Xtreme Manly Man Force of Intense Badassery: Book One: The Fountain of Testoserone (34 page)

Without his axe, The Tomb Lord, UDGD
can only watch as his team mates finish off their greatest foe. He
feels humiliated for not being able to help, but also, strangely
honored to be in the presence of people that actually care about
his well-being. Ultimate yells “FUCK” one last time, before SISY
joyfully tears through the flesh to the heart inside the hand,
tears it out, and then smashes the heart half as large as himself
with a vicious, gleeful stomp. Ultimate screams as his body
explodes, and the Subspace Orchestra finishes their Xtreme wailing
with a momentous applause, cheering, and the drummer
yelling:

“VICTORY”

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE: WIPING THE BLOOD
OFF

IMRM stands up from the charred
skeleton, his cloak burnt off from the heat. IMRM’s wounds, the
worst of which being the enormous cleaving to his side, is revealed
to the others, though they’re more occupied with other things to
notice. The group catches their breath, SISY and HTO smiling at
each other, speaking with their expressions before their
words.

“HELL YEAH!” HTO cheers after he gets a
good enough breath. SISY laughs heartily.

“THAT WAS SO AMAZING. YOU’RE A REALLY
GOOD SWORDSMAN, FRIEND!” SISY responds with equal volume as he
throws his sword aside and embraces HTO in a way he finds all too
intimate for his tastes.

“Eh... uh, yeah. We did it,” he
responds with notably-less excitement. SISY nods with his grin,
wide as ever, and turns to IMRM to complement him as well, but
notices his half-destroyed condition along with the others as he
emerges. HTO’s expression widens in fear as he looks over
IMRM.

His tall, slender black figure is
rather like the outline of a man, but faceless, like he were
wearing a full helmet; wrecked from the various times he has been
smashed in the face along their journey. His left hand is the only
part of his body armor colored in any way, with a yellow ring and
the numbers AD-01 printed around the forearm. Hooked around his
back is what seems to be a metal sheath of some sort. UDGD would
mentally rate his manly appearance, but is interrupted by Phillip
freaking out like a baby sissy.

“Ace? Ace! A-are you...”

“Don’t worry, Phillip, I am quite
alright,” IMRM says, interjecting into HT’s sentence. Phillip looks
over to UDGD, who is as surprised as he is that IMRM is still
alive, and looks over to Mr. Honkers, who seems rather pleased for
some reason. Phillip presumes that if Honks isn’t afraid of IMRM’s
wounds, then neither should he; he apparently knows him the best
after all. That aside, HTO has to admit the O.E.L. employs some
seriously badass dudes for Ace to shake off being opened up like a
can like that.

SISY laughs and releases HTO to embrace
IMRM instead.

“AMAZING! NOT EVEN I CAN BE OPENED UP
LIKE THAT WITHOUT EVEN SHOWING SOME KIND OF WEAKNESS! YOU’RE
AWESOME!” SISY exclaims with even more excitement.

“Thank you. You’re pretty awesome
yourself,” IMRM replies, doing his best to be polite in such a
strange situation. SISY gives the half-destroyed one a final
squeeze, and turns to do the same to UDGD.

“No. Hell no,” UDGD says as he shoves
off SISY.

“OH, COME ON, FRIEND! WE DID IT! WE
KILLED THE STRONGEST PERSON ALIVE!”

“Oh? And who might that be?” a voice
questions from across the room, all the way down the steps, and in
the entryway.

The Subspace Orchestra’s string
players, tired from all of the intense battle, gets back to their
playing positions and begins an unnerving, refined cello
piece.

All five of the men turn and look down
to spot a blacker-than-pitch figure, tall, grinning, and staring at
them with wide, glowing eyes. His profile is angular, mighty, and
with his face, intelligent looking. At the top of his head are two
peculiar, blade-like antennae, horn, rabbit ear-like things. In his
hand is a sword that looks as cruel and strong as its owner,
drenched in the blood of over a hundred beast-men. While the other
three reflexively, foolishly prepare their weapons, Mr. Honker’s
initially-calm expression flashes into one of heart stopping,
bowel-voiding fear, and IMRM prepares for an attempt at peace.
Honk’s greatest fear has come to fruition; the reading he picked up
wasn’t incorrect. The man, or perhaps better-stated the thing,
standing below them is High Overlord Chaos, the #1 wanted being in
all the Omniverse with a bounty on his head large enough to buy one
his or her own dimension and then-some, along with the reward of
being regarded as the strongest, greatest, most honored person
alive. UDGD watches him closely, waiting to judge just how manly he
is- he’s not ready.

