Guns of Gonzo: Of Satanists and Spacemen Part 1

“I need you. Now.”

'Why?”

“You're not gonna believe it until ya see it.”

And that's all it took to get the group of adventurers revving from Central City Kansas to the road of Lotta Burger billboards, velociraptors and the occasional escaped genetic experiment that lead to Fort Fort, New Mexico, in a world familiar yet askew.

It was a world known well by the man traveling down this road by motorcycle following a cobbled-together dune-buggy covered in black plates, a man by the name of Bill, with coffee-dark skin and a steel re-enforced cowboy hat upon his head. Which was appropriate, as “Cowboy” was what the Adventurer's Guild had him classed as.

He personally thought the classification business a little silly and pigeonholing, as he'd never herded cattle before. But he had a steady hand with a gun and lasso; a steady head for the world and a heart for the wandering life. Given that the guild's classifications included such things as “Carnie”, “Magical Girl”, “Horror Host” and “Mystic Ponyboy”, he supposed that was all that mattered. Along with the fact that, whatever job it was he was riding towards, if it was as big as he had a hunch that it was, then they'd be making a big ol' bank on it.

Of course, he wasn't the one summoned here. That would be the aforementioned friend, the little grey humanoid clinging to his back as his cycle, beetle-black eyes shut to avoid remembering how close he was to the road running like a river below.

His name was Xill, an Earth-born alien of finest Roswell stock, moving swiftly in a beeline on a motorcycle with a magically animated horse's head sittin' behind its driver, Bill. Bill; the man he had met while working for a bookstore in Manhattan, Bill; the man who had gotten him to see the world and go adventuring after they worked together to stop the September 19th plot, Bill who was willing to drop everything and go on an assignment to aid someone he'd never met just because it was deeply important to Xill. But that's what friends are for, ain't it?

In return, Xill tried to avoid betraying any fear of the upcoming mission. Keyword being “tried”. For, at the best of times he was jittery and at the worst of times he was scream-like-a-little-girl terrified, and though he tried to hide the jittering of his left leg and the soapy sweat on his gray palms, he was certainly leaning more towards the latter.

It's not that he was afraid of the one who'd summoned him here, no. His feelings towards her were a bit more... complicated. It was the fact that she needed them to come. She the top-notch gadgeteer, she the mage with the . She was the one who made a radio, which he still had some where in his belongings. So, for her to need outside help with this was... troubling. To say the least.

“Though,” he observed as he looked back, “at least I have backup.” And he wasn't just referring to Bill, as there were two others in their party, riding from the back. Or perhaps I should say careening from the back.

For, behind the motorcycle, was a ship of fiberglass on rubber wheels, currently tearing up asphalt at its driver's steadily unsteady grip. Not out of lack of competence, but out of sheer, un-adulterated gumption.

Her name was Valerie and she could strain against hell itself, with muscles like taut cords and an electric gleam in her eye, hair kept taut beneath a bandanna but black flag flying in the breeze, heart loyal to her friends but body loyal to no law. Especially the laws of sane/dull driving, much to the annoyance of her one passenger immersed in shadow.

She careened against the road, wheels screeching and gnashing at the asphalt like an enraged parrot, moving nearer to Bill.

“So,” she said as she sped over to neck-and-neck with him, “how's drivin' going?”

“Fine, fine.” Bill said, adding “Say, I didn't know your ship was an off-roader.”

Valerie looked to the side. Her vehicle was certainly not an off-roader, though right now it was trying its damndest to be, with ninety percent of its mass on the desert sand. She looked slightly embarrassed and careened back onto the asphalt, slamming her dark passenger yet again against the “ship's” fiberglass walls with a THUD-CLANG.

Bill gave a chuckle. Valerie laughed a little too.

“Yanno,” Valerie said, “I never saw our mysterious patron before hauling ass out here.”

“Wait, really?” Bill asked. “I thought that you met at least once .”

“Nah, all ya said 'New job,' I packed, she was in the car, and it's 10 hours later.”

“Huh.” Bill said. Xill looked a little embarrassed.

“Ah, don't worry about it.” Valerie said, as much to Xill “If magicboy's willin' to go on this short a notice, she must really be somethin'.”

