Mania and the Executioner (25 page)

“Ooh, Rei! You might need to do something drastic if things get any worse!” Katie exclaims.

“Yeah, maybe…” Cheza quietly says.

“Well I need to get going, but we need to hangout soon! Call or text me if you need advice or anything! Bye Rei!” Katie says.

“Bye Kate, I’ll talk to you soon!” Cheza says and hangs up.

I dress in a new pair of shorts and a white t-shirt before I exit my room. As I turn towards the kitc
hen, I’m ambushed from behind with skinny white arms being wrapped around my neck.

“Welcome home
Dear. I’m going to get dressed and then I’ll be out for dinner.” Cheza whispers into my ear and gives me a peck on the cheek before she scampers off to her room. I’ve never really noticed this before, but Cheza has really nice legs for being such a short girl.

I walk out into the k
itchen and I see Natasha sitting at the table, rubbing her temples.

“Hey, how are you feeling?” I ask.

“Hungry, tired, headache.” Natasha says.

“Is it your concussion?” I ask
, concerned.

“No, it’s the shit storm your little ‘blood-covered guy with a sword in each hand
and a girl over each shoulder, walking around with three swords through his chest’ move has caused.” Natasha says while glaring at me slightly.

“Sorry…” I say quietly.

“*Sigh*…I’m not mad at you Cole; I know that you really had no other choice while hauling me and the fairy princess…how is she by the way?” Natasha asks.

“I don’t what she was like before this whole mess, but I imagine that she was an energetic, mischievous, happy little girl. She seems to be back to that girl, but I think she is just acting. There’s someth
ing there that is still broken and it comes through in a timid sort of form…” I say.

“Do you think the Daeva
…
did
anything to her?” Natasha asks.

“I don’t know; I haven’t asked and I don’t plan to press her
into telling me…but I do know that I want to protect her. Earlier today, I actually found myself wondering if that was what a normal brother-sister relationship would feel like: I want to protect her but I’m not possessive of her like I was with Cheza.” I tell her.

“Hmm…
Well do you feel like she is your sister?” Natasha asks.

“Not really. She is too young for me to consider categorizing her in my ‘friend
s’ category so I considered making a ‘tiny associates’ category but I didn’t really like the feel of that so I put her in the ‘cute little girls with wings’ category but the title was too long to put on the file so I put her in the recently vacant ‘little sister’ category.” I explain.

“What!?”
Natasha exclaims looking concerned.

“Oh, ‘basketful of kittens’ cute.”
I say.

“Oh okay…whew, I thought we were going to have to stage an intervention haha!” Natasha
exclaims as Cheza and Tia come out and Sara serves dinner.

“So how did the experiment go?” I ask in between bites.

“It went well. We were able to spar until Cheza froze my sword enough for the ice to reach my hand, but the swords definitely stood up to the temperature; not so much as a crack on them.” Tia says.

“Alright
, well that’s interesting.” I reply.

Good, that means pure silicon carbide should work for Cheza’s blades. I finish dinner, g
rab five 32 oz. Gatorade bottles, and head to my room. If I drain half of a liter into the cooler every five minutes, my blood supply won’t go down as long as I stay hydrated and I should have enough for the blades in roughly three and a half hours. I grab my laptop, pull the cooler out of the shower, and sit on the lid of my toilet as I slice my arm open and hold it over the cooler.

“Airi, please deposit .5 liters of blood into the cooler every five min
utes as needed until there is 20.5 liters in the cooler.”

(As you wish it, so it shall be
, Master)

I start researching different components of blood and possible ways I
can use it to make explosives. With my Drive no longer around, the exploding vampire head is one mystery I’ll have to solve alone. About an hour and five bottles of Gatorade later, I hear someone enter my room.

“Hey Cole?
Are you alright?” Cheza asks through the bathroom door.

“Huh? Yeah I’m fine Cheza, I’m just reading.” I say.

“Wha—? Why are you reading in the bathroom?” Cheza asks incredulously.

“Don’t question why men do the things that they do
, Cheza. Do I question why you do some of the things you do? No, I don’t…at least not vocally. I will exit the bathroom when I exit the bathroom.” I say as if I were stating some sort of declaration for all man-kind.

“I…fine.” She
replies and leaves.

Hopefully it will buy me at least
three more hours. In the following two and a half hours, I find interesting information about extremely unstable chemical compounds that I may be able to make. I also refill the Gatorade bottles with water from the sink three times when Airi reminds me that I’m getting dehydrated.

(20.4 l
iters is presently in the cooler. This is the amount necessary for Cheza’s blades)

“Thank you Airi. How long will it take to form the blades and sheath?”

(ETA: 2 hours 15 minutes. Reminder: if you lose sight of the object you are trying to create, the structure will collapse. Meditation is recommended)

“Damn
! Wow that is a really long time…meditating while creating this sounds like a good idea, thanks Airi.”

I d
rag the cooler over to my bed, sit crisscross on top of it, and stick my right hand into my blood. I picture Cheza’s weapon in my mind. I take several deep breaths and I start the construction.

In the back of m
y mind, I hear my door open before it closes quietly; probably Tia.

I picture the Kukri-like blade that curves inward. I picture a split in the center that follows the curve of the blade, stopping halfway down its length to act like
the disarm-bar on my gun; and I sharpen the inside of the split. I imagine the back half of the blade being three inches longer than the front so it is more effective at blocking and disarming. I sharpen the back edge of the blade too because I know it will never hurt her.

I’m about to start the handle when I hear Cheza’s voice from a far off place.

