“WE KNOW YOUR’E IN THERE, JOSHI!!” roared General Blackfin, the brother of General Whitefin. Who is General Whitefin? “Well,” said Asia Bones, who arrived on the scene just in the nick of time, “General Whitefin was an old enemy, but that’s ANOTHER another story. And that story might be titled “Spooks in the Deep”, and might be available at Amazon.com.
“Wow, Asia Bones, you’re so smart!” remaked Danz and Chriz.
“Yes. Now boys, help me beat up these sharkmen! Protect Joshi at all costs!”
But the cost was even lower than they anticipated. For the flood of shibas rolled over the sharkmen like ants on a piece of fruit. But nothing could penetrate the networking circle that Joshi and Size were inside. In cyberspace, Joshi was still fighting for his life.
“Give up, Joshi!” Size said. “You can’t win. Size has FAR more network resources than you!”
“Wait a minute, did he just refer to himself in the third person?” wondered Joshi. He peeked open an eye and noticed something he hadn’t before, in their circle of ethernet cable. THERE WAS AN ETHERNET CABLE RUNNING INTO SIZE’S BODY. Joshi quickly traced it with his eyes and saw that it led outside the circle!
“GUYS!” he yelled. “Follow that cable!”
Chriz and Danz acted immediately, running as fast as they could. The cable led into a backroom, where they saw it led to a scrawny little bitchboy.
“So is this the REAL size?” Chriz asked Danz.
“I’m not sure. JOSHI, THERE’S A GUY HERE! WHAT SHOULD WE DO WITH HIM?”
“STICK A VI-DRIVE INTO HIM! HE’S THE PUPPET-MASTER ADMINISTRATOR OF SIZE! HE IS THE *TRUE* SIZE!”
Chriz and Danz nodded to each other and jammed a Vi-drive into a USB port on the back of his head.
“Hey guys!” Vi said.
“Vi, we need you to brain-drain this dork or else Joshi’s going to die!”
“I can do that!”
From her secret facility deep in the steel intestines of the GSS Rand, Vi began launching an all-out assault on the Size-admin’s security. It was unlike anything she’d ever seen before, but that didn’t make it much more difficult. She knew that if Joshi hadn’t been tricked into fighting the fatman decoy, he’d be able to handle this himself.
Meanwhile, Joshi was just barely holding on.
“SUBMIT JOSHI!!” screamed Size, desperate to steal Joshi’s brainpower so he could protect himself against Vi.
“JUST HOLD ON A FEW MORE MINUTES JOSHI!” cried Vi, desperately hacking away (literally and metaphorically) at Size’s 64 firewalls.
“He’s not going to make it,” said Asia Bones, who’d once taken a single networking class in college. Even that was enough to see that Joshi was fading FAST.
“We’ve got to get him out of there!” said Chriz.
“DON’T BE CRAZY!” roared McMann. “Nothing can break a networking pentagram circle except…”
“Except WHAT?!”
“Except THE GOVERNMENT.”
Space Judge appeared in a cloud of lawfulness. “This hackerbattle is ILLEGAL!” he arbitrated, and so he used his lawhammer to slam down the killswitch that only HE, as a lawman of the United Space of America, could see, instantly shutting down network access for both Joshi and the Size-puppet.
Cut from the extra resources of the psuedo-Size, Size collapsed before Vi’s cyber might.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” he cried like a baby, trying to boot up his body and pull the Vi-drive from his brain. Of course, it’d be too late even if he did. Vi had copied herself straight into his brain’s hard drive. There was nothing he could do as she formatted him.
“YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO MEEEEEEEE! I’M SIZE!!!!!!!!!”
Fitting last words.
Vi turned his brain into a server and transfered admin-credentials to Joshi. Now Joshi was more powerful than he’d ever been before.
Meanwhile, are we happy? As if anyone could ever be. THESE.ARETHEREA.SONS.THESE.ARETHE.REA.SONS.THESE.ARETHEREASONS.THE.REA.SONS. Whoa sorry im listening to Pain of Salvation as I type. Song’s “Reaons”. The Passing Light of Day is a really good album on the whole. where did we leave off? well, let’s stop and think things through.
>The Shade is still largely at large.
>Grueber’s Fellowship has managed to EXPOSE Goblin Doctor and Goblin General as memebers of this SHADY organization. What are their goals? Why does it seems like every member of the Shade is a worthless loser? Satan also belongs to the organization, but it’s unclear whether he’s a full-member or a mere erand-boy/punching bag.
>Pills and needles/tears and stings/fallen angels save me from these things
sorry, still listening to music. “Angels of Broken Things” is the song. The lead singer had a terrible infection that required surgery, he was really messed up for a while.
