House Fire
The Ero-Sennin
Shitposter no more
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A chapter that I've waited a while to get to, the beginning of the next stage of this story and an unsettling turn of events. After this night, things are going to be different.
When Marco and Jackie made it back to the front of Hillhurst manor, they could already see what had Dipper alarmed. In front of the house, at the edge of the vineyard surrounding it, a wall of encroaching flames blazed brightly and aggressively. The fire burned slowly but steadily, consuming the dry and withered vines left unattended for years. Flame leaped from one dry patch of vegetation to the next, growing stronger and brighter as new fuel was added.
"Oh shoot," Jackie said, worried. "What happened?"
"… That's a big fire," Marco said as he went for his phone. "I'm calling the fire department."
Flabber abruptly appeared with a pop and looked out towards the flames, as Dipper exited the tunnel to the Beetle Battle Base, panting heavily for breath. "Wait… haa… hold on…!"
Dipper staggered over to the window and looked out it. "There's someone out there."
Marco looked up from his phone and joined Dipper at the window with Jackie. Peering into the firelit darkness, they saw what Dipper was so concerned about.
Walking well ahead of the fire, but barely faster than it, was a person strolling towards the house–with a walking stick in hand and a red rubber imp mask over his face. He spotted them as they did, and stopped to lean on his walking stick.
Jackie narrowed her eyes, trying to get a clearer look at him against the fire. "… Is that a Magnavore?"
Dipper shook his head. "No, it's just some guy who was setting fire to the edge of the vineyard. I caught him on surveillance."
Marco turned to Flabber. "Hey, can't you put the fire out?"
"I can," Flabber said, "But we don't know who this guy is and what he's doing here. If I start magicking up the place, he could see it and that could cause problems."
"After he started the fire he headed this way," Dipper said with a slightly heavier tone.
Marco didn't like the implication. "Then he stopped when we came up to the window."
And he wasn't moving.
Turning to Jackie, Marco put a hand on her shoulder. "Stay in the house… I'm gonna go see what he wants."
Dipper headed past him. "We are."
He called back to Flabber. "As soon as we got this guy gone, you do what you need to put the fire out."
"Flabber engine one is on standby!" Flabber, dressed as a firefighter, said as he dropped the visor of his helmet over his face.
As Marco headed out the door, Jackie called after him. "Be careful, okay?"
He looked back and smiled. "We'll be okay."
With that, he followed Dipper outside and the two walked up to the masked man waiting up the path. Side by side they approached, Marco trailing at first but then slowly edging ahead of them as they neared the encroaching heat from the burning vineyard. The man, mask and all, remained still even as the wind generated by the fire blew at his back, rustling his very human clothes and making the wolf and imp on the end of the string connected to his walking stick dance.
As they neared him, Marco realized that the walking stick was anything but. It was a bokken… a long one, on top of that. He tensed up, his guard and alertness high when both stopped.
Dipper spoke. "What are you doing here, and why'd you start the fire?"
The masked man did not move for a moment, before he nodded. "Aight, listen up, I'm Goblin."
"… Goblin?" Marco asked.
Goblin gripped his sword tighter. "Goblin deez nutz, cuh."
Marco recoiled. "… I walked right into that one."
"Nah but for real, y'all can call me Goblin, and I'm just gonna cut to the chase, if you cool with that, Pine Tree."
Dipper's eyes widened with fury, as he recognized where this was headed. Marco grew incensed as well, since there were only two idiots in this whole city who were happy to call him that.
Goblin pointed at Dipper. "The way I see it, there's two ways this can go: Either you be a man and let me whup your ass for one minute straight, or I can dog-walk all y'all until I get bored–and that goes for the thick shorty you left back in the house."
And now Marco was furious. "… Excuse you…?!"
Dipper's right hand dropped to his side, his fingers twitching. "And if I'm not in the mood to play along with either?"
Lifting his free hand, Goblin waved his finger admonishingly. "No, no, no my guy… that's the only choice you get in this."
He pointed at Dipper with the handle of his wooden sword. "Either I beat you." He gestured back and forth with it. "Or I beat all y'all."
Dipper bristled. "How much did they pay you…?"
"More than the girls that hustled 'em last time, that's for sure," he said. "In fact, that's why I'm here–and keeping it simple."
Marco, his tone cold and flowing with anger, answered. "You're not laying a finger on him, or her. This is your one warning. Turn around and walk away."
Goblin let out a laugh. "Or what? If you wanna go, let's go then, my boy!"
With that encouragement Marco accelerated towards Goblin, fire burning in his eyes as he reached him, jumped, and spun. Feinting a jumping spinning kick, he instead turned it into a spinning back kick aimed straight for Goblin's stupid mask. Instead of crushing the nose of the mask and whatever face lay underneath, his foot collided hard with the flat side of the dense wooden sword, his strike blocked with a rattling sound of wood against metal.
The force of the blow pushed Goblin back a whole yard from Marco, his feet dragging on the ground, before he stopped.
"Oh word, you MAD mad. Aight, show me somethin' and I won't slap your girl up!" Goblin said as he rushed right back at Marco.
Marco, not in the mood for banter, let out a kiai as he swung his right heel in a wide kick for the left side of Goblin's head. When Goblin ducked under it, Marco came back around and began swinging viciously for his face with quick, violent punches that Goblin evaded by swaying and dipping from side to side while bobbing his head to weave around his fists.
"Marco, don't let him bait you!" Dipper yelled, before there was a loud slap from flesh hitting wood and the rattling of metal as Marco punched the flat side of the sword's upraised handle again.
His left fist grinding against the wood, Marco glared at the expressionless visage of the Imp mask staring back, and used the back of his hand to shove the wooden sword out of the way as his right hand came up in an uppercut aimed at Goblin's jaw.
Goblin weaved his head around and ducked low as the uppercut passed, before he shot his left hand forward and drove the hilt of the wooden sword into Marco's solar plexus. As the air was forced from his lungs, Goblin struck twice more in quick succession, hitting the same place before he came up and slammed his horizontally held forearm across Marco's face as it came down, knocking him away from him in a stagger.
