Mad War - The(e)

In a land three winds and a dusty sunset away from that wind-paused field, another warrior began his mission.

Boots thunk on boards as the batwings creak aside. There's a melody note as spurs jangle like shell casings.

The gunner's eyes roll around like the steel turret in his revolver. Click. Click. Click.

He sees no one except the shadows over the rafters, the bottles behind the bar, the painting on the wall.

"I can smell ya." He grumbles.

An errant wind blows his poncho aside so grimy light can gleam on polished wood handles, handles of wood polished by hard hands.

The rafter shadows do not move, the bottles behind the bar... they do not gleam like his polished guns.

"I ain't in the habit of keepin' the whiskey waitin'." The gunner grumbled around a cigar.

Flash, click, snap, the cigar is lit but the lighter is gone before the eye could see it. But the gunners clockwork eyes did see. In the light of the lighter, the shadows above the rafters did not move, and the bottle behind the bar did not gleam.

So, that’s how it was gonna be. The ol’ stare-down. A stand-off, like they have south-ways.

Click-click-click, his eyes went, as his lids ratcheted down into a mean glare. He glared about, two fingers on his cigar, two fingers on a gun handle. Behind him, the orange sunlight glowed on the dusty air.

The shadows all about were dead black, so black that velvet would stand out like sparked powder, so black they made his eyes hurt.

Click. The table, was that shadow too dark?

Click. Did that shadow move?

Click. He took a pull on his cigar, but did not exhale.

A rafter, it was so small it must have been an illusion, but did it just sag under the weight of a shadow-

The gun was in his hand, snapping up with a whipcrack, and another as the barrel spat lead, then a snap as one hand slammed the hammer back, thump as the gunner stepped back and the black form fell before him.

"Damn ninja." He grumbled, now hoisting a gun in each hand. In the flash of gunfire he had seen them, dozens of dark forms painted in India ink crouched and hanging, suspended and ready in every corner.

He whirled and shot on instinct, knocking another ninja out from under a bar stool, then the fight was on.

They swarmed like arrows blocking the sun, as shuriken and kunia flew at the gunner. He rolled, firing with tick-tock precision as his spurs sliced through the air, his poncho thumping on the boards. Blades sank deep into the wood behind him, then into the table he kicked over for cover. He knew better than to throw his back against the cover, to squeeze against it; he’d only be throwing himself into the razor points that jammed through the oak board. And he had no time anyway; a chain kunai yanked it away into the room, where it feel silently against a slippered foot, then launched by a spinning kick, launching it back at him with monstrous force.

The gunner was ready, guns punching out and spitting sparks to shatter the furniture into splinters, but only with five shots instead of six. This trigger discipline paid off as he diverted the last shot through the cloud of shards into the heart of another ninja using the debris as chaff cover. The gunner stepped aside as the body flew past him, already reloading his gun like a sewing machine.

Click-Click-Click, three shells before the barrel snapped up and put them back out into three more ninja; one behind him, the next also behind him, and the third trying to karate chop his head off from behind. This many was easy to handle; they weren’t powerful if there were too- He finished the spin just in time to dive roll away from a decimating flying kick, only to tangle with a ninja hiding behind a painting on the wall.

"Shit tricky-" He spat as his arms were pinned, a shadow dashing at him, head low, arms back.

His poncho flapped in the stiff breeze as this attacker leaped, careening into him, placing one pinky finger into his chest and stopping-

WHAM

The world went black as the strike hit, crushing the wall with his own body, throwing him bodily into the dusty street, passing so fast through the dry plank wall that his revolvers were a spinning blur where he’d been. The body rattled back on knocky knees until it lost its balance and fell back into the light earth, soaked in the blood red dusk light. Ninja peered out through slitted headscarves. The gunner's boots made a wide skyward V. He was still. Killed in one flawless strike, the ninja way.

Crack!

A black hole in black tunic threw one ninja back into the shadows before they could duck away.

"Ugh, been a minute since I got a lickin' like that." The gunner muttered as he got his elbows under him. Coming upright, boilerplate steel fell in pieces out of his patchy vest. He spared a second to yank away the twine that had held it on, then put his poncho back in order. That was his free out, but he wasn’t going to underestimate these shadow boxers a second time. The next out wouldn’t be on the house.

He regained his feet cautiously. He was lucky that one-inch punch put him outside; the ninja had less power here. But he'd also put a good many of them back in their shinijami world, and that made the rest of them a might more dangerous.

"Ya'll too chicken to take this outside?" He said.

There was a flash and a gunshot as a poison dart flew out of the bar and he shot it out of the air. He'd have followed up with a killing shot on the bastard with the darts, but this Derringer only had the two barrels and he’d just spent the second. His real pieces were inside. What hassle. Least he still had his hat.

“Gonna need some better tricks, bucko.” He said, and reached up with two fingers and took a casual drag on his cigar.

Movement. Out of the corner of his clockwork eye he saw it; the telegraph line was-

He ducked away just before a ninja fell where he’d been standing, grabbing for his neck. Now another was behind him again, falling from the sky itself, but he had no six-shooters for it- Damn! Another devastating blow as the ninja landed an uppercut that didn’t connect on camera. He stumbled back, knowing but impotent to stop his stagger towards the first ninja. Desperate, he plunged his hand into his shirt pocket, fingers closing around flat cold steel.

The flask.

