The Brothers Beedle in: Swarmed By Weevils (Patreon)

I figured I'd post this here. When I took my month off in March, I reread the Brothers Beedle mock-pulp adventure story about a pun-filled family more concerned with competing and teasing each other than the actual danger afoot. I liked the characters a lot and had actually written down a bunch of fake chapters/episodes of their bullshit, which looking back, I really loved the ideas and characters. They had that Bully Code energy where the entire story is having fun with the narration and just the strong character chemistry going on in any scene. I think I'm going to just write a bunch of short stories about their escapades as basically a family character study via traveling to the moon to fight dinosaurs and undersea mummies.

The Weevil family was made very early into the conception. Me and some friends basically listed every kind of beetle we could think of after I joked about making a character named Hercules Beedle. Someone came up with a rival family named after Weevils and it blew up into a whole side thing. Their dynamic became a lot of fun as an evil, more intelligent parallel to the Beedles. Also Plum Weevil, the only girl out of either of the siblings, and her cutely awkward, mutual crush with Goliath has become one of the most important elements of this entire story to me.

Their original story was posted back here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/brothers-beedle-13738334. Already working on a third, so hopefully really making a book out of his. Probably something I'll settle into just dumping onto Amazon again rather than fight to find an agent, but it's always nice to finish these big projects once in a while.

Those that were either fortunate or unfortunate enough to have met the family knew that there were few things that could stop a Beedle. Half of them were oversized men built like boyishly handsome brick houses and the other half were dangerously clever. The especially unlucky ones ran into the ones that were both at once.

Among the few things known to make them retreat was a giant, ancient skeleton made from the bones of an entire animated elephant graveyard. This news was as surprising to Atlas and Hercules Beedle as it was to anyone who might have read that same sentence.

They barreled through the jungle in lightly torn and dirtied hiking outfits with a ruby the size of a watermelon tucked under Atlas’ arm. Perhaps a dozen yards behind them, what looked like a charging elephant made out of twenty smaller, deader charging elephants crashed through the trees like they were blades of grass.

“Herc! Coming at you!”

Atlas raised the gem in one hand. The skills as a quarterback that had got him into Harvard kicked in and he chucked it towards the elder Beedle. The accuracy launched it right into the crook of his arm for a catch that any goon could manage to receive. With his hands free, he whirled around and drew his handgun. He fired a few shots around the large skull of the chimera of calcium while still running backwards. As impressive as it might have been to anyone watching, the shots only cracked one of countless pieces of elephantine bone.

“I don’t know why you always think that will do any good,” Hercules called over his shoulder, palming their ruby in one hand. “Skeleton guarding an ancient treasure and you think nobody’s thought of shooting it before?”

The bulkier brother furrowed his brow, focusing on the path ahead. He took a steely-gazed scan before striking his fist into the thick, overgrown roots of one of the incoming trees. Hercules Beedle lived up to his namesake as the blow hit with the precision and force of a ballerina wielding a sledgehammer. The root burst into splinters and the tree came tilting over into the rampaging mountain of bones’ path, time out to land like a giant spear in its path.

The tilted tree shattered to bits just like the rest.

“I suppose nobody thought of using their fists either!” Atlas sarcastically goaded back at his brother. “Punching was only invented, what? Half a century ago?”

“Sometimes the classics are the best!”

The Beedle Brothers were often competing and squabbling with each other to some extent, but none of them so clearly as Hercules and Atlas. The brothers had been wrestling and racing since they both could walk. Even when they went after their own athletic pursuits, the clean cut, fair fighting Hercules and the more cunning and creative Atlas had no shortage of nitpicks with which to pick on each other.

Atlas growled and patted his vest. He pulled out a radio that had managed to stay put in one of the less tattered pockets. He squeezed the button so it crackled to life.

“Baum! Where’s that exit? We’ve got an elephant graveyard after us.”

“We’ll be a few minutes. Goliath tried to help with some of the more delicate instruments,” the radio replied.

After a moment, he added “Did you say an elephant graveyard?”

“Yea. The bones of a bunch of elephants merged into one giant skeleton. You should’ve been there. It came to life. I called it an elephant. Herc called it a skeleton. I called it a skelephant. We laughed. You probably would have laughed if you weren’t too busy screaming.”

“Wow. Sounds like quite the sight. Very jealous,” Baum said in his usual even tone without a hint of irony.

“Well if you got here with that plane already, I’d love to give you a god damned tour!”

There was a roar of engines from somewhere overhead. They wouldn’t have thought it possible to drown out the stomping bag of bones, but their days were often full of surprises.

