accusingly. “If this were a story, you'd be a pretty offensive stereotype."

“Nah. That don't apply to me," the old man said.

“No?"

“Aye," Masamune said, his sneer the silver bullet in his smoking gun of infallible logic. “I like women too, so I ain't queer."

Ed considered this.

"Don't try changin' th'subject. Look me in th'eye 'n tell me y'didn't like it when ya bust your nuts up that muskrat's ass," Masamune said as they neared the compound's large front door. Whoever rang the bell alarms now switched to an electric siren that echoed throughout the surrounding jungle. "Y'even fucked 'em in th'throat for cryin' about it."

"Oh, I liked it," Ed said, "but I liked it cuz it made me feel strong, not cuz it felt good. Plus, that bastard had it comin'. Prolly slapped Trixie in front of me cuz he was beggin' for it, th'fuckin' fag. No offense."

"None taken. You're th'one who fucked him in th'ass."

"For slappin' Trixie."

"You're deflectin'."

"I didn't like it when I busted my nuts up that muskrat's ass before fuckin' 'em in th'throat for cryin' about it," Ed said, looking him in the eyes.

They stopped at the compound's front door, a large iron slab which the fleeing guards just closed behind them. It opened outwards. Six men pulled it shut before Ed and Masamune arrived, neither of whom were in any hurry. It was the kind of door iron padlocks the size of watermelons were made for. The kind that should've had a sliding door viewer for a pair of serpentine, yellow eyes to peek through, where a gravelly voice would ask “Who goes there?" from behind it.

"Don't th'Mettled Warlord live in Hell or some shit?" Masamune asked.

Ed scratched his chin. It'd been a while since one of Papa's sermons, even longer since he'd read the Book of Holy Grievances.

"Yes...He invaded Hell, conquered it, and kicked Death out into the world. He rules it and welcomes all warriors who die in battle in his name with an eternal reward."

"So ass fuckers go to Hell along with everybody else."

"If they die fightin' in His name," Ed nodded, remembering to capitalize the H with his tone this time. "Very succinct of you."

Masamune stared at him. "Did you just call me sus?"

"It means," Ed said, steel-faced and aerated with internal glee, "to the point."

They holstered their weapons while searching the lawn. Of course the guards took the women with them. The bastards. They squeezed their fingers through an inch wide gap between the door and its frame, and heaved. Their muscles bulged, launching blood and sweat like they'd leaped off a trampoline.

"So...what's th'conniption?" Masamune asked, grinning with effort. "Fuckin' a guy don't sound too against your religion t'me."

The door groaned alongside them with stubborn resistance. Dust fell over their shoulders.

"I'm not...fucking you...old man."

"I never said I wanted ya to."

"Ya never said you didn't."

Both animals snarled together with a brutish tug that wrenched the door wide open. This threw a pair of hapless guards, who thought they pulled the door against mortal men instead of walking steroids, at their feet. Masamune drew his swords and sheathed them into the backs of their necks before they even knew they'd fallen down. Ed entered by stepping over their gurgling corpses, axes drawn.

Mexican standoffs look the same across the multiverse, even in Three Worlds, where racing to the John after lunch at the local taco stand was the closest to the border anyone could get. This one saw Masamune and Ed staring down a pack of fifty snickering gnolls, wolves, weasels, badgers, and other predators crowding together in a spacious foyer, all armed with lethal weapons in their hands and jockstraps. The gang looked like they'd taken a pit stop at a skimpy leather bar on their way to a post-apocalypse themed biker convention. Enough spikes and leather occupied the otherwise elegant space to make a porcupine in his punk phase glare with envy. The armored guards who'd retreated now lay dead between them, fresh stab wounds airing their grievances, and insides, to the world. The naked guards and women were probably the ones screaming somewhere within the throng which was, coincidentally, also where all the cackling moans were coming from too.

"Masamune Kage," the largest animal in the pack called out, a burly badger with pink hair and enough pierced jewelry to make one swear off metal detectors forever. "Lord Masamura sends his regards."

Masamune might've stood about eight feet away from him. Ed was going to ask “Where to?" when he slashed in the badger's direction, whipping his hair back from the breeze above his eyebrows.

There was a pause. The badger and his gang cackled afterward. "What was that supposed t'be? You forget your glasses at home, old man?"

Masamune licked blood off his sword. He pretended he didn't cut his tongue on Moon Cutter's jagged blade so as not to wince and ruin the ominous effect this should've had.

"No," he said, righting his grip. For a moment, he'd held his katana by its pommel between two of his knuckles.

The top half of the badger's scalp finished doing somersaults over the quieted pack, who'd followed its trajectory with slack jaws after noticing it was missing from their boss's head. The badger, last to notice he lacked more off the top than usual, peered upwards at the gushing summit above his forehead.

"Y-you clipped my do, duuuuuuuuuuuude..." He said, and fell back with a thud, dead, claws still groping empty air above his sliced ears.

"Told ya it was a trap," Ed said, breaking the icy silence of life choices being reassessed. Dressing up like a biker goon seemed fun until a master samurai needed a bloody action sequence.

"Th'first one who tells me where Masamura is can keep their heads," Masamune shouted. "Th'one who takes me to him can live."

A meek, gloved hand rose within the pack. "So, to be clear, the person who tells you where he is will keep their head, but not their life."

"Heads," Masamune said. "I'm gonna stab th'guy who tells me where he is in th'heart. I'm gonna cut everyone elses's heads off. Th'one above th'shouders, 'n th'one between your legs."

"Ah," the owner of the gloved hand said.

"That don't sound like too good an incentive to me!" the owner of the next hand to shoot up over the crowd said.

"One's an instant death. The other's you watchin' me cut your dick off," Masamune said."

"Hm," the second speaker said, contemplatively.

"Also, he's lyin'. We're gonna kill all of ya and have fun while doin' it," Ed said.

"Don't tell them that!" Masamune said, mirroring Ed's grisly leer.

"Even the person who takes you to Lord Masamura?" someone else asked.

Masamune frowned. This was a lot more talking than he'd prepared for. He scratched his forehead with Sun Reaver's hilt.

"No...I mean...Maybe? I dunno. Probably," he said. "I'll at least kill ya faster than if I'd stabbed ya in th'heart."

"You can do that?"

"Sure."

There was a general murmur of amazement. It seemed like quite the bargain.

An animal, a scroungy jackal wearing nothing but a studded vest and a frown like a coulrophobe at the circus, emerged. "I know where Lord Masamura is! I'll take you to him."

Three thin blades sprouted from the jackal's bare chest. He grunted, like holding in a burp, but didn't appear to notice. What he did notice, what twisted his face in a bread knot of agony, was when those blades twisted in an upward angle, slicing meat, fur, and bone with sinewy ease. The blades sunk into his chest, then stabbed three new holes in it from behind. Again. And again. And again. And again and again and again, until the wailing man, his entire front painted red, went limp in his attacker's grasp.