>Joshi has become more powerful than anyone could imagine, and he’s not even done yet. Size has been seized, melding his brain’s processing power with Joshi’s own, which was ALREADY augmented with Ace Tunout’s. Joshi still needs to take down “Bear” Sweeney (REAL NAME: UNKNOWN) and Olya Kalishnakov. Bear Sweeney’s island security is 2nd only to Grueber Towers, it’d be too risky for Joshi to try tackling it even now. He probably could, but why not make it E-Zer and do it after hijacking Olya Kalishnakov’s braindrive first? Johi subscribes to Olya’s premium snapchat as a way of gaining her trust. Of course, Olya’s no ordinary camgirl. She’s educated, to put it lightly. After Joshi’s first $5 came through into her account, linking their networks and fates forever, she was already in his emails, peeking around every encrypted corner. Of course, Joshi knew that she was doing this and set up decoys on top of decoys to try to feel out her abilites. Of course, she knew he was doing this as well, and did her best to remain INCOGNITO. Joshi smiled to himself. She was good, he’d give her that. As she battled agaisnt his automated shadow-clones, he checked out her nudes. She was no Belle Delphine, but she was still easily a hundred times more desirable than any of the big fat fuggos that made up the fleshy overwhelming majority of the cyber hell-world Joshi inhabited. But he couldn’t let himself remain distracted for too long. He checked in on his programs to find them utterly defeated. He’d let himself remain distracted for too long. There was no longer any point in hiding it. Joshi sent her a DM asking for her total surrender. She replied with a laughing-crying emoji. Feisty bitch. Joshi tried accessing her bank account just to spook her. BAM. He was in. He took his $5 back and checked out her accounts. Thousands upon thousands of dollars, multiple transactions from paypigs hoping to see her tits. But why was there so much? He checked her instagram, her snapchat, her patreon, she wasn’t giving the same pics she’d sent him to anyone else. No one else- thousands of other men- had seen her tits. Joshi’s face flushed. What the hell was this? She sent him another message.
“They’re only for you daddy UwU”
>STILL MEANWHILE, Rodrigo was training with Asia Bones in heart of the Mountain of Cold. It was the coldest mountain in the world, and would surely prevent him from thinking with his dick, no matter how much he thought about Goblingirl. Asia beat the shit out of him in every sparring match they had. Rodrigo might have had the RAW STRENGTH, but he lacked the necessary skill to run with the BIG DOGS. And Asia assured him that there were indeed dogs even bigger than him and HERE COMES ONE NOW.
It was the Shiba Chief, Kiiroi Kao. “Call me Kao for short,” said the mighty shiba.
“Thank you for meeting with us, Kao,” said Asia Bones, bowing respectfully to the 20-foot tall dog.
“Asia, it’s been a long time. Why do you summon me after all these yeets?”
“It’s the Shade, Master, they’ve returned!” Asia said.
“Ahhh, the Shadesu…” the giant dog-god walked around in a circle and plopped himself down. “I never thought I’d hear that name again.”
“The human businessman Grueber is waging war against them, but he can’t do it alone!”
Kiiroi Kao nodded. “Indeed, no man can. The Shade are complete worthless morons who can’t do anything right. They fuck up consistently. But their tenacity and their ability to quickly recruit weak-hearted men can be overwhelming.”
“Dog-god, is it true that you once defeated the Shade single-handedly?”
“No, Asia just likes exaggerating. I had a lot of help from my friends.”
But Asia Bones wasn’t going to let Kiiroi Kaoi’s humility make him look like a liar. “YOU GIANT YELLOW ASS, YOU HUNTED DOWN EACH MEMBER OF THE SHADE ALONE! YOU SLAUGHTERED THEM ALL WITH YOUR MIGHTY JAWS!”
The dog let out a howling laugh. “Yes I suppose that is true. But I would not have been able to do so were it not for you all preoccupying their forces!”
“You see, Rodrigo? We must do the same thing once again. While McMann and his Space Marines hold off the Shade’s armies, you must don the robe of the assassin, and stealthily take out each member of the Shade!”
Rodrigo flexed his cyborg-biceps. “I’m no assassin,” he said. “I should be down there with the boys, blasting crowmen into ash! Leave the sneaking around to Joshi.”
Asia Bones kicked the wind from him.
“You still have so much to learn, Rodrigo. Joshi might be faster and smarter and more skillful than you, but the reason why the members of the SHADE are chosen in the first place is because of their stupid abilities to survive countless defeats. That’s what makes them so terrifying, Rodrigo. Kiiroi Kao personally ATE EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM, AND THEY STILL RETURNED. No, what we need here is FORCE BEYOND FORCE. WE NEED SOMEONE WHO CAN PUNCH THEM CLEAN FROM EXISTENCE. NOW, PUNCH!”
Asia Bones summoned a training dummy that looked like Satan. PTSD-flashbacks of Satan almost cucking him flashed through Rodrigo’s head and on pure instinct, he let loose a punch. That was it. The dummy was gone. Not merely “practically” obliterated from existence, but entirely banished in a literally-permanent fashion. It was gone and could never come back, existing ONLY in the memories of those who witnessed what just happened.
“What just happened?” asked Rodrigo, who’d reacted and punched faster than his brain could even recognize.
But Kiiroi Kao saw the whole thing. And Asia Bones, who’d summoned the dummy in the first place, understood what’d happened, even if not even his eye-holes were powerful enough to see it.
“Asia, this boy is dangerous. I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I don’t,” confessed Asia. “And that’s why I’ve summoned you, Master. I need you to help me train him to control his abilities. Until now, he’s only been able to do something like that in defense of this girl here.”
Asia took his phone out and showed Kiiroi Kao a pic of Goblingirl.
“She’s cute but why’s she covered in green paint?”
“It’s a really dumb story, Master.”
“Very well. I will help you teach Rodrigo. When we’re done with him, he’ll be able to FULLY CONTROL his abilities!”
In Pieces 