“Here they come!” Hercules called out, pointing up and ahead of them.

Atlas narrowed his eyes to examine the approaching vessel. It was rounder and more compact than one of Baum’s usual planes. It resembled a halved apple on its side, covered in coppery metal with numerous propellers and engines installed around the bottom. It was around twenty feet in diameter with a standing platform on top ringed by low railings. It came to hover ahead of the boys, keeping pace with them while keeping just above the treeline. Several men in snug, dull brown security guard uniforms operated a mounted control panel, but a familiar and narrow face stood at the head of the vehicle.

“Nut Weevil! You dastard!” Hercules shouted bitterly.

“It’s Nathan,” he corrected snidely from overhead.

Nathaniel “Nut” Weevil didn’t have many chances to loom over the Beedles, given the difference in their height. He took every chance he could to do so. He knew himself to be their intellectual superior, but the brutish adventurers had a way of bulldozing their way through things with a tactless and downright rude rate of success.

He was a slight young man in his later 20s, thin on just about all accounts. He had thin, pointed features and even his slick, dark blonde hair had joined in on the theme and started thinning early. It gave him a wiry look, accentuated by the black and green pinstriped suit he wore. Bright green eyes narrowed down at the rival family’s eldest boys running beneath and behind him. It was, quite possibly, the only way he liked to see the Beedles whatsoever.

“And I think you have something that belongs to me. You have the Jewel of the Jungle, do you not?”

“You’ll never get your meddling mitts on it, Nut!” Hercules swore defiantly.

“Yea. We dug it out of that long lost pit ourselves, so finders keepers,” Atlas agreed.

“I truly don’t care. When are you idiots going to realize that’s what hired hands are for? Now I’m sure you’ve realized that the guardian will pursue whosoever holds the jewel. It’s in all the translations of the salvaged journals.”

The Beedles stared at him as they kept jogging through the jungle. Hercules looked behind him, holding up the jewel and waving it one way. The skelephant’s head tilted to follow it, and again when he tipped it the other way. The brawny Beedle held it in front of himself and studied it curiously. Nathan sighed noisily, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Of course you neanderthals didn’t read any of the research… this is why you’re always in situations like this, you know! You can’t outrun this raging monster, but you could give the jewel to ME! I’ll take it back to the Adventurers Guild, perhaps mention your involvement in the footnotes… and you two get to not be trampled under several tons of calcium phosphate. Rather generous, I should think.”

“Ha! In your dreams, Nut. We were just about to tire this thing out,” Atlas laughed.

“And we’re not letting you take the credit!” Hercules agreed. “Do you have any idea how many tigers I had to wrestle to get this!? Because let me tell you it was more than the usual amount!”

“Yea! Get your own one of a kind cursed jewel!” Atlas joined in.

“You… you KNOW I can’t!” Nathan snarled. “You JUST said it’s one of a kind!”

Atlas snickered to himself and held a hand up to his brother. Hercules hi fived it without breaking stride. The two were always butting heads, but few things united them quite like frustrating a member of the Weevil family.

“Fine. If you careless cretins won’t cooperate, I can stoop to your less subtle methods.”

Nathan gave a dismissive gesture towards his hired henchmen.

“Ready the guns. I’m sure these neanderthals will find a bullet to the knee closer to their language than a reasonable proposition.”

“Right away, Mister Weevil.”

Several large machine guns popped out of the front of his craft. The Beedles’ eyes widened and Atlas held up a hand.

“Hold on a sec, Nate. I think we can work something out here.”

Nathan’s sour snarl returned to its smug sneer.

“Really now? What’s your offer?”

“Oh, I wasn’t talking about an offer. I meant I was working out an escape plan.”

There was a sudden crash from the rear of the Weevil’s miniature airship. It tilted backward before some hasty grasping at the controls made it simply dip lower to handle the sudden increase in weight. The craft’s underbelly scraped through some of the treetops to ribbons as Baum’s cargo plane slammed its landing gear on the back of Nathan’s pod. He hadn’t noticed the hum of its propellers through his own overworked engines.

“Nice piece of work, Nut!” Baum shouted out, leaning out of his cockpit. “Of course, it looks like it’s only good for a couple trips with that kind of strain you’re putting on it. It’ll never last.”

“MORE accursed Beedles! Exactly what I didn’t need!” he seethed.

“Well you’ll need somebody more tech-savvy than you if you plan to build these things to last.”