Mr. Honkers flicks a switch, pushes
some buttons, and begins charging his device. As it charges, his
expression relaxes as he continues pressing buttons to prepare the
program.

“Th’ hell’re you?” UDGD asks, guessing
he’s one of Ultimate’s minions. Chaos’ grin widens.

“Who am I? Why, that is a marvelous
question. You must understand I forget at times, so currently I am
not so sure who I am. I am certain, however, that I need something
over where you all are standing,” he replies with perfect
politeness, his voice reverberating through the men’s very souls.
UDGD scoffs.

“Yeah? Well scra--”

“Rick,” IMRM interrupts. UDGD looks
over to IMRM.

“What?”

“This man is Chaos, the Overlord you’ve
heard about.”

Chaos’ expression brightens up in
realization, and UDGD’s intensifies.

“Oh, there we are. I repose I am Chaos;
how thrilling,” he says, mistaking the word “suppose” for “repose”.
Along with being a legendary Overlord-Tyrant, Chaos is also
well-known for having horrible memory problems- including the
mistaking of similar-sounding words.

Upon hearing the identity of who is
below them, HTO begins quivering in grief and fear. UDGD stares
Chaos down a moment, and was about to tell him something pretty
nasty and impolite, when IMRM decides to take charge to ensure the
survival of the group.

“Hello, Chaos,” IMRM responds, calm as
a breeze.

“Ahh, hello there. You have a fairly
strange life-signature coming from you; you would not be one of
those complex golems the O.E.-”

“I do not mean to be rude, but I would
appreciate it if we could stay on topic, Mr. Chaos,” IMRM
interrupts, proving to be the first person that has interrupted him
in many years. Chaos squints his left eye a bit.

“Topic? Oh? What was this
topic?”

“The ‘thing’ you wanted?”

“Hmm? Oh yes. The corpse of the ancient
hero Qelled, his body exudes limitless stores of some peculiar
‘manliness fluid’ that drives one completely insane upon bathing in
it for too long. Many centuries ago I had intended to use the body
to make a hot spring next to one of my Overlord towers, but Yebby
here stole it back after I had rightfully won it in a game of
chess.”

“Yebby?” UDGD questions.

“Oh, the large beast man you killed.
His name is Yebby Waddlesworth. A very comical, rather rude lad, if
I remember correctly,” Chaos says as he begins to make his way up
the steps at a casual pace. SISY is the only one that laughs at how
dumb Ultimate’s real name is, as the others are far too afraid of
the danger at hand to take humor in the discovery.

“... Is that all you want?” IMRM
asks.

“Yes, indeed it is,” Chaos says with a
nod.

“I’m curious, how did you find
us?”

“By a fine stroke of luck, really. I
was just jumping around subspace looking for adventure and found
Torment. I gave him a proper beating on account of being a
pretender to my authority, a serious weakling, if you will, and
afterwards I interrogated him to find out how he escaped his death
prison. He told me it was a group of creatures matching your
descriptions, and that one of them seemed to be one of the O.E.L..
I very much dislike the O.E.L., mind you, so I decided I would
follow you five along just for the fun of it, and lo and behold,
look where it led me. Is life not a grand thing, leading us all on
such unexpected adventures so long as we throw our caution to the
wind?” Chaos explains and asks with a charisma that, if the rest
were not so preoccupied with survival, would find very appealing.
It becomes apparent to the group that the reason no minions came to
Ultimate’s aid was because they had met Chaos on the
way.

“There are no O.E.L. operatives here.
However you are free to take the body as you please,” IMRM lies
with a polite bow. Chaos bows in turn.

“Well, I repose I will have to take
your word for it. Thank you,” Chaos says with a nod of the head.
UDGD steps over to IMRM, and leans in to whisper.

“Hell no he can’t take the body, what
if we c’n make it work again?” UDGD asserts, not about to let an
inter-dimensional traveler take what he’s spent so much blood to
achieve. Chaos’ antennae twitch in recognition of UDGD’s words; he
can hear him perfectly well, even though they’re so far
apart.

“Defying his expressed will would prove
to be a highly detrimental strategy towards the survival of
the-”

“Common language,” UDGD
cuts.

