The Laughing Magickian
Elroodan, Elrood - An alleyways leading up to SPACEPORT B
“Aw, Sithspit, man – They’re coming! They’re karking coming!”
Smitt, Jezzy, and Fat Gay Dan were not native to Elrood by any means, as their tattered street fashion no doubt screamed to the more agrarian locals. Colored hair, spiked bracelets, black velvet and leather, vinyl and mesh were their counter-cultural attire of the day, vying for status within the Spunk Rawk scene (or what passed for it these days, anyway) and the relevant concert they were on-planet to attend. The whole thing was not at all shocking anymore and had become quite predictably uniform, but no matter what crimes of Posing had been committed, they were just teenagers, trying on new personas and then shedding them for new ones like dead skin cells, and they didn’t deserve to go out like this.
Devoured by a bunch of hungry conformists in a back alley while trying to make it to their busted-up astrovan.
“Shut the kark up, Smitt – Man the kark up and keep it the kark together.”
“Kark sake, Smitt – It’s karking unattractive as kark.”
Jezzy was a little spitfire in her straight laced combat boots, spikes adorning the toes like some wicked triceratops of podiatry as if she’d been waiting for this zombie apocalypse her entire life (and if you were to check the reading material on her holopad, you’d find she probably was). She had kept a brick in her purse for those moments where all the males in the pub got a bit too wasted and developed that rapey, predatory look in their eye. Naturally, when a significant number of the population began to salivate and come at her hungry, she fell into a familiar routine, making short work of their skulls and appearing every bit the veteran gladiator.
It was because of this hyper-aggressive disposition of men that caused her to seek out a night’s comfort in the arms of Smitt, his sensitive and nurturing nature persuading her to overlook his frail, tiny physique for the sheer novelty of going to bed with someone who wouldn’t think of her as his property or conquest. That was a week ago, and they reckoned themselves young and in love. Eventually, however, this once cherished sensitivity, when thrust into different circumstances, became an object of disdain as Smitt was found to be completely incapable of adjusting to this curveball that life had thrown their way.
Fat Gay Dan, on the other hand, acted the complete opposite, courageously battling back the horde with his fists, his weight, and a sewer lid. His valor was inspiring, and Jezzy would probably have considered his candidacy for mating, if not for the simple fact that Fat Gay Dan was quite dauntingly fat and probably more than a little gay. Surprise.
“We’re not going to make it. We’re karked. We’re so karking karked…”
Jezzy bashed a zombie in the temple, the momentum from her swinging purse then batting the head against the alleywall, smashing it soundly. With the momentary gap in attacks, she reached into her purse and produced a can of black spraypaint, tossing it to Smitt.
“There…Karking do something before your karking piss yourself.”
“What….What do you want me to do?”
Fat Gay Dan was getting bombarded, holding the line from behind the lid as Jezzy beat the zombies back one at a time.
“Call the karking bogeyman, you karking ____,” Fat Gay Dan exclaimed, calling Smitt a slur for homosexuals. “Do karking ANYTHING. ANYTHING AT ALL.”
“For real. Holy sith. Ugh,” Jezzy echoed, disgusted. Fat Gay Dan gave a hefty push, heaving some of the undead back into each other and causing them to topple over.
With shaking hands, Smitt began to spraypaint a sigil onto the alley’s back wall -- Their dead end. It was a tag that could be found in basically every city in the galaxy, but nobody really ever seemed to know who it belonged to or what it meant. It was superstition. It wasn’t working.
It was worthless.
“Aw, kark. Nothing’s karking happening,” Smitt was quite obviously crying at this point, crouching into a little ball. “We’re karked. We’re karking dead.”
They were exhausted, their morale extinguished. After all that fighting, they hadn’t made a dent, and the mob of zombies just kept coming. They wouldn’t be able to stand forever. Their parents were probably (and, in fact) dead and they had nowhere else to go but Hell.
Whether they knew or not, they were orphans. They were homeless and lost. They were gutterspunks.
And that made them part of his court.
It was the sickly stink of Gungan algae-tobacco that alerted them to his presence.
“Oi, children,” he spoke around the cigarette, gesturing with a thumb over his shoulder to the subway tunnel miraculously having appeared behind him. “On your bike, then.”
The youths didn’t need to be told twice, fleeing hurriedly down the Subway steps. The entrance vanished behind them.
He had been dealing with this type of thing all evening – vagrants escaping into his realm, leaving the door wide open, and him having to deal with more and more of this rubbish.
“Ruddy household drudge, I am,” he muttered, drawing his lightsaber and igniting it with a snap-hiss, the beam of light struggling to stay lit, humming arhythmically like a drunken dragonfly.
The zombie at the head of the pack lunged for him and was met with a quick vertical strike, dissecting him in half. Benedict continued the motion by drawing his blade out of the undead man’s hip, turning to take a shot at what may have been the corpse’s wife’s head.
The lightsaber’s poor battery faltered and the blade withdrew, leaving her head undisturbed. Benedict overswung, his motion continuing forward, lopping off the forehead of the walking dead beside her as the lightsaber reignited. He stumbled against the nearby building, pressing himself flat against it, narrowly avoiding the falling air conditioning unit as it fell from the 11th story apartment to “coincidentally “crush the female that had narrowly escaped decapitation only a moment ago.
It was as if the city were fighting alongside him.
“Tell me where it hurts, luv – I’m only here for you,” he stated to no one in particular, reacquiring his disinterested stance at the back of the alley. With a final exhale of smoke, he proceeded to flick the spent cigarette at the horde…
And, as if they had been pre-soaked in gasoline, the entire frontline ignited in a funeral pyre.
