Number One Crush
By M. Alford
Begun April 2008, finished August 2008
This is a fanfiction for entertainment purposes. No copyright infringement is intended.
Chapter Nine: Machine Guns
The King went to the Mayor first. Even the monarch knew that an act of war must first be approved by the lowly figurehead of a southwestern American town. “War, huh?” The Mayor gave the glowing monarch from another era the once-over. “Sure, sure, I’ll back you. Of course, you realize--war to you might mean something very different from what it means to the Judge.”
“The King of the Brightens is not cowed by the upstart machinations of a lowly village squire!” sneered the King.
The Mayor shrugged. “Suit yourself. Do you need anything from me?”
The King hesitated visibly. He did not like to demean himself, asking the help of a lowly bürgermeister. His Majesty especially did not relish needing to call upon the demonic ranks the Mayor was known to employ. Pagan black magic was not the way to go for a soldier of God.
On the other hand... Arthur had called upon the magic arts before... when he had employed Merlin to help him...
The King drew himself up haughtily. “If you love this land, you will of course spare no effort in aiding your King!” he snapped, as if it was his own idea.
Considering the two men had both been cut from the same cloth, perhaps it indeed was. “You have all my faith behind you,” the Mayor acquiesced, his own countenance a sneer.
##
Across the vale, the evil Judge had not missed a beat going directly to the one who would ensure his victory against the moldy old fairy prince of arcane legend. Having dispensed of his judgely cape, he had clad himself in the typical war garb of his day--aviator goggles, flight jacket, leather helmet of the 1940’s. The Judge now looked every bit like the Red Baron of Snoopy legend. “Is my plane ready?” he snapped at the cowering Doctor.
The Doc, even though he was a peaceable scientist, and usually opposed to the use of technology in warfare, found himself inexplicably bound to help the wicked Judge in his quest against the ancient King of the Brightens. “Ship’s ready, Judge!” he pointed out gleefully. “I’ve kicked up the horsepower to well over what was available during the Second World War; you shouldn’t have any trouble overpowering him! Ah...” The Doc reneged, remembering just whose side he found himself on, “you know... you really don’t have any right to defeat him! If history shows that you, an aviator of the twentieth century, defeats King Arthur of the medieval age, there could be a catastrophic upheaval in the space-time continuum!!”
The door to the hangar burst open. On the other side of the door stood Isaac, the guitar-playing Cowboy. He stepped into the hangar, looking every bit the kind of tough-ass 1950’s rebel punk that James Dean would have approved of. “I got a proposition for you,” he said to the two Elders.
The Judge regarded the young heartbreaker icily. “What makes you think I’ll listen?”
Isaac knew he was getting into dangerous water here, but he felt the reward was worth the risk. “Because you’re a Chris,” he answered. “I’m a Chris, too.”
In days of old, Christopher was the name coincidentally shared by several of those Muses the Goddess had chosen, back in the early adolescence of the realm. The Doc and the Judge were both of the House of Christopher. And even though he called himself Isaac, and was descended from a different Muse, the young singing Cowboy was in fact a Chris as well. “Listen here,” said Isaac, “I figure, you and me join forces, we got a better shot against the King. Better than you got now. And if we defeat the King; maybe... maybe we can defeat the Mayor, too.”
The Judge’s evil smile had not faded. “And the gallant young troubadour rides off into the sunset, having won the heart of the fair maiden once again,” he guessed shrewdly.
Isaac nodded, having been found out, but not ashamed of it. “She’s my girl. I had her first.”
The Judge’s glassed eyes glinted coldly. “At the same time as I.”
“Yeah, well...” Isaac resolved to burn that bridge when he came to it. “Look, we get the King and the Mayor out of the way, we can fight over that later. Look at the big picture, man. This here’s been a long time coming. We’re Chrises. They’re Harrys.”
The Mayor and the King both happened to share the name of Harry. Theirs was the current dynasty, a House that had come to power after the violent upheaval and chaos marked by the boy-king Burt’s juvenile rule of the Goddess’ heart. The era of the Harrys had brought stability, brought the Goddess back to vibrant life--and consequently, whether by accident or design, she had never granted the Christophers the same fervent favor she used to. “It’s high time we called them out,” Isaac insisted.
