Absolute Corruption

I lowered my gun, panting. "Ow."

"I wish that our ears weren't damaged," Laxy said.

Calculator's powers managed to go that far -- and the ache in my head vanished. Gabe put his finger to his ear, rubbing it wonderingly.

"Come on!" I said, nodding. "Lets follow it."

"Yes, lets follow the massive bloody tentacle, you Yank madman..."

"Shut up, Gabe" came from every single throat in the corridor.

We continued walking forward for what felt like an eternity -- following the gory tail that the tentacle left behind it, the corridor winding and twisting and seeking -- and eventually we came to an immense chamber that looked as if it had been carved out of a human's stomach. The walls were braced up by a rib-like quartet of obsidian pillars. The walls flexed inwards and outwards. The center of the area, though, was dominated by a slab of calcified bone carved into a hideous amalgamation of nude human bodies and skulls and leering eyeballs that were, fortunately, still statuary rather than blinking, living flesh. Chained to this grotesque alter was the girl that we had come to rescue. She wasn't knocked out or gagged -- and she was making it extraordinarily clear as to her opinions about the situation.

"You fucking cunt!" she snapped, jerking at the bindings wrapped around her ankles as robed figures slithered and lurched and distended slightly around her. There were four of them, and their robes kept on stretching and collapsing around whatever their bodies were. Because they definitely weren't human -- but there was something in the way they used robes, with sleeves and hoods, which implied they had been humans once. Their language was gurgling and inhuman now, and they were clearly getting ready to do something -- likely nefarious.

"Okay, so, what's the plan?" Laxy whispered as she knelt down at the edge of the tunnel, watching the hideous monsters moving around the girl.

"Well, I was wondering, why the fuck am I here?" Gabe whispered. "Why did I get drafted? What do I add here?"

"A fourth person to carry a BBSG. Plus, you're a security guard. You know security stuff," I whispered to him.

"...I am a bouncer," he hissed back. "Most of my skills are bloody conversation skills and rambling about video games!"

"Aren't those technically the same thing?" Laxy asked.

"Don't you FUCKING touch me!" The girl on the slab shouted -- one of the robed figures was leaning over her and with an arm that was more tentacle than muscle was touching her forehead, rubbing a slow circular symbol on her forehead in blackish slime.

"Guys!" I hissed. "We don't have time. We should shoot them."

"We might hit her," Calculator whispered. "And killing one of the few humans here will weaken me even more."

"Ugh," I muttered.

"You people have no fucking idea what you're doing, don't you?" Gabe whispered, sounding as if this was some kind of horrifying new dawning realization blooming on him. "Bloody hell, we're fucked. We're so very fucked."

"Do you have to be so pessimistic?" I whispered.

"Calculator, can you make me a flashbang?" Laxy asked.

"Oh, nice think-" I started, but Laxy was already under handing it. The flashbang clanked off the corner of the alter, hit the soggy floor, and then went off. Thanks to our previous wish to not get deafened by firearms, all we had to do was look the other way and screw up our eyes. The creatures screeched as they staggered backwards, their tentacle-arms flailing and bifurcating as they lost their cohesion. We ran forward -- I vaulted over the edge of the tunnel mouth, my butt skidding along the wall, soaking my jeans through with slime. Calculator fired -- and I saw one of the tentacle monsters staggering backwards under the spray of bullets. I was at the girl then, and I smashed open the locks that were wrapped around her wrists by the simple expedient of sliding my palm underneath them by flattening it, then expanding my fist until the metal popped.

Shapeshifter, remember?

"Ow ow ow ow who was the fucking asshole who flashbanged me?" the girl asked.

"Me!" I said, sliding her over my shoulder with a grunt.

"What?" she asked -- sounding even more confused.

I turned back to the tunnel doorway and saw that Calculator, Gabe and Laxy were both gaping over my shoulder. I turned back. And then I wished I hadn't. The far wall of the room had turned into a wall of eyes. Thousands of them, many larger than my face, opened and staring down at me, their pupils focusing on me. Their whites seemed endless. Then a voice beyond a voice -- a voice that was more presence and more reality than a sound -- boomed into the room, filling every nook, every cranny.

EXCUSE ME...BUT WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

"T-That's rich!" I said, trying to sound confident while inside, I was wetting my pants. "You kidnapped this-"

I DID NO SUCH-

Pause.

I THINK THAT ONE OF MY SUB ENTITIES MAY HAVE MISUNDERSTOOD WHAT I ASKED FOR. YOU HAVE MY APOLOGIES.

