Prophet with a Capital P

We stood in the great hall of Hannel House, myself - Roger Bristol - surrounded by ten of the 231 NS Combat Division, standing in a semi-circle, blades out, the techsteel glowing blue, aqua, red and purple, each color and hum matching with the unique soundpitch of a specific soldier. The men and women of the division held their swords (called Kiri-Katana) in the modified ready stance of the ancient samurai, two hands wrapped around the intricate handles, held at just-below-shoulder height to their right or left sides, dominant hand depending.

They were dressed in fatigues and combat boots. Gone were the ancient ways of robes and armor. These were modern soldiers in every sense of the word.

Sitting before me, not six feet away, was the warlord Corin Damewood, sprawled lazily on his carved Balinese throne, arms hanging off the teak lion armrests, fingers bedecked in silver rings loaded with diamonds and emeralds. He was a slight man, a ragged beard peppered with gray and red, bright eyes darting everywhere like silver fish in a pool, glinting and flickering, those eyes surrounded by smudged mascara, long dark lashes accentuated by the stuff. 

He was dressed in a dingy black t-shirt and jeans.

The soldiers were here to arrest him or kill him. 

I was here to provide the world with the interview everyone wanted. 

Rock star stuff. 

For here was the legendary pariah messiah, the lazy lord, the man with no plan. Yet also sitting here was the Prophet with a capital P, the man who’d predicted more outrageous shit than any crazy Nostradamus-type-wannabe in thousands of years. This man might be the most stunningly accurate predictor of future events the world has ever seen.

He predicted the bombing of the Taj Mahal

The tsunami that swept away the majority of New York? Called it.

The election of Lazar P. Buford? No one could have seen that one coming. The list goes on.

But the man who had an army of ten thousand screaming loyal zealots, was now almost alone, the guardians fled, the servants dead or hiding, the massive estate in flames and riddled with bullet holes. Twenty vacdrones surrounded the complex, armed with frightening force. He was done and he knew it, yet here he was lounging on his awful throne like a debutante, casual and carefree.

But the man had one more - make that two more - cards to play. The first was that damned chatterbox mouth of his. The second card was lying equally casually at the foot of the throne, covered in golden fur and watching the warriors with calm, deep-pool eyes, the bluest of blues, blinking serenely, massive intelligent orbs observing the ten Neo-Samurai surrounding her and Damewood. Her five-inch claws clicked on the tiled floor, retreating into the huge pads of her feet, then clicking again on the floor; click … click … click. She was purring, a deep, metallic, resonant sound that rattled her chest.

Her names was Elliana, and she was as legendary as her owner. Created in the infamous vats of the Polyblue Farms in late-stage revolutionary California, she was regarded as the finest bit of pirate genetics to come out of that lab. A blend of tiger DNA with modified elements from at least a dozen different apex predators, Elliana had been purchased by Damewood three days before the raids at PolyBlue, a decision much of the world would rue. She was as close to immortal as was possible; bulletproof, slashproof and smashproof, it was rumored that the only way to destroy her was by fire. 

Without Elliana, it is likely Damewood never becomes the warlord he is - or was. 

So now I am standing ten feet away from Damewood. My heart is pounding and I have never sweat so much in my life. Hannel House had been built deep in the Amazonia, by design of course, and the humidity and heat - not to mention the stress - were getting to me. The pencil in my hand shook as I tried to write the first words.

We are here now. 

Yes we were.

I knew the men and women of the 231 would protect me, I wasn’t worried when the zealots were charging and the plasma rounds were whistling by at 1/10 the speed of light, I have been in enough war zones to remain calm enough to function, but this was different.

Elliana made this different. The Neo Samurai could protect me from most foes, but her? I found it dubious they’d be able to slow her down, much less kill her. Still, I had a job to do.

The fear would have to wait.

“Mr. Damewood?” I said. A ludicrous start, I admit. Who the hell else would he be? “My name is Roger Bristol, I write for -”

“I know who you be Mr. Breestahl,” Damewood said in his famous drawling Arkansas patois. “Heard you might be out these parts. I bid ye welcome. Welcome to ma home.”

I nodded, scribbling furiously now.

“These men and women are here to arrest you,” I said, motioning with my head and eyes to the ten soldiers holding screaming blades surrounding us. I found the rainbow of crackling plasma blades distracting and more than a little ominous.

“Iyam sure they tink they’re going to do so,” Damewood said, cackling, his toothless maw wet and slobbering as he stretched his face into the grin of a skeleton. He was a gaunt figure, his torn and shredded Levis hanging off of him and his shirt full of holes. 

One thing I have never understood. These new warlords are billionaires, most of them, yet they all dress in rags and never seem to shower.