“Aw, Sithspit, man – They’re coming! They’re karking coming!”
Smitt, Jezzy, and Fat Gay Dan were not native to Elrood by any means, as their tattered street fashion no doubt screamed to the more agrarian locals. Colored hair, spiked bracelets, black velvet and leather, vinyl and mesh were their counter-cultural attire of the day, vying for status within the Spunk Rawk scene (or what passed for it these days, anyway) and the relevant concert they were on-planet to attend. The whole thing was not at all shocking anymore and had become quite predictably uniform, but no matter what crimes of Posing had been committed, they were just teenagers, trying on new personas and then shedding them for new ones like dead skin cells, and they didn’t deserve to go out like this.
Devoured by a bunch of hungry conformists in a back alley while trying to make it to their busted-up astrovan.
“Shut the kark up, Smitt – Man the kark up and keep it the kark together.”
“Kark sake, Smitt – It’s karking unattractive as kark.”
Jezzy was a little spitfire in her straight laced combat boots, spikes adorning the toes like some wicked triceratops of podiatry as if she’d been waiting for this zombie apocalypse her entire life (and if you were to check the reading material on her holopad, you’d find she probably was). She had kept a brick in her purse for those moments where all the males in the pub got a bit too wasted and developed that rapey, predatory look in their eye. Naturally, when a significant number of the population began to salivate and come at her hungry, she fell into a familiar routine, making short work of their skulls and appearing every bit the veteran gladiator.
It was because of this hyper-aggressive disposition of men that caused her to seek out a night’s comfort in the arms of Smitt, his sensitive and nurturing nature persuading her to overlook his frail, tiny physique for the sheer novelty of going to bed with someone who wouldn’t think of her as his property or conquest. That was a week ago, and they reckoned themselves young and in love. Eventually, however, this once cherished sensitivity, when thrust into different circumstances, became an object of disdain as Smitt was found to be completely incapable of adjusting to this curveball that life had thrown their way.
Fat Gay Dan, on the other hand, acted the complete opposite, courageously battling back the horde with his fists, his weight, and a sewer lid. His valor was inspiring, and Jezzy would probably have considered his candidacy for mating, if not for the simple fact that Fat Gay Dan was quite dauntingly fat and probably more than a little gay. Surprise.
“We’re not going to make it. We’re karked. We’re so karking karked…”
Jezzy bashed a zombie in the temple, the momentum from her swinging purse then batting the head against the alleywall, smashing it soundly. With the momentary gap in attacks, she reached into her purse and produced a can of black spraypaint, tossing it to Smitt.
“There…Karking do something before your karking piss yourself.”
“What….What do you want me to do?”
Fat Gay Dan was getting bombarded, holding the line from behind the lid as Jezzy beat the zombies back one at a time.
“Call the karking bogeyman, you karking ____,” Fat Gay Dan exclaimed, calling Smitt a slur for homosexuals. “Do karking ANYTHING. ANYTHING AT ALL.”
“For real. Holy sith. Ugh,” Jezzy echoed, disgusted. Fat Gay Dan gave a hefty push, heaving some of the undead back into each other and causing them to topple over.
With shaking hands, Smitt began to spraypaint a sigil onto the alley’s back wall -- Their dead end. It was a tag that could be found in basically every city in the galaxy, but nobody really ever seemed to know who it belonged to or what it meant. It was superstition. It wasn’t working.
It was worthless.
“Aw, kark. Nothing’s karking happening,” Smitt was quite obviously crying at this point, crouching into a little ball. “We’re karked. We’re karking dead.”
They were exhausted, their morale extinguished. After all that fighting, they hadn’t made a dent, and the mob of zombies just kept coming. They wouldn’t be able to stand forever. Their parents were probably (and, in fact) dead and they had nowhere else to go but Hell.
Whether they knew or not, they were orphans. They were homeless and lost. They were gutterspunks.
And that made them part of his court.
It was the sickly stink of Gungan algae-tobacco that alerted them to his presence.
“Oi, children,” he spoke around the cigarette, gesturing with a thumb over his shoulder to the subway tunnel miraculously having appeared behind him. “On your bike, then.”
The youths didn’t need to be told twice, fleeing hurriedly down the Subway steps. The entrance vanished behind them.
He had been dealing with this type of thing all evening – vagrants escaping into his realm, leaving the door wide open, and him having to deal with more and more of this rubbish.
“Ruddy household drudge, I am,” he muttered, drawing his lightsaber and igniting it with a snap-hiss, the beam of light struggling to stay lit, humming arhythmically like a drunken dragonfly.
The zombie at the head of the pack lunged for him and was met with a quick vertical strike, dissecting him in half. Benedict continued the motion by drawing his blade out of the undead man’s hip, turning to take a shot at what may have been the corpse’s wife’s head.
The lightsaber’s poor battery faltered and the blade withdrew, leaving her head undisturbed. Benedict overswung, his motion continuing forward, lopping off the forehead of the walking dead beside her as the lightsaber reignited. He stumbled against the nearby building, pressing himself flat against it, narrowly avoiding the falling air conditioning unit as it fell from the 11th story apartment to “coincidentally “crush the female that had narrowly escaped decapitation only a moment ago.
It was as if the city were fighting alongside him.
“Tell me where it hurts, luv – I’m only here for you,” he stated to no one in particular, reacquiring his disinterested stance at the back of the alley. With a final exhale of smoke, he proceeded to flick the spent cigarette at the horde…
And, as if they had been pre-soaked in gasoline, the entire frontline ignited in a funeral pyre.