A wolverine armed with steel claws released him, letting the corpse drop with a sloppy splat before stepping over it. He licked his gauntlet's blades. Masamune winced. He hadn't cut his tongue…a professional! This animal wore a tight fitting jockstrap, proudly presenting his collection of scars and muscles.

"What Karl meant t'say was: We'll never tell ya shit!" The wolverine roared, arms opened to his comrades, the ones whose blood weren't staining them.

"We don't care who ya are! We don't care if you've got samurai skills t'pay th'bills! We'll make mincemeat outta ya, keep stabbin' ya till you're jelly, then we'll spread ya on our toast 'n shit ya out tomorrow mornin'!"

"Who died 'n made you leader, Malcolm?" someone else shouted, without raising their hand, and channeling every ventriloquist act they'd ever seen to throw their voice across the room.

"Bob did, when Masamune Kage killed him!" Malcolm shouted back, raising a gauntlet. "Unless somebody wants to contest th'new leadership?"

No one contested him, but nobody would've heard over Malcom's manic laughter anyway. Someone started laughing too, hesitantly at first, until more animals joined in and the entire gang was cackling like mad hyenas.

"Masamune Kage is mine! Ya'll have fun with th'bear. What's our motto, boys?"

"Rush 'em down!" the animals cheered.

"What'll we do if they got us out-gunned, out-skilled, 'n out-manned?"

"Rush. 'Em. DOOOOWN!"

"Who're we?"

The RUSHDOWNS!"

"LOUDER!"

"THE RUSHDOOOOOOWNS!"

"Say your prayers bitches!" Malcolm the wolverine sneered as fists and weapons went up amidst jubilant roars. "Y'might get some of us, but y'can't kill us all!"

Ed, yawning, regretted leaving his handheld back on the ship. Masamune, who'd waited patiently with one katana over his shoulder and the other tapping against his thigh, widened his stance.

"Maybe not," he said, "but who's gonna be alive t'find out?"

3

Lain used his key to get in through the back door. Stowhart followed behind.

"Are we really leaving them to die?" he asked.

"That's the plan," Lain said, marching ahead.

"But...do you really think Masamura's men will be enough to handle them?"

"Assuredly. As skilled as Kage are purported to be in combat, no two men can take on an army of eighty-eight trained warriors by themselves."

Stowhart said nothing. One of his sword instructors in the Order was a Kage. The kind of long bearded, impossibly old sword sage who could cut a fly with such precision that it'd continue buzzing around without realizing its wings were gone. He was an unscrupulous bastard and massive pervert, but that didn't matter. It paid credence to his skills, if late-night samurai flicks taught him anything. His instructor, armed with the chopsticks tying his bun, could make an army of eighty-eight trained warriors tap dance while reciting poetry in French. What would the world's most wanted swordsman do to them?

“Our job here is finished," Lain said, as though sensing his doubt. “We're one step closer to getting Emil back."

Lain glanced at him.

"Emil is more important than whatever inconsequential bond you've developed with Masamune's pet, correct?"

"Of course he is."

Yellow afternoon cast dusty spears across the carpeted floor ahead of them, shining through various cracks and windows.

"Do the Rushdowns really have eighty-eight men?" Stowhart asked.

"I counted fifty-three, last I saw them," Lain said.

"Then why did you say eighty-eight?"

"I'm told they're perpetually hiring. They can't maintain their target number when their namesake demands they throw themselves at their opposition like lemmings into wood chippers."

Stowhart scoffed at this speciest analogy. Everyone knew lemmings preferred drowning.

"But why stop at eighty-eight?"

Lain shrugged. "They think it sounds cool, who knows? It's probably another stupid movie reference."

Lain stopped before a wooden door with the Kage lotuses carved onto it.

Masamura Kage should've been waiting here.

He couldn't magically sense people, like his familiar's earlier lie suggested. He felt pulses vibrating the ground beneath his feet, heard breath displacing air, felt body heat change a room's temperature. If he focused, he could even hear blood gushing through veins. These weren't the same as magically sensing things, which involved lots of aura-based, hand-wavy gobbledygook. He could do that too, but it wasn't as cool.

The point being, he sensed animals behind this door.

He grasped its cold knob, turned it, then opened the door.

The brothers entered along a runway of light as it unrolled itself into the dark room from the hallway behind them.

The door slammed shut.

A spotlight snapped on, illuminating a green-haired gnoll seated behind a glittery, red drum set, arms raised. His arms became manic blurs, pummeling the instrument to create a racket so invasive, so much more felt than heard, that a listener could've sued for pain and suffering.

Another spotlight came on. A blue-haired gnoll standing within it struck the kind of chilling note on his electric guitar, a bloody battle axe with guitar strings on it, that'd send Yeti's looking for space heaters. He followed this up with a wild riff fit for dueling the Devil himself, his blazing fingers making the air shimmer, his reverb dancing like an auditory mirage.

Lain, who hated classical music as much as the next guy, frowned as these more abominable melodies used his heart like a trampoline. At least things couldn't get any worse.

Another spotlight lit.

"YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!!!" screeched a yellow-haired gnoll into a skull on a standing spine like it was a microphone. The room shook. Stowhart, covering his ears, felt the incessant scream burrowing into his brain.

The fourth, and final, spotlight shone in front of the three gnolls, revealing the back of a large animal with his arms spread so every letter of his glittery red cape was legible as it billowed. It read: “BEATSTICK and the RUSHDOWNS" in flaming letters. The "I" was dotted with a skull sticking out a snake like a tongue. Iridescent blood spatter underlined it. The animal tore this cape off in a flourish, throwing it at the brothers. Lain made a gust blow it over their heads without moving.

"Lain Granfyre! Stowhart Granfyre!" the animal shouted, an ape with a body cut from marble addicted to protein shakes. Gold chains and thick-barred piercings jingling to the pace of his tapping feet. A vibrant mohawk streaked from his head like a multi-colored exclamation point.

"Foolish mutts of the otherwise illustrious Granfyre family! My audience of TWO! Welcome to my rave! Only those with the privilege, the HONOR, of dying by my hand get a private show, lucky you! I, Beatstick, of the Six Demonic Petals of the Twin Lotus will give you a show to remember! A show you can take all the way to Hell with you! Sing my praises to the Devil, fellas! Make sure he's got my stadium ready for me! I will only play for a sold out crowd!"

Beatstick, an ape who "Put the Ass in Massive" according to the arrow-shaped tattoo on his back, spun around, flashing a gold-toothed sneer. Everything on him glowed hazily under the intense spotlights. His teeth, his shades, his piercings, his sweating muscles, and, lastly, his metallic arms. He wore nothing but a speedo somehow more indecent than Masamune Kage's, a moistened bulge of iridescent fabric holding its musky cargo the way a thin napkin holds a steamy turd.

Stowhart's right eye twitched.

"Where is Masamura Kage?" Lain asked, undeterred.

"Lord Kage had urgent business to attend to," Beatstick said, trading places with his drummer. "You'll deal with me, it'll be a short transaction. Quick, but not painless, puppies! Dig this dogshit."

