Ancient Evil Instituted
Ancient Evil Instituted
A seven foot eight inch wolf-bear dressed in black boots, black cargo pants, a black button down shirt with a blood red tie and vest to match under a black trench coat, red leather gas mask that looks like it's been preserved from those used in world war one with black lenses to protect his identity, a black and red pinstriped fedora on his head and fingerless red gloves with reinforced knuckles on his hands climbs up a fire escape to the roof of a warehouse. Inside the warehouse octopi in black robes gather around a chalk circle of dark magic sigils. The wolf-bear watches from a window as he tries to keep himself hidden.
One of the octopi steps into the circle as the others Chan to the elder gods which causes a darkly green light to bleed through the floor. The octopi in the circle takes down his hood and reveals himself to be cephalopod mafia Don Marco Calamari an up and coming mob boss. On the fire escape Michael O'Connor takes aim with his sniper rifle.
Unnoticed by all, Michael has his shot lined up when the call goes out for a sacrifice and a vixen is brought out as naked as the day she was born. In a drug induced stupor the pink haired red fox woman groggily stumbles towards Don Calamari who holds a Kris dagger in his hand ready to plunge it into her hear and offer soul in tribute to his dark master. But Michael has other ideas as he pulls the trigger to make a powerful head shot and gets an instant kill.
The unholy fire burning from the chalk outline flares as Don Calamari collapses dead before he hits the floor. The vixen rejoins her senses, screams and runs for her life as the cultists just stand there in shock and disbelief. The body of Don Calamari levitates as smoky wisps envelop him and unearthly chanting shatters the stillness of the chamber.
Don Calamari gets a little bigger as he comes back to life in a way. For a brief moment he starts to speak in tongues before he goes back to his "normal" state of being. He calls himself King Cthulhu and proclaims himself to be a shard of the conscience of the great old one amid great cheering.
Cultist fan out to recapture they get to the place where the shot was fired and all they find is a red triangle with a red eyed black ghost inside which is the logo of the Shadow Guard. But the vixen has disappeared without a trace.
The tire tracks of an SUV are found not too far but little other evidence is found that can be tracked King Cthulhu and his cultist go on a rampage looking for their victim but end up having to retreat when the Shadow Guard appears with ghost guns blazing . Several cultists are killed and King Cthulhu is wounded by the firefight and he is forced to retreat.
Rain starts to fall heavily as the SUV of the Shadow Guard drives home after this bittersweet victory. The vixen, a Vice cop that Shadow Guard knows in both identities, is covering in the back seat, mumbling to herself as she tries to make sense out of what just happened. She regains her senses well enough to talk when the SUV turns onto Golgotha Street and she vaguely recognizes the house it's driving towards.
"M...Mike?" She asks incredulously.
"Mhmmm,: Shadow Guard replies.
"Wh...what just happened?" She asks.
"Zoo-Ark just got a new super villain," Shadow Guard replies. "And the worse thing is I helped make him."
"And this sort of confirms that you're the Shadow Guard," Jezebel says ruefully.
"You've been lobbying accusations at me for weeks now," Mike teases, "And this is what, the tenth time I've saved your tail?"
"Mike, every cop in town is practically drooling to bust you!" Jezebel yells. "Now granted it will be easier to fuck you behind bars, the real problem is the fact I know half the charges they would hold you on are false and the other half are misleading and shouldn't even come up if you were a cup. Excessive force? Maybe, but most of those you kill deserved to die."
"Did they kidnap you from your home?" The Shadow Guard asks.
"I don't remember, honestly," Jazz says sheepishly.
"I'll take you home then," Mike starts.
"Don't please, Mike" Jazz begs. "After all this, I want you between my legs as I try to forget this night ever happened."
"Alright ," Michael O'Connor says with a chuckles, "I'll put you to bed and then do my research, I have some idea as to what they were trying to do but I want to be sure. So I have a better idea on how to stop them than shoot the leader."
"I'm not going to complain about the results," Jezebel coos.
Michael insists on a ritual shower when they park the SUV Samhain Wagon but since it requires them to get naked, Jezebel isn't inclined to be too disagreeable. Jazz wants to get frisky but Mike is being too methodical for that to be usable as the water draining off of them is jet black and slightly reeks of corruption. It's the smell that gets to Jezebel; the stench frightens her into compliance with what Mike is doing to cleanse them both of the evil that has attached itself to their bodies.