Coughing, Marco stumbled back towards Dipper, stopped abruptly, and then turned to his left in order to avoid the wooden sword coming down on where his head had been an instant before. He turned to face Goblin as the swordsman did not hesitate, swinging upward and diagonally towards his torso, and jumped back from the strike.
"Bro, what is your footwork?!" Goblin said as he kept swinging the sword, and Marco sharply dodged a horizontal strike, a rising diagonal return stroke, and a descending blow. When Marco closed in again, he punched rapidly, but Goblin was faster, spinning the wooden sword like a propeller to block each punch before they could connect with his stomach, throat, and jaw.
Catching his sword, he moved with the spin to catch Marco's leading right foot with the back of the blade, then swung up to catch him behind the knees before lifting him off his feet and into the air, falling backward.
Goblin then brought the sword down on Marco from above, slamming him into the ground as he yelled. "IT'S TRASH!"
Watching the fight from the house. Jackie gasped. "Marco!"
Flabber brought a hand to his mouth in fear. "Ooh…!"
On the ground, Marco coughed heavily, trying to catch his breath, when Goblin kicked him in the side, sending him skipping down the road towards Dipper's feet. Grumbling, Goblin shook his head. "Whack ass VHS Tang Soo Do shit… the fuck you think this is, a karate tournament…?"
He stopped when he found Dipper pointing his Grandfather's Hi-Power pistol at him.
"… Oh…" Goblin said, as he saw that the gun was cocked and ready to fire.
Dipper stared down the sight at him, eyes wide with fury. "Back off, or I fucking kill you."
Goblin's mask made it impossible to tell what his expression was, but the near unnatural stillness of his body was something Dipper picked up on.
"My guy, it ain't about that. I'm just here to beat your ass, ain't nobody gotta die over that," he said.
Dipper was unmoved. "Excuse me if I don't want mine, or my friends' asses kicked."
A sigh escaped the mouth of the mask. "I already told you; that's happening regardless. Pull the trigger then, if you think you ready to kill."
Without hesitation Dipper fired the pistol.
Goblin's stillness had been misleading. Even as he challenged Dipper he'd been inching, creeping while looking not at him but at his trigger finger.
The instant Dipper squeezed the trigger, Goblin completed the movement, and the bullet lashed across the rubber of the mask's right cheek.
Dipper fired again, but Goblin was still moving, going lower so the bullet took off the end of one of the mask's horns. By the time Dipper fired a third round, Goblin was faster still, the bullet passing to the right of his head. His feet digging into the ground as Dipper drew a bead, Goblin kicked off in the other direction, side-hopping to his right, and passing over Marco's prone body.
Goblin could see the shock spreading across Dipper's face in slow motion, the realization hitting him that he'd fired three times and had missed. He swung the sword up and to his left, the wooden blade catching the gun and whipping it out of Dipper's hands.
And before he could bring it down for the return stroke, Dipper's right fist collided with the left side of Goblin's head, sending him stumbling away and interrupting the attack entirely.
Recovering, Goblin violently swept the sword from side to side in front of him, but Dipper was already backing from him, moving in the direction the gun had gone.
"Oh… oh…!" Goblin said as he stopped. "I thought you didn't have that dawg in you–but I fucked up!"
Marco kicked back up onto his feet, turned around, and attacked Goblin, snarling like an animal as he threw himself into a flying kick. Blocking the kick, he didn't expect Marco to use his momentum to go up and over the blade, spinning over him to kick the back of his head. Goblin's reflexes did not let him down, and he turned in time to block that followup kick.
Jumping off the blade before Goblin could swing it, Marco landed on his hands, then sprang off them like a head-standing grasshopper to shoot over him again. This time he twisted mid ascent and swung a chop that clipped the other horn of his mask and took it off.
Marco landed, and with a furious kiai parried Goblin's punishing horizontal stroke up and away from him, then rotated his arms to repeat the movement and move the haphazardly returned opposing stroke. Marco went on the offensive, yelling more kiais with each blow, punches and palm strikes targeting Goblin's head that he blocked with the wooden sword.
Dipper, cognizant of the fire and Marco pushing Goblin back, quickly scanned the vineyard for the Hi-Power. Damn it, where is it…!
Lodged firmly in the zone, Marco continued his assault, his hands moving faster and faster, his focus narrowing to break Gabe's defense.
That sword is everything to him! He thought. Get rid of the sword, get rid of the shield!
His fist slammed into the sword, which stopped moving. Marco yelled and struck it again with a palm thrust. Got it!
And that when Marco realized… that the sword was jammed into the ground, Goblin wasn't even holding it.
Goblin's right fist crashed into Marco's jaw with such force that his entire body flipped upside down where he stood.
"… Wha…?" Marco asked as his world spun.
What was happening?
"That's what you get for tunnel vision, cuh…" Goblin said as Marco hung upside down, before he slammed his left into Marco's stomach with such force that his body went flying and crashed into one of the trellis rows some ten feet away. "Get your goofy ass outta here!"
Dipper had gotten ahold of his gun when he saw Marco crash through the row. Startled, he looked back at Goblin, who was pulling his sword out of the ground.
"Wait… what?" Dipper asked when he saw Marco semi-conscious at best.
He quickly aimed the pistol at him, and Goblin stopped moving.
At the house, Jackie turned to Flabber. "Do you have any weapons in the house?!"
Flabber shook his head. "The only weapon I know about is that one."
Several arrows appeared in the air, pointing at a suit of armor in an alcove adjacent to the stairs. In its right hand it held a long 17th century style Halberd–a polearm weapon with an ax blade on one side, a short hook facing the opposite way, and a spear tip above both. Looking up and down at the weapon, Jackie nodded.
"I can work with that…"
Outside, Goblin continued his standoff with Dipper. "We doin' this again?"
