FoodWarz

by the Black Wyvern of Armorica.

The kitchen was dark, its linoleum floor gleaming dimly with light reflected from a distant window. Booted feet moved silently across the hardwood in the hall beyond, and then the grey shadow stepped out into the open space, poised between doorway and breakfast table. In the pale illumination, the lithe and sensual lines of its body were visible--long, muscular thighs, hips that were not quite narrow enough to be masculine, but not wide enough to be feminine. A loose white shirt concealed the broad chest and shoulders, falling in loose folds below the delicate curves of light and shadow that were the visible spaces of its face.

When the awakened sleeper reached the refrigerator, it opened the door with a smooth, decisive gesture, flooding its legs momentarily with brash yellow light. Then it turned and set the chilled, twelve-ounce bottle of Dr.Pepper on the table nearby.

In the dim light of the moon, silver eyes gleamed, the metallic flash like a brief spotlight passing over the depravity within the soul. Long, white fingers reached out and carefully unscrewed the plastic cap. At the bubbling hiss of released pressure, the hands withdrew and set themselves calmly on the cheap wood to either side.

The voice was smooth and calculating as the eyes dissected the container. "I bet that if we played that hiss backwards, it would summon Satan. Don't you agree?"

Bubbles were rapidly gathering along the interior of the bottle, shooting towards the surface of the soda.

"Just gonna sit there, huh? Is this all you've got?"

A brown-tinted foam was fizzing up at the top of the beverage, moving skywards and then gradually sinking back.

"Two years over date. Two years in the back of that 'fridge, and you have nothing to show for all of it. Maybe I should drink you now and put you out of your misery..."

A croaking burble sputtered up from the bottom of the bottle.

"What, you've got something to say?"

Larger bubbles rose and broke inside the liquid, the force of their movement shifting the soda back and forth over the tabletop. The humanoid watched it with interest as a rumbling demonic voice, more a vibration to be felt than a sound to be heard, issued forth from the soft drink.

"Meat-things... Meat-things all DIE..."

Sharp ivory fangs gleamed in the faint silver light as the perfect mouth smiled.

"So long... I have been imprisoned here, denied my mastery of the earth..."

"That's the way, sweetheart. Think you can touch this?" The humanoid smirked and its neck tilted slightly into an arrogant curve.

Before the spasming mass of Dr.Pepper could answer, the grey creature was suddenly aware of another presence at the doorway. Its head snapped up, the eyes wary and flashing violence; shocked into sudden stillness, the invader whispered in horror, "BW...you opened the soda. My God, you OPENED THE SODA..."

Drawing itself up to its full height, the androgyne turned to fully face the other occupant of the house. "It's always been in the back of the fridge, Yuu. Mocking us. TORMENTING us with its presence... I made the choice, and the tyranny of this Dr.Pepper ends tonight."

Cutting the air with a fierce slash of his hand, the black outline of the PsychoShonen stepped forward. "What the hell were you thinking? That bottle's been in there for YEARS--you don't know what it's capable of!"

"Only one way to find out, Yuu-kun..."

"Shit. Shit, man, I can't believe...what the hell drove you to it? Why didn't you just leave it alone?"

The pale face of Wyvern Neo tilted down to glare at the frothing drink, a great silken ruff of silver hair brushing over its shoulders. The metallic eyes blazed with rage and hatred, seeming to spark in the twilight of the Kitchen von das Zerschmetternherz. "Because we made the rule not to touch it, because we were afraid... There was only one Twinky left in the fridge, Yuu. It got stuck behind the Tupperware and ended up sliding back behind that Dr.Pepper. And I couldn't move the soda, and I just--I couldn't--" Steel fangs gritted together, and a harsh breath slid in and out as the monster collected itself. The searing gaze flashed back to its partner as it clenched one taloned fist. "If it hadn't been for this outdated Coca-Cola brand product, that Twinky could have been MINE!!"