Once the water turns clear again Michael knows the taint that had clung to them has finally been washed away. But even with hot water Jazz is still frigid as the effect of the shampoo serves as one more reminder of the Hell she went through. She barely responds to him groping her breasts and groin but the fact that the one doing the touching is someone she knows and trusts and even lusts after mitigates some of her fears and lets her enjoy herself once again.
Jezebel reaches back and squeezes at Mike's scrotum; the feel of his nutsack in her hands makes her cry to know her nightmares of being groped by tentacles is over for now and a male for whom his invasion is invariably welcome as she knows he'll be gentle with her. She doesn't have to ask him to be gentle as he can guess the loving she needs not be tender despite how raunchy she can talk. He kneads her breasts a gently with her nipples rolled sensuously between his fingers.
Her hands coax his member out of his sheath feeling for his tip as she knows how she wants him inside of her. Almost in compensation for what he's sure she went he lets her do this however she wants as he tries not to think about what possibly has been created tonight. His hands continue to play at her breasts as more of his shaft begins to show with her hands guiding its point to rub against her clit and slit at first before it gets long and hard enough to penetrate her folds.
Michael leans back against a water slickened wall and lets Jezebel mount him at her leisure which she does slowly surely and she takes him through her front door. His member extends as deep as it can as she closes her eyes in ecstasy; enjoying every inch of him that she takes into herself. Jazz is soon moaning and crying for she is realizing just how much she wants this on a more permanent basis in her life.
She bobs up and down his shaft as she guides his muzzle to her rack for him to do what she knows he likes doing to her. Michael needs little encouragement to lick and suckle at her breasts and as the water keeps washing over them, blood trickles down his shaft as Jezebel's period expires. Jazz giggles a little at this and just humps his third leg even for because of it.
Once they get out of the shower however and dry off so as to get dressed in sweatpants and matching shirts with the logo of the Philadelphia Flyers on them the news flicks on and scenes of the carnage are on display. Jezebel's father, a retired police officer turned broadcaster, is in tears as he reports the death of his beloved child as one of the victims of the killing spree, placing blame squarely on the shoulders of the Shadow Guard. Michael sighs and shakes his head as Jezebel just stands there in shock.
Michael escorts Jezebel to his bed and she does not even offer token resistance as she still has not quite processed the information that she is dead to the outside world. Howard Jenkins visits Michael the next morning in an effort to hire him to track down the secret identity of the Shadow Guard when it's his own daughter that lets him in. The shock of seeing Jezebel alive and in the colors of a rival hockey team, Howard is unabashedly a Devils fan, is almost enough to give him a stroke, but he lets himself be led to Mike's office none the less.
"You're alive?" Howard asks incredulously of Jezebel.
"Yes, father, thanks to the Shadow Guard," Jezebel states back at him.
"And now you're here?" Officer Jenkins says as he makes a mental leap in his mind, "So, you are the Shadow Guard?"
"Yeah," Michael states as he plops a folder in front of the older fox. "Evidence I have been gathering on Calamari, nothing he can get convicted on due to the methods used in getting it..."
"I can see that," Howard says in all seriousness. "I used to be a cop, and I can see how a lot of this could be tainted and inadmissible in court. But at the same time it's very damning of Calamari. I guess he was the lead rioter last night?"
"Yeah, he was going to sacrifice Jazz to dark powers last night when I shot him in the head." Michael admits. "Then he transformed into King Cthulhu."
"That's what the bastard wants to be called?" Howard asks to which Michel just nods. "I can use some of this in an expose on the bastard."
"Those are copies of what I already have on file," Michael admits. "The police can't use much of this. And then there is the problem of what to do about Jezebel."
"They really are reporting me dead?" Jezebel asks. "Do they have a body?"
"I'm supposed to ID someone in the morgue they say is you," Howard says then turns to Mike, "How do you fit in all this? According to some sources this Shadow Guard character goes back centuries. Hell, there was supposedly a pirate calling himself that."
"My family has been fighting evil and injustice for many generations," Michael relates with a grim smile. "The authorities thought they hung the pirate lord back in the 1700s but the son of that pirate took up the mantle as soon as he was old enough and resumed his father's fight. And since then it's been a mantle handed down from father to son throughout the years."
