Godzilla and Mothra Raid Again

Chapter 1: The Boys Enjoy the Calm Before the Storm

Chapter Text

I REMEMBER EVERYTHING!
I remember every little thing as if it happened only yesterday.
—Jim Steinman, “Love and Death and an American Guitar” (Bad for Good, 1981)

“No one’s ever too old for pizza…or for card games. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Oh, um…yes, sir.”

“Please, dear boy, don’t call me ‘sir.’ I’m not elderly, you know, regardless of the silver hair.”

Sitting up in his red velvet-backed chair, Weevil could scarcely believe his circ*mstances. His dream of winning the Duel Monsters championship had come true. Or, at least, he would have found this result unbelievable if he had not spent years practicing and honing his skills, all the while showing no mercy to his opponents. Pegasus never went soft either, and here he was, occasioning the only moment more joyous for Weevil than feeling the trophy in his hands: sitting across from him at a table for two in an Italian restaurant.

He supposed it was inappropriate, but Weevil’s heart always beat faster whenever he saw Pegasus on television or in a magazine, and it had since the bug nerd was twelve years old. Once, Weevil had gone so far as to wrangle Pegasus’s e-mail address out of a fellow duelist and send the American gentleman a series of typed letters gushing over his creativity and good looks. Those e-mails had included several statements and questions that made Weevil blush as much to write as they did to recall. His personal favorite was “If you could ask me to the junior high prom, would you?”

The experience of having dinner with Pegasus exceeded any school dance. The restaurant lights were down low, and candles lit up the space between the creator of Duel Monsters and his biggest fan. Quiet conversations from other tables produced a reassurance that no one would overhear whatever Pegasus and Weevil said to each other. Between the two of them sat a silver tray bearing a large pizza topped with green olives and feta cheese. The only difference between the man’s side of the table and the boy’s was the glass of wine beside the former’s plate. “You are too young for wine,” Pegasus had told him when their waiter came by to take their drink orders. As though sensing his worshiper’s disappointment, Pegasus ordered him grape juice served in a wine glass. By the time the waiter gave them their pizza, Weevil’s consciousness swam in a dreamy fog, which shrouded his mind more and more as the evening wore on. No one else in the whole world had ever been treated to dinner by the illustrious, brilliant, devastatingly handsome Maximillion J. Pegasus himself. Even without wine, the experience produced a spinning giddiness.

Mostly, Weevil stuffed his face and listened to Pegasus talk. Nothing Weevil could say would impress his idol, or so he thought. Worse, if he spoke, he knew he would start babbling his true feelings and thereby reveal who had sent those love letters two years ago.

“Before you start the Duelist Kingdom tournament, there are some new rules you should know.”

Weevil swallowed his pizza. After washing it down with a swig of juice, he asked, “There are?” That didn’t sound too stupid, did it?

“Of course, Weevil boy. You didn’t think Duelist Kingdom would be the same as any other Duel Monsters tournament, did you?”

Oh, no, maybe I did sound stupid…

“For your purposes,” Pegasus continued, “the most important new rule is the field power bonus.”

“Can you tell me more about that?” There, that sounds smarter, right?

“Certainly.” Pegasus took a bite of his own slice of pizza, chewed it slowly, and finally swallowed it.

He even eats pizza neatly…he’s so elegant.

“Dueling in a certain environment,” said Pegasus, “will increase certain monsters’ attack points, depending on the monsters’ type. You’re a skilled technical duelist. I’m sure you’ll figure out how to use that power to its fullest extent in no time.”

Pegasus complimented him! And he complimented Weevil in a way that gave him the edge over the competition! Maybe, just maybe—he could not let his thoughts travel down this path, but they already were.

“That’s very sweet. But, despite what my detractors in the gossip magazines might tell you, I never take advantage of children.”

What? I didn’t say anything like that! How did Pegasus know where Weevil’s thoughts had gone?

“You didn’t think I knew exactly what was on your mind, Weevil boy? I saw the way you looked at me when you won the trophy. And it means nothing that you try to hide your attraction now: I can see it as plain as day. You’re in the throes of an intense infatuation.”

Weevil felt his face growing hot, much as it had when he first saw Pegasus in person but to a degree still greater. He looked down at the red velvet floor and the white tablecloth hem that barely brushed it. The bee was out of its hive. All he could do now was try to salvage some pride.

“Eh-excuse me, but I’m not a child. I’m fourteen.”

Pegasus chuckled and then wiped his mouth with a white cloth napkin. “Be that as it may, I have no intention of using you as you desire. I do have some limits, my boy. Just as you are too young for wine, you are too young for grown men. You have a certain zealous charm, yes…but that is better spent on someone your own age.”

Just then, Pegasus stood up, walked behind his chair, and pushed it in.

“Pardon me for a few moments. I’ll return soon. I hope you can bear my absence until then.”

The creative mastermind left, and Weevil stared down at his cheese- and tomato sauce-smeared plate. Considering the fantasies that he had entertained before and during his personal meeting with Pegasus, some of which required chemically altered states as a pretext for the imaginary events that followed, he wondered if he was lucky that Pegasus had not let him drink wine after all. Evidently, Weevil gave away enough of his feelings when he was sober.

Then he noticed a little white book on the other side of the table. The item must have blended in with the tablecloth. Could this be Pegasus’s index of dating contacts? If it was, then would Pegasus read Weevil’s mind and jot down his phone number? Whatever it was, it set Weevil’s larcenous impulses at edge. He slid off his chair, walked over to the notebook, and snatched it up.

In his own chair, Weevil opened the small white tome. The title page read DUELIST KINGDOM RULEBOOK.

Ooh. Now this is where the action is.

He flipped through the pages, absorbing as much confidential information as he could in the span of a few minutes. Nervous giggles arose from his chest. This was something no one was supposed to do, and here he was, doing it. Anyone who did not take the chance to feel an illicit thrill was a sucker.

His moment of fun ended when he heard the dulcet tones of his dashing hero.

“I do believe that belongs to me. Kindly give it back.”

“Oh…right!” Weevil looked over his shoulder and stiffly placed the rulebook in Pegasus’s hand. The creator of Duel Monsters walked a few paces to the table’s other side and took his seat.

“You needn’t have done that. I was going to tell you more of the rules anyway.”

“S-sorry, Mister Pegasus.” He forced himself to look Pegasus in the eye and found that he was smiling. Weevil allowed himself a smile of his own, even if it looked like an insecure one.

Pegasus took another sip of wine. “Now, what else would you like to know about this tournament?”

“Everything!” There, that should get his mind off my “infatuation.”

For the next couple of hours, Pegasus regaled Weevil with not only top-secret Duelist Kingdom rules but stories of his past. His tale of lifelong Funny Rabbit fandom resonated with the boy, as did the recounting of the inspiration of various Duel Monsters cards. As the saying went, Pegasus could read a phone book out loud and make it sound fascinating, so it was all too soon when he glanced at his watch.

“Oh, dear, look at the time. It’s almost midnight. We should get you home. Come with me.”

When the waiter next stopped at their table, Pegasus paid the check and then walked Weevil out to the parking lot. Once the two of them sat down in the back seat and Weevil inhaled the scent of fresh black leather, Pegasus told the driver, “Take us back to my guest’s home, if you please.”

The car started rolling out of the lot, and Weevil would have looked at the sights of the city passing by if not for the breathtaking man beside him. The car’s leather interior provided an addictive enough smell, but Pegasus smelled like wine, cologne, and pizza—something forbidden, something mature, and something comforting.

For the second time that night, Weevil’s impulses got the better of him. Narrowing his eyes, he reached over and placed his hand on top of Pegasus’s. Even if it only lasted a second or two, he wanted to feel his idol’s skin against his.

The contact lasted more than a couple of seconds. In fact, Pegasus kept his hand beneath Weevil’s until the car reached the Underwood residence, at which point Weevil knew that he was as red as a ladybug.

Pegasus looked at him then and said, “I know you enjoyed that, Weevil boy. But I must let you know: that was the most intimacy you will share with me.”
Before he could stop himself, Weevil said, “It was? Awww…”

“It was an act of gratitude for me to let you indulge yourself. I hate to disappoint my loyal fans, and there are none more loyal than you. But again, I must tell you: you will meet with nothing but heartbreak if you chase after older men at your age. Play with the lads in your own age group, and save the major leagues for a few years later. Then you will reap the rewards that patience brings.”

A second passed before Weevil understood what Pegasus implied.

“Wait, you think I’m…gay?”

The man laughed. “Oh, I don’t just think so. You’ll know yourself soon enough, but I won’t be there to help you discover that. Why not see about that Raptor boy? He seems like the one for you.”

After saying an awkward goodbye and thank-you, Weevil entered his house and watched Pegasus’s car drive off into the night. He then realized that his host never asked about the e-mails.

But long before the events of that night, Weevil had discovered that Pegasus was correct in his reading of his most fervent fan’s sexuality. Pegasus was an exception to the rules of his groupie’s preferences in terms of age but not in terms of sex. At the age of twelve, when Weevil developed his first crush, it was indeed on Pegasus, but that seemed like an early aberration that would soon give way to socially normative feelings. When Weevil confessed to himself at age thirteen that it was boys and young men who activated his lust, he knew that he could not distract himself with his hobbies. He could, however, avoid admitting his sexuality to anyone else for as long as possible. Remaining closeted was a bad way to satisfy his libido, so every week, when he received his allowance, he bought yaoi doujinshi from an online retailer and waited for it to arrive in a brown paper bag for the next few days. His parents believed him when he said that he had started subscribing to an educational magazine about arthropods.

His attraction to Pegasus made his swift loss at Duelist Kingdom that much worse. He had let his hero down by losing to Yugi Muto. If only Weevil had collected the requisite ten star chips and made it to the duel against Pegasus, he would have demonstrated his ardent fire for this magnificent game as never before, and that gorgeous man would have fallen in love with him right there…and Pegasus had told Weevil, not Yugi, about the secret rules of Duelist Kingdom! Consciously, he knew that it was pointless to expect someone who had sworn that he did nothing sexual with minors to reward him physically for winning this special tournament, but the thought of what might have been haunted Weevil for a long time afterward. Only one other person entered Weevil’s list of important people at around this time, and that was, in fact, Rex Raptor, who requested to spend the night in Weevil’s suite after Mai Valentine ejected Rex from his…and when Rex walked into Weevil’s room, he also walked into his heart, though it took them both a long time to admit it. For whatever reason—Rex claimed that he attributed it to inevitability, as though angels had insisted on it—they always found each other, no matter how much distance separated them. After a series of circ*mstances too incredible even for most tabloids to print, they eventually declared their love for one another officially and started to cohabit in the same apartment.

This night was a long time after Duelist Kingdom, and Pegasus had divined the future of his groupie’s sex life correctly. Now Weevil sat across from Rex at a small table in the Dancing Monkey, the Chinese restaurant closest to their apartment, and the one-time regional Duel Monsters champion swelled up with as much affection as his fourteen-year-old self had with Pegasus. In a way, dinner with Rex surpassed dinner with Pegasus, for while gazing across the table at Rex made Weevil’s heart flutter, none of the nervousness that dogged his date with his idol accompanied these vibrations of love.

The restaurant’s color scheme of red and gold, accentuated by decor consisting primarily of murals and statues depicting dragons and monkeys, stimulated the warm glow that Weevil felt as he munched on a plate of dumplings and noodles. Rex, meanwhile, consumed a steaming heap of chicken and calamari. Unlike Pegasus, Rex displayed no elegance when he ate, wolfing down his lumps of sauce-spotted meat without appearing to notice the white and pale brown shreds that fell upon his shirt. As he lifted another forkful of noodles into his mouth, Weevil became aware that watching his friend and lover eat as though he had gone hungry for the past three days caused a stirring in his own nether regions. Rex ate in the same way he f*cked, and observing the similarity made Weevil twitch with temptation. After too many years of waiting, he learned that there was a prize sweeter than victory, a victory greater than prizes, and it was burrowing into his friend’s earth-brown hair.

Finally, their check arrived, and with it came a pair of fortune cookies.

“All right! I love these things,” said Rex, who placed his half of the dinner money on the tray.

“Announce it to the whole restaurant, why don’t you.” Weevil set his own pair of bills on the tray and lifted his cookie from it at the same time as Rex. Then Weevil broke open the cookie and pulled out the slip of paper inside.

“‘It’s not the man in the fight—it’s the fight in the man,’” he read. He crumpled the fortune into his pocket. “What does that even mean?”

“I think the fortune cookie called you a wimp. Did it have any lucky numbers on it?”

“Oh, right!” Weevil dug out the wrinkled slip of paper and unfolded it, whereupon he squinted at the other side of the fortune. “Hmm…8, 16, 24, 32, 40, 56, 64. They skipped 48. What about yours?”

Rex broke his cookie in two and removed the slip from it. “‘The only way to win? You gotta risk it all.’ Well, your fortune says you’re a sissy, but mine says I’ll be rewarded for taking chances. And for lucky numbers, there’s 4, 8, 12…” He gasped. “No way! My lucky numbers are half of yours!”

“Hee hee! Looks like fortune has more faith in me!”

“Then why’d your cookie tell you to man up but not me?” Rex huffed. "Just because your numbers are bigger doesn’t mean you’re stronger!”

“Ah, whatever.” Weevil slid out of the booth and patted his hip to signal Rex to follow him. “Let’s do what we really went out for.”

“Right!” Rex sprang to his feet. “The creature features are awaitin’!”

As he and Rex exited the Dancing Monkey, Weevil felt the paper fortune rustling in his pocket. He did not look back to see if Rex had left his own fortune on the table.

This night presented the Duel Monsters fanboys with a late-night screening of a double feature of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and Them!. The relevance to their interests was too perfect to pass up—Rex and Weevil joked that maybe they had residual psychic powers left over from their time using the haunted artifact they found in Hollywood—and of course they could not resist attending. Despite the dinner they had just eaten, they purchased two large sodas and a tub of buttered popcorn sprinkled with white cheddar and garlic Parmesan seasoning.

“Want to sit up front where we can get the closest view, or in the back where we can make out?” Rex asked Weevil once they had entered the theater that screened the double feature.

“Do you even have to ask?”

With one look to the left of the entrance, Rex and Weevil took their seats in the very back row. Before their eyes flashed not previews for coming attractions but clips of stop-motion animated prehistoric wildlife from other movies, most of which lumbered through tropical backgrounds in black and white.

Finally, glorious color burst onto the screen, announcing the arrival of the first half of the double feature. Rex lifted his hand from the tub of popcorn to squeeze Weevil’s knee, and they both sat back to take in the reptilian monster action.

Unsurprisingly, Weevil saw that Rex’s eyes remained riveted to the movie the whole way through. Perhaps the dinosaur nerd was fantasizing about using a card based on the Rhedosaurus. His friend’s distraction provided a perfect opportunity for Weevil to snatch the popcorn bucket onto his own lap. He dug into the still-warm mass of soft, buttered kernels and shoveled some of them into his mouth, his taste buds rolling over in delight at the savory Parmesan dust that coated them. Then he remembered why exactly they had chosen to occupy the back row, and he pressed a few kisses to the side of Rex’s face. If that failed to make Rex tear his eyes away from the screen, nothing would get his attention, and, indeed, Rex responded to Weevil’s overtures with a smooch on his friend’s lips.

When the dinosaur movie ended, the screen flashed an old-fashioned Technicolor screen that blared the title INTERMISSION and a digital timer counting down from fifteen minutes, and the lights came on. All the other patrons left the theater at varying times and speeds, but Rex and Weevil remained seated. The former spoke first.

“Man! That was slower than I hoped…but without it, there’d be no Jurassic Park the movie, Jurassic Park the book, or Jurassic Park the arcade game.”

Wait, Jurassic Park was a book first? Rather than admit his ignorance, Weevil cleared his throat and said, “What do you mean, ‘Jurassic Park the book’? You can read, Rex?”

“Come on! I’m not that dumb.”

“Hee hee. I couldn’t resist the urge to needle you.”

Rex suddenly laid his hand atop Weevil’s. “‘Needling’ me? You wanna….”

“Right now? Oh, you little devil.”

“…That sounds like something my grandma would say. Great, now you’ve got me thinking about my grandma while I’m horny. I can feel my boner deflating. And fourteen minutes is just long enough for a couple of hot-blooded guys like us, too! Great!”

“No, it isn’t,” said an epicene voice next to them. “There are other people in this theater at the moment.”

Weevil looked to his left to see the Swami Chinmayi, to whom Ishizu Ishtar had introduced him on Manhattan Beach, standing with a jumbo soda cup in one hand and a large bag of popcorn clutched against its chest. At first, Weevil had thought the Swami was female, but he was always unsure. Its appearance here did nothing to clarify the matter, especially since Chinmayi wore its pale peach turban and a saffron garment that straddled the line between a robe and a dress.

“Figures the eunuch would co*ck-block us!” said Rex with a snort. “Even if you’re a guy, you don’t have a co*ck, so you wouldn’t know how we feel right now!”
If Rex was being abrasive, then Weevil had every right to join in, he thought.

“What are you doing here, anyway? Did you just show up to keep us from having sex? You meddling busybody!”

“I came here to enjoy these fine films. So did everyone else who is here. I just left to get a refill on my popcorn. Now I have returned. Do not worry: I will not sit beside you. But I do have something to tell you.”

“Oh, yeah?” said Rex. “What could be so important that you couldn’t wait to tell us some other time?”

“Yeah, we’ve got another movie coming up in twelve minutes.”

The Swami tightened its grip on the popcorn bucket. “Someone from your distant past and something from your recent past will both become extremely important to you next week. So will something completely new to you.”

Rex stood up. “You co*ckblocked us to tell us that? Screw it. I’m gonna get a refill on our popcorn.” He grabbed the bucket from Weevil’s lap and pushed his way past the Swami, whose expression remained unchanged. Weevil watched his friend walk out of the theater and then turned his face back to Chinmayi.

“So, what’s this about the person and thing from our past?”

“The person from your past means more to you than he does to Rex, but Rex will recognize him nonetheless. And the thing is something you will wish you could forget, but you must confront it.”

Weevil crossed his arms. “Why can’t you advice-spewers be clear about anything? Ishizu did the same thing, and it drives me nuts! Just tell me what you mean.”

“We who receive premonitions often ask similar questions of those who send them. Visions rarely make their meanings explicit. All I can say is that the man from your past brought you and your friend together. Tell him what I told you when he returns.”

The Swami Chinmayi turned its back on Weevil and walked toward the front row, where it took a seat next to the wall. A few minutes later, Rex re-entered the theater, carrying a tub running over with golden buttered popcorn, and seated himself next to Weevil.

Five minutes remained of intermission, according to the movie screen. More people started to file into the theater and return to their chairs.

“What’d the sexless wonder say while I was gone?” said Rex, who then tossed a handful of popcorn into his mouth.

“It said that the guy from our past was more important to me than he was to you, but you’d recognize him anyway. And it said that…we wanted to forget this other thing from our past, but we couldn’t, or something like that.”

“Sounds kinda intense.” Rex paused and munched on some popcorn. “But did it say if it had a co*ck?”

“No. Did you wanna know?”

“Maybe.”

The scattered conversations from other rows formed the only sound either duelist heard for a little while. Intermission would end in three minutes. Finally, Rex slid his hand onto Weevil’s lap.

“You know,” he whispered, “we could pick up where we left off during the movie…”

An excited gasp arose from Weevil’s mouth. He merely nodded, saying nothing else.

When the theater darkened again and the opening credits of Them! rolled across the screen, Weevil, who was now holding the popcorn bucket with one hand, snaked his other hand down Rex’s trousers and stroked the bare skin there. After a sharp intake of breath, Rex reached out and grabbed a fistful of popcorn, which he stuffed into his mouth and chewed with audible crunching sounds. Some small whimpers of delight escaped him nonetheless, though Weevil could tell that Rex hardly cared.

Then he pulled his hand away. He could tell that Rex neared his climax.

“Ah,” he whispered. “That was great. Now lift up the bucket and let me thank you.”

Weevil raised the popcorn tub above his lap, and Rex reached over and unzipped his friend’s shorts. What was Rex about to do, respond to Weevil’s actions in kind?

Then Rex sank to his knees in front of Weevil, who understood instantly that he had something even better coming.

The night had treated Rex and Weevil nearly perfectly, and in the bedroom of their apartment, they decided to put the crown on their pleasure by utilizing their stash of White Widow and packaged snacks. Cannabis debauches had become weekly occurrences for them. Nothing capped off five days of arcade work or enjoying a double feature like getting high and feasting on greasy, sugary food. Even the Chinese food and popcorn they consumed less than an hour ago did little to stave off the cravings that ensued when they smoked. Privately, Weevil thanked whatever caused Rex to favor this strain as opposed to some of the others, which notoriously made their users hungrier still.
In the wee hours of the morning, they both luxuriated in the cloud of euphoria that surrounded them and their box of mixed miniature doughnuts. Several tiny crumbs dotted the quilts of their two pushed-together beds, but under the spell of the hybrid strain, neither man cared.

Something Weevil cared about did start to interrupt the serenity of his mind, however, and in his uninhibited state, he blurted it out.

“Rex, I’ve had Pegasus on the mind all night.”

His friend coughed. “You were thinking of Pegasus when we were doing it at the movies? Dude, that feels wrong. He’s, like, an old man.” He pulled a powdered doughnut out of the box and ate the confection in a single bite.

“He’s nine years older than you.”

“That’s still way too old for you. I wouldn’t touch Pegasus, and I’m, like, one year older than you.”

Then Weevil ran his fingers up the leg of Rex’s pajama bottoms. Only at the waistband did he bring his hand to a rest.

“Want me to keep going?”

“Again? After I just sucked you off?” A dopey smile spread across his face. “Heh heh. Sure. Long as you’re not thinking about Pegasus.”

Sliding his hand beneath Rex’s pants for the second time that night, Weevil replied, “No. I’m not gonna think about him. This is ‘cause I only wanna think about you.”

But Pegasus would regain relevance in Rex and Weevil’s life much sooner than they expected.

Chapter 2: Dread Sinks In

Notes:

Atlach-Nacha and Raphtontis are both creations of Clark Ashton Smith for his story "The Seven Geases."

Chapter Text

In the shadows of the city are heroes waiting for the call.
And all the devils are waking up, and all the angels start to fall.
—“Carpe Noctem” (Dance of the Vampires, 1997)

Monday morning began as it always did. Rex and Weevil reported for duty in the Snake Pit, the arcade that swiftly replaced the bootlegging operation for which they used to work. The latter business, the Scarlet Citadel, was crammed with shelves that overflowed with dolls, DVDs, and VCDs of dubious origin and often obviously suspect design and paint jobs. In their place, the Snake Pit filled its floor with video game cabinet upon video game cabinet, each one either decorated in bright colors that advertised cartoonish thrills or painted in black and deep red shades that dared to challenge the player’s capacity for the hardcore. Either way, potential fantasy violence beckoned, as did puzzles, jumping across platforms, and, in a few cases, driving and space flight simulation. Other new arrivals to the location formerly known as the Scarlet Citadel included a trio of employees, whom Kiki had hired shortly after the Snake Pit opened. They included one young man with a slightly pimply face, a girl with braces, and another person who resembled the Swami Chinmayi: namely, an androgyne, though this one wore the black and white uniform of the Snake Pit rather than a pastel-colored robe and turban.

For all the new differences, the aesthetics of the building’s previous tenant remained in evidence. After Madame Cutcliffe’s mysterious departure from the face of the planet, Kiki disposed of the Scarlet Citadel’s counterfeit and fake goods in a dumpster fire but retained the official dolls, DVDs, model kits, posters, and trading cards. Except for the latter two, these items had been pushed back onto wall-mounted shelves, where they seemed to stand guard over the video game cabinets. Nothing put more pressure on a gamer to win than the focused stare of the Dark Magician, even if he was less than a foot tall and made of plastic. The Duel Monsters cards themselves rested in legitimate booster packs that hung from hooks behind the glass counter. The posters, meanwhile, still covered the walls of the establishment’s interior. Anyone who walked into the Snake Pit or looked up from a game would see an array of sights uncommon outside of cosplay conventions or highly specialized parties: bodybuilders of both socially identified sexes dressed variously in loincloths, tunics, and full body armor, a green dragon and a golden gryphon wrestling in battle like angry lovers, a spellcaster in a floor-length star-dotted gown letting sharp-clawed birds perch on their shoulders while a crystal ball on a short pedestal crackled with energy behind them.

