1

The deal was done.

Isabella Sistrane handed over the pills to the little Finuvian boy, taking the cash-money in exchange and inserting the bills in between her larger-than-life-itself, 48V-sized breasts. They didn't even make bras big enough for those mutated boobs of hers, which was why she went without.

"Aw deeth goink to wahk?" the boy asked, foul-smelling drool depending from his bone-braced teeth. His Finuvian accent was near-impossible to understand at the best of times. Combine that with a set of gnarly looking choppers undergoing realignment via the finest in dental technology, and you had a recipe for excessive use of subtitles.

"They'll make you see pretty pink mechanobats pissing rainwater into your mummy's morning tea," Isabella told him, before ruffling the three red curls on his otherwise-bald skull.

"Oh, dath good." The boy popped one pill and swallowed it dry. He looked around the industrial park, eyes gunning straight for the nearby rooftops and mechanotrees. "Dath weal good." He started to whistle, spraying more spit than sound.

Isabella found this very suspicious. "Say, kid, you're not planning on screwing me, are you?"

His eyes went to Isabella's ample bosom, then back to searching the mechanical leaves on the trees and scanning the tops of the buildings. "Uh, naw."

"What are you looking at, then?"

"Nawthink."

"Doesn't look like nothing to me," Isabella said. "Looks like you're waiting for backup to come swooping in and arrest me. You part of a sting op, kid? You been given all the powder your little nose can toot, in exchange for taking down the biggest dealer in illicit narcotics this side of Garbalzapan? Huh?"

"I doan even know what that meanth." The kid fidgeted, tugging on the front of his salmon-coloured shirt. He cleared his throat. "It'th a wathah nithe night tonight." He looked around, eyes wide. "I thaid: IT'TH A WATHAH NITHE NIGHT TONIGHT!"

Definitely a code word.

Like a stroke of lightning across the blackened sky, Isabella pulled her revolver out from between her breasts. The gun was made of solid bone and had been possessed by the soul of her dead dad—after a freak accident involving high-grade explosives and even-higher-grade psychedelics.

The kid tried to run. But Isabella was faster than that. She grabbed for him, found purchase on the collar of his ugly shirt and yanked him back. She put the barrel to the kid's temple and saw a darkness seeping down the inside of his pant leg.

"Naw, naw, naw! Doan kill me, pleathe!" He started to cry.

Sensing tears and the unmistakable stench of fear, Dad chimed in, his echo-y voice emanating from the barrel of the revolver: "Shoot him, Izzy! Shoot the little prick! He tried to get one over on you! I wanna see his blood and brains blasted out the side of his skull! I wanna be the bullet that ends his stinkin' life!"

"Dad, stop. You're scaring him." Isabella was about to ask the little brat a question when her worst fears were made reality.

"IT'TH A W-W-W-WATHAH NITHE—" The boy's code-worded sobs were cut off by the thunderous gear-and-pulley system of an incoming vehicle.

The Bonobo Bonemobile suddenly rolled up from out of nowhere, crunching a park bench under its hulking, white mineral wheels. It came to a screeching halt and out rushed the coppers: decked out in skeletal body armour, wielding guns that looked like femurs with hollowed-out skulls attached to the far end.

"Police!" they roared as one unit. "Drop the gun and put your hands in the air like you just don't care! Where are the illegal substances, miss?"

Isabella sighed, disappointed she'd have to go on the run once again—and after she'd just gotten her life back on track in this new city. Looks like she'd have to leave Bonobo and make a mad dash for some other land. Maybe Catsweenu? The weather was supposed to be nice this time of the—

"DROP THE GOD DAMN GUN! WE'VE GOT YOU REDHANDED, PUSHER!"

"Do what you gotta do, Izzy," Dad cooed. "Pop some heads. Do it for daddy."

What happened next is generally confined to only the most award-winning of action movies. Picture a scene in black and white, pile on the CGI and slow the whole thing down to about quarter speed. You need a big budget for these types of theatrics, people.

With one impossibly fast movement, Isabella whipped her gunhand around and dragged the little punk-ass kid in front of her body, effectively using him as a human shield. A half-second later her revolver—her dad—let out the lead. The breath of the bone came whooshing out, one powerful expulsion of pneumatic wind after the other, carrying lead-tipped teeth at Mach 1.

As the coppers squeezed the finger-bone triggers of their bonerifles, Isabella's own weapon was already filling them with tooth-sized holes. The cops who shot faster than they died ended up making the Finuvian runt leak red from about a couple dozen different wounds. The kid was dead before a drop of his blood had so much as hit the ground.

Tossing the broken shield aside, Isabella did cartwheels and frontflips—making excellent use of her gymnast youth—firing tooth after tooth, her breasts bouncing and smacking against her jaw. Felt like a pillow fight on girls' night.

When our heroine had finished with her flashy acrobatics, Dad needed reloading and there were about twenty-two dead bodies strewn about the immediate vicinity. Bones jutting out of uniforms, broken and scattering white dust everywhere. Guts spilled out from the corpses, looking like yellow-brown snakes linked in a conga line.

Isabella wiped some sweat from her brow and went around to each of the corpses. Needed to refill her ammo.

"Nice job, Izzy!" Dad cheered. "You really wreaked havoc that time, girl! And I wasn't too bad myself, eh?"

"You were great, Dad," she said absently, breaking teeth from the jaws of her victims. It was easy work once you'd developed the hand muscles. "But it looks like we'll have to find a new stomping ground. I doubt the nightly news will be focusing on the soaring prices of men's thongs tonight."

Once she was properly stocked up, she then began to reload her dad. She'd fed eleven teeth into the weapon when a familiar whirring could be heard behind her.

Isabella sighed, groaned, moaned. Turned around. Saw the annoyance she knew she couldn't possibly be rid of. Not for long, anyway.

Rupert the Reporter-Robot: a bulky grey cylinder on black treads, with an enormous glass casing where its head should have been. Inside the glass case—amidst a mysterious yellow fluid—was a red-and-blue electrical surge, arcing this way and that for whatever scientific reason. A speaker sat in the centre of its body, allowing its methodical computerized voice to say whatever its circuits desired. It held a microphone in one of its pincers. The other pincer held a bottle of cheap motor oil, ready to be guzzled as needed. Rupert was a drunkard.

"Isabella Sistrane. I have been. Following you. For some. Time. Now. I have. News. For you. You are—"

"Rupert," Isabella started, already losing patience with this robotic piece of crap. "Screw off. I don't have time to wait for your programming to spit out whatever it is you have to say."

Rupert continued: "You are. Not. An only. Child."

