Shhink. Shhink. Shhink.

So went the mantra of whetstone against metal as Noah sharpened the eponymous blade of his gunblade. At least he thought that’s what eponymous meant. Eponymous was one of those words whose definition always eluded him, like the word irony eluded hipsters or dignity eluded cosplayers.

His contemplations on how to insult various sub-cultures were interrupted by a cry of, “Noah, what the hell are you doing?!”

Noah looked up from his trusty stupid weapon concept to see his younger brother Miles standing in the door to his room.

“Sharpening my gunblade,” he said, continuing to do just that as he sat on his bed.

“No, I can see that, but what the hell is up with all this?!”

Miles swept his arms across Noah’s bedroom. The preoccupied man looked around to see the stockpiles of swords, firearms, and combinations thereof stockpiled in the small bedroom as if it were a Left 4 Dead safe house as imagined by Tetsuya Nomura.

“What? I’m just taking care of all my weapons,” Noah said, looking up at his brother as if they were speaking a different language. Namely talking sense versus talking internet reviewer-ese.

To say that Miles looked confused would be like trying to compare the ocean to a puddle. “Why?!” was the only word that Miles seemed to be able to come up with.

Noah sighed and set his gunblade next to his supply of healing jelly. "Look, I'm in the middle of reviewing Final Fantasy Thirteen, and at the end of every single one of those games one of the main characters comes to try to kill me. I have a feeling this time it's going to be that Snow fucker and his stupid goddamn super trench coat, so I want all my weapons to be ready for when he shows up."

“Here’s an idea: how about you just stop doing the reviews?” Miles asked. “When your old house blew up, that wasn’t your fault. When I came home to find Insano dissecting some blonde guy, that was kind of fucking creepy.”

“And I had to talk you out of arresting him,” Noah reminded.

“But after last time when I found you two disposing of some chick’s body, I officially got sick of this shit,” Miles finished.

“Look, I just have to, okay? I don’t know why, but something in me is compelling me to see this through,” Noah said with a sigh.

“Do you have to do it with all this?” Miles asked, looking like he was about to get on his knees for a semblance of sanity. “I’m really damn sure more than half of this is illegal for you to have!”

"We've been over this: I don't need a gun permit to carry a gunblade,” Noah repeated with the sort of patience he could only muster for his younger brother. “It's just a sword with a revolver grip. It is not a projectile weapon."

“Then why load it with bullets?” Miles asked, his brow furrowed in confusion more comprehensible by mortal men.

Noah threw his arms up. “Fuck if I know!”

Miles shook his head and kneaded the bridge of his nose. “Look, that’s beside the point. The point is, all this other shit? Yeah, illegal as hell.” He paused and lowered his hand. “Is that a SPAS-12?”

Noah followed his brother’s gaze and shrugged. “Hell if I know. Every shotgun looks the same to me. All I care about is that bullets come out of the end.”

“And this, this is a lightsaber,” Miles said as he waded into the makeshift armory and picked up the sci-fi icon. “Does this thing even–” It sprung to life in his hands with a hiss of plasma. “Holy shit!”

“Put that thing down before you cut your arm off!” Noah turned it off with a flick of his wrist and wrenched it out of his brother’s hands using the Force. “You may have a gun permit, but I’m the Jedi here.”

“What even is this thing?” Miles asked, holding up a metal wristband with some kind of mechanism atop it.

“Wrist-mounted semi-automatic dog launcher,” Noah said with the mother of all straight faces.

“A dog launcher,” Miles repeated, his jaw hanging off its hinges. “You got a weapon that launches dogs. Wait, you were going to use Oreo as ammo?!”

“It worked for Renoa!” Noah exclaimed, holding up his arms with his palms flat. “It’s really fucking stupid, I’ll be the first to admit, but not as stupid as that fully automatic version.”

Miles didn’t drop the dog launcher so much that his fingers went slack and let it fall. “Where the hell do you even get stuff like this?”

