159 Meeting a King (Briefly)

Ellisburg, New York, November 25th, 05:46.

How long even is a power nap supposed to be anyway? I only really sleep once a week, or after sex anyway, so it's not like I take naps, and I usually sleep for at least half a day when I do.

Ah well, doesn't matter.

I made sure to park my bike a good distance away, because I get the feeling that Dragon won't be so ready to just let me go this time. Pastor was just a potential Class-S threat after all, Nilbog is very much on the list.

Also, I just realised, but with this, I'll have personally taken out two of the six listed Class-S threats.

Unfortunately the other four are all Endbringers and Sleeper, so I don't think I'm going to be getting a hattrick.

...Unless I manufacture another Class-S threat just to kill it?

Thoughts for later I guess, because I'm hungry.

Now, since he's known as the Goblin King, I figured I'd dress appropriately and got myself a classic court jester outfit from a novelty store. It only cost twenty bucks too, what a bargain.

The only other new thing new apparel wise is that I remade all my tattoos and got a new one, this time on my other forearm, showing a large hand, faintly glowing blue, connected to a bunch of flaming skulls by strings coming from it's fingers, seemingly manipulating them all to do it's bidding.

Pretty neat if you ask me.

Not that it can even be seen under my current outfit, but whatever.

Time to slay some goblins.

With a single bound, I am on top of the sixty-foot walls, landing shortly after the last patrol passes by. They're more here to stop things from getting out than in, so sneaking by them isn't all that hard.

However, that is until I notice a blinking red light and the camera it's attached to staring right at me.

Ah fuck.

Making a peace sign, I give the camera a smile and hastily jump over the wall.

Looks like I'm on a time limit then.

Legend should be in New York, which isn't too far from here. Hell, he could probably make the trip in less than a minute if he wanted to, so it looks like there isn't much time for banter.

...Maybe a little bit of banter.

The first thing I notice after getting inside, is how the walls are all painted to show a horizon and nice, large and empty fields, with the shapes of mountains, valleys and other indecipherable things in the distance, thought it was painted overcast for some reason.

Honestly it's like the fucking Truman Show from Aleph.

I get the feeling that Nilbog might end up being even more insane than I thought.

How fun.~

Setting off towards the centre of the town, I rock my head side to side as I walk to make the bells in my hat jingle as I observe the town.

Frankly, I'm kind of jealous, this place looks awesome.

The buildings are all clearly modified, floorboards having been taken out and used as walls and rooves, the road is lined with plant life, trees decorating my sight like the most well cared for orchard in the world.

Except the trees and bushes and plants are all wrong. They're too 𝘦𝘹𝘢𝘤𝘵. Perfectly round, cubed, coned. Looking at some of the younger trees, I can see wiring that is clearly there for the sake of controlling their growth into perfect, twisting and strange shapes.

And the 𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴 oh the colours. Each front garden is immaculately cared for, covered with flowers of every colour planted in patterns that make no sense, colours being randomly matched together with the grass under the flowers being cut so cleanly and perfectly that I get the feeling someone did it with scissors.

I notice a scarecrow in one of the gardens, clothed in a colourful, patchwork outfit and with the head of a dog's skull, pointed to the sky in elation. I also notice how the scarecrow's hands, wired to be holding a rake and watering can, seem to be small human hands.

Like that of a child.

This dude is using baby hands to make scarecrow art. It's almost enough to make me not want to kill him, if he's this insane.

Eh, I suppose I'll decide after meeting him. If he seems functional enough, then maybe. Though that would require me to get him past whatever the Protectorate is going to send.

Oh well, I still have to get to him first. Maybe the thing that's been walking behind me for the past twenty paces will take me to him?

Spinning around with my next step, I continue walking backwards even as I come face to face with André Delambre from the 1958's hit movie, The Fly.

It looks mostly human, just with leathery skin and stubby fingers, oh and his entire head has seemingly been replaced by a deformed fly's head, with it's giant beady compound eyes and freaky little mouth things.

It's right arm is also inhuman, instead having flesh the same black colour as it's head, with a sharp pair of bladed pincers that it is holding open right over my neck even as it keeps pace with me, it's arm not bouncing with it's steps.

I noticed this guy the moment he got behind me, just like I've noticed all the other freaks in the buildings around me.

I can smell them all.

They're kind of like Crawler, in that they smell mostly human, but also alien. Like they were originally human, but are now something else.

From my experience with Crawler, ah fuck, I mean, with Cerberus, I can tell that they'd taste too leathery and chewy to be a nice meal, but they'd still be edible and I am rather hungry.

"Hola chico! Dast tu sprechen Deutsch? Me llamo le fromage?" I say, asking him to take me to his leader in perfect Russian.

Clearly Mr Fly doesn't speak Russian though, as he simply continues to stare at me in silence.