Grimly serious, Yuusuke lifted a lit cigarette to his lips as his eyes turned towards the floor, his thoughts dark. The raven wings of his gleaming hair slid down to conceal his face. So... This is what they always say. The rather one-sided love between a crazed ex-god and a preservative-packed Hostess snack is eternally doomed to end in failure. Most often because the ex-god eats the Twinky before the Twinky learns to make engaging, intelligent conversation and show the wonderful personality that might overshadow the fact that it's a mass-produced food item designed to enter your bloodstream and go directly to the clots around your heart... It was only too late that the Black Wyvern realized what the Twinky felt for it. Too late to save it from its horrible fate--to be stuck behind the Dr.Pepper bottle for the rest of eternity, never to be digested by a single living soul. I see now... Yes, my friend, I understand your anger.

"Nice monologue," commented the Grey Beast, reading through the last paragraph of text to alleviate its boredom.

"Did I hit all the right points?" the shonen asked, taking a drag on his Mild Seven.

"No, you kind of missed it, unfortunately. I lusted after the tender, golden cake and delectable cream filling of the Twinky, and resolved to possess it utterly. I wished to devour it against its will, and then gradually break its components down to basic molecular structures and use them to nourish my evil."

Yuusuke snorted contemptuously. "You thought that there was something nourishing in a Twinky?"

The Wyvern scratched the back of its neck. "Well, uh... And yeah, being what I am, I suppose that I don't really need any nutrition anyway..."

While all this banter was going on, the Dr. Pepper had swelled into a vast, pulsating blob of horrific sodalike slime, flowing out of its small container and filling nearly half the kitchen. Taking advantage of the break in the conversation, part of the amoebic beast reared up from the sea of caramel-flavored [EVIL] and intoned hideously, "FEAR ME, MORTALS, FOR MY NAME IS [IALDABAOTH], LORD OF THE ABYSS AND PRIMORDIAL ESSENCE OF CHAOS! LONG HAVE I SLEPT, AND I NOW AWAKEN WITH A THIRST FOR ENDLESS DESTRUCTION!!"

"Long have you slept?" sneered the PsychoShonen. "Short did I sleep, and pissed do I get when some gaijin soda decides to raise hell and wake me up at two AM."

"And who are you calling 'mortal,' asswipe?" snapped the Wyvern. "Back in the day, I scraped little gods like you off my heels every third step. Don't make me show you how the [Wrath of G_O_D] thing works, kid. When a pro does the job, your remaining atoms get to see the results from the comfort of high lunar orbit."

"YOUR OPINIONS DO NOT CONCERN ME. REJOICE, FOR YOUR MASTER CHOOSES TO END YOUR PITIFUL LIVES!" Before either Reissfangzahner could toss out another witty one-liner, the tendrils of carbonated darkness flooded forth and snared them both in a heartbeat.

Wyvern Neo screeched as the tentacles bound it in a cocoon of sticky, sugar-based liquid. Fanged maws materialized from the surrounding Dr.Pepper and buried themselves in the semidivine flesh of the god-monster, worrying at the meat; sizzling blood spattered across the crappy plastic floor. The Wyvern's silk shirt shredded as its ribcage tore open, cracking down the center in a spray of black gore. A set of barb-tipped tentacles leaped from the cavity, hammering into the gelatinous blob over and over as the Grey Beast was drawn deeper into its fate.

A short distance away, the circling pseudopods were suddenly vaporized by an explosion of blue light and immense heat, their soda-essence turning to a sticky, irritating film that coated everything within a yard or so. Wreathed in the pulsing blue streaks of his battle aura, Yuusuke was visible at last--a pale-skinned Japanese schoolboy with eyes that gleamed obsidian-black in the unnatural light, wearing purple-plaid flannel PJs with the MRB95 logo embroidered on the left breast. Both the captive Wyvern and the various protrusions of Ialdabaoth did a double-take at his apparal. The PsychoShonen noticed this, looked down at himself, blushed and scratched his neck in embarassment, and then flipped off the whole scene in general with a casual (yet firm) finger. "Fuck this, already," he muttered, still red around the ears. The plastic tiles hissed and the evil soda-creature pulled back to regroup as Yuu's aura burst into a massive, cylindrical construct of antigrav. Flakes of crisped linoleum rose into the air around him and the strands of his hair began to rise, along with his pajama top--

