The Bathrobe Knight: Volume 3 (16 page)

“To help us talk,” Kitchens said as he pulled his sword in an upwards cut at Darwin, causing it to glance off his downwardly-angled blade off to the side.

“Kind of hard to talk like this though.” Darwin did his best to get out a few words as he shifted his blade upwards to block Kitchens’ next blow.

“That’s a matter of perspective,” Kitchens said with a smirk. He slammed his bokken into Darwin with a downward slice on Darwin’s right side and kicked Darwin in the stomach at the same time. Darwin momentarily dropped his defenses after being stunned by the kick, so Kitchens bopped him on the head with a quick tap of his bokken right between Darwin’s horns. “This seems rather easy to me. Wouldn’t you say?”

Darwin rubbed the spot on his head and then gripped his sword again. “This isn’t the best place to be doing this. What if I lose it again?”

“Lose it? The only thing experiencing a loss will be your sloppy form.” Kitchens showed all his teeth when he smiled, and Darwin found it a little disconcerting. “Again,” Kitchens demanded, extending his blade out with both hands.

“I don’t want to do this here.” Darwin pleaded, but his hands had already sprung into action as he struck Kitchens’ extended bokken and followed it up with a strong right to left slash. Kitchens, parrying from his left as Darwin had before, easily diverted the force and then matched it with his own pressure, attacking with the same motion he had used to parry. This time, his weapon went all the way through and knocked Darwin in the stomach whereupon Kitchens followed it up with a hit to Darwin’s back.

“You say that, but you attacked first that time.” Kitchens wasn’t just laughing and smiling: his whole face was curling up towards his eyes and ears with such a happy look that it almost looked like a kid discovering candy for the first time--or like that same kid finding out twenty years later that he no longer had diabetes. Before Darwin could fully straighten himself out and recover, Kitchens extended his wooden sword once more. “Again.”

“I’m telling you: This isn’t the right place to do this. What if something bad happens?” Darwin complained again. He held his ground for a moment this time, but his resistance was short lived. Kitchens’ sudden swing came diagonally at Darwin from his lower left. Darwin wanted to back up and parry it, but his instincts kicked in, he moved to his left this time, rotating around Kitchens, and made a thrust that nailed Kitchens right in the sternum. He expected Kitchens to grow upset, grimace or even make at least one grunt at the blow, but the other man just chuckled again.
What is with this guy? He’s taking all of these risks unnecessarily. And why is he so happy right now? Has he gone mental?

“Darwin, you’re lying to yourself,” Kitchens laughed.

Where is this coming from? Why is he laughing so much?
Darwin didn’t understand the sudden shift in Kitchens’ personality as the usually-zen tank-top-samurai held his sword up again, extending it straight out with both hands.
Again. Yeah, yeah. I get it. Again.
He grumbled to himself as he dashed forward to grab the blade with his actual hands, but the blade shifted higher as Kitchens jerked his hands upwards and to Darwin’s right. Darwin then met the bokken with his own slash and knocked it even higher and farther to his right. Taking advantage of the gap and the fact his blade was already there, he attempted to lunge forward in an attack. As soon as his blade was struck, Kitchens freed his right hand and used his palm to push the flat of Darwin’s weapon away so that it careened off in the same direction as his own sword. Darwin’s hands were both still clenching the hilt of the detouring piece of wood, leaving him wide open for Kitchens to dart in and use his elbow to strike Darwin in the solar plexus.

Crap. He’s good,
Darwin thought. He wanted to sigh in frustration, but found it a bit hard between wheezes as he tried to recover his breath. “What happened to us talking?” Darwin tried reason one more time, raising his bokken to defend himself as Kitchens assumed an open stance once more.
Right foot only slightly forward, left foot back, knees bent--is this always his fighting stance? He just walks at his enemies?
Darwin waited for the incoming attack from the jubilant madman, who was again oddly still cackling in front of him. “I’m not lying,” Darwin insisted one more time. “I really don’t think this is the time or place.”