Whiskey vessel in hand, the panic slipped away, he ducked a straight jab, stumbled under a high kick and span for no reason to miss a mad karate chop.

“Ya’ll know the drunken master?” He said, unscrewing the whiskey flask with a snap of thumb, “I’ll learn ya!”

Dusk copper light caught the text roughly scratched into the flask, XXX.

The ninja were circling him as the ink shadows spilled from the bar. Then two ninja were three, a fourth appeared from behind another, then a trick of the eye turned into a fifth, then there were too many to count again. Good.

“Slow dance, huh?” The gunner said, casually turning to match them, the first two on each side, the rest prowling and watching from all around. Looked like only these two were the real threat, for now, but he couldn’t watch both.

“Sorry, buckaroo, but I only get left feet when I’m dancin’.”

They were still pacing him, stanced wide, crab-stepping so they were always facing him head on. One had crossed arms, holding something black in front of his black tunic, the other was holding a bundle of shuriken in each hand.

Well, no time like the present.

The gunner knocked back the flask, feeling the hot fire hit his throat and burn all the way down.

The ninjas pounced; the shuriken master launching high, casting his missiles down from above as the other lunged forward and appeared behind the gunner in a black blur. The liquor hit instantly, throwing the ground asunder. The world tipped drunkenly on some spinning axis, throwing the near attacker off balance and sending the gunner stumbling away from the shuriken in a narrow miss. But the attack did not let up; in a dizzy haze, the gunner found himself swinging and bobbing as the near ninja swung nunchaku at his face, limbs, gut and shins, but never quite keeping up with the gunner’s alcoholic weaving.

“Oh, you wanna fight? Put em up!” The gunner said with a thick slur, raising his fists in a boxer stance as the throwing ninja landed and dashed in for the fist-fight.

Now it was one gunner fighting two ninjas in tight hand-to-hand, but nothing landed. He jabbed and swung, dipped and stepped and tripped and fought, cussing the dust off the ground as the ninja attacked with perfect silent grace. Kicks grazed his poncho, his boots kicked up a dust cloud, but made no mark, lethal chops and grapples flew in from both sides just as he was taken aside by poor balance and dodged again when he was trying to dodge some long-gone attack.

But it was enough to panic the ninja. As a lucky mis-step made him dodge four fists and three kicks at once, the gunner realized through the dust-bowl that he was fighting no less than eight ninja at once.

Perfect, this was a dance he could do.

Endless strikes flew from all sides as he let himself ride the flow, moving with awkward grace away from all attacks, and landing his own with only dumb luck and liquor. Weapons appeared and disappeared in the smoky haze, he accidentally tripped a ninja to impale it on a dao, then threw a spinning elbow into another he hadn’t even known was there.

Then he was out.

In the confusion of the dustcloud, the gunner found he was outside the fight for a crucial second while the ninja karated and kwon-doed the dirt itself. He glanced at the flask, still in hand.

XX

He knocked it back again, pitching the world on the mad tilt of alcohol, spilling the whole brawl right back through the bat-wing doors, with the ruckus crash of a bar fight.

No hiding in shadows now, the ninja were clear and blurry on all sides. His clockwork eye was toc-ticking madly as the gunner appraised the bar full of ninja and tried to keep both feet on the ground at once, grabbing a chair for support, then smashing it across the nearest target, and keeping the splintered legs in hand to attack the next one. Another lunged at him, double nunchuk whistling through the air.

Clack! Snap!

He blocked with the chair legs, bouncing the nunchuck back to crush the ninja’s fingers, then side-stepping away from the skull-swipe from a ninja with a bo staff.

“Huh, nicssse rod, partdener.” He said, grabbing the staff as the ninja swang again. He yanked, the ninja yanked, they circled, tripping another ninja coming in for a killing blow, he yanked, the ninja yanked back, but he’d let go, letting the ninja fall on its ass as he turned to face the next one. All around, ninja were pacing, ready to join the fight, but this one alone was attacking now, in a flashy series of high kicks, low punches and fancy twirls. The gunner stepped in perfectly between two moves and put a straight jab into his nose, marveled that had worked, and turned around to catch a glass bottle in the face.

“Shit!”

The warm, fun spin was gone; now he was in the bottom of the XX flask, were the danger was setting in.

A kunai stuck in his shoulder, he screamed, a sai was flying at his neck, but he managed to catch that and slam it into the fist of an oncoming attacker before he was launched into the automatic piano as someone landed a kick in the small of his back. Jangly music off key added its own musical chaos.

Now, too late, he saw he was up against three ninja. That was too few, where were the rest of the damn shadows?! Lying dead and groaning.

“Got tour- tour- your ninjitsssssu? Huh? Come at it, buckamigo.” He put his fists up again, and saw he miraculously still had the flask.

They were eyeing him through their scarves, each holding a different weapon. That was also bad; a few ninja were bad, but uniquely armed ninja were even worse. He was up against a sickle, a knife and a club. The sun was setting. His chances and light were black.

He looked at the flask, which swam enticingly before his eyes. The booze. The death of a gunner. It made this fight easier, hadn’t it? It would kill him soon enough, though.

He knocked the flask back one more time. This time it didn’t burn his throat, but it burned his hand, as the flask showed one final X. Last sip. One more tussle. If he drank again, he’d be riding to the sunset. But the sun was set. The red hazy light was now sleepy blue. Night was here.