Baum leaned further out the window and rapped a knuckle on one of the guardrails. The safety precaution rattled for a moment and fell off to the jungle floor. It clattered past Hercules as he cupped his hands together.

“Atlas. Leg up!” he called.

Atlas grabbed Hercules’ shoulder and planted a foot into his collective palms. With a mighty heave and a synchronized leap, Atlas was launched at the lowered platform. He grabbed a ledge and hoisted himself aboard, taking care not to trust the railings that Baum had knocked off so easily. Atlas turned back and held up his hand. Hercules threw the jewel into his expecting hand. Atlas could admit that Hercules had a real arm on him, but his hammer throw was a lot more forceful than precise. Atlas resisted the urge to shake the numb tingling out of his fingers, not wanting to give Herc the satisfaction.

“Get him, you fools! Seize the ruby! Frankly, that should be self-explanatory by now! We went over this in the prep meeting!” Nathan ranted at his henchmen.

The closest of his guards lunged at Atlas. Nathan knew that in his intellectual pursuits, he had left the Beedles with an ample head start on physical advantages. He compensated by using his father’s considerable fortune to buy the loyalty of underlings burly enough that his rivals couldn’t toss them around like they were paper dolls.

Atlas caught the incoming henchman by the arm and threw him around like he was a ragdoll, skillfully hurling him over his shoulder. The uniformed man had a split second to shout and grab onto the railing on his way down. The railing creaked, then sagged, leaving the Weevil minion dangling precariously in front of a propeller chute and above a giant rampaging elephant.

See the world! the carefully worded ad for Weevil Family Industries had read. Meet (and kill) new people!

Hercules leapt like the Olympian he was and grabbed onto the dangling guard’s belt. The adventurous Beddle climbed him like he was any other handhold just before the pole gave way, dropping the henchman onto into one of the skelephant’s many eye sockets. He was left stuck up to his waist in elephant bone.

Good pay for loose morals at exotic locales!

Atlas was already partying another guard’s baton to slug him in the breadbasket. Said guard wheezed out any bread he had left in his basket before a harsh elbow knocked him out. Two more flanked him and one came at him with a heavy haymaker. Atlas simply flashed his handful of gemstone in between them with a wolfish grin. The guard flinched as he recalled Nathan’s suddenly conflicting orders and stopped just short of punching the jewel. Atlas decked him across the jaw before he could prioritize.

Hercules shoulder-checked the man approaching behind Atlas, sending him flying over the edge of the floating craft and colliding with a tree trunk.

“Quit going for bonus points, you two! This thing doesn’t run on well wishes!” Baum called out to them.

Nathan grit his teeth as the Beedles casually tore through his minions. He drew a knife from one of his tastefully tailored pockets and stormed towards Hercules. Hercules turned just in time to sidestep the attempted backstab, the blade barely grazing his side for a superficial wound. Herc didn’t seem to notice amongst all his tiger bites and blocked Nathan’s follow up attempt for a karate chop to his neck. It likely would have worked on anyone besides a Beedle. The story of his life as far as Nathan’s inferiority complex was concerned.

Hercules twisted Nut’s arms up and around his neck in a quick but effective chokehold, forcing him to drop the knife.

“Say, Baum?! Where could I throw him to cause them the most trouble!?”

“Big console over there!”

Hercules lifted Nut over his head and chucked him into the control station. Things popped and fizzed as the wiring was knocked out of whack, making his aircraft start to drift and sputter.

“Well now you ACTUALLY have to leave,” Goliath reminded him, leaning out from the back of the plane.

Hercules and Atlas raced aboard, leaping off the sinking vessel with the jewel in hand. Atlas stuffed it into a sack as Baum took to the skies, leaving Nathan and his men struggling to stay afloat and away from the skeletal titan.

“So what? We’re going to have a super skeleton chasing us forever now?” Goliath asked, peeking out through one of the smaller windows.

“Please, Goliath. The proper term is ‘skelephant,” Atlas lectured as he dusted off his clothes.

“Since when?!”

“Since I made it up when it first showed up. One of the perks of being on the ground team.”

“Aww man. I miss all the new monsters.”

“You’ll get the next one, little guy,” Baum told the tallest of the Beedles. He checked a few of the dials on his dashboard, one of which had a roughly mended crack in the glass from where Goliath went poking at it.

“Your average curse only runs, ohhh… a kilometer or two? It’ll tucker itself out in no time.”

As Baum pulled higher into the air, Goliath peered out his window again. He felt a little more at ease when the skelephant slowed its charge and crumbled into a massive heap of significantly less vengeful bones.