Dipper didn't shoot this time, and Goblin nodded.
"You're thinking real carefully about it now, huh?"
Dipper said nothing, even as he acknowledged that Goblin was right. There was no guarantee that the gun in his hand would do anything in this situation, not against this guy.
Marco needed a second, maybe more, to get back up. Dipper knew he was tougher than that. "You realize that this isn't going to end with this."
"I don't really care," Goblin replied with a shrug of his shoulders, "I'm only here to beat you up and then I'm out. It's nothin' personal. I'd take it up with the motherfuckers who paid me as far as getting it back in blood is concerned."
Oh, they would. "That goes without saying… but grudges don't really care about technicalities."
Once more Goblin shrugged his shoulders. "I mean, it's whatever then. You, your sister, those Beetleborgs, even the magical princess. I'll knock the shit out all y'all and then you can go back to LARPing or whatever."
Everything about this guy pissed Dipper off, but he held himself back–he wanted them to get angry and make mistakes. "Are you sure about that?"
Taking a moment to think about the answer, Goblin nodded. "Yeah, pretty sure. You're all whack as fuck, my boy."
Running footsteps alerted them both, and Dipper looked out the corner of his eye to see Jackie–hefting what looked like a giant battle ax, charging straight towards them. Growing alarmed, Dipper looked down at Marco and then back at Jackie.
"Jackie, stay back!" He called out.
"Nah, if she wants the smoke the fire is right here," Goblin said as he turned and shot straight towards her in return.
Dipper turned to draw a bead on him, but he'd already placed himself between him and Jackie. Seeing Goblin running at her, Jackie tightened her grip on the halberd and ran faster.
A laugh escaped his mask. "Aight then, brave! Show me what you got!"
Right before Jackie reached him, she hefted the halberd and to Goblin's surprise the whole weapon became a solid blur–like a helicopter's rotor–before she swung it in a wide sweeping arc that he had to immediately stop and jump back from.
"Ayo, what the…?" As Goblin tried to figure out how the sleepy blonde skater chick came from with that, Jackie used the momentum of her first swing to bring the halberd up over and down to try to cleave Goblin in two.
Realizing the blade was coming down much faster than it should, Goblin jumped back and watched as Jackie used the weapon as a vaulting pole to launch herself up and above him. Yanking the weapon up after her, she twisted her whole body to bring the weapon around, over her head, and then down again, Goblin this time jumping to his right to avoid the blow.
Jackie swung herself around the weapon and set her feet on the ground, before lifting the halberd, spinning it above her head, and pointing it at Goblin.
Goblin took his wooden sword in both hands. "Aight, I'mma be real, I didn't expect that."
Even as he expected Jackie to attack, Goblin didn't anticipate her speed as she lunged forward while thrusting the halberd ahead of her–the spear tip aimed for his throat. With a quick but short forward swing he parried the halberd aside, but Jackie circled the spear tip up and around the bokken before thrusting again, prompting him to parry the other way.
Jackie's rush of attacks continued, the young woman shouting with each lunge and forcing Goblin to parry and deflect the halberd. Left and right, aiming for his neck and chest, she was relentless as she walked Goblin back, before she overextended a final thrust and managed to get past the sword. When Goblin leaned back, Jackie rotated the shaft of the weapon and pulled it back, catching the wooden sword before she swung the weapon down and pinned it into the dry, cracked dirt.
Once more Jackie ran forward, using the spear to vault and kick Goblin in the face successfully this time. With the grace of a gymnast, she swung herself around the shaft fast, turned herself around and dragged the heel of her left foot across his face.
Goblin staggered back, pulling his sword free from Jackie's halberd, but then a much harder roundhouse kick smashed into the side of his head, sending him spinning off his feet and crashing through several rows of vineyard trellises back towards the fire he started.
Marco slammed his foot on the ground, his body trembling from adrenaline and anger.
Goblin crashed through two trellises out of control. But as he reached the third, he recovered and crashed through it back first, crouched down on the balls of his feet as he skidded to a halt. His white shirt, the cream-colored sweater vest he wore over it, and his brown slacks were covered in dirt and torn in places, and the lower half of his goblin mask was ripped open, revealing his mouth… which was pulled into a wide, open-mouthed smirk.
"Dude, are you all right?" Jackie asked Marco.
Marco wiped away the blood that seeped from his mouth. "I'm still standing."
Dipper joined him, his pistol pointed in Goblin's direction but not raised to shoot. "Let's go back to the house."
Marco glanced at him. "You sure?"
Dipper nodded. "Yeah, this guy's just here to kick the crap out of us… I say we don't oblige him at all."
Jackie and Marco looked at each other, then at Dipper, before they nodded in agreement. All three began to back up, inching back towards Hillhurst and away from Goblin.
Standing upright, Goblin's smirk disappeared. "Hol' up, where are you goin'?"
Dipper aimed the pistol at Goblin. "We're done. If all you're here to do is beat the shit out of me, then we're just not going to fight you!"
Goblin did not expect this course. "Oh word, you're just gonna bow out?"
"Take it as a compliment," Marco said as he and Jackie trailed behind Dipper, putting themselves between him and Goblin, "You're a lot stronger than we thought."
Dipper kept a bead on Goblin. "And this is over the freaking Vanderhoffs; fighting you isn't worth it."
Goblin's scowled. Tilting his head from one side to the other, popping his neck, he spoke. "How many times do I have to say this? There's only two ways this goes and one way this ends. You only get to choose if your homies get messed up with you."
Taking the bokken in his right hand just above the handle he held it down at his side. "Since I've already smacked your boy around and shorty has my respect–I'm giving you one last shot to do the right thing and end this in one minute."
Jackie took two steps forward. "Dude, you want him, you go through us."
Marco joined her. "And I guarantee you won't."
Goblin went still, the tension building in his body as he leaned ever slightly forward. "Bet."