Turning her back on the robot, Isabella muttered, "I said, screw— Wait, what?" She turned around. "What did you just say, fool?"

"You are not. An. Only. Child."

Dad's voice from the barrel of the gun: "Oh, damn. So I guess that little trick your Uncle Basely taught me didn't actually work."

"Dad. Rupert." Isabella felt hot and light-headed all the sudden. She had... a sibling? But she was always an only child as a girl! What a mind job! This was too much! A brother or a sister! A fellow Sistrane!

Both the robot and Dad started to go on, but Isabella couldn't hear their voices. As a matter of fact, she couldn't hear anything—nothing except for the sound of the ocean, whistling in and out of her ears.

She fell unconscious seconds later, her boobs acting as a marvellous cushion.

2

Cut to an empty scene. A clinical white room, washed thrice daily by an over-achieving cleaner-bot. Mostly barren, aside from the massive computer in the centre, coloured lights flashing, beeps and bloops sounding. Three large wires, fattened with all the data travelling through them, are connected from said computer to the corner of the room. Where the wires go is anybody's guess, as said corner is obscured by a large red curtain. The huff and puff and grind and discord of machinery can be heard from behind said curtain.

A voice—sounding robotic through the electronic filter—boomed from the computer: "DAGON! COME HERE, DAGON! NOW!"

An abomination of a man rushed into the room, nude and hairless. He had eight spider-thin legs, their joints turned backward, clicking and clacking their nails on the floor. He walked with his chest facing the ceiling and his head hung from an elongated neck—the nape facing the floor—which bobbed up and down with every step he took. He arrived at the computer and looked up at it, seeing it upside-down. His mouth opened to speak, and long yellow tusks popped out. It was a wonder that he could even get them back in. "Shir? What ish it, Shanté, shir?"

"DAGON, WHAT ARE THE REPORTS ON... THE FUGITIVE."

"Shtill at large, shir," Dagon said. "The Bonobo polishe forsh hash been moshtly butchered. Shall I shend out another shity'sh tashk forsh?"

"YES, DAGON. AND I WANT YOU TO GO AFTER HER YOURSELF, AS WELL."

"Ash you wish, my mashter." Dagon bowed, his spindly legs creaking and cracking as they lowered him to the floor. His long neck extended further, until his eyes were looking at the place where the floor and the computer met. His lips kissed the cold metal of the computer. "I love you, Shanté."

A roboticized shudder escaped the computer's speaker. "I LOVE YOU, TOO, DAGON. NOW GO!"

The spider-man lifted himself back up, turned around and charged out of the room, gonads jouncing and slapping together.

The room empty once more. The computer uttered one final line before going to sleep: "WE'LL GET YOU YET, WOMAN." Its lights faded of all their colour.

3

"Hon, get up. Izzy! Hello! Give her a pinch, would ya?"

Isabella—hearing Dad's voice—snapped to a conscious state, just as Rupert the Reporter-Robot stowed its microphone and pinched her face with its pincer.

"OW!!!" she cried, batting the robot away. "I'm awake! For the love of a hairless perineum, I'm awake!" She sat up on the grass, realigning her spine. Dad was off to her right, practically weeping through the barrel of the revolver. And Rupert was... being Rupert: stuck in a never-ending loop of gyration with a candy wrapper caught in its treads.

"You're alive!" Dad yelled, before letting off a few celebratory rounds which rang out into the night.

"Dad, you're not really helping with all that damn shooting you're doing."

"Sorry, sweetie," he mumbled sheepishly.

Isabella picked herself up, which wasn't easy considering how much weight each breast packed. Maybe forty pounds apiece? Thankfully, after years and years of lifting her own bodyweight, she had developed some rather large muscles. "How long was I out for?"

"Approximately. Seven. Minutes," Rupert calculated, still spinning in circles.

"Jesus... Seven minutes? For real? And no more coppers came?"

"None, sweets," Dad said.

She found that hard to believe. After being on the run for years, she'd grown accustomed to having the coppers trying to bust her ass in fifteen-minute intervals, all day, every day. She picked up her father and tucked him back in between her breasts. Then removed the candy wrapper that was screwing with Rupert's circuits. "Rupert, you can thank me by screwing off."

"Negative. Isabella. Sistrane. You know. It. Is my sworn. Duty. To—"

"Then at least tell me more about—" It all came back to her. One huge surge of information. Of memories. She got woozy. Nearly fainted again. "About my sibling. Who is it? Are they a he or a she?"

"Don't. Know. Just that they. Exist."

"How'd you find out?" Then to Dad, she added, "Do you know anything about this?"

Dad and Rupert were both about to say something, when the din of sirens and gunfire echoed from maybe a kilometre away.

"Save it for later, friends and neighbours," Isabella said. "We've gotta skedaddle."

She took the lead, running full tilt out of the industrial park. Ducking under mechanotrees and swerving around park benches. Weaving through pseudo-bushes, knocking chrome leaves off and leaving a trail of broken glass in her stead. Her boobs flopped up, down, side to side—every which way, really. She'd probably have some bruises on her chin by the end of the day. Maybe a black eye, too.

Rupert wasn't far behind, its treads running on what its circuitry called "Chaos Speed"—which was only about twenty kilometres per hour. The fluid in its glass case, where its head should've been, had turned a glowing white. The cooling of its central circuits had been initiated. Chaos Speed had the tendency to cause the robot to overheat.

Mechanobats fluttered overhead in droves, squeaking out sonar calls as they devoured various small bug-machines. They could be seen dipping this way and that, spinning in circles—any movements necessary to catch all the mechanical bugs. This was a delicate balance, of the hunters and the hunted. Both were essential to the artificial ecosystem of Garbalzapan.

Isabella and Rupert exited the park and found themselves stationed at the busy streets of Bonobo.

Bone-cars ripped and roared past. Curses were shouted as drivers became enraged with each other. The flatulent stench of spent exhaust pervaded the air.

Isabella looked back into the park and saw another vehicle screeching onto the scene where all the bodies lay. Not a Bonemobile, but a smaller ride: its blue-and-red lights flashed wildly. That would be the last of Bonobo's police force coming to investigate the first unit. It was only a matter of time before the coppers discovered all the corpses of their fellow police.

They needed a ride. Fast.

And as if fate had a hard-on for her, a taxi pulled up in front of them. Yellow bone chassis. Looked like a ribcage on wheels, with the spaces in between each rib filled with a matching yellow glue to keep the bugs and the wind from getting in. The rear door opened. Isabella hopped in first, Rupert clunked inside second.

