The clouds hung in the sky like so many lumps of undissolved non-dairy creamer floating in a night blacker than the cup of microwaved swill they called coffee on this airline. Remind me to find a decent place to get a cuppa Joe when we land...I set my steaming swampwater aside and picked up the tour pamphlets I'd picked up on Paragon City. I didn't figger on sleeping this flight...Hell, last time I was able to book a flight, there wasn't such a thing as "airlines."
My name's Sam Black, P-I, and I've been dead for about 70 years...of course, I'm feeling much healthier now. I'm about a foot shorter, Japanese, and bleed every 28 days now, but, hey, nobody said reincarnation was a perfect process.
See, this whole thing started during my last case...'course, if I'd known it was gonna BE my last case, I might of gone ahead with my scheduled lunch-date with Jack Daniels. Hindsight and all that, y'know.
Still, who am I to resist a pair of crying eyes...especially when they happen to be upstairs neighbors to two of the biggest, roundest, fullest...ahem, anyway, when she said she was desperate for help in finding her family's precious heirloom, I thought it was an old-fashioned cake walk. I mean, it's not like I was spying on Joe Blow an' his secretary doing the motel mamba or anything, just helping Little Miss Sweaterpuppies locate an old sword.
Heh..."an old sword." That same "old sword" was now stashed as carry-on luggage in my overhead compartment, and the hoops I had to jump through to get it there woulda qualified me for the Ringling Brothers Circus. Somehow, though, when they learned I was heading back to Paragon, they seemed to be a lot more reasonable, so long as I registered myself with some candy-cane colored commission called "Freedom Corps"...talking of circuses, I hadn't seen that many men and women in tights since I got suckered into going to the ballet. Somehow, I had a feeling the old neighborhood wasn't gonna be the SAME old neighborhood anymore...not its fault, though. I mean, for most mooks, a 7-decade dirt-nap's more than long enough to consider the change-of-address forms are permanent. Nobody counted on me drawing the "Go Back To Start" card, least of all me, ESPECIALLY not the way I bought it. I mean, being shot, stabbed, strangled, these are all normal, everyday ways a guy can get hisself whacked, no strings attatched.
Me, I had to go and get my [censored] sacrificed to a demon.
See, it turned out that "old sword" I was hired to find way back when was the, what'd Big Daddy Psychopath call it, the "corporeal manifestation" of some ancient soul-sucking boogeyman, and Miss "Bouncybouncy" was sent to find the specific person "destined" to be this thing's next lunch. Two guesses who drew the lucky number, too, and the first don't count...
What nobody knew was that the big bozo who supposedly lived in the sword didn't. Live in the sword, I mean. Turns out the sword was just a means of collecting souls for him to eat...so, basically, for the past few centuries, these idiot cultists have been doing nothing but sticking me and every other "destined" munchie on ice for something that wasn't even there. Like worshipping a damn icebox.
Of course, one of the PREVIOUS victims turned out to be the head of ANOTHER cult...only his, the Spider House, was full of ninjas. SMART ninjas, too, since they not only figgered out the truth behind the sword, they figgered out how to get the souls OUT of the sword. Only problem, they needed someone of direct blood lineage for it to work properly...which is where the cutie who stares back at me whenever I look in a mirror these days comes in.
Ariko here was the daughter of the current "Silken Master" of the Spider House, and her family had carried on the dead guy's bloodline since he got sucked into the sword. Of course, the Silk Master could've sacrificed HIMSELF to bring back their dead boss, then the plumbing would match at least, but blind, mindless zealotry apparently only goes so far. I tell you, they don't make braindead cultists like they used to...
So, anyway, Mr. Father-of-the-Year Candidate strings up his only kid, intending for her have her own existance obliterated so their great, great, greatgreatgreatgreat...eh, you get the idea...gramps can be resurrected to lead the Cult of the Spider House to greatness. That WAS the plan at least...seems they needed to do a LITTLE more research on the spell or the sword or SOMETHING. They blew it BIG TIME: they tried to bring back the original Silk Master...