The ape laced his metallic fingers together, cracked them, then held up both index fingers. These elongated into drumsticks after a bit of steam and mechanical whirring.

Then he played.

An entire marching band couldn't rival the din of Beatstick's infernal drumming if they were all armed with Gatling guns instead of instruments. His metal arms made silvery after-images on the black canvas of darkness behind him. The previous drummer screeched into the mic with his blonde partner, the guitarist shredding all the cheddar he could in the form of heart-juddering notes, all while head-banging wildly.

Stowhart's hands squeezing his ears could've smashed a watermelon to bits.

Then Beatstick's drums collapsed inward, like crumpled paper.

The electric guitar exploded.

The mic burst into flames.

Lain's eyes surged with crackling, hateful energy.

"We had a deal," he said with a hurricane's fury. "Where are my tomes?"

The gnolls snickered between gasps as they blew at their burning instruments ineffectually. Beatstick stood, kicking his destroyed drums aside.

"You should've got it in writing, pup. Ever heard the old adage, two shitheads, one stone? Who wouldn't wanna bump off an aspiring necromancer before his death metal phase, while dealing with some family drama on the side? Lord Kage's ingenuity never ceases to amaze me!"

“Licentious oaf!" Lain roared. "You'll never be amazed by anything ever again!"

Lain raised a gloved hand. The gnolls gasped breathlessly several times, confused at first, before clutching their throats. Their red eyes bulged. Blue veins popped all over their necks as they struggled to breathe oxygen that was no longer there. The gnolls fell one by one, writhing on the ground at their metal-armed leader's feet. He grinned, his grill glinting as brightly as a single red dot behind his left sunglasses lens.

4

You couldn't get more "dime a dozen" than illegal breeding compounds in the Wilds. Jelly beans came close, after inflation. So did toothpicks, thumbtacks, and paperclips. Warlords couldn't raise jellybeans into loyal subjects from birth. Animal traffickers didn't sell office supplies to labor companies. Plenty of sex tourists all over Three Worlds already had a toothpick, but brothels cutting out the middleman by breeding their own workers taught them not to point this out. A successful breeding compound in the Wilds was as versatile as it was musty, able to pivot from one obscene venture to another. What few compounds could've managed without some “cut-throat downsizing", or without Ed and Masamune around, was looking like the killing floor of a busy slaughterhouse.

They stood back to back, weapons brandished, their frayed pelts caked thick with steamy gore. Most of the skimpy biker thugs were now finger-painting on the floor with their guts, their surviving comrades forming a skittish circle around them.

Ed gasped for air.

He glanced over his shoulder at the old man.

He was grinning. Despite having been stabbed, slashed, gashed, and sliced all over, a large, feral grin stretched from ear to ear.

Ed stepped away from him, slowly.

"What are ya waitin' for? Weren't ya'll gonna Rush. Us. DOOOOWN?" Masamune roared and threw himself at the remaining goons in a blind frenzy. One of them frantically thrust his sword at the charging otter. Masamune let it hit him. The blade tore a jagged line down his chest as he ran forward, its tip catching the skin of his left pectoral.

Masamune hissed, his eyes rolling back. His already huge bulge grew exponentially.

Still blinded by masochistic bliss, Masamune slashed Moon Cutter upwards, Sun Reaver downward. His attacker's arms flew off in four parts: both elbows separated, both hands still clutching his sword. Cherry-colored geysers sprayed from his severed stumps as Masamune slashed him down the middle. His muzzle split like the spread of an opened book. His bare chest unzipped like a jumpsuit down to his crotch, his entrails spilling in fleshy heaps before he even hit the ground.

Masamune spun on his heels, swinging both swords in a wide arc. Limbs flew. Blood sprayed. Animals screamed.

Ed watched with dumb fascination, as did the leather-clad animals nearest him. One tried a sneaky stab at his gut and, without looking, Ed cleaved them in half at the side.

More animals attacked Masamune. One gouged his right arm with their machete before their throat was slit wide open. Another buried their hatchet in the old man's back. Masamune gritted his teeth and flexed. The animal couldn't pull his weapon free before Masamune's elbow turned his face into a bone-shattered crater.

Another group converged slowly, flashing steel and fangs with murderous zeal. Masamune, meeting them with his own dark ardor, ripped his speedo off. His dick sprung free, standing tall atop its scraggly throne of white public fur. Its glans was a bright, red ruby crowning the massive erection. It drooled with as much anticipation as the old man himself, throbbing in rhythm with his haggard breathing, webbed with as many veins as his rippling muscles.

The pack froze, gaping.

"What's th'matter boys? Don't mind if I fight with three swords, do ya?" Masamune cackled and leaped over them. His shadow grew over their horrified gazes until the moment of impact.

Ed's opponents ignored the noisy slaughter happening nearby. A wolf charged forward and Ed, caught off guard by Masamune's moaning, swung too late, too wide. The wolf parried his strike with his own axe, sending Or Else flying from his sweaty grip. Another animal struck his other wrist with a club at the same time, making him drop Get Fucked as he recoiled.

"He's unarmed! Quick, kill—"

Ed lunged, ursine jaws crushing the wolf's snout with a sledgehammer's force. Then, yanking back, he ripped the wolf's face off, leaving behind a mask of exposed musculature like a bust made of red clay. The wolf didn't scream. He couldn't before Ed clawed him, raking five cavernous ravines down his front. He regarded them with stunned interest as he dropped dead. Ed clawed blindly at the club-wielding animal behind him, slicing their face into four wedges and throwing him into his friends.

Then Masamune, a running chainsaw thrown onto a dogpile, jumped them.

Ed spat out the wolf's snout, stretched, and went looking for his axes. Several groaning survivors had their heads stomped in along the way.

A coppery haze shrouded the compound's lobby. Every wall, every surface, was splattered red. The floor was completely submerged. Ed approached Masamune slowly after finding his axes, half to keep his footing, half because the old man could've still been in his “trance". Masamune, standing over a pile of corpses, masturbated vigorously with a bloody palm, Sun Reaver clutched between his teeth.

He shuddered, lips quivering around his blade, and came.

Hot semen streaked a gnoll's wide-eyed, grisley countenance in five gushing spurts.

Ed waited for him to finish before clearing his throat.

Their eyes met. It took another moment or two for Masamune's gaze to clear, as though a carnivorous fog clouded over him. The hand wielding Moon Cutter twitched. Ed tensed, ready to parry an attack that never came.

"Oh, you're still alive. Good Lad," Masamune said.

Ed chuckled nervously. "You thought I'd die 'n let you have all th'fun?"

"Nah. I thought I might've slit your throat by accident. Turned out it was some other bear who won't ever fuck me."

"You're still on that?" Ed groaned. Aside from a lingering fear that the old man might attack him on impulse, he was entirely indifferent to the bloodshed around them. You couldn't tail Masamune Kage without getting desensitized to bloodbaths, especially because it was the closest he'd ever get to having good hygiene.

