WWYCD: Prose Edition

Mark checked his shirt for bloodstains, and, finding plenty, proceeded to wipe his hands on it. He headed back for the car, and I followed. 'Ey!' he suddenly exclaimed. 'The fuck's that?' He walked over to what looked like a white duffel bag on the ground and kicked it inquisitively. I scurried up beside him. Curled up in the rain-soaked grass lay what could truthfully be described as a baby unicorn. The genuine original deal, too, with a lion's tail, cloven feet and everything. 'Shit, man...' Mark said in a voice that bordered on humbled. 'That thing's gotta be valuable.' He untucked the revolver from his pants and pointed it at me. 'Look man', he said, 'I know you aint the type to incite brouhahas for the sake of gaining worldly possessions, but 'til I manage to get li'l phallusface here sold, I aint taking chances. No offence, but you ride in the trunk.'

Dawn cast it's ruby fingers over Castle Barin and I found myself slogging through the halls from the hanger, thighs frozen from the night patrol and wanting nothing more than to sink into my bed, fully clothed if necessary. I gave an eloquent grunt to Sanya as we reached the usual fork. She responded with a massive yawn and ran her head into the door with a soft thud, the knob rattled a few seconds later and she disappeared into Eila's room.

Barkhorn and Hartmann's room loomed on the left, as I passed I heard a massive "Huuh?" of befuddlement, I weighed just walking past but my curiosity triumphed over my fatigue. The room was no different than usual, Barkhorn's immaculate side versus Hartmann's miniature garbage dump. Trude herself was propped on her arms in bed, hair a wonderful cascade of chocolate as opposed to her normal no-nonsense twintails. I followed her gaze and finally picked out Hartmann among the garbage.

She had scaled the highest peak of Mount Landfill but my brain refused to acknowledge much more. She had on the dopiest smile I'd ever seen, on her head, clashing horribly with her short blonde hair I could individually pick out as a replica viking helm, horns jutting to the ceiling in triumph. A bare chest, and the bottoms something I couldn't easily identify. I finally decided they were Arabian Harem pants, poofy pink fabric narrowing to a point before her ankles. (No hammer pants in 1944.)

My usual impulse of punching or shooting everything that confused me failed in the face of that much disjointed insanity. I could only stare and beg my brain to somehow understand what I was seeing. Was she making fun of me? I never mentioned I was Swedish I think. She stared back, dopey smile replaced by confusion with a slight hint of horror, I met Trude's eyes and they were filled with a similar overwhelming confusion. A few agonizing seconds passed and I finally closed the door as quietly as I could hoping that whatever entity was in charge of order in the world would blissfully wipe away the last 20 seconds of my awareness.

As Barkhorn's yelling echoed down the halls I briefly contemplated how much booze I would need to do the lazy reality god's job for him, I decided that Castle Barin couldn't fit enough booze for that and resolved to try very hard not to think about it as my face plunged into my mattress.

Everything was going so well until the gunfire started.

It was coming from the next floor down - the lobby, Rashid thought. There was also the sound of someone shouting into a megaphone, and the sound of running up stairs. He sighed. All the arrangements were perfect, and if they didn't get a new lead out of this he was going to have to switch out his ID before they'd be able to set up another meeting when the right person was out of her office... and if either of them were to be identified as hostages things would go very badly indeed. Could it be helped? He whispered a somewhat bitter prayer as he weighed his priorities.

He also had to restrain his accomplice. Sarissa was excitedly trying to dig out her mask and slip away, before she felt his firm grip on the back of her neck. "Aw, whaaaat? Aren't we doing this?"

"Wait. I'm still thinking..."

"But -" she interrupted herself and tried to be persuasive. "This is exactly what you had in mind all along, right? Save people, murder bad guys, cool party, everyone has a good time, right?"

Someone out of sight down the hall was firing into the air; most of the doors were shut and locked. Except for the one that sounded like it just got kicked down. He pulled her after him towards what he thought was supposed to be the right room. "Yes and no. Hush." If he were with the hostages he would be better able to see opportunities as they came up, and he could probably talk his way through the police...

Sarissa slipped out of his grip and clung on his hand as they continued down the hallway. "Come oooon," she hissed, "People are gonna start dying any minute now and I won't be involved!"

Rashid rolled his eyes. This is why he hadn't let her try to sneak her knives past security. "No! Sh. I'm going to try to go search the office while we have the chance. If I find anything, I'll set it aside for you to pick up. You do your creepy lurking thing and don't start anything. Just wait until everything is over. If I need them distracted I'll send you a signal somehow, then you can pick people off." She beamed, then pulled down her mask.

They were at the door. He grabbed her again and stared back through the eyeholes. She winced first. "Don't get bored. If you kill anyone, the police will find out, and then I will find out." She gave him a slightly shaky two-thumbs-up back and an happy-looking nod, then grabbed a mugful of pens from a nearby cubicle, took a deep breath, and vanished.

Rashid sighed internally and slipped through the door, then flung a filing cabinet in front of it and broke open the drawers. The monkey's paw burned in his pocket. This was not going to end well in any event.

The dead were walking, as they usually do. They shuffled down streets, they stumbled through the park, and a plethora of them were congregating outside a particularly well-appointed house.

"We take the paintings," suggested Ellis as she rifled through piles of miscellany, "and we throw them at the zombies."

Alexander grabbed another empty absinthe bottle and hurled it from the second-story window. "There are easier ways of doing this."

"We take the paintings, light them on fire, and throw them at the zombies." Claire grabbed a newer watercolor and held it up for appraisal.