He wiped his lip with the back of his hand as the X flask clanged on the floor, sloshing with one more lick of spirits. His.

“Ya’ll know ssssquare dance?” he asked, then attacked.

No more madness, only a fight like grit sand. Blades cut him, and the club bruised him. He got a hand on the first ninja’s neck, slamming it into the one with the knife, the screamed as the third landed a sickle in his gut. The bottle was red hot need on those dry floor boards. He turned on that one, still screaming, lashing out, landing a fist in that one’s eye, then knocking forward as the other punched him in the back of the skull. He lashed out, but one had grappled his arm, wrenching back until something snapped, but he had another arm to grab their knife, wrong end, slicking his grip with his own blood. Flames licked the floor. A fist slammed into his head, blacking the world as his brain bounced off the inside, but he still wrenched on the blade, pulling the user into a killing boot kick that shattered their jaw like kindling.

Pain erupted in his other leg as the third ninja sliced important tendons with its sickle, felling him, but he fell with it, and landed with all his force focused in his elbow, feeling skull crack like pumpkin husk as he hit the floor, now surrounded by angry red flames from the X flask, incandescent soul vessel for the damned gunner.

One more. One more damn ninja. But he couldn’t see. Eyes out of time. He spat blood. The world was swinging, lit only by the red-hot fire glow of the X flask. He needed it. It would fix this.

Just one more drink would fix the world.

The gunner crawled, digging his fingers into the board floor, baking in the hell fire heat, to drag himself to the last sip, the one that would fix everything. Just drink the last of his spirit-

A black slipper slammed down on his hand, inches away from the X.

X marks the spot! It’s all he need now! Just one more sip, one more ninja-

Honk.

What in the devil?

The gunner, half dead and bleeding like a butcher’s hog, and ninja, a velvet form in the night-lit bar, turned as one to the batwings. There, stood two silhouettes. One small, one dashing. The dashing one had a hand… on his nose?

Mad War - Second Part

“Hmf! So, hmf, you mean to tell me that a yellow, with a blue on the sidecar no-less! Hmf! Failed to retrieve the Child?” Pompador Bombastic huffed as he paced in front of Cheerio.

“Sir, the vamp used a teleportation spell, even after getting pied.” Cheerio said.

Bombastic pirouetted on the clown, “I know that! Hmf, you think I did not read the report? In my day, hmf, I would have tackled that blood sucker before, hmf! Hmf! HMF!... Well, that is that. Did you manage to capture any of them?”

Cheerio stared straight ahead, down the featureless field, as he replied, “No, sir. Garlic bread, all of them.”

“Well blast the- HMF!- The ringleader himself!” For a second, Bombastic stared across the airship field at the bobbing shadow of Cheerio’s vessel. Such a wide expanse would be swept by gales that would bowl him over in peacetime, but not a gust or breeze had been loosed in five years. When they didn’t need to dock airships here, then maybe the winds would return. Bombastic flipped his red curls over his shoulder, as if wishing the wind would come back to do it instead.

“Well, my boy, hmf, those fangs are full of tricks, of course. No use painting tears on your cheeks for it.”

“That is very funny, sir.” Cheerio said.

“Hmf. There is some good news for you though. Next mission is on the land. No more wirework for now.”

Behind the commander, Cheerio and Jefferson exchanged huge frowns, very subtly. Bombastic knew damn well that they were the best wire-ridders in the force. He was trying to play coy to take the sting out of this new assignment.

He continued, “Now, let’s find the specifics, hmf!, shall we? Tiny, Vlat, Jefferson, you are dismissed.”

The three gave swift, identical salutes as they pinwheeled their arms in a unison mockery of lost balance, before about-facing sharply, all three in different directions, and setting off for the barracks tents.

“Now, my boy, we must, hmf, be going.”

Cheerio assumed they were heading for the command tent, but they passed the behemoth of blue and red without a glance from Pompadour. On all sides, clowns were carrying crates, papers, flowers, anvils and doves, but none of them disturbed the commander red and soldier yellow marching through the chaos. Pompadour only stopped when a trio of triplet blues disrupted the haphazard crowd by herding a clowder of cats between tents and underfoot. Cheerio came abreast to watch, carefully shuffling so he wouldn’t step on any of the felines with his big boots, and was surprised to look up to see Pompadour as morose as ever, staring at the cats.

“My boy, have you, hmf, put red on the ground since Hooptember?”

“No sir.”

Pompadour gave a deep, long, long, long, comically long sigh, “Then just hear; hmf, that I hope the damn cats are the least of our concerns.”

“Sir?”

But now the clowder was past, and Pompadour marched ahead as if he’d never stopped. But where to? Cheerio looked about, as if a glance at his ringmembers would give him a clue, but they were too busy attending to the funny business of the army’s headquarters to give him a second look. He couldn’t pick a trend or hint out of their behavior. Of course, even to a fellow clown, trying to predict what was about to happen was impossible. Looking at the manner and supplies was pointless; no one could know what kind of joke the force was setting up for... Assuming they were still setting up jokes. Were they in the punchline now? Cheerio realized his team had been chasing the vamps for over a month. Was it possible that they were reaching the end? Had their joke fallen flat?

“Eyes front!” Pompadour coughed from ahead.

He did and now saw where he was going after all. The pure white was tent ahead. Cheerio stomach filled with a sense of relief, even as his body suddenly felt all the tire of his assignment. Pompadour must see fit to give him a rest before he got his assignment. Overheard, suspended by party balloons of gleaming white, painted with white paint on white wood, a sign named the tent, “Eggs”.