The air shuddering around him, Goblin rushed down Jackie and Marco. Tightening the grip on the halberd, Jackie raised it, took a deep breath and lunged to reach him with her weapon before he could attack with his. Marco was right beside her, going wide to prepare to attack Goblin's left side.
When they merged, however, Goblin's left hand shot to the handle of the bokken. Jackie and Marco's eyes both widened when they saw how he held the sword, then grew wider as he pulled on the handle. The handle of the bokken separated from the rest of the wooden blade–revealing that it was in fact the handle of a katana without a hand guard, locked inside of a dense wooden sheath.
That was the only glimpse of it before the blade vanished from their sight.
In an instant, with the sound of metal shearing through metal and wood effortlessly, the business end of Jackie's halberd was cut to ribbons. In the next instant, as shock filled her eyes at the destruction of her weapon, the sheath of the guardless katana drove into her gut and she was lifted straight up off her feet and above Goblin's head.
As Marco skidded to a stop, he felt the katana's steel bisect the air in front of him, keeping him back and in place long enough for the sheath of the weapon to follow the blade on a different course–slamming into his stomach and forcing all the air from his lungs and a spray of blood from his mouth.
Marco and Jackie both hit the ground at the same time as Goblin came to a stop behind them–holding sword and sheath in both hands like their own separate blades.
Dipper rushed Goblin; hands steady despite his rage as he opened fire with the pistol while approaching him. Goblin faced him, the unsheathed sword in his left hand a blur as he twirled and spun it to deflect the seven quick shots in succession before he was close enough to lunge forward, bring the sheath across himself and swing to knock the gun up and out of Dipper's hand, sending it clattering to the ground beside where Marco lay.
A split second after that, the sheath crashed into Dipper's diaphragm, and down onto his knees he fell, clutching his smashed hand while gagging and gasping for breath.
Resting the sheath on his shoulder, Goblin looked at Marco and Jackie, and then down at Dipper. "Y'know what? I'mma keep it one-hundred… y'all surprised me."
He kicked Dipper in the face, dropping him on his back. As he lay there stunned, Goblin stepped closer, then kicked him violently in the side.
"I thought you'd go down like that, you know?" He kicked him in the stomach when Dipper rolled onto his side and tried to curl up, then kept kicking.
"But y'all… some tough ass… opps…!" He drove his foot into Dipper's arms, his face, and his gut, hitting him over and over until Dipper stopped moving and just lay still, breathing raggedly.
Taking one step back, he looked down at Dipper's right hand as his arm uncurled from guarding his body and gave it some thought.
"Did you really think them dumb motherfuckers were going to just go away after you kicked the shit outta them?"
He lifted the sword and pointed the blade down at Dipper's hand, the very tip aimed to take off his pinky finger if it came down. "They paid me half a milli to fuck you up after that. In the future, if you want your problems to go away, you need to do what you have to do."
As he held his hand still and lifted the blade a little higher to drop it, he finished. "I'mma just take a bit off the end, so you don't forget."
Three more gunshots rang out, the bullets striking the sword and shattering it just above the handle. Goblin turned and looked at the shooter as more clicking followed.
It was Marco, lying on his side, pointing the now empty Hi-Power at Goblin and squeezing the trigger over and over while giving him a look so filled with wrath that it made the swordsman take a step back.
Several more times Marco pulled the trigger, before he fell unconscious and went limp.
Looking at his broken sword, then down at Dipper, Goblin shrugged his shoulders and turned to start walking away–when something in the fire caught his attention.
He froze.
The Red Strikerborg stepped from the roaring fire, her helmet's yellow eyes shining brighter than the fire itself.
Goblin stared at the armored heroine as she just stood there in the blaze, staring back at him. He looked at the flames just swirling around her and how her trembling fingers curled and uncurled.
Slowly, Goblin stepped away from Dipper's prone body, and then began walking away from him, Jackie, and Marco. The Red Strikerborg turned her head slowly, following him until he was more than ten paces away from Dipper.
As soon as Goblin's foot fell on that eleventh step, the ground in front of him fractured from the Red Strikerborg landing in front of him, her right hand drawn back. Immediately Goblin threw his arms up to block–and when the Red Strikerborg's fist crashed into him, he was gone–a projectile rocketing away from her, sailing into the hills that surrounded Hillhurst.
Assured that no one could survive a hit like that without serious injury, the Red Strikerborg rushed over to Dipper and knelt by him. "Dipper…! What the hell happened?!"
Dipper opened one eye, then looked up at her. "… The Vanderhoffs sent him to attack us…"
Jo looked at the state Jackie and Marco were in, then back at Dipper. "I'm going to fucking kill them. After I go and finish off that asshole…!"
Dipper shook his head. "Jo, forget him… you need to call my Grandfather. I don't know how bad Marco and Jackie are, that man was not normal."
Swearing under her breath, Jo restrained her fury. As she went to call Shermie, however, numerous message prompts flashed in her helmet's HUD, all of them flagged urgent. Opening them, she lost her hold on that fury when she saw the alarming message being spammed by Mabel.
Mabel said:
SOS! STAR IS FIGHTING A MONSTER TRYING TO GET IN 2 THE DANCE! WE ARE STUCK INSIDE! ROLAND AND DREW CANT SLIP OUT TO TRANSFORM! JO WHERE R U?!
Taking a deep breath, as the fire began to die down thanks to Flabber's magic, Jo looked again at her three fallen friends. She had to get them inside the house first, and make sure they were okay. However, she wasn't going to leave Mabel hanging. Using the helmet's fancy eye tracking, she sent a message.
Jo said:
I'm in my suit and on my way.
During the second world war, belligerent nations observed a troubling trend. In every theater, in almost every nation, soldiers, sailors, airmen, and civilians were observed surpassing well past human limits of intellect, strength, reflexes, endurance, and survival. With so many points of data collected, researchers during and after the war came to the realization that a very small percentage of the human race were superhuman, and as more data was collected an alarming realization was made of this population.
In the 1950s, these observations led to the establishment of Monster Theory: The human race was transforming into something stronger, faster, and smarter.