This environment allowed Rex and Weevil to perform to their fullest. School had recently started again for most of the town’s children and teenagers, which drastically reduced the Snake Pit’s quotient of possible customers in the daytime. In the late afternoon and early evening, the crowds regained their healthy size, and at night, the most dedicated adult gamers entered for that which impassioned them. Weevil could not have felt happier with this arrangement. Mornings were never his favorite time of day to talk to people, though he still thought he handled the early hours better than did Rex, whom he sometimes had to awaken by shaking. Other times, Rex woke Weevil up in the middle of the night by clinging to him and crying. When Weevil asked why, Rex simply shook his head and wiped away his own tears.

Despite the relaxed atmosphere of the Snake Pit, Weevil felt a sense of unease there that lessened only somewhat outside the arcade. His and Rex’s adventure of three months ago had left them with unanswered questions. As Weevil opened a crate of newly arrived model kits in the arcade’s shipping and receiving quarters, he ran through some of these lingering queries. How did some random casino-owner get a hold of a mystical artifact? Why did the Pink Pangolin have a Duel Ring in her torture chamber? What was the purpose of the giant lizards under the city of Hollywood, and what did they feed on, other than human flesh? For that matter, were those lizards still alive? Exactly what was the nature of the Wyrm of the Wastelands? Madame Cutcliffe had told them something about the Wyrm strengthening the “inner devil,” and doing that somehow boosted the user’s psychic powers…

Madame Cutcliffe! That’s right, he thought as he carried an armful of model kit boxes out to the front. What happened to her? He could not honestly say that he missed her, but her sudden disappearance made him wonder. She claimed that the Pink Pangolin was her bitterest rival, but neither Weevil nor Rex had seen any evidence to suggest that Pink competed with Cutcliffe in the criminal organization field. And what about that criminal organization? If any of her former subordinates or associates had unfinished business with her or with Rex and Weevil, Weevil did not know it. What happened to the Cutcliffe Cabal after the departure of its ringleader?

He shook his head to clear his mind as he set the dragon and giant mech model kit boxes on the shelf beside their companions. Cutcliffe was nowhere to be found, and Pink and her henchman were skeletons at the bottom of a casino’s sub-basem*nt; he had no reason to think of them now. Far better it was to concentrate on building a life with the man he loved in this dirty-but-pleasing small city. Kiki had raised their wages almost as soon as the Scarlet Citadel transformed into the Snake Pit; why not focus on using his and Rex’s increased income to improve their shared existence? They could save up money for college, or add some nice things to their apartment. If nothing else, they could at least buy a new video game console.

On his return to the shipping and receiving quarters, Weevil realized that his conscious mind told him to push the horror of the recent past out of his thoughts, but his heart said otherwise. As the day wore on and he sold Duel Monsters cards and other goods to his fellow nerds, the burden of these mysteries weighed more and more heavily upon him.

When Kiki emerged from the room above the arcade and called, “Lunch break!” Rex and Weevil departed for the nearby diner, where they ate many of their lunches back when they worked for Madame Cutcliffe. Once they took their plush red booth inside and gave their drink orders to the waiter, they looked at each other in silence.

Weevil broke the tension. “So, are you thinking the same things I’m thinking?”

“About how we should totally get a new game console when we have the money?”

“No! Okay, I was thinking about that, too, but what about all the weird stuff we went through in Hollywood? Doesn’t it haunt you?”

“Eurgh.” Rex closed his eyes and massaged his temple with one hand. “Don’t make me think about that. I still have nightmares about the torture.”

The hot knife of guilt scratched at Weevil’s heart. Now he understood why Rex woke up in distress sometimes. In fact, Rex’s response raised another question: why did Rex suffer more than Weevil did on that journey, when Weevil exhibited worse behavior? Should events not have gone easier on Rex, whom the Wyrm deserted sooner for the comparatively lesser amount of evil in his heart?

“Sorry, Rex. I mean, when you think about that whole situation, it just doesn’t add up. Don’t you wonder about those giant lizards we saw? Or how those creeps got the Wyrm in the first place? Or what happened to Cutcliffe?”

“Cutcliffe…” Rex’s face changed from an expression of pain to one of pensiveness. “I don’t miss the old broad, but there’s something fishy about how she just disappeared.”

“See, we are thinking the same thing.”

Then their waiter arrived at their table, carrying a tray that bore two baskets: one containing a double-decker cheeseburger, the other holding a fish sandwich, and both barely restraining their quantities of fries. As the server silently set his customers’ lunches on the table, the two young men momentarily forgot about their haunting questions.

But when they resumed their positions inside the Snake Pit, Weevil felt the same mysteries press upon his mind, demanding solutions. As the hours passed, more people, particularly teenagers and young adults getting off from school, entered the arcade, and Weevil became proportionately busier, selling Duel Monsters booster packs and DVDs of science fiction movies. Making chit-chat with customers was tolerable enough, but as they often did, pondering the serious matters made it worse.

Seven o’clock came by, and with it, more gamers appeared. Rex had quarter-collecting duty this evening, so Weevil left him to it. Then a woman who appeared to be Weevil’s own age entered the arcade and walked up to the counter. She looked at him with a glint of familiarity in her eye and a rolled-up newspaper in her hand. Something about her countenance made Weevil feel slightly queasy.

“May I help you?” he asked her.

She laughed. “I knew I recognized you!”

His heart sank. “You did?”

“Sure! You’re that guy who won the regional championship back in…whenever it was. You were just a kid then, and so was I, but I recall you.”

The weight on his heart lifted—but only just. “Someone remembers my shining moment! I’m not all washed up!”

“Heh. You could say that you and the other guy are remembered. Here, let me show you.” She unfurled the newspaper, revealing that it was a tabloid. The paper’s title made his nose wrinkle.

“The Hobbyists’ Herald?” For many years, the Hobbyists’ Herald had combined the two seemingly incongruous forces of items relevant to gamers and old-fashioned celebrity gossip. Only in the Herald could anyone read a page of tips for improving a zombie-themed Duel Monsters deck and then turn over the page to find a story about the new development team for the Monster World RPG all secretly having cocaine problems. Somehow, despite its niche audience, the Herald had been published every month since the mid-1970s. Apparently, the gaming world was filled with scandals, for a given definition of the word “scandals,” from the beginning.

“Yes! And you’re in it!”

“What?”

“Check it out.” She flipped the paper open to the middle section and pointed to a short article on the left-hand side of the page. Then she spread the open tabloid onto the counter, and Weevil looked down at the article of interest. Bile rose in his stomach as soon as he saw the headline, and that feeling continued as he read the accompanying text.

Nasty also-rans prove Panaggio’s prediction
Not too many of us still follow Weevil Underwood and Rex Raptor, the champion and runner-up from the regional Duel Monsters tournament of nearly ten years ago. If anything, we remember them for the rudeness that got them a beating at the hands of the duelists they scorned as beneath them. You might be thinking, “Who cares about those guys?” But even if these two creepy critters never return to the DM spotlight—and it doesn’t seem likely—they’ve caught our eye again at HH for one reason. Remember way back in V24, I8 when we first covered Pegasus’s regional tournament, and Lady Panaggio predicted that the winner and runner-up would become lovers? It looks like they have! One reliable source recently informed us that Raptor and Underwood have been seen together doing things appropriate for couples: shopping with the same cart in local supermarkets, eating candlelit dinners with each other, and even—this is the clincher—smooching at the movies! (Yes, we know you probably don’t like picturing that, but our source saw what they saw.) Score another one for the good Lady…and finally, score again after all these years for Raptor and Underwood! They’re losers, but at least they have each other.

Weevil could not see his face, but he could feel his hands, and they were balled into fists. Losers? Also-rans? The insult was bad enough, but what editor let this story pass by, as though it were relevant to a readership of millions? Who informed on him and Rex to the Herald? For that matter, who watched them buy groceries, eat dinner, and go to the movies? A ray of fear shocked through his spine when he considered that the informant might have seen Rex fella*te him. At least that detail did not make it into the article, but they sat in the back row for a reason.

And who was this woman who thought she had the right to bother him like this? Did she come in here to buy anything, or did she simply want to embarrass him?

“Um…that doesn’t matter. Plus, you’re blocking anyone who might want to get in line. We have a business to run.”

“Oh,” she said with a giggle as she removed the offending tabloid from the counter, “I know. I came here to beat up some pixelated bad guys. It must have been a slow news day over at the Herald. Why did I show you that article?” The woman winked at him and then walked off toward the fighting games.

In the next couple of hours, Weevil tried to throw himself fully into his transactions, selling packs of Duel Monsters cards and model kits with more fervor than he ever did before. That young woman’s smug grin and callous giggle continued to pop up in his consciousness, however, and then his temper would start to fray. In an attempt to conceal his fury from the customers, Weevil reminded himself that the Snake Pit’s closing time would soon fall. And still, the unanswered questions pounded like drumsticks inside his mind.

When closing time arrived and all the other customers, including the woman who made herself Weevil’s enemy, had left, Kiki appeared in front of the counter, with Rex in tow. She turned to the three other employees, who variously tidied up the dolls on the shelves, alphabetized the DVDs on the racks, and emerged from the unisex bathroom carrying a mop.

“You three can go home. Rex and Weevil, stay behind a little longer.”

“Wha—” Rex began to protest, but Weevil held up his hand to silence him. They both watched their three co-workers bid good night to Kiki and walk out of the arcade.

“Why’re you having us stay late, Kiki?” asked Weevil.

She grinned. “Come upstairs with me.”

“Are we gonna have a three-way?” said Rex. “You’re cute and all, but—”

“Rex! Don’t even think about it!” Although they had only become a couple in the past few months, Weevil knew that Rex belonged to him. And surely Rex understood that Weevil would not care to even see a nude woman, let alone touch one or watch one touch his lover.

“It was a joke. Besides, I would’ve said no anyway. Sleeping with your boss is just weird.”

As though the conversation had never happened, Kiki continued, “I need to show you something. That’s why I told you to come upstairs with me.”

Weevil asked, “We can’t just go into the back room?”

She shook her head. “It’s not private enough. Follow me up the stairs.”

The room above the arcade, Weevil observed, functioned as Kiki’s private residence as well as an adjunct to the business operation. Like his own place, Kiki’s habitation was a one-bedroom apartment, complete with a small kitchen and living room. In those respects, the room above the shop conformed to Weevil’s expectations.

What did not conform to his expectations was the sight of Ishizu Ishtar sitting on the sofa in front of the living room’s coffee table. She stood up but did not venture near him and Rex.

“Hello, Miss Miyamoto. Hello, Messieurs Raptor and Underwood. How do you do?”

“I’m fine,” said Kiki. “You wanted to see us again, as I recall.”

“Yes. Thank you for coming.” She sat down on the edge of the sofa. “Take your seats.”

They all sat beside her, and Weevil felt a cold sweat begin to break from his pores.

“Surely you remember the events of three months ago, when you traveled to Los Angeles and destroyed the Wyrm of the Wastelands?” said Ishizu.

“I wish I could forget,” replied Rex. Weevil resisted the urge to pat him on the back, even when he thought he saw Kiki grin.

“You did well to remove such evil from the world. However, I regret to inform you that you confronted only a small fraction of the society that threatens mankind.”

Now Weevil could no longer exercise patience. “The society?”

Ishizu nodded. “The Pink Pangolin and her lackeys were far from the height of wickedness. They came from a larger, older, more ambitious group. You removed one branch of a poisonous tree. Now you must finish what you started.”

“Wait a minute,” said Rex, whom Weevil could tell was also breaking out in a mental cold sweat if not a physical one. “We’re going on another quest?”

“You are. Do not be alarmed. If I believed you could not handle this mission, I would not assign it to you. I have every reason to believe that you will succeed, if you apply the lessons you learned in Los Angeles.”

“We’re not going to Hollywood again?” asked Weevil.

Kiki twirled a lock of her hair around her finger and said, “Well, you could possibly go there if you made enough time, and it would make sense in its own way, but that’s not your intended destination.”

“And where’s that?” Rex and Weevil asked simultaneously.

“Your mission is in Australia,” said Ishizu.

“What?” Weevil almost jumped to his feet. “You’re sending us to the middle of nowhere?”

“I would not characterize Australia in that way, but regardless of how you feel about the location, that is where Pegasus is.”

His heart stood still, or so it felt. Pegasus had resurfaced in Weevil’s mind for a good reason, then. After all these years, Pegasus was about to enter Weevil’s life again—or, from the sound of it, Weevil, along with Rex, would make a re-entrance into Pegasus’s life, whether he expected them to or not.

For a moment, Weevil could not speak, so it was Rex who found the wherewithal to ask, “You mean Maximillion Pegasus?”

“Of course she means Maximillion Pegasus!” Weevil snapped, hoping he did not sound too defensive. Then he looked at Ishizu. “Don’t you?”

“I do. He is vital to the plans of the organization you encountered in Los Angeles.”

Thinking about what Pegasus would mean to a criminal organization turned the gears in Weevil’s brain. What could Pegasus specifically give a crime syndicate, other than oodles of money? Any disgustingly wealthy eccentric could do that if he and the crooks were on each other’s good side, or if the crooks demanded a ransom. Why target the creator of Duel Monsters in particular? And, if he would willingly aid any less-than-legal business, then why did Cutcliffe never reach out to him? Was it because the Pink Pangolin’s organization competed with her own, as Cutcliffe had said, and Pegasus was part of that opposing team? Perhaps she would still be around today if Pegasus had helped her.
Then again, his suspicions about exactly what happened to Cutcliffe were such that Industrial Illusions’s technology might not have let her escape that fate…

He shuddered, and evidently Ishizu read one at least one motivation for that action.

“I see that you are naturally feeling apprehensive. Take these along; you will need them. Their relations helped you in southern California.”

She reached into the folds of her dress, produced two cards in plastic sleeves, and handed them to Kiki, who gave one to Rex and the other to Weevil. The former read his card text first.

“Raphtontis the Night-Flyer? This one really is a dinosaur! Awesome! Aw, but it only has twenty-four hundred attack points.”

Weevil looked at his new Duel Monsters card, which showed a giant, many-eyed spider crouching in a dewy web laid over what looked like an infinitely expanding cave, judging from the tiny bats flying overhead.

“Atlach-Nacha, the Weaver in the Chasm. Hey, it only has twenty-four hundred attack points, too!”

Kiki sniffed. “Really! That’s the kind of gratitude you show Ishizu? You’re the only people in the world who have those cards!”

“We are?” Rex looked sheepish. “Sorry, Ishizu, I just thought, since the last cards you gave us had such high attack power…”

“You thought they would be as godly as Yig and Rlim Shaikorth. Make no mistake: these cards are indeed powerful. Kiki is correct: no one else on Earth has these cards. Treasure them as you do your Father of Serpents and Great White Worm, and these two monsters will prove equally rewarding.”

While Weevil continued to study his card, Rex posed another question to Ishizu. “How do you know where Pegasus is?”

“Previously, he gave me a long-distance telephone call, saying that as one former Millennium Item-holder to another, we should collaborate on ideas for future projects. I would have liked to discuss more about the subject with him, but I lost all contact with him after that. When I last spoke to him, he was in the wilds of southeast Australia.”

Rex stared at Ishizu. “The wilds? Like, away from civilization?”

“You’ll like it,” said Kiki, “‘cause it’s full of creepy animals that try to kill people.”

Weevil smirked. “That is what we’re all about.” Then Kiki’s words reminded him of something else, and another chill ran down his back. He could not bear to let this conversation end without raising the subject. Surely this was a good time to get some of his questions answered.

“This group in Australia…do they have giant lizards, too? I mean, what’s with the reptile stuff? The statue that looked like a snake, the acid-spitting lizards…”

“We have determined that reptiles are extraordinarily important to this organization, though for what reason, we do not yet know. We hope you will uncover some clues about that matter while in Australia, but the chief objective of your mission is to retrieve Pegasus,” said Ishizu.

As though he were in class, Rex raised his hand. “Yeah, I got a question, too. Pegasus is filthy rich; why can’t he just call someone to fly him home?”

A sigh passed Ishizu’s lips. “If he were safely home, he would have let me know. Given his most recent location, I have every reason to believe that he is currently trapped somewhere beyond the reach of any method of communication. Even psychically, he has become untraceable. If my time were not otherwise occupied, I would seek him myself, but I have other matters that require my attention. But you can help. I would not ask this of you if I did not know you could do it.”

If Pegasus was in trouble, then Weevil knew instantly what to do. He had to rescue him. An ardent fan owed his idol nothing less. And that stupid tabloid article still chafed…what better way to prove to that paper and its readers that he and Rex still meant something to the wider world of Duel Monsters?

He sprang to the floor. “We’ll do it! All you have to say is when!” Rex looked slightly taken aback, but he stood up beside Weevil a second later.

Kiki rose as well. “Can you leave a week from today?”

Weevil draped his arm over Rex’s shoulders. “Of course!”

“Yeah,” said Rex. “We don’t care how dangerous it is!”

“Good,” Kiki said with the same grin she had flashed at the beginning of the conversation.

Not long afterward, Ishizu said a polite goodbye and then departed, leaving the two young men and their boss to their own devices. Since night had fallen two hours ago, these devices consisted of Kiki following Rex and Weevil to the front door as they prepared to go home.

“A mission to Australia?” Rex said just as he and Weevil reached the door. “It sounds cool, but I’m still kinda reeling from the last one. I’ve got so many questions about it.”

Ah, now was the time to put Kiki on the spot. Weevil whipped around to face his employer. “I’ve been waiting to grill you for over a month! You have explaining to do, Kiki.”

She affected an innocent face. “What do you want to know?”

“Let’s start with the lizards. We talked about them when Ishizu was here, but she never said what purpose they served,” said Weevil.

“Yeah, and what about the ones in the Hollywood tunnels? Hell, what about the Hollywood tunnels, period? All we saw when we were down there were some ancient-looking passageways—well, and some kind of secret room for the Wyrm.”

And a torture chamber, Weevil thought but refused to say. Instead, he asked, “What about the people who worked in Pink’s casino? Where’d they go after their boss died?”

At this last question, Kiki let her face spread into a wider smile than Weevil had ever seen, and the effect made Weevil’s skin crawl in a distinctly less pleasant way than usual. “Don’t you worry about the lizards. They’ve been well fed. In fact…let’s just say the problems of those casino workers who were unemployed when their boss died and those poor lizards that went hungry for so long were solved at the same time.”

Oh, no. Oh, no. She could only mean…

“…How do you know that?” asked Rex.

“I have my ways.” She winked. “Now, why don’t you go home before it gets any darker? You do have work tomorrow, you know. Have a good night, and make sure you start preparing tomorrow for your trip next week.”

Before they could prepare for the journey they would soon undertake, Rex and Weevil had to prepare for bed that night. As always, Weevil showered before his longer-haired lover did and then tucked himself into the sheets beneath the two double beds they had made into one. While waiting for Rex to emerge from the bathroom, the other man continued reading his copy of Frank Herbert’s The Green Brain.

He had just finished the third chapter by the time Rex entered the bedroom, a ratty red bathrobe around his body and a towel around his hair.

“Are you gonna get into bed like that?” asked Weevil, looking up from his novel.

Rex opened his robe slightly to reveal that he wore only his briefs underneath. “This is more comfortable…and more fun. I like wearing almost nothing to bed, and I know you like it, too.” He leaned over to touch the underside of Weevil’s chin.

“Hee hee! That’s right!”

“Besides,” Rex said as he climbed into bed beside Weevil, “I need a little fun tonight to take my mind off…you know.”

“What, our impending adventure in the outback?”

“That…” he began, pulling the covers over his knees and loosening the belt that tied his robe. “And the fact that our boss is kinda sick.”

None of the sickness that either man had ever witnessed until then could compare to what they would soon experience.

Chapter 3: The Boys Get Recognized

Notes:

With apologies to Australians. I hope I did not stereotype here; if I screwed anything up, please tell me.
The cross-town blue bus in this chapter does not really exist. Neither does the Watering Hole.

Chapter Text

And in the middle of a steamy night, I’m tossing in my sleep.
But in the middle of a red-eyed dream, I see you coming, coming on to give it to me.
—Meat Loaf, “All Revved up with No Place to Go” (Bat out of Hell, 1977)

“End of the line, folks!” called the bus driver. “Last stop on the route! Get out if you’re getting out! Everyone else, this bus is going back to the station.”

In the seat beside Weevil, Rex snored. Weevil shook him awake with a harsh whisper of, “Wake up, Rex! We’re here!”

“Wha…?” Rex blinked a few times and wiped the sleep seeds out of his eyes. “Jeez, did that drive take a whole day?”

“It was five hours!” said Weevil. “Come on, we need to get out.”

As he and Rex left their seats and walked down the length of the otherwise empty bus, Weevil reflected on all he had seen so far. The blue bus that picked up the inseparable dueling pair and several other travelers from the airport and drove them all the way into the edge of Bourke had provided its passengers with a variety of fascinating sights all safely viewed through a window in an air-conditioned vehicle. Behind the bus’s windows, which would have done justice to an observation car on an old-time locomotive, Weevil had seen the wineries of Mudgee, the distinctly nineteenth-century urban stylings of Gulgong, and the homesteads of Dubbo. At last, in the sparsest of all possible settings, the bus had wheezed to a halt alongside a ranch house painted white. Now, in the dimming, purple-orange light of the evening, Rex and Weevil walked out of the bus for their first true taste of Australia.

Australia, upon Weevil’s initial step into the country, tasted like something irresistibly alien. Most of the turf beneath his feet was bare and brownish-orange. Some patches and blades of grass burst up here and there, intermittently. That transitional state between the heat of the day and the cool of the night fell upon his skin, welcoming him to his new surroundings. Not a drop of moisture hung in the air. Perhaps, if he and Rex had spent more time in southern California and driven east or south from there, they could have visited an environment like this, but of course matters got out of hand prior to any desert trips. Now they could roam the nearly barren plains to their hearts’ content.

“Are you gonna get your stuff, or are you just gonna stand there doing nothing?” said Rex, whose voice jerked Weevil out of his reverie. Weevil turned around to see Rex leaning into the bus’s luggage compartment and pulling out his lumpy hiking backpack. Rex glared at him, and Weevil scuttled beside him to retrieve his own backpack, which sagged upon his shoulders.

The ranch house they approached had a hand-painted sign out front that read THE WATERING HOLE—YOUR LAST BIT OF CIVILIZATION FOR MILES AND MILES AND MILES. Three cars—one green, one red, and one white—lined up next to the building.

A ponytailed woman in a black-and-white-patterned calico dress sat in one of the porch’s three rocking chairs. When she saw them, an excited gasp arose from her diaphragm, and she stood up to greet them.

“We’re duelists,” said Weevil. He and Rex held up their Duel Disk-bearing arms as proof.

“Oh, you needn’t say that,” said the hostess. “I could tell. I’m so glad you’re still dueling. Well, then, come on in. Your room’s a-waiting. Or should that be rooms, plural?” She stood up and bounded over to the front door, which she opened with a girlish giggle that sounded strange for someone in her mid-forties at least.

“Uh, we’ll take just one room,” said Rex as he and Weevil followed her into the house.

She led them inside a massive living room that apparently occupied the entire downstairs area. A semicircle of beige and orange velvet-backed chairs, standing on either side of a pale green sofa that looked long enough to hold about eight people, faced a red brick fireplace. In the other corner of the room, a baby grand piano sulked under stacks of sheet music books. The staircase that divided one side of the downstairs from the other consisted of wood covered in white carpet and seemed to disappear into the ceiling.