"Driver, anywhere but here," she said, reaching over to close the door. "Fast."

The driver—an anthropomorphic turtle with an extra-large hand-rolled cigarette smouldering in his beak—looked at her with bloodshot eyes through the rearview mirror. "Hey, hey, woah, woah there, Ms. Bigguns—a robot? Stinkin' up my car, gettin' excited and spewin' motor oil everywhere? I don't think so. Get out." He turned up the radio with his filed-down claws.

Rupert opened the door with a pincer and nearly toppled on its side as it left the vehicle.

Isabella went next, turning back and leaning in to the car. "We really need to get out of the city."

"Hey, baby, shaddup for a second, would ya?"

"Don't call me 'baby,' and don't tell me to shut up—"

The driver raised his yellow-scaled hand and swung it down as if she were a bug being swept away. He listened to the radio chatter:

"The city of Bonobo is the site of a massacre tonight, as the majority of the police force has been discovered dead in the industrial park, their bodies littered with bullet holes. Also dead is a young boy of ten years, an immigrant of Finuvia."

The driver rocked a fist down. "That's what I'm bloody talkin' 'bout! Whoever shot that damn dirty immigrant would get a free ride in my car."

"Oh really?" Isabella asked, a smirk working its way on her face as one corner of her red lips lifted. Her brown eyes glittered. "Me and my robot friend here were the ones who did that job. The kid was part of a sting op to bust me for drug dealing. I assume you've heard of the name 'Sistrane'?"

The driver's eyes—large black pupils amid deep-red irises—narrowed, deep in thought. Certainly he'd heard of the Sistrane Crime Family, comprised of Isabella Sistrane and her father, Korbin Sistrane. Who hadn't, really? Sizing up the unlikely duo (secretly a trio), he said: "Alright, get in. But don't make a mess back there."

Back in the car and closing the door, Isabella noted the abundance of old coffee cups, cigarette butts and empty beer bottles. "That won't be a problem."

"So out of the city, eh?" the turtle asked, extending his neck so he could see over the steering wheel.

"Preferably so it's about as big in the rearview as my fingernail." She held up her pinky finger for him.

He nodded and off they went. Weaving in and around the traffic, passing whoever had stopped for even just a moment.

Isabella examined a photocopy of the driver's taxi license. It was stuck to the back of his seat with tape. "Terry P? What's the 'P' stand for?"

"P," he said simply. "What the bloody hell did you think it stood for?"

"I dunno. Something."

"It doesn't. My family comes from a long line of noble P's." He nodded at her in the rearview, eyes wide as if he were trying to prove it to her as much as to himself.

They were silent for the next couple minutes. Then they hit the freeway and Terry decided to put the pedal to the metal.

Isabella felt nauseous as the world whizzed by in a mix of colour. "Woah! Slow down!" she shouted, above the roar of the gear-and-pulley engine. "You're a turtle!"

"Oh? And just what the bloody hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Y'know..." She tried to think of the least offensive way of informing Terry of the stereotype. "Turtles are slow... and—"

"I resent that. In fact, I take great offence to it."

"I'm very, very sorry."

"I'll have you know that my father was a racecar driver."

"I'm, uh, I'm sure he was."

"And my uncle raced the horses at the track. Before he fell off and cracked his shell. He's dead now."

"Lots of racing in your family."

"Turtles like to go fast, y'know."

"But you guys walk so slow!"

"That's exactly why we go fast when we can. Same reason why cheetahs drive so slow."

And on that note, Terry stuck his head out the window and spewed a stream of invectives at the vehicle they were passing. The car contained a family of cheetahs. The children stopped their game of Patty Cake to stare open-mouthed at the turtle saying their mother was "no better than a filthy hoor."

"Feel better?" Isabella asked him.

"You know, I do. I really, really do. 'Better out than in,' my daddy always said."

"The racecar driver?"

"The very same," Terry said with a wink. "That robot don't talk much, does it?"

"It's shy," she said. "Aren't you, Rupert?"

Rupert's glass casing was full of green fluid now. Its circuits had initiated the appropriate protocols to reverse nausea, dizziness and vertigo. "Don't. Like. Going this. Fast." Its pincer clutched the bottle of motor oil, as if it were some sort of talisman to keep the fear at bay.

"Awww, that's cute," Terry said. "Almost as cute as the picture of a turd my brother—"

Terry never had the chance to finish that insult. A bullet suddenly blasted through the back of the car, narrowly missing Isabella's head, and found its way lodged inside Terry's shell.

"OW! What the bloody hell was that!" He took one look at the chip in his multicoloured shell and nearly fainted. "I've been killed!" he shouted. "Oh gods, I'm dead!"

"You're not dead yet, Terry," said Isabella. She took Dad out and glanced behind. The coppers were on their tail, men leaning out of the car with bonerifles ready to fire. "Step on it, Terry! The pigs have come to feed!"

The taxi upped its speed, weaving crazily around the traffic. All seemed well. Then Terry passed over a hump in the road and caught sight of the wall-to-wall gridlock up ahead.

"Brace yourselves! It's gonna be a bumpy ride!" he called out, flicking a special switch on the side of his steering wheel.

The taxi lifted high into the air, like the shocks were on hydraulic lifts. With careful and precise and very subtle movements, Terry positioned the taxi so its white mineral wheels were able to pass in between the gridlocked cars. They came out in front of the perpetrator of said gridlock: an old man having a heart attack on the hood of his car; paramedics attempting to quicken the process so traffic could flow once more.

"That should do it," Terry said, lighting up a second cigarette and flicking the switch back again.

But that didn't do it. The coppers plowed through the vehicles, scattering the cars and leaving them in pieces. The guns fired.

Rupert took this as its opportunity to start drinking.

Glug-glug-glug.

Isabella positioned her revolver so the barrel poked through the hole made by the earlier bullet. "Dad, I need you to work your magik, okay?"

"Of course, Izzy-pie."

"Woah, your bloody gun can talk!?" Terry shouted above the chaos. He tugged the steering wheel this way and that, trying to dodge bullets.

"It's a long story." She fired a burst every few seconds. They managed to take down a few more coppers, seeing bodies fall from the police car. Tumbling and rolling. Quite dead, obviously—as they were crushed by the traffic closely following the chase. "Rupert, don't you have any weapons on that tin can of yours?"

"No. Isabella. Sistrane. Not made. For. Combat." Rupert continued to glug down its motor oil. Anything to numb its fear circuits.

The chase continued for a few more kilometres of freeway. All seemed well. That is, until one of the few remaining coppers pulled out a stomach-launcher and fired the acid-filled missile.