= - = 6-6 = -=
|House Fire|
|House Fire|
When Marco and Jackie made it back to the front of Hillhurst manor, they could already see what had Dipper alarmed. In front of the house, at the edge of the vineyard surrounding it, a wall of encroaching flames blazed brightly and aggressively. The fire burned slowly but steadily, consuming the dry and withered vines left unattended for years. Flame leaped from one dry patch of vegetation to the next, growing stronger and brighter as new fuel was added.
"Oh shoot," Jackie said, worried. "What happened?"
"… That's a big fire," Marco said as he went for his phone. "I'm calling the fire department."
Flabber abruptly appeared with a pop and looked out towards the flames, as Dipper exited the tunnel to the Beetle Battle Base, panting heavily for breath. "Wait… haa… hold on…!"
Dipper staggered over to the window and looked out it. "There's someone out there."
Marco looked up from his phone and joined Dipper at the window with Jackie. Peering into the firelit darkness, they saw what Dipper was so concerned about.
Walking well ahead of the fire, but barely faster than it, was a person strolling towards the house–with a walking stick in hand and a red rubber imp mask over his face. He spotted them as they did, and stopped to lean on his walking stick.
Jackie narrowed her eyes, trying to get a clearer look at him against the fire. "… Is that a Magnavore?"
Dipper shook his head. "No, it's just some guy who was setting fire to the edge of the vineyard. I caught him on surveillance."
Marco turned to Flabber. "Hey, can't you put the fire out?"
"I can," Flabber said, "But we don't know who this guy is and what he's doing here. If I start magicking up the place, he could see it and that could cause problems."
"After he started the fire he headed this way," Dipper said with a slightly heavier tone.
Marco didn't like the implication. "Then he stopped when we came up to the window."
And he wasn't moving.
Turning to Jackie, Marco put a hand on her shoulder. "Stay in the house… I'm gonna go see what he wants."
Dipper headed past him. "We are."
He called back to Flabber. "As soon as we got this guy gone, you do what you need to put the fire out."
"Flabber engine one is on standby!" Flabber, dressed as a firefighter, said as he dropped the visor of his helmet over his face.
As Marco headed out the door, Jackie called after him. "Be careful, okay?"
He looked back and smiled. "We'll be okay."
With that, he followed Dipper outside and the two walked up to the masked man waiting up the path. Side by side they approached, Marco trailing at first but then slowly edging ahead of them as they neared the encroaching heat from the burning vineyard. The man, mask and all, remained still even as the wind generated by the fire blew at his back, rustling his very human clothes and making the wolf and imp on the end of the string connected to his walking stick dance.
As they neared him, Marco realized that the walking stick was anything but. It was a bokken… a long one, on top of that. He tensed up, his guard and alertness high when both stopped.
Dipper spoke. "What are you doing here, and why'd you start the fire?"
The masked man did not move for a moment, before he nodded. "Aight, listen up, I'm Goblin."
"… Goblin?" Marco asked.
Goblin gripped his sword tighter. "Goblin deez nutz, cuh."
Marco recoiled. "… I walked right into that one."
"Nah but for real, y'all can call me Goblin, and I'm just gonna cut to the chase, if you cool with that, Pine Tree."
Dipper's eyes widened with fury, as he recognized where this was headed. Marco grew incensed as well, since there were only two idiots in this whole city who were happy to call him that.
Goblin pointed at Dipper. "The way I see it, there's two ways this can go: Either you be a man and let me whup your ass for one minute straight, or I can dog-walk all y'all until I get bored–and that goes for the thick shorty you left back in the house."
And now Marco was furious. "… Excuse you…?!"
Dipper's right hand dropped to his side, his fingers twitching. "And if I'm not in the mood to play along with either?"
Lifting his free hand, Goblin waved his finger admonishingly. "No, no, no my guy… that's the only choice you get in this."
He pointed at Dipper with the handle of his wooden sword. "Either I beat you." He gestured back and forth with it. "Or I beat all y'all."
Dipper bristled. "How much did they pay you…?"
"More than the girls that hustled 'em last time, that's for sure," he said. "In fact, that's why I'm here–and keeping it simple."
Marco, his tone cold and flowing with anger, answered. "You're not laying a finger on him, or her. This is your one warning. Turn around and walk away."
Goblin let out a laugh. "Or what? If you wanna go, let's go then, my boy!"
With that encouragement Marco accelerated towards Goblin, fire burning in his eyes as he reached him, jumped, and spun. Feinting a jumping spinning kick, he instead turned it into a spinning back kick aimed straight for Goblin's stupid mask. Instead of crushing the nose of the mask and whatever face lay underneath, his foot collided hard with the flat side of the dense wooden sword, his strike blocked with a rattling sound of wood against metal.
The force of the blow pushed Goblin back a whole yard from Marco, his feet dragging on the ground, before he stopped.
"Oh word, you MAD mad. Aight, show me somethin' and I won't slap your girl up!" Goblin said as he rushed right back at Marco.
Marco, not in the mood for banter, let out a kiai as he swung his right heel in a wide kick for the left side of Goblin's head. When Goblin ducked under it, Marco came back around and began swinging viciously for his face with quick, violent punches that Goblin evaded by swaying and dipping from side to side while bobbing his head to weave around his fists.
"Marco, don't let him bait you!" Dipper yelled, before there was a loud slap from flesh hitting wood and the rattling of metal as Marco punched the flat side of the sword's upraised handle again.
His left fist grinding against the wood, Marco glared at the expressionless visage of the Imp mask staring back, and used the back of his hand to shove the wooden sword out of the way as his right hand came up in an uppercut aimed at Goblin's jaw.
Goblin weaved his head around and ducked low as the uppercut passed, before he shot his left hand forward and drove the hilt of the wooden sword into Marco's solar plexus. As the air was forced from his lungs, Goblin struck twice more in quick succession, hitting the same place before he came up and slammed his horizontally held forearm across Marco's face as it came down, knocking him away from him in a stagger.
