Joey stirred, massaged his temples and tried to sit up. The first thing he heard was a couple of sobs and whimpering here and there in the dim lighting and about more than a dozen silhouettes in a rather cramped room. While he still tried to shake the dizziness off his head, he was approached by someone he knew too familiar of even though he couldn’t really see his face.
“Dude, where the fuck are we?”
“I dunno, Trist,” Joey replied. “I dun ev’n remember how we got ‘ere.”
“Ah, rise and shine, my fellow friends.”
Everyone gasped and whined and cried as they heard footsteps and the sound of the key clicking. The strangers came into the room in groups and the lights automatically glowed slightly brighter. Joey and the five, who were also stirring, realized that they were in a room that looked like dungeons in a castle and that the owners of the crying, sobbing and cursing belonged to the rest of their fellow hermaphrodites from Gammon and Maximillion High, along with a few more others who looked foreign, possibly from other countries. They were all stripped of whatever clothes they were wearing and were only adorned with some sort of dirty bed sheet serving as a sorry excuse for a garment. Everyone was chained to the floor through a clasp on one of their ankles and they were surrounded left, right and center with brick walls with only a prison cell door as their only means to get in or out.
Speaking of cell door, they were even more astonished to see that the person who spoke and held the key was no other than their Domino High school nurse Illuscia Nester Himawari a.k.a. Illust-chan! She was sporting clothes of a female warrior, a huge pair of raven-black wings, ears pointed like an elf, wild brownish-black hair and skin as white as ivory, and when she smiled, her fangs stood out like a vampire.
“I…Illust-chan?!” the five exclaimed. “What the…? What the hell is going on in here?!”
“What does it look like it is?” Illust-chan asked. “You are all my prisoners, and soon will be the sacrifice for our great lord Zorc Necrophades.”
“Zorc?!” Ryou exclaimed, recalling the name he had read so many times in history books and ancient scrolls. “But…But he was the Lord of all Duelist Phantoms! He’s supposed to be gone! Maximillion Pegasus and Gozaburo had already defeated him! He is supposed to be in the Abyss by now!”
“He is in the Abyss,” Illust-chan confirmed Ryou’s story. “At least his body is. His soul is pretty much still around these parts, and if we hadn’t found him, he would’ve been a wandering spirit, never knowing his identity and his purpose in this world ever! It wasn’t easy gathering you all here, what with us being in hiding and all that, but at least we had a little help.”
So saying, a huge group of people began to emerge behind her, obviously human, showing their faces under the light. Judging by the way their fellow teen herms gasped, the revealing people seemed to be one way or another associated to them, and the five definitely recognized a few among the group.
“D…Diesel Kane…!” Malik almost stuttered.
“Feng Long!” Joey exclaimed.
“Demy…?” Yugi breathed, unable to believe his eyes.
“Be…Beluga?!” Ryou and Tristan cried simultaneously.
“I see you recognized them,” Illust-chan said, grinning from ear to ear and stroking the said boys’ chins affectionately, as would a master to a pet kitten. “Humans are just so easy to manipulate, aren’t they? I just needed to light a match onto Diesel’s oil of anger, relive the grudge of losing an arcade battle on Feng Long, ignite the flame of passion and jealousy in Demetrius’ heart and cloud Beluga’s mind with his hidden hatred for Ryou’s success in studies and Tristan’s fame in sports and they were all too willing to sell their souls to the devil to see your demise. Same case goes to all the other humans who have harboured secret inner feelings for the rest of you. Guess it’s true when they say it’s not good to bottle up your feelings, eh, boys?”
“Who…What are you?” Tristan demanded, earning a glare from Illust-chan.
“What am I? What am I? Who do you think I am, some sort of object you pathetic humans can assume me as a ‘what’?” Illust-chan shrieked at first, but regained composure and continued, “I am a Fallen Ethereal, one of the many descendants of those who had gave their heart and soul to love a Bad Seed. Bad Seeds, humph! That’s the title you have given those who were not afraid to go overboard and try to venture into the world of the unknown and break free from the traditions of old lives and of those so-called pure Ethereal Clans of the Outer Beings. I dare say, I’m proud to be related to a Bad Seed.