“Some redneck named Arlo. I ask for weapons, he builds them. He doesn’t ask why I need them, I don’t ask how the hell he makes them,” Noah explained.

“Maybe you should start,” Miles suggested, holding his head.

“Sorta can’t. I think he’s still in the loony bin after trying to tamper in the barrier between our world and the howling void. Last time I heard of him, he was trying to swim into the ocean shouting ‘ia ia, cthulhu fhtagn.’ Thank fucking Christ that he finished and shipped my anti-magic gun before he did, though,” he said with a sigh of relief.

Miles could only stare as he slumped against the wall. “The fact that I believe you and that I’m not surprised scares me.”

“You’ll get over it,” Noah assured.

Miles shook his head. “Look, I’m a cop. Do you have any idea how arrested you’ll be and how fired I’ll be if anyone finds out you had all this shit and I didn’t report it?”

Noah cocked an eyebrow as he looked up at his brother. “Okay, go ahead; report me for owning a lightsaber, a gunblade, and a sharkzooka. See who believes you.”

Miles could only blink and repeat, “Sharkzooka?”

“Don’t ask,” Noah said with a shake of his head. “I ordered that one after I got plastered for the Tekken: Blood Vengeance review.”

Miles opened his mouth to most likely chide his brother for getting shitfaced when it came to Twilight – probably because he never had to see the last two movies – when the pair heard a sickeningly sweet noise in the doorway. Both brothers looked down to see Insano Junior looking up at them pleadingly.

“You forgot to feed Junior tonight, didn’t you?” Miles asked, crossing his arms.

“I was going to get to it,” Noah said with a wave of his hand. “Though now that you mention it, would you mind doing it? These swords aren’t going to sharpen themselves.”

Miles scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Fine, whatever. Come on, Junior.” He walked out of the room with the pink tentacle blob squealing happily, rolling along at his heels. Noah just rolled his eyes and picked up his gunblade, continuing his work.

Shhink. Shhink. Shhink.

That’s when he heard it. That music. That awful, catchy as fuck music.

“Oh fuck no.”

“Heya, Spoon!”

“No, no, not you!” Noah looked up and it was indeed him. Chuckles, in all his stupid fucking glory, was standing in his doorway, with his stupid fucking jester hat and his stupid fucking multi-colored outfit and his stupid fucking red Marti Gras mask and his stupid fucking white face paint.

“Miss me, Spoon?” the jester asked with an exaggerated grin and a honk of his stupid fucking horn.

His question was answered with a whetstone thrown at his face and Spoony leveling the gunblade at him. “Yeah, like I missed food poisoning! Get the fuck out of here, you creepy goddamn clown.”

“Jester,” Chuckles corrected, unfazed by the stone thrown childishly at his face.

“Does it look like a give a damn?” Spoony asked, lowering into a combat stance. “I already killed you once, fucker, don’t make me do it twice.”

Chuckles folded one arm across his chest and tapped his chin with the other. “Yeah, about that, Spoon, I really didn’t like being murdered with a cannon and my body stuffed in a trunk in Lord British’s bedroom. Kinda gives a guy a grudge, ya know?”

“Don’t care, leave,” Spoony spat. “I found that corpse in that secret room behind your fireplace. I don’t regret anything, you psychotic fuck.”

The jester’s grin widened from creepily cheery to outright sinister. “I don’t either. I’m certainly not going to regret this, Spoon.”

Chuckles reached into his stupid fucking sleeve past his stupid fucking gloves and- oh shit, that's a knife.

In the blink of an eye, Chuckles drew a shining steel dagger from his sleeve and threw it with expert precision at Spoony’s head. Spoony blocked it with the flat of his gunblade as the jester threw another one, which he blocked just the same.

“Okay, you asked for it!” Noah swung his gunblade to cut the psychotic jester right in half, but he was too fast. Chuckles leaped out into the hallway and tossed another dagger. Spoony tried to dodge, but it grazed his neck. “Fuck!”

“Why, Spoon, I didn’t know you swung that way,” Chuckles cackled as he practically pranced backward to stay out of range.