They got me instead.
Fortunately for both me and Ariko, since I have about as much genetically in common with her as my drink does with real coffee, the spell didn't work properly. Instead of being obliterated, she was sorta...shoved into the background. She's still in here, hanging around in the subconscious area of her brain, sipping tea with her imanginary friends...luckily, that also means she has access to her reflexes, which means that, even though I'm now in the driver's seat, I can still use her lifetime of being trained as a ninja assassin to keep us both in the land of the living. This definitely came in handy when Daddy Dearest realized it was ME in his kid and not Great Grand-Papa-san...which, now that I think about it, brings all SORTS of icky images to mind...and sent the Pajama Squad to take us down so he could try again. We got outta there by the skin of her uvula, I tell you...that's that little dangly thing at the back of your throat. Getcha mind outta the gutter, folks, we'er in the home stretch here.
Anyway, after a bit of a mental pow-wow, Ariko tells me that there's another who knows of the spell her loving father tried: HIS dad, her grandad, the former Silken Master who was forced to flee to America when he realized what a psycho plan his kid was concocting and wanted out of the Cult. The Silken Master hadn't been able to find him, but, then again, he didn't have one of the finest investigative minds in the continental U.S. of A. working on the case...well, I was in the top 50, at least. Anyway, we look up his number and, wouldn't you know it, it turns out he moved back to MY old stomping grounds, Paragon City. Like it WAS destiny or something, I guess...
So, there you are, all up to date and on the same page as the rest of the class: me and Ariko are off to the old neighborhood to visit dear, old Grampy Master in the hopes that he can get her back into her own pantyhose and me off to whatever reward I've got waiting for me...I figger this whole situation oughtta clean the slate a bit with the Man Upstairs, at least enough to make up for that whole thing with Mrs. Witherspoon back in middle school, especially if I gotta do this "hero" thing in the meantime.
...just as long as I don't have to wear tights.
Posted
HEHEHEH!! Oh this is gonna be fun...
"City of Heroes. April 27, 2004 - August 31, 2012. Obliterated not with a weapon of mass destruction, not by an all-powerful supervillain... but by a cold-hearted and cowardly corporate suck-up."
The clouds hung in the sky like so many lumps of undissolved non-dairy creamer floating in a night blacker than the cup of microwaved swill they called coffee on this airline. Remind me to find a decent place to get a cuppa Joe when we land...I set my steaming swampwater aside and picked up the tour pamphlets I'd picked up on Paragon City. I didn't figger on sleeping this flight...Hell, last time I was able to book a flight, there wasn't such a thing as "airlines."
My name's Sam Black, P-I, and I've been dead for about 70 years...of course, I'm feeling much healthier now. I'm about a foot shorter, Japanese, and bleed every 28 days now, but, hey, nobody said reincarnation was a perfect process.
See, this whole thing started during my last case...'course, if I'd known it was gonna BE my last case, I might of gone ahead with my scheduled lunch-date with Jack Daniels. Hindsight and all that, y'know.
Still, who am I to resist a pair of crying eyes...especially when they happen to be upstairs neighbors to two of the biggest, roundest, fullest...ahem, anyway, when she said she was desperate for help in finding her family's precious heirloom, I thought it was an old-fashioned cake walk. I mean, it's not like I was spying on Joe Blow an' his secretary doing the motel mamba or anything, just helping Little Miss Sweaterpuppies locate an old sword.
Heh..."an old sword." That same "old sword" was now stashed as carry-on luggage in my overhead compartment, and the hoops I had to jump through to get it there woulda qualified me for the Ringling Brothers Circus. Somehow, though, when they learned I was heading back to Paragon, they seemed to be a lot more reasonable, so long as I registered myself with some candy-cane colored commission called "Freedom Corps"...talking of circuses, I hadn't seen that many men and women in tights since I got suckered into going to the ballet. Somehow, I had a feeling the old neighborhood wasn't gonna be the SAME old neighborhood anymore...not its fault, though. I mean, for most mooks, a 7-decade dirt-nap's more than long enough to consider the change-of-address forms are permanent. Nobody counted on me drawing the "Go Back To Start" card, least of all me, ESPECIALLY not the way I bought it. I mean, being shot, stabbed, strangled, these are all normal, everyday ways a guy can get hisself whacked, no strings attatched.