“COLE! WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU DOI—” Cheza says as her voice trails off. I think I heard Tia run up before Cheza stopped talking. Tia probably shushed her…or Tia used a chloroform rag on Cheza and she is currently unconscious on my floor; both are equally possible.

I picture the cross guard being the five-pointed flower-esque cross guard that the Diamond swords had. I
see the hilt that fits her small hands perfectly. I imagine a pentagonal diamond with the point facing outward for the pommel. With the blade finally complete, I split the whole thing in half so that the left half is a mirror image of the right half; when separated, the hilt is a semicircle for each half.

“COLE WHAT IS ALL THIS!? WHY IS CHEZA ON THE FLO—” I hear Sara say, sounding like she is shouting from across a football field. I’m thinking the Tia/chloroform scenario is much more likely now and Sara has joined Cheza on my floor.

I picture the scabbard that is curved to fit the blade.

I hear the door open again and I wait for the screaming followed by the chloroforming
, but it doesn’t come. I imagine some sort of conversation consisting of pantomiming and mouthing of words followed by silent laughter is going on between Tia and Natasha at the moment.

As a final touch, I etch a message into the inside of the left and right halves of the hilt:

To Cheza, the Diamond in my Heart

May these protect you if I am
unable

I open my eyes and
see the sheathed blades standing straight up in the center of the cooler while a whirlpool of blood circulates around them. Strangely enough, the clear blades and sheath are completely devoid of blood. When I pull them out, the blood fills in the hole and stops spinning; okay, that was pretty cool.

I take sto
ck of my surroundings and find: Sara and Cheza asleep on my floor, a white rag that looks slightly wet, and a silent game of strip poker between Natasha and Tia…you know, just to make things weird. They are both down to just their bras and panties and it appears that Natasha just lost that hand because she starts to reach behind her to unhook her bra.

“That’s far enough Natasha.” I say as she jumps a little.

“Are you sure Cole?” Natasha asks while thrusting out her chest, cocking her head slightly to the side, and batting her eyes at me. As such, it takes me a few moments consideration; in which time, I’ve already failed the test so I go with the backup excuse.

“Yes I’m sure! I wasn’t actually thinking that over; I was just having a mild stroke an
d my mouth was refusing to work.” I reply.

(That’s the best you could come up with?)

“Please don’t say anything to Cheza…” I quietly beg.

“I won’t on one condition.” Natasha says.

“Name it.” I say.

“Have sex with me on your bed while Cheza sleeps right there.” Natasha says with a
surreptitious smile.

Okay, I have a few things to consider. One: if Natasha tells Cheza there is a 100 percent chance that she is going to be at least slightly angry. Two: if Cheza wakes up while I’m having sex with Natasha, then she is going to be far from angry…the phrase suicidal double homicide
fits. Three: chloroform only lasts for about three hours. So really it boils down to two questions: How long has Cheza been out and how fast can I have sex?

“How long has Cheza been unconscious?” I ask.

“About two hours.” Tia responds as Natasha’s smile widens.

Okay two hours is most likely within the standard deviation of chloroform’s duration and I can most likely finish with Natasha in less than 15 minutes if I really focus and worst case scenario I can fake an orgasm thanks to my contr
ol over my blood. Wait a second, I am missing the most important thing!

“Does your condition include foreplay?” I ask. Natasha’s smile widens more.

“Not this time.” Natasha replies as Tia starts smiling too.

Okay so no foreplay so
I can definitely get it done in less than 15 minutes, but Cheza has already been unconscious for two hours and—Oh, shit…

(You know you done fucked up, right?)

“You aren’t even using that quote in the right context!”

(I know, but you know it, don’t you? You know you done fucked up)
11

See, here’s the thing about being an insensibly logical person: you will spend three minutes trying to figure out the probabilities of two things versus the varying degrees of severity
in consequences and you will ask stupid questions that dig you deeper and deeper into a trap while trying to figure out the answer that has been obvious the entire time to a sensible person.

I look over and
see Tia holding her cellphone, recording my failure as Tia and Natasha reach the breaking point and just start dying; the rolling around, pounding on the floor with laughter kind. However, all this pounding and rolling around also causes Natasha’s partially unhooked bra to slip all of the way off.

This time, I do the sensible thing: I look for the second that it takes me to save that file in the hard drive of my mind, and then I look away.

(You know you done fucked up again right?)

“Wait, what did I do this time? I LOOKED AWAY!”

(Hard drive of your mind. Unintentional sharing of images)

“FUCK ME SIDEWAYS!”

Please, oh pleeeeeeeeease let Cheza’s subconscious process that image into some sort of lesbian sex dream of her and Natasha or a dream threesome of her, Natasha, and I!

(Impossible)

“WHY!?”

(Because the conscious mind received it first)

“…”

I look at the scene around me and notice that this can be easily misconstrued as me kicking ass at strip poker while Cheza and Sara lay unconscious a few feet away.

“Cole…you have ten seconds to explain why an image of Boobzilla’s naked breasts just popped into my head, and why she is topless right now, before I go to the kitchen, grab a knife, come back here, and stab you with it.” Cheza says in a furious monotone as she sits down on the bed next to me.

“Cheza, this isn’t what it looks like.” I say calmly.

(Why do you never learn? How many of the last three times has that line worked?)

“Okay.” Cheza says as she shrugs.
Seriously?

WOOHOO! 25% SUCCESS RATE!

Then Cheza snatches the blades from my hand, whips them out of the sheath, and tackles me onto my back. She straddles me as she raises the blades above her head while wearing a blank expression…why are women always doing this to me?