There was a sharp cracking sound. Darwin’s bokken was hit so hard with a fast downward cut that it almost fell out of his hands as Kitchens advanced again, following up the blow with a straight jab. “Lies, lies, lies,” he said and let out a snicker as Darwin deflected the wooden sword jabbed at him with his left hand and followed it up by shoving his own elbow into Kitchens’ chest this time.

“Why are you laughing so hard?” Darwin finally let his confusion escape his lips in an exasperated sigh.

“Why am I laughing?” Kitchens paused and scratched his left cheek for a minute. “Well, it’s because you’re over thirty years old, and you’re not even a real person. You’re too busy lying, covering yourself with a shell of other people’s identities, stringing it together through some series of expectations on how you’re supposed to behave. It’s funny.”

“I am not,” Darwin grimaced.
Am I?

“Darwin, I already know who you are. You are fire--someone who has never made peace with himself, a flame that exists by burning the spirit of its own being, raging against itself endlessly.” Kitchens held his bokken out and looked up and down the blade, the cackling laughter gone, but the grin remaining. “You are a murderer.” Kitchens moved his bokken like he was going to adjust to Darwin’s left, but it was a feint as he twisted it around in a quick circular motion, Darwin’s own weapon being led astray by the fake-out until the tip of Kitchens’ sword was pressed against Darwin’s throat. “I can see it in your eyes.” Kitchens stepped back, reassuming his stance. “You’re like I was: a pyre fueled by your own soul.”

“I thought you were water?”

“Water? Hmm. Yes, I am. A man’s nature changes when he has a daughter. I was fire; now I am water. You . . . You’re still fire. You’re still lying. It’s okay. I never told myself the truth until long after I had changed, and that makes it funny for me to see it in you.” Kitchens finally lowered his blade and sighed, but he didn’t lose his jubilant expression. “Darwin, he’s about to be back, but I think you should consider our conversation.”

Consider what? All you did was attack me!
“What’s there to think about?”

“You are fire. You recognize that it is your nature, but you don’t understand it. The heat is generated by the wood it burns. If you rely strictly on your own soul, you’ll wither away and die. You must consume others.” Kitchens extended a hand. Darwin wasn’t sure if he was supposed to shake it or return the extra-large, oak-colored bokken, but he figured the latter was a good bet.

“What am I supposed to do about it then? Just go ahead and eat other people’s souls? I am a Demon . . . but even I think that seems excessive.” Darwin wasn’t making heads or tails of this advice.
Not to mention, I was explicitly warned not to let NPCs in the game die, not to continue NPC on NPC bloodbaths like I had previously been doing, so what is he trying to tell me to feed off of?

“When man gave up using wood, there was electricity, oils and other plants to burn. We went from burning year-old dead trees to exploding million-year-old dead dinosaurs and all the way to using giant streaks of lightning captured in cheap, finger-nailed-sized storage devices. If you don’t want your own soul to burn up to feed the flame, you don’t need to burn someone else’s. You just need to feed it somehow, and there are plenty of ways.” Kitchens had finished storing both bokken and pulled out his real sword.

Wait, he’s not going to start fighting me with a true blade, is he?
Darwin felt a bit nervous, but also a bit excited. “So if it isn’t souls, what is it?”
Dreams? Ambitions? Should I . . .
Darwin began to understand the warning perfectly.
This hadn’t been out of the blue. Kitchens was never worried about my bathrobe or concerned about the flap . . . Well, maybe he was, but more importantly, Minx’s complaint gave him the opportunity to split away and get out of sight of the others so he could explain this.

“There you go, fire. I can tell from your look that you’ve already started figuring it out. Now, when Justin comes back with your new bathrobe, let’s change and get moving. If I know my daughter, she’s already paired us off to go figure out who this quest giver is. So, since there is no changing that stubborn girl’s mind when it’s set on scheming, we might as well be prepared to flow with it,” he softly chuckled.