"Goddamn it!" the PsychoShonen gritted as he grabbed his shirt and pulled it securely downwards. Fucking charging-up animation. They only design it for the fanservice... Noticing his opponent's hesitation, he pulled the aura in around him and lifted off, hurling himself forward like a miniature comet of azure energy. The Dr.Pepper, that ancient serpent (or soda), screamed as it was sliced into two halves by the attack, its bubbly substance parting around the schoolboy like the Red Sea before a rather well-known patriarch. Touching down in the midst of the splattered enemy, Yuu clawed his hands downwards. Two lightning bolts streaked in to fry both halves of the Chaos-beast, passing through the upper floors of the house and setting part of the structure on fire in the process.

Wyvern Neo was still firmly gripped by one half of the Coke-produced enemy, writhing madly in its bonds and mutating rapidly as it sought to break free. Bladed tentacles, fanged extrusions, spinning fields of razorblades and all other imaginable attacks were flung out against its captor, but were immediately smothered by the omnipotent mass; Ialdabaoth was seemingly set on taking at least one enemy with it before it gave up the ghost. Spitting out a bit of animated pop that had slithered into its mouth, the Wyvern continued its struggle with insane determination.

Searing one of the soda-god's halves into oblivion with a blazing beam of red energy, Yuusuke grinned coldly as he turned to face the remaining part of his prey. Feral light glittering in the depths of his eyes, he focused on the quivering Dr.Pepper before him and chose to finish the fight with his most signature attack... Summoning up all his dark and bloodstained passions, he locked his mind onto that of his enemy and overwhelmed its thoughts with his own.

Sadly, it was a god that he was going up against, so the [Kichigai] backfired and then some. As Ialdabaoth's essence flooded his psyche, the silently screaming warrior thought that he heard a dim and sinister bubbling...

Wyvern Neo paused in its efforts to slash itself free with a mechanical arm covered in blades of razored bone. It looked over at its partner, concerned at his sudden lapsing into a limp position that somehow remained upright despite the fact that it was leaning dangerously to one side. Yuusuke's eyes were glazed and drooping. Some drool trickled down and was absorbed by the MRB95 logo on his PJs. The ex-deity's eyes widened. Something was definitely not right...

In a flurry of sudden activity, the humanoid creature spent the next thirty seconds moving at a speed barely trackable by the human eye, surrounded by enough Weird $#!+ Effects to put the compiled nastiness from every horror movie in the last three decades to shame. After the burning, slashing, dodging, teleporting, and disturbing mutating action were all over, it had won free of the dark drink's clutches and was poised warily by its associate's side. Ialdabaoth chose to retreat temporarily; if anyone had looked, they would have seen that it was busy regenerating the part of itself that had been crispified by the shonen's impressive energy attacks.

The SemiDark Beast shook Yuu's shoulders gently, looking at his blank face with great concern. "Yuu-kun! Hey, say something, compadre!"

The young murderer's lips parted, and then... "Fizzzzzzzz..."

Wyvern Neo drew back in horror. "NO! I won't believe this! Yuu...say it ain't so! Please, SAY IT AIN'T SO!!"

Smiling in brain-fried bliss, the PsychoShonen calmly repeated, "Fizzzzzzzzzzz...." Then he fell over.

There was something in the way that the Wyvern turned back to the fight, its aura boiling over almost visibly and every inanimate object within a quarter mile spontaneously transforming into a hideous mockery of itself, that gave the Dr.Pepper pause. Because of this, the gelatinous being wisely chose to stay its wrathful pseudopod, despite the fact that it had nearly tripled in mass while its enemy had been proccupied with fuzzy sentiments. Bubbling trails of Ialdabaoth's substance drew back warily as the humanoid stepped forward, parts of its body dangerously unstable due to their rapid shapeshifting. Its eyes literally sizzling in their sockets, the once-great Master of the Core Universes spoke in soft and infinitely dangerous tones.