“Wait right here,” she said and then walked up to a door on the far side of the room. She opened it slightly, leaned inside the doorway, and called, “Paddy, a couple of new guests have arrived! And you won’t believe who they are!”

From where he stood, Weevil thought he smelled meat cooking. He wrinkled his nose at the thought of having to eat it, but he stifled his complaint for the moment.

“You’ve got me pumped!” boomed a masculine voice from behind the door. “Who are they?”

She pressed her fingers to her closed mouth as if trying to contain her glee. When she opened her mouth again, she announced, “None other than Rex Raptor and Weevil Underwood!”

None other than…? For the first time since he won that championship at age fourteen, Weevil’s heart began to glow with the pride of victory. Could it be that out here, he still had a fan or two?

“You always were a kidder, Daisy,” said the man in the kitchen. “You can’t mean that.”

“It’s true! They’re waiting to meet you.”

Rex nudged Weevil. “Let’s go up and say hi. It can’t hurt.”

“You don’t have to tell me! Someone remembers us; we have to let them bask in our presence!”

They both strode up to the kitchen door, which the host opened promptly, revealing that he was a six-foot-tall man with a short red-blond beard and a scar on his face. He wore khakis and a T-shirt covered by a chef’s apron. In one hand, he held a spatula encrusted with something blackened and bloodied.

“Well, I’ll be damned! Daisy was telling the truth! If it ain’t the Dino Duelist and the Bug Brawler! Last time I saw you boys on the telly, you were kids. But you’ve grown.” His eyes lit upon their Duel Disks. “And you still duel! Just what I was hoping. It’s a real delight to see you.”

If the host had dropped to his knees and kissed Weevil’s feet, Weevil could hardly have felt more honored. Here, he partook of the all-too-rare experience of receiving his due. Glancing over at Rex indicated that he felt much the same way; his face contorted itself into a big, toothy grin.

The host stuck out his gnarled, slightly blood-stained hand for a shake, and Weevil took it. “The name’s Paddy West, and the missus is Daisy.” Paddy shook hands as though he were airing out a rug.

“We’re thrilled to meet you two in person,” said Daisy as she shook Rex’s hand, much more gently than her husband did.

“Especially since you’re just in time for dinner.” Paddy let go of Weevil’s hand. “But first, why don’t you put up your things?” He looked at his wife. “Daisy, will you—”

Rex held up his now-free hand to silence his host. “Uh, we’ll find our own room.”

“Okay,” said Mrs. West. “But before you do, just know that all the bedrooms except ours are upstairs, there’s five bathrooms up there and one down here, and if you’re going to eat in your room, clean it up afterwards. There are vacuum cleaners in the hall closet.”

“We don’t have a full staff to pick up after you here,” Mr. West continued, as though anticipating his guests’ question. “It’s just Daisy and me. Go up and pick out your room; we’ll see you in a few.”

The young men started toward the stairs until Mrs. West’s voice stopped them.

“Wait!” she said. “There’s something else you should know.”

Weevil turned his head in his hostess’s direction.

“We have two other guests staying here. One is a laid-back surfer type of fella. He’s been sleeping here for about a week now. He looks disreputable, but he pays regular. A nice bloke when you get to know him. He has the room in the middle of the hall.”

Weevil restrained Rex, who had begun to resume his walk, by the arm. “Wait a bit,” he hissed at his partner before facing Mrs. West again.

Mrs. West continued, “The other guest just got here yesterday. He’s real quiet and doesn’t like to be spoken to. He didn’t have nothing in his car but one suitcase; isn’t that odd? He’s got the room at the end of the hall. Other than those two, you can have any room you want.”

“Okay, thanks,” said Rex, before Weevil could formulate an eloquent answer. Weevil maintained his grip on Rex’s arm as the two of them ascended the staircase.

Not long after Rex and Weevil chose their bedroom out of the three that remained and left their backpacks by the bed, Mrs. West shouted, “Dinner’s ready!” from below, and everyone gathered around the dining room table, which could have seated sixteen people comfortably and eighteen or twenty people somewhat uncomfortably. At any rate, most of the chairs remained unoccupied. Aside from Weevil, Rex, and Mrs. West, the only other person at the table was a man clad entirely in dark gray, from his fedora to his shoes. His black sunglasses proved the only exception.

“You still haven’t taken those off, sir?” asked Mrs. West from her seat at one end of the table. “We’ve been over this.”

“We have, ma’am,” replied the trench coat-clad man in a gravelly voice. “You should remember what I told you.”

Mrs. West winced and drew back from her guest.

With a creaking noise, Mr. West opened the door and entered the dining room, bearing a silver tray topped by multiple cuts of thick red meat drenched in what looked like barbeque sauce. Roasted shrimp and lettuce leaves surrounded the main course. To the side lay several strips of darkened fish.

“Kangaroo legs for everyone!” he cried, setting the tray on the table. “And fish, for those who don’t eat kangaroo.”

Everyone grabbed a kangaroo leg except for Weevil, who scooped the fish onto his plate.

“Where’s Geoff?” asked Mr. West as he lifted his dripping hunk of meat to his mouth. “I thought he’d be here this evening.” He stuffed his face with a big bite of kangaroo.

“Well, dear, he’s probably fallen asleep from another weed session. If you want to smoke where no one can see you, Bourke’s not a bad place to do it.”

Rex and Weevil looked at each other and smiled, as if to say that they both knew whom to talk to after dinner. They then resumed digging into their food.

As they all ate, Weevil looked around the room. Most of the decor in the Wests’ dining room, now that he could see it, had a Duel Monsters theme. The walls were covered in yellowing flyers for tournaments, posters of powerful and popular monsters like Black Luster Soldier, Exodia the Forbidden One, and both Red Eyes Black Dragon and Blue Eyes White Dragon posed for battle, and even newspaper articles announcing championships on television. In the midst of the memorabilia, on a wall-mounted shelf, sat a pair of trophies, both covered in dust. A cobweb stretched from the ledge to the wall.

“What are those trophies for?” he asked.

Mr. West paused his eating and bared his barbeque sauce-stained teeth in a wide grin. “You folks are looking at the former Australian champion. The very first one, in fact.”

Weevil’s ears perked up. Another previous Duel Monsters champion sat before his eyes, and that champion was a middle-aged man.

“Yeh, I won the ’96 national championship. I came back one year to defend my rank—”

“And then I beat him,” said Mrs. West, pointing to the trophy on the right side of the shelf. “That was how we got together.” She pecked her husband on the cheek.

“No way!” said Rex. “You met at a Duel Monsters tournament?”

“We did, all right,” Mr. West replied. “I couldn’t resist Daisy after she walloped me.”

Light laughter bubbled up from Mrs. West’s throat. “Don’t be so modest, dear. I hardly walloped you. Beating you was a hard-won fight.”

“But you whacked those other blokes without breaking a sweat!” He gave her a one-armed hug. “The point is,” said Mr. West to his guests, “even though we were always a bit older than most of our…colleagues, and we don’t play the game so much anymore, we still love Duel Monsters. We’ve got heaps of cards and so many matches on tape. We always hoped we’d meet other high-ranked Duel Monsters players, especially ones from other countries, and now we have. You’ve brightened our lives, lads.”

“We have?” said Rex. “Wow, I wasn’t expecting anyone to say that to us.”

“Why do you say that?” Mrs. West asked, dabbing the side of her mouth with a napkin.

“Don’t ask,” said Weevil. His mind flashed an unbidden memory of that tabloid article again, and he fumed.

Their hostess must have caught his facial expression, because her smile of gustatory pleasure turned to one of concern.

“You can tell us what’s bothering you.”

This is starting to get uncomfortable, thought Weevil. Before matters could worsen, however, Mr. West spoke up.

“Let’s not. Why don’t we talk about old times? How’d you boys get your start as duelists, and what brings you here now?” He winked at his wife and then at his guests.

For the second time in several minutes, Rex and Weevil looked at each other, but with consternation rather than insouciant excitement on their faces. Should we tell them about Pegasus? Rex mouthed at him.

Weevil hesitated. Let’s tell them the truth up to that run-in with the Atlantis cult. Then maybe we’ll talk about Pegasus.

And then we can just make up the rest as we go along?

Yes.

“Speak up,” interjected the man in the trench coat. “We can’t hear you.”

Rex slammed his palms on the table, making Weevil jump a little. “Okay! It all started when…”

A few minutes later, when he finished processing his gratitude at Rex’s save, Weevil added his own life story as a duelist to Rex’s. They spoke of Weevil taking first place and Rex second in the regional Duel Monsters championship many years ago, their bitter losses in Duelist Kingdom, and the events they would have preferred to forget but could not in the Battle City tournament. From there, they improvised tales of successes against other duelists in their own neighborhoods and skipped ahead to their present lives as employees of the Snake Pit, eliding their recent past as career criminals and their erotic relationship.

“Our boss gave us some time off,” said Rex, “and here we are.”

Mrs. West sat there blinking, with a smile on her face. Mr. West rested his head in his hand and laughed.

“Well, that was quite a story!” he told them. “Daisy, my dear,” he said to his wife, “I knew you were a keeper.”

“Where are you going from here?” Mrs. West asked. “I hate to see you go, but I suppose you can’t stay. You’ll be getting on the bus to bring you back round to Mudgee and going from there, right?”

Before Weevil could form a convenient lie, Rex blurted out, “No, tomorrow, we’re headed straight for the outback! We’ve got important business out there.”

The man in the trench coat sat up in his seat.

“To the outback?” said Mrs. West. “And you have no car? That won’t do at all. Oh…I wonder if…”

She leaned in toward her husband and whispered into his ear. He nodded.

“If you blokes don’t have a car, and you’ve gotta get through the outback, you’re in serious trouble. It’s mighty nice that we have the blue bus now, but why it won’t go past our place, I don’t know. Anyone who wants to come here’s gotta have their own car. But since you two have granted us our wish of meeting real champion duelists in the flesh, and we want to make the most of what little time we’ve got together, we’re gonna make a deal with you. Go and get your decks, and then come to the garage with us.”

They had to bring their decks with them? This would surely be exciting.

In the Watering Hole’s detached garage, Mr. and Mrs. West, both of whom now wore Duel Disks on their wrists, stood beside the most magnificent car Weevil had ever seen. This vehicle was a massive jeep with four doors, four dirt-equipped tires and another one hanging up on the back, plenty of interior space, a roof, and a bright orange coat of paint that practically screamed for attention from other drivers. For some reason, the man in the trench coat had followed them into the garage, and now he stared at the jeep under the brim of his hat.

“Say hello to Old Bessie,” said Mr. West. “We don’t take her out so much now. Even though we still like to paint her.”

“That’s where the deal comes in,” Mrs. West continued. “We can sell her to you for a thousand dollars…”

“A thousand dollars?” asked the young men.

“Or,” Mr. West continued with a smile, “if you know how to double duel, you can win her from us.”

Weevil had to stop himself from shouting yes. He asked, “What if we lose?”

“We’ll make you shear our sheep,” said Mr. West.

“What the—” Rex began.

Mrs. West elbowed her husband. “No, he’s just kidding.”

“I always tell my guests they’ll have to shear sheep for us, especially if they’re not from around here,” said Mr. West with a chuckle. “If you lose, you’ll have to pay up to get the car. What’ll it be?”

Rex smirked and thrust his Duel Disk-encumbered arm at Mr. West. “You’ve got a duel on your hands, old man! And old lady!”

“We’ll take you on!” rejoined Weevil.

“Fantastic!” said Mrs. West. “Will Mister Jones be the referee? Not that I expect dishonesty, of course…”

Weevil tried not to snicker and noticed Rex stifling his own attempt at laughter.

“Certainly,” said the man in the trench coat.

Everyone’s Duel Disks snapped into place. The four-way chorus of “Let’s duel!” sent Weevil’s heart aflutter.

A noise pinged on Mrs. West’s Duel Disk. “Oh, I start,” she said, laying a few cards on the field. “I summon Dandylion in defense mode.”

A cartoonish-looking creature that looked like a bipedal lion cub with leaves for forearms and yellow flower petals for a mane stood in front of its mistress alongside two face-down cards.

Rex sneered. “What’s that little munchkin doing on the field?”

“Don’t make fun of my wife’s monsters!” said Mr. West.

“They have no need to, dear. They’ll see what I’m about in just a moment.”

He winked at her. “Ah, I see. Well, they won’t laugh at this. I summon Faith Bird in attack mode!”

A large blue bird with sweeping wings appeared in front of Mr. West.

“I end my turn.”

“All right, now it’s my turn!” said Rex. “I summon Destroyersaurus in attack mode!”

On Rex’s side of the field appeared a large black therapod with red stripes, a purple mane running down the back of its neck, spikes jutting from its back, and a backward-curving steel scimitar protruding from its head.

“That’s it for now,” he said.

Weevil contemplated the best strategy to use against the Wests. Faith Bird stood no chance against Destroyersaurus, though getting excited this early in the duel was folly. Both he and Rex possessed their Other God cards—Weevil had remembered to return Yig to its rightful place in its true guardian’s deck—but summoning either of them on their own, let alone deploying the Conqueror Worm combo, would likely be overkill for this friendly pair. These people are our fans, he reminded himself. Fans. This time, he had no reason to unleash the beast that normally reigned when he dueled. Still, mercy was not his style, and it never hurt to treat every duel with gravity. Furthermore, if the Wests truly harbored fannish devotion for him and Rex, then they should consider it an honor to receive a sound trouncing from them. Then the matter was settled: he would stomp the Wests as soundly as he would any other opponent, Other God card or no Other God card.

Looking at the cards in his hand, he saw two that made him grin.

“I summon co*ckroach Knight in defense mode and set a card of my own face down.”

A sword- and shield-bearing co*ckroach clad in green armor appeared before Weevil, next to a face-down card.

“Is that all you’ve got? I’d expect something more intimidating from a famous duelist,” said Mr. West.

“Now, dear,” Mrs. West said, “remember their championship match? How we thought Rex would win when he summoned that Two-Headed King Rex card and Weevil had the Basic Insect? We were sure surprised with what happened after that.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Don’t remind me!” said Rex. ““Destroyersaurus, attack his Faith Bird!”

The therapod charged forward and bit the bird in half, subtracting four hundred from Mr. West’s life points.

“B’gawd!” he cried. “I didn’t know you were gonna hit me with something that strong right off the bat.”

Rex laughed. “You better get used to it. My deck’s full of monsters that’ll stomp yours into dust if you don’t protect them.”

Chapter 4: The Van Starts Rocking, and a Stranger Comes Knocking

Chapter Text

It never felt so good; it never felt so right;
We were glowing like the metal on the edge of a knife.
—Meat Loaf and Ellen Foley, “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” (Bat out of Hell, 1977)

Before Weevil could scream again, the hand around his ankle gave it a tug, sending him falling face-first on the floor. He tried to get up, but the unseen menace pinned him down with its elbows. Then the predator lifted one of its arms from Weevil’s back, and Weevil felt something cold slip down his shirt—and the unmistakable point of a knife a fraction of an inch away from his neck.

In a rough whisper, the thug said, “We know what you’ve done. Now you must pay.”

As his attempted murderer edged the knife closer to Weevil’s throat, Weevil discovered that he recognized that voice.

“Mister Jones!”

“Speak out of turn again, and your throat will be slit. What have you done with the Wyrm of the Wastelands?” He pressed the knife against Weevil’s neck, barely scratching it. “Answer me.”

Suddenly, something heavy struck Mr. Jones on the head, causing him to drop the knife and lay his arms flat across the floor. Weevil rolled out from under his assailant’s arm and stood up, whereupon he pulled the chain dangling from the bedside lamp.

Leaning off the bed was Rex, his Duel Disk strapped to his arm.

“Brute instincts win out!” said Rex. “He’s out cold. Let’s tie him up.”

“With what? We don’t have any rope.”

“Damn it, you’re right!”

For a few seconds, the two duelists stared into each other’s eyes.

“Let’s scram,” said Weevil.

“Yeah.”

Thanking his lucky stars that neither he nor Rex had bothered to unpack their backpacks except to remove the pajamas they now wore, Weevil grabbed his backpack and Duel Disk and slipped into his shoes. Rex followed suit, and the two of them ran out of the bedroom, down the stairs, and into the Watering Hole’s garage as though the house were on fire.

“You got the keys?” Rex asked as they sped to the jeep.

“Of course!” Weevil patted his pocket. “I’m going to drive. Let’s get outta this madhouse!”

Both men opened the car doors and practically jumped into their respective seats, not caring that they still wore their backpacks. Weevil turned the keys in the ignition, pressed the button on the garage door-opener that Mr. West had thoughtfully left on the console between the driver’s and passenger’s seats, and peeled out into the desert. He could always buy another copy of The Green Brain. Meanwhile, Rex’s gift of the soothing dream leaf would have to wait.

“Do you think we should’ve told the Wests that one of their guests was a murderer?” asked Rex once Weevil put a few miles between their jeep and the Watering Hole. The outback stretched before them like the desert from an antipodean variant on an Arabian Nights story.

“For all we know, they were in on it. Besides, there was no time to leave a polite note! That guy was about to kill us.”

“Why do you think Kiki told us to go here, if she knew we might not survive? We’re in the outback, away from civilization, and the only place to stop was some crazy B and B she probably never heard of…”

“Come on, don’t you suspect Kiki of something? The last assignment she gave us almost got us killed. Why would this one be any different?”

“But we’re not stealing some exotic statue this time. We’re rescuing Pegasus, the most important person in all of Duel Monsters! She wouldn’t knowingly send us to our death when we have to save someone else’s life, especially Pegasus’s.”

Rex had a good point, Weevil had to admit. But when he contemplated Rex’s very argument, something dawned on Weevil with sickening clarity.

“Rex, if Pegasus had really gone missing, we would have heard about it. The creator of Duel Monsters just falling off the face of the Earth would be somewhere in the news. But it wasn’t even in that stupid tabloid that that stupid woman made me read the other day.”

The dinosaur specialist paused. “…What are you saying?”

“I’m saying”—Weevil swerved to avoid hitting some sort of small, fuzzy shape that darted into the middle of the road, cursing at the obscured mammal mentally—“that we don’t even know that this mission is legit. Kiki could have sent us here to get rid of us!”

“That can’t be right! It wasn’t just Kiki’s idea for us to come here. Ishizu told us that Pegasus was in Australia, remember?”

Oh. Right. Still, something was wrong with these circ*mstances.

“If Ishizu knew what she was talking about, she’d have given us a better idea of where Pegasus is. We don’t have anything to go on except that she last heard from him when he was in this part of the country.”

“Well, we gotta find him.” Rex, who had not fastened his seat belt, removed his backpack from his shoulders and set it by his feet. He bent down, unzipped his backpack, rummaged around inside for a few moments, and pulled out a pair of toaster pastries sheathed in a silver coating.

“Wanna listen to some tunes?” he asked, breaking open the wrapper.

“Sure.” If nothing else, some music might take Weevil’s mind off the dire uncertainty that pervaded his mind. He pressed the button to turn on the radio, and the opening strains of a 1980s new wave song streamed forth from the jeep’s speakers. Rex broke off a piece of one of the toaster pastries and handed it to Weevil, who stuffed it in his mouth and tasted a burst of sugar and blueberry flavoring.

The next few songs the men heard continued in the same vein as the first one, with electronic punk-adjacent sounds and lyrics that ranged from consciously artistic to deliberately bizarre. Weevil wondered what a shark would want with candy, as one song indicated that it would, when he realized that he had not thought about the mission for several minutes.

“Damn it!” he cried.

“What is it?” Rex licked at the filling of the last piece of his toaster pastry.

“I had just gotten my mind off how creepy our mission is, and then my mind congratulated me for not thinking about it. Now I’m thinking about it again! Grrr!”

Rex sighed. “Dude, we could really use some weed right now. We should’ve gotten some from that Geoff guy before it was too late.” With three crunching noises, Rex finished his late-night snack. From the sound of it, crumbs scattered on the seat and floor, but the jeep was Rex and Weevil’s now to do with as they wished. If they wanted crumbs in their jeep, then they would have crumbs in their jeep.

A messy car did not compare even remotely to the gravity of the mission, however. Regardless of the danger and ambiguity of the situation, if there were any chance that Pegasus was lost in the Australian wilderness, then Weevil and Rex had every reason to find him. Kiki was not the most trustworthy or well-intentioned person in the world, but Ishizu had proven her reliability by giving them and them alone the Other God cards. When Weevil contemplated the matter, he thought that Ishizu ultimately ensured his and Rex’s survival against the Pink Pangolin and her lackeys. Ishizu even told Rex and Weevil that she knew they would make the right choice in the end, and they did. She would never let them die on a mission.

Yes. They were under capable authority. This mission had to be legitimate. They would not surely die…

The music faded out, and suddenly a tenor voice addressed the listeners.

“Just about one o’clock in the morning! G’day to you folks who are still awake! You just heard ‘Journey Through the Eyes of Madness’ by Death of Comedy on the only station in Australia that would ever play such a song.” The disc jockey chuckled at his own remark.

Despite the corniness of the deejay’s words, Weevil breathed a sigh of relief to hear them. The presence of a live voice on the radio reminded him that he and Rex were not alone out in the open desert. With the rambling now providing background noise to soothe his nerves, Weevil cleared his throat.

“Rex, I need to tell you something.”

“You really are going to become a woman, like I asked about?” said Rex as he reached down into his backpack again. “I mean, I don’t care, but…hey, I thought there were more toaster pastries in here! Did you eat my other toaster pastries?”

“No! And no to that, too! Get serious, Rex. This is about our mission.”

“I thought you weren’t sure if the mission was even real.” With a grunt, Rex zipped his backpack shut and sat up to face Weevil, who slowed down his driving.

Weevil did not bother to address that comment. “I have to tell you about this, though. I wanted to keep it a secret, but I can’t.”

“Ooh, this sounds juicy. Go right ahead.”

“Just before Mister Jones jumped us, I dreamed that the Red Eyes Black Dragon crawled out of the ground and talked to me.”

Rex snickered. In a bad imitation of Weevil’s voice, he replied, “Monsters talk to you in your dreams? You must be going crazy!”

A current of guilt shocked Weevil’s heart and spine. With an exasperated sigh, he said, “All right, Rex, I said I was sorry! You don’t have to bring that up again!”

“Aw, you know me. I couldn’t resist. So…” Rex’s voice took on a wistful tone. “You saw good ol’ Red Eyes, huh? What’d he say? And what’d it have to do with the mission?”

“He said that Pegasus was in greater danger than we knew.”

“What? Did he say where Pegasus was?”

“Yes. He said it so weirdly that I remember it exactly: ‘just beyond the fountain in the heart of the continent.’ Isn’t that like something out of an old movie? And we’ll save the world by rescuing Pegasus…” And Red Eyes sounded like your lost lover, but I’m not about to tell you that. “If we have to save the world, the reward had better be good. Other than getting to see Pegasus, I mean.”

“If I know anything, it’s that a dream that weird has to tell you the truth. Red Eyes wouldn’t have showed up for nothing. What’re we waiting for? We’ve gotta get to that fountain!”

Weevil pressed down on the gas pedal. “That’s great, Rex, but your dragon didn’t tell me where the fountain was! All it said was ‘the heart of the continent.’” As he spoke those words, another revelation occurred to him. “Wait…we’re right in the center of Australia, aren’t we?”

“Oh, yeah. So, we don’t have to wait too long to get there, right?” Rex flashed a dopey grin at Weevil.

“We’d better not, but if Red Eyes knew more than that, he didn’t say.”

Conversation evaporated as they drove on through the outback. Until now, Weevil never grasped how much the city lights he grew up with obstructed his view of the night sky. Out here, all he could see through the car windows were an infinite ebon canopy studded with pinpricks of white light and the vast expanse of barren earth below. And he saw these sights behind the glass panes of a jeep. The thought of witnessing them with nothing between him and the outdoors made his heart beat faster. Oh, to be a spider wandering through this unforgiving land, looking for small animals to sink one’s fangs into…

Later, he noticed his concentration fading. The interior of the jeep was perfectly temperate, and the outside environment was cold, and yet beads of sweat dripped from his hands onto the steering wheel. He felt himself start to slump in his seat. All that he perceived blurred into an increasingly indistinguishable mass of darkness. A pinch on his upper arm startled him back to alertness with a yelp.