The flaps parted before them, and when they closed, there was silence.

Thousands of eggs. Tens of thousands of eggs. Miles of eggs in this tent.

Cheerio could only honk his nose in reverence as he continued to follow Pompadour deeper into eggs on pedestals. Every egg was painstakingly decorated with paint, a wig, craft paper, cotton thread, bits, bobs, and, rarely, a miniature animal. All of them bore faces, some smiling manically, some frowning with distressing depression, some with open mouths darkened by charcoal black, and some sticking out clay tongues. Cheerio realized he was now leading Pompadour. He wasn’t marching anymore, he was running swiftly through the grid of eggs, some only as high as his ankle, some head and shoulders above him, he ran on. Looking at each one was overwhelming, but he did not have to look to know where he was going, or who he was passing. For a second, he felt Tiny’s eyes on him and glanced aside to see a tiny shock of blue hair passing swiftly, then he was past. Then he felt a different gaze magnetically drawing his eyes forward, under his own more powerful command.

And stopped, before his egg. Right before his face, his egg.

Gold hair, over a coy swashbuckler’s smirk. Blushed cheeks and boyish chin, all dominated by keen jade eyes. Except he was not looking at the egg, he was looking at himself; the dirt on his face, the wrinkles in his plaid jumpsuit, betraying the effort of his failed mission. It was all he saw. He knew the egg’s face did not have tired bags under its eyes, nor was its perfect texture marred by the scars of battle. Looking now, it was hard to tell, who was the egg? Was the egg Cheerio? Was he? Cheerio Egg Was?

Now it was impossible to tell.

Applause.

The noise of the encampment was back, the oppressive pressurized silence of Eggs was gone, and all that was left was the dazed waking confusion of not knowing which was looking at who, and then that evaporated away too.

He broke his stare, and saw his body turning away from him, just in time to see the scars gone, the youth returned, and his polka-dot jumpsuit as fresh as a polished horn. He did not see his egg, now smudged and tired. Not cracked, but almost.

“You better, son?” Pompadour asked.

“Right as cats and dogs, sir!” Cheerio said, saluting enthusiastically, his flailing arms carefully avoiding the delicately painted totems on all sides. He felt like Cheerio again.

“Good. Hmf. Gonna need your pep, cause cat’s ain’t so right anymore.”

“Sir?”

“Hmf. Follow me.”

Cheerio’s cadmium yellow brow furrowed as he fell back into step. Before they were too far, he spared a glance over his shoulder, seeing the grimy, marked face of his egg smirking sardonically back at him. It was almost enough to damp his refreshment. Then it was out of his mind; he’d have to fix that up before his next mission.

Pompadour was back on track, marching as swiftly as ever past the endless grid, and it was not until they had gone a thousand feet did Cheerio realize; they were not leaving. They were going deeper into Eggs. And shortly, he realized the tent was getting brighter. Growing light, but this light was not soaking through the canvas. And this light was not still. It flashed and span, it danced. Cheerio realized he had never been this deep in Eggs, nearly at the center. He saw that these eggs were coarser, no more perfect faces with perfect paint, now they were crude things. Wax smeared in the poor imitation of a face. Some pedestals were empty. One egg was green, the unpainted shell itself a sickly shade. These were ancient. The original eggs.

That was all he saw before the wild light was all he could see, and then they were at the center, where the tentpole stretch up to a cloudy canvas above.

And he heard crying song. Now he saw, in the center of Eggs, was the Dancing Clown.

White light, blazing white, dancing, pure clean and glowing all over, the Dancer moved and swang hypnotically, casting their light askew, falling in place and rolling over itself, bald head bobbing, hips thrusting, arms weaving, feet rising, soles falling, hands waving, fingers tutting, elbows wagging, shoulders cycling, body swaying, waist gyrating, knees popping, wrists flapping, the whole Dancer swinging and sliding around the center pole, so bright that the pole of Eggs was a black line against the brilliant Dancer.

And the Dancer spoke,

The boy, the boy,

Ahoy the boy

No coy ploy the boy!

Far away falls the boy, when slipping.

The Dancer, supreme leader, the King of Clowns, span around and bucked madly with its song,

The land, the land,

unhand the land,

Plans to span the land!

You say in land is the boy, a-dripping.

The Queen of Clowns rose and fell, blinding and dazzling in their song.

The top, the top

Stops a-top

Elope the top p-l-o-p!

Unhand the prop, the boy is flipping!

Pompadour put a hand on Cheerio’s shoulder. The message was done, the Dancer had sung. His mission was-

The wire, the wire

So dire the wire

a-flyer aspires

High on the wire but I won't trip it.

And with a great crash of both blazing boots striking the ground, Cheerio was awoken as the tent flaps parted before him. Except they were behind him, for he and Pompadour were walking backwards out of Eggs.

It was time for the next mission. He did not know what it was, but Cheerio knew he wouldn’t fail this time. He’d had his tragedy, he’d dipped into bathos. But he knew that next time he was out there, he would kill it. One way, or the other.

Mad War - Chapter 1

“Jefferson, adjust tiller to fifteen!” the pilot shouted over the deafening beat of wind and hammering rain.

“Yaw is already in the skulls! What do you think this is, a hamster ball?!”