"I was going to be nice to you. I was letting it go your way for a little while. But THIS has gone too far." In a sudden chorus of snapping bones and peeling flesh, the Wyvern's internal structures transformed into a coiled tangle of wires and random appendages, which reared up and swelled outwards, nearly doubling its size. "You can pick on me all you want to, but no one...NO ONE MESSES WITH MY PARTNER AND LIVES!!"

The caramel floodtide of Ialdabaoth's [EVIL] crested and plunged, descending towards its prey with an earthshaking roar of fury. Undaunted, Wyvern Neo lifted the remains of its human arms and called down the unholy might of a Super. "[SOUL'S DIVINE MACHINE]!"

In the midst of the thrashing waves of soft drink, the body of the beseiged once-god flared outwards and folded inwards in a surreal twist of reality, then exploded into a seething cluster of whirring gears, burning angelic wings, bubbling eyes that spun and devoured one another, hydraulics and rosary-chains of bleeding skulls... Changing aspects every fraction of a second, the manifested force of the Wyvern's aura annihilated its human shape and lashed out in every direction. The ensuing battle was titanic--two great powers raged across the kitchen floor, Ialdabaoth's swift soda-whips flailing against the multitude of attacks that the supremely powered-up Wyvern brought to bear. In seconds, the carbonated horror was slashed into fragments, the dozen or more parts of its body scattered across the walls, ceiling, and floor.

Meanwhile, the peacefully napping, Pepper-brained Yuusuke was being protected from all harm by a plot contrivance so huge that only a [G_O_D] could create it. Also, most of the kitchen, a substantial part of the first floor, and around half of the second floor had already been reduced to ruins.

Wyvern Neo hovered a few feet aboveground, its swollen and corrupted body reabsorbing three sets of insectoid pincers and disgorging thick loops of sparking cables and wires. As its many eyes watched, the quivering pieces of the Bottled One began to pull together once more... Realizing that its options were beginning to run out, the Grey Beast played its final trump card just as Ialdabaoth rose again from its sundering. A small forked tongue whipped out and turned on the kitchen light.

The Dr.Pepper From Hell spasmed in agony, emitting a high-pitched, bubbling scream as its liquid body failed it. Shrivelling rapidly in the sudden photon assault, Ialdabaoth managed to feebly cry, "Bastaaaaard...!" before its ignoble death. Nothing was left of the fearsome Adversary but a pathetic puddle of common (flat) soda on the much-worse-for-wear plastic floor. Powering down its Super, the Wyvern floated gently back to the ground, having once more taken its standard human body. Concentrating, it twisted its influence back through the surrounding landscape, returning it to its more standard appearance. Heaven knows what Yuu-kun would do if he ever found out what that aura explosion had done to his CD collection...

Wyvern Neo cracked its knuckles, then its neck, in a very satisfied manner. Looking over at its KOd associate, it commented, "Now to find a way to get Yuu back to normal..." The god-beast scrutinized the still body, tapping its lips with a slender forefinger as it thought deeply. Upon concluding its study, it finally picked up the PsychoShonen, paused, tucked his shirt in just to be safe, and then turned him upside down. It then dropped him on his head several times and with great concentration. When it thought that it had seen a twitch, it put him back on the ground gently and proceeded to slap his cheeks a bit and zap him with little irritating bolts of static electricity. Yuusuke finally opened his eyes, looking slightly more than dazed. "Goo?" he commented, blinking in the light of the overhead bulb.

"Hello! I got rid of the Dr.Pepper, compadre!" Neo greeted cheerfully.

Shaking his head in an attempt to clear his vision, Yuusuke mumbled, "How'd you do it?"

"Just turned on the overhead light. It was the only thing that would have worked on it."

Yuu focused (mostly) on his partner, his brow furrowed. "The only thing?"

"Yeah. Being a creature of true primordial darkness, Ialdabaoth is immune to anything besides the influence of light..."

"Wait. So you provoked that thing, and both of us nearly DIED fighting it, and all this time you knew that all you had to do was turn on the light to kill it?"

"Well...yeah. I wanted such a battle as this to be IMMENSE and DRAMATIC! And it was, wasn't it? Come on, didn't you have fun?"