“While you humans go around fluttering the world in carefree attitudes, we had to take care not to reveal ourselves and had to succumb to impersonating human roles and human lives in order not to receive the prejudice and hatred you harbour discriminately against our people and be sent as an outcast in the Abyss or be eliminated so easily as ridding a rodent! Do you realize how much pain and suffering you and your people and your pretty little Outer Being friends have caused us just by denying us the chance to live normally in this world?! We and our Bad Seed comrades had no place to go but to lurk behind the shadows being ashamed of our heritage and living in constant fear that one day our pups would be denied a chance to live.
“If it weren’t for the recent territorial and population dispute in the Ethereal World, we wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the situation and start up a rebellion. And if it weren’t for the help of our great Zorc Necrophades, whose spirit stayed strong even without his body, we wouldn’t have achieved such greatness in such a short time. I gotta hand it to you humans, you did great work releasing the Duelist Phantoms from the Shadow Realm, whether you intended it or not, for we wouldn’t have reached where we are today.”
“That’s impossible!” Yugi exclaimed. “There have not been any wars or disputes or any other type of disturbances in the Ethereal Clan! We’ve been living peacefully for so many centuries without much of a major disaster going on! How can there be any disputes going on?”
“Oh, haven’t your precious little Whisperer darlings told you? We are experiencing what you would call a war aftershock. Due to the dwindling of females, there has been a population imbalance. Not an amount of Ethereal hermaphrodites and herm Halflings are enough to cover the area and there have been a huge argument between the Ethereal people about the overpopulation of certain species in the area, and that isn’t working good,” Illust-chan replied longwindedly, then gave a mock gasp and said sarcastically, “Oh my god! So that’s why your precious little Whisperer sweethearts were bound by the centuries-old tradition! Aww, ain’t that just the sweetest thing?”
“If you’re a Fallen Ethereal, then you should be dead by the Plague!” Tristan exclaimed. “There are no such things as female Ethereals anymore! You shouldn’t exist!”
“Sorry to burst your bubble, Golden Boy but in fact we have quite a lot of Ethereal females around here,” Illust-chan pouted, pretending to be offended as she dismissed the dazed-looking boys away. They were obviously under a spell judging by the way their blank eyes looked, but it didn’t take a genius to figure that out. “In fact, thanks to our mixed human blood, we were only cursed to be barren instead of dead. Why do you think we’re called Fallen Ethereals?”
“Ya said we’re gonna be sacrifices fer yer Lord,” Joey said as he tried to calm down a few scared shitless teen herms. “Wat exactly ya mean by dat?”
“Isn’t it obvious? You are going to remain prisoner here until you all give birth,” Illust-chan said. “Then after that we are going to line you all up in front of Lord Zorc and feed both your body and soul to him so that he can achieve full memory and physical form. He was in a rather bad shape when we found him staggering and floating around aimlessly in Yami Forest, mindlessly killing people who dared to trespass it without even knowing why he did it, and he was filled with so much remorse and guilt over the blood he spilt that he wasn’t the grand ruler he was anymore. We sorted that out by taking him into our hideout here and nurse him back to health.
“His memories are bits and pieces here and there, and we’re helping him to regain them one by one, but to attain complete 100 percent memory plus physical form requires more than that, and devouring ‘mothers’ and newborn babies seemed to do the trick. Oh, don’t you worry your socks off, at least they’re not your fellow teen herms we’ve captured. Just a couple of older ‘mothers’ who have gone through the ritual before and currently pregnant with normal children, is all. No one would miss them…much.”
“You bitch!” Malik shouted at her, wanting to get her but was held back by the chain on his ankle. “So you’re behind my neighbour’s pregnant ‘wife’s sudden disappearance!”