“Hey! What was that for, Rex?”

“You’re losing control of the wheel!”

“I can’t help it if I’m tired. It wasn’t my fault someone tried to kill us in our sleep.”

“You wanna stop and get some rest?”

“In the car?”

“Where else? You know, we could both sleep in the back seat.” Rex waggled his eyebrows.

Weevil pulled over and removed the keys from the ignition. As he sloughed off his backpack and followed Rex into the back seat, he reflected that at least they were both still wearing their pajamas.

Finding a comfortable position to sleep in proved challenging, but eventually the two men did. Sooner than he expected, given the weight on his mind, Weevil drifted off to the land of slumber.

This time, he sat barefoot on a wooden dock, letting his toes dangle above the still water. For a moment, he breathed in the faint zephyr that blew across his face and the smell of salt that suffused the air. When he brought his feet back down, they touched a hard, scaly surface.

You are standing on my head, said the thing in the water. Will you please get up?

Without thinking, Weevil sprang back onto his feet and watched as the Red Eyes Black Dragon’s head and elongated neck emerged from the bay. The dragon snorted a few puffs of smoke from his nostrils.

“You can’t give me another mystical dream sequence!” cried Weevil. “I just had a mystical dream sequence! Let me speak to the manager!”

No, Weevil, you want to receive this dream. I have more vital information to divulge.

“Oh, yeah? If you’re so smart, tell me.”

The fountain you seek is nearer than you know. You will find it within half a day’s time from when you wake.

“How do you know that? You’re a figment of my subconscious!”

Your subconscious mind can receive messages that your conscious mind rejects. Awake, you cannot tune in to this frequency; asleep, you can.

Weevil shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Red Eyes. Can’t you be straightforward for once?”

Yes. You asked me for an explanation, and so I gave one to you. When you find the fountain, you will be a mere hour and a half away from Pegasus.

“By car, you mean?”

Your mode of transport may or may not be what you expect, but you must get there. Rescue Pegasus and the world…and my heart…

As the dragon began to submerge himself, Weevil shouted, “Red Eyes, you’re not a water-attribute monster! How can you breathe underwater?”

This is but the first of many surprises in store for you. Tell my former master.

In the morning, Weevil woke first, as usual. Even if it were not his typical habit to wake before Rex did, Weevil felt certain that Rex shoving him off the bench seat and onto the floor of the jeep would have done the trick.

Two could play at that game. He tugged on Rex’s hair, which hung over the side of the seat and tickled Weevil’s face.

“Ow!” Rex sat up with a jerk. “What was that for?”

“You pushed me off the seat, so I get to pull your hair. It’s time to get going on our mission.” Weevil rose to his knees and put a hand on his hip.

“Aw, couldn’t you let me sleep a little longer?”

“You were saying last night that you were sure Pegasus was lost out here and we had to find him. Now, let’s get dressed and set out for him.”

Rex yawned. “Get dressed? Can’t we just wear our pajamas?”

“Are you serious? You want to wear pajamas in a desert?”

“Well, kinda. Most people haven’t done it, I bet, and I sure haven’t, so—”

“Argh!” Weevil smote his forehead. “Rex! We sleep in pajamas! That means you don’t want them to get dusty and dirty, because then you’ll be uncomfortable when you go to bed!”

“Okay, okay, Mister Bossy-shorts,” said Rex, unbuttoning the pajama shirt he wore last night. “Let’s do it your way.” He began to pull down the trousers when Weevil found himself reaching out his hand to stop him. Rex looked at Weevil and smirked.

“You just told me to get out of these pajamas. What’s wrong now? Don’t tell me you don’t want us to see each other naked! In fact…” With one swift yank, Rex removed his pajama pants and gestured as if to rip off the boxer shorts underneath. Instead, he simply laughed and began to crawl toward the front seat, where he unzipped his backpack.

Weevil supposed that his reaction was irrational—Pavlovian, if anything. They were in the outback, miles distant from anyone who might see them.

Except…no, he would not think of that. He returned to the driver’s seat and opened his own backpack, whereupon he grabbed the first articles of clothing that greeted him. Weevil surmised that Rex would watch him undress himself, and while under other circ*mstances, Weevil might have removed his clothing slowly so as to prolong his enjoyment and Rex’s, they could not afford to take any extra time today.

When he finished changing clothes, Weevil expected to see Rex gazing at him appreciatively, but his friend stared into space with a mixture of worry and guilt on his face.

“What’s eating you, Rex? Come on, we need to get going. Why don’t you take the wheel this time?”

“Uh…sure.”

They both exited the jeep, and once again, Weevil stepped unprotected into the Australian desert. He could not savor the new feeling of standing beneath the outback sun, however; Pegasus awaited, and so Weevil walked around the car and re-entered the passenger’s side. Rex maintained his troubled expression as he climbed into the driver’s seat.

He turned the keys in the ignition, and the jeep rumbled to life again.

Driving through the outback in the daytime felt less troubling than traversing the terrain at night, despite the high temperatures. Perhaps leaving Mr. Jones far behind assuaged some of the fear Weevil felt previously, though he was unsure that he could ever be too far away from Mr. Jones.

Both men had decided to roll their windows down, and Weevil stuck his hand out to feel the breeze between his fingers. For all that Rex drove, rarely did another car enter his or Weevil’s sights. The majority of what they saw while driving consisted of tall shrub grass, orange-brown plateaus, and trees of leafy and barren varieties. Occasionally, a rodent shot across their view, escaping just in time to avoid a violent death. The jeep passed several kangaroos lying about on rocks, possibly offering silent judgement on the driver and passenger. The radio played more punk-adjacent songs broken up by the over-the-top ramblings of the disc jockey.

Weevil filled his lungs with a deep inhalation of the desert air. “Mmm…after we rescue Pegasus, we have to explore more of the outback. Everything’s so wild and pure here…and deadly.” He snickered. “I can’t wait until we meet some of the arthropods here.”

“Um,” said Rex, “I don’t wanna ruin your good mood or anything, but I gotta ask you: do you have any food in your backpack?”

An icy feeling engulfed Weevil. “I don’t think so…”

“The only food I have is one more pair of toaster pastries.”

“What?”

“Yeah. It was at the bottom, too, so it’s probably gotten crushed.”

Rage bubbled up in Weevil’s stomach until he remembered that he and Rex would have a difficult time rescuing Pegasus if one of them were dead.

Noon came and went, and Rex stopped the jeep to dig the toaster pastries out of his backpack. As he predicted, the pastries were split and cracking like the ground of the outback itself—or, as Rex himself said, an example of continental drift. The two young men consumed the artificially flavored blueberry treats nonetheless, swigging water from the cooler the Wests had provided all the while.

For the next leg of the trip, Weevil drove, wondering how and when to tell Rex about his dream. He spent the next couple of hours trying to distract himself and his friend by discussing Duel Monsters strategies, old creature features, and hypothetical sexual experimentation, but every line of conversation brought Weevil’s mind back to Pegasus.

Then Rex interrupted Weevil’s description of his latest deck build.

“Look at that!”

Weevil stopped the car and then pinched himself at the sight to which Rex pointed.

In stark defiance of the law of this desert, where nature barred all artificial matter but the sturdiest vehicles from the environs, something that bore the mark of human construction jutted out from the cracked orange ground: a fountain made entirely of crystal, shining blue and white in the sunlight. More incredible than the fountain itself was what flowed from it. Lavender liquid that appeared to have the consistency of water gushed from the top of the fountain and arced downward into the pool at the base. Unbelievably, the lavender water emitted a smell, a scent like that of honey mingled with jelly.

The fountain…this has to be it.

Rex leaned his head out of the window and took a deep breath. “I don’t know how it’s possible, but that water smells delicious! It’s like a grilled octopus platter! Let’s go outside and have a drink!”

What’s Rex on about? “What? No, it smells like honey and jelly. How could you think it smells anything like meat?”

“Honey and jelly? No way. You would think that. It’s got a tasty meat smell. And I gotta get a closer whiff of it.” Rex unbuckled his seat belt, opened the car door, slid out, and strode up to the fountain. Once there, he brought his face so close to the arcing lavender liquid that it nearly splashed him. Then he leaned in and inhaled the scent of the water, and the fluid sprayed onto his face.

“You better come over here! This is great!” He filled his mouth with the streaming water, which he swallowed in an instant. “Ah, that hits the spot. Mmm…it’s filling me up, too! This is way better than regular water! Whatever this is!”

With a sigh, Weevil obeyed Rex’s directive. Shutting his eyes when he stood beside the fountain, the entomophile opened his mouth and received the spray...and it did, indeed, taste like a singularly sweet mixture of raw honey and grape jelly. As he swallowed, Weevil thought he detected a hint of strawberry.

“All riiight!” he said. “We oughta drink more!”

They filled their mouths and bellies with the sumptuous liquid for the next few minutes, until they had had enough.

In moments, Weevil’s hunger dissipated…only for another, equally strong and nearly as demanding emotion to replace it. A fire that burned to out-blaze the desert sun ignited in his loins. When he looked at Rex’s half-closed eyes, wry smile, and trouser bulge, Weevil could tell that his friend had fallen under the same thrall.

“Let’s get busy in the jeep,” he said.

Without saying a word, Rex put his arm around Weevil’s, whom he let lead him back to the car.

Rex and Weevil’s previous sexual encounters always resulted in vivid climax, but the bliss of this connection was beyond org*sm. No persons since the first sunrise on Earth had received the blessing of so much physical ecstasy at once. This superhuman splicing, not their initial groping session in the Venice Beach hotel room or the consummation of their partnership in their apartment, was their real first time together. On that latter night, after they made love, Rex had told him that he saw comets exploding in the night sky, rose and gold painting the air, and the world dying and coming to life again. Now, entwined with his friend in the back seat of the jeep, Weevil saw moons falling into seas and then tearing themselves out of the abysses—other planets exploding into cosmic rubble and then each piece of shattered stone rejoining to form a new world—entire galaxies fading into darkness and then bursting alight. The complete transformation of one planet did not equal the force of this pleasure.

Every square inch of his body became a bee supping nectar from a resplendent flower opening itself up for pollination. In reaching this undreamed-of height of carnal passion, Weevil felt like one virgin sacrificing another to a monstrous god hungering not for blood but for the throes of pleasure. Their union produced a thousand little deaths all at once, each one feeding the god they worshiped with their bodies. Was their spiritual master the Conqueror Worm? Something limbless and subterranean wriggled at the base of Weevil’s spine and, he expected, Rex’s too. Neither of them, he could tell, had ever known sex until this night.

Here, at the bottom of the world, was the gateway to Heaven.

When he and Rex returned to their senses, Weevil said, “We should bottle up some of that stuff to take back home with us.”

“Great idea!” Rex rolled off his friend and onto the floor of the car.

Suddenly, something knocked at the door of the jeep.

Chapter 5: The Road Trip to Hell Commences

Chapter Text

I’ve got a dream when the darkness is over we’ll be lying in the rings of the sun.
But it’s only a dream, and tonight is for real…
—Fire, Inc., “Tonight is What It Means to Be Young” (Streets of Fire, 1984)

“Oh, crap! Who’s there?” said Rex, grabbing at the T-shirt that lay atop the pile of clothes on the floor. He pulled the shirt over his head, neck, and arms and then picked up his trousers and underthings.

“Whoever it is, they’re lucky we already came,” said Weevil. “If we hadn’t, I would have to strangle them.”

“Easy there.” Rex donned his blue jeans and zipped them up.

The stranger knocked on the door again.

“Come on, get dressed so we can talk to ‘em,” Rex continued. He must have noticed Weevil’s hesitation, because his next words were, “If you don’t put your clothes on, I’m gonna open the door anyway.”

Grumbling, Weevil picked up his own clothes from the floor. He yanked his own shirt, unmentionables, and shorts back on as Rex swung the door open.
In front of them stood a young woman whose strawberry blonde hair hung down in French braids. More importantly, however, she wore a neon orange tank top and shorts of identical color and level of eye-gouging brightness. From her shoulders hung a deep orange hiking backpack that resembled the ones Rex and Weevil themselves brought to the outback, but that seemed like an afterthought.

“‘Scuse me,” she said. “My car broke down a ways back there.” She jerked a thumb in the direction in which Rex and Weevil were headed. “Would you let me ride with you? Haven’t seen another car for miles.”

“Uh…” Rex stared at her for a moment before clearing his throat.

“Who are you?”

Now there’s a good question, thought Weevil. But why let Rex do all the talking? “Tell us who you are before we even think of giving you a ride.”

As though Weevil had said nothing, the woman giggled. “The name’s Sheila Smith. What’re yours?”

“I’m Rex Raptor, and this dude”—Rex pointed at Weevil—“is Weevil Underwood. Where you tryin’ to get to, Sheila?”

“My grandpa’s house. He’s an old man, and I’m his only grandchild. Well, the only one who ever comes to see him, anyway.” She cast her gaze at the burnt orange ground before refocusing on Rex and Weevil. “He lives in Queensland. I know that’s quite a while away, but I live quite a while away from him."

Making sure to scowl, Weevil looked at Sheila and said, “Why do you need to get to your grandpa’s house? Are you bringing him a basket of goodies in that backpack?”

“Kind of,” she said. “I can’t get there on my own now, anyway. You two’re my only hope. If you don’t take me, I’ll have to rough it out here until someone else come to rescue me, and I don’t know if I can make it very long. No one wants to be alone when they’re back of Bourke.” She jostled her backpack as if to assure herself that it contained everything she would needed for a punishing night in the outback. “What’ll it be, gents?”

Rex and Weevil looked at each other, the latter glaring into his partner’s eyes.

“Ah…” Rex began, turning back to Sheila. “Let me consult with my partner here.”

He shut the door and faced Weevil again.

“We don’t have a choice, Weeves. We gotta take her to her grandpa’s place.”

“Rex, Pegasus is in the heart of the continent. We need to drive to the center of Australia! Queensland’s in the northeast, dino-brain! We’re on a mission to save Pegasus, not help some girl get to her grandpa’s house.”

“We can do both! After we drive up to Queensland and drop this girl off, we can come back down here and rescue Pegasus. It’ll be fine.”

“How can you say that? We have no idea what’s happened to him! He could be dying! Why should we put Pegasus on hold to help some random girl wandering through the outback?”

“Come on,” Rex whispered. “Even you can’t be that heartless. Remember when we thought Kiki was gonna get killed, and you told her that we weren’t ‘such dick weeds’”—Rex made finger quotes–“that we’d let it happen? Sure, she was crying wolf the whole time, but still!”

“Kiki wasn’t a hitchhiker. You can’t trust hitchhikers. She could have a gun or a hunting knife in that backpack. You don’t know!”

“She’d have to dig to find it in there. Besides, don’t tell me you’re afraid of a skinny girl. Unless…” A sly smile crossed Rex’s face. “Oh, I get it! Well, you’ve been watching too many soap operas. Yeah, I still like girls and everything, but I’m not gonna cheat on you.”

The surprisingly quick penetration to Weevil’s true motivation made him sneer. “You like girls ‘and everything’? I was right when I said your big reptile obsession was unhealthy!”

“Shut up. Are we gonna take her, or are you gonna be responsible for another death?”

“Those creeps in Hollywood deserved to die, and you know it! But…” Weevil sighed and looked down at the floor. Nothing he could say would get Rex to budge on this matter. “Let’s try it your way and see what happens.”

“Ha, I knew you’d have to listen to reason sometime.” Rex reached for the door handle.

“But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Ignoring him, Rex opened the door to a blank-faced Sheila.

“Well, what d’you say?” she asked.

“We’re takin’ ya to Grandpa’s place,” said Rex.

As Weevil saw Sheila smile and clasp her hands together, he added, “But first, we have to work something out. We’re on our way to the middle of Australia. How are we gonna get you to your grandpa’s house and go where we need to?”

Still clasping her hands, Sheila’s smile widened. “Oh, we’ll be closer to the center than you think once we reach Grandpa’s. You’ll see.” Then she paused and looked back at the fountain. “Before you let me in, I’m going to refill my water bottle. I drained it dry waiting for someone to come pick me up, so it’s a mighty good thing you’re here.”

Wait a second…she’s going to drink the—

Weevil sprang out of the jeep and ran after Sheila, who now stood beside the fountain and removed her indigo metal water bottle from its backpack holster.
“Sheila! Wait! Don’t drink from there!”

But she unscrewed the lid and raised the open bottle to the arc of lavender liquid. The fluid began to fill the container with surprising neatness.

“What are you doing? You don’t know what this liquid is! It’s not water!”

The girl screwed the lid back onto the water bottle and took a sip. A moment later, she rubbed her belly and breathed a sigh of satisfaction.

“No, it’s definitely water. It tastes like the coolest, cleanest water I’ve ever drunk.” She placed a hand on her hip and walked back to the jeep, with Weevil following her again.

“And may I add,” Weevil continued as they both reached the car, “you have terrible taste in clothes? Day-Glo colors went out before dial-up Internet!”

Rex chuckled. “Don’t mind him, Sheila. All the females he likes have six or eight legs. We’re not gonna hurt ya, though.”

Rather than protest, Weevil reflected that Rex was right. Then he noticed Sheila’s expression blur from a bright-eyed grin to a contemplative frown. In an instant, she regained her cheerful countenance and looked at Weevil directly.

“You don’t mind if I take the back seat, do you?” She winked at him.

What’s the point of arguing? “I thought you’d never ask. Come on, Rex, let’s get on up front. You take the wheel. I’m tired of driving for now.”

Electric guitar riffs blasted from the car speakers as Rex drove up the dirt roads leading from New South Wales to Queensland. Inevitably, he and Weevil had grown tired of the music on the New Wave station, so they hunted until they discovered a station dominated by another musical trend of the 1980s: heavy metal. If Sheila found their choice disagreeable, she did not say so.

Privately, Weevil had to admit that the drive to Queensland spoke to something buried deep in his soul. Australia in general seemed like a vast terrain open for endless exploration, and this route delivered on that promise. The outback stretched out of Bourke and through the road to its northern neighboring state. All around the jeep sprawled burnt orange earth broken up by green scrub grasses. With the car windows rolled down and a cool breeze emitting from the vents, he could bear the desert heat. No wonder Sheila willingly hitched a ride with strangers: the thought of being lost in this alien wasteland was not to be entertained.

Raising her voice slightly, Sheila spoke over the guitar solo. “So, what brings you blokes to Oz? You don’t sound like you’re from here.”

“Why do you want to know?” snapped Weevil. He hoped Sheila could hear the irritation in his voice.

“Come off it, Weeves,” said Rex. “Well, Sheila, we’re on our way to see someone, too. A real important guy…uh, to us, I mean.”

She swung her legs up on the bench seat. “Oh? Who is he?”

Summoning his powers of slickness, Weevil thought of a lie. “He’s…the host of the Antipodean Duel Monsters Grand Prix.”

For an instant, Rex opened his mouth in the shape of the word “what,” but he silenced himself just in time.

“‘Scuse me?” asked Sheila. “I’ve heard of Duel Monsters, but I don’t know of any Antipodean Grand Prix.”

Now was Weevil’s chance. “You’ve never heard of the Antipodean Grand Prix? It’s only the biggest Duel Monsters tournament in the entire Southern Hemisphere! And Rex and I are gonna win it!” He winked at Rex, who briefly turned to smile at him before whipping his eyes back to the road.

“Um…yeah,” Rex continued. “You might not have heard of it, ‘cause it was just announced…last year, but it was a huge hit! We were real steamed about missing it last time, but now we’re goin’ in! We’re gonna cream all the other duelists!”

Was Rex demonstrating some creativity? Whatever caused this new craftiness on his friend’s part, Weevil felt a fire stir in his belly because of it.

“Oh, yes,” he added, raising the register of his voice. “They won’t know what ‘em when we show them the combined might of our giant monsters! We’ll rule the outback and the jungle!”

Sheila laughed. “Rule the outback? The outback’s a lawless place, mate. No rule but ‘kill or be killed.’ I doubt any of the creatures out here would respect your dueling prowess.”

“All he means is that we’ll win the Australian championship. Jeez,” said Rex. “Oh, look! A kangaroo!”

A kangaroo lounging on a flat rock to the right side of the road indeed passed Weevil’s line of vision, but knowing that Rex demonstrated his true loyalty captivated him more than the sight of a recumbent marsupial could. He just hoped that Rex could maintain the embryonic tale of the Antipodean Grand Prix.

“Good luck, I guess.” She pulled a nail file out of the pocket of her bright blue shorts and began to round off the point of the nail on her middle finger.

For another hour, Rex continued to follow the northern trail, passing more miles of orange-brown desert and plucky-looking scrub grass. Eventually, his pace slowed down until he finally stopped.

“All right, Weevil. I’m bushed. It’s your turn.” He opened his door and stepped outside.

Weevil reached for his own door to do likewise, but Sheila leaned forward and grabbed his shoulder.

“What’d you do that for?”

Ignoring Weevil, she called out the still-open driver’s-side door to Rex, “I’m going to drive.”

Rex, who was circumnavigating the jeep, replied, “That’s fine—but why?”

“I know the way. I’ll take it from here.”

So that was how it was going to be, was it? Weevil could not spend the leg of a journey next to this girl, and he would be damned if he let Rex sit beside her.
He yanked his door open and jumped in front of Rex, who now stood on the other side of the jeep.

“We’re both sitting in the back,” said Weevil. “Don’t argue with me.”

But when he saw where Sheila took them, Weevil began to wish that Rex had put up a fight instead.

The scenery itself raised no alarms; the harsh desert gave way to a dirt road flanked on either side by rows of trees and yellow and green grasses peeking their way out of the ground. Before Weevil could let himself grow too mellow, Sheila came to a fork in the road and took a sharp left turn.

Within minutes, the comparatively mild scene of heroic grasses surmounted by trees disappeared. In its place, there materialized rows of deep green grass that stretched up to the sky, which itself darkened and darkened until an expanse of blackness shot through with crackling violet light swallowed the environs.
From all appearances, the jeep’s passengers were trapped in a black hole with a thunderstorm inexplicably brewing inside.

Weevil clung to Rex like a child to its faded blue security blanket, and Rex did the same to Weevil.

“Sheila!” yelled Rex. “What the hell is this?” He shuddered against Weevil’s shoulder and neck.

“Relax, fellas,” said Sheila. “I know where we’re going.”

They burrowed through the black-and-violet vortex for what could only have been a minute or two, although it felt like an hour when the jeep emerged from the darkness and into recognizably Australian territory again. The sky was still dark, but the infinite array of stars above—more stars than Weevil had ever seen in his home town, much less in Hollywood—attested to the naturalness of the environment, as did the now-familiar trees and scrub grasses.

Before Weevil could sink into complacency, fear sunk into his stomach like a lead weight.

“Hey, it was daytime just a little while ago!” he said. “How is it nighttime all of a sudden? Can you explain that, Sheila?”

She giggled. “Well, I’d like to, but I’m afraid I can’t. Things are weird in the outback. That’s all I can say.”

After a few seconds of silence, Rex asked, “What happened to the radio? It’s gone silent.”

More knots twisted in Weevil’s gut. The jeep must have lost reception in the vortex. He tried to force the anxiety to transmute into rage as he said, “What’s going on here? Stop clowning around and give us answers!”

Rather than respond, Sheila stopped the car.

“We’re here!” she chirped.

She had parked in front of a two-story Gothic mansion, complete with turrets that would have fit comfortably atop a fortress and towers fit for a lonesome long-haired princess. An old-fashioned wrought-iron gate barred the entrance. From a distance, something emitted a canine-sounding howl. One other vehicle was parked nearby, a camper van even bigger than the jeep.

“This is your grandpa’s house?” said Weevil. “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, but I am,” said Sheila. “Let’s go in.” She opened the door and exited the car.

As the girl made her way to the gate, Weevil noticed Rex unbuckling his seat belt. The entomophile placed his hand atop his friend’s.