---

True to Baum’s claims, the plane needed to refuel before it could get far. It was the better part of an hour when they made an improvised landing at a city close to the jungle’s borders. It was far from a proper airport, but it had enough crop dusters and cheap tour guides that the Beedles were able to overpay for some fuel.

Lurking in the shadows of their rented hangar was none other than Beech Weevil. He was by far the largest of the Weevils, both a marksman and fencer of some renown. He was a man who considered time spent as a sniper in the army as good practice but a bit more “hands off” than he preferred. Beech was almost a match for a Beedle in a fair fight, which was why he so rarely fought fair.

Beech had a short, full beard that matched his trim, dirty blonde hair. He was dressed in a dark brown trench coat and darker chamo pants. It was as fashionable as it was for stealth, though he was desperately grateful to be back out of sight. Walking through town in stealthy attire was a great way to get odd looks. He was built like a python: long and densely muscled. He even believed he could see via his sense of taste until his siblings made him stop licking things he found on the ground. Beech knew he wasn’t the brains of the family, but he was the only one with any muscle.

He moved quickly and quietly, navigating the messy old hangar. He had plenty of cover as Baum refueled and the other brothers stretched their overgrown legs.

“Damn those sturdy Beddle legs. They’ve stretched their last,” Beech cursed under his breath.

Those legs had kicked him from head to toe at one time or another. Atlas glanced in his direction, making Beech hastily duck out of sight and cover his mouth. He waited until the coast was clear before he approached the plane, set the device, and stealth-hurried out of sight.

His portable radio crackled loudly and abruptly enough that he nearly had to change his camo pants.

“Beech? Come in, Beech. Where is that bloody…?”

Beech immediately paled and hurled himself out the nearest window. He barely had the time to be grateful it was already open as he tumbled out of sight, muffling his radio under his coat.

“What the hell, Nate?” Beech growled as soon as he was out of earshot.

A few puzzled farmers stared at him as he paced nearby. He was too angry to care.

“You almost blew my cover with the targets! Stealth mission, remember?”

“If it was a stealth mission, why did you have your radio on?” Nathan asked.

Beech stared into space for a few seconds. He knew that a good excuse took time.

“Cuz… I knew you’d call.”

“That makes even less sense. We’re still stuck out here. How is it going with the Beedles?”

“Taken care of,” Beech smirked smugly. “I’ve got the charge planted and the detonator’s prined and ready.”

“Are you mad?! They have the Jewel of the Jungle! That thing is too irreplaceable to risk with something that explosive.”

Beech’s beady eyes blinked a few times as he pieced things together.

“Uh oh.”

“Uh oh!? What’s that ‘uh oh,’ you damnable goon!? Did you just ‘uh oh’ a priceless relic!?”

“No.” He paused and then corrected himself with “…not yet.”

“Good gravy, man! No ‘not yet.’ No ‘uh oh.’ Just sabotage them or threaten them or something like-”

A booming explosion sounded behind him, sending a faint wave of heat through the air. Beech refused to look back at it: half to look cool, and half trying to deny anything had gone wrong.

“What was that!?” Nathan demanded. “I swear if you say uh oh, I’ll…”

“Uh… whoops. Just a sec.”

Beech whirled around and hurried towards the hangar. He thought it looked strangely intact for the racket it had made, especially considering he hadn’t even hit the detonator. He threw open the door and saw the four brothers Beedle standing next to their plane. They were mildly startled (except, perhaps, for the plane) but perfectly safe and sound.

“Found your little party favor, Beech,” Baum said with a friendly wave.

“I took the opportunity to have a little skeet shooting with Goliath. Hell of an arm on the runt, eh?”

“I could have thrown it further,” Atlas grumbled.

Goliath beamed proudly and nudged him with a massive elbow. The two quickly devolved into a poking/smacking/shoving match while the others ignored them completely. Hercules stepped forward with a square-jawed scowl.

“If it isn’t Beech Weevil and his old tricks. Looks like your trap fell short again.”

Beech furrowed his brow. He tried to make it look like a glare as his pea brain raced to come up with another excuse. He drew the saber from his side and held it out towards them.

“I see you found my distraction,” he growled his face-saving lie.

“I knew it!”

Hercules pounded a fist into his palm, immediately convinced. Baum gave a wordless hum of a noise but he didn’t want to ruin his brother’s fun. Beech gave a twisting flourish of his blade.

“Now that you’ve fallen right into my trap, why don’t you face me like a man, Hercules Beedle?”