“Damn the skulls, Jeff, I’m joking here! Those teeth cleaners are getting away!” the pilot shouted back.

“Teeth are in skull,” a new voice said, its piano treble voice undamped by the hard rain outside, “So I think they would be close-“

“Jam your gears!” The pilot spat, “Jeff, give me more damn tiller!”

Teeth gritting, Jefferson leaned into the lever taller than himself, counting the clicks up to eleven, the danger zone, then twelve, bringing the airship into a steep incline, thirteen, his feet started sliding on the floor, fourteen, and he had to stop himself from clinging to the tiller for support as the floor slid out from under his big red boots. Now, as they slipped down through the air and the rain slammed into them side-on, their target loomed large ahead. Cheerio gave a predatory snarl as he fought the wheel to keep his controls under control.

“Back in sights!” he called from the driving ring. Jefferson didn’t hear, he was sliding out of control, the comms cluster rushing up to meet him-

“Or is the jaw not part of the skull?” the piano voice continued, as the speaker casually closed a gripper around Jefferson’s suspenders just before he slammed bodily into the cluster, “So it may be no matter to the teeth how the skull fairs?”

“Shut it Pretty, I’m trying to concentrate!” Cheerio barked as he slammed his bright red, massive boot repeatedly into the valve pedal, “Pies and Whoopies! Did we lose hydro?!” He shouted as the pedal gave a pathetic squeak.

Just then, a speaking tube in the coms cluster whistled, followed by a tiny, tinny voice from the chemistry room, “Hydro is down! Primary vat spilled when someone threw us into a turn! Just how far into skulls are we?!”

“Vlat!” Cheerio shouted into another tube as Jefferson scrambled up beside him.

“Vat!” he added.

“Spill!” Cheerio added.

“Fill?” The response came, through the deck, too big to fit through the tube.

“Fast!” Jefferson shouted.

“Blast!” Cheerio shouted as their target disappeared into the storm.

“Mop?” the big voice said, now in the Hydro’s tube.

“Stop!” the tiny voice screamed, upside-down.

“Quick!” Jefferson shouted into a tube as the ground appeared.

“Fix.” Vlat said,

“Git!” the little one shouted.

“Crank’er!” Cheerio told Jefferson.

“Wanker!” The small voice told Vlat

And she was about to say something certainly unfunny, but Jefferson had built enough head of Hydro and Cheerio saw the other ship again, just before a huge stormhead, and just before he stomped on thrust, and the chemistry in the vat boiled to fruition.

Ignition!

- - -

“How is it that they follow us, my child?” Coth hissed in his pilot’s ear.

“My lord, they are defying all proper decorum, as their kind is want to do.” The Sly One replied.

“Curse the light of day!” Coth hissed, sweeping around to face his right hand, “Have we any more power?”

Thumb and pointer finger flapping in arcane gestures of obscene origin, it said “No, thrust is at its limit, and they have not been swayed by our greatest maneuver techniques nor our penultimate power.”

“A new burst of speed, my owner.” The Sly One growled.

“Bright thing!” Gertrude grumbled, pointing three times at the black clouds ahead.

“Curses” He said again, then recoiled instinctively from the sight that appeared through the sheets of rain on the viewing portal.

Light. Curses on curses, their fortunes were turning to daylight at every turn!

Or was it? Through the glare of the light, Coth sensed a bone-chilling and welcome feeling. Recovering his composure, his smile broke as wide as the crescent moon. And he knew in his senses that his children felt it as well.

“Take us there, my child! We shall show those clowns our true conviction!” he cried.

 - - -

“Cheerio, why aren’t we shooting the hooks?!” Jefferson called as he kept up the crank on Hydro next to the captain’s chair.

“Those blood sucking bastards are falling like rocks, I can’t trust the shot!” came the reply, “Where are these gnawers taking us anyway? Lay off the thrust, get us some direction.”

They had leveled out, in the nastiest strata of storm, where any more speed as as likely to dash them into the wind as cacth their prey.

Jefferson clambered across the cabin, tripping just right on the steps and brasswork, then all wrong on a little person dropped in from the dorsal corridor.

“Tiny!” He spat as he pinwheeled into the navigator’s table.

“Nah, I’m big. Uh. Vlat.” Vlat said, lowering himself on one arm.

“Talking to me Toss-For-Brains!” someone said from below his huge zebra-print buttons.

“Help with nav.” Jefferson said, grabbing her by the conveniently placed handle sewn into the back of her jumper and lifting her onto the table.

Tiny glared at the maps underboot, “You haven’t touched this mess in two days, how are we-”

The world pitched as they hit a roll of wind, and would have rolled themselves, except for Vlat’s hands. And the hit pulled their eyes as six to the windshield.

Through the viewing glass, they could see their mark; a deeper black against the black clouds, highlighted by lightning arcs between thunderheads. But also lit by a new heavenly beam. The eye of the storm.

“What’r they thinking?!” Tiny said, “We got ‘em on the ropes so they’re gonna suicide?”

“No chance. They’ve got a trick! Pretty, Jefferson, someone tell me where this damn balloon is floating?!” Cheerio shouted over his shoulder.

“Hmmmmmmmm” The robot buzzed, daintily placing a gripper to its chin in thought, “Inertial measures have failed. Visual tracking has failed. The balloons have not been sighted for two dozen and-“

“You don’t know?!”