"I'm kiddin'," Masamune said, "I think you're right about it bein' too weird between us. I taught ya how t'swing a sword. I paid for your first blowjob. Watched it too—"

"Don't remind me."

"I've seen you cry 'n shit."

"I dunno what you're talkin' about," Ed said. "I've never cried about anything in my entire life."

"Ah. It must've been rainin'."

"You ain't gonna die on me are you? You've lost a lotta blood."

Masamune surveyed his new red coat and snorted. "I'll be fine. Y'think I ain't shrugged off worse than this?" He asked, swayed, then tripped. Ed caught him.

"Whoa, got all dizzy for a second there...What's that I feel on my back?"

Ed looked over his shoulder.

"It's a hatchet."

"Pull it out."

"You're supposed to leave those in."

"That's if you're impaled. 'Tis but a scratch."

"What?"

"A flesh wound."

"I'm gonna be real pissed if you bust all over me," Ed said, reaching around him and yanking the hatchet free. The old man didn't "bust" on him, but he did squeal a bit.

"Haaa...see? Wasn't deep at all," he said while rolling his shoulders.

"Whatever. Just be glad none of these fucks had any—"

"Guns!" a weasel cried as he kicked through a door, hauling various firearms. "I'm back with th'guns, fellas!"

He tripped over a severed arm and landed awkwardly atop a shotgun, which went off beneath his chin. The echoing blast turned his head into a greasy mist. Boney chunks painted a nearby wall like an expressionist's canvas.

Masamune and Ed blinked, then resumed their conversation.

"How're you feelin'?" Ed asked.

"Like I need a pussy to bust my nuts in," Masamune said.

Ed sighed. “Glad t'see you didn't lose both your heads with old age."

“Whatever. Y'think we can find any of them bitches from earlier?"

"What about your brother?"

"Masamura ain't here. He'd've jumped us by now," Masamune said, sounding almost disappointed. “I need somethin' ta take th'edge off before we find those mutts again. If I see 'em now I'mma just cut their heads off instead of interrogatin' 'em."

"Wouldn't fuckin' sex slaves make us just as bad as these guys are? I mean, we're takin' advantage of helpless animals in a vulnerable situation," Ed said.

They shared a glance, seriously considering this moral quandary, then cackled like the gnolls they'd butchered.

"You crack me up, Lad," Masamune said, wiping away tears. "You really crack me up."

5

Loud explosions preceded the dungeon's ceiling collapsing. Masamune and Ed, safe from falling rubble inside one of the stone cells, nevertheless hid their cocks inside the pair of beautiful jaguars occupying it. You could never be too careful with the family jewels.

"Fuck!" Masamune coughed, dust and tits in his face, and continued hammering his dick into his prone, moaning cellmate. They'd stayed behind after breaking everyone else out of their cells. These lovely ladies obliged themselves to show their gratitude right then and there, possibly because Masamune'd saved them for last and might've forgotten to let them out if they refused. Ed wouldn't let him do something so heinous. He told them they could fuck them for real or get fucked.

"I don't remember kickin' out th'rafters on our way down," Ed wheezed along with his partner, both pressed back-to-belly against an adjacent wall, their crotches grinding together like a mortar and pestle. He stopped thrusting until the dust settled, then resumed vigorously tenderizing her cunt, moaning enthusiastically.

The four of them fucked as though a ceiling hadn't caved in down the hall moments ago. If either woman cared that their horny bachelors were bloodied, feculent brutes their preference toward living outside of bondage made them reconsider.

Masamune's cock was the huge tenderloin to the thin puff pastry that was the spotted feline's pussy, the oven heat of their sex bursting her walls wide open. His hips rammed her deeply, making them writhe like slugs under a blanket of salt. Her sweating breasts muffled his rough moans, jostling violently around his face in rhythm with his fierce, rapid thrusts.

The woman groaned sensually while hugging Masamune, clawing his back and biting his shoulder like his gyrating mass was her only life support while adrift amidst crashing waves. Her eyes fluttered, her groan trailed to a whimper, and she fell limp beneath him. Hot fluids gushed around his pistoning cock, spilling in frothy globs as he continued hammering her through her afterglow.

Masamune came after her. He unlatched his maw from her tit, his hanging tongue slobbering her moistened nipple, moaning aloud. Otter cum overflowed the feline's already cramped loins. Her right oven spat his nut batter along their sweaty thighs in gloopy streaks before his final thrust slammed the walls of her cunt shut. Most of the cum that escaped afterward dribbled sloppily off his shaggy, white nuts.

Ten years from now, the woman would recall Masamune while explaining to her blue-furred son why he looked different from everyone else.

Ed rutted his partner heavily, making her moans rattle at the same machine gun pace of his hips. His massive hand clutched her neck from behind. His other hand squeezed her hip. Ursine nuts the size of lab-grown grapefruit battered between her thighs while his battering ram of a dick relentlessly bulldozed her sopping walls wide open.

They sweated in the sauna of their copulation. Mingled perspiration exploded from their pelts each time he roughly hilted her, peppering the ground in its rainfall. He fucked the sense out of her. She couldn't even remember her own name with her brain ping-ponging in her skull. All it could manage was having her moan like a dumb slut while making a tear-streaked expression twisted with pure ecstasy, one she wouldn't've made if her own Gods came down to personally deliver salvation unto her. Strong fingers craned her head back, and a big tongue invaded her wailing mouth. It slithered deep into her throat, choking her as their lips sealed into a drooling snog. Ed's last thrust pressed her flat between his enormous bulk and the stone wall, both drenched in fluids so hot it'd been like bundling her tight in a soggy quilt. Red-faced, mind-numbed, she hungrily returned his slurping kiss.

Ed's balls clenched. He growled into her mouth, and came.

The sheer volume of his orgasm forced his first shot to spray out of her loins when instantly flooded her to the brim. His semen alternatively streaked the wall or spilled thickly down their quivering thighs in tempo with his girthy cock's throbbing, eventually joining the growing puddle around their feet.

Her son would grow freakishly large compared to his kin, but there'd be no awkward discussion about his fur color, at least.

"Funny," Masamune said, only an inch off his orgasmic merry-go-round, "ya didn't need privacy this time."

Ed pried his tongue out of the woman's sucking mouth. "Must've slipped my mind."

"Y'sure it's nothin' to do with a certain lady in your life? Tusks like ice cream cones?" Highlights like a sunset? Easy on the eyes? Y'only seem to wanna be alone when it's her ass you're poundin'."

"I dunno what you're talkin' about," Ed lied. "Stick to makin' widows. Poetry ain't your thing." He resumed snogging his partner, corking her weak mewling.

"Hm," Masamune said before grinding into the feline beneath him, frowning. He'd workshopped "tusks like ice cream cones" for weeks. He leaned over the panting woman and whispered in her ear.

“Bite me."

Her eyes cleared. Her orgasmic fog was blown away by the tornado of his sudden demand.

"What?"

"C'mon, bite me. Right on my neck. Nnngh! Ooooh, fuck yeah! Gnaw me like a doe, bitch!"