"And the supernatural angle?" Jezebel asks.
"Throughout the ages there have been those seduced by power to do bad things," Michael states. "Many of them draw on dark forces barely understood by the magicians and priests of ancient times and even less understood now by modern science. Part of the reason is the modern faith of Christianity that has poisoned the minds with the notion that there is no magic, nothing supernatural going on in the world. I know different as I have hunted down more monsters than I care to rightly remember."
"You hunt the terrors of the night," Howard states to which Michel just nods. "As incredible as it seems, what little I have been able to dig up on your alter ego suggests otherwise."
"My computers keep tabs on a lot of things," Michael admits. "Some of what I take down are mundane criminals. Those are the easy ones. It's fuckers like Calamari that really make my blood boil."
"How high are the stakes?" Jezebel asks.
"If I don't stop him, the whole world could be in danger," Michael says with a straight face. "I don't kid about stuff on this scale. As far as I can tell, Calamari may not be alive anymore. That's his body to be sure but the controlling essence is a fragment of an ancient evil entity."
"Not the same fictional old one, Lovecraft wrote about?" Howard asks incredulously.
"The very same," Michael confirms with a grim nod. "There are times when writers couch their contacts with otherworldly beings as fiction so the rest of the world can disseminate it safely. The entity itself has name that is incomprehensible to our ears let alone pronounceable by our muzzles. But take this for granted: it is very old and very nasty. Life as we know it is largely an annoyance to it, just like bugs are an annoyance to us. In essence to them we are bugs, disgusting things crawling around on they consider their property."
"I take it they have been here longer?" Howard asks.
"Much longer, what we call civilization arose while they slept," Michael relates. "And are still sleeping. This Calamari incident is just a one off for the most part. As far as I can tell there is not enough of the entity at present to do more than continue Calamari's criminal empire. In essence, we are living in its dream for the present time."
"More like a nightmare," Jezebel says with a shiver.
"Just pray they never wake or we'll really have problems," Michael warns.
"How much...?" Howard asks fearfully.
"Too much," Michael counters, "That's all you need to know. But you can take comfort in one thing and that is people like me exist around the world to make sure they never awaken from their death like slumber."
"Not to change the subject," Jezebel says, "But what are we going to do about me? As far as I know there's going to be a funeral for me and I'm not dead. Plus if I try to go back, Calamari might have folks in the department that will try to off me and make sure the casket they bury has my actual corpse in it."
"They'll try to pressure you to say the corpse is Jazz no doubt," Mike growls.
"Yeah and I may have to just let them for her own safety," Howard admits ruefully. "I don't want to, and if it's alright with you, Mister O'Connor, I'd prefer she move in here with you if possible."
"I kinda have a lot of stuff here already," Jazz admits ashamedly. "That private eye we discussed..."
"The one you were telling your mother you were sleeping with?" Howard asks slyly to which she just blushes, "The station has hired O'Connor in the past, which is one reason I'm here now. I wanted to hire him to look into your death. And officially I still do."
"Will this be you hiring me or the station?" Mike asks.
"Right now it will be me and anything really good I can use on air I'll have the station reimburse me," Howard says with a sly grin.
All three nod conspiratorially before Howard leaves the pair in peace to clean out Jazz's apartment.
"Now what am I going to do with you?" Michael asks in a factious tone, "I know love slave is not completely out of the question but for the most part I am going to want to have you nearby when I go out most nights just so I don't have to worry too much about you."
"I can watch the house and do internet research while you go out," Jazz suggests. "I can probably get into the police database with my profile. Heck I can hack into it so nobody will know it's me."
"Sounds like a plan," Mike says, "But when I 'm out on a case and you're here surfing, you are in here and the rest of the world does not exist." He draws the blinds over all the windows. "Nobody is to know you're here or this thing is on. I already have wards in place to prevent folks from scrying on this place..." She gives him a look. "Remote viewing or otherwise looking around here via magic. It may sound fantastic, but I have a crystal ball I can use for the same purpose."
"I'm not going to bother going into how contrite that sounds," Jazz says with a smirk.
"Oh ye of little faith," Mike says with a smirk and moves off while beckoning her to follow.