Coughing, Marco stumbled back towards Dipper, stopped abruptly, and then turned to his left in order to avoid the wooden sword coming down on where his head had been an instant before. He turned to face Goblin as the swordsman did not hesitate, swinging upward and diagonally towards his torso, and jumped back from the strike.
"Bro, what is your footwork?!" Goblin said as he kept swinging the sword, and Marco sharply dodged a horizontal strike, a rising diagonal return stroke, and a descending blow. When Marco closed in again, he punched rapidly, but Goblin was faster, spinning the wooden sword like a propeller to block each punch before they could connect with his stomach, throat, and jaw.
Catching his sword, he moved with the spin to catch Marco's leading right foot with the back of the blade, then swung up to catch him behind the knees before lifting him off his feet and into the air, falling backward.
Goblin then brought the sword down on Marco from above, slamming him into the ground as he yelled. "IT'S TRASH!"
Watching the fight from the house. Jackie gasped. "Marco!"
Flabber brought a hand to his mouth in fear. "Ooh…!"
On the ground, Marco coughed heavily, trying to catch his breath, when Goblin kicked him in the side, sending him skipping down the road towards Dipper's feet. Grumbling, Goblin shook his head. "Whack ass VHS Tang Soo Do shit… the fuck you think this is, a karate tournament…?"
He stopped when he found Dipper pointing his Grandfather's Hi-Power pistol at him.
"… Oh…" Goblin said, as he saw that the gun was cocked and ready to fire.
Dipper stared down the sight at him, eyes wide with fury. "Back off, or I fucking kill you."
Goblin's mask made it impossible to tell what his expression was, but the near unnatural stillness of his body was something Dipper picked up on.
"My guy, it ain't about that. I'm just here to beat your ass, ain't nobody gotta die over that," he said.
Dipper was unmoved. "Excuse me if I don't want mine, or my friends' asses kicked."
A sigh escaped the mouth of the mask. "I already told you; that's happening regardless. Pull the trigger then, if you think you ready to kill."
Without hesitation Dipper fired the pistol.
Goblin's stillness had been misleading. Even as he challenged Dipper he'd been inching, creeping while looking not at him but at his trigger finger.
The instant Dipper squeezed the trigger, Goblin completed the movement, and the bullet lashed across the rubber of the mask's right cheek.
Dipper fired again, but Goblin was still moving, going lower so the bullet took off the end of one of the mask's horns. By the time Dipper fired a third round, Goblin was faster still, the bullet passing to the right of his head. His feet digging into the ground as Dipper drew a bead, Goblin kicked off in the other direction, side-hopping to his right, and passing over Marco's prone body.
Goblin could see the shock spreading across Dipper's face in slow motion, the realization hitting him that he'd fired three times and had missed. He swung the sword up and to his left, the wooden blade catching the gun and whipping it out of Dipper's hands.
And before he could bring it down for the return stroke, Dipper's right fist collided with the left side of Goblin's head, sending him stumbling away and interrupting the attack entirely.
Recovering, Goblin violently swept the sword from side to side in front of him, but Dipper was already backing from him, moving in the direction the gun had gone.
"Oh… oh…!" Goblin said as he stopped. "I thought you didn't have that dawg in you–but I fucked up!"
Marco kicked back up onto his feet, turned around, and attacked Goblin, snarling like an animal as he threw himself into a flying kick. Blocking the kick, he didn't expect Marco to use his momentum to go up and over the blade, spinning over him to kick the back of his head. Goblin's reflexes did not let him down, and he turned in time to block that followup kick.
Jumping off the blade before Goblin could swing it, Marco landed on his hands, then sprang off them like a head-standing grasshopper to shoot over him again. This time he twisted mid ascent and swung a chop that clipped the other horn of his mask and took it off.
Marco landed, and with a furious kiai parried Goblin's punishing horizontal stroke up and away from him, then rotated his arms to repeat the movement and move the haphazardly returned opposing stroke. Marco went on the offensive, yelling more kiais with each blow, punches and palm strikes targeting Goblin's head that he blocked with the wooden sword.
Dipper, cognizant of the fire and Marco pushing Goblin back, quickly scanned the vineyard for the Hi-Power. Damn it, where is it…!
Lodged firmly in the zone, Marco continued his assault, his hands moving faster and faster, his focus narrowing to break Gabe's defense.
That sword is everything to him! He thought. Get rid of the sword, get rid of the shield!
His fist slammed into the sword, which stopped moving. Marco yelled and struck it again with a palm thrust. Got it!
And that when Marco realized… that the sword was jammed into the ground, Goblin wasn't even holding it.
Goblin's right fist crashed into Marco's jaw with such force that his entire body flipped upside down where he stood.
"… Wha…?" Marco asked as his world spun.
What was happening?
"That's what you get for tunnel vision, cuh…" Goblin said as Marco hung upside down, before he slammed his left into Marco's stomach with such force that his body went flying and crashed into one of the trellis rows some ten feet away. "Get your goofy ass outta here!"
Dipper had gotten ahold of his gun when he saw Marco crash through the row. Startled, he looked back at Goblin, who was pulling his sword out of the ground.
"Wait… what?" Dipper asked when he saw Marco semi-conscious at best.
He quickly aimed the pistol at him, and Goblin stopped moving.
At the house, Jackie turned to Flabber. "Do you have any weapons in the house?!"
Flabber shook his head. "The only weapon I know about is that one."
Several arrows appeared in the air, pointing at a suit of armor in an alcove adjacent to the stairs. In its right hand it held a long 17th century style Halberd–a polearm weapon with an ax blade on one side, a short hook facing the opposite way, and a spear tip above both. Looking up and down at the weapon, Jackie nodded.
"I can work with that…"
Outside, Goblin continued his standoff with Dipper. "We doin' this again?"
Dipper didn't shoot this time, and Goblin nodded.
"You're thinking real carefully about it now, huh?"