“Any reason why she paired us in particular?” Darwin hadn’t realized that Minx was a schemer, but Kitchens would obviously be the authority on all things Minx.
So behind that overly-cutesy, fake personality is yet another plotter.
He tried to think of what machinations Minx might have carried out upon him already.
Why does this talk of a super-cutesy personality being used to cover up a mastermind suddenly remind me of Stephanie . . . Actually, no, don’t think about it.
Darwin stopped himself before that thought went too far. After the dinner party with Charles, he knew something was up, but a bit of ignorance was bliss.

“Oh, well, she’s still been trying to get me a new friend since I lost my usual fishing buddy.” Kitchens put his hands on his lower back and popped his spine all the way down.

“You lost your fishing buddy? Is it because you spend so much time on the game with Minx?” Darwin took a stab in the dark at what the reason might be. He knew that, between work and gaming, it was unlikely Kitchens had much free time to hang out with anyone.

“Hmm . . . No, what happened was that we were playing a shoot-‘em-up on the big TV. Then Minx walked by, his whole head turned, and he locked his eyes on her rear end like steak was being dragged in front of a starving dog. I punched him out and then threw him out of the house. Haven’t talked to him since.” Kitchens said it with such a flippant tone that it sent chills down Darwin’s spine.

Note to self: Don’t even look at Minx below the nose.
He carved this rule into the very core of his memory.
Don’t even look at her juicy, well-formed, bouncing bubble b . . . NO! Oh no, just thinking about how I shouldn’t think about it is making me want to think about it. You twisted human psyche, what’s wrong with you? Kitchens can’t tell I was just imagining his daughter’s . . . Can he?
Darwin hoped for the best, closed his eyes and counted to three.

“Don’t worry, Darwin. You haven’t looked at her once. That’s why I like you: You’re safe and have plenty of other girls to keep you occupied.” Kitchens patted him on the back.

Other girls? Why is ‘girls’ plural? I only have Stephanie right now! Wait, was that in response to my inappropriate thoughts or my silence at the fact he had knocked out his friend over just looking at her caboose? I never thought a callipygian woman would be so deadly.
Darwin chortled to himself. “Alright,” Darwin said, wanting to change the subject. “I’m not good with tracking people through the forum. Do you want to just head right there and let one of the Demons tell the others where we’ve gone, or do you want to stop and make sure that Daniel and them give us the best directions?”

“For starters? Make as many of those Blue-Drakes into slaves as possible while we wait. After that, I say the two of us just head out and not worry about the others. There will be plenty of time to spend with them when we get back, right? You’ve understood my lesson, correct?” Kitchens pointed to a spawn camp that was about to reappear. There were already five spear-wielders waiting to finish them off as soon as they were tangible enough to stab, but Darwin called out for them to hold off and let him do it.

“Yeah, I get it.” Darwin ran over and shoved his burning zweihander right between the eyes of a Blue-Drake as soon as the materialization had completed enough for it to take damage. There would still be time before the dragons’ AI booted and they fought back, but, by then, they would all be his pets.
I get that you’re saying that, if I’m to control this beast in me, I don’t just need the self-confidence. I also need to feed off my people’s hopes and dreams, their need to survive and their will to live on peacefully. They are my strength. I guess I wasn’t really a hundred percent honest with Alex. We do have an infinite number of recruitable defenders that aren’t players, but I can’t be doing this all day, every day, and still advance enough to protect them.

“Good,” Kitchens said as he watched Darwin go on his Blue-Drake farming escapade, slaughtering camp after camp.

When Justin finally came back, he had an extremely anxious look. “Oh, thank goodness!” he exclaimed when he saw Darwin converting another one of the flying azure lizards.

“Hmm?” Kitchens and Darwin both looked over at Justin’s frantic face.

“We already put the design for Darwin’s new logo on his bathrobe when we heard from a scout that he saw Darwin fighting in the cave with you using a different weapon, a wooden one with an entirely different shape. Considering how hard we had worked on the new logo--we had started preparing it long before the new bathrobe request came in--there was concern that it would have to be scrapped before it was ever worn,” Justin explained.

Why does he care about this logo so much? Is this an everybody-but-me thing or just an NPC thing? Does Kitchens think it is that important as well? Ugh. When it comes to this stuff, I could give less F's than an Asian printing T-shirts in English.