Later, as both men performed the archaic and ineffective contraceptive ritual of eating out their respective partner's cum-stuffed pussies, Stowhart pulled himself out from under a large pile of rubble.

"Brother!" he cried, standing shakily to his feet. Dust filled the air like a crowded smoke room. He could barely see two feet in front of him between this and the dungeon's darkness. Several torches were either knocked off their wall mounts after the ceiling collapsed, or trembled dimly within the hall's gloomy atmosphere.

"Brother, where are you?"

An unstoppable force from above answered him by smashing his back like a gong. A mechanical monstrosity of whirring cogs and smoking pipes, joined into the shape of a big war hammer, struck him hard enough to launch him on impact.

Stowhart was lucky, although his headache would later say otherwise.

A better shot would've flattened him, turning his breastplate into a waffle iron and his innards into the excess batter spilling out its sides. An overhead swing would've turned his head into a whack-a-mole dummy, dunking it so hard into him that coroners would've found his smashed head behind his ribcage. Beatstick's underhand swing simply treated Stowhart the way an overzealous mini-golfer treats his ball. This launched him into a stone wall, upon which he left a canine-shaped crater when he dropped to the ground, clattering like a bag of tin cans.

Beatstick's approaching silhouette had blazing red dots for eyes. His war hammer, hot off a skilled artificer's, or a talented cosplayer's, workbench, steamed appreciably.

Large stones pelted Beatstick from all sides as he prepared to attack the unconscious mutt. One hit the back of his head. Another one dug into his belly, doubling him over. A third, fourth, and fifth crumbled to bits against the metallic arms shielding his face.

“That's not—" a sixth large stone pitched his forehead backwards.

"Very—" a seventh rock hit him after he shook his head, shattering his sunglasses.

"Stop doing that! Where are you?" Beatstick roared, red pupils rimmed in mechanical sockets, colorful bangs hanging over his face.

Lain answered by pelting him with dozens of stones at once. Each one held their places to seal him in a coffin of rubble, which rose to the command of Lain's outstretched arm. His arm tensed and shot towards the hallway, which the coffin hurtled toward and through another wall.

Masamune looked up from the back of his partner's bobbing head when he heard a crash near their cell. "What was that?"

"Ooooh..." Ed, seated beside him, said. His partner's oral skill ensured he wouldn't've heard anything less than a huge explosion, especially not while she so adamantly tried making the bomb between his legs go off.

Lain stumbled into their cell, catching himself against its outer wall. He saw them, squinted, and gagged at the same time. "Noxious" didn't do their post-coital, post-homicidal funk adequate justice.

"You?!" Masamune and Lain said together.

"You" they snarled as one. They waited, now mildly annoyed, intent on letting the other have the first word so they'd have the last one.

"You're alive!" Lain said, giving in first.

"Aye, but you won't be for long," Masamune said, resisting the urge to moan and managing an aggrieved whimper, “if y'don't tell me where Masamura Kage is!"

"Right. Him. He double-crossed me?" Lain asked. Masamune blinked at him. Somehow, he knew the question was being directed at him.

"Yes. Double-crossed," Lain said after a series of ponderous grunts and hums. "Help me kill his goon and I'll take you to him myself."

Masamune opened and closed his mouth. Aside from feeling cheated out of a vital, enjoyably barbaric step in the interrogation process, he couldn't believe this wolf's cheek. He couldn't believe the woman's cheek either…her's were still full of his meat during this strange back and forth.

"You can keep what I was preparing to pay you," Lain said.

"You're nuts if y'think you can buy me after this!"

"Double."

Masamune shoved the disgruntled woman off his penis with one hand while backhanding Ed across the head with the other. "Stand up, Lad. Time to work."

"Th'fuck are you talkin' about—You! You..." Ed said.

"Been there, done that. Get your axes, we've got a different fucker t'kill for now," Masamune said to him. Then, to the women, "You kitties better leave. Things are about t'get messier than th'four of us put together. Call me."

"Call you what?" one of the jaguars asked, neither of whom'd ever seen a telephone in their lives.

"Dunno. Never learned what that sayin' meant." Masamune, hastily fastening his sword belt and pauldron in place, ran after Lain with Ed in tow.

"Have either of you ever heard of the Six Demonic Petals of the Twin Lotus?" Lain asked.

"Don't sound too good," Masamune said. Nothing sounded good in italics, even ridiculous titles like that.

"I watched an OVA whose a villain group had a name like that once," Ed said, "there were eight of 'em, tho."

"They're your brother's personal hit squad. He was supposed to meet me here to deliver my reward for luring you here," Lain said.

"And me too?" Ed asked.

"He never mentioned you specifically, no."

Ed's nonchalant grunt didn't hide a shred of his disappointment.

Masamune squinted. “You trusted somebody with a private hit squad called the Six Demonic Petals of the Twin Lotus?"

"Lots of nobles give their hit squads extravagant names. Father's is called The Goddamned Superstitions."

Lain stopped, searching the dungeon's hall. Dust floated everywhere. Stowhart lay within a rim of debris, as knocked out as a sleeping beauty on a flower bed.

"I won't apologize for tricking you, because it's not as though you shouldn't be brought to justice. He told me you were a murdering, psychopathic, blood-thirsty bastard. A shit stain on your family's reputation he was all too eager to wipe clean. A quick Googol search of your crimes confirmed these assertions."

"Checks out," Masamune said, albeit with narrowed eyes. He suspected “shit stain" was Lain's creative paraphrasing. "So, where's this bastard y'want me ta get my murderin', psychopathic, blood-thirsty bastard freak on with?"

Beatstick chose this convenient moment to erupt from his mountain of rubble with a roar fit for giant apes clutching dumb blondes.

"Ah," Masamune said.

"Look what you did to my HAIR!" Beatstick shrieked, his mohawk now a frazzled mop of colorful spaghetti. This looked pretty bad, but not nearly as bad as half his face being missing. His exposed metallic muscles tightened, contorting their owner's face into a scowl deeper than the earth's core. Masamune whistled. Ed made gagging noises.

Those same muscles loosened with surprise when he noticed the duo behind Lain.

"Masamune Kage!" Beatstick gasped. “You're…"

“Alive? Aye," Masamune chuckled with his eyes closed. He meant to point Sun Reaver at the ape's chest, noticed he was pointing above his head when he opened his eyes, and course corrected before continuing. "You won't be for long, if y'don't tell me where Masamura Kage is."

"I was going to say bald," Beatstick said.

To say this blew the wind out of Masamune's sails was like calling the Titanic's sinking an awkward mishap. Beatstick, sensing a change in the room, added, "You'll sooner make me shit gold than betray my Lord, ronin filth!"

Ed coughed uncomfortably into his fist.

Masamune, eager to get their pre-battle banter back on track, was about to say something witty when Lain cut in with, “Then DIE!"

Masamune deflated again. It wasn't as foreboding as what he wanted to say, but it sent the message.

The wolf raised both hands while chanting. His glowing eyes crackled with electricity. Pebbles rumbled at their feet.

