Master Builder

Death does not a monster make.

Pita tried to hold onto Raelyn’s words as she muttered grumpily to Iggy, “The creep followed us.”

Because of all of the people scrambling around the airport and the intercom regularly announcing flights, she initially thought he hadn’t heard. He was using a few chairs as a makeshift bed and his camping pack as a pillow. Pita sat atop his belly, a patch of mist made invisible by the building’s florescent lights. She was about to poke her brother between the eyes when he muttered sleepily, “He hurting anybody?”

Pita scrunched her baby face in frustration.

“…No,” she admitted. “Just being really freaking annoying!”

Sato, one of the Yakuza members, stood leaning against the far wall, next to the restrooms, smoking a cigarette. None of the staff members or security guards had the guts to tell him to stop. The gangster turned his head and exhaled a mouthful of smoke before returning his attention to Iggy.

“You kicked his ass so hard he fell in love with you,” Pita said, half joking. The man was now obsessed with her brother. Instead of meeting up with Raelyn right away, Iggy stayed a few nights at Sister Aoi’s church to make sure the Yakuza didn’t go back on their word and become tiger food.

Sato and the ugly one, Birdie, had swung by the church with a small army of men. Yet instead of waging war, Birdie ordered them to get to work on fixing the roof, cleaning up the yard, and giving the church a new coat of paint. Meanwhile, Sato would follow Iggy around, constantly asking questions about Iggy’s “magic.” Iggy managed to sidestep most of the questions, yet Sato persisted. And now here he was, stalking a teenage boy while smoking in an airport.

“Can’t follow us with two broken legs,” Pita thought aloud just as the intercom announced their flight.

“That’s us,” Iggy yawned, sitting up. Pita floated up and then rested atop his head as he gathered his things. She looked back towards the bathroom as they headed towards the terminal. He was gone.

Good riddance, she thought, eyes fluttering sleepily. Phantoms did not sleep as the living did. Rather, they simplified. Their many layers of thoughts, memories, and emotions peeled away, leaving only a wisp of energy that was then reabsorbed within their blue witch’s heart. In much simpler terms, Pita was an electric-powered toy that used Iggy’s heart as an outlet to charge.

Against his protests, Pita’s (understandable) paranoia towards the Yakuza kept her conscious throughout their stay in Japan. Yet the church was now in good hands. Or claws, really. Iggy had explained to Sister Aoi that Incineroar would still be tethered to him, but the tiger would draw its lifeforce from the surrounding sea life and rodent population instead. To her credit, the woman had taken it all in stride, though it wasn’t until she was properly introduced to the phantom tiger that she became convinced that the Yakuza would no longer pose a threat-

“This seat taken?”

Pita’s consciousness instantly snapped back together. Just in time to watch Sato plop down into the airplane seat right next to her brother. Iggy was seating by the window. Through it, Pita saw that the plane had already taken off, now soaring through clear blue skies.

Death does not a monster make.

I know, Raelyn! Pita thought as she struggled to rein in her rage.

“Er, hey,” Iggy said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “Um, what are you doing here?”

“What’s it look like?” Sato leaned back in his chair, making himself comfortable. “Going on vacation.”

“Oh. But what about your boss?”

“Assigned somebody else to babysit his dumbass kid. Not that they’ll have to do much.” Sato chuckled darkly. “Birdie’s found religion. All it took was a magic tiger.”

Pita didn’t like his tone. Or his stupid tattooed face. He was only here because he wanted answers from Iggy. Wanted to become a blue witch like Iggy. Her brother wasn’t stupid. He’d probably figured that out, too.

But Ignacio was also lonely.

Raelyn had been great. She had been constant shoulder for Iggy to lean on once it became apparent that their parents would always blame him for Pita’s death. At fifteen, once he’d finished constructing his grimoire, he’d run away with his master. They, Pita, and Raelyn’s children had traveled the globe. Iggy and Pita loved Raelyn. She was their mama in all but blood.

But Iggy wanted a friend.

His dead baby sister’s companionship and that of his “Pokémon” could only go so far.

“First time to America?” Iggy asked Sato hesitantly.

“Nah. I did a gig bodyguarding Mr. Kaen," that was Birdie's father, the mob boss, "a few years back at some conference. Lasted only three days, plus I had to stick to Boss like glue. So I didn’t get to see much.” Sato glanced sideways at Iggy. “Sooooo your boss. What they like?”

Here we go, Pita thought irritably. She plopped herself onto Iggy’s lap and crossed her arms over her chest, openly scowling at Sato as she did so. The gangster couldn’t see her, and Iggy pretended not to notice.

“My boss,” he said, frowning thoughtfully. “Not really my boss. More like…like my sensei, I guess you could say.”

“They a shaman, too?” Sato asked, keeping his voice light.

“We’re not shamans,” Iggy laughed. “At least, that’s not what we call ourselves.”

“What then?”

Iggy hesitated.

Sato suddenly shuffled back in his seat and help his hands. “Yo, man! It’s cool! I’ll back off!” he said quickly. “No need to aim the flying shark at me!”

Flying shark?

Both Iggy and Pita turned and looked out the window. Sato had been half right. The gigantic creature flying alongside the plane possessed the upper half of a great white shark with burning scarlet eyes. The lower half was split into sections. The middle section sprouted tumor-covered batwings. The rest of the creature ended in wriggling, barbed octopus tentacles. It was currently using them to shimmy their way up the plane’s wing and towards the window. By this point the rest of the plane’s occupants had noticed. Some were rushing to the windows to get a look, while others were scrambling the opposite way, swarming the unprepared flight attendants.

“Pita,” Iggy said.