Michael leads Jezebel to a darkened room with a basketball sized sphere of clear quartz crystal set in a golden tripod with Egyptian pyramids as the pylons to hold it in place, the tips of which have eyes carved in them like on the backs of American currency. Candles are lit around it as a light swirls within the ball independent of the wax luminaries surrounding it. Jezebel can see her father visiting her apartment, which looks as though it was ransacked as Michael's gaze upon the crystal ball intensifies.
Howard has the distinct impression that he is being watched as he looks for essentials to bring over to Mike O'Connor's place for his daughter. Once he leaves, Michael pulls Jazz through the shadows to emerge in her apartment with goggles over both of their eyes. A terse arcane phrase from Michael activates special enchantments in the goggles as their perceptions takes a trip back through time.
King Cthulhu directs crabs from the harbor patrol to tear the rented dwelling apart looking for any evidence as to where she might gone. An otter looks on with a sleazy look on his face as he looks through her lingerie. Mike and Jazz are unseen specters observing all around them and cannot interact although Jazz clearly wants to throttle the otter.
"What the yiff did we just witness?" Jezebel growls to Michael once they return to their senses in real time.
"These goggles have post cognitive abilities," Michael states. "I use them to see what has gone on in the recent past. It's how I collect some of my intelligence on those I hunt."
"Any lawyer worth his salt would be able to get such evidence thrown out in court," Jazz says wistfully. "No matter how damning it could be. But I see how it would be useful as a vigilante to have the intel."
"Grab what you think you will need that your father overlooked and let's get back to my place before he does," Mike orders with a smirk.
"Gotcha," Jazz returns with a smirk. "But what could they have been looking for?"
"Let me go back further in time to see something," Mike says as he walks into her bedroom. "By the way, is your car outside?"
"No it isn't actually," Jezebel reports as she sees Michael walk out of her bedroom towards her front door. "They took me from my bed didn't they?"
"Yeah, if you have naughty tentacle dreams for a few nights," Michael begins with a dour smirk.
"They also fucked me in my sleep?" Jezebel asks in a growl.
"When they marched your tail out of here," Michael relates with dark amusement, "You weren't wearing a stitch."
"Ew!" Jazz squeals as she grabs a Totoro pillow and hugs it tight. "Then again, am I really surprised?" Then she shakes her head ruefully. "Not really." Then she looks over to Michael. "Can you teach me some spells? Like any protection wards? I'm not going to sleep well tonight."
"Do you believe in their veracity?" Mike asks and Jazz gives him a solid nod. "Alright, one of the key things about this is to have faith that it will work. It's part of the personal investiture that is required to make sure the enchantment does what it needs to do."
"Alright, I have everything I would want for now," Jazz says as she has a large gym bag stuffed with various clothes and plushes from anime, including My Neighbor Totoro."
"Something doesn't smell right," Michael says and pulls out her plush monster. "I need to do something here," he whispers a few arcane words which briefly turns the anime plush into a cthulhu plush and then back again, "That fixes that."
"The dirty fucker!" Jezebel swears. "What did he do to my pillow doll?"
"Attached a piece of himself to it," Michael admits freely. "He would have been able to look through its eyes and even animate it. It's back to normal now."
"I wonder," Jezebel conjectures as she puts the one plush away and then takes out Godzilla, "Can any of these become animated?"
"I'd watch out on that front at present," Mike says honestly as he pulls them through back to his place. "Summoning any sort of animating spirit is suspect right now."
They hear a knock at Mike's door and Jezebel goes running for the space bedroom with her treasures.
"Officer Calamari!" Michael exclaims as he sees Carlos Calamari, a cousin of the gangster he shot earlier in full dress patrolman's uniform at his front door with the wolf-bear drawing one of his ghost gun Mauser hand cannons, "To what do I owe the honor of your visit?"
"There was a bit of an incident in the warehouse district, Mike," Carl asks with a growl as he looks read to bum rush the door, "One of the slugs was from a sniper rifle that was registered to you some time ago."
"The same one I reported stolen a year or two ago?" Michael retorts and braces himself for Carl to do something stupid.
"You filed a report?" Carl asks to which Mike just nods. "I'll have to check on that."
"You do that," Mike says with a smirk and then checks to see if anyone is watching them.