“If you’re about to follow her, don’t. We’ve dropped her off; we are done with this stupid side quest. We’re getting out of here.”

“What, you don’t wanna see if she gets inside safely?”

“No! She’s walking up to that gate like she owns the place. She must know how to get in, and she’s sure not acting like she’s in any danger. Look, I don’t want to spend any more time thinking about this girl than I already have. It’s my turn to drive, and I’m taking us back where we were going before she derailed us.”
Weevil removed himself from the back seat, walked around the car until he entered the still-open driver’s-side door, and seated himself behind the wheel. He turned the keys in the ignition…

And nothing happened.

No, it couldn’t be. After all these hours they had spent as Sheila’s entourage, she repaid them with this?

He turned the keys a second, a third, and a fourth time. With each turn, the dashboard lit up for a moment, and then everything fell dark with a sputtering noise.

“Um…Weevil, we’re in trouble, aren’t we?” Rex asked from the back seat.

Weevil slammed his face against the steering wheel and then pounded his fist on the dashboard.

“No, no, no, no! Nooooo! This isn’t fair! What did we do to deserve this?” Tears pricked at his eyes.

“You mean…we’re gonna die a horrible death in the outback?” Rex’s voice began to quaver. “And we’ll never rescue Peg—”

Footsteps preceded a cry of “I don’t think so, chaps!”

Turning his head to the right, Weevil saw Sheila standing beside the car. Even in the dark, he could discern her smile.

“Your car won’t start, huh? Pity. Well, Grandpa will let you stay the night.”

“Uh…” Weevil tugged at his short collar. “That’s nice of him, but we thought we might rather sleep in the car.”

“Sure you want to do that? Someone might sneak in and slit your throats open. There are dingoes out here, too. They look cute, but they’re deadly. Trust me, I know.”

Rex piped up, “Wait, I think I’ve seen this movie. We’re not going to get raped by a singing space vampire in old-fashioned underwear, are we?”

“First of all, that character wasn’t a vampire. But no, there are no lingerie-clad miscreants here to have their wicked way with you. You’ll be fine. Come on inside. You’re with me; no one’ll give you trouble.”

With a groan, Weevil looked at Rex and then at Sheila. “All. Right.”

Once Sheila opened the gate by uttering a password—“speckled eggs”—and entered the house with him and Rex in tow, Weevil discovered that the interior of the mansion outstripped his expectations. The first sight his gaze landed upon was a parlor that adhered to a two-color scheme: a cherry-colored chaise, two ochre sofas with crimson pillows, a Persian rug with a pattern of interlocking red and orange tones. A staircase divided the parlor from a white-carpeted room with a circle of small orange chairs around some kind of woven fiber mat.

“This is cool,” said Rex. “You said your grandpa lived here, so I was thinking this place would look like my grandparents’ house, with mothballs and fishing hooks on the wall and stuff, but I like what you’ve got going.” He threw his backpack on the floor and flopped down on one of the sofas.

As if she had not seen him, Sheila thrust one hand on her hip and scanned the room. “Where is that servant girl? She was supposed to be here to take your things. And where’s Grandpa?”

“I’m here, m’dear,” said a scratchy voice from such proximity that it made Weevil jump.

“Oh! Hello, Grandpa!” said Sheila.

A man whom Weevil must not have seen arose from one of the chairs in the other room and crossed over to the parlor. Dressed in an orange shirt and strangely matching khakis, he greeted Sheila with a grin.

“Hello, Sheila. So glad to see you again. And—oh!” He spotted Rex on the sofa and Weevil standing by. “Who are these two young men you’ve brought home?”
Rather than allow Sheila to introduce him, Weevil said, “I’m Weevil Underwood, and the guy on the couch is Rex Raptor. We’re here for the Antipodean Duel Monsters Grand Prix.”

The older man paused. “Antipodean Duel Monsters Grand Prix? I can’t say I’ve heard of such a thing.”

“Well, it just started last year,” said Rex, not bothering to get off the couch. “We missed it when it started, but this year, we’re gonna slam the competition.”

“Yes,” Weevil continued. “We’ll be famous in a whole new continent!”

“Well…I wish you luck,” said the host.

As Weevil got a closer look at the man whom Sheila called Grandpa, he noticed something odd. This man had several gray strands in his short brown hair, but otherwise, he bore no signs that marked him as old. He had to be in his middle fifties at most. Was this man really anyone’s grandfather? Perhaps “Grandpa” was an affectionate title rather than a suitable descriptive term…but what, then, was Sheila’s relationship to this man? Was it best not to think about it?

“Anyway,” the host said, “you look as though you’ve had a long day.”

“We sure have!” said Rex, before Weevil could stop him.

The entomophile cleared his throat. “What my friend is trying to say is, we helped Sheila get here because her car broke down, and as soon as we arrived, our car stopped and wouldn’t start again.”

“What a shame. Our servant can fix it for you pretty soon,” the middle-aged man said. Then his voice assumed a low, growling tone. “In fact, she should be here right now. That lazy thing’s probably asleep.” He seemed to remember to whom he was talking and then said, “Sheila, why don’t you make it easier on these two blokes by helping them carry their luggage upstairs?”

Weevil held up his hand. “Uh, we’ll take care of it ourselves.”

“Are you sure?” asked Sheila. “I can help you.”

“No, I insist. Come on, Rex.”

Rex lifted himself from the sofa, hauled his backpack up from the floor, and followed Weevil up the staircase.

“Don’t you want to receive the grand tour?” Sheila asked.

“We’re fine!” said Rex.

“We’ll call you when dinner’s ready!” shouted the host.

The upstairs hallway reminded Weevil of a boutique hotel. He might have only made that association for lack of experience inside Gothic mansions, but the surroundings made him feel like a guest in a swankier resort than he had ever been able to afford. Medieval-looking tapestries depicting scenes of knights on horseback and balladeers crooning to ribbon-bedecked ladies in towers covered the rich brown walls. Another orange-and-red Persian rug spread throughout the entire length and width of the floor. Against the wall squatted small wooden tables laden with copper ornaments in long, thin shapes that Weevil did not care to analyze. All the doors looked heavy, and their brass knockers and doorknobs blended in somewhat with the brown paint that coated the paneling.
To make matters more uneasy, whenever he or Rex knocked at a door, a voice replied from behind, saying that the room was occupied.

“So, we’re at another boarding house,” said Rex.

“Just what we need.”

“Well, it kind of is just what we need. Our car won’t start. We gotta have a place to sleep.”

“Think about it, Rex. If we hadn’t halted our plans so we could drive Sheila here, we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.”

“You’re saying we should have let her stay lost in the outback? What’s gotten into you? Are you still jealous? Wait, there’s one door left.”

They had reached the end of the hallway. A lone door stood before them, almost daring them to knock on it.

Weevil took hold of the brass door knocker and rapped upon the brown painted surface with it. No reply issued forth.

He turned the doorknob, and the door swung open to reveal a clean room containing two neatly made beds, a nightstand between said beds, and a writing desk outfitted with little drawers.

“This looks…tasteful,” said Weevil. “But let’s not let our guard down.”

Rex pushed past Weevil, threw his backpack on the floor, and sank face-down on the nearest bed.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m gonna go right to sleep. Wanna join me? There’s room enough for two on this bed…”

“Argh!” Weevil wrung his hands. “We can’t fall asleep now! We should be formulating a plan to rescue Pegasus!”

The other duelist rolled onto his side. “Then maybe you should fall asleep. Your dreams might tell you something about where he is.”

“Rex!”

“What? It’s not like we have anything else to go on. You said so yourself.”

“Hmph. All right.”

Weevil removed his backpack and set it beside the other. He then climbed onto the bed and lay on his side, wrapping his arm around Rex.

Despite what was normally the comforting presence of his friend and lover, Weevil found himself awake for the next several minutes, even as Rex fell asleep. When his closest companion, the man he had rescued from death at the risk of his own life, failed to calm Weevil out of a neurotic emotional state, then he knew something was wrong. Even watching a sleeping Rex’s rhythmic breathing did nothing to loosen the tension in Weevil’s muscles.

Maybe Rex is dreaming of Pegasus…or Red Eyes, Weevil mused. He’d better. When we get back on the road, I am going to teach him a lesson…somehow.

As it had before, a knock on the door interrupted Weevil’s thoughts.

“Housekeeping,” said a weary-sounding voice.

If the housekeeper doesn’t like seeing two guys sleep together, then that’s their problem. “Come in!”

The door opened with a creaking noise, and in stepped an individual clad not in orange but a navy blue maid’s outfit, complete with starched white apron. In one hand, the housekeeper wielded a white plastic caddy containing bathroom-cleaning supplies; the other hand closed around a feather duster.

Surely this was the servant whom the middle-aged man referred to—but both he and Sheila said the servant was female. For all that this person wore a dress, however, they looked more like the Swami Chinmayi than Sheila herself. With their black hair above shoulder length, a lightly muscular frame, and broad shoulders but no facial hair, the servant could be a cross-dressing barely teenage boy, an underdeveloped young woman, or something else.

“So, you’re the new people?” asked the housekeeper in a voice that gave no hint about its owner’s biological sex.

“Yes,” Weevil replied. “You look surprised.”

The androgyne shrugged. “The Miss Sheila who last gave me my orders said there were a couple of new guys at the end of the hall.”

“How is that weird? You’re a boarding house, aren’t you? You should get new people all the…” Suddenly, the housekeeper’s exact words sank in. “Wait a minute, the Miss Sheila?”

A look of horror passed over the housekeeper’s face.

“Oh, Gawd. I’ve said too much. Er, you’re here for the ‘Antipodean Duel Monsters Grand Prix’?” Their voice raised in pitch, as if the notion of a Duel Monsters tournament heightened their sudden fear.

Best to keep up the lie. “Yes. We’ve been looking forward to it all year.”

The housekeeper’s gaze darted from one end of the room to another. Finally, they said, “I’ll have to tell—er, Miss Sheila that you were sleeping and couldn’t be disturbed. She’ll like that I’m able to get ready for dinner early. See you then, but be very careful.”

They turned around, exited the room, and shut the door, leaving Weevil to marinate in a stew of ever-increasing confusion.

Dinnertime arrived, and with it, an additional pile of strangeness. After shaking Rex awake, Weevil dragged him downstairs, where they met the other residents of the mansion.

Unlike dinner at the Watering Hole, the evening meal here was attended by at least ten people in addition to Rex and Weevil. At the handsome polished wooden table sat five men and five women, the former dressed in orange suits that accentuated the broadness of their shoulders and the narrowness of their hips and the latter clad in tight orange dresses. Weevil thought the men looked overdressed for the climate, but he declined to comment. Instead, he attempted to focus more on the food, which lay atop the pale orange tablecloth in a neat arrangement. Small white plates of roasted fish and other plates of lettuce and spinach surrounded two large silver plates of what could only be kangaroo meat. In front of each plate of orange china, which sat in front of every chair, was a matching soup bowl.

Soon, a sixth man, the middle-aged fellow who had met them earlier, took his seat at the head of the table.

“Now that I have arrived, we may begin. You may help yourselves, but wait for the soup. Binda will bring it.”

While the other diners began loading their plates with meat and vegetables, Weevil motioned for Rex to avoid following suit.

But I’m hungry, Rex mouthed.

So am I, but the housekeeper said to be careful.

As though on cue, the housekeeper emerged from the kitchen, carrying an orange soup tureen that looked nearly as big as their head. A ladle stuck out from inside the tureen.

“Soup’s ready, madams and sirs,” they said.

Binda traversed the length of the table, scooping soup into every bowl, and Weevil noticed something that unsettled him still further. Not only did Binda speak to each diner directly, but they addressed every man as “Mister Jones” and every woman as “Miss Sheila.” The only exception was the man at the head of the table, whom Binda called “Old Man Jones.” The display looked wrong even to Weevil, but he noticed one of the men glaring at him when he opened his mouth.

Then Binda reached the other end of the table, where Rex and Weevil sat. The servant looked down into the tureen and immediately donned an exaggerated frown.

“Oh, jeez,” they said, gazing at Old Man Jones. “We’re out of soup.”

“Then go and make some more,” he growled. “And remember the special ingredient that we give to all our new guests!”

“Yes, Old Man Jones.” Binda ran back into the kitchen.

“Don’t run! Watch what you’re doing with the tureen, for Gawd-damned sake!” he called. Then he smiled at Rex and Weevil.

“I’m sorry Binda is slow and forgetful. We try to teach her to do better. She’ll be back with specially flavored soup made just for you. It won’t take too long.”
Waiting for the specially flavored soup took longer than Weevil or, evidently, Old Man Jones and his tenants anticipated. Some of the men tried to make small talk with one another, but most of the diners twiddled their thumbs or stared off into space. Old Man Jones’s countenance wore a frown, which deepened and deepened progressively.

“So,” said Rex, “does anyone here play Duel Monsters?”

All the other diners turned their heads to look at Rex. The frown evaporated from Old Man Jones’s face.

“We’re familiar with the game,” he said. “In fact, you said it had something to do with why you’re here, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Rex continued. “We came for the Antipodean Duel Monsters Grand Prix!”

The girl who had driven Rex and Weevil to the mansion stood up and pushed in her chair. “Excuse me, everyone. I’m going to see what’s taking Binda so long.” She walked up to the kitchen door, opened it, and went inside.

Along with Rex, Weevil improvised details about the imaginary tournament. They had just finished adding a grand prize of fire breath and the ability to control magnets to it when Sheila Smith re-entered the dining room, carrying the soup tureen.

“Sorry about that again.” She poured soup into Rex’s bowl and then Weevil’s. “Binda can be so thick-headed. Anyway, if you don’t eat anything else while you’re here, try the soup. We insist upon it,” she said with a pronounced sibilance.

After a moment’s hesitation, Weevil scooped a spoonful of soup into his mouth.

Within the next twenty-five minutes, the two duelists lay engaged in another bout, this time in the bed where Rex had napped and where Weevil had tried to nap.

“Weeves, I had a boner for you the whole time we were at dinner.” Rex nipped and sucked at his friend’s neck.

Weevil felt his toes curl up, his fingers outstretch, his consciousness start to fade. “Oh…sex with you was always perfect, but now it’s…it’s…better than perfect.” He could have stayed locked like this forever. The feeling of Rex’s lips and tongue on his throat exceeded the thrill of winning any tournament, real or fictional. When Rex brought his mouth down to Weevil’s chest, the entomophile stifled a scream. Usually, Rex had to descend to a lower territory to elicit such a response from Weevil, but something about this encounter stimulated him more than he ever imagined.

In fact, the stimulation succeeded so well and swiftly that the act ended a few minutes later. Rex reached his own ending shortly thereafter.

The tranquility of their post-coital cuddling shattered under the noise of another knock on the door.

“Damn it!” said Weevil. “Who is it?”

“Housekeeping.”

“Well, we’re a little busy!”

“I knew you would be. Please let me in. You cannot go to bed before you hear what I have to tell you.”

With a groan, the comparatively less undressed Rex rose from the bed, approached the door, and opened it. Binda entered, and Rex closed the door behind them.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” said the housekeeper. “The folks here, they ain’t no human beings.”

“Some people have said the same thing about Rex and me,” said Weevil.

“No, I mean it. They’re monsters.”

“We saw the way they treated you at dinner,” Rex said. “Do you want us to beat them up for you?”

Binda shook their head rapidly. “No! Don’t play the hero on my behalf. I came here because I thought you might be the blokes I need, and I want to make a deal with you. So, first, I have to ask: what’re you doing in Australia? I can tell you’re not from here.”

“…Promise you won’t tell on us?” asked Rex.

“Rex!” said Weevil. “Don’t give anything away!” Then he clapped a hand over his mouth, mentally berating himself.

“What’s there to give away?” Rex said. “You just gave something away by saying we had something to give away.”

Weevil sighed. “Okay. We’re in Australia because we heard that Maximillion Pegasus was lost, and we were on our way to rescue him until we picked up Sheila. Well, one of the ‘Miss Sheilas.’”

Binda exhaled their relief. “Oh! Thank Gawd! Then you are the blokes I need!”

“What do you mean?” said Rex.

“What if I told you that Maximillion Pegasus was closer than you think? Like, say, just a short distance away from this mansion?”

“That can’t be true,” said Weevil. “Just before we left to save Pegasus, we heard that he was in southeast Australia, and then I had a —uh, I was told that he was in the ‘heart of the continent.’ Queensland’s in the northeast!”

“I can’t explain that, but Pegasus is here on these grounds, as sure as I’m standing in front of you. Now, here’s the deal. Your car’s broken down, right? Well, I’m gonna fix it for you. Then, once it’s fixed, we’ll pick up Pegasus from his prison, and you’ll take me out of here with him. It don’t matter where you’re going; I never wanna see this awful place or these Gawd-damned people—these things—ever again.” They balled their hands into fists. “Other problem is, you’re not safe tonight unless I’m standing guard for you. The…well, my masters expect me in bed by now, but if they spot me up and about, I can tell ‘em that I got up to go to the bathroom. That’ll hold ‘em.”

Suddenly, Weevil was glad that he was sitting down in bed while taking in this information.

“I’m in,” said Rex. “Are you, Weeves?”

“I’ll do anything to save Pegasus,” he said.

“Good. I can’t thank you enough for what you’re going to do for me,” said Binda. “Oh, Gawd, there’ll finally be an end to this misery. Thank you, thank you. I’ll have your car repaired in a jiff.”

No one suspected the misery that was to come.

Chapter 6: Weevil Discovers Pegasus and Something Much Worse

Notes:

Update: a continuity error has been removed.

Chapter Text

All I wanted was a piece of the night.
I never got an equal share.
Now the stars are out of sight, and the moon is down;
The natives are so restless tonight.
All I needed was a spot in the light.
It never had to get so dark.
Now the stars are out of sight, and the moon is down;
The natives are so restless tonight!

—Pandora's Box, "Original Sin (The Natives Are Restless)" (Original Sin, 1988)

With another sigh of relief, Binda spun on their heels and began to run out of the room.

An urgent thought stung Weevil’s mind. “Hang on there! When will the car be ready?”

Suddenly, Binda jerked to a halt. They turned around to face the duelists. “Oh, yeah. Can’t believe I forgot to tell you. If I do everything right, and I know I can, I should have it fixed by tomorrow morning.”

Rex’s mouth dropped open. “Tomorrow morning? And you’re doing it free of charge?”

”It ain’t free of charge. You’re paying me by getting me outta here.”

”Wait a second,” said Weevil, rubbing his chin. “If you’re so good with cars, why don’t you just drive away from this place?”

Binda shook their head. “It ain’t that simple. I tried stealing their car one night, but I couldn’t drive more than a few miles away. When I got to the tunnel, I couldn’t go inside it. It was like an invisible wall stopped me. I just drove back here and put the car back in its place. The only good thing was that no one caught me. If someone had…” They looked down at the floor and then up at the duelists. “Well, I think Pegasus is gonna hold for one more night.”

The housekeeper’s choice of words made Weevil squeeze Rex’s arm involuntarily. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

”It means that he’s not about to die, but it’s best if we get him out as soon as possible. I can’t do it alone, or else I would have. Now that you’re here, we can save him.”

Rex folded his arms. “But where is he, exactly?”

”I can tell you firsthand that Pegasus is in…” The housekeeper shuddered. “He’s in the Compound.”

”The Compound?” asked Rex. His expression did not reveal whether he mentally heard that word with a capital C, as Weevil had.

”It’s where they keep their prisoners—well, for now it’s just the one prisoner—and their pets.”

Both the duelists gulped. “Their pets?”

”Trust me, you don’t wanna know about ‘em. If we play our cards right, you’ll never have to see ‘em. Now, the Compund’s in a real outta-the-way place, but you can get there by car…or you could take the other way.”

Weevil’s ears perked up. “What do you mean?”

Binda sighed. ”I didn’t wanna tell you this ‘cause I was afraid of what you might do, but I suppose I might as well. There’s another way to get there besides driving.”

”You mean…” An inappropriately happy smile spread across Rex’s face. “There’s a secret passageway?”

”Oh, there’s gotta be,” said Binda, nodding. “When they make me go with them to the Compound, they all pile into the car. But I don’t always go with them. Sometimes they leave me here for hours or even days, and when they come back, they’ve obviously been there. They come back in their costumes, and they’re all dirty. The people and the costumes, I mean. I never see them take the car those times…so there must be a path from this house to the Compound. For all I know, there could be one in every room.”

Rex’s voice rose. “Then what’s the problem? We can just find the passage, sneak outta here tonight, and rescue Pegasus! Just give us the jail keys.” He stretched out his hand in apparent anticipation.

Binda shook their head. “No way, mate. It’s much too dangerous for you to go without me guiding you. I know how to navigate that place, and you don’t. I’ll spend all night working on your car if I have to, and early in the morning, before they get up, I’ll wake you, and we’ll drive down to the Compound and save Pegasus. I have the tools to get him out, but I didn’t get to use them until you got here. We’ll all see each other then. G’night.”

”Uh…good night,” said Weevil.

Binda turned around again and walked out of the room, closing the door behind them.

For the next several minutes, Rex and Weevil sat on their bed, knowing that Binda stood guard outside by the door. Neither man spoke a word.

Finally, Rex pushed himself off the bed and rose to his feet. “Well, the housekeeper’s gone. Let’s go look for that secret passageway.”

Weevil grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back down. ”Are you crazy, Rex? We’re supposed to wait until tomorrow morning!”

”Come on, do you really wanna stay here when Pegasus needs our help? Don’t you care about the mission?”

After jerking his arm out of Weevil’s grasp, Rex stood up and ran his hand along the nearest wall. As he watched his partner grope the wallpaper, Weevil reflected on Rex’s words. He was entirely too correct: Pegasus did need their help. Ishizu had assigned them this mission for a reason, and even had she not, millions of Duel Monsters players around the world would suffer a terrible loss at Pegasus’s death.

Furthermore, did not he, Weevil, owe something to Pegasus? That marvelous man had sauntered through the fields of Weevil’s mind recently for a reason. Pegasus was Weevil’s first crush and thereby his introduction to his own sexuality. When no one Weevil’s age would approach him as more than a game opponent, Pegasus took him to dinner and made him feel special. By creating Duel Monsters, Pegasus had brought Weevil together with Rex…and with Rex and Rex alone, Weevil knew what love was.

He jumped off the bed and ran up to stand beside Rex.

”You’re right!”

Rex paused in his search of the wall. “You think I’m right?” He grinned and rubbed his chin with his thumb and forefinger. “Maybe I should call more of the shots from now on.”

”Think about that later. We have to help Pegasus! I’m going to look over there.”

Weevil walked over to the entertainment center, reflecting how odd it was that this bizarre establishment had a large television with a cable hookup while the comparatively wholesome Watering Hole had none. He peered around the edge of the cabinet but saw only wires, cables, and an electrical outlet.

”Whatcha doing over there?” asked Rex.

”Didn’t you ever see a movie where someone tried to find a secret passageway? They’re always hidden behind bookcases or fireplaces.”

”But there’s no bookcase or fireplace in here.”

”Obviously! This entertainment center is the closest thing…but I don’t see any hidden doorway or anything.” He caught himself pouting and erased the expression before Rex could see it.

”Well, it’s gotta be somewhere around here! How else would those weirdos be getting to their…Compound?”

With no further words, Weevil continued to run his hand along the wall for anything that felt hollow. Then, suddenly, his hand stopped as if instantly paralyzed. His entire body stiffened. A new flame ignited in his loins and belly. Making sure that he smiled in as venal a manner as possible, he walked back to Rex and took him by the free hand.

”Weren’t we having sex until the housekeeper came in?” Weevil asked.

”Oh, yeah. We should get back to that.”

They did, and the sensations sent more electric currents through Weevil’s flesh than ever before. For all that the pleasure receded as though it had never occurred when Binda interrupted their love-making, that delight returned thrice over.

”We can’t have sex all the time, but can we try?” said Weevil, clutching Rex in his arms upon completion of the bout.