"Herald of Lighting!" Lain words shook the dungeon, loose stones groaning, dirt phantoms freed from ancient crevices all around.

"Bringer of Storms!

Come to me, my Familiar!

Electrify my Enemies into Smoldering Husks!

Thunderkiss! I Summon You!"

The world stopped shaking. Nothing happened. Beatstick glanced around from behind his war hammer. Masmaune, who wasn't a gamer but knew an AOE spell being channeled when he saw one, peeked from behind a deadpan Ed.

Lain waggled his spread fingers. He loosened his arms and thrust them out again in a flourish that didn't look nearly as dramatic the second time around.

"Thunderkiss…I…SUMMON You!"

Nothing continued to happen.

Masamune pursed his lips. Ed's jaws set.

Lain shut his eyes, looking inward with a startled turtle's haste.

T.K.! I'm summoning you! Get out of me!

You've never said THAT to me before, replied a cantankerous, echoey voice.

Lain's consciousness, floating within the dark, ethereal soup of his inner mind, blushed.

The enemy is standing five feet in front of me.

Say it like we discussed.

Thunderkiss, now is SO not the time!

Then I guess you'd better summon me PROPERLY.

Are you serious?

As serious as th'hammer about to play croquet with your face.

Lain barely opened his eyes in time to dodge Beatstick's hammer swing, which hit the ground where he previously stood with an impact that shook the whole building. Stones and debris and dust flew everywhere, choking the dungeon with grimy plumes. Upstairs, the compound sagged inward as smoke billowed from its windows. A resounding smash echoed throughout the surrounding jungle.

“Alright, fine!" Lain coughed while picking himself up. The dust cleared enough so Ed and Masamune, still disoriented from the powerful force that knocked them off their feet, could see Lain striking a pose.

He bent one leg while stretching the other one out, with both arms pointing northwest. Next, Lain switched his legs' orientation and moved his arms in an overhead arc until they pointed northeast. Lastly, he stood up, striking an X pose with all four limbs. These three poses punctuated the same word, shouted with the last ounces of dignity the blushing wolf had left.

All together, it went like this:

"Thunder..." pose.

“Thunder..." pose.

“THUNDER..." pose.

“THUNDERKISS! I SUMMON YOU!!!"

Lightning struck Lain as though dark clouds loomed overhead instead of befouled cobwebs. The black wolf disappeared behind a curtain of electricity that bathed the hall in white flashes. With a deafening thunderstorm's abruptness, the flashes and lightning ended.

Lain stood tall, dignified, unburned but with several hairs on his pelt awkwardly pointing in different directions.

His familiar, Thunderkiss, hovered above him while mirroring his posture: arms folded, glaring with confidence, sneering, in his case, like a metaphorical sonofabitch. An electric mane, like a cowl of live wires, sent errant sparks around his shoulders. He shone with light so intensely yellow it was like staring into the sun. His mere presence illuminated the hall, throwing long, black shadows across its walls. Walls which everyone now saw desperately needed a good scrub.

"An electric elemental!" Beatstick said in a forcefed concoction of dread and awe.

"Aye," Masamune said, coveting his drink, “zesty fuckers, haughtier than dragons. Ain't ever heard of nobody taimin' one."

"Why's he naked?" Ed asked.

Thunderkiss spun around, his electrified cock swinging with the grace of a stun baton on its highest setting. "You're naked too, teddy face!"

“What's that got t'do with…wait, 'teddy face'?"

"Thunderkiss," Lain said in a commanding tone undermined by his rose-colored cheeks. "Cut the theatrics. Skip to the 'Electrify my Enemies into Smoldering Husks' part."

Thunderkiss faced Beatstick, interlaced his fingers, and bent them back until they pealed like successive thunderclaps.

“Yeah, yeah. Your wish, my command."

Outstretching his fingers, Thunderkiss fired lightning bolts from their tips at Beatstick. The massive ape became a skeletal outline within this crackling light show. Masamune and Ed covered their eyes so that when T.K. finished, arms folded, smirking with smug satisfaction, they didn't see the look on his face after the sparks cleared. Beatstick stood in place. His pelt steamed. His already ruined haircut was now a rainbow-colored starburst. Some of the ends were on fire. He was otherwise perfectly fine, if you didn't take his wobbling or crossed eyes into account.

"Hm," Thunderkiss hummed. "I'm all out, Boss."

How Lain didn't break his neck, snapping his head to glare at him, remains an unsolved mystery to this day.

"What?"

"I gave him all th'juice with cherries and whipped cream on top. I even zapped 'em with my dick toward th'end for added insult!" Thunderkiss said, dejected.

"Zap him again, and again, and again until he's so full of 'juice' his mother will mistake him for a smoothie!" Lain said.

T.K. took a moment to mull this over. "Nah," he said.

Lain's bulging eyeballs tested the limits of their stalks.

"Okay, okay, geez. Learn to take a joke."

Beatstick shook his head and was about to speak when nineteen lightning bolts hit him at once, fired from ten fingers, eight toes, and, visible to anyone with safety goggles on, one dick. An even bigger light show, one sounding like the chirps of one thousand angry chicks, burned his darkened form on the backs of everyone's eyelids. T.K.'s electricity dissipated again, and Beatstick remained standing, albeit swaying more now. Static coursed all over his pelt. His mother wouldn't've mistaken him for a smoothie, but she might've confused him for a frizzy hairball.

"Wow!" T.K. gasped, staring at his palms in distress. “This has never happened to me before!" He never saw Beatstick's hammer coming. Its catastrophic swing flattened him, hitting the ground with a wrecking ball's force.

The dungeon quaked and as Lain half dodged, half fell from the hammer's impact, Masamune charged forward. Moon Cutter and Sun Reaver slashed the ape in an X that normally left animals confused before stepping forward and falling into four neat parts. He ducked afterward, narrowly avoiding the hammer swing that would've used his head like a t-ball. Thrusting forward, Masamune attacked Beatstick's legs next. Both swords slashed away huge chunks of pelt, revealing solid metal underneath.

Ed attacked next, flying through the air, both axes raised over his head. If a magazine called Barbarians Monthly existed, and a freelance photographer happened to be in the dungeon now, this snapshot of Ed would've been on next month's cover. Beatstick's elbow crashing into Ed's face a moment later might've even made a decent two-page spread. The blow slammed Ed back against the nearest wall, where he rolled across it before falling to the ground. He spat blood, decided feeling like every bone in his body just got out of a rock tumbler must've meant he was still alive, then passed out.

Air sizzled above Lain, who watched this at a distance. Thunderkiss took shape as a convergence of electric flecks reconstituted him. “This can't be happenin'!" he cried, doubled over in anguish. “What's th'point of livin' anymore if I can't even shock some dumb ape?!"

"I don't know. I heard steamed rutabaga is pretty nice," Lain groaned.

Thunderkiss stared at him sidelong. A rock must've hit his head or something.

“Where's Stowhart?" Lain asked, leaning against a stone wall.

"Th'party pooper?"