Dipper said nothing, even as he acknowledged that Goblin was right. There was no guarantee that the gun in his hand would do anything in this situation, not against this guy.
Marco needed a second, maybe more, to get back up. Dipper knew he was tougher than that. "You realize that this isn't going to end with this."
"I don't really care," Goblin replied with a shrug of his shoulders, "I'm only here to beat you up and then I'm out. It's nothin' personal. I'd take it up with the motherfuckers who paid me as far as getting it back in blood is concerned."
Oh, they would. "That goes without saying… but grudges don't really care about technicalities."
Once more Goblin shrugged his shoulders. "I mean, it's whatever then. You, your sister, those Beetleborgs, even the magical princess. I'll knock the shit out all y'all and then you can go back to LARPing or whatever."
Everything about this guy pissed Dipper off, but he held himself back–he wanted them to get angry and make mistakes. "Are you sure about that?"
Taking a moment to think about the answer, Goblin nodded. "Yeah, pretty sure. You're all whack as fuck, my boy."
Running footsteps alerted them both, and Dipper looked out the corner of his eye to see Jackie–hefting what looked like a giant battle ax, charging straight towards them. Growing alarmed, Dipper looked down at Marco and then back at Jackie.
"Jackie, stay back!" He called out.
"Nah, if she wants the smoke the fire is right here," Goblin said as he turned and shot straight towards her in return.
Dipper turned to draw a bead on him, but he'd already placed himself between him and Jackie. Seeing Goblin running at her, Jackie tightened her grip on the halberd and ran faster.
A laugh escaped his mask. "Aight then, brave! Show me what you got!"
Right before Jackie reached him, she hefted the halberd and to Goblin's surprise the whole weapon became a solid blur–like a helicopter's rotor–before she swung it in a wide sweeping arc that he had to immediately stop and jump back from.
"Ayo, what the…?" As Goblin tried to figure out how the sleepy blonde skater chick came from with that, Jackie used the momentum of her first swing to bring the halberd up over and down to try to cleave Goblin in two.
Realizing the blade was coming down much faster than it should, Goblin jumped back and watched as Jackie used the weapon as a vaulting pole to launch herself up and above him. Yanking the weapon up after her, she twisted her whole body to bring the weapon around, over her head, and then down again, Goblin this time jumping to his right to avoid the blow.
Jackie swung herself around the weapon and set her feet on the ground, before lifting the halberd, spinning it above her head, and pointing it at Goblin.
Goblin took his wooden sword in both hands. "Aight, I'mma be real, I didn't expect that."
Even as he expected Jackie to attack, Goblin didn't anticipate her speed as she lunged forward while thrusting the halberd ahead of her–the spear tip aimed for his throat. With a quick but short forward swing he parried the halberd aside, but Jackie circled the spear tip up and around the bokken before thrusting again, prompting him to parry the other way.
Jackie's rush of attacks continued, the young woman shouting with each lunge and forcing Goblin to parry and deflect the halberd. Left and right, aiming for his neck and chest, she was relentless as she walked Goblin back, before she overextended a final thrust and managed to get past the sword. When Goblin leaned back, Jackie rotated the shaft of the weapon and pulled it back, catching the wooden sword before she swung the weapon down and pinned it into the dry, cracked dirt.
Once more Jackie ran forward, using the spear to vault and kick Goblin in the face successfully this time. With the grace of a gymnast, she swung herself around the shaft fast, turned herself around and dragged the heel of her left foot across his face.
Goblin staggered back, pulling his sword free from Jackie's halberd, but then a much harder roundhouse kick smashed into the side of his head, sending him spinning off his feet and crashing through several rows of vineyard trellises back towards the fire he started.
Marco slammed his foot on the ground, his body trembling from adrenaline and anger.
Goblin crashed through two trellises out of control. But as he reached the third, he recovered and crashed through it back first, crouched down on the balls of his feet as he skidded to a halt. His white shirt, the cream-colored sweater vest he wore over it, and his brown slacks were covered in dirt and torn in places, and the lower half of his goblin mask was ripped open, revealing his mouth… which was pulled into a wide, open-mouthed smirk.
"Dude, are you all right?" Jackie asked Marco.
Marco wiped away the blood that seeped from his mouth. "I'm still standing."
Dipper joined him, his pistol pointed in Goblin's direction but not raised to shoot. "Let's go back to the house."
Marco glanced at him. "You sure?"
Dipper nodded. "Yeah, this guy's just here to kick the crap out of us… I say we don't oblige him at all."
Jackie and Marco looked at each other, then at Dipper, before they nodded in agreement. All three began to back up, inching back towards Hillhurst and away from Goblin.
Standing upright, Goblin's smirk disappeared. "Hol' up, where are you goin'?"
Dipper aimed the pistol at Goblin. "We're done. If all you're here to do is beat the shit out of me, then we're just not going to fight you!"
Goblin did not expect this course. "Oh word, you're just gonna bow out?"
"Take it as a compliment," Marco said as he and Jackie trailed behind Dipper, putting themselves between him and Goblin, "You're a lot stronger than we thought."
Dipper kept a bead on Goblin. "And this is over the freaking Vanderhoffs; fighting you isn't worth it."
Goblin's scowled. Tilting his head from one side to the other, popping his neck, he spoke. "How many times do I have to say this? There's only two ways this goes and one way this ends. You only get to choose if your homies get messed up with you."
Taking the bokken in his right hand just above the handle he held it down at his side. "Since I've already smacked your boy around and shorty has my respect–I'm giving you one last shot to do the right thing and end this in one minute."
Jackie took two steps forward. "Dude, you want him, you go through us."
Marco joined her. "And I guarantee you won't."
Goblin went still, the tension building in his body as he leaned ever slightly forward. "Bet."
The air shuddering around him, Goblin rushed down Jackie and Marco. Tightening the grip on the halberd, Jackie raised it, took a deep breath and lunged to reach him with her weapon before he could attack with his. Marco was right beside her, going wide to prepare to attack Goblin's left side.