“Get back here, you fucker!” He chucked his gunblade to the side and grabbed his anti-magic pistol. “Hope you like lead!” He fired a pair of rounds right into Chuckles’ head.

Or at least tried to. Before the bullets could reach their intended target, there was bright yellow force field between hot lead and soft skull.

“What the fuck…?” was the only thing Spoony could say to bullets not solving his problems.

Chuckles just giggled to himself. “Sorry Spoon, but you’re gonna have to do better than that! The gloves are off.” Chuckles held up his right hand and pulled off his white glove, as he was obligated to do after making a joke that horrid, to reveal a yellow power ring.

“Wait, you’re a Yellow Lantern?! Where the fuck did you get that ring?” Spoony asked, his jaw going slack.

“You’ve made a lot of enemies, Spoon,” the jester replied coyly. His point was backed up when the yellow energy changed into the construct of a minigun.

Spoony looked between the minigun, his own pistol, then back again. “I’m pretty much fucked, aren’t I?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Look, Chuckles, we can talk this out, right? I mean, I know we have our differences, but I’ve been charged with homicide, so I can’t really judge you. Come on, holding a grudge isn’t healthy, and we all know revenge doesn’t solve anything,” Spoony pleaded. The minigun construct’s barrels began to spin.

It vanished before it could fire a single round due to a trio of gunshots making Chuckles’ head explode into a shower of brains and blood like a piñata at Eli Roth’s birthday party. The jester flopped to the ground, his hat in tatters and the head upon which it used to rest splattered all over the room.

Spoony looked up to see Miles with his pistol drawn, the end smoking. “You owe me big,” the police officer said.

“You are the best brother ever and I love you,” Spoony panted as he let out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding.

“You owe me a lot more than that,” Miles said, holstering his weapon.

“Fuck,” Noah swore.

Before either of them could start the customary brotherly squabble over exactly how much Noah owed him for saving his ass, they heard a gurgle and a squelch come from the dead jester’s body. Flesh and bone and brain began to grow again from his neck stump like a nightmarish weed, the mass reforming into Chuckles’ ugly mug. “You know, I really was on the fence about killing you,” he panted as he got back to his feet, “but you just shot me right over the edge.”

Before Miles could recover and get another shot off, a tendril of black light erupted out of the jester’s left hand and swatted his pistol away before wrapping up its owner.

“Oh come on, you’re a Black Lantern too?! That’s just not fair!” Spoony protested right before he was wrapped up in a yellow tendril of light. It fastened his arms to his sides and constricted him until he let go of his anti-magic gun.

“Fear, death, they both make you soil yourself in the end. How do you think I came back in the first place, anyway?” Chuckles asked with that creepy as fuck grin of his. “Didn’t exactly have enough cash to bribe the grim reaper, and I couldn’t beat him in poker. I guess you could say–”

“If you end that with a ‘dead money’ pun, I swear I will shove my gunblade right up your ass,” Spoony hissed as he struggled against his bonds.

“Aw, you’re no fun,” the jester pouted. “Not that it’ll matter soon, anyway. My friend and I are here to take your immortal soul, Spoon!”

“Friend? What friend? I knew you were a crazy bastard, but I didn’t think you were delusional,” Spoony choked out as the tendril tightened. “Jesus fuck, you’re going to break my ribs!”

The jester just threw his head back and laughed. But it wasn’t a normal laugh. It was a whooping, psychotic cackle that set off Spoony’s childhood memories like tumblers in a lock.

“Kefka?!”

“I see my reputation precedes me,” a voice deeper than Chuckles’ said using his mouth. “Kefka Palazzo, master of magic and maestro of mayhem and misery. Feel honored to be in my presence, worm.”

“Took you all day to think up that intro, didn’t you?” Miles grunted.

Kefka retaliated by backhanding Miles like he owed him money. “I wasn’t talking to you, whelp!”

“Terra and her group kicked your ass; how the hell are you still alive?!” Spoony asked as he subtly started to move his hand behind his back.