“He would kill us. I presume that you
do not know enough about Chaos to understand how precarious this
situation is for u-”

“Common.”

“Dangerous. He’s incredibly dangerous
and could murder all five of us easily.”

“Seems t’me he thinks were his friends
or somethin’. We could get the jump.”

“Very few people in recorded history
have ever received a stealth-based advantage against-” IMRM’s cut
off with a sigh from UDGD. “Pardon, he’s incredibly aware of his
surroundings. Only a few people have ‘gotten the jump’ on him,”
IMRM clarifies.

“Then I’ll be the next.”

“I would advise against that. The
people who have are a hundred times faster and stronger than you;
and that is no exaggeration. Please remember, it’s not just your
life on the line, Mr. Rick.” UDGD does not answer IMRM, as Chaos
has gotten close enough for him to presume that it’s too dangerous
to whisper- Chaos has, however, heard the entire conversation with
perfect clarity.

The High Overlord reaches the top of
the steps and smiles to everyone right as Mr. Honkers stops his
frantic button pressing and off-handedly points the tip of the
device towards the Overlord’s general direction. Chaos steps up to
the destroyed body of the ancient hero, and hums.

“Well, looks like Yebby did not take
very good care of the corpse. Seems as though his mana-core was cut
through by something. Well, no matter,” Chaos says as kneels down
over the body and places a dark hand of his on the corpse’s wound.
The blacker-than-pitch Chaos begins speaking in some arcane
dialect, speaking words that none of the group understand. As Chaos
looks down over the corpse, UDGD gets an idea. UDGD looks over to
SISY, HTO, and IMRM, and signal with his eyes to approach. SISY
grins in immediate agreement, HTO takes a breath and nods, and IMRM
pauses only a moment before deciding that, even if what they are
doing is stupid, they should be stupid together if they are to have
any chance.

“ ‘Ey,” UDGD addresses Chaos, The
Slayer of Kingdoms.

“Yes?” Chaos stops his incantation for
the sake of being polite.

“Mind if w’take a closer look?” UDGD
asks with his usual, bitter tone of voice.

“Oh, not in the slightest! Go right
ahead,” Chaos says, rather happy that this man here is taking such
an interest in the finer arcane arts. Chaos restarts his
incantation from the beginning, and the four step over to him and
draw their weapons as quietly as they can. As Chaos is preoccupied,
UDGD silently poises the blade of his axe over his neck. SISY
follows suit and does the same. HTO prepares to thrust straight
into his back. Finally, IMRM positions the blade of his scythe
right over the Overlord’s skull. Mr. Honkers sighs, rather amazed
how his team mates could get in on such a stupid plan, though
thinking on it he really isn’t all that surprised they would try
something like this.

A few seconds pass as Chaos finishes
the incantation, and the fountain of testosterone, bound in the
corpse of the old hero, wells up again. Chaos grins.

“Ahh, excellent. It seems my hot-tub
has hope for it yet!” The Overlord says with a resplendently-sharp
grin. UDGD raises his axe in preparation.

“Good t’know, you’ll need more than
that in a sec’, though,” UDGD says as his allies draw back to
decimate their apparently-strong foe. Chaos’ antennae perk up a
bit.

“Oh? Like what?”

“A coffin,” UDGD says as he, along with
the others throw their weapons down.

ENGAGE!

All four of their weapons strike Chaos
precisely where they are aimed, and each warrior is met with the
unpleasant, bone-hallowing feeling of striking a man made of
unearthly metal. Not a single one of them wounded him. Chaos
laughs, expecting such, and stands up.

... UNENGAGE?

“I would have reposed meatbags like you
could not appreciate it when I decided I would spare you. It seems
yet again I placed just a bit too much faith in the human race’s
ability to use intelligence,” Chaos says with a deep, refined
voice. The entire group is silent as Chaos takes his sword, and
shoves it down his throat in a way that HTO finds completely
unnerving. “To be perfectly honest, I was really hoping you would
try to kill me. All of those beastfolk that came rushing at me a
few minutes ago did not quite give me my fill of fighting for the
day. I will give you all a moment to prepare, and then I will come
to kill you- with my fists, I think, sword-fighting does get old
after a while,” Chaos expresses as he steps away from the group of
five, pulls a thermos out of his mouth along with a tea cup, and
pours himself a few sips worth.