Isabella saw it and time seemed to slow, if not freeze entirely. She tried to scream, tried to shout something. She found her mouth had gone dry and her throat incapable of voicing her concerns. The missile came ever closer. Finally, she found her voice. "RPS!"

Terry's eyes widened. "Stomach? STOMACH! Oh, bloody hell! This is bad!" He impotently jerked the wheel left and right, but it was all to no avail.

The missile hit nearby and the stomach exploded, splashing yellow-green acid all over the rear of the vehicle. Terry jerked the steering wheel hard to the right, sending the quickly disintegrating taxi smashing through the guardrail and barrelling off the freeway. The taxi landed in a forest of mechanotrees and the four managed to escape the acid erosion by mere moments.

4

Maverik and five of his fellow soldiers had been requested by Commander Dagon for a special mission. They were to meet with him in the vestibule just outside of The Great One's throne room.

He didn't know what this was about—neither did his fellow soldiers: Garrety, Dickson, Imbolshet, Uvillia and the ever-mysterious Ghost. They'd heard the buzz on their comm-link, reported in, heard the order to get into their skeletal body armour and be waiting outside the throne room in five minutes.

So here they were.

Imbolshet and Dickson were playing with a deck of cards, one asking the other if they had a certain card—if yes, then the filed-down, paper-thin bone went into the pile.

Garrety and Uvillia were bickering about whose wife was more voluptuous.

Ghost, ever grim, was polishing his bonerifle.

"Any idea when this ugly mutant's gonna show?" Maverik asked the others.

"At thish very moment, Maverik," said a voice which could only belong to one individual.

Maverik gulped and turned around. "Commander Dagon, sir! Uh— Might I say you're looking chipper today, sir! Have you been polishing those tusks, sir?"

"No," Dagon said, click-clacking his way to the task force. His hairless body glistened under the overhead lights. Balls bouncing as they always did. "They're jusht ash yellow ash alwaysh, Captain Maverik." He smiled those large yellow tusks at his new team. "You all are here for one shpeshal purposh. The Great One, Shanté himshelf, requiresh you all to acquire a shingle woman by any meansh nesheshary. Alive, I musht add."

"That's it?" Ghost grunted, his voice raspy from not talking a whole hell of a lot.

"That'sh it," Dagon confirmed, raising his upside-down head in a grotesque nod.

Garrety chimed in with what would be his last words: "Are we going to finally meet 'The Great One' after this mission? I'm starting to think he doesn't exist."

Dagon twitched and weakened, his spidery legs struggling to support his weight. His body started to leak sweat. Oh, how he loathed the idiots who doubted the existence of The Great One. "You fool! Fool! Of coursh The Great One ekshishtsh. He'sh shitting on hish throne right now, you coloshal fool. Ghosht, kill thish man. Hish eshensh defilesh the shanctity of thish very plashe."

"Gladly," Ghost said, lifting his bonerifle and aiming for the head. He pulled the trigger and Garrety's brains went splat against the wall. The corpse slid down and came to a dead slump on the floor.

"Anyone elsh have any doubtsh about our glorioush leader?" Dagon asked.

Nobody nodded.

"Good," Dagon said. "Now get thish woman alive. Her name..." He paused dramatically. "Ish Ishabella Shishtrane."

5

"My car..." Terry whispered, obviously unable to handle the gravity of the situation. He stared at the bone dust scattered on the ground in a ten-foot-by-six-foot area. Some of the acid from the copper's RPS was now eating into the ground. "My beautiful bloody car!"

"It wasn't that beautiful," Isabella said, trying to be comforting. "It was actually kind of ugly, when you think about it. It looked like the middle part of a really old skeleton. I think there was even some mould growing on it..."

Terry recoiled as if he'd been slapped. His beak almost shaped into an 'O' (except that his beak really couldn't make that sort of shape). "Ugly? UGLY!? It was a fine automobile, woman. You just don't have the eye for a vehicle as fine as that one was."

"Dad, what do you think?" she asked the revolver in her hand.

"Ugly!" Dad agreed.

"That gun don't even have any bloody eyes!" Terry retorted.

"True. Whether it was an ugly ride or not—"

"It wasn't." Terry crossed his arms. He clearly wanted to hide in his shell and never come out. As that wasn't an option at that very moment, he made do and lit up another cigarette. He was rocking three now, but only a little over halfway finished with the first one.

"—we're still on the run from the coppers," Isabella continued. She looked around the immediate vicinity. A mechanotree forest. Off in the distance, about three kilometres away, was a used-car dealership. "Which means we shouldn't waste time chatting. Not here, at least." She looked through the mechanotrees above, up at the freeway from which they'd driven off. There were alternating red-and-blue lights. "So, shall we head for sanctuary?"

"Sanctuary. Where. Isabella," Rupert said in its trademark disjointed manner. It polished off the last of its motor oil and swallowed the bottle, reclaiming it for spare parts. It then pulled out a fresh one and got to glugging.

She nodded at the used-car dealership. "Sanctuary. Also known as Swartzwelder's Auto Afterlife."

"The name doesn't instil much bloody confidence," Terry muttered woefully.

They started moving. There wasn't much in the way from the forest to the dealership. Simply some lush silver-green mechanograssland, some bone-dry artificial desert and a few shimmering streams of liquid mercury.

"So," Isabella started, as they moved through the fields of silver-green. "I believe before this mess began, there was talk of me having a sibling and questions about what the hell it all meant."

"Well," Dad said from Isabella's hand. "I got nasty with this hooker one time. This was before I met your mother," he added, somehow knowing she had a look of revulsion on her face. "I was trying out a trick your Uncle Basely told me about. As we both now know, it didn't work."

"Gross, Dad. Okay, Rupert. Your turn. How'd you find out about my supposed sibling?"

Rupert took a few moments to run the appropriate memory calculations. "It was. A. Calm day in. Garbalzapan. The weather. Left a. Lot. To be. Desired. Some. May say. It was. Summer. Others. Winter. The sun shone. Down. On me. As. I strode. To. The gates. Of—"

"Enough with the purple prose," Isabella snapped. "Wait, does it qualify as purple prose if it's dialogue? I dunno. Whatever. Just get to the freakin' point, Rupert." She snorted. "Oh and... strode? Please."

"Very. Well. And robots can. Stride. In. Their dreams." Rupert's programming skipped the literary masterpiece it had transcribed. "A real. Ugly. Fellow in. A bar. Told. Me."

A moment of silence followed as Isabella awaited what would surely be the rest of the story. When she realized that more was not on the way, she said, "That's it?"