Rex yawned, and Weevil caught a whiff of his soup-scented breath. “Yeah, after we take a rest. I’m sleepy after all that hot f*cking.”

”How can you sleep when I’ve still got a boner the size of the Insect Queen?”

”If your boner’s the size of an insect, you’re a freak of nature,” said Rex with a laugh.

Weevil sighed. “No! The Insect Queen is massive! She’s as big as most of your dinosaurs! Do I really have to explain that to you?”

”Aw, I’m just funnin’ ya. Now, let me sleep, will you? We can get back to our f*cking after we’ve gotten plenty of shut-eye.” Rex wriggled out of Weevil’s embrace and turned over, long hair splaying across the pearl-gray pillow.

As he watched his ultimate friend fall asleep, Weevil felt his own eyelids grow heavy. The depredations of Hypnos began to weigh upon him, and soon, his perception of his friend, the bed, and the boarding house room dissipated.

In their place appeared the interior of a cavern. Dressed in hiking gear, Weevil navigated the empty cave system, the flaming torch in his hand lighting his way through the otherwise impenetrable darkness.

Suddenly, he heard a series of low growls coming from ahead. The sound of something striking against a surface echoed through the air, followed immediately by a roar of pain.

Against his better judgment, Weevil raced forward to see what made the horrible noises. He entered a dead end illuminated an unseen source of light, though a faint crackling sound indicated that someone had started a fire. The sight he saw next sent him into a screeching halt.

Chained to a wooden post by the neck, Red-Eyes Black Dragon slumped on his belly. A blindfold slipped halfway over his eyes. He raised his head and tried to spit a fireball in the air, but all that emerged from his throat was a spurt of blood. Several feet above Red-Eyes, on a stone platform connected to the cave wall, stood a hooded figure whose own eyes glowed orange in the dark. When the figure moved closer to Red-Eyes, Weevil could see that the stranger’s robe matched the eyes, and so did the whip that the unknown person brandished.

”Red-Eyes! Speak to me!” cried Weevil.

The robed stranger brought his whip down on the dragon’s neck, striking between the spines. Red-Eyes roared, and in that moment, Weevil saw blood trickling down Red-Eyes’s skin and onto the cave floor.

”This dragon can’t talk to you, boy,” said the whipmaster. “We’ve fixed him. He’s our property.”

As Red-Eyes emitted more pathetic growls, Weevil shrieked, “No! What have they done to you? Red-Eyes! Red-Eyes!”

When he awoke, thrashing, he saw an empty space beside him in bed. To ensure that his eyes did not deceive him—he wore no spectacles when sleeping, after all—he ran his hands along the mattress and pillow. He touched nothing but cotton sheets.

Cold sweat beginning to bead on his forehead, Weevil sat up, took a few moments searching for his socks, and pulled them on. He slid out of bed and onto his feet, not taking care to make up the bed afterward.

As far as he could determine, there were two possibilities. One was that the suspect people from downstairs had abducted Rex. Weevil dismissed this idea almost instantly. Even if they had subdued Binda (which was all too likely a possibility), why would they kidnap Rex but leave Weevil untouched? The other option was that Rex had found the secret passageway. If he had, however, why did he not awaken Weevil and tell him where it was? Of course, it would be like Rex to simply forget something important…

Forgetting something important? With that phrase newly in mind, he licked his teeth and discovered a film coating them. In a haste surprising to himself, Weevil dashed to the suite’s built-in bathroom and flicked on the light switch, half expecting to see a dead body sprawled on the tiles.

Instead, the bathroom’s floor, cabinets, and shower glistened white and spotless. Weevil grabbed his toothbrush from the counter and suddenly realized that he could see no tube of toothpaste in the bathroom.

That’s weird. Didn’t I set my toothpaste on the counter with the toothbrush? Maybe it’s under the sink.

He knelt down, opened the cabinet door, and saw some items scattered inside: a white plastic box containing dental floss and fingernail clippers, a miniature First Aid kit, an inexplicably present pack of strawberry-flavored chewing gum, and, beneath it all, some translucent beige and brown shopping bags.

Hmmm…it could be under these bags.

When he shoved the other items aside and lifted up the bags, he found not a red-and-white tube promising clean, shiny teeth after proper use but a small orange button similar to the kind seen on arcade machines.

Then he took a second look at the space of wall behind the cabinet. Upon first glance, it had simply seemed dark for the same reason the interior of any cabinet was dark. Looking at it now, however, Weevil realized that there was no wall there but instead an empty space. His eyes turned to the orange button again, and his heart caught itself in a limbo between lifting and sinking. Nonetheless, he knew what he had to do.

”This is for Rex—and for Pegasus,” he whispered just before he crawled into the cabinet, taking care not to press the button with his legs. He only wished he could have brought a flashlight.

For the next strand of unmeasured time, Weevil kept his hand firmly on the wall as he descended farther and deeper into the inky blackness. While the path below his bedroom sock-clad feet was soft enough to be dirt, the walls were made of stone. To keep his nerves from fraying until the breaking point, he hummed all the nursery rhymes he knew. When the last nursery rhyme deserted his memory bank, he resorted to show tunes, hoping no one would hear and recognize them. By that time, his eyes had adjusted to the dark, though he continued to drag his hand along the wall.

Eventually, the path diverged. With his newly adjusted vision, Weevil could see a pair of tunnels split from each other by another stone wall.

He cursed this unexpected encounter with rotten luck. How was he to know which direction to take? If only he had brought a coin.

Then another sound joined his volley of swears: the sound of something metallic pouring like solid rain onto another metallic surface. The sound seemed to emanate from the tunnel on the left.

A sign of life? I should go that way!

As Weevil walked onward, the sound grew louder and louder. A few rats and bats appeared on his path, causing Weevil’s curiosity about what in the living hell was under this house to grow piqued.

Suddenly, as he took another step, a burst of yellow light assaulted his vision, and he had to shade his eyes with his arm—belatedly, of course. Grumbling, he squeezed his eyes shut and left them so for several seconds. When he opened his eyes and looked at the source of the light, he gasped.

He had entered a small cave, one that looked all too similar to the site of Red-Eyes’s torture in his dream. Against one wall, a light shone, illuminating the sight of a familiar figure sitting in a pile of coins and sifting it through his fingers.

He ran ahead, knowing that with every step he was gaining on—

”Rex! Rex, it’s me!”

The other man looked up from his stash of coins and directly at Weevil. By the light shining on the wall, Weevil could see Rex’s bright-eyed, open-mouthed smile. Before the entomophile could say anything else, Rex sprang onto the ground and raced toward Weevil, catching him in a running hug tight enough to bruise his friend’s sides.

For a moment, they did nothing but embrace. Rex captured Weevil’s lips in a kiss and then broke oral contact to say, ”I was afraid I’d never see you again. Hell, I was afraid I’d never see the light of day again. But you’re here.” He burrowed his face into Weevil’s shoulder.

Weevil basked in the attention for several seconds until Rex grabbed him by the wrist and led him to the other end of the cave. As he approached the pile of coins, the spirit of acquisitiveness howled in his heart and lit a fire in his fingers. When he gazed upon the coin pile up close, he felt as though he exhaled that fire in his gasp.

The material heaped up on the cave floor indeed consisted largely of coins—golden coins, specifically—but gold currency was only the beginning. Upon closer inspection, the pile of treasure yielded baubles that Weevil instantly snatched up: silver rings topped by spiders that carried obsidian hourglasses on their backs, pendants shaped like moths with wings made of featherweight gold and inset with emerald and sapphire spots, a miniature statue of a golden praying mantis with white diamond eyes.

”I don’t believe it!” he cried. “Treasure that’s ours for the taking, and it’s shaped like bugs?” His heart leapt. He could not have asked for a sweeter moment than if he had prayed to become a black widow spider on the verge of receiving a nuptial gift. Wishing that he had brought a burlap sack, Weevil slipped one of the spider rings onto his finger and set his first handful of precious metallic objects on the ground. Then he dug two-handedly through the pile, searching for more arthropods wrought of gold and silver. He heard Rex step away from him and walk up to another section of the cave, one containing other pile that Weevil had not noticed earlier.

”They’re not just bug-shaped! Lookee here.”

Weevil turned his gaze away from the hoard of treasure and toward Rex, who held up a football-sized, white-shelled spheroid veined with gold and encrusted with what appeared to be rubies. “Isn’t this the coolest? It’s like a dinosaur’s egg!” A few steps later, he handed the egg to Weevil, who felt a few of the rings drop from his hands under the new treasure’s weight.

”There’s more where it came from, too. Look!” In a flash, Rex darted to the other treasure pile and back. He held a trio of long, thick, pointed claws, which looked less menacing for their golden coloration, in both hands. “These look like Deinonychus claws dipped in gold. I mean, they can’t be real, ‘cause Deinonychus didn’t live in Australia, but you gotta admit, the resemblance is uncanny.” Rex held his focus on the golden claws, as though their sparkle captivated him. Then he returned to the other mound of treasure as Weevil resumed digging through the coin pile for more insectoid and arachnid treasures.

“We could buy Kaiba Corporation!” cried Rex. “We’re richer than Pegasus!”

At his lover’s last sentence, Weevil stopped clawing through the coins. Several seconds later, Rex sprang back up from his own pile of treasure with a gold and silver scale clutched between his fingers.

”See, here’s the thing I don’t get. If all this treasure is dinosaur-themed, then why make a scale? Why not a feather? Maybe it’s ancient treasure and they didn’t know the difference between dinosaurs and dragons?”

Weevil stood up. “Rex, go back to what you were just saying.”

”Okay. See, I think this treasure has to be shaped like dinosaur stuff, not real dinosaur stuff, but—”

”No. Before that.”

”I said, ‘We’re richer than Pegasus!’” He paused. “Oh. Oh. Oh my gawd! We’re supposed to be rescuing Pegasus, not digging for gold! Come to think of it…what’s this stuff doing here?”

Before Weevil could form an answer, the sound of hissing pierced the air.

He and Rex stared into each other’s eyes.

“What the hell is that noise?” said Weevil.

“I don’t know, but let’s not stick around to find out. Get what treasure you can, and let’s scram!”

Rather than protest that Rex should not issuing orders to him, Weevil clutched the “dinosaur egg” to his chest and began to run.

He could only begin to run. At the time, he did not see what snatched him up from behind.

”You’re alive! I feared you had left this world for good.”

The sound of that unmistakable voice brought Weevil to an upright sitting position. When he placed his hands on either side of him, he felt a cold, hard floor. However, the voice he heard possessed a strange warmth. At last, Weevil had found his quarry.

”Maximillion Pegasus?” Weevil opened his eyes to see the inventor of Duel Monsters kneeling in front of him. Presenting a stark contrast to his usual well-dressed, elegant appearance, Pegasus wore a black fur pelt that left half his chest bare and came down to his knees. Even in his teenage fantasies, Weevil had not pictured his idol in such attire. Worse, scars decorated Pegasus’s chest, and an unsightly purple bruise marred one side of his face.

Scanning his eyes around the room and then immediately cursing, Weevil saw that he and Pegasus were behind bars in a medieval-style dungeon. The floor and walls were made of stone, and a trickle of something cold and wet dripped from the ceiling. A few patches of green-brown mold stained the floor here and there. In the middle of the cell lay a brick wall that looked approximately three feet high, and behind that brick wall sat a gigantic nest made of straw and hair. The nest was empty, so Weevil detected the open doorway behind it. An empty room stretched before them. This entire place had to be the Compound of which Binda spoke.

”Weevil boy! You’ve come back.” Pegasus’s voice jarred Weevil out of his gloomy scenery observation and back to the sight of the man himself. A small smile appeared on the older man’s face and departed just as suddenly. “I hoped we would meet each other again, but I neither wanted nor expected it to be under such circ*mstances.”

Just as he had years before, Weevil froze up when trying to formulate a response to Pegasus. “Uh…I didn’t want us to meet like this, either. But…how’d you get here?”

“That, my boy, is a long, sad story. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The Millennium Items are no more. But…” Pegasus hung his head.

”What do you mean, Mister Pegasus? The Millennium Items? What is ‘this way’?”

Pegasus sighed. “I suppose I should tell the story from the beginning. You surely know that I traveled to Egypt to find the inspiration for Duel Monsters?”

Weevil nodded. “Everyone who knew anything about Duel Monsters back then knew that!”

”Well, there were other travels I never told the public about. One of my foreign sojourns was to the Australian outback. I was drinking at a pub in Queensland one night when I had a conversation with a young woman. She came up to me and asked me if I were the creator of Duel Monsters. Of course, I told her the truth. She became excited and asked if I could design some special cards for her group, never to be released officially. I accepted, under the condition that she told me why she and her associates wanted their own cards.

”She said that most card games were useless, but these were to be for ‘religious purposes,’ and so she gave me images I was to use when designing the cards. Some of these were photographs; others were her own group’s reconstructions of these creatures based on what they could discern from some of the original images. But they were all photographs or drawings of ancient carvings and idols…carvings and idols even older than the Egyptians’. Understand, Weevil boy, that I had volumes of information on the ancient world, and I had never seen images like these before. No book I read or Web site I visited depicted them, until…

He paused to inhale. “Until, that is, one of my subordinates found an out-of-print tome from the 1920s that wrote of the Order of Ophiuchus.”

”The Order of what? Is it anything like the…” He could not bring himself to form the words.

“No, the Order of Ophiuchus has no allegiance to the organization that troubled the world those years ago. But the Order’s focal point has a similar aesthetic, you might say. Or perhaps it’s an even worse one.”

”I don’t think I even want to understand you.”

”You must, Weevil boy. Your survival depends on it. If anything, the Order of Ophiuchus would be a rival to that society. This one can boast less success but more longevity. You see, according to the book, the Order of Ophiuchus is another group of snake-worshipers, which is nothing unusual throughout history, but they claim to be the very first people to have ever revered snakes. Their snake god is the original, or so the book said, and they care much more for serpents than they do for mankind.

”When I read this information, I had finished designing all but one card based on the images that woman gave me. I dared not create the final one, the one based on their greatest god. Their mission was all too clear to me. So, the next time I met their representative, I gave her the cards I had designed and simply neglected to mention that I never created the most important one. I said my goodbye and left, never expecting to hear from her or her group again.”

”Then what happened?”

Pegasus brushed a newly forming tear from his one eye. “Because I thought it was safe, I decided to return to Queensland. The cult never troubled me between my initial meeting with their representative and…last month, if I’m counting correctly. I wanted to take a trip to Australia’s famous eastern coast and visit wine country later on. But it was not to be.

”I stopped in the same pub I had years ago, and the same woman showed up. That time, she wasn’t alone. She had a gaggle of her horrid fellow cult members assault and abduct me. They dragged me to their hideout, tied me to a chair in front of an easel, and demanded that I paint their serpent god for them. I had to refuse them, even as they claimed they would throw me in their dungeon. They did, and they swore they wouldn’t release me until I design that card. But it’s too late now.”

”How is it too late?” Weevil suddenly realized that he had seen no canvas, paints, or paintbrush anywhere in the cell.

”Last night, the guard came in and saw that I hadn’t painted even a stroke of their devilish monster. He took the art supplies from me and laughed in my face. ‘Card games have only one purpose, and that purpose is power,’ he said. He told me that I had taken too long and they were tired of waiting. Now the cult is going to try to make the card themselves and impregnate it with their own powers.”

Weevil threw his hands up to stop Pegasus’s speech. “Hang on. What happens if they use this card based on the snake god?”

”Activating their god as a monster card is as close as they can get to really summoning him in the flesh. They think his presence will restore their reign on Earth.”

”Wait a minute, restore? These weirdos used to rule the world?”

”Earth’s rulers were not always human.”

Weevil let the implications of that sentence sink in. Like Binda, Pegasus was being vague, but Binda’s and Pegasus’s words lined up perfectly in such a specific way that Weevil’s most dire suspicions worsened further.

Wearily, he stood up. “Mister Pegasus, why don’t we escape through the doorway over there? We could climb over the wall, and there’s nothing in the nest.”

A bitter chuckle arose from Pegasus’s throat. “Oh, my dear boy, the only reason that nest is empty is because the thing that brought you here just left to find your friend.”

The heat drained out of Weevil’s body. He barely heard Pegasus say, “You two ended up together after all, eh? I knew it. But then, I didn’t need a Millennium Item to see the sparks between you…”

Just then, a series of high-pitched bleats and brisk footsteps burst into the dungeon. Weevil looked to see their source…

Mister Jones, the man in black who tried to murder Rex and Weevil at the Watering Hole, led a struggling lamb inside the chamber with one hand. He held a long-bladed knife in the other.

Chapter 7: Rex Tears the Roof off the Sucker

Chapter Text

We drink your blood and then we eat your soul;
Nothing’s gonna stop us, let the bad times roll.
—Jim Steinman, “Der Tanz der Vampire” (Tanz der Vampire, 1997)

In an instant, Pegasus’s hand covered Weevil’s eyes.

”You don’t want to see this,” whispered the American gentleman, and for once, Weevil took another person’s word for something.

Unfortunately, he could still hear, and his ears detected the padding of many pairs of shoes on the stone floor, followed by another bleat. Then Mister Jones began to speak.

”Brethren and sisters of the ophidian path, we are once again sadly delayed in our Great Purpose. The man in whom we trusted has squandered his talents in the continued pursuit of making games for children, and although we admire him for that, we must also despise him for his failure to actualize our ultimate plan. Furthermore, the heavens have gifted us with a quarry we once feared never to capture: one of the meddlers who destroyed the Wyrm. And what do we do with meddlers?”

”We consign them to the serpent’s jaws!” shouted the crowd.

”Indeed. But first, we must open this meeting with the standard protocol.”

In an instant, the sound of a blade slicing across a throat rang through the air, as did a screeching bleat. Then something landed on the dungeon floor with a thud.

Weevil felt his gorge rise. Watching a spider drain a fly of its vital juices was a pleasing pastime, but something about this situation struck him as completely different. Immediately after his stomach lurched, it sank: only he could be the “meddler” of whom Mister Jones spoke. Worse, Jones mentioned the Wyrm, which had to be the Wyrm of the Wastelands that caused him and Rex an abundance of riches followed by nearly fatal peril in Hollywood. What these people’s connection to that wretched artifact was, let alone how they knew what he and Rex had done to it, was a mystery that he supposed had no choice but to be solved. Trembling, Weevil lifted Pegasus’s hand from his eyes. The American man let him do it.

”Now, we have only but to wait,” the cult leader announced from beside the lamb’s bleeding corpse.

Suddenly, the largest snake Weevil had ever seen slithered through the doorway and into the cell. Holding back a scream, he saw that this serpent was easily the size of Perfectly Ultimate Great Moth, and the reptile’s skin consisted of a shining mottled pattern of jade and bronze. The snake’s eyes glowed yellow in the dim lighting. Most surprising of all, however, was the person who rode in with the snake, nestled in the curve between its neck and back. As the serpent curled up in its nest, the rider jumped off and scrambled to his feet on the cell floor, carrying the egg or egg-like object Weevil remembered.

”Rex!” said Weevil.

”Raptor boy!” said Pegasus.

”Sangréana!” said Mister Jones. “And you’ve brought the other meddler with you!” He turned to his followers. “She has come, brethren and sisters! Strange though it is that she has not devoured the other interloper, we will remedy that. Who will take this knife and plunge it into the miscreants’ hearts?”

”Wait!” shouted Pegasus. “I have a better idea!”

The cult leader waved his hands in the air to silence his followers. “Did you hear that, brethren and sisters? Our captive believes he can improve upon our methods!” He smirked.

”If you will follow my suggestion, I will more than submit to your will. I not only accept your decision to paint the likeness of your god; I will mass-market the cards you create so that every household in civilization will know the rending of the soul that comes from a true monster invocation. Every Duel Monsters-player will be as you are. Soon, the whole world will serve your god.”

A “true monster invocation”? What could that possibly mean? How was summoning whatever monster these people wanted to base on their snake god different from summoning any other monster in the game?

He began to say, ”Excuse me, Mister—”

A chorus of mocking laughter followed by a loud shush interrupted his question.

”Do not laugh, brethren and sisters. This man is renowned for his genius. He may know better than we how to entrench our god’s domination. Now, Maximillion Pegasus, what do you propose we do rather than feed your…fanboys…to our serpent?”

”I propose a duel. You took Duel Disks from me when you captured me. Let one of these young men duel you. If you win, you may do as you like with their lives, and I will ensure that the image of your god finds its way into all Duel Monsters-playing households. If he wins, however, you must release all of us.”

Mister Jones snickered, as did several of his followers. “Very well. For all their talent at ruining things for us, I do not expect that either of these pipsqueaks will pose much of a challenge on the dueling field, so I—”

A shushing noise ended Jones’s words abruptly. “You are not the leader of this society, Jones. I am. It is who must take up the challenge.”

The voice belonged to the middle-aged man who had greeted Weevil and Rex at the door. Now the leader, strapping a Duel Disk on his arm, stepped forward to face the cell. Weevil could not think of him as “Grandpa,” a term that implied a certain warmth or at least a peculiar charm. This man could only be called…Great Orange.

”I accept. Which of you would like to die first?”

Weevil moved to stand, but Rex lunged himself at the bars of the cell. “I’ll duel you, you creep! Your reptiles against my reptiles. Let’s go.”

In minutes, Rex and Orange stood across from each other, each with a Duel Disk strapped to his wrist. The cult members clustered against the wall opposite the cell, where Pegasus and Weevil huddled too close to Sangréana the giant serpent. The massive snake lay silent in her nest, her coils rising and falling with her breath.

”Let’s duel!” both men said. Each of them drew five cards.

”My Duel Disk says I go first,” said Rex. “I activate a field spell, Jurassic World! Go, Crawling Dragon Number Two!”

In the bleak space between the two duelists appeared a hologram of a deep brown dragon with a pale brown belly, spiky crests down its back, and, thanks to the field spell, nineteen hundred attack points. Despite the stance implied by its name, the monster stood on its hind legs.

”Now, I equip Crawling Dragon with Raise Body Heat! And I set this card face down.”

Crawling Dragon #2 stood on the field with 2200 attack points.

”I end my turn. Try and pick me off now!” Rex said with a grin.

”Certainly,” said the leader. “From my hand, I activate De-Spell.”

Jurassic World vanished, causing Crawling Dragon #2’s attack points to drop to nineteen hundred.

”So?” Rex said with a sneer. “Crawling Dragon’s still got a lot of attack power. Let’s see you try to summon something with two thousand attack points right off the bat!”

”I don’t need to. First, I set this card face down. Next, I summon Serpent God’s Daughter in attack mode.”

In front of the leader materialized the image of a woman in a neon orange shirt and shorts, complete with strawberry blonde pigtails. She would have been a dead ringer for Sheila Smith, if not for the slit red eyes and the fangs in her mouth.

Rex took a step back. “Holy crap! How’d you get a card that looks just like—like—”

”Like one of our own family? Your hero Pegasus was kind enough to design this card for us. He has some sense in his head, you know.”

The dinosaur aficionado straightened himself. “Well…uh…I’m not scared. She only has a thousand attack points. Crawling Dragon Number Two will stomp her flat.”

”It will not. This card has two special abilities. Here is the first. Serpent God’s Daughter, attack his life points directly!”

The fanged woman raced across the dungeon floor and snapped at Rex’s face, making him stumble slightly. When she zipped back to her master’s side, Rex looked at his Duel Disk and saw that he had three thousand life points remaining.

He snarled. “Hmph. This duel’s just started.”

”So you say. I end my turn.”

Rex drew a card, and Weevil felt his heart thump against his rib cage. His friend placed a card on his Duel Disk.

”I summon Two-Headed King Rex!”

Next to Crawling Dragon appeared a purple-skinned therapod-like creature with a pair of draconic wings and two horned heads that stared with pupil-less eyes and roared with mouths full of sharp teeth.

”This’ll be a short main phase. Two-Headed King Rex, attack!”

As the misbegotten product of a confusion of large reptiles charged at the even more ill-conceived monster on the other side of the field, Great Orange declared, “Stop right there. I reveal a face-down card! Windstorm of Etaqua!”