The Judge did not see a downside to any of this. The Cowboy would rally the younger Muses to his side. And once the Mayor’s reign of terror was dissolved... the Judge could easily wipe the realm clean of the leftovers. Erase them all.
The Judge leered at his ignorant young new partner. “It’s a deal,” he hissed, holding out a rubbery hand.
##
Bloom burst through the front entrance into the Lodge, glancing around the dining hall for the Calculator. He spotted the mute sitting, as usual, in the reclining La-Z-Boy over by the window, staring at the wooded wall.
“‘Stage a war’,” Bloom muttered as he hurried over to the young man. “What a load of crap! ‘Gee whiz Judy, let’s put on a show, we’ll save the town!!’ Well, they want to cower in a corner pissing their pants over a bunch of crazy women in an ivory tower, fine. Their loss.” Bloom reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out the parchment, which contained the so-called Math problem. Unfolding it, he positioned it in front of the Calculator’s eyes, more or less where they were staring. “Hey,” he said quietly. He leaned over the Calculator, trying to access the faint spark of life he thought he sometimes saw in the muteling’s eyes. “What do you think? Do you remember this? Our little project we were working on? Any ideas so far?”
Silence. Dead, mindless silence.
Bloom balanced on the armrest, trying to catch the mute’s eye. “Look,” he spoke gently to the boy, “I know you haven’t been thinking much about math... or anything, these past years. But you’re the only one in the whole camp who can solve this. Now, I know you can do it. I believe in you.” He smoothed out the parchment, then folded it neatly in quarters. He tucked the folded paper securely into the Calculator’s shirt pocket. “There. You hang onto that. If you get any ideas--feel free to speak up, all right?”
Silence.
Bloom straightened up, took the Calculator’s limp, lifeless hand and pulled the docile being to his feet. The Calculator had re-learned how to walk, at least; he could be tugged around like a puppy on a leash now instead of having to be carried everywhere. “All right. Let’s go hunt for some women.” Bloom swiped the dust off the Calculator’s shoulders, tucked the mute’s shirttail into his pants. “Are you excited? I know I am.” Bloom sneered, humorlessly. He gave the mute a genial slap on the shoulder, nudging him along. “C’mon.”
As the two made their way to the door, Harrison appeared in the doorway. His owlish brow furrowed into a scowl. “Where are you going?”
Bloom didn’t slow down. “Across the lake. To the Tower. Score some chicks.”
Harrison did not look as if he approved. “You’ll never find your way over there. You won’t survive if you do.”
“That’s honestly starting to sound better by the minute, Harrison, but in spite of that rosy prediction, I can guarantee you we’re at least going to try!” Bloom looked at the elder Lieutenant. “What are you going to do?”
Harrison retained his superior attitude. “I have thrown in my lot with the Harrys. It’s only fitting, given my name, I suppose. I was going to ask which side you plan to fight for in the upcoming war.”
“I’m not fighting the war.” Bloom glared at the dead Lieutenant. “You men are wasting your time with this ‘stage a war’ crap! There’s a reason the Goddess almost walked off that ledge the other night. There’s a reason she killed Sonny, and it’s not because she’s bored or because she needs to be ‘distracted’! This Math problem is the answer. Now, I don’t care what it takes, I’m going to get the Calculator to that Tower and he’s going to solve this thing!” Bloom stepped toward Harrison. “Now... are you going to tell me how we get there? Or do I have to muck around chasing my tail until I stumble over it by accident?” He waited. “You may as well tell me, Harrison, I’m gonna find it one way or another! You can save me some time. And you might be saving her life.”
Harrison seemed to realize that this was true. He drew himself up, readying to impart dire information. “If you go to the far end of the mess hall barracks, there is a tool shed. There is a padlock on the door, but it has long since rusted. You will be able to get inside, and you must descend through a trap door which you will find in the floor. There is a series of catacombs underneath the ground. Follow the first corridor until you come to the Great Stone Globe, then bear left. You will arrive at an entrance guarded by the Djinn of the Lamp. You must answer his riddle to pass. If you gain passage... you should find yourself on the other side of the lake.” Harrison paused ominously. “And may God have mercy on you after that.”