“Oh, come on,” Illust-chan scolded. “He was the ‘bitch’, philandering around like he owned every pure man in the world. The baby in him doesn’t even belong to his husband! Give me a little credit for disposing a worthless ‘whore’ like him!”
“You have no right to decide who lives or dies!” Ryou shouted.
“Yeah! You’re not the judge, jury or executioner around here to be deciding whether someone should live with their sins or die with their regrets…”
“Oh, fuck off, Malik,” Illust-chan spat, slapping the Egyptian hard on the face with her superhuman strength. “Put a sock in it. You spawns of middle men are the worst with your so-called righteousness and stupid views of justice. I hate, no, despise you the most with a passion.”
While the gang tended to Malik and his swollen cheek, Illust-chan began to morph and change, chuckling as she went. Gone were her wings and back was her skin in human skin tone, and within minutes, everything Ethereal was dematerialized and she was the hazel-brown-haired, blood red-eyed school nurse cum head midwife everyone in Domino was familiar of.
“Well then, I’m going to be off to panic along with the other humans and your parents about your disappearance,” Illust-chan spoke in her usual perky way when she was in human form. “I’ll make sure the sudden disappearance of these lovely pure men like Demy and Diesel Kane is suspicious enough for people to point fingers to. Dinner will be in shortly. Don’t wait up. Ta-ta!”
With that, she left and the light automatically went back to its dim state, leaving a stream of wails and angry protests behind closed doors.
--:--
All the middle men young and old, humans and Ethereal, gathered in Mahad’s meeting room along with Maximillion Pegasus and Lords of every clan, from elves and fairies and Mountain Dwellers to members of the Night Clans, discussing about the recent disappearance of the teen herms of the world. Their disappearance along with pure men associated with them seemed to raise questions, but after deep, long discussions, and after the attack on Obsidian and the five in the border vortex, they felt that there were possible moles at work behind this. Duke Devlin and his colleagues, speaking for the middle men of the Whisperers, were not excluded in this discussion, as was Marik, who is Maximillion Pegasus’ Royal Executioner and ready to do damages on anyone that crosses the boundaries of the Ethereal Clan.
“Traitors, Your Majesty?” a human middle man from France asked.
“That’s right,” Maximillion Pegasus replied. “We have made a few arrests beforehand and are down to the last one. Mahad, I believe this is your field, so to speak.” The advantage of being the Ruler of the Outer Beings was that he had the power to create a Multi-Tongue atmosphere. All he needed to do was cast a spell over the room and whatever he spoke in his language would be quickly translated and reach the ears of different nationalities as their own language, i.e. his language would be heard as French for a Frenchman and German spoken by a Germany rep would be heard as Chinese for a Chinaman.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Mahad continued what Maximillion Pegasus wished to relay, “As we all assume, they must have been promised riches, fame and glory by the Bad Seeds and were clouded with false hopes of amazing titles and wealth beyond their wildest dreams, accompanied with the fact that they had personal grudges over those who had possibly wronged them. After what had happened at the border vortex where my personal assistant Obsidian has escorted the ‘mothers’ of Domino Island to do an urgent visitation to their Whisperer mates, so to speak, and after I have issued men to do a search and rescue on him, I have issued an order for both Obsidian, as soon as he recovered, and our fellow Ethereal middle men to do an extensive investigation and capture those who are involved in this treachery. We have gathered them all in the next room and Obsidian is catching the last one as we speak. He will be bringing them in soon.”
After 5 minutes of tense silence, Obsidian knocked on the door and came in with a group of tied-up protesting and struggling people using his staff as a restraint on them. Everyone gasped as they were no other than their own fellow Ethereal middle men colleagues, including the one who had been a rather good fellow Halfling friend to Duke Devlin and had been working side-by-side as a Whisperer comrade Damien Draco.
“Brother Damien!” Duke exclaimed in disbelief. “It can’t be you! There must be some mistake!”