“How precisely do you want to know? Though not a null response, it is valid to all queries.” Pretty saw, in the way his gold curls were whipping with dismantling intent that it should compose its insufficient data into a meaningful response, “It is unlikely that we have left the country of Gruber-Kach, given the maximum airspeed of this vessel.” It replied, with a staccato sarcasm in its voice.

Jefferson was strapped into the navigation desk. He grabbed a map, some scrap paper, a blue crayon and started drawing.

“Pretty, what’s this boat’s max airspeed?” he asked as he squinted at his own thumbs up, and at a course map that hadn’t been updated in two days.

The glowing green and blue eyes turned on him, “Given loading profile, and Mister Cheerio’s treatment, approximately one hundred kilometers per hour.”

“We caught a blast in the tail over Yestetownellow.” Tiny added.

Jefferson had a chart in each hand, storm profiles and troop movements along the Gruber-Kach/Hectare border, looking back and forth and at the map, doing the figures in his head now. They had been using hydro liberally, so increase airspeed, storm above the equator, so counterclockwise. He traced their path with his eye. Pretty’s guess may have been less than useless. And if the frontline had lost anymore ground in Hectare since the last report…

“Dammit, Cheerio, pull us around!”

But it was too late, they crossed into the eye of the storm. Directly above the enemy artillery battery a mile below.

 - - -

With storm shutters sealed tight on all viewing windows, turning every window into deadly gold rectangles as light tried to barge in, they were flying blind now. But they were not deaf. As soon as the rain stopped hammering on their airframe, Coth’s daughter launched signal flairs. Scarlett, Red, then Blood Red.

A responding Maroon flair went unseen on the distant ground.

Then smoke. Then the sound of artillery.

 - - -

“Pull around, Pull around!” Jefferson cried as flak rushed up to meet them.

Deep thumps on all sides as the explosive munitions tried to pluck them out of the sky. Cheerio screamed orders, whipping the crew into a circus of action. Vlat wrenched control levers, venting the gas, and opening up hydro as Tiny sat on his shoulders, adjusting trim on the overhead valves to make sure nothing melted or failed as they converted into gliding mode. And Jefferson was elbow deep in powder sacks and ignition charges, deftly tying wires to every trigger pin. He wrenched open a floor hatch and dropped the first charge as the ship keeled forward on skeletal wings. The dropwire trigger snapped taught, and it erupted below them as Cheerio pulled the ship into a tight turn, just before a new flak cannon joined the salvo with a shot where they would have been, shrapnel rattling the airframe. The new-slack bladder meerly coughed, instead of tearing. But the airframe quaked in the blast. Tiny took over smoke charges as Jefferson sprang to the trigger board and began launching more charges with drumroll succession.

Finally, with a gut-drop fall, the balloon lost buoyancy and Vlat span up a hand-crank to finish their transformation.

 - - -

“My lord! They have transfigured!” Sheltho cried from the divining circle in the middle of their guiding circle, eyes squeezed tight shut, fingers digging into her temples.

“How is that possible?!” He replied.

“Where before the image was a great balloon, I now see the image of a stork, they have changed their form.”

‘Curses’ was too fine a word for this, and Coth spat such vulgarities that Sheltho’s divining magic nearly sputtered and failed. The damn rednoses were as tricky as racoons! Even with their devil’s luck, stumbling right onto the front line of the ground-war, finding the eye of the storm directly over a working artillery line, even making it this far at all, they were about to fail in their unholy mission!

It was time to change the plan.

“Bring me the child!” Coth shouted.

 - - -

Cheerio’s tendons were sticking out like steel cable as he wrestled with the glide controls, barely manageable even now as they converted from balloon to glider mid-free-fall. The whoopie-damn machine was never meant for this!

“Vlat! Take it!” He barked.

With acrobat precision, Vlat jumped over the back of the pilot’s chair as Cheerio slid out the bottom of it, and grabbed the controls with hardly a shudder. He had almost no room for leveraging the rebellious levers, but he didn’t need leverage when he had power. Tiny and Jefferson were still coating the airspace with smokescreen, throwing off plumes to feint movements for the cannons below, but they were running on borrowed time. If they didn’t get back into the cover of the storm before Tiny used up all the charges, they would have more bullet holes than polka dots.

“Lay double smoke and join me in the car!” Cheerio called to them as he went to car controls, “Pretty, dial us in to go over them, then back into the storm. In that order, dammit! Vlat, join us on the car once we’re on course. ”

“With pleasure, sir.” Pretty said.

Vlat gave a thumbs up as he began locking control levers down for the move.

With one more drumroll of smoke charges being fired into the blazing clear sky, Tiny and Jeff followed Cheerio down into the corridor, then into the car compartment. Tiny went in first, almost too big for it. Jefferson and Cheerio went next, at once or they wouldn’t have fit. Then Vlat barreled in.

 - - -

In the blackest depths of his ship, surrounded by ancient runes drawn in dried blood now ebbing with scarlet magic, Coth chanted the spell of displacement. In his arms, the child squirmed and squealed, knowing with child instinct that all was not right. But in this grip, as cold and stiff as rigor mortis, the babe had no power to escape.

Thump.

An impact; the rednoses’ grapples. They must have gotten lucky for only one to hit, but the clowns would leverage even this tiny toehold if it gave them a chance to ruin his plan. He clamped his eyes shut in concentration on the displacement spell; this couldn’t fail!

