Absolute Corruption

Author's Note: This is a sequel to the story Absolute Power -- if you want to learn how Leon and Laxy got into this enviable situation.

*

There are upsides to being an immortal shapeshifter with your own personal wish granting genie.

Okay, let me rephrase that, because the only way to end that sentence would have been with a resounding no shit, Sherlock. There are upsides that you might not expect. I know that I had never imagined that never needing to poop again was an upsides -- but oh, it was. I lounged back on the sofa, eating some popcorn as Laxy -- my roommate slash boyfriend slash girlfriend slash pet dragon slash former internet roleplaying buddy slash co-genie owner -- shifted shapes every few seconds. She had been born as a she, and had always wanted to be a he. So, when I wished her to be a him, she had been he and he had been happy. But now that she had access to a Genie...

"Okay!" Laxy said, her whiskers twitching up. "Calc, make meee feel natural in a cat's body."

"Why not just order me to make it so that you always feel comfortable in any body, no matter what gender it is you're in?" Calculator asked, walking in from the kitchen with a second bowl of popcorn.

Another upside?

Never getting fat.

Calculator -- called because of his phylactery (since not all genies were contained in bottles, you racist) was an old clunky scientific calculator -- rolled his shoulders and thumped himself down on the sofa beside me.

"I'm just saying, you shift your form the way I shift my..." Calculator pursed his lips. "Actually, no, you do it faster than I do anything."

"It's just so much fun!" Laxy said, laughing as she barked, having shifted into the form of an immense, incredibly fluffy, pale white wolf. She padded over and leaped onto the sofa, sending a popcorn bowl spilling out of my hands. The kernals scattered across the carpet -- then vanished, the bowl appearing beside me again. Another wish I had made that just kept our quality of life that much higher and lazy.

Laxy started to lick my face when the TV show we had been watching -- Firefly: The Rebirth (you're welcome) -- switched to an emergency news channel. A harried looking reporter's face filled the screen, her makup half done, her hands holding a piece of paper that looked like it had been jammed into her hands immediately. "We break this immediate emergency story -- but a nuclear device has been detonated in downtown Sydney and Melbourne."

As she spoke, the news camera footage behind her played -- a helicopter a few miles away from one of the two cities, watching the roiling, amazingly beautiful mushroom cloud spreading over the two cities. My eyes widened and Laxy gaped, her head snapping around to look at the screen.

"Calculator!" I stammered. "I wish that-" I pointed at the screen. "Undo! Undo!"

Calculator -- who had drawn his legs up underneath himself -- frowned, tilted his head. "As a reminder, it's harder to undo things that naturally occurred, especially those that effect so many people. This might just be history in the making and we might not be able to fix it that easily. Human free will and all th-" he blinked as the news anchor vanished and Firefly came back on. He blinked again. "Or, alternatively, someone is being a dickhead."

I slowly relaxed back into the sofa, breathing out a soft sigh.

Laxy shifted to a slender, pink haired anime-looking girl with a chest so flat it was barely extant. She laid down on my lap, looking shaken. I slipped my hand along her spine slowly, petting her. No matter the form, Laxy liked being petted.

"Okay," I said. "Who the fuck wished for Australia to get nuked?"

"Not sure," Calculator said, tugging on his chin. "We're going to have to track it down. If you want to stick with your whole idea of, you know, fighting bad people who have genies." He grinned at me. "We could just stay here and eat popcorn."

"How do you even track that kind of thing?" Laxy asked.

"Well." Calculator stretched his arms over his head. "Reality is fragile and it notices things -- even when they're wished away by a certain incredibly powerful, highly sexually potent and attractive genie."

"Like who?" Laxy asked, grinning slightly -- some of her normal spunk coming back. Calculator stuck his tongue out at her. I smiled and petted Laxy a bit harder, my palm resting above the cleft of her tight, athletic ass. She added a tail to herself and cat-ears, so I'd have more to pet. It was already helping erase the hideous sight of those mushroom clouds. Though, I was worried that they'd visit my dreams again -- roiling and boiling and reaching upwards towards the sky. I shuddered.

"Welll," Calculator said, sticking his tongue out and chewing on the tip. "As I was saying. When reality gets yanked around, there are bits that get shaken loose. Things that were not meant to be get dragged out -- and usually, things know why they are brought into the world. Humans are unique in that sense. You have no idea why you're here or what you're doing."