"Yessiree. Bob."

"What a letdown. Any names? What did the ugly freak look like?"

"A mutant. Eight. Legs. Naked. His name. Was. Dagon."

"Dagon," Isabella repeated. Letting the name sink in.

6

After ordering the new task force to find Isabella Sistrane, Commander Dagon spider-walked his way back into The Great One's quarters. He stopped in front of the computer. "Shir? Shanté, shir?"

The lights on the computer came back on. Every colour of the rainbow was on display within those lights. Then the booming voice: "HAVE YOU FOUND HER YET, DAGON?"

"Not yet, my mashter," Dagon said, bowing. "I have jusht come to inform you, oh Great One, that the tashk forsh hash been eshtablished and shent out. Ishabella Shishtrane will be dishcovered shoon enough."

"GOOD, GOOD. YOU WILL BE GREATLY REWARDED FOR YOUR EFFORTS, DAGON. NOW GO! AID THE TASK FORCE IN THEIR SEARCH! I AM RUNNING OUT OF TIME, DAGON! YOU ARE AWARE OF THIS FACT, YES?"

A tear began to roll down Dagon's forehead. He didn't bother to wipe it away—mainly because his spiderlike legs didn't really possess the "wiping" capability. "Yesh, my mashter. I am aware of your... m-mortality."

"SO THEN YOU UNDERSTAND WHY I REQUIRE YOU TO ACT QUICKLY, DAGON, MY MOST DEVOTED SERVANT... AND FRIEND."

Dagon looked up. "Shir...?" He'd never been called "friend" by Shanté the Great One before. By anyone, actually.

"IT IS TRUE, DAGON. WHEN ONE SUCH AS I IS CONFINED TO SUCH A PLACE AS THIS, FRIENDS ARE QUITE HARD TO COME BY. YOU ARE A FRIEND. I THANK YOU FOR ALL THE LOVE YOU'VE SHOWN ME. YOU ARE A FINE CREATURE."

"Thank you. Thank you, shir! I will go now! I will find the woman! And I will bring her back to you myshelf! I promish!" Dagon turned and left, those balls still slapping against legs, back and chest.

He had his mission in mind; his resolve strengthened by the boost to his ego and sense of humanity, given to him by Shanté the Great One. He would find the woman his master sought. He'd done everything he'd been asked to do so far for Shanté—telling the reporter-robot that the woman he was following, Isabella, had a sibling; setting up that sting op which had failed to result in her capture; and now the task force, which would certainly result in this Isabella's capture.

Feeling more on top of the world than he ever had before, Dagon galloped to the frontlines. He had a woman to catch in his web.

7

Maverik had been made head of the task force, much to Ghost's chagrin. The sadistic bastard was pouting near the guardrail of the freeway, practicing with his scope on mechanobats. Lining them up and shooting them down, feeling the chromium guts fall on his face and relishing the taste.

With a shake of his head and shudder that went both up and down his spine, Maverik went over the police reports and the eyewitness testimonies in his head again.

A woman by the name of Isabella Sistrane—now head of the Sistrane Crime Family—has been on the run for a year, following the mysterious death of her father, Korbin Sistrane. The rumour mill says she set up shop here in Bonobo, eventually rising to the top of the illicit-narcotics trade. So, under the orders of Commander Dagon himself, the police attempt a sting op, using a stupid little immigrant kid as fodder. Naturally, the sting op goes to hell in a handbasket: the kid ends up dead, the moron cops who rush in to bust her get shot to smithereens, and the fugitive gets away.

Then she gets a ride in a taxi, as the witnesses recall, and attempts to flee the crime scene. A robot was with her. All seems normal, until the rest of the Bonobo police force gives chase to said taxi along the freeway, shooting up a storm and leaving countless vehicles with busted fenders and contorted chassis. Shots are fired from the taxi, and numerous more cops get killed. A reaction-propelled stomach is fired from the police car, hits the fugitive's taxi, the taxi begins to decay, ends up soaring off the freeway, lands in the mechanotree forest below and is disintegrated before any evidence can be gathered. Not a body nor a robot is found.

Maverik shook his head again. Talk about a tough nut to crack, this case. They hadn't found any solid leads at the first crime scene, where the police and the kid were killed. Or at the second, where the taxi went through the guardrail. So far nothing at the third, where the taxi should have landed, either. Dickson, Imbolshet and Uvillia were down in the mechanotree forest, scouring for literally anything: a hair, a fingernail, any trace of a lifeline that could lead them onward.

"Ghost," Maverik yelled. "See anything?"

Ghost put a pause on his skeet shooting, turned to him with guts dripping from his chin and scowled.

The scowl said everything.

Then came the shouts from down below: "Maverik! We found footprints! And tread tracks!"

A smile found its way onto Maverik's face. The first smile he had all day.

8

Swartzwelder's Auto Afterlife, located on cracked desert land, was pretty much a graveyard for cars. And given that the cars of Garbalzapan were all made of bones, the abundance of forgotten vehicles gave the impression of a mass-burial site for prehistoric creatures, lying dead in the same spots they were grazing in before the cataclysmic meteor struck down.

The main building, sitting beyond the cemetery of used cars, was shaped like a dome. It was made of glass more expensive than all of the beat-up automobiles combined. A picture of a large (and quite gross-looking), greasy moustached face had been painted on the billboard beside the dome. It read: DEAN SWARTZWELDER COULD SELL YOU ANYTHING! EVEN A SUN-DRIED HORSETURD!

"Quite the boast," Isabella noted, looking up at the leering face. She noticed that the painters hadn't hesitated in adding all the fine details to this Dean Swartzwelder's rotting teeth. The grin was black and yellow, with bits of green broccoli caught under the gumline in between his front teeth. At least he ate healthy. Got to offset that appetite for cigars and dipping tobacco somehow.

Rupert, Terry and Isabella (oh, and Dad!) passed by various death traps on their way to the dome. Affordable prices such as fifty-six Garbalzapanians, thirty-four Garbalzapanians, twenty-five Garbalzapanians—and some even as low as a single Garbalzapanian—were drawn on the windshields of their respective vehicles in white bone dust.

"See anythin' you like, miss?" Terry asked sarcastically.

At that same moment, one car collapsed, scattering bones this way and that like a set of bowling pins. Naturally, they all laughed—well, except for Rupert. Robots can't laugh. Very sad, but that's the way the world works.