 “ 'Somethin's probably the best word to describe her. In most of the positive senses of the word o' course.” Then Bill looked over a bit, with that dark passenger in Valerie's ship making a very un-dark grumbling “Hey, Is Bishi okay?”

“Huh. Didn't think to check.” Valerie said. She looked back, taking her eyes off the road and to the shadows at the back of her “ship”. “HEY, YA OKAY THERE BISHI?!”

The dark passenger said nothing, though his glare inferred a statement involving all the seven words you can't say on TV, alongside a few others. He was garbed in a dark blue and polishing a slightly scuffed kunai, still trying to get back into the rhythm after he'd tossed around by Valerie's reckless driving, and his full name was not Bishi. It was Bishikama, Model No. 417. This was an unusually weeaboo-y name for a ninja, but what was more unusual was that that was the least unusual thing about him.

Like the fact that he was a classical-style ninja, as could be inferred by the many, many bladed weapons; tools and poisons he had boxed behind him, or indeed the one he was currently polishing (who's Japanese name I refuse to write on account of its length). Or the fact that he was a sentient android, as could be evidenced by the mechanical precision in every stroke of his cloth and his vague resemblance to an anime prettyboy (Which, as far as ways to avoid the uncanny valley go, was surprisingly successful ).

And also the fact that, while he wasn't quite gay, he wasn't quite straight either. More smack-dab in the middle of the Kinsey scale, along with being a very specific variety of shojou-manga-sparkle-bishie camp. So, when Valerie asked again, “ARE YA OKAY THERE BISHI?!” in a louder, shriller voice, his response was not a mere no.

“I am sitting in a glorified carnival vehicle being tossed about the asphalt river by the most uncouth adventuress I have ever found myself in acquaintance with, stuck in this barren desert wasteland going somewhere on the initiative of someone I have not even met. So I would answer no.” He said in one long, elegant huff.

“He's all right!” Val hollered back to Bill

“That's not at all what I said!” Bishi responded

“Yeah, and that's how I knew you were okay!” Valerie said, laughing heartily “You're the biggest damn drama queen in the world, you whinin' sounds like a big ol' 'everthing's gonna be okay' to me!”

She never thought much of his pomp. Perhaps that was because she had little of it herself, or perhaps she thought he could be better than that.

He was about to respond, vocal synthesizer working up and pneumatics juddering about. But he decided against it, sitting down gracefully, going back to polishing the weapon as if nothing'd happened. That something was indeed happening, that something being him sliding and clunking all over the back of the boat, did not matter. After all, to react more harshly would be inelegant.

Ignoring the clunking of Bishi about the back of the boat, Bill looked to the side of the road. There was a semi-rusty red-n-yellow sign saying “FIVE MORE MILES TO THE JORODOWSKI SAUCERS!”. He smiled a little, reminded of the tales of the old Route 66 attractions he'd heard  as a child, narrated to him from one of those old “antennaed-brick” models by his travelling-adventurer father before bed.

But, such things were only memories, memories which he held onto dearly after his father's disappearance at the hands of the Nightmare King beyond the Black Door. Someday he would find the King and destroy him, or so he swore. But that's a story for another day, completely unrelated to this one. No, I'm not sorry for leading you all on.

But speaking of memories, and getting things back on track, the whole train of thought brought to Bill's mind a question he'd been meaning to ask this whole drive, but had somehow slipped his mind.
“So Xill,” he turned his head a little to ask. Xill was still clinging tight and still trying to avoid looking at the sharp gravel road that seemed only inches from his feet. “This woman...  How exactly did you know her from beforehand?”

Xill's cheeks suddenly got a blush of blue coming into his cheeks. He'd hoped he'd lucked out of having to answer that one. “I... Ue... er... we ah... her... I-i-it's complicated.”

“Ah. Gotcha.” Obviously a romantic relationship, or at least something deeply personal, Bill thought. He wouldn't pry. But the stammering seemed more of the twitterpated than terrified variety, which helped put his mind at ease a bit.

There was a silence for a moment. “It was a college thing.” Xill added, still hesitant to add that much.