Me, I had to go and get my [censored] sacrificed to a demon.
See, it turned out that "old sword" I was hired to find way back when was the, what'd Big Daddy Psychopath call it, the "corporeal manifestation" of some ancient soul-sucking boogeyman, and Miss "Bouncybouncy" was sent to find the specific person "destined" to be this thing's next lunch. Two guesses who drew the lucky number, too, and the first don't count...
What nobody knew was that the big bozo who supposedly lived in the sword didn't. Live in the sword, I mean. Turns out the sword was just a means of collecting souls for him to eat...so, basically, for the past few centuries, these idiot cultists have been doing nothing but sticking me and every other "destined" munchie on ice for something that wasn't even there. Like worshipping a damn icebox.
Of course, one of the PREVIOUS victims turned out to be the head of ANOTHER cult...only his, the Spider House, was full of ninjas. SMART ninjas, too, since they not only figgered out the truth behind the sword, they figgered out how to get the souls OUT of the sword. Only problem, they needed someone of direct blood lineage for it to work properly...which is where the cutie who stares back at me whenever I look in a mirror these days comes in.
Ariko here was the daughter of the current "Silken Master" of the Spider House, and her family had carried on the dead guy's bloodline since he got sucked into the sword. Of course, the Silk Master could've sacrificed HIMSELF to bring back their dead boss, then the plumbing would match at least, but blind, mindless zealotry apparently only goes so far. I tell you, they don't make braindead cultists like they used to...
So, anyway, Mr. Father-of-the-Year Candidate strings up his only kid, intending for her have her own existance obliterated so their great, great, greatgreatgreatgreat...eh, you get the idea...gramps can be resurrected to lead the Cult of the Spider House to greatness. That WAS the plan at least...seems they needed to do a LITTLE more research on the spell or the sword or SOMETHING. They blew it BIG TIME: they tried to bring back the original Silk Master...
They got me instead.
Fortunately for both me and Ariko, since I have about as much genetically in common with her as my drink does with real coffee, the spell didn't work properly. Instead of being obliterated, she was sorta...shoved into the background. She's still in here, hanging around in the subconscious area of her brain, sipping tea with her imanginary friends...luckily, that also means she has access to her reflexes, which means that, even though I'm now in the driver's seat, I can still use her lifetime of being trained as a ninja assassin to keep us both in the land of the living. This definitely came in handy when Daddy Dearest realized it was ME in his kid and not Great Grand-Papa-san...which, now that I think about it, brings all SORTS of icky images to mind...and sent the Pajama Squad to take us down so he could try again. We got outta there by the skin of her uvula, I tell you...that's that little dangly thing at the back of your throat. Getcha mind outta the gutter, folks, we'er in the home stretch here.
Anyway, after a bit of a mental pow-wow, Ariko tells me that there's another who knows of the spell her loving father tried: HIS dad, her grandad, the former Silken Master who was forced to flee to America when he realized what a psycho plan his kid was concocting and wanted out of the Cult. The Silken Master hadn't been able to find him, but, then again, he didn't have one of the finest investigative minds in the continental U.S. of A. working on the case...well, I was in the top 50, at least. Anyway, we look up his number and, wouldn't you know it, it turns out he moved back to MY old stomping grounds, Paragon City. Like it WAS destiny or something, I guess...
So, there you are, all up to date and on the same page as the rest of the class: me and Ariko are off to the old neighborhood to visit dear, old Grampy Master in the hopes that he can get her back into her own pantyhose and me off to whatever reward I've got waiting for me...I figger this whole situation oughtta clean the slate a bit with the Man Upstairs, at least enough to make up for that whole thing with Mrs. Witherspoon back in middle school, especially if I gotta do this "hero" thing in the meantime.
...just as long as I don't have to wear tights.