“Before they do that though, I was brought here to ask you some questions,” I said. I was, after all, an official representative of the Union of Federal States and Countries, a rare and unusual position for someone who was better know for rock ‘n roll articles than serious geopolitical intrigue.

Yet here I was. 

He nodded, though a big grin came onto his toothless face that alarmed me. “Sortainly,” he said. Ok, I thought, too easy, too willing.

I gave him a wry look. His smile only grew larger, more menacing.

The 231 took a unified step forward, closing the circle, their boots thumping on the hard, expensive Moroccan tile of Hannel House at the same time. Elliana shot to her feet and growled and began carving a silent circuit around her master, over and over again, that wide, murderous head looking from man to woman to man, those giant blue eyes - so close to human - looking at each person directly, sizing them up, assessing their threat level. The hostility was unmistakable and that afternoon I saw looks of fear on those bold, brave samurai, men and women so hard that fear was an anathema to them. Yet here in this room, outnumbering their foe 10-2, I saw them sweating and shaking, though they kept their composure the entire time.

Elliana might be able to destroy all of them without receiving a scratch, and they knew it.

She once tore through a regiment of riflemen at the battle of Banog. By herself. She might be the single most lethal being on the planet.

“My first question is - why?” I asked, scribbling notes in my journal, looking up periodically at him - and Elliana - to see what his reaction was.

He chuckled, that exaggerated southern laugh that the rest of the federation came to dread. It was said that whenever Damewood laughed, death followed.

“Whah my deah Mr. Breestahl,” he said, the smile fading as he regarded me seriously. “I expacted you’da be a more intelligent sort. What a silly question.”

“Just answer,” I said. His kingdom was smashed, his vanguard of zealots crushed and scattered, his days of inflicting terror gone. “You’ve got moments before they take you.”

He put a hand on Elliana’s head, petting her golden, roseate fur, fingers disappearing between thick tufts of her mane only to reappear a moment later. I found it hypnotic, and maybe that was the point, so I shook it off.

“Please, Mr. Damewood, we have no time. You have no time,” I said, imploring him with my eyes and my hands to take this seriously. I knew what was going to happen, even if he didn’t. He had grown lazier and even more complacent over the years and it would be his undoing. He truly only had moments of life or freedom left, and yet he never dropped any of that façade of surety he always carried so effortlessly.

“Yaiht son,” he said, clapping his hands together suddenly, startling Elliana and then the Neo Samurai were started by her, and shuffled their combat stances as if she’d sprung at them. “I give ye what ya seek.”

He sat up straight, brushed off his filthy O'Neal Surf T-shirt, taking a moment to pick at a piece of some stuck wayward food. He looked up.

“Whyah? Whyah ask?” He said, cackling. His eyes burned suspicious holes into all of us, which made me restrain a laugh.

“I tell ye whyah. Because I wunted ta get laid.” He jammed a skinny finger up in the air, towards the teak ceilings. He locked his eyes on my face with a fierce glare, an angry look, as if that explanation was somehow the right one. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

I’d come all this way to find out this man, this legend who’d created a cult out of whole cloth, the man who’d inspired 500,000 ordinary men and women to throw away their lives to become warriors to the cause, zealots of the army of flame, that man, this man, had done it … so he could get laid.

I looked around me at the gathered soldiers, and seeing their worried faces looking back at me, I had to restrain myself from bursting out laughing. They could tell I wanted to say fuck it and let them do what they do. I was close, there’s no doubt.

In my head, I thought: you fucking douchebag.

I took a breath, composed myself.

“Mr. Damewood, are you seriously telling me you did all of this, threw the former United States into upheaval, cost hundreds of thousands of ordinary people their lives, and you did all of it so you could - quote - get laid?”

His skeleton grin grew wider. I wanted to smack him. One look at his beautiful but deadly pet disavowed me of that notion.

“Weyall there was theya drugs too,” he said. A stream of drool suddenly flowed out of the corner of his mouth and leaked off his chin before he could stop it. He was truly a wretched figure. I would have pitied him if he wasn’t who he was.

“Surely there has to be more, Mr. Damewood,” I said, pleading with him now. I had never felt more dispirited as a journalist. “There must be … something.”

He shrugged. “The powah was nice,” he drawled, wiping off his chin and slurping up the remaining drool. “Acting withuh impunetay is quite the rush Mr. Breestahl. You should try it.”

“I have impunity to end this interview,” I said. I smirked. He knew what I meant.

“Then ye should youse it,” he said, jabbing that skinny, malnourished finger at my chest, spit flying from his flappy hole.

“Don’t think I’m not tempted,” I said, smirk growing. It felt good. Let’s face it, reporter at large isn’t exactly a power position, so when you have a taste of it, it feels amazing.

“Look,” I said, softening my tone, knowing we really were out of time. “Quickly tell me what happened. I think the world deserves to know. After everything that's happened.” I looked at the men and women again and their looks told me they were more than ready to end this.