The street is empty and since Carl was planning on doing some hard core interrogation of the wolf-bear he deactivated any sort recording devices he had on them so as not to have any incriminating audio evidence of the crime he was going to perpetrate on the suspected vigilante's alter ego. No cars on the street and it's so late at night few people are up anyways. So when Carlos turns around to walk down Michael's front porch and go to his squad car he is executed by the Shadow Guard with three slugs to the back of the head.
Michael uses his magic to reverse the direction in which Carl's body lay so it will look like he was coming towards his place when he got shot. Then he calls 911 to report shots fired near his home. Carl's brother Carson, who is just as much in the pocket of the Calamari crime family as his brother was, takes Mike's statement and the coroner's office takes away the body.
There were too many potential witnesses for Mike to shoot Carson too but the message has already bee sent to Don Calamari to lay off O'Connor. King Cthulhu is already aware of the set up from the initial report but concedes that legal action to take care of his enemy is out of the question for now. In an underground grotto he broods and considers his next move against the costumed crime fighter.
King Cthulhu concentrates his gaze on the water before him and see the house in which the Shadow Guard dwells but that's as close as he can get as something is blocking his efforts at looking inside. A flat screen television set into the ceiling broadcasts the news of the sniping of the younger cousin of the fool whose body Cthulhu's mind now inhabits. Retaliation is required and Don Calamari has already ordered that a serial arsonist be hired to burn down his house, preferably with him inside.
"King Cthulhu?" A voice from the edge of the grotto calls and attracts the super villain's attention as he beholds a burly salamander.
"Ah, the Blazer I presume?" King Cthulhu says in a sinister voice that unnerves the salamander quite a bit. "I have a job for you. Burn down the house at 1313 Golgotha Street. My subordinates will see to the details."
"Yes, sir," Blazer says as he feels the evil emanating from the high priest and gangster and gulps as he wants to get out of the presence of the octopus as soon as possible.
King Cthulhu mentally dismisses the quivering amphibian and goes back to his musings as he tries to concentrate on more important matters like awakening the rest of his consciousness and finds that he is a thought cut off from the mind he was spawned from. While trapped in this body he can access his host's memory and still perform greater magic than the would be mystical gangster ever could bring to bear but he is still rather limited in what he can ultimately do. At first he thought the ritual was successful and it was, just not in the way he wanted as this fragment of the consciousness of the old one has become a key to keeping him asleep, for as long as he existed, the rest of him cannot awaken.
Dressed in his Shadow Guard costume, Michael O'Connor almost wrecks his own Samhain Wagon when he gets a telepathic broadcast of the realization that King Cthulhu got that his mere existence on the physical plane prevents his originator from awakening. Instead of going out on patrol, the Shadow Guard drives to the warehouse district and pulls ups in front of a building marked: Federal Book Depository 13. Officially it doesn't actually exists as all records of it were destroyed long ago by one of Michael's ancestors but the building is still meticulously maintained and staffed, but access to the wealth of knowledge within is strictly controlled.
A stone gorilla walks out of the brick to challenge the Shadow Guard but a stern look from the mystic detective causes the golem to retreat from his presence. The boarded up door is merely an illusion that Michael goes right through as braziers alight inside to acknowledge his presence. An black and white version of Michael O'Connor materializes in front of him.
"Greetings, Michael," The ghost of Michael's too many greats grandfather says in greeting to his descendant with guarded warmth. "What brings you to the Shadow Vault this time?"
"Research and advice, grandfather," Michel admits with respect, "I just got a mental broadcast I was probably not supposed to receive."
"Do tell?" Grandfather O'Connor asks wryly. "This should be amusing; tell me more."
"I had suspected Don Calamari of being in charge of some cult of one of the dark ones for quite some time," Michael begins as Grandfather stares in darkly rapt attention. "And then I find a bunch of octopi doing some ceremony in a warehouse not far from here?"
"Is that the source of the chill I felt?" Grandfather asks with fearful dark sarcasm. "I thought I was feeling a draft, which is rather unusual considering the fact that I'm dead. But then I realized it was the coldness of the outer void I was feeling. The place where much of the consciousness of the elder evils who should never find any toehold in our reality."
"Funny you should mention that," Mike says with a frightfully ashamed expression.
"What did you do?" Grandfather says with a disapproving look.