“Gladly! Bring me my sword, brother.”

Baum looked at him blankly for a moment, then shook his head.

“First of all, Herc, get it your own damn self. Second, you can’t. We didn’t pack any with us.”

Hercules frowned.

“Really? Now even a machete?”

“You brought those with you to the jungle. Did you lose them with all the…?”

“With all the tiger wrestling. Riiiight,” Hercules mused, rubbing his chin as his memory got a rare but healthy jog in.

“Ah well. I’ll make do without. Have at you!”

Hercules rolled up his sleeves as he marched towards Beech. The sword-wielding Weevil cracked a smirk. He knew the Beedles well enough from their various clashes and encounters. Hercules was an absolute monster to face in close combat, but he was dumb enough to be a man of his word. He had all confidence that the brute would accept any challenge, even if he was unarmed and Beech had one of his weapons of choice in hand. His beady eyes scanned him for openings before he had to remind himself that when all Herc had was flesh, all HE had to do was start stabbing.

“Oh jeez, Herc! Watch out!”

Goliath’s sudden shout surprised the both of them. There was a sound of rushing wind as a length of pipe flew through the air and over Hercules’ shoulder. Beech was so focused on his self-orchestrated duel that he didn’t see the improvised projectile coming until it clanged against his forehead. His eyes rolled back in his head as if trying to inspect the damage to the inside of his skull before he crumbled to the floor.

Hercules frowned at the downed Weevil and turned back towards his brothers. Goliath blushed and avoided his gaze.

“Seriously?” Hercules pressed. “I had my sleeves rolled up for nothing?”

“Atlas was distracting me!” Goliath tried deflecting.

“Do you know how hard it is to come by a proper one on one showdown these days? It’s always armies of guards, packs of wild animals, or an old fashioned colossus. The lengths I need to go to just to wrestle a man to the ground without getting interrupted!”

“Okay! I’m sorry! I saw he had a sword and I thought you’d catch it. That, or I’d just save your butt...”

“Did I look like I needed saving?”

“Well obviously, cuz that’s what I thought you needed! How many times has a random piece of pipe gotten us out of a jam?”

Baum and Atlas let them squabble as they checked in on Beech. He was out good and cold with a welt starting to grow where he’d been hit. Atlas picked out some nearby rope and started binding the fallen Weevil’s arms and legs. It wasn’t the first time he’d had to tie up an unconscious man who’d threatened their lives. It wasn’t even the first time he’d had to hogtie Beech Weevil in particular. He tended to botch his ambushes one way or another, to the point where they had come to call the particular method Atlas was going through “the Weevil knot” for short.

“I told you he had a hell of an arm,” Baum noted, flashing a proud smile and nodding towards Goliath.

Baum helped strip the assorted gear off of Beech to make sure he wasn’t a minor threat anymore. He examined Beech’s radio before he clicked it on.

“Beech? Report in. How goes operation Stone Swap?” Nathan demanded.

“Afternoon, Nate,” Baum greeted in a neighborly tone. He was met with an annoyed growl.

“Just thought I’d be polite and let you know he’s getting tied up as we speak. Pipe to the head, but he should be fine, just in case you cared. The types they let in the military these days, eh?”

---

The foolish Beedles went about their business, dealing with their shallow, mortal camaraderie. Longinus was beyond all that. As a dark seeker of the strange and mysterious, he knew there were greater things beyond the realms of flesh and emotions. He was still mortal, for the time being, but at least that let him act in the name of the powers that normally wouldn’t touch his world out of fear of ruining it beyond recognition.

Longinus Horne Weevil was ghostly pale, making his dark freckles stand out. He was more thickly built than most expected under his cloak and dark, silken clothing, an uneven mix of doughy softness and some underlying muscle. He was the shortest of the Weevil brothers with bags under his eyes. Despite his theatrical attire, his personal grooming habits went about as far as tying his greasy black into a ponytail. It all gave him the look of a devilishly handsome man who had been used as a candle a few too many times.

His grim appearance came with  He had his petty pleasures but he spent most of his time secluded in his room or the Weevil manor’s library, desperately reading and translating the more obscure and forgotten books. He consumed any information he could find related to the occult. Longinus literally devoured a page once while misinterpreting a ritual, which made him especially awkward about telling Beech to stop licking things.

As much as his brothers enjoyed their schemes, Longinus kept more than his share of secrets. As far as he was concerned, the family relied too much on their monetary resources and reputations. He watched through binoculars as Atlas tossed Beech out of their current hideout, thumbing a small, ornately carved bronze relic in his hand.