"Thanks," I said, frowning.

Calculator snorted. "You take it as an insult. It's not. Like, why the fuck do you think you're here-" he gestured around himself. "In a house with computers and I-phones, watching TV shows about space cowboys committing crimes and being witty and cute? It's because, ten thousand years ago, some human looked around and started to ask questions about why they were here, what they were doing, who they were, and why the fuck they had to sleep all cold and alone when Ugg had captured fire after that lightning strike. If Ugg can have fire, I can have fire, then I won't feel so lonely and sad. And thus, humanity's endless drive towards invention and creation was pushed forward, milestone after milestone, inch by inch, all by existential doubt, concerns about your future, and a desire to stick your dick in new and interesting inventions."

"God. Bless. America." I whispered, putting my hand over my heart.

"So, okay," Laxy rolled onto her back, grabbing onto my hand and guiding it to one of her breasts. I stroked her gently. "Weird shit happens when reality gets bounced back. Why haven't we had any weird shit here?"

"...you-" Calculator started.

"Beyond what we wished for!" Laxy snapped.

Calculator shook his head, shrugging. "Cause your wishes have impacted, in total, you, me, this house, and a few million browncoats. But that was a minor weirdness. Like, Firefly getting back on the air was within the realm of possibility -- it just took a few of the right meetings, a little bit of inspiration. Tiny nudges and all that. So, it produced small sheer -- I think Nathan Fillion's cats might have lost all their hair, but I haven't checked."

Laxy snorted.

"But two big whammies hit Sydney and Melbourne -- first, being incinerated by a nuke, then by having it undone. There's got to be major supernatural fuckups going on there. We find some of it, we ask questions, and we track this back to the source."

"Cool!" Laxy sat up. "I wanna look like a kangaroo when we arrive."

"How about we look like people?" I asked, grinning. "Calculator -- can you arrange transport?"

"Nah," Calculator said. "But your own fucking plane tickets."

###

The three of us were suddenly in the blazing heat of downtown Melbourne. There was no transition, no momentary flash of light. Nothing but being in my air conditioned house in California to the very much not air conditioned heat of Melbourne, flanked by two immense skyscrapers, and with a broad street before us, cars zipping along. It seemed to be utterly like any American city -- but I was fairly sure that the differences would start to crop up pretty quickly.

A sleek, four limbed creature with a pair of curved, chitenous blades rushed past, leaving behind a series of gouged out chunks of sidewalk and a few screaming pedestrians who were fleeing towards their car. I blinked a few times.

"Okay," Laxy said. "I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that that was not normal for Australia."

"Nah," Calculator said. "I've read Cracked, I think it's pretty normal."

"Calculator, I wish for a big gun," I said.

Calculator nodded. "Thy wish is my command."

A big gun appeared in my hands. I worked the safety off, then ran around the corner, skidding a bit as I saw that the creature had leaped onto a car and was squatting down, looking around with a narrow, triangular head. It hissed and then turned to face me as other pedestrians scrambled backwards, several of them holding up cellphones. They started to film the thing and one of them -- with amazing comic timing and an astounding sense of appropriateness -- shouted out: "I THINK IT'S ONE OF THEM SMALLER TYPE OF ZERGS!"

The southern accent sounded like a man with a bagfull of dicks in his mouth.

But I respected the effort.

The zergling leaped towards me. I snapped the gun up and -- with the ease of long practice in virtual bubbles created by Calculator because why play an FPS when you can live an FPS? - blew the thing away. The bullets stitched across its chest, leaving a series of sizzling craters of green gore. The chitenous armor on the things back exploded backwards and it hit the ground between me and the car and skidded a few feet, leaving behind a greenish smear, it's spinal claw tips leaving behind a pair of screeching lines that left the sidewalk looking like someone had cut into it with rulers.

"Fhew," I said, lowering my rifle.

"You do know we were going to question it, right?" Calculator asked, stepping over to kick the creature.

"Yeah, why didn't you wish for a net gun?" Laxy asked.

"Because-" I stopped. "Well, I..."

I noticed that people were filming us. I glanced at Calculator, whispering. "Should we be keeping this secret?"

"Probably?" Calculator said, shrugging. "My powers are rooted in the faith in and use of technology. If people start seriously questioning their reality, we could have problems."