When they merged, however, Goblin's left hand shot to the handle of the bokken. Jackie and Marco's eyes both widened when they saw how he held the sword, then grew wider as he pulled on the handle. The handle of the bokken separated from the rest of the wooden blade–revealing that it was in fact the handle of a katana without a hand guard, locked inside of a dense wooden sheath.
That was the only glimpse of it before the blade vanished from their sight.
In an instant, with the sound of metal shearing through metal and wood effortlessly, the business end of Jackie's halberd was cut to ribbons. In the next instant, as shock filled her eyes at the destruction of her weapon, the sheath of the guardless katana drove into her gut and she was lifted straight up off her feet and above Goblin's head.
As Marco skidded to a stop, he felt the katana's steel bisect the air in front of him, keeping him back and in place long enough for the sheath of the weapon to follow the blade on a different course–slamming into his stomach and forcing all the air from his lungs and a spray of blood from his mouth.
Marco and Jackie both hit the ground at the same time as Goblin came to a stop behind them–holding sword and sheath in both hands like their own separate blades.
Dipper rushed Goblin; hands steady despite his rage as he opened fire with the pistol while approaching him. Goblin faced him, the unsheathed sword in his left hand a blur as he twirled and spun it to deflect the seven quick shots in succession before he was close enough to lunge forward, bring the sheath across himself and swing to knock the gun up and out of Dipper's hand, sending it clattering to the ground beside where Marco lay.
A split second after that, the sheath crashed into Dipper's diaphragm, and down onto his knees he fell, clutching his smashed hand while gagging and gasping for breath.
Resting the sheath on his shoulder, Goblin looked at Marco and Jackie, and then down at Dipper. "Y'know what? I'mma keep it one-hundred… y'all surprised me."
He kicked Dipper in the face, dropping him on his back. As he lay there stunned, Goblin stepped closer, then kicked him violently in the side.
"I thought you'd go down like that, you know?" He kicked him in the stomach when Dipper rolled onto his side and tried to curl up, then kept kicking.
"But y'all… some tough ass… opps…!" He drove his foot into Dipper's arms, his face, and his gut, hitting him over and over until Dipper stopped moving and just lay still, breathing raggedly.
Taking one step back, he looked down at Dipper's right hand as his arm uncurled from guarding his body and gave it some thought.
"Did you really think them dumb motherfuckers were going to just go away after you kicked the shit outta them?"
He lifted the sword and pointed the blade down at Dipper's hand, the very tip aimed to take off his pinky finger if it came down. "They paid me half a milli to fuck you up after that. In the future, if you want your problems to go away, you need to do what you have to do."
As he held his hand still and lifted the blade a little higher to drop it, he finished. "I'mma just take a bit off the end, so you don't forget."
Three more gunshots rang out, the bullets striking the sword and shattering it just above the handle. Goblin turned and looked at the shooter as more clicking followed.
It was Marco, lying on his side, pointing the now empty Hi-Power at Goblin and squeezing the trigger over and over while giving him a look so filled with wrath that it made the swordsman take a step back.
Several more times Marco pulled the trigger, before he fell unconscious and went limp.
Looking at his broken sword, then down at Dipper, Goblin shrugged his shoulders and turned to start walking away–when something in the fire caught his attention.
He froze.
The Red Strikerborg stepped from the roaring fire, her helmet's yellow eyes shining brighter than the fire itself.
Goblin stared at the armored heroine as she just stood there in the blaze, staring back at him. He looked at the flames just swirling around her and how her trembling fingers curled and uncurled.
Slowly, Goblin stepped away from Dipper's prone body, and then began walking away from him, Jackie, and Marco. The Red Strikerborg turned her head slowly, following him until he was more than ten paces away from Dipper.
As soon as Goblin's foot fell on that eleventh step, the ground in front of him fractured from the Red Strikerborg landing in front of him, her right hand drawn back. Immediately Goblin threw his arms up to block–and when the Red Strikerborg's fist crashed into him, he was gone–a projectile rocketing away from her, sailing into the hills that surrounded Hillhurst.
Assured that no one could survive a hit like that without serious injury, the Red Strikerborg rushed over to Dipper and knelt by him. "Dipper…! What the hell happened?!"
Dipper opened one eye, then looked up at her. "… The Vanderhoffs sent him to attack us…"
Jo looked at the state Jackie and Marco were in, then back at Dipper. "I'm going to fucking kill them. After I go and finish off that asshole…!"
Dipper shook his head. "Jo, forget him… you need to call my Grandfather. I don't know how bad Marco and Jackie are, that man was not normal."
Swearing under her breath, Jo restrained her fury. As she went to call Shermie, however, numerous message prompts flashed in her helmet's HUD, all of them flagged urgent. Opening them, she lost her hold on that fury when she saw the alarming message being spammed by Mabel.
Mabel said:
SOS! STAR IS FIGHTING A MONSTER TRYING TO GET IN 2 THE DANCE! WE ARE STUCK INSIDE! ROLAND AND DREW CANT SLIP OUT TO TRANSFORM! JO WHERE R U?!
Taking a deep breath, as the fire began to die down thanks to Flabber's magic, Jo looked again at her three fallen friends. She had to get them inside the house first, and make sure they were okay. However, she wasn't going to leave Mabel hanging. Using the helmet's fancy eye tracking, she sent a message.
Jo said:
I'm in my suit and on my way.
= - = 6-6 = -=
During the second world war, belligerent nations observed a troubling trend. In every theater, in almost every nation, soldiers, sailors, airmen, and civilians were observed surpassing well past human limits of intellect, strength, reflexes, endurance, and survival. With so many points of data collected, researchers during and after the war came to the realization that a very small percentage of the human race were superhuman, and as more data was collected an alarming realization was made of this population.
In the 1950s, these observations led to the establishment of Monster Theory: The human race was transforming into something stronger, faster, and smarter.
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