“A failure. Of course,” Longinus mused.

He fondled what his predecessors had presumed to be a primitive compass. It was shaped like an inch-thick coin with a pyramid shape jutting out on one side. Ornate patterns were carved into the surrounding surface in precise but seemingly nonsensical lines. When Longinus pressed his index finger hard enough against its peak, the blood from the small cut flowed rapidly down the sides. The crimson streaks rapidly filled up the crevices like tiny rivers flooded themselves full.

“Hear me, darkness, for I beseech you. Grant me the boon of blasphemy to spread your cosmic will upon this plane of existence.”

When the token was coated in his lifeblood, a foot-tall shadow emerged on its own. It was completely without any clear lines or angular nature. Just a hunched creature with curled in arms like the silhouette of some oversized, squatting rat made of 2-dimensional darkness. A dozen glowing blue beads of light ran across its squat face like eyes.

“Long, we’ve talked about this. You can talk to me like I’m a person,” the shadow sighed.

The thing called Fetch spoke in a very level, very reasonable tone of someone who had gotten very good at customer service and hated the fact.

“I should think our eldritch cause would demand some pretense of its severity,” Longinus defended, his joyless scowl looking slightly hurt by the response.

“Look, we appreciate the blood. Don’t get us wrong about that. It’s going towards a good cause. But you could make this a little easier on us if you just leveled with me. What do you want?”

Longinus recovered quickly and pointed towards the structure that housed the Beedles and their plane.

“A loathsome foe nest in yon shelter. I would wish for a force capable of striking them down and seizing their prize.”

Fetch took a very long, steadying breath. It inflated his tiny body like a balloon, expanding in all direction by a few inches before exhaling back down.

“Long… this is what I mean…”

“I want one of yours to slay the Beedles. They have an artifact of some arcane power,” Longinus rephrased himself impatiently.

Half of Fetch’s eyes widened in shock.

“OH! Oh, the Beedles? Oof. Okay, give me a minute… I’ll see if anyone’s interested, but no promises…”

The shade tutted something under his breath as some of his eyes winked in and out like a telephone operator’s switchboard. Longinus pursed his lips until the entity came back to his full attention.

“Alright. I’ve got one on his way. He’s new, but he’s a big guy, so he should be able to make himself useful out there.”

Longinus grunted dismissively.

“Good. I’m not made of blood.”

His gloomy eyes darted around self-consciously. “Not… completely anyway.”

“Right.”

The shade rolled his twelve eyes like some shifting constellation over his night sky of a body.

“If only. Well we look forward to your next donation. Good luck with your murder thing.”

“Indeed. Hail the dark master,” Longinus replied stiffly.

“Uh huh.”

Fetch barely finished the words before he and the pool of blood sucked into his summoning token in an instant.

---

A gout of flame shot out of the floor of the hangar. The brothers Beedle whipped around and faced it, and as the flames died down there was a monster standing in its wake. It was six and a half feet of raw, scarred flesh and external bones in a humanoid shape. A squat head covered in a dented iron helm was squashed deep between its burly shoulders. One arm was a lava-like hunk of burned muscle and chitinous armor while the other was a skeletal arm laid out over the flesh. It gave off a strong smell of burnt 3333 and medical supplies gone sour.

“FOOOLLLSH! I COME TO CONQUER! WHO SHALL BE FIRST TO-”

“Me!” Atlas cut in quickly.

“Me!” Hercules jumped in as soon as he realized it was a contest.

“C’mon! No! Me!” Goliath whined.

The flesh monster paused as the three massive siblings shoved and jockeyed to get in front of each other to wrestle a live demon. His burning eyes scanned them, noting that humans were growing much taller than he had remembered them being. He drummed a bony finger on one of his thighs.

“I, ah… did only ashk for one,” he added tentatively.

“Come on! Demon, you weren’t here for it, but I got a duel interrupted a few minutes ago…”

“You won’t shut up about all the tigers you wrestled! You had your turn,” Goliath reminded him.

“Tigersh? Like… like plural?” the entity asked.

“And you got to beat the skelephant!” their youngest continued.

“AND named it,” Atlas reminded them.

“But that so does not count as ‘beating’ it. We ran away from it for a while.”

The summon was disliking his odds the more he heard. It made a swallowing noise in its absence of a throat and looked for a way out of this. He finally found one in the shorter man watching his brothers argue with a look of nostalgic bemusement.

“YOU! I accshept your challenge.”

Baum looked up at the monster like he’d only just noticed him and raised his eyebrows.