"My brother."

"Kissin' cobblestones, last I saw through your eyes." Thunderkiss hovered upwards, peeking over Beatstick's and Masamune's duel. Steel clashed. Sparks flew. Mammals found climactic battles like these interesting, but he totally ignored them. Tornadoes or tsunamis or mudslides destroying entire villages? Now that's entertainment!

He hovered back down.

“Yup, still unconscious."

Still unconscious. Lain gritted his fangs. He'd used a lot of magic today and, although he put on airs, T.K. couldn't've had much left in him either.

"Damnation," he growled, "I wanted you to do 'the trick' with him."

Their faces were lit by the constant flashes of colliding steel, or they would've been if T.K. weren't a walking lighthouse. “Why not tell me t'start chagrin' his batteries too, while you're at it?" T.K. asked, glowering.

“You'll charge a whole recycling bin's worth of used batteries if it means killing that fucker," Lain snapped. “Need I remind you, you'll die too if that ape kills me?"

Thunderkiss fanned himself. “Temper, temper. I won't let you die, but th'point stands. King Dope's out cold."

"Do it with Masamune."

There was a pause. Lain glanced to find Thunderkiss, blushing, twiddling his fingers. A certain part of his electric anatomy, level with Lain's nose, twitched.

"I meant: do 'the trick' with his katana, you perverted idiot!"

"Oh. Sure. Yeah, that works." They stared each other down until Thunderkiss, with a cracking boom like a rifle's bullet, flew towards Masamune. Sun Reaver happened to rebound off the ape's shoulder at that exact moment, providing a lightning rod for the jagged streak that was Thunderkiss to collide with in a blinding flare. Masamune, recoiling, held it at arm's length. Beatstick, equally disoriented, staggered backwards.

A new current fired from his energized sword to zap Moon Cutter, enveloping it in a bright aura. Now both swords glowed, emitting powerful discharges like humming transmission towers. Masamune cooed while waving his new weapons around. He looked like a homeless vagrant who'd robbed the prop closet of a space opera production.

Static pinched his sweaty body with quick, wormy fingers. His palms, feeling like they held two cattle prods' electrodes, tingled. A translucent face with a zig-zagging sneer appeared on the screen of energy flowing between his two blades.

"Well, this is weird!" Masamune said. "I always thought gettin' zapped with anythin' worse than a taser wouldn't feel as kinky."

"I could roast ya, but I'm bein' nice cuz you're hot," T.K. said, his face moving like stop motion at three-fourths the speed.

“Story of my life," Masamune replied with a smirk. He almost ran a hand over what remained of his hair when a volt from Moon Cutter zapped him.

"Quit feelin' yourself 'n do some badass electro-shock-samurai shit while I'm in a helpin' mood old man!"

Beatstick ran at them and swung his hammer. His footfalls were the banging of raider's war drums, his roar their bloodthirsty battlecry. Masamune reflectively put Sun Reaver in its path. Before, their weapons would've scraped shrilly, spitting a shower of sparks like a struck match. Now, his voltaic blade sliced through the war hammer's bulbous head like a hot cleaver through a mound of lard. Sparks still flew at them, along with severed cogs and scorched bolts and heaps of other miscellaneous widgets artificers squeeze into their contraptions. Beatstick finished his swing and the other half of his hammer finished flying several yards further down the hallway. Both halves were rimmed with a molten, orange outline.

Their stunned surprise was mutual.

Masamune, trained through years of disappointing climaxes, recovered a fraction of a second quicker.

The world slowed, dipped in the cruel amber of Masamune's keen flow state. He could count every pebble, every old, crusty condom tossed down and forgotten in the dungeon, every vein on Beatstick's tensed throat within the half a millisecond it'd take for the ape to realize he'd been killed.

Masamune's arms were twin whirlwinds. His swords struck like lightning, their yellow afterimages trailing behind them. Slashes and thrusts and strikes and swings etched impressionist strokes on the cyborg ape's bodily canvas, who remained locked in slow motion, still mid-leap.

Beatstick's upper half split from his waist.

Then his metal arms divided into fours, then his legs into eights, then sixteenths, thirty-seconds, and so on.

Blood and oil squirted at the speed of pouring marmalade. Masamune felt real flesh being torn somewhere within this walking jungle of magitech, and his cock throbbed with murderous glee.

From Lain's perspective, Masamune's movements were an erratic blur, a frenetic barrage of electrified slashes belying his surgeon-like precision. He blinked and missed the final two strikes. The first chopped Beatstick's head, still screaming on muscle memory alone, off his shoulders. It flew atop a fountain of mechanical gore, spewing from his stump of a neck.

Then, the final slash.

Masamune leaped at the floating head with his arms crossed, the twin lightning bolts that were his swords trailing over his shoulders as though propelling him forward. He and Beatstick's head locked eyes, and in that moment the world truly froze.

He slashed both swords outwards, stamping a high-voltage yellow “X" that lingered in mid-air after he landed. This cross-slash made a noise like laser swords locked together, or the hum of a projector monitor, which, in realities with ingenuitive sound engineers, was the same thing.

Finally, as a force of habit, Masamune flicked his katana. Charred soot flung off instead of the usual bodily fluids. Whatever the case, he twirled and slid the now clean swords into their scabbards. Their tsuba, their hand guards, meeting each scabbard with audible clicks became reality's signal to resume its normal pace.

Beatstick's head split into quarters. These and his hundreds of other pieces rained down behind the old otter for several seconds, like hail sputtering a windshield. Last to hit the ground was the half of his magitech war hammer, his dead fist clenched. It fell with a clatter, then disappeared in a flutter of neon particles.

Masamune glanced left and right, yawned, then scratched his balls. Ed must've been unconscious. This was usually the time where he'd play that annoying “RPG victory music" on his phone.

"My word!" Lain said, now remembering how to speak.

"Which one?" Thunderkiss groaned, reconstituting himself above Masamune, eyes spinning. "You're never takin' me on that carousel ride again, mammal!"

Masamune found Ed, who groaned something about reloading his last save, and sat him up. Masamune breathed a sigh of relief. His head took most of the damage from hitting the wall, so nothing he regularly used.

"That's one nasty bump, Lad. Want me ta kiss it 'n make it better?"

Ed's eyes instantly cleared.

"Kiss my ass on a Taco Tuesday." He winced while surveying the new mess. "Is he dead?"

Masamune glanced over his shoulder at the heaps of ape chunks prepared on the cutting board of his fury.

"Probably. You'd have to put 'em back together 'n ask if ya wanna be sure."

"Fat chance of that!" T.K. said. He floated over the diced corpse, humming as he appraised Masamune's handiwork. "Say, you sure you didn't wanna question this guy for intel or nothin'?"

Masamune blinked.

"Fuck."

6

The stifling afternoon heat was like smoke from a burning skillet. Jungle plants sagged. Sweat rolled like tumbling boulders. Bodies carried out of the compound rotted like, well, meat left out in the sun all day. Bugs swarmed, and were beaten away with large leaves.