He muttered the next stanza, then hard to grumble to a stop as shouting broke his concentration.

Shouting. Shouting? But how?!

Sheltho’s eyes flew open. The image of the Christmas box!

“Brethren! They are coming!” She cried, just before the thump of impact.

Sly One was already moving, slithering in his way towards the sound. Gertrude was moving too, like a spider crawling along ceilings and walls toward the fly causing vibrations in its web. Sheltho had no power to fight the way they could, but she was not powerless. As sweat rolled down dead skin, she put her fingers back to her temples.

Sly found them first. Careful to avoid the blinding beam shining through the hole in the ship’s carapace, he circled the tiny shape that was buried, nose deep, in the floor.

It looked, for all the world, like a Parade Day Firework, but almost big enough to contain a delicious toddler instead of an explosive charge. A big logo for the Robot Company was painted along the rocket in cheerful reds and blues.

Sly One was out of sight when Getrude arrived, her pounding feet awakening the red, white and blue cylinder in the floor. With a soda-can pop, a door in the side flew open and a clown burst out, springing and flipping, guns blazing. Cheerio, silver magnums akimbo, lit up the creature of the night with gusto as he bounced a spinning flip over her head.

Sly slithered along the ceiling over the rednose, let go to fall on the busy shooter, then screamed in pain as another clown popped out, holding a mirror to reflect cursed light up into the falling vampire. Sly fell in a heap, caught two rounds from Cheerio’s left gun, but managed to roll himself to the far side of the rocket, just beyond the burning light and stinging gunfire. Gertrude was roaring with power as she swiped with four arms to knock Cheerio through the hole the rocket had punched in the hull, but he had already somersaulted between her legs. Before she could turn to dash him to pieces, Jefferson had his mirror on her, stunning her with the light of day. Tiny appeared behind him, shouldering a bazooka half the size of their vehicle, leveraged over Jeff’s shoulder, aiming squarely into Getrude’s face.

“Say Cheese!” She cried.

Click.

In the cockpit, Sheltho grinned. Holding the image of the unfired bazooka in her mind, showing it to reality, and claiming its truth. No toys for the clowns!

“Shit!” Tiny cried, just before Sly appeared behind her, wrenched the tube out of her hands and brought it down on her skull. The thump was almost as loud as their landing. Tiny went stiff as a board and fell face-first to the boards. Then a massive arm reached out of the rocket and grabbed the other end of the unfired bazooka before he could use it to bash her head in.

Cheerio’s guns clicked empty, but he lost no time pulling two more out, still dodging Gertrude’s jabs and swipes, one arm for each gun, as they danced a death tango around the rocket, as he juggled four guns, reloading a pair one motion at a time on the catch, and firing the others on the other catch. Under this impossible hail of motion desperate shots, the vampire was sagging and slow, spending too much energy patching the bullet holes as they opened up all over her body and deluge of arms.

Vlat squirmed out of the rocket, wrestling the launcher out of Sly’s grasp, squeezing himself through the rocket’s door, but he couldn’t get his other arm free. Sly had leverage, but Vlat still had power. He jerked the tube in, rocked his head forward into Sly’s own, with a crack like an egg on face. Sly reeled back screaming and clutching his face, now marred with white make-up that had smeared off of Vlat’s forehead.

Gertrude screamed as she abandoned the healing, swallowed three shots with no effort to patch the bloodless holes, and doubled her attach. But Cheerio was still one big red step ahead, now reloaded on two steps, and chucked a freshly spent revolver into her face on the three steps, eliciting a new scream as the silver platting hit her sunburned skin, then, catching his fresh guns on the four steps, kicked the third under her legs back to Jefferson on the four and a half steps, who leapt into the fight swinging it like a club into Gertrude’s back. As she cried out, Cheerio kicked the first gun on the rebound off her face and kept blasting with the other two to draw her attention, but she was so enraged she span to face Jefferson, arms flailing wildly at the clown beating her with the silver gun, but Jefferson was quick, managing to dodge her mad, half-blind flailing and beating back her blunt strikes with his silver club. Gertrude was failing fast.

Sly was back in the fight again, ducked a swing from Vlat and lunged forward, teeth bared, eyes blazing an angry red, spit flying that could tranquilize a rhino. The clown barely caught the vampire with his free hand, stopping the fangs an inch from his throat.

“What’s the rush?” Tiny said groggily from the floor, then “oof!” As Jefferson was thrown against her.

Gertrude cackled with glee as she finally landed a hit on one of the clowns, then whirled to finish off the juggler. Two barrels jutted forward, she invited the lead slugs to strike her, knowing that as soon as he fired, she would survive and kill him, then she would- pain erupted in her scalp as the fourth gun fell from the air on her head. Then, with a two-handed strike, Cheerio clapped her head between the other two, crushing her skull between silver barrels, striking hot.

Sly screamed with carnal rage as Cheerio put a bead on him, flinching and jerking as rounds tore into him. Vlat used the shift in power to throw the vampire off his body, then popped back into the rocket as Sly jumped back up to bit him again. Teeth clacked on open air, Sly ignoring the sizzling and popping as sunlight hit his skin as he threw himself into the rocket after Vlat. 

Damn! No shot! Cheerio couldn’t shoot into the rocket; he’d kill Vlat! Jefferson was swaying drunkenly from Gertrude’s strike and-

Great! Tiny was conscious! Damn! Tiny was climbing back into the rocket!