"Well, uh, hey everyone!" I shouted out. "Thanks for, uh, being a part of the fan video. Pretty cool special effects, huh?"

The Aussies looked at me like I was some kind of raving lunatic.

"No, seriously," I said, kicking the monster -- hoping that Calculator had my back here. The creature rolled to the side, revealing some kind of highly advanced animatronic. "See?" I said, grinning slightly.

The Aussies looked at me like I was a subtly different kind of raving lunatic.

I let Laxy talk to them after that, and Calculator and I both handled the corpse. We rolled it onto the back of a truck that Calculator subtly wished into existence behind the alleyway, and I covered the monster with a tarp. Once we had it covered up, I looked at the genie. "So, uh, can you make a weirdness tracker? I want to follow this sucker back to where it came from. Since, I mean, if reality is like a big blanket, then the stuff that comes through would all come through at the tear. Right?"

Calculator nodded. "You do know that reality isn't a big blanket, right?" he whispered.

"But my idea is still good?"

"Better than standing around with our thumbs in our butts," Calculator said, giving me a thumbs up.

###

We drove through the streets of Melbourne -- me at the wheel, trying to not freak the fuck out as we drove along the left side of the road -- and with Calculator serving as Laxy's butt cushion. "You know," the genie said, turning his head to try and not get his face mashed into Laxy's long, pink hair. "You could shorten your hair, Laxy."

"Shut up, I'm having fun," Laxy said, grinning as she adjusted the PKE meter that Calculator had made for us. She grinned, adjusting a dial upwards. "Oh! Oh! Left!"

I turned right.

"I said LEFT!" she shouted.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" I swore, jerking on the wheel -- causing each of us to strain against the straps.

"You know," Calculator said, his voice dry. "You could have wished to have your brain automatically adapt to adverse driving conditions. I'm basically like being in the Matrix, but without that concomitantly your first blah blah blah bullshit."

"Shut up, Calculator," I muttered through clenched teeth.

"Okay, turn right here," Laxy said.

We pulled up before a large apartment building -- or did they call them flat buildings here? - that looked utterly mundane in every way. Then I noticed that the fire escape along the side of the building had several large chunks gouged out of it, and a tiny splash of green blood marked the alleyway beside the building. The zergling had come from here. I pulled up to one of the parking spots -- scowled as I realized that I was roughly at a forty five degree angle from the curb. I glanced back, backed up, almost smashed into the other car parked there, drove forward, hit the brakes to keep from hitting a light pole and sighed.

Calculator opened his mouth.

"Calculator, I wish for us to be parallel parked," I said. "Also, give us netguns, please."

We stepped out of the car and I slung my netgun over my shoulder. A woman with brassy blond hair and skin the color of ebony walking a dog that looked to be mostly rolls of fat and panting walked past. She looked at me, then looked at my netgun, then took her glasses off her face and blinked a few times as she looked at me again. "Cor," she said, quietly.

"Yes, ma'am," I said, grinning at her. "I have a huge gun."

She shook her head. "Yank, you do know that we don't let people just carry guns around here, right? We kinda put a stop to that sort of thing."

"Well, in my defense," I said, patting the gun. "It's not a gun gun. It's a netgun."

She looked skeptical.

And hot.

Like, Jesus Christ, she was wearing what amounted to a half shirt that cupped her breasts like a pair of hands, and a skirt so high up that I could see acers of black, athletic thigh. I just wanted to bury my face between those thighs and just eat her out till she exploded. And that expression was clearly on my face because she snorted, turned, walked away, then got grabbed by a huge, sucker covered tentacle that reached through the wall as if the wall was made of nothing more solid than air...and got dragged back in without even time to scream. Her dog stood there, panting phlegmatically, his rolls of fat compressing like the wrinkles on the face of Winston Churchill.

"Oi!" I shouted. "I was talking to her!"

I ran towards the wall.

I smashed into it face first, rebounding and hitting the ground with a groan. I felt blood trickling into my nose and saw the tiny percentage that I had wished for in my field of vision tick down a few times -- marking how close I was to total system failure. It was far more convenient and useful than pain. For one thing, I could ignore it a lot easier than pain. For another thing, it was really satisfying to see it tick upwards when Calculator healed me.