"I believe we've already talked about this-"

"Look, I was trying to be nice, but we need to get this shit out of the house." Ellis said, at a slightly louder volume. "Now is a good time!"

Warren saw the thick forest miles below him. Trying not to panic despite crying on the inside, he said, "Get me back up there."

"Of course sir!" He heard Dan stammer. Then he felt something grab his foot, and he felt himself being pulled back up.

"Well hurry up, I'm getting dizzy." The rebel leader snapped. "Will someone help mister Brigham already?" He was starting to feel more than just dizzy- he was nauseous.

That was when the progress sped up. Dakota must have taken over, because someone's strong grip began to drag him from the waste back into the helicopter.

Once inside, he took a breath and stood up, facing the followers that had saved him. He gave Dakota a warm, grateful look, then returned right back to his professional attitude and looked at Dan.

"Thank you." Warren said, with a small nod. "Dismissed."

The last of the Xenobreaker troops fell as gemstone shards flew at bullet speeds and embedded themselves in their necks

Calia breathed a sigh of relief, but kept on guard for any incoming threats in the seemingly-abandoned facility. As Calia used her powers to detect the solids around her, she began to tense up.

"No. Not this. Why this?"

Crawling stealthily on the ceiling towards Calia was a large, spider-like robot. Calia looked up, and her eyes met its gaze.

Calia froze up in fear. She hated spiders. Too many eyes, too many legs, and they crawled about. The spider robot took advantage of Calia's hesitation, leaping down from the ceiling in front of the green-haired lady.

"This... is not good!" were the only words that Calia could think of before the spider robot made its move.

Calia screamed in terror as the spider leaped at her, but was unable to move herself. Her mind was in disarray- preventing her from even casting a quick magic spell via thought.

The whoosh of a blade was heard, and the spider robot split into two.

At the entrance of the room stood Calia's bodyguard AC, who had thrown a lightblade to sever the machine. He conveyed both amusement and understanding as he saw Calia's fearful expression. "Spider problems again, I presume? Don't worry, I understand."

"Don't.. tell... anyone... that this happened." Calia told AC, still shaken up by the incident.

Two days after my arrival, reality turned ridiculous. Or perhaps more accurately, it turned radically different from the reality I had grow used to. Looking at it objectively, one could certainly make convincing claims that the reality I had up until then accepted as normal was rather ridiculous as well. Like the fact that the dominant species on Earth is a type of mostly bald primate whose primary motivation is to have their genitals interacted with in such a way that it triggers a chemical reaction in their brains. That's pretty ridiculous. And so is the fact that any sufficiently basic question about the nature of reality can only be answered with a paradox or a shrug. Oh, and the fact that anteaters exist. Anteaters are very ridiculous animals.

But if one, as I did, perhaps irrationally, though, since we have nothing with which to compare, who can really tell, accept those and all other aspects of that familiar reality as normal, one would be, as indeed I was on that second day after arriving, rather surprised to see a mexican cartel member conjuring fireballs from thin air.

I stood dumbstruck as the flaming projectile approached me. Moments before it would have hit, one of Mark's henchmen pulled me into cover behind one of the barracks - causing approximately two decilitres of instant coffee to leave my paper cup and arc majestically through the air - and handed me a pistol. 'Los Magos.' he hissed. 'Bad. You see, you shoot. Understand?'

He retrieved a machine gun from a canvas bag slung over his shoulder and rushed out, firing wildly toward the attacker for two and a half second before exploding into a flock of gore-spattered doves. Thinking quickly, I raised my gun hand to shield the opening of my cup, and just in time, too; a soggy piece of muscle tissue bounced off my knuckles, leaving a streak of blood across the back of my fist. I drawined the rest of my coffee lest it should be subjected to other dangers, then dropped the cup and pressed myself up tighter against the corrugated sheet metal wall. All around I could hear bursts of gunfire and screams of the wounded, interspersed with sounds that were harder to identify. A drawn-out noise halfway between a hiss and the groaning of ice under pressure. A fragmented scratch like thousands of matches being lit simultaneously. A rustle as of paper, but deafeningly loud.

A blast rocked the barrack behind which I sat hidden, and as I looked up I saw the roof fly off, corrode in mid-air and fall to the ground a few meters ahead of me as a cascade of rusty flakes.

I got to my feet to look for a shelter with more structural integrity, and suddenly found myself face to face with a member of the rival cartel. He wore a leather jacket over a dirty tank top, and an inexpertly made tattoo of Saint Mary covered the left half of his scarred and disfigured face. Violet sparks of energy snaked from his right hand all the way up to his elbow. He raised his palm toward me and an orb of energy manifested itself in the air, growing more intense by the second. I dropped my gun at his feet as nonthreateningly as I could and backed up against a stack of barrels with my arms raised and my eyes pressed shut.

There was a fleshy thud.

I opened my eyes. In front of me stood, judging by her clothes, one of our cartel's manual labourers. A strikingly attractive woman, with high cheekbones and an unkempt black bobcut. In front of her lay the tattooed man with a crowbar lodged in his skull.

Dakota could not help but grin as she entered the government building. Now that Warren had become the leader, she could actually feel safe in this place, not haunted by the past.

Her best friend was probably getting things set up for the rebels— well, former rebels— to move into true leadership positions. She would simply remain as Warren's second in command, a spot where she was comfortable in.

In the halls, some of her group-members were taking down the pictures of the Pierce family and putting up a picture of Warren in it's place. She felt the need to remind them, "Hey, he said to take those to storage, right? Hurry up!"

They nodded to her and nervously ran off with the pictures of the former leaders.

Dakota laughed to herself.

Seems like nothing had changed at all...