He looked at me and the expression on his face changed, softening until it seemed tears would pour from his eyes, but then he shuddered, shook his head a little, and seemed to recover, but the sober look remained.

“Iyah know what Iyah done,” he said, and his voice trembled. He turned his attention to Elliana, who sat erect and wary beside his throne, purring her disturbing metallic purr, that massive head watching each of us in turn. He regarded her with so much love that it made my heart ache to see it. We all love our pets, even if they are murderous beasts who have - supposedly, there’s no confirming that story - killed over a thousand people, including old people and children. Again, supposedly. A lot of things happened after the collapse.

“This heyar kitty cat is as good a freyand as I uh ever had,” he said, and this time there could be no doubt, the man was crying. I couldn’t believe it. He wasn’t crying about the massacres or the atrocities or the global upheaval he had caused.

He was crying because he and his cat were about to die.

It couldn’t end any other way, could it?

“Sheuh been through so many adventuhs wit me, sheuh -” then movement, coming in from the right, so quick it barely registered in my brain.

A slash, a blur, a glowing arc sudden and merciless, before anyone could react - not Damewood or Elliana or me, it was over before it had seemingly started, a whoosh as the humming blade wielded by Gunnery Sgt. Maxine Weathers crashed down into the massive, bulky form of Elliana, whistling through the air, cutting through her fur, armored hide and refined skeleton as if it were a paper lantern. The head toppled over, big blue cat eyes rolling back into its head.

Her head toppled from her neck, the separation causing a massive explosion of white fluid as the severed tubes and artificial arteries unloaded their supply of sustaining milk, showering Sgt. Weathers and Damewood in a bath of the stuff. He took the brunt of the liquid, getting completely saturated in it, his skin, beard and clothes turning a pasty shade of white, so that his gaping mouth and eyes looked dark and startled.

He choked and coughed and spat out the liquid remains of his champion. He stared at Weathers with a terrified, shocked expression, as if he couldn’t believe that his defender, his most powerful weapon, could be so easily defeated. Her body lay convulsing at his feet, still spraying gallons of milky fluid.

Her death throes were piteous mewling cries, growing more grotesquely pixelated with each moment as her core processor shut down.

Damewood was trembling now, nearly convulsing, and after a moment the inevitable happened: he wet his pants, a dark stain opening in his crotch and spreading downward towards his left knee.

Gunnery Sgt. Weathers struck out with her right fist, still clutching the glowing, burning blade, smacking Damewood with a short, sharp blow to the back of his jaw, a quick, efficient shot that staggered him. His already trembling legs went fully rubberized, and he listed, leaned, then toppled over, sprawling unconscious over the body of Elliana.

This was a sad end for the world’s greatest warlord, hunched over his decapitated terror, bladder emptying, his wound for a mouth open and grotesque, his eyes rolled back in his head, his clothes grubby, torn and filthy. He looked like little more than a homeless grifter. 

And he wasn’t even dead. He’d sworn he would never be captured alive, but alas, I’m certain he thought Elliana would have provided more of a fight.

“Sorry to cut the interview short,” Weathers said. “Had to take the opportunity.”

I chuckled and shrugged my shoulders.

Later I would find out the NS 231 had hacked the security features embedded in Elliana, had shifted her defensive frequencies to a resonance that matched Sgt. Weather’s Kiri-Katana, allowing her to defeat her quickly.

Damewood had used an easily discovered password for her security features: ProphetwithaP123. It had taken a computer tech ten minutes to access her account.

See? Lazy.

Within an hour Damewood would be on a vacdrone heading to Baltimore, given a halo and a sedation pack. With 48 hour his arrival at the capitol, he was tried, found guilty with prejudice and sentenced to a life extension of 487 years, the longest such term handed out in UAN history. No surprise, considering what he’d done.

So now Corin Damewood sits in jail, tracing out a neurotic circle in his tiny cell, over and over again, circling the perimeter of his ten foot prison. He wears a shimmer suit (not the most flattering attire) and slippers. His detox from the massive orgy of drugs he’d been taking was not pretty, and I’m told he almost died on at least five occasions, but these prison wardens, they take their jobs pretty seriously, and there would be no death relief for Damewood. They made sure he got the best medical care possible so that he would live every moment of his sentence. Only on January 6, 2546, would he be allowed to die.

The army of the flame was scattered, most had been executed or sentenced to life extensions, but some still remained alive and free, many supposedly holed up in Amazonia, still clinging to that quaint saying they’d cribbed from the old country:

The south will rise again.

Maybe. But for now, the world licks it wounds, the bombed out Arkansas territory remains a wasteland and the Prophet with a Capital P sits rotting in the Lackansa Federation Holding in the northern wastes, where he will remain until the ends of his days.

All so he could get laid.