"I. Would. Like. To. Speak. With. Your. Leader. Please." I say, enunciating each word like how stupid people speak to foreigners, expecting them to suddenly understand the language if you talk to them like they're retarded children.

Flyman stays silent, but I hear movement behind me, and am thus not surprised when I feel a small grubby hand start patting me down on the waist.

Moving my eyes without turning away from Bugsy Malone, I observe the weird little freaky cherub thing looking for weapons, presumably, it might be looking for drugs for all I know.

It's got strange dark green skin that's covered in boils and warts, with thin, fish-like teeth and beady, underdeveloped eyes, like that of a pigs. It's also completely bald except for a single strand of hair pointing straight up that I take to be an antenna of some sort.

I kind of want to yank it, to see if something will happen.

"Now as much as I'm all for touchy-feely fun times, you're kinda freaky looking and that's sorta a massive turn off.~ Can I go see Nilbog now?~ I have a gift for him, a gift fitting for any King.~" The grimy little thing doesn't respond to my words, but that doesn't mean I wasn't heard.

All around me, dozens, hundreds of freaky little goblin monsters appear. Between the alleys, hanging out of the trees, eyes glowing from through the houses windows. Each of them unique, the only common factor being how fucking ugly they all are.

It's kind of cool to be honest, they're all so freaky looking. I want to keep a couple of them, put them in a little box. I'll water them and feed them and take them for walks and clean up after them, promise!

𝘈𝘩𝘦𝘮, anyway.

The little gremlin finally finishes touching me, not finding any weapons, or anything at all beyond my clothes. It's not like I need weapons, and frankly I don't really expect to even still have my skin by the time I leave here, so I left all my shit in the bike.

None of the freaks say anything, nor do I get an escort of any kind, but they do make a path for me, to which I just shrug and follow it. What's the worst that could happen?

A short walk later and I'm starting to wonder if that camera was a lie or something, because by my count it's been six minutes since I passed it, and yet there has been no disco lights raining death from above.

But I soon let that thought leave my head as I reach a large open area, filled with the little gremlins and a giant table that is stuffed to the brin with 'food'.

Frankly, if not for my own eating habits, I'd probably be disgusted by the display.

"Yous are here to sees the Kings?" Some fucked up snake-human thing the size of a cat says in barely legible English, but my time with Cerberus is once more paying dividends, as I understand her? just fine.

"I sure am, little thing,~" I respond with a smile and finger guns.

Without a proper response, the thing just slithers away to the table, and I follow, soon getting a clear sight at what must be Nilbog, or Jamie Rinke, as he used to be known.

And here I thought 𝘮𝘺 costumes were lazy.

I don't even know where to begin. For one, he is 𝘧𝘢𝘵, and not like the eat-too-much kind of fat either, more like bloated, like a corpse that's been thrown in a river. What was that thing I saw once online? Inflation? Something like that, some weird fetish thing. He looks like that, but worse somehow.

Then there's his outfit. It looks like a patchwork dinner cloth wrapped around him, filled with colourful patches that ascribe to no pattern, and his mask is much of the same. It's made up of cloth, with a perpetual leer of a smile and actual beads over the eyes, with a cloth crown sewn to the top.

He looks like a homeless guy so lost in the high of hard drugs that he thinks he's a god-king or something.

...That's probably not inaccurate is it?

In the middle of the clearing, ahead of the giant table filled with 'food' that looks more like vomit to be completely honest, there is what seems to be a gladiatorial fight going one.

One mostly human thing with bat wings that have mouths on their ends, against some more traditionally goblin looking thing with green skin and pudgy limbs, standing about waist hight, with it's foe being almost twice as tall as me

All the while, Nilbog happily claps and bounces as he watches the show with great intrigue.

What a silly little guy.

That's when he notices me and suddenly starts to ignore the fight, bouncing around in excitement, causing his layers of flesh to writhe and roll with his movement as he turns bodily to face me.

"Guests! We have a guest! Tell me stranger, what brings you here, and why are you not on your knees, when facing a King?!" His words sound like they should be threatening, but he really just sounds like a curious child.

"Because an equal need not bow, Lord Nilbog.~"

𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵 gets a different reaction out of him, causing him to bristle slightly at the perceived insult.

"And what makes you believe us to be equal?" He demands.

"That is simple my Lord, while you are the King, whose job it is to rule, I am the Jester, my job's to entertain.~ You are the King of Goblins, and I am the Queen of Clowns.~ You rule a territory, I rule a people.~ We are thus equals."

All the creatures around us, who turned tense upon my declaration of status seem to calm down with my words as Nilbog does.

With a jaunty nod of the head, he waves me over to his table as he responds. "I see, I see. In that case, would you care to dine with me, as one Monarch to another?"