“Life, death… they’re abstracts, really,” Kefka said dismissively, turning back to face Noah. “Turns out you can’t kill a god. Not fully. When those loathsome little pinpricks of peace and love and friendship and blech destroyed my body, my godly soul was set adrift in the cosmos. Until I found some poor sap willing to let me borrow his body, that is.”

“And why the fuck do you wanna kill me?” Spoony asked, just trying to keep the clown talking.

Kefka snickered. “Because you’re the Titan of Aether, the god of magic from the world of Pagan. I could just wait and let my power grow again naturally, but I was never much of a waiter. I solve my problems with nice and wholesome murder; hell, I’m not opposed to a good slaughter even when there isn’t a problem at all. And if I kill you and absorb your soul, your power, my power will increase exponentially. I’ll be able to snuff out entire galaxies instead of one insignificant little rock. Oh, and Chuckles wants you dead or something; I never really cared much about his motives, but as long as we both want you dead, I might as well humor him.”

Spoony got his hand into position and prayed that Kefka didn’t notice. “So I’m fighting a psychotic jester possessed by a psychotic, nihilistic dead clown god. I gotta say, that’s a new one.”

“Fighting?” Kefka repeated with a scoff. “Don’t kid yourself; this is a beat down.”

“Like I’m scared of a ‘god’ who was beat up by a bunch of douchebags armed with the power of pointy objects, a moogle, a yeti, and an androgynous mime. Fuck, one of them fought with playing cards,” Spoony taunted loudly, trying to hide the hiss of plasma.

Kefka looked around in confusion. “What was that noise? It sounded like sizzling flesh.”

Spoony grinned. The setup was just too great. “Oh, did it sound something like this?” He flicked his wrist and his lightsaber flew out of his bedroom right into Kefka’s chest. With another flick and twist, the blade swiped side to side, cutting the clown neatly in half.

“You little brat!” Kefka gurgled as his two halves flopped over onto the floor. He pumped his fist and tightened his hold on Spoony.

The Jedi yelled in pain and struggled to keep his hold on his lightsaber steady, but with another swing he cut Kefka’s right hand clean off at the wrist, the power ring on it going dead. Spoony fell forward onto his knees with a ragged gasp and a heavy cough. “Motherf-fuck…!”

“Little help here!” Miles gasped as he struggled against his own bonds of black light.

“Sorry, sorry, my organs are just a little strangled is all,” Spoony spat as he drew his lightsaber into his hand, ignoring Kefka’s cursing and threats. He pushed himself onto his feet and lopped off Kefka’s other hand, though the first was quickly growing black tendrils to reconnect to its owner.

Miles fell forward himself with a heavy cough. “Is there any way to kill this fucker?”

“I am invincible!” Kefka shrieked. “You can’t keep me like this forever!”

“Sadly, Nutcase McCrazy here is right,” Spoony said as he struggled to keep up with Kefka’s body reassembling itself, trying to cut off the black tendrils before they made contact. He wasn’t fast enough, and the clown’s right hand reconnected and sent a ghostly fist made out of yellow energy into Spoony’s chest, pinning him to the wall and making him drop his lightsaber. “Fuck!”

Miles drew his pistol and shot at Kefka’s head, but at that point it only annoyed the undead clown. “What the fuck do we do, then?!”

“Go to the basement,” Noah choked out. “Turn on Insano’s portal; I got an idea.”

Miles nodded and dashed down the basement stairs as Kefka reassembled himself. Spoony tried again to control his lightsaber, but the clown pinned both his hands to the wall.

“You,” Kefka snarled as he got back to his feet, “you are going to die slowly. Painfully. You are going to scream, while I laugh, and laugh, and laugh, and laugh!”

“Then what’re you waiting for, fucker? Come at me,” Noah coughed.

Kefka cackled as he drew a dagger from his sleeve. “First, a riddle: What’s white on the outside, red on the inside, and about to be dead all over?”

Spoony gasped as the vice around him tightened. “Y…your mother,” he choked out.