Bloom was almost put off by how easily the Lieutenant had given it up. “Thanks... that’s very dramatic,” he grumbled. “You were in very good voice when you did that. Should I beware the eye of Sauron as well?” He turned his back on Harrison, leading the Calculator toward the door.
“Good luck to you,” came Harrison’s voice from behind.
It was so unexpected that it made Bloom pause momentarily. “I think I begin to see the quality that made the Goddess choose you,” the Lieutenant added.
Well, Bloom figured that was about as good as a compliment from Harrison got. Nodding his assent, Bloom and the Calculator continued out the lodge door.
##
They found everything just as Harrison said. The tool shed was there at the very end of the mess hall, so was the trap door in the floor. Bloom was afraid at first that he’d have a challenge making the Calculator understand that he was to climb down into the hole, but the Calculator seemed to be learning. He descended the ladder silently, and Bloom followed him down into the dank, dark chasm.
The catacombs were like something out of an Egyptian mummy movie. Bloom led the Calculator silently down a long corridor, past pillar after pillar stretching up into blackness. The floor was wormy dirt, and the place smelled of mildew and mold. Yet tremendous work had gone into the carving of the pillars; even in the half-darkness lit by Bloom’s lighter he could see intricate designs worked onto the immense stone structures. “I wonder why the hell anyone goes to so much trouble,” he spoke aloud--ostensibly to reassure the silent Calculator, but mostly to calm his own crawling skin. “Look at all this. All for some hidden passage that nobody even sees.”
He could see something in the flickering light, something looming ahead. It was the great stone globe that Harrison had mentioned. Just a spherical concrete stone, four or five arms wide as well as high, perched atop a low base covered with more intricate carvings. The stone glittered faintly in the dim light, as if covered by the tracks of thousands of garden snails. Bloom reached out to touch the sphere--and came away with slick green lichen covering his fingers. The verdant plant growth seemed to pulse light; a faint phosphorescence. The stone, too, seemed warm, not clammy or cold like a rock deep down in an earthen pit should have been.
Bloom sighed, growing weary of all the Freudian symbolism. “All right, here’s the fox’s core,” he muttered. “Which way did Harrison say to go? Left?” He spoke the question idly; of course the Calculator wasn’t going to answer. He looked over at the flaxen-haired mute, who was standing there dumbly in the corridor, eyes gazing disinterestedly around at the pillars. “Well, let’s try it. The worst that can happen is...” Actually, there were a quite a lot of worse things that could happen. Bloom decided it was probably better not to rattle them off.
So they turned left down the corridor. The end of this one could be seen not far off. About sixty feet down the hall was a huge stone arch. Preceding the door, upon a free-standing pillar, sat a gleaming golden oil lamp straight out of the Arabian Nights. As Bloom and the Calculator approached the entrance, the lamp began to glow redly in the half-dark. Bloom was actually not surprised at all to see crimson-colored smoke begin billowing out of the fluted mouth of the lamp. Within moments the entire corridor was filled with thick, dark red smoke. It blotted out the flickering light from Bloom’s lighter, and the two men slowed to a halt before the encroaching mist.
The billowing smoke seemed to coagulate directly before the doorway they were making for; almost as if it were guarding the entrance. A face solidified in the haze: a perfectly bald, scowling, bare-chested genie with pointed Vulcan ears tipped in thick gold earrings materialized before them, towering toward the ceiling. The demonic illusion stood with folded muscly arms, gazing imperiously down on the little men, looking for all the world like--
Bloom gasped. “Yul Brynner??”
The bronze-skinned genie glared down on him with eyes of fiery amber. “DJINN SAY NO ONE SHALL PASS!!” the genie’s voice boomed like an Asian gong. The dirt floor trembled. Dust sifted down nervously to mote on the ground.