Laxy knelt beside me. "You okay?" she asked.

"Yeah, just five percent damage," I said, sitting up and shaking my head. "We have to rescue her."

"No duh," Calculator said, putting his palm on the wall. "That was an Unspeakable Servant."

"That sounds unpleasant," Laxy said.

Calculator nodded. "Before the world stabilized and when human will was more paramount than human intelligence, Unspeakable Servants were spontaneously generated out of human nightmares. A great working by a proto-Persian sorcerer chained them to people who could speak the command words. Only problem was those people tended to be huge jerks. So they got banished to a pocket dimension a few thousand years ago."

"Goodie," I said. "And now, the reality tears have let them back in?"

"What? No," Calculator said. "This portal feels far too stable. I think it's been here a while." He narrowed his eyes. "Now, we must knock."

"With guns?" Laxy asked.

The front door of the building opened and a man in a security outfit ambled out. He looked like he climbed walls for a living -- broad shoulders, beefy and thick with muscles, but with legs that had shrunken down and were merely normal human legs. It made him look like a walking V. He had his hand planted above his left hip -- as if he was going to draw a handgun. Instead, he had a nightstick sheathed there. But the effect was fairly impressive, if you didn't look too closely. He frowned at us.

"What the fuck is going on here?" he asked.

"We're shooting a movie?" Laxy suggested.

"Where are your cameras?" the man asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

"On our cell phones. Duh." Laxy rolled her eyes, shaking her head a bit. "But, listen, you're ruining the shot."

"What cell-"

The portal chose that moment to open as Calculator tapped his finger against it and whispered -- so soft that I think I was the only one who heard him -- the words...open sesame. The portal reached inwards like a coiling throat. The term wasn't entirely symbolic -- I could hear a slow, steady breathing noise coming from within. The walls were covered with blinking, staring eyes, and the only light that existed within the portal seemed to come from glowing green fungal protrusions that stuck outwards like that dangling bit inside of a human throat.

"So, uh, you've been drafted," I said to the security guard. "What's your name?"

"...Gabe..." he whispered.

"Cool," I said. "We're going to go into the mystery goop tunnel, fight evil monsters, find a kidnapped girl, and possibly save the world."

Gabe looked unimpressed.

###

The four of us -- with me and Calculator in the lead, Gabe and Laxy leading up the rear, all of us armed with forehead mounted flashlights, cameras recording the whole thing, chest covering body armor that regulated our temperature somewhat, and heavy duty bang bang shoot guns. I held my BBSG in a relaxed grip, ducking my head past a dripping polyp that hung from the ceiling as I looked around the tunnel we were advancing along. The breathing sound wasn't getting louder -- but it also wasn't getting any softer, and the faint feeling of the air brushing against my face, then tugging against my hair was it was blown back the other way felt deeply confusing.

"So," Calculator whispered. "We're deep in the domains of an Unnatural Servant."

"Yay," Gabe said, his voice almost a squeak.

"Well, there is an upside," I said. "If we miss, we hit bad guy."

"Unless we hit you," Laxy said, cheerily.

"Aren't you fucking terrified?" Gabe whispered. "This is serious Silent Hill shit here. Cthulu shit. Shit shit!"

"Oh, I am," Laxy whispered. "But we have a genie with us. We can just wish anything really bad out of the way.'

Calculator pointedly didn't say anything. He so pointedly said nothing that all of us slowly stopped. My feet squelched as I turned to face him, frowning slowly. My brow furrowed and Calculator started to look guilty.

"Well, my powers come from technology and the human subconscious," he whispered. "We're in an otherspace controlled by beings formed from the nightmares of ancient Pesian god-kings. My abilities may function at a reduced capacity here."

"Oh now you tell us!?" Laxy squeaked, sounding terrified.

"Maybe we should pull b-" Gabe started. But I saw motion at the end of the corridor and lifted up my BBSG and opened fire without a second pause. The barrel flash filled the fleshy tunnel with strobing lights and whatever was coming towards us stopped -- and I saw it in flashes and blinks. It was the tentacle, and it was starting to turn into a shredded mass of flesh. The shredding went faster as Gabe, Laxy and Calculator joined in on the shooting. After a few moments, the tentacle jerked backwards, slurping and gurgling away from us, leaving behind a thick stream of gore.