“Sorry, me? It’s alright. You can take one of them on…”

“The pact is made!!!”

A ring of low flame sprang up around the creature. Baum looked quietly at his staring brothers, shrugged, and took off his fight jacket as he stepped into it.

“Alright. Your pact, your call.”

“Try to leave some for the rest of us, Baum!” Hercules called behind him.

“Or at least make it last a while,” Goliath sighed as he sat cross-legged nearby.

The summon’s eyes swept worriedly towards them before settling back on Baum, who had fallen into a rigid boxing stance. He gave a small, inviting upward nod towards the monstrosity. It took its first and only swing at Baum.

The Beedle middle child was easily the smallest of them. He saw his share of action serving overseas and fared VERY well in some boxing during his field training, but more importantly, no one lived a life of roughhousing and adventuring with three hulking brothers without learning how to fight with the best of them. Even those who married into the Beedle family were either brave and sturdy folk or quickly learned to keep up.

Baum moved in like a blur, dodging the heavy swipe and snatching a duller part of its bony armor. He pulled and twisted, wrenching it around at an angle that the bigger beast wasn’t flexible to reach on its own. The meat monster bellowed like a startled gorilla as joints he wasn’t aware he had popped out of place. He tried to grab at Baum with his other hand, but his bulk betrayed him as Baum simply danced around him to use his own body as a shield. The shortest brother spiked a hard jab deep between its ribs, hitting the callous meat experimentally while he pulled on the lever of the creature’s arm. He pulled the arm up and pushed his foot into the back of the monster’s knee with his entire weight like he was trying to climb it. Gravity took a split second to think about what the sudden shift in weight meant before giving up completely and dumping the thing onto its bony chest. Baum knelt over the otherworldly entity and started grabbing and yanking on any point of leverage he could get his hands on until it popped and he moved onto the next.

“Oof. Poor guy,” Hercules mused. He watched the meaty monster’s thrashing grow more and more limited as Baum snapped another joint.

“Remember when he used to do this to his toy planes? Mom couldn’t buy them fast enough,” Atlas chuckled, looking far more amused by the state of their surprised challenger.

“Only now he does it with real planes,” Goliath noted, leaning on his folded legs.

He winced as Baum turned the creature’s skullish head all the way around and cupped a hand to his mouth.

“Hey, new guy! I’m just saying that if you tell him your weak spot, this is all over a lot quicker. It’s that or he experiments until he finds out!” the shaggy brother called.

“And we always find out!” Atlas reminded him with a toothy grin.

“Of course, there’s always the scientific method. The process of elimination will get us there eventually,” Baum assured them.

He stepped on where its elbow ought to be and pulled it backward until the summon was touching his own armpit.

“RGHHH! NGHHH! HOW DA-AUGHHHH! RIGHT EYE! IT’SH THE RIGHT EYE!”

“Thank you kindly,” Baum noted.

He hooked his thumb and thrust it into the socket of the flesh and bone fiend’s skull. There was a rushing sound of heat moving through the air and the thing and its flaming circle vanished. Baum dropped a few inches to the ground and flew on some slightly burnt skin on his thumb.

“Ah well. He was fun while he lasted. Sort of an all hype, no hellfire type though.”

Baum dusted off his hands and reclaimed his coat.

“He did look like a real 2 out of 5 kind of demon, if you ask me,” Hercules nodded, his arms folded over his barrel of a chest.

“That’s only because you oafs can’t count that high,” Baum said with a flash of a smile.

He thumped a playful jab into Hercules’ upper arm. Herc smiled back and returned the favor, even if it made Baum stumble a couple paces. He had always refused any special treatment and had grown to expect to sport a few bruises at any given time like signs of overgrown affection. He paused near the window before leaning hos head out of it.

“Say, Longhorn! If you didn’t already notice, your latest little gremlin failed!” he shouted.

He couldn’t be sure that Longinus was lurking about, wringing his hands over the results of his latest Faustian scheme, but it felt like a safe bet. Long winced at the news of another summoning wasted. He promptly bailed on any further plans, itching at where his pierced thumb had healed over. If the Beedles could beat back the otherworldly entities, he’d spend his blood elsewhere.

---

A short while later, the Beedles were refueled and repaired. Baum gave the plane a confident pat and they started to load back up when there came the tinny clacking sound of a bit of metal hitting the metal of their building. It was entirely unremarkable, especially once it was overshadowed by the hundred other bullets that went tearing through the upper half of the structure. The Beedle brothers stooped like they were in a home with doorframes not built for titanic young men, getting littered with shreds of class and tin.