Upon reaching the dome, Isabella read the note sticky-tacked to the front door. Terry withdrew his head into his shell to block out the sunlight from his eyes, and placed the opening of it up to the glass, trying to peer inside. Rupert was using its DNA-tracking software to pinpoint the exact location of Dean Swartzwelder. Dad was snuggled safe and sound in between his daughter's boobs.

"Says here that Mr. Swartzwelder is out stealing more cars and that he'll be back in fifteen," Isabella told the others.

"Yup. Seems likely," Terry agreed, his head extended and observing all the cars in poor condition. "I must say, these babies do look hot."

"That didn't come out right," Dad said, his voice muffled from all the breast he had to talk through.

"No, it did not." Terry paced at a turtle's pace. "So, what to do, friends? What to do? Wait 'round for our favourite automotive thief? I'd ditch you all, but you destroyed my beautiful car!"

"Still on about that?" Isabella asked, smirking.

"You're damn well bloody right I am."

Rupert let out a chime. "Discovered. D. N. A. Trace of. Dean. Swartzwelder. Tracking." Its treads began to whirr, spinning. The robot roamed, heading along the perimeter of the dome to its rear.

"DNA trace?" Isabella asked herself. "Follow that robot!"

Her and Terry kept close to Rupert as he roamed over sand and pebbled ground. They reached an outhouse, positioned in between two hulking Dumpsters.

Isabella drew her dad, locked and loaded. She had a pocketful of ammo if she needed it. "This where the trace ends?" she asked Rupert.

"Yessiree. Bob."

Cautiously, she stepped closer to the outhouse door. Not knowing what she'd find inside. Dean rocking a piss? Puking his guts out into the toilet? Hanging from his feet, head in the water, suffering through the world's worst swirly? There certainly weren't any pips or squeaks coming from within...

With her gun at the ready, Isabella reached for the door. Opened it slowly at first. Then she threw it aside, aiming for whatever awaited a good shooting.

A greasy man sitting on the John, stripped down to his boxers with duct tape over his mouth. His hands and feet were handcuffed to the dangling flusher and the toilet roll, respectively. "Mmmph!" he sounded, his eyes wildly sweeping across the horizon.

She tugged at the tape, tearing off the man's fake moustache in the process. It was definitely Dean Swartzwelder—she could tell from his decayed smile. His face was noticeably gaunt, however. "Dean? Is that you?"

"Oh, thank the Holy Ghost! Yes, I'm Dean. I've been in here for a week, for gosh darn's sake... The guy who put me in here—that gosh-be-darned goofball—he's living in my car. He comes out here every so often to, ahem, use the facilities." He lowered his eyes after this latest revelation.

"Where's your car?" she asked him. "I'll take care of that punk. My friend here will get you out of those cuffs. Won't you, Terry?"

"Sure, miss," Terry said, smiling and twiddling his fat thumbs. "I'll just use the lock picks I carry 'round with me at all times."

"No need to be sarcastic, Tare."

Armed with a handful of lock picks he'd pulled out of his shell, Terry said: "Who said anythin' 'bout bein' sarcastic?" He winked and got to work on freeing Dean.

"So where's the car, Dean?"

He nodded his head to his right. "Side of the dome, baby."

"Don't call me 'baby.'"

"Sorry, sugar-bum."

"Or that."

His hands now free, he found a candy in his crotch. He handed it to her. "Tar-flavoured sweet?"

Isabella ignored him and got to finding the car and the thug who was living in it.

"It's exotic!" Dean shouted to her as she walked away.

She ignored that, too. Time to find the car.

Moving along the outside of the dome. She neared the right side, which had been obscured from where they all had been standing at the outhouse. Sure enough there was a car sitting there. Blue bonewagon. Wooden panels on the side. A real soccer mom's car. She snorted and crouched down real low.

Got to get the jump on this creep.

She crept along, one silent step at a time. Gun at the ready, hoping Dad didn't all of a sudden shout some comment and blow her cover.

Sitting in the car with the seat leaning back. There he was. Sleeping. A real ugly twerp. Unibrow running from temple to temple. A nose bigger than the city of Bonobo. Isabella found his absent forehead to be... startling, to say the least.

She aimed the gun. Going for the spot right between the eyes.

Then Dad shouted: "WHAT AN UGLY RUNT, IZZY!"

And her cover was blown. She swore as the freak jolted awake, his wide eyes staring at her with a strange mix of fear, shock, and fury for waking him from a delightful dream of debauchery. She fired four shots in quick succession, not waiting for the echo of one blast to subside before firing off the next. The glass of the driver's-side window shattered and three teeth found themselves embedded in his microscopic forehead, blood and brains already dripping and falling out like a punctured can of spaghetti. Not an easy shot to make—and she'd made three of them. The fourth shot had gone wide and into the passenger's seat.

It was done. No thanks to Dad, of course—but then again, he was the gun, so, yeah.

"You gotta stop spooking my victims like that, Dad."

"Sorry, Izzy. I couldn't help myself. Honest. His ugliness took me by surprise."

No matter. All's well that ends well.

She only hoped that none of the cops up by the freeway had heard the gunfire. Or else she'd have to make like a turtle and race.

9

Dagon arrived at the freeway just as the shots were fired. Maverik and his team had already been following a set of footprints and tread marks which were travelling toward the used-car dealership. When the four gunshots were heard, their pace sped up considerably. He watched as the five-man task force raced off toward the source of the din.

Good. Certainly that would be where Isabella Sistrane was holding out. Probably grabbing a new ride before hitting the road for foreign lands.

"Not if I have shomething to shay about that, Ishabella."

Dagon launched himself over the smashed guardrail, doing perhaps a dozen frontflips, which would have left a pro diver sick and nauseous from feelings of jealousy and inferiority. He landed on the floor of the mechanotree forest and skittered off in the direction of the used-car dealership.

He would watch the exchange. And when the time was ripe, he would strike.

Finally, he would snatch the fugitive and hand her over to his master. And then all would be well. Shanté would admit his true feelings—of love and life and an eternity of togetherness. Then Dagon would probably become his boyfriend and they would get married.

Dagon nearly wet himself at the thought.

10

The Second Sun was rising rapidly, coming to meet the faraway First Sun which had already brought dawn with it an hour ago. Daylight on this planet lasted for over fifty-two hours, with nightfall only lasting a measly seven. Sometimes it was hard to sleep, but generally your body and mind were used to it. Three times a year, however, the First Sun would be closer to the planet, and then you'd have but a single hour of darkness each day. Now that was hell.

Five men thundered on the horizon, their silhouettes showing high-powered bonerifles on their backs. They were coming. Surely coming for her.

The final stand was at hand.