"Well the high priest was going to sacrifice Jazz for the ceremony to summon something that I knew would be rather disastrous if I let it get completed," Michael starts to explains as his grandfather nods his tacit approval, "So I used my customized sniper rifle gravedigger to kill the priest."
"Please don't tell me that you completed the ritual with you shot," Grandfather says fearfully.
"That's something I'm not sure of," Michael admits. "The trance they had on Jazz broke and she bolted."
"From what you've told me of her," Grandfather says with a dark smirk, "That may have been the smartest thing she has done in her life besides sleeping with you."
"Thank you," Michael says jovially to which his Grandfather smiles back and bows, "But then the body of the high priest starts to levitate and life comes flooding back into him. And he grew a little."
"I don't like what I'm hearing but continue," Grandfather states.
"I beat it out of there to try and figure out what to do next, and ended up using the Ghost Guns to force King Cthulhu to retreat and lick the wounds I gave him."
"Your Ghost Guns actually hurt it?" Grandfather asks to which Michael just nods. "I must say that is rather unusual the transfer of power must not have been as complete as Calamari was going for."
"I'm thinking that myself," Michael admits. "y shot provided the ritual a soul to sacrifice and a body for the spirit to inhabit but not the full spirit of the monster we want to keep eternally slumbering."
"How so?" Grandfather asks.
"That broadcast I started off telling you about?" Michael states in inquiry. That the entity itself coming to a kind of revelation that it is trapped in Calamari's body. It's cut off from the rest of itself and while it inhabits Calamari's body it can't draw on its full power and it's consciousness will be trapped in slumber where it is as the dream that is dreaming while possessing Calamari still persists."
"Let me get this straight," Grandfather growls in inquiry with a tone that is half angered but also half amused. "A fragment of the essence that is Chulhu, the worst of the worst as far as we know of the elder evils is now animating/possessing the body of a gangster whose form mirrors his own and thus has a small bit of wakefulness which we have been trying to prevent for centuries but this soul shard is cut off from the main of its progenitor and with this bit of freedom the bulk of its identity is prevented from realizing its eons long goals of attaining full wakefulness and destroying the world?"
"More or less," Michael states. "You see my quandary?"
"Too well," Grandfather says with a grim nod. "On the one paw you inadvertently let a soul shard of pure evil into the world. But on the other paw by doing this you actually enhanced the wards keeping it trapped. "
"It's technically both a triumph and a failure if it's true," Michael says. "Could it happen?"
"I'd have to check the ancient pact but this could be a loophole we either never considered or simply overlooked as an impossibility," Grandfather says. "I can only imagine the frustration it's going through dealing with this new set of circumstances."
An explosion draws their attention outside. King Cthulhu walks through the door. Grandfather dematerializes in the presence of the avatar of elder evil as Michael just glares at him.
"How convenient," King Cthulhu says in a voice of pure malevolence as he glares at Michael with unrestrained hatred. "I get to kill you myself. I suspect that you are the one person alive that can stop me from attaining my full power."
"Give it your best shot, Calamari," Michael growls as his guns meld into his gauntlet to enhance his punches.
"Enough talk!" Cthulhu roars as he produces a switchblade and stabs at Michael.
Shadow Guard and King Cthulhu are teleported into an area like the Roman coliseum in miniature. The weapons didn't change even if the scenery did. Michael wonders what is going on and decides to try and beat the information out of his enemy.
"So tell me, tall, dark and gruesome," Mike quips. "What does an omnipotent being such as yourself need of a place like this?"
"Silence, lesser being!" Cthulhu bellows as he endures a kidney punch from the slightly faster Shadow Guard. "You are the one whose shot brought me to this dead end! Tell me something before you die at my hands; are you the last of your line?"
"As far as I know I have no kids, unless the vixen who almost became your love lunch isn't telling me something," Michael answers flippantly. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"Since I am not going to let you live, I'll tell you," Cthulhu gloats. "If I kill you and you are the last of your line, I can try and reconnect with myself using your soul to fuel the spell."
"So you need my soul to fully realize what you were trying to accomplish, eh?" Mike says with a dark smirk. "I'll have to make sure I have a large family with my vixen."
"Curse you, Shadow Guard!" King Cthulhu yells as he rages at not being able to do more than scratch Michael. "Stand still and accept your fate!"