Jones’s face-down card turned itself face-up, and Two-Headed King Rex screeched to a halt and crouched down as though he were brooding. Crawling Dragon #2 now assumed the position its name implied, touching its belly to the stone floor.

As Weevil seethed from within his prison cell and watched Rex shake his fist, the leader explained, “Windstorm of Etaqua changes the battle positions of all the monsters my opponent’s got on the field.”

”I know!” said Rex. “I have that card, too! It’s a damn good one! Grr…I end my turn.”

”Now it’s my turn,” said the leader. “I draw.” He drew a card, looked at it, and leered at his opponent.

”Well, it’s my lucky night,” he said. The leader’s voice now assumed a deep, sibilant undercurrent that Weevil never noticed before, but the effect was audible now. “If it isn’t just the card I wanted. Funny how that works out. First, I set this card face down. Then I summon Serpent God’s Bride in attack mode!”

Beside Serpent God’s Daughter appeared a tall, pale woman clad in an orange robe with drooping sleeves. Her green hair trailed behind her in a sextet of pointed spirals. The monster woman’s eyes glowed with a golden light.

Rex snorted. “How’s that supposed to scare me? It only has twelve hundred attack points.”

”When Serpent God’s Bride is summoned immediately after Serpent God’s Daughter, I can special summon the third member of the family!” hissed the leader. He lay another card in a slot on his Duel Disk.

”Come forth, Serpent God’s Minion!”

A man in a bright orange robe identical to that worn by the Bride and all the human members of this strange clan appeared on the field. His skin was mottled green and white, and he carried a chalice in one hand.

”When these three monsters are on the field, I can do a couple of really special things, but not until my next two turns. It’s your move, you thief.”

Weevil blanched, and Pegasus lay a hand on his forehead as if to soothe him.

Jones snickered, and his nails unmistakably elongated and sharpened.

”Ack!” Weevil shrieked. “How did he do that? What’s happening?”

Rex whipped his head in Weevil’s direction and said, “Your guess is as good as mine!” Then he looked at the card he just drew. “Hmph…nothing I can use in this draw. But whatever that ‘something special’ you mentioned is, I don’t care,” said Rex. “I change Two-Headed King Rex and Crawling Dragon back into attack mode! Let’s battle! Foot Stomp Serpent God’s Minion, Two-Headed King Rex!”

The two-headed purple abomination raced across the dungeon floor and raised its foot to crush the hooded man-monster, but Great Orange laughed. “My monsters’ effect activates!”

Two-Headed King Rex disappeared from the field as though the monster had never been there.

As Weevil gasped, Rex shouted and stamped his foot. “What? What the hell, man? You can’t do that!”

”On the contrary. I certainly can. When all three members of the Serpent God family are together, I can banish one face-up monster from the field.”

The impact of these words hit Weevil so hard that he slumped backward, nearly touching the dungeon wall with his head. Did any monster card have a more ludicrously overpowered effect? Then again, he himself still liked to use Monster Reborn.

”Grr.” Rex’s fist trembled. “You might have sent Two-Headed King Rex to the graveyard, but I can still attack with my other monster. Crawling Dragon, destroy Serpent God’s Bride!”

”You can’t do that,” said Jones. “From my hand, I activate Sphere Kuriboh!”

For the second time, Crawling Dragon assumed a defensive stance.

”Huh?” said Rex. “What the—”

Has Rex never seen Sphere Kuriboh before? Well, it is an ultra-rare card, maybe he hasn’t—but we work in a shop that sells Duel Monsters cards, so… When he realized that this situation did not call for criticism of Rex, Weevil brought this train of thought to a halt.

The clawed leader co*cked his hand on his hip. “When I send Sphere Kuriboh to the graveyard, your attacking monster is forced into defense mode!”

”Graaahh!” Rex cracked his knuckles. “I feel like I’m getting co*ck-blocked!”

”Such language,” said Pegasus to Weevil.

Rex was not listening to his lover’s conversation. He addressed Great Orange instead. ”All right, you old putz. I gotta ask: why are you so angry with us in the first place? What did we do to you? Do you just really wanna feed your snake, ‘cause I’m sure there’s some nice sheep around here it could eat.”

Great Orange huffed. “No, you silly boy. We want to kill you personally because you are responsible for irreparable damage to some of our most sacred property!”

If Weevil’s heart could sink any further, it would have. Why on Earth would two different groups be after the same obscure artifact—no, three different groups, since Madame Cutcliffe wanted it for her own organization? More importantly, how would these freaks know about his and Rex’s excursion to Hollywood in the first place?

”What?” said Rex. “What’re you talking about?”

”You and your companion stole the Wyrm of the Wastelands!”

Rex gasped as Weevil rolled his eyes. How did you not figure that out? Then the insect duelist slapped himself. He had just told himself not to criticize his lover, and there he went again. Lives were at stake. From now on, he would not allow disloyal thoughts about Rex to stay within his mind.

”How do you know we did that?” Rex insisted. “How do you even know what the Wyrm is?”

”We were the Wyrm’s original owners. We bonded ourselves to it by blood and promised our souls to what it represented. While we, the ones you see here”—Great Orange swept his arm to one side to gesture toward the cultists lined up against the wall—“wanted to use its power to actualize our supreme purpose, others thought it would be better to take the Wyrm to pursue worldly interests. So a schism erupted between us, and our side reluctantly agreed to let them have the Wyrm, as long as they left our other treasures in peace. Ever since then, we have had to divide our time between gathering victims for our great purpose and plotting to secretly restore the Wyrm to its rightful place in our vault.”

That was enough. Weevil could not simply continue to sit down and say nothing. “Why do you have a problem with us? We killed the people who took that awful thing away from you!” Technically, he alone sent the Pink Pangolin to her death, and her right-hand man hurled himself into the lizard pit to die with her; Rex only watched helplessly as his best friend added the proper amount of compound interest to the avenging of his abduction and torture. Still, better to protect Rex than to be a stickler for accuracy.

Growling, Great Orange replied, “I was not finished, you rude upstart. Our plans depending on the Wyrm remaining unmolested. But then you and your miscreant friend destroyed it!” With his free hand, the leader pointed to Rex in accusation.

Well, that explained it. But how did these people know what had happened to the Wyrm?

As if reading Weevil’s mind, Rex objected, ”Um, excuse me, what told you that we’d destroyed that thing? You couldn’t possibly know that!”

”Have you not figured it out, or you are simply that thick? A psychic bond with the Wyrm is permanent for those who let it taste their blood. We felt you shatter its sacred body, and then—nothing. When you stole the Wyrm, we saw your every move, including your destruction of the form that kept it alive. Now you are here, and you must pay!” Great Orange finished his monologue with a hand signal to the cluster of cultists, who applauded him.

Rex groaned. “Just get on with it, old man. I end my turn.”

”Gladly.” Great Orange drew a card. “Heh heh…I equip Serpent God’s Minion with Serpent’s Tooth! Now he can pierce your defense-position monster! Attack, Serpent God’s Minion!”

The man-like monster in the orange robe ran across the field and bit the bowing Two-Headed King Rex on one of its tiny arms, making the saurian creature shatter.

”Now you lose four hundred life points!” shouted Great Orange.

”I know! I can read the counter on my own Duel Disk, thank you very much!” Rex stood with one hand on his hip.

The cult leader cleared his throat. “Now, Serpent God’s Bride doesn’t have enough attack power for your Crawling Dragon, so I’ll use her daughter’s special ability. Serpent God’s Daughter, attack his life points directly!”

The reptile girl sprinted across the dungeon floor and kicked Rex’s Duel Disk, knocking him backward slightly and making him shout. She returned to the side of her mother and male relative, and Rex stood erect again.

”You’re down to sixteen hundred life points, and you haven’t so much as scratched mine,” said Great Orange with a sneer. “Why don’t you just give up and hurl yourself into Sangréana’s mouth?”

”I don’t give up, old man! Just you wait!”

Sweat trickled down Weevil’s forehead. Rex could snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat sometimes, but was this time one of those? For their sake, it had to be. It had to be…

”Let’s see if you can impress me…and save your life. I end my turn.”

From the distance between the makeshift arena and the cell, Weevil studied Rex’s next draw carefully. His friend and lover cracked a toothy smile of the kind Weevil knew well.

”Heh heh, I’ve been waiting for this! You might have tried to scare me with cards I’d never seen before, but I guarantee you’ve never seen this card before! I tribute Crawling Dragon Number Two and summon…Raphtontis the Night-Flyer!”

Crawling Dragon disappeared, and in its place materialized an Archaeopteryx. Purple and black feathers covered the prehistoric bird’s body, save for its scaly green underside and yellow legs. The proto-bird’s eyes glowed golden in the dark.

A collective gasp arose from the cultists.

”What the hell is that?” Great Orange asked.

”Raphtontis is a dinosaur that only I can use. Its special ability lets me summon it by tributing just one dinosaur-type monster from the field or my from my hand! And now, I declare battle. Attack Serpent God’s Minion, Raphtontis!”

On its chicken-like legs, Raphtontis ran over to the leader’s side of the field and tore Serpent God’s Minion with its teeth, shredding the hooded figure apart.

”Boo-yah!” shouted Rex. “How do you like me now, creep?”

Great Orange drew his next card. “I had hoped that this would not be necessary, but it appears I have no choice. In a cruel twist of irony, the card I have drawn is the card I wanted most to play, but I will have to tribute summon by sacrificing these two monsters. It hardly matters, though. Once I summon my ultimate card, I will win this duel, and your life will be forfeit. First, I set this card face down. Now, I tribute Serpent God’s Bride and Serpent God’s Daughter to summon…Serpent God Avatar!”

Weevil squeezed Pegasus’s lower arm. This was the moment to which this duel had been building up. The entomophile braced himself for what he might see, although he knew he could not prepare himself. What monster might appear next? Something similar to Yig? A serpent-man hybrid?

As it turned out, the answer was neither. Great Orange placed a card on his Duel Disk…and nothing materialized on the field. The space before Great Orange remained bare but for the single face-down card.

”What is this? I just tributed two monsters! Serpent God Avatar doesn’t have to be summoned by those three monsters’ effects! We wrote the card text so that it could be tribute summoned like any other tribute monster if need be! Why hasn’t it showed up?”

Growls of rage erupted from Great Orange’s throat. As his voice rumbled, his skin began to flake and peel away. Entire strips of flesh tore themselves from his body. Underneath his mammalian coating was an expanse of dark green scales.

This time, Weevil could not hold back his shriek. He should not have worried about the summoning of Serpent God Avatar, whatever it looked like; this was what filled him with horror. Daring himself to keep his eyes open, he saw the cultists along the far wall start to shed their own human skin. Their soft pink flesh burst apart, and the scales underneath glistened in what little light streamed into the dungeon.

Strangely, Rex seemed to ignore this new development. “Are you gonna end your turn or what? This duel can’t last forever.”

”Argh…yes, I end my turn.”

”Good.” Rex drew a card and set it on his Duel Disk. “I set a card. Now, Raphtontis, attack his life points directly!”

Raphtontis began a running start toward the leader’s side of the field, but Great Orange declared, “I reveal my face-down card: Mirror Wall! My trap activates!”

A reflective wall made of jagged crystal emerged from the card and divided the two sides of the field in half. Raphtontis bit at its own reflection.

”Ha! Your monster has only twelve hundred attack points now!”

”Don’t get excited, lizard-man. I end my turn, but just you wait.”

Great Orange hissed his laughter as he drew his next card. “Even at the cost of two thousand life points, I keep Mirror Wall on the field. That leaves me with eight hundred life points, but I know what to do. I summon Armored Lizard in attack mode.”

On the field appeared a man-sized bipedal blue lizard with a bright green throat, red eyes, and sharp-toothed jaws, poised for battle.

”His monster is weakened, Armored Lizard. Attack!”

The blue lizard creature lunged at Raphtontis.

”Uh-uh, I told you not to get co*cky,” said Rex. “I activate Enemy Controller!”

Armored Lizard crouched on the floor in a manner resembling Crawling Dragon’s, and a spark of pride flared in Weevil’s heart. “Rex! You’re using strategy for a change!” he called from across the dungeon.

Grumbling, Great Orange said, “I end my turn.”

”My turn!” Rex chirped. He drew a card, placed it on his Duel Disk, and announced, “I set a card face down.”

”Do you have no more monsters to summon, thief?” asked the leader.

”No. I’m sticking with Raphtontis. He’s all I need…this turn. In fact, I’m so confident that I’ll win, I’m not even going to attack right away. I end my turn.”

What? Rex had been dueling so well up to now. How could he risk his, Weevil’s, and Pegasus’s lives just to prove a stupid point?

”You can’t be serious! You don’t know what he has up his sleeve!” shouted Weevil.

”I know what I’m doing!” Rex shouted back.

”Enough chatter,” said the leader. He drew a card. “First, I send Mirror Wall to the graveyard.”

The wall of reflective crystal vanished.

”I now summon Oshaleon in defense mode.”

A chameleon with scales that faded from yellow to green to blue and finally to purple appeared on the field. White stars decorated the reptile’s back.

”There is nothing else I can do for now. I end my turn.”

Rex drew a card. “Nyeh heh heh…I like this card. But I won’t play it just yet. I won’t have Raphtontis attack, either. I’m ending my turn.”

For the second time, Weevil wanted to beat his head against the bars of the cell. What was Rex playing at? He liked to crush his opponents’ life points into dust as quickly as possible!

Now Great Orange drew a card. A grin crept across his reptilian face.

”You will regret your decision not to attack—just before you die beneath Sangréana’s fangs. The card I just drew will soon turn the tables. I tribute Oshaleon and Armored Lizard to summon Red-Eyes Black Dragon!”

And there, on Mister Jones’s side of the field, the two inferior reptiles disappeared, and it manifested: the spiky black dragon with gleaming red eyes. The marvelous black beast proclaimed its majesty with a roar.

Weevil gasped, and so did Rex.

”Red-Eyes! It’s my old pal! What’re you doing with these creeps, buddy?”

Mister Jones scoffed. “‘Buddy’? You are pathetic. Why do you care about monsters from a card game at your age?”

Black flames ignited in Weevil’s heart.

”How dare you!” he heard himself say. He began to rise to his feet, but Pegasus gave him a light touch on the shoulder, reminding him to sit back down.

The older gentleman asked, “Excuse me, but is there something wrong with an adult enjoying card games?”

”Yeah, what they said!” Rex said with a nod. “You’re playin’ Duel Monsters, too, unless my eyes’re deceivin’ me. How can you even ask that?”

“We use this card game because we want power. Our Serpent God favors us above all others. When we spread his image all over this stinking planet through the means of this game, he is certain to be summoned in the flesh, and then he will reward us with an honored place at his side while we enslave the rest of the human race. Face it, card games are only good for two things: power and money. They sway the minds of those who play them, and they reap profits for those who manufacture and sell them. As long as there are plenty of losers and suckers like you in the world, men like Pegasus will always be rich and powerful.”

“I beg your pardon!” said Pegasus.

The cultists along the far wall laughed in unison, and Great Orange cracked a smile.

”Red-Eyes Black Dragon is a fearsome reptile, a worthy ally and formidable foe,” the leader continued. “But do I call it my friend? No. It is a tool for the use of our group’s supreme purpose. Both my dragon and your dinosaur have the same attack points, so I will refrain from declaring battle now. I end my turn. On my next turn, however, you can expect defeat and death.”

”We’ll see about that! You won’t get away with abusing Red-Eyes! I won’t let you!” He drew a card, and a high-pitched cry arose from his mouth.

”This is it!” he shouted. “This card will mean your doom!” He slapped the card down on his Duel Disk. “I activate the spell card Change of Heart!”

Weevil’s eyes widened.

”For one turn, I can take control of my opponent’s monster. And even if you had other monsters on the field, I would still choose the one I’m choosing now: Red-Eyes Black Dragon! Red-Eyes, come to Papa!”

The black dragon strode across the field and stood in front of Rex, who trembled as he spoke.

“Now, Red-Eyes Black Dragon! Attack his life points directly! Inferno! Fire! BLAST!”

Red-Eyes belched a stream of fireballs, which exploded against Great Orange. The leader screamed as the holographic flames struck his body and Duel Disk.

When the smoke cleared, Great Orange stood there shaking, his life points depleted entirely.

”Well. You have won. I did not expect it. You may go. Jones, go set the other prisoners free.”

With relief cresting in his chest, Weevil watched Mister Jones approach the cell that held him and Pegasus. The leader’s closest subordinate swung a ring of keys in one hand as he walked. He selected one key from the iron ring and nearly touched it to the cell door’s keyhole.

Then he pulled back.

”Excuse me, but Raptor boy won that duel fairly,” said Pegasus. “You must honor your word by setting us all free.”

”Oh, I’m unlocking the cell,” said Jones. He stuck the key in the hole and twisted, opening the door with a cracking noise.

Weevil sprang to his feet. “Finally!” He moved to exit through the open door.

Jones snickered. His gaze traveled to the giant snake that remained curled up in her nest. “You must be hungry, Sangréana. We know we haven’t fed you as often as we should. Start with the interlopers!”

Icicles stabbed Weevil’s mind. The duel was a farce. This cult was going to actualize their plan no matter what.

As tears began to leak from Weevil’s eyes, Jones continued to goad the snake. “Come on, girl. Eat the captives in this cell, move on to the little cretin you see standing over there, and then you can have your lamb. Come on. Come on.” He tapped on the cell bars, as if trying to get Sangréana’s attention. “What are you, stupid? We’ve had some dumb pets before, but you must be the dumbest!”

In the next moment, Weevil saw something for which he knew he should have tried to prepare himself. Seeing a hologram of a giant snake monster in a duel was one matter. Seeing humans turn into reptiles before his eyes was another. But seeing this was a third matter yet.

Hissing, Sangréana reared herself up, opening her mouth. She slid out of her nest, bypassed Pegasus and Weevil, and pushed the cell door open with her head. The snake slithered up to Jones, who turned to face her.

Shaking, he stuck a hand out just above her lowered head. “Uh…I didn’t mean it when I called you stupid. You’re still a good, obedient girl, ain’t you?”

Sangréana distended her jaw and swallowed Jones feet first. His screams reverberated through the dungeon as more and more of his body disappeared into the serpent’s mouth.

Weevil tried to tear his gaze away from the sight in front of him, but his eyes remained fixed to the spot.

His eyes stayed where they were as Sangréana slithered throughout the dungeon and swallowed every half-human, half-reptile cultist one by one. Their shrieks evidently meant nothing to their “pet,” which pursued them down the hallway through which they must have entered the dungeon originally. Finally, the only scream in the room came from Rex, who stood there trembling from fear rather than excitement.

Sangréana crawled up to him. Instead of opening her mouth to swallow him, she bowed her head.

Rex stopped shaking. “What are you doing, snakey?”

”Snakes can’t talk,” said Weevil, who, like Pegasus, stayed inside the cell.

”This one’s talking to me. She says, ‘Thank you for saving me. Now I have to go. Goodbye.’”

The giant snake slithered back to the other end of the room and through the hallway. Her hissing carried for the next few minutes until the sound dissipated.

Pegasus stood up and stretched his muscles. “Ah, that was tiring. Come along, boys. Let’s follow the way Sangréana went and leave this dreadful place.”

”Good idea, Mister Pegasus,” said Weevil, who wished he could think of something more intelligent to add. Then he saw something that gave him that opportunity. “Hey, look over there!”

”What’s that, Weeves?”

The shape of a Duel Disk stood out in the darkness. “He dropped his Duel Disk.”

The three men walked over to the object, and Rex bent down and removed the cards and the remainder of the deck from their slots.

”Mister Pegasus,” Rex began, “I’m gonna steal some of this guy’s cards. That’s okay with you, right?”

”Throw away those Serpent God cards. Otherwise, help yourself.”

Rex looked through the cards in his hand. “Let’s see. I want that Serpent’s Tooth equip spell. And here it is!” He read the card text out loud: “‘A reptile-, dinosaur-, or sea serpent-type monster equipped with this card gains the ability to inflict piercing battle damage on an enemy monster.’ Excellent!”

He stuffed the card in his pocket and continued to look through the deck. “Hmm…Sphere Kuriboh’s hard to come by. I’m taking that. I could use another Mirror Wall, too. But here’s the big one!”

Rex plucked the Red-Eyes Black Dragon card from the deck and waved the card in his companions’ faces.

”After all these years, he’s come back to me! Oh, Red-Eyes, we’ve got catching up to do!”

As Rex kissed his long-lost favorite card, Weevil flashed back to his recent dreams, and his heart began to warm itself.

Chapter 8: A Dragon Lives Forever

Notes:

In this, the final chapter, the one-sided Fawnshipping returns. Be warned.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

I got the feeling that I'm gonna be alive forever, dancing on the edge of the grave.
—Jim Steinman and Karla DeVito, "Dance in My Pants" (Bad for Good, 1981)

One mind-boggling drive through a purple and black void later, Weevil and Rex landed on the other end of the portal that had brought them to the Order of Ophiuchus’s lair. The jeep emerged in the comparatively familiar setting of the outback, with cracked brown earth and scrub grass struggling from the ground.

Binda pressed their foot to the brake, and the car screeched to a halt. They unlocked and opened the driver’s-side door, slid out and onto the ground, and walked over to the tunnel through which they had just driven.

”What’re you doing?” asked Rex, watching Binda. Weevil pondered the same question as he saw the former housekeeper approach the mouth of the tunnel.

Instead of replying, Binda knelt before the entrance to the passage. The androgyne maintained a motionless stance until raising their arm and pointing their index finger. Then they crossed their arms over each other. What followed next was a display of rapidly changing hand, arm, and finger patterns and gestures. All the while, Binda chanted something—their lips moved—but the words remained inaudible.

Rocks fell from the tunnel ceiling, collapsing and filling in the entrance. Mounds of rubble blocked the way to the vortex.

As Weevil gaped at Binda, the former house servant returned to the jeep, resumed their place in the driver’s seat, slammed the door shut, and turned the keys in the ignition. Weevil then looked at Rex, who mirrored his open-mouthed, open-eyed stare precisely.

“No way anyone’s getting in or out of there ever again,” explained Binda as they continued driving through the desert.

”So our friend Sangréana won’t trouble the poor, defenseless wildlife out here,” said Pegasus, who sat in the passenger’s seat up front. He turned his head to look at Rex and Weevil. “Quit staring at each other, boys; haven’t you ever seen interdimensional magic before?”

It was Rex who spoke first. “Um, well, we kind of…okay, no.”

”What my friend is trying to say is—” Weevil began. All the words he wanted to say would raise potentially self-incriminating questions. “Uh…”

”We’re surprised!” Rex said.

”Yes! We were surprised! Everything about this trip’s just been one surprise after another, right, Rex?”

”Um, yeah!”

Weevil leaned into Rex and whispered, “Nice save.”

”Now, where are we all going?” asked Binda. “I drove us all with the sole intent of getting the hell out of that den of nightmares, but you never told me where you wanted to go. Nobody asked me where I wanted to go, but I’m used to that.”

Before a sense of shame could cut Weevil deeply, he cleared his throat and said, ”I’ll drive! I know just where to go on the way there. It’s just…well, it’s gonna take a while.”

Rex stopped suddenly. “Wait, are you talking about that place in Bourke?”

Binda, who had been walking quietly beside Weevil, said, “Bourke? That town ain’t much shakes, but any place you go’ll suit me. Anything’s better than the hellhole we burst out of.”

A few hours later, during which the time sun began to set, Weevil parked the car in front of the Watering Hole. No other vehicles occupied spaces in the parking lot.

”Here we are! Now, let’s see if they’ll accept us again!”

”‘Accept us again’? What ever are you talking about, Weevil boy? Were you boys up to something nefarious here?” Smiling, Pegasus raised his eyebrow.

Binda unbuckled their seat belt, opened their door, and got out of the jeep. “Who cares? I’m just glad we’re out of that awful place.” They stretched and yawned. “It’s good to be out of the car, too!” Adjusting the straps on the khaki backpack that they claimed contained the sum of their worldly goods, they strode up to the front door of the boarding house.