Dean removed the phony note from his front door, balled it and tossed it in the trash. Then he let Terry, Rupert, Isabella and Dad inside. Isabella had her father as her weapon, of course, so she was sitting pretty. It was the others who needed something to shoot with.

As it turned out, Dean was not only a used-car salesman, but also a collector of the finest in vintage weaponry. Not boneweapons—no, that was new shite—but the technology of the ancients who had inhabited the planet before the Great Cataclysm. Metal weapons which fired metal projectiles.

"Strange," Terry said as he studied a handcannon. The metallic sheen danced under the overhead lights. "I load it by insertin' one of these rectangular thing-bobs into the bottom?"

"That's darn right," Dean told him. He himself had a machinegun on a turret. He'd set it up at the helpdesk, so when the five men came in they'd get a nasty surprise. "Make sure to take the safety off, bud. Those funny ancients actually thought a little switchie thing made these killing tools safe!"

This gathered a large round of laughter, straight from the belly.

Rupert had what was called a "grenade launcher" inserted into its pincer. "What. Does it. Do."

"It launches what the ancients called a grenade," Dean explained. "Similar to the RPS used by the coppers. But get ready for one gosh-darn-big explosion. No acid, though. Just fire and explosive power. Aim high, Rupert."

"Will. Do."

"Now, armour." Dean pushed aside some more weapons and found some metal suits. He got into one and looked like a tinman. He lowered the facemask and there were only small holes in the mouth and slits in the eyes to see from. "The ancients wore these on the battlefield," he said, his voice both muffled and trailed by echoes. "The bullets would ricochet off, and head who knows where. Maybe... up to the Sun," he added ominously.

Isabella couldn't fit in a suit of armour on account of her bust size. Rupert was already made of armour, so it didn't need a suit. And Terry's shell got in the way.

"You don't happen to have some metal platin' for me, eh, Dean?" Terry asked. He pointed out the chip in his shell where the tooth had hit him on the freeway. "Those damn teeth really do some damage to m'shell."

"As a matter of fact," Dean started, his finger raised in the air. He went and dug deeper in his armoury and found a large bronze shield. "I have this disk. The ancients would hold these suckers while shooting away with those handcannons."

Terry grabbed it and put his left hand through the slot at the back. He ducked down real low and hid behind it. Isabella told him that she couldn't even see him anymore, which made him grin like a cheetah. She didn't tell him that latter bit, however.

"Yeah, this is my kind of gear," he said, spinning the handcannon around his finger.

"D. N. A. Signatures detected," Rupert told them.

"Everyone get in position!" Isabella shouted. She went off to the right side of the entrance, crouching behind a giant-sized white mineral tire. Dad was in her hand, ready to exhale a breath of bone or two dozen.

"I love you, Izzy," he told her. "I just want you to know, in case this—"

"Dad, we'll be fine. I love you, too."

Dean got behind his turret, now a man of steel. He loaded the ammo belt in with a click-clack sound. Aimed. Ready to fire.

Rupert got beside Dean, holding the grenade launcher with machinelike stillness. It aimed slightly higher than the doors, more up at the glass window above them. Calculating. Trajectory perfected. Waiting for targets. In the meantime, it glugged back some more motor oil.

Terry had gone on his haunches opposite Isabella, beside a tall red plant. He hid himself behind the shield and looked like a decorative piece. His handcannon flickered in view every so often.

They were ready. Ready to rock.

The shadows of the five men grew, penetrating the glass dome and extending inside. They looked big. Powerful. Not like the regular coppers. These guys were advanced soldiers.

Dean waited. Watching as one of them—who you might know as Maverik—stepped up to the glass, put one hand above his eyes and peered inside.

Then Dean fired the machinegun and the war began.

The sound was loud, proud, mean and obscene. Those ancients sure knew how to create a weapon, Isabella thought. She peered out from her tire and watched as the bullets from the turret shattered the dome's glass. Shards fell from the front doors, splintering into infinitesimal pieces as they touched ground.

The turret kept firing, round after round making its way into Maverik's body. His bone armour blew to smithereens, no match for the raw power of the ancient hardware. Appendages were ripped off by sheer force. Blood spattered and spewed, draining from the man like water from a tap. By the time Maverik hit the dusty ground, he was a bleeding stump, his deflated head full of holes, his oozing brains still throbbing with the weakening beat of his heart.

"They got weapons!" one of the men (Dickson) shouted.

"No shite!" another (Imbolshet) yelled back.

"Scatter!" Uvillia ordered.

The three of them separated, each running in a different direction. One left, one right, the other back to a car for cover.

The fourth—everyone's favourite badass, Ghost—had already run back to cover before Maverik's corpse had even reached the ground. He peered through his scope into the dome, found a robot and fired.

BLAM.

Rupert recoiled after it'd been hit—and in doing so, its aim had raised even higher than before. It fired in reaction, and a grenade launched out of its weapon, whistling as it soared up and through the now-broken glass window.

Fate must have had a hard-on for Rupert, as the grenade reached the apex of its arc and began to lower. The grenade landed right beside Ghost, exploding in half a heartbeat. He never stood a chance. It sent up a miniature mushroom cloud of fire, which engulfed Ghost after the blast blew his legs off. As his skin melted from the inferno, his legs landed in his lap. He cried for the first time in his life that day. And then he died.

"They got Ghost!" Dickson said in astonishment as he worked up a fear sweat.

"And Maverik!" Imbolshet felt something hot and mushy in the back of his uniform pants.

"Keep it together, men!" Uvillia said, really liking his impromptu leadership position. He could get used to it. It's a shame he was about to die, though. "Dickson, lay down suppressive fire. Imbolshet, you move in."

"No effing way!" Lionel Imbolshet had regressed to a state of childhood and was wailing for his mommy.

"Fine! I'll do it! Cover me!"

Harry Dickson nodded, too full of fear to speak anymore. He shifted a joint on his bonerifle and went onto fully automatic. He started firing ten lead-tipped teeth per second.

Imbolshet did the same, though in his toddlerhood he lacked the strength to aim properly.

Thurston Uvillia charged into battle, roaring and raging like some primitive man lost in some atavistic endeavour. A hunt for blood and meat. Nothing could stop him now. He was a man. And men waged wars and won them. It would have been impressive, had he not been shot to death by Terry and Isabella both. He slid in the dry earth, pumped full of bullets and teeth, leaving a blood trail behind him that was far more impressive than his attack had been.

"What do we do, man!" Imbolshet was pissing himself now. Not good. He was losing it. What would all his girlfriends think?