An elderly jaguar, the leader of the tribe Masamune and Ed freed from the dungeons, oversaw the work of clearing out the compound's main lobby. This was the job for a biohazard crew, or at the very least someone with lots of mops and buckets. It should've been a serious operation, with safety protocols and decontamination processes and health insurance assessments, with none of the glee with which tribesmen tossed the corpses of their former captors into a sticky pile on the compound's lawn. You never let fresh meat go to waste in the Wilds, much less the Feral Islands, where the local butcher's idea of cutting out the middleman was slitting his throat.

Younger jaguars wearing nothing but iron manacles streamed in and out of the compound or hovered around their leader, awaiting commands. Mothers were reunited with their children. Families became whole. Everything worked out for the tribe, not counting the whole sex slavery thing.

The elder, an aged but strong jaguar flanked by two warriors, approached Ed and Masamune. He wore an old man's scowl. One saying he'd weathered life's storms, or that he was always prepared to tell someone to get off his lawn. They'd broken him out of his shackles first, so only his scars, tattoos, and spots adorned his muscle-stretched, graying pelt. He was holding a pair of large legs by their ankles, offering them to the duo.

Ed made a face.

"What is the matter?" the elder asked.

"That's a bear's leg," Ed said.

"Yes," the elder said.

They stared at one another.

"May I have th'other one?" Ed asked.

The elder blinked, inspecting the limb alongside his warriors. He couldn't see anything wrong with the bear leg. Its meat was a fresh, healthy color. He was the type of man who, while sitting in an outhouse's pit, would've been thankful if he only felt rain. He was a man to whom manganese and cerulean were both simply shades of blue.

He swapped the legs and the duo took them.

Masamune, as he'd implied to Ed several times, had no issue with eating bear meat. He happily tore into the raw limb, devouring it with the table manners of a championship eater breaking a world record. Stowhart, who knew animals ate raw meat all the time in the Wilds, nevertheless wrinkled his nose. Lain, who stood beside him, hadn't shut his mouth ever since Beatstick's demise and didn't see any reason to close it now. Lunch at Jerk's hadn't prepared him for Masamune's cartoonishly disgusting lip smacks. Ed lost his appetite. He couldn't enjoy fresh meat while watching the old man reduce a kinsman's limb to bone. A kinsman he murdered, sure, but the thought was there.

"Are you certain there is no other way we can repay you?" the elder asked.

Masamune hummed with his mouth full. "A harem of your youngest virgins'll do th'trick. No, stop, I was jokin'."

The elder stopped giving orders to a nearby feline in their native language, brows perked. Several busty feline women already materialized in his orbit, naked and dressing Masamune with their purring leers. Some had their hands behind their back. Others leaned forward. Both postures protruded many hefty chests in Masamune's direction at once. Some in the catcalling business would've called these “jugs". Masamune, thinking “wine barrels" described them more accurately, swallowed. You'd've had an easier time proving Santa Claus was real than convincing him these young women were virgins, but he was willing to compromise.

"Well, mostly jokin'," he said. "Your village anywhere near here? I'll visit later so y'all can gimme th'King's treatment."

"Our village was burned down. We are all that's left," the elder said. Forlorn tribesmen groaned. Even the previously salacious women quit leering to lower their heads. To Masamune, it was like an infomercial for hemorrhoid cream just played in the middle of a porno.

"However," the elder continued, "we'll happily accommodate your vices should we ever cross paths again. Ask anyone in the jungle for the Balami tribe. We shall find a new home for ourselves soon enough."

"Good shit," Masamune said, and took another bite of his bear leg.

“If you'd join our tribe," the elder said, smirking conspiratorially, “you'd have the privilege of taking any woman for a bride. We need powerful warriors like you, now that we're vulnerable."

Masamune swallowed, eyeing those young women who'd gotten over mourning their ancestral home and resumed looking like they wanted to take turns slobbering his drumstick.

"We've got our own shit t'do," Masamune decided after an intense internal debate.

"A pity. Regardless, I thank you for freeing us and our sister tribes from our captors. Please, seek us out when you've finished your business on the Feral Islands."

Ed risked glancing at Masamune's half-eaten leg to look at the elder. "Sister tribes?"

"Yes. Surely you've freed the tribes who occupied the upper floors?"

The compound collapsed behind them before Ed answered.

Its roof folded inward, imploding top to bottom like a house of cards. Card houses didn't sound like atom bombs when they fell down, and neither did slave compounds, but everyone, especially those still inside, now had a decent frame of reference. Smoke rose from the rubble like the final wisps of a stubby blunt. Ed's jaws set. He didn't turn around.

"Yeah," Masamune said with his mouth full. "Got to 'em first, couldn't tell ya why they didn't wait. Y'all should hurry up 'n catch up with 'em."

7

They left the jaguar tribe without goodbyes, fanfare, or celebratory trumpet acts with confetti everywhere and fat old ladies waving rags out of their windows. Better this than sticking around until someone pulled a familiar corpse out of the wreckage, Masamune'd said. Their trip back to Lain's airship went unabated. Word traveled fast in the jungle. Looking like they'd all climbed out of a vat of cherry puree and smelling like a body farm in the middle of June surely helped.

They emerged from the thicket to find Lain's airship, untouched like sidewalk cracks during summer break.

"I knew it was a trap," Ed said, breaking the silence as deliberately as he'd break his worst enemy's heirloom china.

"I mean, It was pretty obvious," T.K. said from somewhere unseen, in a voice like an invisible army of scurrying cockroaches. "You'd have to be a fuckin' idiot not to see it comin'. Thanks for bein' so gullible, by th'way."

"What he means is," Stowhart began before Ed spun on him.

"I thought you were cool!"

Stowhart stopped his tail from ducking between his thighs. His ears twitched, wanting to droop like melting wax. "I am cool!"

"You plotted to have me killed!"

"No! Well, not you. Just him," Stowhart pointed at Masamune, who smiled and waved at everyone. "It wasn't anything personal, I swear. This may ring hollow after everything that's happened but...Brother and I have our reasons."

"Stowhart'," Lain began.

"They have to know! They'll never trust us again if we don't explain ourselves, especially if you're adamant on pursuing your foolish revenge instead of going home while we can!"

“Call me th'little devil on his shoulder," Masamune said, now frowning. “I won't let him go home until he takes me to Masamura. Your reasons don't mean jack shit t'me."

Masamune thought the brothers' pained expressions were because of what he said, but actually it was because he was stroking his beard with a hand he hadn't washed all day.

"I won't tell ya t'shut up for th'Lad's sake, tho. I know he's curious."

"Then it can't be helped," Stowhart said, ignoring how Masamune's beard now looked like he'd gelled it to a point with strawberry syrup. "We must put our cards on the table, as it were. No more deceptions. No more lies."

Lain, sighing, went to climb up the airship's ladder. "Do what you want."

Stowhart stood between the duo.

"Looks like it's my turn for backstory time, eh?" Stowhart laughed, and stopped when he saw Ed's glare. "It all started like this..."