I slowly looked back at Calculator. He looked at me and shrugged, spreading his hands.

I looked back towards the wall of eyes. "W-what did you want to do here?" I asked.

I REGISTERED AN IMMENSE REALITY SHIFT. ENTITIES FROM OTHERSPACES WERE DRAGGED INTO THE HUMAN REALM. I WISHED TO DETERMINE HOW AND WHY. BUT MY SENSES WERE CONFUSED BY THE DISTORTIONS -- I THINK THIS HAS ALL BEEN ONE BIG...MISUNDERSTANDING.

I blinked a few times. "Oh."

Then, quietly, I coughed. "S-Sorry for shooting up your tentacle."

I APOLOGIZE FOR THE KIDNAPPING. MAYBE...WE CAN POOL OUR RESOURCES?

I grinned. "That's the third best idea I've heard all week!"

THE MYSTICAL DISTURBANCE ORIGINATED IN THE LAND OF THE AUXIMITES.

We all stood there. I glanced at Calculator. He looked at me and shrugged. I scratched the top of my head, then said: "Uh, so, do you know who those are in the modern day?"

NO.

###

"Well, that was a fucking bust," Laxy said, her eyes focused on the ice cubes that floated in the brightly colored drink that she had purchased, her head resting on the counter of the bar that made up the lower level of the apartment building. Gabe sat beside me, and the girl -- who had said her name was Abigail -- was sitting beside Calculator, who was tapping away at his cellphone.

"Not necessarily," Gabe said. "We're all still alive, after all."

"Pfffffttbbb." Laxy made her lips slap together as she rolled her head from side to side.

"Sorry for dragging you down there, Gabe," I said.

"Nah, it's fine," he said, shrugging. "I'm over it, I think."

Gail -- who still seemed to be a bit shell shocked -- shook her head and brushed her hands through her frizzy hair. "What happened to Sir Pudgeworth?"

"Your dog?" I asked.

"No, my pet dolphin, the fuck do you think I was talking about?" Gail snapped, glaring at me.

Sir Pudgeworth chose that moment to waddle into the bar, panting heavily, his rolls of fat compressing and rubbing together in a grotesque display of corpulence that would have left me feeling faintly queasy if we hadn't just crawled out of a crazy tentacle tunnel full of eyeballs. Gail picked him up and started petting him in roughly the same way I petted Laxy when she was in a doggy form, rubbing her hands up and down his side. Sir Pudgeworth -- as was his standard mode -- looked forward and panted and didn't blink.

"Ah!" Calculator said. "The Auxumite Kingdom was...drumroll please..."

I started to tap my fingers on the bar-top.

"Centered in modern Ethiopia!" Calculator said, grinning brightly. "The only African nation state to every kick colonialist Europeans in the junk, first African members of the United Nations and the League of Nations. And you thought you wouldn't learn anything today, huh?"

"To be fair," I said. "We did learn that there are ancient tentacle demons living in subspace that sometimes can reach through the walls to drag people off to be..." I paused. "What were they going to do to Gail?"

"Yeah, what was their plan?" Gail asked, eying Calculator fishily.

"...did you know..." Calculator said, looking down at the front of his cellphone. "That...Ethiopia was ruled by communists until, uh, the 90s and that they freed themselves during the collapse of the Soviet Union?"

Gail narrowed her eyes.

I slapped my palms down on the bartop, shoving myself to my feet. "All right," I said. "Next stop? Addis Ababa."

"Holy shit, you're right, that IS the Capital of Ethiopia!" Laxy said, snapping her head up.

Gail put her hands over her face. "You two are the worst at this." She picked up Calculator's drink and downed the rest of it. Then, wiping her mouth along the back of her hand, she sighed. "I'm coming with."

"You are?" I asked.

"Me too," Gabe said, nodding.

Calculator looked between the two of them. "Why?" he asked.

"Well, it seems a bit of a dick move to pull out halfway through," Gabe said, nodding, his face straight. Laxy started to waggle her eyebrows up and down as quickly as possible, going so far as to actually grow them outwards until they started to resemble overlarge caterpillars. As she wiggled them, Gabe looked at her with a frown.

"And you?" I asked,, looking at Gail.

Gail frowned at me. "I wanna know who fucking nuked my home town for no good fucking reason. Is that enough of a reason for you?"

I grinned. "Now that you mention it? Yes." I snapped my fingers. "Calcy, get us to AA. And make sure we can speak the local language. Whatever that is."