“Oh, can it, Devlin!” Damien growled, not bothering to fight for his own defense. “Your righteousness is useless here! I don’t plan to get away from it anyway!”
“How…How could you? Brother Damien, this is not like you…”
“Do not call me ‘brother’, you filthy Halfling!” Damien spat at him. “It’s because of you Whisperers that my human ‘mother’ died because of birth complications when he gave birth to me! I despise the fact that I’m a Halfling like you and I am only too willing to help the Bad Seeds out!”
“You know the Bad Seeds are evil! You know better than to collaborate with them and betray our clan!”
“Better than serving those who have killed my ‘mother’! When they approached me with the proposal of bringing about your clan’s downfall I was only too happy to oblige. I spiked your human mates’ scent mark with a little bit of their menstrual blood and their sweat when they go into human heat so that you would be overly infatuated with your mates and neglect your posts to be with them so that they can spread their influences into Sky City little by little. Once you all were issued the Forbidden Blue mark, it was a matter of time before they went for your pathetic pregnant mates, and your own people are falling into their trap as we speak. There’s nothing you can do to save them or your world now!”
“Tell me!” Duke grabbed Damien’s collar and shook him. “Tell me where my Soldier is!”
“Over my dead body!” Damien grinned, head-butted Duke and lunged at Maximillion Pegasus, which forced Obsidian to blast him with his staff, killing him instantly. It took a while for everyone to settle from this commotion and for Maximillion Pegasus to regain composure, but they soon calmed down as Obsidian took the prisoners away, locked them up in the other room and rejoined the meeting.
“Well, now that we’ve more or less know their motives,” Maximillion Pegasus continued, “we will have to find out the whereabouts of the human females and hurry up to bring them back to their respective families. The priority of the ‘mothers’ are much more important right now as this concerns both the future of human and Whisperer race. We shall have to excise…extreme measures to extract information from those traitors about the ‘mother’s whereabouts.”
“I would like to suggest,” a human middle man from Turkey spoke, “that protection is to be issued to the ‘mother’s respective families. There is no telling whether those Bad Seeds might target their families as I have heard some of the rare families that has given birth to two herms in one household.”
“I second the motion,” a human middle man from Thailand agreed, “They might even try to aim for those young herms regardless if they have come of age or not. Better safe than sorry.”
“For those who agree to this motion please raise your hands,” Mahad said, resulting into a unanimous vote.
“Since we’ve agreed to that subject, I shall issue an order to send in representatives from my clan to each ‘mother’s families,” Lord Seth replied. “Remind me to bring this up in the political meeting, Lord Katz.”
“Yes, milord,” Lord Katz nodded, mentally reminding himself of the task.
“Milord, if I may be so bold as to offer myself as one of the reps,” Duke raised his hand to speak. “It’s the least I can do for making up for my colleague’s indecent betrayal to the clan.”
“No, Brother Duke,” Lord Seth refused gravely. “You are still under punishment due to you choosing your human mate over your sacred post, as are your fellow brethren. I will not allow you to participate in this charade. For all we know, as spoken by your ex-colleague Brother Damien, your infatuation towards your human counterpart may be no other than a trick of the mind and emotion due to their tampering with the scent mark.”
“My feelings continue to remain the same! Even if they haven’t tampered the scent mark, I would still be…”
“The order is done. Do you wish to disobey it and join them?”
Duke hesitated for a moment, wanting to argue his point some more, but decided against it and sighed, sitting down and saying, “No, milord. Forgive me, milord.”
“Very well then,” Maximillion Pegasus nodded and looked sideways at Marik, “while we discuss about other urgent matters regarding the aftershocks, Marik, you know what to do.”
Marik nodded and excused himself from the meeting. Before he left for the door, Duke grabbed Marik by the wrist and whispered, “Make them talk, brother, no matter what it takes.”
“Do not worry, brother,” Marik replied as his face was showered with murderous intent, his malice and sadistic aura began to permeate the room, “I am going to make them squeal like a pig so bad they’d wish they never even exist.”
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