"I don't think so," Shadow Guard says as kicks out a knee on his opponent, "As big as you are, you still are inhabiting a mortal body aren't you? Which gives more limitations than you'd like to think about."
"Insolent, ignorant annoyance!" King Cthulhu yells as he stabs the leg of his opponent and roars in laughter. "I have you now!"
"Don't count on it, Calamari!" Mike growls as he hits the oversized head of his opponent with a spinning side kick. "You're only a fraction of the powerhouse you could be if you were fully connect with the rest of your essence." Cthulhu falls to his hands and knees and Michael pounces to further pound his head with his fists. "Bullets don't do much to really hurt you, it take the brutality of fisticuffs to really batter down your defenses. I know your weakness in this mortal frame Cthulhu, retreat now before I consign this portion of your essence to the oblivion you would subject those who dwell on Earth to in your terrible ascendance."
"You can't destroy this body!" Cthulhu cries out as he rolls away without his switchboard. "I need it for now!"
"I know, but if I beat it bad enough, you'll be out of action for a while so you can regenerate." Michael says as he pushes Calamari into a spike with a flying kick. "I will not let you progress any farther while I still draw breath " He pushes his opponent further along the spike while keeping himself from joining him. "Say goodnight, Gracie, it's beddybye time for you."
"I...will...not...concede!" Cthulhu thunders as he drags his own carcass off the spike with murder in his eyes. "Your...soul...shall...be...mine...to...devou..."
"So close and yet so far," Michael mockingly quips as Cthulhu gets himself fully off the spike only to collapse into the oblivion of unconsciousness.
"Well done, Michael!" Grandfather beams as he claps mockingly. "It seems this version of our eternal adversary is far weaker than he realized."
"I lucked out, Grandfather," Michael growls back angrily. "He'll regenerate soon enough and I don't want to be here when he comes to."
"I see the world is in capable hands," Grandfather says with all seriousness through a cocky smirk. "I was able to look over a few things while you played with your sparring partner though."
"Do tell," Michael states.
"You initiated a brazen gambit," Grandfather says with open admiration. "Quite frankly I'm ashamed it's only been tried with you." Michael gives him an inquiring glance but says nothing. "By attempting your assassination at a key juncture of the ritual like you must have done you gave our adversary a partial manifestation point in our reality but the way it took advantage of the opportunity enacted a few contingency clauses. We already had in place."
"How close was my initial appraisal of the situation?" Michael asks.
"Pretty accurate actually," Grandfather says. "Cthulhu is locked in a dream from which even he cannot escape until it plays itself out."
"In other words?" Michael asks with some annoyance.
"Fuck that vixen like a rabbit, boy," Grandfather Orders; "As long as our family line propagates, he's trapped in that form. And as long as he is trapped in that form there is nothing else he can do. The event we have been dreading is put off in perpetuity now as long as there is a stalemate between you two."
"Is there a way of consigning him to oblivion?" Mike asks.
"There are ways," Grandfather admits, "But that will just reset things to the ticking doomsday clock we were at before. By keeping him just impotent enough to be frustrated but not so much a failure as he is completely undone the situation is stymied. And as long as you have sons to pass the mantle of the Shadow Guard down to, he loses the battle he desperately needs to win to accelerate process in which he can destroy us all."
"I see," Michel says as he looks for an exit. "Now I need to makes sure I still a potential mate."
Ferdinand O'Connor opens a door to the outside where Mike gets in his SUV and runs home just as Blazer is beginning to spray the baseboards with an accelerant outside. He is wearing the uniform of a pest control service provider which is how he gets into a lot of the homes he torches for hire. The Samhain Wagon pulls up and sees the van of an exterminating company that he knows does not exist.
There is no big confrontation as Shadow Guard uses his sniper rifle to take out the Blazer. The corpse is then secured in the driver's seat before the van is guided into the bay and allowed to sink to the bottom. Then Michael drives his special SUV into the hidden garage under the house and goes upstairs.
Jezebel is waiting for him and senses her lover is troubled as he is more willing to fondle her than speak to her. He leads her to the bedroom and has her strip nude before he pins her to the bed. She submits to him as she feels a need for his touch; Michael needs some carnality to chase away the carnage he has been through tonight in his mind, not to mention the fact that he knows it's up to him to keep his family line from dying off.