“Oh, good guess; I hated that whore,” Kefka giggled. “But thanks for playing. Tell her I said hi when you meet her in Hell!”

Another chorus of gunshots blew Kefka’s head open right as he was about to carve Spoony’s head like a pumpkin, spraying Noah’s face in gore as the clown’s body staggered and the ring’s grip loosening. Noah took in a deep breath and concentrated, managing to bring his lightsaber back into his Force grip and lop off Kefka’s right hand again.

“Better hurry; that was my last shot,” Miles panted as he helped his brother back up.

“Then help me carry him to the portal; we’re chucking him inside,” Spoony said as he picked his lightsaber back up. A blast of black light came streaming towards his face, but he deflected it into the wall.

“You want to carry the ball of rage and knives?” Miles asked as he ducked around the corner.

Noah deflected a sword construct that tried to slice through his kneecap. “You got a better idea?”

Miles winced at a deflected blast of yellow energy crashing into the wall next to him. “Two words: Force Push.”

“Why didn’t I think of that?” Spoony wondered aloud. He dove forward and dodged the pair of chainsaw constructs that Kefka had conjured up and bisected the killer clown from the waist. His upper half didn’t even reach the ground when Spoony pumped his hand forward and sent the two pieces flying down the staircase into the basement.

“I hate you!” Kefka shrieked. “Hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate you!”

“C’mon, let’s push him through!” Noah said as he sped past his brother. He didn’t get far before Kefka erected a barrier of black light to block the stairwell while he pulled himself together. “Son of a bitch!” He slammed and slashed and stabbed at the energy field, but it was about as effective as asking for patience from his fanbase.

“Once I kill you, this entire planet will burn,” Kefka seethed as his two halves reconnected in front of the portal. “It’ll burn brighter than any star in the damned sky before I extinguish those, too! It’s one big genocide barbecue, and everyone’s invited!” He cackled with his trademark laugh as he got back to his feet and lowered the shield, only to replace it with a black and yellow pair of miniguns.

“Hoh shit!” were the only words Spoony got out before he dove to the side, barely avoiding the hail of energy bolts that tore up the stairwell in a hail of splinters.

“Run, run fast as you can, you can’t hide from me, I’ve got firepower, bitch!” Kefka cackled insanely as he adjusted his aim, tearing up Insano’s lab.

Noah wove and dodged and deflected as best he could, but the sheer number of bolts earned him wound after wound that spurted blood like a wine barrel from hell. “Miles, help, now!” he barked. “Can’t keep this up!”

His prayers were answered in the form of a projectile Junior being thrown down the stairs and into Kefka’s face. The enraged blob of pink goo wrapped his tentacles around Kefka’s head and refused to let go, growling as threateningly as he could manage, which wasn’t very. The sight would be a mix of comical and adorable if not for the fact it threw off Kefka’s aim and sent energy bolts everywhere but their intended target in a storm of bullets.

“What the hell is this thing?!” came Kefka’s muffled cry of confusion as he tried to claw Junior off his face.

The words awoke in Spoony his inner nerd, his self just beneath the skin that was saturated in pop culture, the primal urge to parrot pop culture memes. It welled up within him like the rising tide of Noah’s flood until he could hold it back no longer.

“This!” He charged at Kefka, his lightsaber and his Force powers forgotten.

“Is!” He stopped and cocked his leg back in front of the flailing clown.

“Sparta!” He kicked Kefka square in the chest, sending both him and his pink tormentor through the rift and into parts unknown.

Spoony collapsed backward, panting heavily with a triumphant smile on his face. He was covered in blood, most of it his own, he felt like shit, but goddamn it, he won the day once again. He was the best around, and nobody was ever gonna keep him down.

“Hey, Noah, where exactly did that portal take him?” Miles asked down the ruined staircase. “I don’t have the slightest idea how to change the coordinates, so I didn’t bother.”

“…fuck.” Next Chapter: Unto the Breach 2: Electric Boogaloo Estimated time remaining: 43 Minutes