Yeah, I don't want this loser in my Clowns. Maybe in other circumstances I'd have wanted to keep him as a class pet or something, but he's just so childish I wouldn't trust him to keep a secret if branded reminders over every inch of his body.

"Why, I would love to!~ Might I ask what I will be eating, my Lord?~" I ask as I take a seat opposite him, looking down at the weird purplish slop covering the table, overflowing from the plates to cover the actual table itself.

"The chef stores every ingredient we can find inside her, then regurgitates it in the form required. I asked for something with a kick, so here we have it," he says as he takes another bite, "spicy."

Giving the slop a surreptitious sniff, I figure that it doesn't smell any worse than any of the creatures around me, or Nilbog himself for that matter.

Wait a minute.

Giving Nilbog a subtle once over as I raise a spoon of what is literally just vomit to my lips, I suddenly get the feeling that I'm not looking at Nilbog's actual body.

How queer.

I swallow a mouthful as I contemplate this mystery, only to freeze the moment the slop touches my lips.

It tastes...

It takes me a moment to place the memory, but when I do, I almost recoil in shock.

It tastes like sour patch kids.

When was the last time I tasted sweets? When was the last time I'd eaten anything other than meat?

Ignoring the fact that Nilbog clearly doesn't know the difference between spicey and sour, I'd forgotten the taste of, well, anything really.

If I was more of a foodie, I'd probably have changed my mind, but as it is, this has just made me decide to ask Riley if she can make something that tastes like cupcakes for me.

"This is amazing Lord Nilbog. I haven't tasted anything like this in ages.~"

He visibly puffs up at the compliment, but I ignore that in favour of searching the area, first with my ears only to find that to be a pointless idea with how many creatures there are around me making a racket, then I focus on my sense of smell.

Parahumans have always smelt different to humans, and these creatures smell more like my dog, who smells even 𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 like a human. Which means I simply have to track down the scent of the only other parahuman I can smell.

The only issue is that the scent trail dies right were the creature Nilbog is, but that would mean he has two scents, which just doesn't make any sense.

Unless...

Heh, there you are.

"Ohoho, indeed, my chef is quite the talent!" He says, but before he can keep talking, there is a sudden commotion behind me, and when I turn around, I see a sight I did not really expect.

I see a man entering the clearing in much the same way I did, walking through a parted line of goblins with complete calm, not worried even the slightest bit that he may be harmed, simply because he knows his own power.

Legend.

I didn't expect him to knock. I thought he'd do more of an appearing from the sky raining death kind of thing.

All of a sudden, I get assaulted with the thought that in this situation, Jack would probably play a little game, try to talk Nilbog into going to war while Legend tries to do the opposite.

Jack would win of course, just like I would if we were to do that here.

Unfortunately for everyone else present, I'm not Jack.

"Legend!~" I yell, jumping to my feet and making his eyes widen in weariness seeing my positivity, "if you're here then I assume the plan, made in collaboration between the Protectorate, PRT and the government of the United States of America, is in motion then?~"

I make sure to loudly announce my words so that all the little creatures can hear me.

Legend opens his mouth, no doubt to rebuke my words, but I speak over him, half way to shouting with how I am speaking.

"In that case, don't worry! I have already done my part as ordered and located the target! Don't worry yourself though, I will take the shot for you!" I say before abruptly spinning to face 'Nilbog' and transforming my arm into a gigantic blade of blood, easily twenty feet long.

With a single downwards slash, the creature in front of me is cut in half, but my arm does not stop swinging until it is buried in the earth and I can feel through my blood as another body is cut in half.

The real Nilbog, hiding under the earth with a puppet taking his place.

In the shocked silence that follows my action, I turn to Legend and give him a thumbs up as my other hand returns to normal.

"Job's done Boss! And that's the second time too!~"

Except this time, the reactions are a lot more simple, as they skip all of the steps and jump straight to that sweet, sweet 𝘱𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘶𝘮.

=================

A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!

I know at least one of you will get the song reference

Also, you have no idea how difficult it was do actually kill Nilbog. Like, I spent a lot of time arguing with myself over whether I could let him live or not.

But the simple fact is is that it's too early in the game for a factor like him to come into play. Maybe if she visited him in the arc after the next one (whatever the fuck is gonna be happening then, idk, I haven't planned after the next arc) then he could have lived. But she wouldn't ignore him right now for later, and letting him live would ruin some other stuffs.

Also, I was reading the worm chap he's in while writing this to help get his character n stuff, and I found it funny how diametrically opposite the ways Taylor and Luisa react to Ellisburg

(5+)Advanced chapters with the links below!

pat/reon.com/user?u=41732867 (get rid of the first slash or check the description)

Also, join the discord with this invite code! Pj3Dttwses