"Ugly American," Gail muttered.

"Hey, you're the one who doesn't know, uh," I paused. "...Arabic?"

"Close, it's Amharic," Calculator said, whistling softly. "Related to Arabic, so, there's that. I guess."

"Right." I nodded. "Warp us away, Calculator."

Calculator snapped their fingers and I felt, suddenly, as if I was being torn to pieces. My skin stretched outwards and I opened my mouth to try and scream, but then I was dragged into many different directions and twisted apart. I closed my eyes -- but I could still see through fragments of empty space and see that my friends were being torn to pieces like ragged chunks of meat. Then, thankfully, blackness came and swallowed up the world.

When my eyes opened again, I was laying on my back, tied to a bed, with a smiling face looking down at me. She was pretty, white skinned, blond haired, and was eying me with the kind of studious curiosity of the truly deranged. But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part -- and this is saying something -- wasn't even the immense butcher knife that she was holding to my chest, the tip tracing a slow line between my nipples. No, that wasn't the worst part.

The worst part?

She was dressed in an SS uniform -- black fabric drawn taut across an impressive rack, with a bright red armband wrapped around her left arm, swastika painted in stark black on white field.

She beamed. "He's awake, mein fuhrer."

I looked to the side and saw a skinny, awkward looking nerd with a fedora lean over the other way. He beamed at me -- holding a hideous looking steel knife in one hand, a swastika printed on the side of it. His finger caressed the flat edge of the blade, lovingly. His face was handsome in a kind of achingly punchable way...and yet, squirming underneath it, was the pudgy, stubble ridden acne covered face of a total neck-beard. The reason why I could see both Handsome McBrownshirt and your average 4Chan user was simple -- I had wished, long ago, to be able to tell when reality had been changed.

I had that wish rescinded for Laxy's shifting -- no need to be constantly aware that Laxy had been born as a muscular woman who looked like she could have bent steel with her bare hands.

But it applied fully to this douchebag.

"Hello Leon," he said.

"Hello..." I paused. "You look like a Dennis. Are you Dennis? You've definitely got that kind of asshole with a slingshot in their pocket vibe to you. Oh wait, sorry. You're wearing a fedora. So, what's your MRA screen name? Alpha Rapeyston the Third?"

His face twisted and he snarled at me. "This is not exactly the time to make jokes, Leon, considering I'm here with Greta and you- Oh! Greta, introduce yourself."

"I am Greta," the blond woman purred.

"Whoa, really?" I asked, my eyes widening. "I never would have fucking guessed."

I jerked on the chains around my wrists.

"Your sarcasm fits the mold I expected." Dennis -- I was still thinking of him as Dennis -- rolled his eyes. "You millennials are all alike."

"I'm twenty nine," I snapped. "I was born in 1988! I'm NOT a snake person."

"Do you want me to stab him a little?" Greta asked -- sounding as if she relished that concept.

"Mmmmaybe a little," Dennis said, clearly relishing the chance to be a total douchecanoe. I tensed my body and when I got stabbed, I managed to actually sound like I was hurting. Not a half bad impression, if I do say so myself. The little HUD indicator I had ticked down and showed that I could actually take a bit more damage before I really got into trouble. I clenched my jaw and spat out a quick 'fuck you.' It seemed like the thing to do.

But I'd figured out at least one thing. Greta was a genie, definitely. Which meant that getup wasn't her just being tacky. It meant...

"So," I said, panting. "Let me guess. North Korea or China or ISIS or Daeish or whatever the fuck we call them nukes Australia. America goes to a full war footing, and you start pushing for more fascism, thus..." I jerked my head towards Greta. "Boosting her power. Slick. Real fucking slick. Wait, did I say slick? I meant sick."

Dennis slapped me, snarling. "Shut up, you little cuck."

"I'm the bull, you asshole," I snarled.

Dennis looked mystified. I laughed, and Greta stabbed my chest again. I, once again, managed to sound like it actually hurt. But, I hasten to remind everyone, it doesn't hurt. I haven't felt pain since I changed pain out for my HUD health-bar. The number didn't go down very quickly -- she was an expert at this kind of fuckery, it seemed to be. Once she jerked her butcher's knife backwards, she frowned.

"Something is wrong, fuhrer," she said, looking up at him. "He is not hurting as much as he should."

"Has he been altered?" Denis asked.