About the only thing that kept Bloom from having an accident in his pants was the fact that the Calculator, who by all rights should have been the panicky one, was as blank-faced as if he was staring at moldy cheese. Bolstering his courage, remembering that he was Bloom, the bad-ass punk who’d lived through much worse at the Goddess’ hands, he tried to remember what Harrison had said to do. “Do you have a riddle for me?” Bloom shouted up at the monstrous genie.
Personally, Bloom fucking hated riddles. There was always some hidden meaning that was supposed to be oh-so-clever and which never was. He had been trying to think what kind of dingbat riddles the Goddess, with her taste for sadomasochism and awful pop culture sense, would think were funny. He’d come up with nothing. It was likely going to be the most obvious cheap shot ever, and therefore it might as well have been the final round question on Jeopardy! Bloom had zero faith that he was going to guess right.
The demonic genie seemed to be trying to think up the biggest zinger riddle he possibly could. “What do you want to do today?” he finally questioned.
Bloom blinked. Several times. He was so taken aback, he almost asked the Calculator to repeat what he thought the genie had said. What did he want to do today??
Okay. Bloom began turning over the different things this might mean. Was the genie offering some kind of wish that could be granted? If Bloom answered what he really wanted--to get through the door--the genie had just got through saying no one would pass. Would Bloom be wasting his wish by asking anyway? Or--was it one of those trick-question things, where if he had the courage to speak his true desire the genie in his infinite generosity would be so impressed that he would actually grant the wish? Was it one of those things where you had to word the wish very specifically? If Bloom said, “I want to get through,” the genie might let him through--but not the Calculator. If Bloom said, “We want to get through,” the genie might disqualify the request on it not being specific enough. Bloom would probably have to say where he wanted to get through; otherwise he might end up finding himself being birthed by a rhino in the Serengeti--
...Damn it all, this was hard! Bloom fucking hated riddles!!
The Calculator stepped forward, having been silent all this while. He was still silent, but he looked toward the doorway, almost as if he knew that’s where they were trying to go. He gazed so intently at the door that for a second Bloom almost expected the Calculator to start speaking in perfect English and voice an eloquently-worded request to get through. Wouldn’t have surprised Bloom, at this point.
But that didn’t happen. Instead, Bloom decided, hell with it. “He and I want to get through that doorway there,” he answered the genie’s question. “Right now!”
This actually seemed to placate the demon-eyed servant of the lamp. Not-Yul-Brynner bowed his head, still giving them an evil smirk. “I hear and I obey,” he intoned thunderously. “You may pass.” With his muscly arms still folded like Jeannie in the TV series, he seemed to melt away and vanish. The smog-choked hallway cleared almost instantly.
Bloom threw up his arms. That was too easy. Here he’d been overthinking and second-guessing and... that was all he’d needed to do. Just ask! Unbelievable.
The stone partition that separated them from whatever nameless horror lay beyond the gate slid aside, gratingly, slowly. The light that came from behind the doorway blinded Bloom momentarily, after being so long in the dark. Nevertheless he and the Calculator moved slowly, tenuously toward the entrance, bracing themselves for whatever was out there. The warnings from the men of the Lodge were running through Bloom’s mind. Blood-drinkers... vampiresses... headhunting warriors...
They stepped out onto... a stage. A darkened stage, with neon strobe lights winking like wee stars in the black sky. Suddenly--there was a burst of color, a sharp spark of light.
A glowing rainbow aura bloomed into life from one end of the stage to the other. At the top of an incandescent staircase, a spotlight lit up a female form. Her hair... well, the foundation of her hair color was platinum blonde, stained with flame-orange streaks and electric blue strands, styled into stiffened tufts and studded with bright pink feathers and glittery tassels. Her petite body was clad in wildly mismatched dime store chic straight out of a 1985 issue of Teen Bop magazine--mismatched sneakers, clashing prints, pounds of tacky jewels. She pointed a heavily-baubled neon pink finger at the two men. “Totally rad!!” she shrieked. “You showed up!”
Bloom and the Calculator stood frozen. “Okay... what the hell just happened?” Bloom burst out, completely flabbergasted.
Chapter Ten: That's What You GetFeedback
Obligatory disclaimer: This is a fanfiction for entertainment purposes. No copyright infringement is intended.