”I’m inclined to agree with Binda,” said Pegasus. Rather than opening his own door, he exited in the car in the same direction as Binda. “Well? Aren’t you going to get out, boys? Coming here was your idea.”

”No, it was his idea,” said Rex, pointing at Weevil.

”Then what would you have suggested?” Weevil hissed. “Were we supposed to drive all the way to the airport from that vortex of horror? Get out, and let’s go inside.”

Rex grumbled. “Eh, I guess they can’t do anything worse to us than what that cult tried to do…” He opened his door and exited the car, and Weevil did the same.

After everyone had collected their luggage, they walked up to the front of the house. Weevil knocked on the door.

When Mrs. West answered it, her face passed from affable to disgruntled to starstruck in a matter of seconds.

”Hello, and welcome to—it’s Rex and Weevil again! To think I admired you! Where have you been, you cheap, sneaking scoundrels—flippin’ cripes!” She gasped. “Is that…are you…no, it can’t be. Pinch me! I must be dreaming! Oh, forgive me, sir.” After performing a quick curtsy, she ran to the kitchen. “Paddy! Come here! You won’t believe this!”

Weevil and Rex looked at each other and grinned. This visit would be better than either of them thought.

That evening, Rex, Weevil, and their fellow escapees from the Order of Ophiuchus’s clutches sat around the massive dining room table with their hosts. The table nearly sagged under the weight of the spread it bore: a centerpiece dish of heaping kangaroo meat surrounded by containers of barbecue sauce and ranch dressing, plates of grilled and fried fish and popcorn shrimp, fluffy pancakes and golden waffles next to butter dishes, a dispenser filled with maple syrup, and a canister of whipped cream, and small glass bowls of strawberries and blueberries. As much as he tried to concentrate on the maple syrup and butter that melted in his mouth as he chewed his pancakes, Weevil could not help but observe Rex tearing into his forkfuls of sauce-slathered kangaroo meat. The most voracious diner, however, was Binda, who wolfed down their helpings of everything—kangaroo, fish, shrimp, pancakes, waffles, strawberries, and blueberries—as though an asteroid would strike New South Wales at any moment.

”Gawd rot it, Binda!” said Mr. West with a chuckle. “You’re like a vacuum cleaner. Australia’s not about to sink into the sea, you know.”

Binda swallowed their mouthful of shrimp and washed it down with a gulp of beer from the tall glass that stood beside their plate. “It’s just that I haven’t had food like this in so long. You don’t know the half of it.”

A discordant note resounded inside Weevil’s mind. In all this time, he had not considered that…well, what he could have done about it?

Thus, it was almost a relief when Mrs. West said, “So, Mister Pegasus, you told us that we shouldn’t begrudge these boys for running out on us without paying, and you’d say exactly why at dinner? Well, we’re having dinner now. Give us a reason why we should be treating Rex and Weevil as nice as we are.”

”Certainly, madam,” said Pegasus. “Surely this will be enough to cover any expenses they incurred for sneaking out in the middle of the night. Consider this a payment from them.”

He produced his checkbook from the pocket of his trousers, opened it, and scrawled a figure on the first blank check. After signing it, he handed the slip of paper to Mrs. West. When she saw the figure, her eyes widened, and she gasped for the second time that evening.

”Paddy, look!” She jabbed at the sum on the check, and at the sight of it, Mr. West gave a cry of delight.

”Cover one night’s expense? Hell’s bells, that’ll pay for a year! We can’t possibly accept all that. Aw, who am I kidding? Of course we can. And we will.” He put an arm around his wife, who turned her attention from the check to Binda, who engaged themselves in chewing a mouthful of fish.

”Where’d you come from?” she asked. “How’d you come to be with Pegasus and the boys?”

They swallowed and then bowed their head. “I don’t wanna talk about it, really. It’s too painful. I just wish I had somewhere to stay after all I’ve been through. When these blokes helped me bust outta that…place, I was so excited, all I could think about was getting away from there. But now I don’t know where I’m going to spend the rest of my life.”

Helped Binda bust out of there? thought Weevil. Binda was the one who repaired the jeep and drove them away from the Order of Ophiuchus’s dwelling in the first place.

Neither of the Wests asked for details. Instead, Mrs. West smiled and said, “Why don’t you stay with us?”

”Are you sure, Daisy?” her husband interjected. “We hardly know this…person.”

”Have a heart, old man!” she said. “We won’t be around forever, but we want the Watering Hole to last for ages to come. You can help us out around here, can’t you?”

Binda nodded vigorously. “I’ll do anything, if only you’ll give me a good place to live!”

”Allow me to be of further assistance,” said Pegasus. He flipped his checkbook open once more, wrote and signed another check, tore it out, and handed it to Mr. West, whose eyes boggled.

”Bejesus, Mister Pegasus! You’re as generous as you are creative! Someone up there must really like us for you to come to our humble abode and start throwing money around.”

Pegasus dismissed his host’s praise with a flick of the hand. “Nonsense. I only did what anyone in my position ought to do to those who show him kindness.” He dabbed the side of his mouth with a white cloth napkin. “Mister West, did you prepare all this food? I’ve had many fine meals in my life, but this spread has been nothing short of exquisite.”

Mr. West chuckled. “I do a lot of the cooking around here, but so does Daisy. She’s a supreme baker, too, can make poppy seed muffins like nobody’s business.”

”Oh, stop,” said Mrs. West, but her blush and smile mutely issued the opposite directive. She looked at Pegasus again. “Much as we love it, food wasn’t what brought us together. It was dueling.”

”Dueling, you say?” Pegasus raised an eyebrow.

Rex finally spoke up. “Yeah! Tell them the story you told me and Weevil, Mrs. West!”

At the sound of Rex’s voice, Weevil jumped slightly in his seat. Rex had spent so long stuffing his face with the Wests’ array of delicious savories and sweets that he had declined to verbalize throughout the entire meal.

Mrs. West blinked. “Oh, you mean that story.” She clapped her hands together. “Paddy, let’s tell the illustrious Mister Maximillion Pegasus here about the trophies on our shelf up there,” she added, pointing to them.

”Ah, those must be from the Australian national championships!” said Pegasus. “What a pity that I wasn’t there to attend those. I would love to personally present every champion with a trophy, but a person can only be in one place at a time.”

”Then that’s all the more reason for us to tell you all about ‘em,” said Mr. West.

The Wests proceeded to divulge not just what they had told Weevil and Rex but the complete story of the Australian couple’s dueling careers. According to them, they had both reached a crisis point several years ago; both were working jobs simply to pay bills, neither of them had been in a relationship since their early twenties, and the purpose of life seemed to elude them. When Duel Monsters came to Australian shores and took the country by storm, Paddy and Daisy independently decided to give this strange new game a chance. Duel Monsters sucked them in as nothing ever had. They spent most of their free time and a fair amount of money on the cards.

”But you said you were just working to pay bills,” said Weevil. “How’d you make enough money to buy all those cards?”

”I sold my services as a bike repairman,” said Mr. West.

”Well…” Mrs. West said with a laugh. “As for me, I pawned my grandmother’s jewelry.” Pegasus stared at her, and she said, “What? She was a hateful old bat. When my grandmother died, my mother said, ‘Daisy, I don’t want any reminder of that she-devil in my life!’ So she gave me some of her awful mum’s diamonds and pearls to hock. They got me a nice, tidy sum for buying all the Duel Monsters packs I needed.”

Weevil snickered. “I like your way of thinking, Mrs. West.”

”Me too,” said Rex.

Binda nodded.

”Anyway,” said Mr. West, “we both trained as hard as we could during our time off, and then we heard the first Australian national championship was starting…”

”Well, you played in it, dear. I couldn’t make it the first year. Blasted cold.”

The Wests continued to talk about their experiences in the tournament—Mr. West particularly seemed to enjoy belittling his opponents years after the fact—capped off when Mrs. West announced that she had met her husband when they faced each other in the final match of the second national championship.

”I beat him with my tried-and-true plant deck. ‘Course, when I came back next year to defend my title, some scrawny Sheila who played a bunch of spellcasters won instead…” She sighed. “But I’m not bitter. I have Paddy!”

”What do you mean, you’re not bitter?” her husband teased.

”Come off it, you.”

Pegasus cleared his throat. “In other words, Duel Monsters brought you together. Wonderful! I’m so honored that my game helped you find love.”

Those words brought a blush to Weevil’s face. He turned to face Rex, who grinned at him.

”Now, has everyone had enough to eat?” asked Mr. West. “Everyone’s plate is empty. The wife and I will wash up, and then…since we’re celebrating tonight, how about we gather ‘round the piano for a sing-along?”

”Are you serious?” Weevil blurted out.

Rex elbowed him in the ribs. “Come on, it could be fun.” He lowered his voice. “Besides, they’re not throwing us out after we snuck out without paying the other night. It’s the least we can do.”

After the whole group joined Mr. West in a rollicking piano-backed performance of “South Australia,” “Drunken Sailor,” and “The Coast of High Barbary,” Rex and Weevil climbed up the stairs and headed for bed.

”What song did you like best, Weeves?” asked Rex as he entered the bedroom he and Weevil shared during their previous stay at the Watering Hole.

”’Drunken Sailor’ was my favorite.” Weevil unzipped his jacket and hung it up on the doorknob. “It doesn’t matter if you can’t sing for that one; you just have to think of something nasty! I would have liked ‘High Barbary’ the most if the pirates won.”

”Yeah, I know what you mean. If the pirates won, that song would have been awesome.” For some reason, Rex chose to remove his trousers first and let them fall to the floor before pulling his shirt over his head. He let the upper garment join his pants on the floor. “Too bad I can’t sing, either.”

When Rex tugged his boxers down to his knees, Weevil instantly saw what his friend was doing. In haste, Weevil removed his own clothing and threw it down to join Rex’s.

”Jeez, Bug Boy, don’t you wanna take a shower first?”

”Why don’t we do it in the shower?”

Later that night, when both young men lay freshly showered and bathrobe-clad in their bed, a knock came at the door.

Rex’s faint snores alerted Weevil that he would have to do the honors. With a groan, he got up and out of bed and began to approach the door…and then he tensed up. What if another murderous intruder stood outside? How could be sure?

”Um…friend or foe?” he called. That was the protocol for this kind of situation, wasn’t it?

”I’m a friend. You have nothing to fear from me.”

That voice told Weevil all he needed to know. He walked toward the door and opened it.

There stood Maximillion Pegasus, clad in silk pajamas barely discernible as maroon. The pink bunny slippers on his feet underscored rather than detracted from the elegance of the rest of Pegasus’s nighttime wear. Weevil felt underdressed in his natty green bathrobe.

”Yes, Mister Pegasus?”

Pegasus brandished something at Weevil.

”I almost forgot to thank you and Raptor boy properly. Here you are.”

When he realized what Pegasus meant, Weevil gasped.

”Mister Pegasus, you can’t!”

”Oh, can’t I?”

A moment of silence passed between them. Then Weevil cackled.

”Of course you can, Mister Pegasus. I want whatever you’re giving Rex and me.”

”Excellent.” He placed the checks in Weevil’s hand. “Now, is there anything else you want to say to me?”

All the starry-eyed passion from Weevil’s adolescence rushed back to him. His heart pounded; his throat constricted; he felt his face heating up. Thus, he asked the first question that came to his mind.

“Mister Pegasus, what was going on in Duelist Kingdom? Those rules were nuts!”

“What was ‘nuts’ about the field power bonus?”

“Never mind. Why didn’t you sue any of the papers for calling you a pedophile?”

“They were small fry. It was hardly worth my time to go after such niche publications. Besides, one cannot prove a negative.”

Weevil turned over Pegasus’s words in his mind and started to sweat. I’m overthinking this, he decided.

”Um…you know, Mister Pegasus, there’s a tabloid that’s printed some nasty things about Rex and me, too. Some of them were true, but still…”

”Let’s not discuss tabloids right now, if you please. I prefer not to think about them. Instead, think about how you’re going to use the reward I gave you. Make sure you invest it wisely.”

”What?”

”Or you could spend it on Duel Monsters cards. I’m not your father.”

Without thinking, Weevil emitted a nervous titter. “And thank the heavens for that!” In an instant, he slapped a hand over his mouth.

Pegasus responded with a laugh of his own. “You and Raptor boy have an open invitation to visit me if you’re ever in Las Vegas. We can eat like kings and drink like fish. Now, go back to your lover. He’ll wonder where you are if you aren’t beside him when he wakes up.”

”Uh…yes, Mister Pegasus!”

”Have a good night’s sleep. Goodbye, now.”

”‘Goodbye’? Will you not be here in the morning?”

”Go back to your lover, Weevil boy.”

Pegasus closed the door, and Weevil followed his instructions. As he crawled into bed beside Rex, who had rolled over onto his belly, Weevil thought of how stupid and hurtful it was to think of Pegasus in that way. Rex loved Weevil deeply, regardless of what he did or did not do to deserve it, and Pegasus had always been much too old for Weevil and out of his league besides. It was fundamentally wrong for Weevil to feel, at age twenty-one, even a fraction of the warm glow he had felt for Pegasus at age fourteen. Even though Weevil had not wanted Pegasus to wine, dine, and—yes—seduce him just now, something about that multimillionaire’s presence reminded Weevil of those years-old moments. Memories of those times meandered through his mind: composing love-struck e-mails in his darkened bedroom, meeting Pegasus for the first time upon winning that tournament and feeling his stomach flipping, sitting with him in the Italian restaurant and wishing that one thing would lead to another.

Will these feelings always haunt me? Weevil thought as he draped one of his arms around Rex. I shouldn’t think of Pegasus like this anymore. I didn’t think of him again until recently! And that was where all the trouble started. Hey…he needed me, though. If it weren’t for those freaky dreams, I never would’ve found him. And I never would have found Rex without Pegasus, either. So that’s it. He brought us together. He’s our god of love.

With the strange image of an angel-winged Maximillion Pegasus standing on a marble pedestal and shooting a golden arrow through his heart as he gazed at Rex, Weevil drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, after packing up and bidding farewell to Binda and the Wests, Weevil led Rex into Old Bessie.

”Shouldn’t we be taking the bus?” asked Rex as he watched Weevil get behind the wheel. “We didn’t drive the jeep to Australia! How are we supposed to get a car back home?”

”The bus doesn’t go where we need to go this morning. I owe you something. We’re going to Nimbin for a…special treat.”

Rex broke out into a wide smile. “Damn right, you owe me something! Now you’re talkin’!”

As they drove east, Rex began croaking out “The Coast of High Barbary.” Before he could stop himself, Weevil joined in, and they both changed the verses so that the pirates emerged victorious.

When they arrived in Nimbin, hours later, evening had begun to fall. The hour deterred them not as they exited the vehicle and stretched their legs in this little town.

Walking in Nimbin reminded Weevil very slightly of his time on Ocean Front Walk, but only just. This town’s inhabitants certainly bucked normative trends, and yet these people displayed their nonconformity in a more overtly spiritual way than the denizens of Venice Boardwalk. Here, the locals evinced a connection to the earth, and he immediately understood why. The walk to the beach was fortunately brief, but Weevil would have trudged multiple miles, on his short legs, to gain a spot in this locale. Parallel to the beach stood a thick green forest, which looked wet with dew even from a distance. On the other side, where the two young men faced, blue waves lapped at the glistening yellow sand like kittens’ tongues lapping milk. A quintet of limber people in sleeveless tops and stretch pants performed yoga stances atop blue exercise mats.

“Do you smell that?” asked Rex, nudging him.

Beneath a tree some distance away from the yoga group, a young woman in a tie-dyed sarong leaned against a cooler and sat puffing away on what Weevil instantly detected as a joint. This was not the first time he and Rex had seen someone smoking a non-tobacco substance on a beach, but at least he could identify what it was this time.

”It’s our good friend,” Rex added.

From the pungent odor wafting from the girl’s attire, Weevil knew that he had found what he was looking for. Relief flooded his heart.

”I was sure I’d find what I needed here, but I didn’t think it would be this easy,” he said. “Come on, Rex.”

They approached the sarong-clad woman, who rolled her head back as she took another drag of her joint.

”Hi, we’re new here,” said Rex.

She opened her eyes and looked at them with an unmoved expression. “Yeah, I figured. Never seen you before.”

“Are you selling any of what you’ve got?” asked Weevil.

“Yeh, take a gander at this.” The woman scooted away from the cooler and opened it, revealing myriad pockets bulging with herbs wrapped in small plastic bags.

Weevil felt his eyes boggle as he scanned the array of delights before him. He read the labels on each bag: Old Mother Sativa, Blueberry Diesel, Northern Lights…

”Ain’t it dangerous for you to be smoking this stuff out here, let alone selling it?” asked Rex, staring at the contents of the cooler rather than looking at the seller.

”No cops are patrolling this beach,” she said. “Whatcha want?”

”Do you have any strain that treats anxiety?” Weevil asked. “He’s…” He thumbed over at Rex. “Well, he’s having nightmares.”

She beamed. “Do I ever!” The seller dug into the middle of her cooler and pulled out another plastic bag. “Canna-Tsu is what you need, boys. It’ll make you mellow without messing with your mind. Prices are firm, though.”

She named her price. Rex balked, but Weevil took the cash out of his wallet and forked over the sum that the seller named.

”You’ll sleep easier tonight, fella,” she said to Rex as he and Weevil walked back down the beach.

Rex was only too correct about the jeep. They had to drive back to the Watering Hole, surprise Binda and the Wests again, leave the car there, and eventually check out after Mrs. West reassured them that Old Bessie was theirs and would wait for them, no matter how long it took them to return to Bourke.

Thus it was that Rex and Weevil, luggage in tow, boarded the blue bus that took them back to the airport. From there, they flew back to the home town, where, at long last, they settled into another night in their apartment.

Immediately after Rex laid his backpack on the bedroom floor, he flopped onto the bed. With one hand, he pulled his lighter out of his pocket; with the other, he grabbed a toke he had gotten from Australia. He lit the joint, took a drag, and exhaled with a sigh of relief.

”Man, that hits the spot. You want some, Weeves?”

Weevil set his backpack on the bed. He unzipped the backpack and began pulling out his clothes.

”Maybe later. If that trip had been any worse, I would be fighting you for that stuff! I bought it, after all.”

”Oh, yeah! Thanks. It was real generous of Pegasus to give us all that money. Now we can buy a new console and a whole bunch of games! Or, all right, put the money in our savings accounts.”

Weevil scoffed. “You think he’d care if we spent the money on games?”

Rex took another puff and exhaled again. “Nah.”

While walking across the room to put his clothes in the laundry hamper, Weevil noticed a bulge in Rex’s backpack. Was that shape there before?

The entomophile dropped the clothes in the closet hamper, scurried over to Rex’s side of the room, and unzipped the backpack on the floor. Rex almost spat out his joint but sucked it back into his mouth just in time.

”What are you doing with my backpack? Don’t go rooting around in my stuff, you prying pest!”

”I wanna see what this weird shape is. Keep your boxers on. Sheesh!”

Rex dropped to his knees beside Weevil, who had already unzipped enough of the backpack to see a white spheroid veined with gold and speckled with deep and glistening red.

”Yeah…” said Rex. “I kept that egg I found in the treasure vault.”

Weevil scrunched up his face. “You want a reminder of that hideous place?”

”Come on! It could be a real dinosaur egg!”

”Listen to yourself. You just sound silly. If it were a real dinosaur egg, it would be fossilized! And even if it weren’t, it would never hatch! Whatever was in there, if there was anything in there, has to be dead by now!”

Rex folded his arms. “Fine. Rain on my parade, why don’t you.”

He looks so cute when he pouts, Weevil thought, momentarily forgetting to pretend to be angry with Rex. Then Weevil remembered. “What parade? There was no parade to be had!”

”Well…” Rex exhaled again. “There kind of is. We rescued Pegasus, and he gave us a ton of money, and we have a decent job to go to on Monday, and we love each other…”

There he went. The only time Rex was cuter than when he was pouting was when he waxed romantic. Something inside Weevil started to melt. He leaned over and grabbed Rex by the shoulders.

”I don’t care that we haven’t showered yet. Let’s make love right here, right now!”

Rex blew out his joint. “Awesome!”

When Weevil fell asleep that night, he dreamed once more of Red-Eyes Black Dragon. Unlike Red-Eyes’s previous appearances, the dragon was neither alone nor threatened this time. Red-Eyes appeared to Weevil in the middle of a lush, green field, where the young man followed the trails of butterflies and bumblebees as they supped the nectar from the red, pink, and purple flowers that opened their petals to the fragrant air.

As soon as he saw the dragon swoop down and land in the middle of the field, Weevil jumped back. “Red-Eyes! You again!”

”Guess who he brought with him?” said a familiar voice.

Weevil looked up to see Rex smiling and waving atop Red-Eyes’ neck. Pegasus sat behind him.

”What are you both doing on Red-Eyes? Do I want to know?”

”Don’t worry, Weevil boy. Red-Eyes came here to drop me off—and take you to your next destination.”

The dragon lay upon the ground and lowered its head, allowing Pegasus to climb off his neck and walk up to Weevil.

”I’m here to enjoy the simple pleasures that only nature can provide,” said Pegasus. “Rex is here to travel to a retreat with you. It’s an all-expense-paid trip, you might say.”

For the final time, Weevil could not speak.

”Go on. He’s waiting for you.”

Weevil ran to Red-Eyes, scrambled onto his neck, and held onto Rex’s hips.

”Let’s get this show on the road! Or in the air!” said Rex, digging into Red-Eyes’s neck with his heels.

The dragon reared up, spread his wings, and mounted in the sky. As the monster rose into the heavens and pierced the clouds, Weevil felt no fear. When he clung to his friend and lover, he felt only a pervasive calm and a keen sense of anticipation.

”Hey, Rex. Where are we going, exactly?”

”I dunno, but look who’s coming with us!”

”Red-Eyes? I already knew that, thanks.”

”No. Look behind you.”

Weevil looked back, and his jaw dropped. Undulating behind Red-Eyes like a Chinese New Year dragon was the giant, blood-red, eyeless, feathered worm that had rescued Rex and Weevil from the clutches of the Pink Pangolin back in Hollywood. Back then, the monster wept tears of black blood from its empty eye sockets. Now, however, nothing oozed from those hollow pits. Instead, the Conqueror Worm wore a toothy smile.

Now Weevil smiled in return. He then resumed looking forward.

”You were with Pegasus…did he say anything about me?”

”He said, ‘I’m so glad you’ve found love with Weevil, Raptor boy. From the moment I saw you two duel, I knew there was a spark between you. And now it’s a blazing inferno!’ And you know, I couldn’t agree with him more.”

Rather than speaking, Weevil buried his face in Rex’s hair. If Pegasus knew all that he had meant to Weevil, then the creator of Duel Monsters did not show it. But there was nothing Weevil could do to adequately show his appreciation. Pegasus would have to live the rest of his life never knowing how important he was to some people. Meanwhile, Rex and Weevil would spend the rest of their lives being each other’s most important person, all because of what some people dismissed as a children’s card game.

In that moment, he wanted to be no one other than himself, and he knew Rex felt the same way. This flight through the bright blue sky was the beginning of a new adventure, one of the many that only he and Rex could have.

THE END

Notes:

Thank you to everyone who continued reading this story despite the sporadic updates. If you liked this fic enough to stick with it over the course of a few months, I'm glad.
Once again, this fic is dedicated to Synthpop, who knows why.
Ave Adventura!

Godzilla and Mothra Raid Again - Sunchales (2024)

Chapter 1: The Boys Enjoy the Calm Before the Storm

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Chapter 2: Dread Sinks In

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Chapter 3: The Boys Get Recognized

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Chapter 4: The Van Starts Rocking, and a Stranger Comes Knocking

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Chapter 5: The Road Trip to Hell Commences

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Chapter 6: Weevil Discovers Pegasus and Something Much Worse

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Chapter 7: Rex Tears the Roof off the Sucker

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Chapter 8: A Dragon Lives Forever

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References