“Well that explains a whole lot more” said Bill, completely truthfully and without irony. Ah Skullymance, the college of magic akin to if the sorts of people who ran The Church of Scientology and The Mafia ran Hogwarts. Graduating from that school was considered meritorious in that if someone had actually manged to graduate there in a pre-mortem state, then they must be doing something right.

Bill paused and looked to the side for a second. Immediately he swerved over, screeching aside as an enormous, ugly feathered thing flew past. He yelled “Heads up” as the bird flew past his former position, snapping viciously at the former location of the ship.

It was a Dire Pigeon, the size of a great dane and the brainpower of a chihuahua and with an attitude as ugly as its hide. And given that said hide was covered in huge pus-leaking tumors, it was an ugly attitude indeed.

Valerie wasted no time, swerving her boat with a screech of smoke, right into the bird's way. The thing flapped through the ship and turned with a shrill; gargling coo.

But right before it could charge for Valerie, Bishikama got up, pulled out the weapon he'd been polishing, and sliced the thing right in two through the air in one single swift, continuous stroke. Then, as the pieces of bird fell along the sides of the road, he sat down, picked up a different cloth, and began wiping off pus and pigeon guts from the no-I'm-still-not-giving-it-a-real-name weapon.

“Damned dire pigeons.”Bill thought to himself as he continued on his way. He would've said “damned bird virus” or “damned government experiments”, but nobody really remembered where the Dire Pigeons had come from. They just knew they were mean., they started appearing in the 1910s. Well, the little Compysaurs chewing on its remains along the road did, but you get what I mean.

And there were more important things for Bill to notice. Like the fact that the hotel they'd booked at was coming up fast, with a big; flashy neon sign on the side of the road saying “THE ASTOUNDING JORODOWSKI SAUCERS!”, with two smaller as-of-yet unreadable restaurant signs adjacent to it.

As it rolled in, the black craft leading them there stopped to a graceful, elegant, near-silent stop. Bill's stop was a bit more skid-y, and whatever the opposite of elegant is, that's what Valerie's stop was, as Bishi thought as he was flung out of the boat and into the shadows. Though, to be fair, half of that flinging was deliberate and would have been called “overly dramatic” by the group if they weren't used to that sort of thing.

Bill put down the center-stand and hopped off. Xill did likewise, looking around. The hotel units that stretched beneath the blaring neon sign were colorful, curved things, a mix of the grimy,; whimsical memories of the sixties movement of love and the gleaming psychedelic sci-fi of the seventies, putting the stink of pachouli in one's nostrils with only a look at their finned, window-eyed light-flashing surfaces.

A little ways off there was a duplex-restaurant, one side with a sign saying Wolf's Burgers; with a picture of a little smiling cartoon wolf on the front, and another saying “Pizza for the gNarly American Consumer” in bold stentorian letters, with a little cartoon of a shady government agent with a backwards baseball cap and sunglasses on a skateboard beneath it. And in the distance was a shining city, the yellow of the setting sun, and giving . He knew this city, and the knowledge worried him, for there were things and people he'd hoped he had left behind.

And currently, right in front of them, was a living mummy looking at them with the desperate grin of a salesman.

“Howdy folks!” she said, extending as firm a handshake to Bill as her weak grip  could muster.
She looked like the leather-dried husk wrapped in bandages most of would expect/run screaming away from when we heard the phrase “living mummy”. But she she was also incredibly gaudy in appearance, some of which did appear to be from her original burial, like the golden nose and eyes. The rhinestones; cowboy hat and obnoxiously loud shirt/shorts/suspenders combo appeared to be more recent additions.

“If you've a-gone here lookin' for a hotel to lodge at while you visit the city of Ft. Fort (Finest city in the USA I say, the finest), then the Jorodowski Saucers is here for you! We've got it all, Continental Breakfast, a gift shop, cable (sort of), an arcade, a pool (Not quite finished but I CAN FILL IT UP ANYWAY!), and did I mention the gift sho-”

She spit out that sequence of words Bill said, “We've already been reserved here.”  stopping her in the middle of her sentence.

The mummy paused for a second. “Oh.” She looked slightly disappointed, like she'd thought up a whole carnie-style spiel to sell them on staying here and now she'd have to let it go to waste. She took a guestbook out of her pocket along with a tacky bobble-topped UFO-pen.