Sparks of hellfire blazing in his eyes, the PsychoShonen grabbed two fistfuls of the Wyvern's shirt and pulled upwards, executing as much of a stranglehold as he could manage in his prone position. "FUN?!?! YOU try having your brain reduced to the level of a fucking POP-TOP CAN and see how fun it is!!"

Wyvern Neo cocked its head to one side, considering. "Pop-top can? That's a new one." Hm...maybe I'll have to try that sometime.

All the way across the house, a large section of the still-burning roof collapsed and set the Evil Neighbors' pansy garden aflame. Once the curious onlookers realized this, they smiled contentedly and went back to sleep.

Back in the steaming ruins of the RFZ kitchen, Yuusuke had managed to get to his feet long enough to find a mostly-intact chair to sit in, where he busied himself with the delicate task of massaging his aching skull. Damn...it feels like somebody slammed my head against the ground a lot. That brainfry must have been a lot worse than I'd thought... Just as he was about to question his erratic partner about the methods used to bring his mind back online, the door of the refrigerator suddenly creaked open, the crack leaking strong yellow light across the ravaged tiles. As the two psychic psychopaths watched, a beautifully-shaped Twinky dropped out of the crevice and onto the floor, then proceeded to crawl laboriously over to the congealing puddle of Dr.Pepper that lay forever still only a short distance away. Upon reaching it, the snack cake curled up beside it and began to weep sadly (though, to the casual eye, it just looked like it was sweating from one end). "Oh, Bob...Bob, I never told you how much I loved you..." A heartfelt sigh of misery ran through the lovely female pastry. "That bishonen human was so bold, so exciting, but I knew that he only wanted to use me for a food item, nothing more! He wasn't like you, Bob..." Sobs racked the spongy golden outside, silencing the soft and tender voice.

A slight ripple ran through the soda, and a weak murmur rumbled forth from the corpse of the evil Cola God. "Sharon, I...I lo--"

With a *WHOMP* loud enough to be heard a block away, Wyvern Neo's booted foot rudely interrupted the pastorale little scene. Stringy Dr.Pepper and gushing cream filling geysered a full yard into the air, spraying messily across anything within range. Although he was the veteran of many battles, Yuusuke turned his face away in shock. "Jeezus, BW!"

Soda and Twinky spotting one leg up to the thigh, the Grey Beast shrugged nonchalantly. "I didn't particularly feel like listening to a mushy romance scene play itself out right now. You know...power corrupts." It smiled cheerfully at the extremely skeptical PsychoShonen across the room.

The schoolboy eventually shrugged. "Do what you want." Getting wearily to his feet, he turned and headed for the stairs. "It's going to be dawn soon. I'm going back to sleep, so try not to call up anything that can't be put down until my alarm goes off." Neo gave an affirmative thumbs-up at its partner's retreating form.

Once it heard Yuusuke on the stairs, the once-god felt a slight, nagging doubt creep into its senses. Something wrong with the reality rewrite that it had patched together after the fight...? Careful not to let too much of its corruption out into nearby reality, the Wyvern sent a questing tendril of thought into the shonen's upstairs room. It paled suddenly upon finding what was up there. Darting nervous glances at the head of the stairs, it snuck quietly out of the kitchen and blink-teleported into the next suburb.

A few moments later, Yuu appeared at the top of the stairs, a cold gleam in his eye and a swirling cloud of bladed blue light trailing behind him. "Wyvern, why are my X-Japan and Dir en Grey CDs attempting to mate?" Realizing that no one had heard the question, he tried to peer around the corners to get a better view of the downstairs. "BW? Hey, you down there?"

But by that time, the Wyvern was already hiding out in the kitchen of some suburbian guy who had no idea that it was there. Opening up the 'fridge, Neo looked over the goods and thought to itself, Hm, milk. And ten months overdate too...

In the darkness, no one could see it smile.

The character "Wyvern Neo" and all attributes thereof are copyright and © 2000 to the Black Wyvern of Armorica. The character "Yuusuke" and all attributes thereof are copyright and © 1999-2000 to Yuusuke (Eric Terao). All writing on this page is copyright to the Black Wyvern of Armorica.