I started to think quicker. It was easier to undo a wish than to create one -- so, if they thought to start hitting my body mods, I was fucked. I had to get Greta's phylactery...the only problem was I had no idea what it was. My eyes flicked to Dennis' little knife. I frowned.

No.

He was playing with it too obviously. I looked him over...and my eyes widened. I had one shot -- one gamble. And, well, as my fifth favorite sci-fi captain liked to say, sometimes you gotta roll the hard six. I shrank my hands using my shape-shifting, yanked them from my restraints, then grabbed for Dennis' hat. He jerked backwards, but one of my fingers managed to hook onto the brim. I fell off the bed he had strapped me into and onto the floor of the Addias Ababa flophouse he was staying in -- to avoid the worst of it if an actual nuclear war started, I was sure.

The bed crashed to the side and we both went tumbling as my weight dragged on the restraints. I felt something in my ankle pop and my health bar juddered down another few percentiles. I felt a weight smash into my back and heard Greta's cackling -- my eyes widened and I saw the hat before me, just out of reach.

Dennis -- knocked on his butt -- scrambled for the hat with the same kind of demented passion as a Nazi reaching for the holy grail. I felt Greta's weight shift and knew that she was bringing her knife down towards my spine. I focused and spread my shoulder blades and my legs to the side, flattening my body outwards. Greta's knife plunged into my back and missed every single vital organ that would have been there normally, thunking into nothing but muscle tissue and a bit of spine. My health bar ticked down ten percentage points at once, but more importantly, I grew my fingers out just enough to grab the hat, yank it backwards, and slam it onto my head.

"I wish for you to go FUCK yourself!" I shouted.

Greta shirked.

And then, with a bright flash of white light, I was no longer laying there with a knife in my back. Instead, I was on my belly, and Dennis stood before me. His body was contorted horrifically, his head twisted backwards, his anus spread, his cock...my eyes widened and I shuddered, jerking my head away from the squirming, still groaning -- in pain and confusion and no little pleasure -- human pretzel. I slowly sat up, shaking my head as I rubbed my hand along the brim of my fedora. I looked back at Greta, who glared daggers at me.

"I wish for Greta the Genie to get back into her phylactery until she is summoned again," I said, panting. I'd have wished for healing, but Jesus fucking Christ, no, I did not want that crazy bitch of a genie anywhere near me.

Greta vanished with a whump and I sighed quietly, taking the hat off my head. I sat down, looking at Dennis.

"Well," I said -- and then winced at his muffled groan of orgasm. "I...think I should fix you. Eventually."

Dennis fell over and writhed.

"Ew." I winced.

It took three tries for my shape-shifting to grow a tracking device in my sternum. I knew the basics behind a stop-gap radio, but that didn't make growing one out of calcium any easier. Once I had done so, I waited -- and shortly later, Calculator arrived with a BBSG and the rest of the group. Each of them looked at Dennis and then at me. I spread my hands.

"Hey," I said. "Self defense."

Gabe winced. "I've heard of head up the ass, but never seen that before."

"So, he's the dickhead?" Laxy asked, kicking the prone form.

"I wish," I said. "That Dennis the Dickhead to be restored to his normal form."

Calculator nodded and with a pale flash of white light, Dennis the Dickhead was laid out flat on the floor. His mouth was open and a bit of drool dribbled from the side, his eyes vacant and staring. He looked like someone who had finally had sex with the person he had wanted to fuck for a long time and was reveling in the afterglow.

I glanced at Calculator. "Is, uh, there any genie prison?"

"Nah," he said. "But, well, the Unspeakable Servant did want-"

"No!" I, Laxy and Gail all said at the same time. I grinned.

"I got a better idea," I said, nodding.

###

"Do you want to do the honors?" I asked, holding the fedora out to Gail. "Since, well, he did nuke your home town."

Gail took the fedora. She held it, eying the piece of headgear. From within, if you leaned in close, you could hear a loud spate of bickering. Almost like there were two spirits jammed inside there -- one who probably didn't want to be there, and one who definitely didn't want to be there. Now, we weren't total monsters. I had wished for the otherspace contained within the fedora to have entertainments and food and enough space for them to live in comfortably. It was a nice prison.

But it was still prison.

Gail twirled the hat on her finger, then chucked it as hard as she could off the side of Cape Horn. It sailed through the air, dropping down and down and then vanished into the waves.

"That felt good," Gail said, nodding slowly.

"So," I said, looking from her to Gabe and Laxy and Calculator. "Adventure done. Bad guy defeated. What do we do now?"