Bill signed his name in clear, crisp script, Xill signed his in a shaky doctor's-type hand, Valerie made a vaguely Kilroy-like shape out of her name. The mummy looked over the signatures.

“Yeah, yeah, this all checks out.” the mummy said “But where's the other two you said was reserved in your grou-” She didn't get to finish her sentence before a blue blur leaped from the shadows of the largest UFO.

His hand was raised as he flipped through the air, elegantly and flashily enough that one would swear sparkles were coming off of him, with an implement dripping with India ink. He dropped down about three inches precisely from the guestbook, signed his name “Bishikama” in machine perfect print, and strode back towards the group.

“Dammit Bishi, was that really necessary?” Bill asked.

“It is always necessary to make a stylish entrance.” Bishi said coiffedly. Bill thought to himself that he wouldn't call any stunt this contrived “glamorous”, but he just kept his mouth shut for the moment.

“So, there's four down, but where's number five?” The mummy asked, looking squarely around/. “She in that old jalopy/hearse/thingy?”

She pointed at the mysterious black-paneled buggy, adorned with doodads, whirring and humming,and beeping and clicking. As they'd followed it, Bill had been able to vaguely identify their purpose, but that just made their owner more mysterious.

Silence rang through the air as everyone was waiting for their mysterious patron to show herself. They were expecting her to step out like a businesswoman with a hawk's glare, or perhaps slink out the door like a femme fatale, or (In Valerie's case) expecting her to jump out the window like a NASCAR driver revved and rarin' to go.

What they didn't expect was her to boing out of the top on an ejector seat and land with all the grace of a pug-dog on a buffet table. And yet she did. With exactly that sound too.

The panel that popped off landed first, then, a few seconds later, so did the foam seat with a loud “Thoonk” and its much dizzied passenger. And my what a passenger she was.

From the neck down, she looked like a cross between a classic pin-up girl and one of those old gorilla suits they used to use in bad movies, beautiful and strange. But from the neck up was something like a space helmet, but more integrated into her body, with two antennae like a rabbit-ear television, and a semi-transparent window like a diver's helmet. And through the hole one could tell stared back two clever and analytical eyes even when it was impossible to see through thanks to the glare.

Her first words to the whole group were “I think I may have crossed some wires between the door and the ejector seat.”

…

The Planet Emperor did not want to be out here. Well, that wasn't entirely true. He was entering into this deal of his own volition, a way underutilized by his fellows to gain more power, compensating for the fact that; despite his grandiose title, he only actually ruled over one, measly planet. And not one of the good ones either.

But to be here, in this stupid desert wasteland, putt-putting along in this “super-efficent” “space-
age-technology” buggy at the speed of a hovering floor waxer in this Corman-forsaken desert looking for a place in some other-dimensional pocket with directions more cryptic than the orders Ro-Man Imperial High Command sent him every fucking day in his office, to a man he was sure he didn't trust but unsure if he could use for his own means. So, he thought, this'd better be fucking good.
Physique-wise he was also like the mysterious woman in the part, part humanoid-gorilla, part bizarrely robotic helmet, but larger, and bulkier, muscled and masculine but with strange almost armor-like pads beneath his skin. Obesity was considered a sign of wealth and influence in his society, but it was also a thing that their “super-scientific” diet made a near-impossibility. Thus the needless and dangerous surgery like the pads beneath his skin, one of the cheaper ways to try and accomplish this, and also one of the most mocked in the high courts of his race.

And that is why he was here today. A desire for power was a thing they shared the most. Respect, however, was only a thing the alien yearned for, one he had ripened and rotted in his heart for years but had not become foul enough to drive him to do what he must to endear himself to his race. But it was a thing his potential ally had in spades. Perhaps because his heart was already a grasping, black pit.

But in this setting sun in this stupid, barren desert, he was tiring of his search. How long must whatever  force he foolishly called “magic” let him wander through the wastes before revealing itself to him! In the name of Logic, was this a mockery of his intell--

He stopped. There was a shimmering in the air in front of him, like a patch of rot on the fabric of reality. “Took long enough.”, he muttered to himself as he pushed his feeble little buggy through the shimmer, ignoring the thin layer of slime that oozed onto the vehicle and the feeling of sickness in both his artificial and organic stomachs.