Inside the dome the mood was much brighter. Nobody had been injured—that was good. They'd killed a few people—ooh, even better.

"They're backing off!" Isabella shouted to her comrades. "Well, one is!"

They watched as the one known as Imbolshet threw down his weapon and hopped away. He was tired of fighting, tired of violence, of death and carnage, of blood and bones and bullets. Actually, he was traumatized. He'd spend the next couple decades of his life talking to his therapist Dr. Hooberstank about what he'd seen that day. He would do a lot of Rorschach inkblot tests, claiming to see intestines hanging from friends and exploding bladders, and his therapist would be very concerned for Lionel's wellbeing. He would never marry any of his many girlfriends, and all would dump him after he continued to shit the bed night after night.

The last guy shook in his boots. Isabella was over this fight. They'd won. Anybody could see that. She walked out of the glass dome, Dad at her side. The one guy had fled for civilization, attempting to reclaim the last fragile piece of his existence. This last guy was about to do the same.

But then he didn't. He aimed his weapon at her.

Time seemed to freeze then. She found her own weapon raising on its own volition. Her arm no longer hers to control. Dad was doing his fatherly duties. Protection. She was his daughter.

Dad fired off five teeth. They all penetrated the bonemask of Dickson, whose gun dropped before he'd even pulled the trigger.

The last soldier dropped dead. Nothing flashy. No blood packs popped, letting out a showering spray of red. No bones smashing through the uniform, an odd shade of ivory to contrast all the crimson. None of that. Dickson was just dead. That's it. End of story.

But the story wasn't over yet. Oh no.

A spidery man dropped into the battlefield seemingly out of nowhere. He turned around and parted his back legs. Web came flying out of the creature's rear, enveloping Isabella, encasing her in the sticky substance which seemed to harden.

She was trapped. She couldn't shift the webbing. She had resigned herself to her fate, and stowed Dad back in between her breasts, sighing.

The others came out to investigate, but the spider-man quickly got them, too.

They were all stuck in their own personal webs. They all went unconscious shortly after. Rupert went into sleep mode.

Caught by the spider. Caught like flies.

11

Isabella Sistrane regained consciousness. She was in some white room. A computer towered in the centre, lights blinking on and off. A red curtain was off in the corner, almost unnoticeable. No longer encased in web, she found she could move freely. She stood up, cracked her back and examined the place.

She was about to follow the strange wires—which travelled from the computer to behind the curtain—when an odd voice spoke from behind her.

"Ishabella Shishtrane."

She turned, saw the spider-man with his upside-down head looking at her. His toned chest facing up, not down. His eight delicate-looking legs. His balls. "Yes? Where am I? Who are you? Why am I here?"

"Finally, you are here. In the throne room. My mashter hash been requeshting you for shome time now. Shome time. My name ish Dagon. Commander Dagon. Shecond-in-command to The Great One Shanté himshelf."

"Why was he looking for me? Why did you take me? Where are my friends?"

Dagon bowed, lowering his head until his crown touched the floor. His eyes continued to look at her. To look through her. "He will want to tell you that himshelf. Your friendsh are shafe, believe me. He doesh not wish to harm you or them."

"DAGON," the computer suddenly boomed, making Isabella jump. "LEAVE US, MY FRIEND. SHE AND I HAVE MUCH TO DISCUSS."

"If that ish what you wish, my mashter. I am, ash alwaysh, your humble shervant."

"IT IS, FRIEND."

Dagon turned to leave, but before he did, the computer said one more thing to him:

"DAGON, I LOVE YOU. TRULY, I DO."

No shudder. Dagon beamed. He left the throne room the happiest man in the world.

The computer spoke again when Dagon had left: "ISABELLA SISTRANE. COME TO ME. BEHIND THE CURTAIN. GO ON. DON'T BE AFRAID. I WON'T HURT YOU. I... CANNOT HURT YOU."

Slowly, step by careful step, Isabella walked to that red curtain. She felt as if she were in a dream of some sort. None of this felt remotely real. She stood just outside of the curtain and could hear the whirr of machinery. She raised one hand and pulled back the curtain.

It was the saddest sight she'd ever seen. A skeleton of a man sat in a raised bed, looking at her through hollow eyes, deep in their bruised sockets. He was hairless from what she could see. His skin transparent white, wrinkled and lined with purple-black spiderlike veins. He wore only a loose pair of shorts over his otherwise-naked body, all bone. His pigeon's chest crackled with every difficult, dying breath.

The man used a bony finger to tap a device in his hand. The giant computer went to sleep. Isabella saw where the thick wires led up to. They got thinner as they reached the man. They were plugged into the back of his skull.

"...is... ...a... ...bella..." he whispered, barely.

She bent down closer to him. "Who... are you?"

"...i'm... ...your... ...bruh... ...ther..." He somehow managed to smile. A light found its way into his eyes, twinkling for a moment. Isabella suddenly realized then that he was beautiful.

"You're... my brother?" She found the tears flowing from her own eyes, leaking down her cheeks in a never-ending stream. "Oh, we have so much to catch up on! You haven't met Dad, have you?"

"...no... ...time..."

"No, Dad is right here. I nearly forgot about him." She removed Dad from in between her breasts, holding the revolver out for her brother to see. She realized she didn't know whether "Shanté" was his real name and asked him if it was.

"...yes..." Another smile, weaker but there.

"Well, Shanté, this is Dad. A weird accident left his soul trapped in this gun. I take him with me wherever I go. Dad? Your son is here."

"Son?" Despite the muffled echo of his voice, Isabella could tell her father was crying.

"...fa... ...ther..."

"My boy! I... I have a boy! Haha!"

"...i... ...need..."

"What's that, son?"

"...to... ...die..."

The silence was overwhelming as they took in what had been requested.

"This is why you sent for me, isn't it?" Isabella asked. "To be with your family before you left this world." She felt a lump in her throat. It wasn't fair. None of this was fair! "Why? What's... what's killing you... brother...?"

"...can... ...cer..." A vile cough. Sounded like shards of glass being stomped on. "...hel... ...p... ...me..."

"Only you can do it, Dad."

"I'll need your help, Izzy. I can't do this alone. Not to my boy. Not even out of mercy."

Isabella looked into her brother's eyes. Saw the tears welling up at the corner of them. They were brown. Just like hers. She raised Dad and felt that same feeling as before, on the battlefield. Of her arm not being entirely hers. The barrel went to Shanté's temple. Dug a little into the hollow part.

Looking into her brother's eyes, Isabella said at the same time as their father: "I love you, Shanté."

And then the breath of the bone expelled one final gasp.

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