“Tiny, No!” Cheerio shouted.

“You wanna ssssmell my flower?” She said with the slur of the barely conscious.

The rocket was bouncing and rocking as Vlat and the blood-lusted vampire fought madly in the tight space, then an ear shattering scream rose as Tiny squeezed the bulb in her jumpsuit, squirting silver nitrate into the mix. Sly tore out the other side, scrambling madly to get away from the poison, flinging himself thirty feet out of the rocket, out of the airship, into the open air and sunlight beyond.

The screaming vampire fell away like a nightmare at dawn.

Jefferson finally got his head on straight, figuratively, “We get them?”

Sheltho changed her mind about the bazooka and reality finally got the memo.

That massive missile would emaciate the meddlesome morons.

FWOOM!

With perfect comic luck, the projectile fired harmlessly though their entry hole.

“Nice shot, Tiny.” Cheerio said.

Then there was a deep boom as the rocket hit their airship.

“Nah, it ain’t.” She said as crawled out of the rocket.

Cheerio ran up to the hole to see the damage; they had lost a glider wing, and Pretty was doing his best to recover control as he shifted back into balloon mode, but it couldn’t keep the airship out of sight in the clouds.

“Pies and pants!” He spat, “Vlat, send Jefferson back; Pretty’s gonna need some help!”

Vlat finally, slowly, extricated himself from the rocket, with a hand from Tiny, then fell unconscious at her feet. His arm was covered in bite marks.

“Break my skull!” Cheerio spat, “Tiny, help me out; they’re both going back now.”

Together, they pulled Vlat the rest of the way out of the rocket, then grabbed the nearly invisibly thin steel cables that were clipped onto it. Two for Vlat, Jefferson was already clipped in, and then, with a short electric bursts down the cables to start the winches, the two of then were yanked off their feet back to the airship.

Cheerio looked Tiny down and more down. Besides the bump poking through her frizzy blue hair, she was unscathed.

“Squeaky?” He asked.

She rubbed the huge bump with one hand and squeaked her nose with the other.

“Let’s get us a kid.”

 - - -

Two words, all that was left in the displacement spell.

“ALKTHENAKTHANAKTHAKNA!” Coth hissed, “ QUAUAQUTTASUATI-“

“Oi!” Someone cried as the sting of silver filled the air.

Coth’s gold eye flew open, seeing the pair with his vampire vision in a single heartbeat. In that blood pulse; foresight.

Two clowns, one lanky and yellow rank, the other tiny and blue rank. The yellow one had three guns, one supposedly hidden in his jumpsuit, the other was armed with a squirting flower with the silver nitrate that now ruined the air itself. Both were true red noses with proper bulbous spheres.

The yellow would open with bluff gunfire, two shots, not daring to endanger the child. The small one would make a blitz, taking approximately a quarter of a second, and would feign a leaping attack, but would go for a close slide so she could use her flower while the yellow one deployed a trick… a pie? No, he would use a bandana weave for sure. Next, Coth saw that Sheltho, through the bowels of the ship, was now preparing the next image in her mind. Perfect, she was as tricky as himself. And he needed seventeen tenths of a second for her to do that, so he needed to evade the short one and a bandanna for that long.

His gold eye saw this, in the time measure of the blood.

Tiny dashed forward, fearless of the master vampire clutching their mark, as Cheerio laid suppressing fire over her head. Coth dodged both shots and span across the floor like a top as Tiny made to leap. But instead she stayed low, sliding on the polished heels of her boots even as she began to squeeze the bulb on her flow. But the vamp was over her, flying towards Cheerio!

He barely had time to pull the bandana from his sleeve and sling it at the monster on batwings rushing up to meet him. But Coth dodged this too, narrowly keeping the screaming child from the bandana sling, and crashing bodily into the clown. Silver heat rose through his jumpsuit, but then Coth had him held up with one hand while his other held the child secure.

Kill the clown. Teeth bared, vamcisors gleaming with toxin-

GACK!

The small one had thrown a pie right into his mouth!

Coth wretched and spasmed as the cream froze every nerve it hit, turning his flesh into sweet froth from the nose down.

Cheerio was thrown aside, and barely turned his impact into a comically flat splat, but the child stayed in the vampire’s hand even as he used his other to tear the pie out of his face.

Sheltho finally had her image, no visual image, a sound image. And so she reminded reality that Coth had said QUAUAQUTTASUATICHUHUHUHUHUHUHAHAHAGUARPRA!

The universe agreed, the spell was complete, and the vampire was gone with no trace except the spilled pie filling.

“Damn the ringmaster!” Cheerio screamed.

Mad War - Section 0000

Mad War was inspired, the entire premise, by the music video below, performed and animated by WorthiKids. The image of hardcore clown soldiers fighting evil magical vampires was moving, and lead to the story I am calling, for now, Mad War. Worthi’s other work, Big Top Burger, gives meat, cheese and some polka dots to the greater lore of the story.

WorthiKids - Wire. Please Support the artist: They have phenomenal animated shorts, music and a series.

Mad War is currently unfinished, but I have a clear image of where it will go. However, I have a mid-arc problem, as I often do. Having great motivation at the beginning, and a clear endpoint, I am caught unawares when I get to the middle. I hope you enjoy what is written so far, and I encourage you to use the feedback form at the bottom of the page to let me know if you do. And if you don’t, the same channel will serve just as well.