And there he saw it, an old, decrepit radio station, spray-painted in shades of red and black, studded with Gothic ornamentation likely stolen from a garden store. Its tall radio tower had a huge pentagram, lit a burning, baleful red with neon. Like a dark cathedral it stood, spiritual stink wafting through its very vision, looming as the lair of the inglorious Ozymandias who dwelt at its heart.

He wasn't much awed by it, as his race was not a religious one. But still the Planet Emperor felt something dark as the double doors opened to the building's halls. There was the smell of brimstone and, strangely enough, ham in the wind as he walked through the winding corridors, and the halls were strewn with little shrines to little devils, some crude and made with cardboard, paper and pen, but some disturbingly elaborate, of hardwood carved into fantastical grotesques, covered in gold leaf and silver wire.

As he walked through, looking at the various bits of graffiti also amongst the halls (most of which were rambling dedications to various demon lords or long conversations on who's mother was sucking what in hell or the sorts of pseudo-edgy un-wit you'd find in a fifteen-year-old-goth's notebook) he started to hear music. It was from an electric organ, a raging torrent of fast, harsh tones that dripped with passion; but also with malice.

If you readers were in the room with him to hear this, the more musically-inclined amongst you might recognize it as Metallica's “Master of Puppets”. The more critical amongst you might also recognize it as”somebody trying far too hard to sound edgy”. To which I would agree. At least, in a Watsonian sense of the idea.

But the sound merely unnerved the Planet Master, who was used to the more pompous, synthetic tones of his home race, like Sousa through a Theremin. And he could hear a voice as he walked through, a voice speaking with passion and malice, growing louder and more powerful as he walked towards the heavy metal double doors all the halls seemed to lead towards. His patron, he guessed.

He was right.

The doors opened easily, and light streamed out of them, as the voice became clear for the first time.

“And I say to you  do not turn the other cheek but to grab a dagger, and do not suffer the meek unless they may suffer for you! You are but the alpha, you are but the omega, following The Master by following none but yourself!”

The room was filled with golden tapestries and black incense smoke, stage-lights and cameras all staring towards the the center of the room, much like the people. The people who ranged from punks and thugs of the streets to the yuppies and robber-barons of the streets of Wall and K, all staring in awe, cheering and hollering at the figure in the center.

“You are the power of yourselves, you are the alpha and omega!  If you kill The Master, then you will have acted as the greatest worshiper of his way. And if you are struck down, you are the greatest tribute to his truth! That the parasites and the moochers deserve the worms that they crawl like, and the meek and the moral do not embody what it means to be human, but what it means to be spineless and weak!

HE was a compelling figure, looking almost like a young Danny Elfman in a red-and-black suit. His hair was slicked into the typical towering evangelist's pompadour, his teeth were of iron, the whites of his green eyes were tattooed a bright, blood red, and two buds of implanted coral horns poked from beneath his skin.

But his eyes, those eyes were his greatest feature. One look into those eyes, those compelling eyes, those eyes of a man grasping the world and breaking the spines of the weak, and one might become a disciple for life, such was the power in those eyes.

There was a creature playing the organ beside him, a birdlike vaguely humanoid creature, with black, expressionless eyes, almost like the (very much inaccurate) vision of Satan by Bosch, a demon sent by those devils he called upon as a servant and a token of Hell's appreciation. Though, he would be much more intimidating if he wasn't wearing a toilet bowl for a head, an update of the chamber pots his kind formerly wore, hence his nickname of "Pothead" from his master.

“And that is why you must-” The evangelist stopped in his tracks as he saw the planet emperor in front of him “Oh, excuse me my brethren. We have a very honored guest today, one from the blackened Cosmic Spheres, with matters of Due Importance. POTHEAD! Play us off, as we go to discuss matters of import to our Three-Faced Master.”

And so, the evangelist walked off stage to meet with The Planet Emperor to discuss their plans for this world. Perhaps, he thought to himself, with the aid of this boltbucket baboon buffoon he could stop preaching and start truly acting upon the world. For, his name was Joe Gold, ad he knew someday that the world would know his power.