“On it.” She floated upwards. Only for his hand to shoot and catch hers. His touch send a ripple of blue light across her form, momentarily making her visible. Sato yelped and fell out of his chair. “No. The daylight,” Iggy reminded her. “None of the others will last longer than a few seconds. You can, but…but you haven’t rested. Be honest, Lupita. How long can you manage?”

She wanted to lie but couldn’t. Not to Iggy.

“…Three minutes tops,” she admitted. She put on a wicked smile. “But I only need two.”

Iggy hesitated but let her go. Pita shot straight up, through the plane’s ceiling. Daylight attacked her form the instant she appeared outside. She pushed through and focused on the mutant shark. It was nearly to the window, nearly to Iggy. Glaring at it, Pita placed her hands over her belly and-

“Fruit doesn’t fall too far from the tree,” a voice called out behind her, managing to make itself heard over the rushing winds. “The fruit, in this case, being dead babies.”

Instead of turning her head towards the voice, Pita’s body remolded itself towards that direction. “Greeeeeeaaaaat,” she muttered sarcastically, rolling her eyes. “Another freak.”

Despite the plane soaring at through the sky at well over 500 miles and hour, the stranger sat atop it, roughly twenty feet down the plane’s body. They wore a scarlet kimono adorned with black flowers and a snarling white, horned Oni mask. Otherwise they were naked, with the rushing winds leaving nothing to the imagination. Because of this, Pita saw that her entire body was covered in suckers, with fish scales granting a reflective texture to her skin. Dozens of tentacles extended out from her back, legs, and arms, tethering her to the plane.

“A red,” Pita sneered, only to be distracted by the sight of another mutant sharks. This one was on the plane’s other wing and was actively pounding its head and tentacles against the nearby windows, trying to bust in.

The red witch gave a “what-can-you-do?” type of shrug and called out to Pita, “No hard feelings, ghoul! Just business.”

“Business,” Pita repeated, her rage and the pain causing her form to spasm.

“Bounty’s a billion for a blue.” The red witch got to her feet. Her tentacles continued to anchor her in place. “It’s a funny story-”

“DON’T CARE!” Pita howled.

Truthfully, she did care. She wanted to know who had sent this freak after her brother.

But her three minutes were already half up.

Death does not a monster make.

“IT DOES TODAY!” Pita declared, digging all ten of her fingers into her abdomen. And then she pulled. “A MONSTER MASTER BUILDER!”

A rectangular shrapnel of blue energy emerged from her belly and multiplied. Within seconds, millions of ghostly Lego blocks formed around Pita’s body, all of them in various shades of blue. They came together into a twenty-feet-tall mech armor. The arms were the last to form, with rocket launchers in place of fingers. Pita’s voice echoed as if she were speaking into a microphone as she took aim at the sharks attacking the plane and bellowed, “I’VE HAD IT WITH THESE MOTHERFUCKING SHARKS ON THIS MOTHERFUCKING PLANE!!!!”

 The rockets exploded from the mech’s fingers, five for each shark. One of the sharks looked up dumbly just in time to take all five to the face. The other didn’t know what hit him. The rockets tore their way into the monsters’ flesh, yanked them off the plane’s wings, and carried them up into the sky.

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

All ten rockets went off in unison, creating twin halos of ghostly fire and shark meat miles above the Earth.

Content with her handiwork but still in a rush, Pita charged at the red witch. Metallic clanks filled the air as her mech’s feet smashed against the plane’s surface. The red witch shifted her weight forward. Half of her tentacles unstuck themselves from the plane and curled around her right hand. Together they formed into a giant, fleshy fist. Pita threw hers back and swung. Ethereal metal and mutated flesh collided. Blood and gore splattered across Pita’s mech while bits of glowing Lego cut at the red witch’s body. They stood that way for what seemed like eternity, deadlocked, neither willing to give the other even a single inch…

“Heh,” the witch laughed. “You’re all turned around."

 She then swung at Pita with her left fist. As she swung it, the flesh warped and expanded into shark head. It bore its teeth around the mech’s middle, cutting it clean in half. The upper half was sent flying backwards by the witch’s fists. It bounded across the plane, leaving a trail of Legos in its wake. What finally made it to the plane’s nose was nothing more than a dissolving baby girl in a ruined church dress. The sunlight was now peeling apart the last of her layers. Pita only had seconds before she lost complete solidity and fell through the plane and into open sky.

“Don’t worry.” The scarlet witch maneuvered her way over to the plane’s nose and stood over her. “I’ll take good care of him.”

Pita glowered up at with the little that was left of her eyeballs.

“I’ll…be…back,” she snarled.

Her form finally dissolved through the plane, leaving her falling through a painful, seemingly endless blue…

“GO! GO! GO!” a voice suddenly blared through the sky. Pita’s mind just registered it before her face colliding with something soft. Shadows mercifully fell over her form. She pulled together what little was left of her and made herself see. She had landed in some kind two-man cockpit, with her as a puddle of semi-transparent goop in the backseat. She pulled enough of it together into a blobby head and peered around the front seat, at the pilot.

“Hey, kid,” they called back. Thanks to the helmet and oxygen mask, Pita couldn’t see their face, yet the voice sounded feminine. “Damn good show, but your new buddy Hollyn’s got it from here. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.” The pilot, Hollyn, flew the jet around the plane. The cockpit’s glass warped with blue sigils and diagrams as she took aim at the red witch still standing upon the plane’s nose. “Locked on target, sir. Permission to fire.”

“Permission granted.” The mildly robotic, female voice resonated throughout the cockpit. “Fire at your own discretion.”

“Yes, sir.”