“Brothers Beedle!” a woman’s slightly, nasally impatient voice barked.

Its harshness and volume was amplified by some device that whined in feedback. That feedback was “please take it down a notch,” and it went entirely disregarded.

“Get your brutish backsides out here NOW or I start actually aiming!”

“Plum,” the Beedles grunted together (though Goliath held a hint of excitement behind his voice).

With a quick glance out the window, the bots stepped outside. The youngest, least patient and most female of the Weevils stood a hundred feet down the paved runway. A handsome and formally dressed man held a tray with a glass and pitcher of water. Even the impressive feat of using one hand to fan his ladyship while holding her megaphone left him incredibly easy to overlook in comparison to Plum Weevil holding a minigun.

Plum was an odd mix of her siblings. She was the shortest of them all, a squat and full-figured young lady in her later years at university. Her gun was about as big as the she was, but Plum had somehow made it match her puffy, purple and pink dress. She was a mishmash of her parents’ looks with her father’s olive complexion and her mother’s dark hair and full figure that gave a good quality bodice a run for its money. Two great, spiraling pigtails framed either side of her scowling face.

Plum was the apple of her father’s eye that could do no wrong, even when she absolutely did. It left her pushy, impatient, and armed with a bluntness that made her generally a lot more effective than her craftier brothers. She drummed her dainty fingers on the trigger.

“There you are. You certainly took your time,” Plum huffed at them.

“Now hand over the jewel or else.”

“Or else what?” Hercules asked stubbornly.

Baum gave him a look of disbelief and gestured towards the heavy artillery in her hands.

“Or else I blast it to bits. Better for neither of us to have it than let you have it, correct?”

“Seriously? Plum, think of the historical…”

Baum had barely started his argument when Plum started rotating the barrel of her weapon in an industrial whirr.

“Let me handle this,” Atlas urged quietly, cutting in front of Baum. He held up a hand for Plum to stop.

“Okay, Plum! It’s yours!”

“Well I could have done that,” the shorter brother snapped as Atlas took the mythical jewel out of its bag.

Atlas shoved it into Goliath’s chest until he hastily caught it.

“And Goliath will make the drop,” he insisted.

“WHAT?!” Plum and Goliath blurted out together.

“He’s the biggest target. If you try and go back on the deal…”

“Like a Weevil would,” Hercules added.

“...at least then he’s in the way. So go get her, runt.”

Goliath blushed and shuffled his feet, dragging large trails in the dust beneath them. Atlas gave his other brothers a knowing glance before grinning knowingly at Goliath.

“Any problem with that? Or did you two have more crushing matters to deal with right now?”

“It’s ‘pressing matters…” Goliath mumbled his correction.

Still, he cradled the gem in one arm and started taking hesitant strides towards Plum. The young lady kept her gun steady on the brothers but her eyes consistently darted away from them. It was difficult to keep an eye on them while also trying to avoid eye contact with Goliath. Neither wanted to be too forward and blow their chances. They both knew you only had one chance at a great first impression, but neither seemed to acknowledge that it had already happened.

The short walk may as well have been a mile for Goliath. Even with his long, lumbering legs, he approached Plum like he could mess up every step. He was so caught up in her lovely hair and rosy cheeks and cutely short but solid build that he barely registered the machine gun in all the fuzzy pink haze that filled his vision around her.

He finished his thirty or so steps after what felt like hours. He smiled awkwardly, holding the gem against his chest with one arm while he tried to hastily fix his shaggy mess of hair from his face.

“Hey there, Plum. Uh… fancy seeing you out here.”

“Yes! Thank you!” Plum responded before thinking.

Her rosy cheeks grew even more rosy. Goliath winced and looked back at his brothers for support. All he got was a gesture from Hercules to move it along.

“Well when we’re out to foil your plans, that’ll happen, I suppose. Not that I was following you… well, I was. Well, WE were…”

The towering explorer nodded.

“Yea. I get it. Weevils and Beedles, eh? I uh…  like your, uh…”

Goliath’s eyes darted towards Plum’s massive gun. Then to her butler. Then to her hair. They all felt wrong in various ways.

“Dress.”

“Really?! Well… you too!” Plum replied quickly, seeming to grow another inch from perking up at his awkward compliment. She twirled a finger through the already spiraling tip of one pigtail.

“What are you plans later? For… the jewel! What were you planning for the jewel?”

“Oh! Mom and Dad usually sell it to a museum or something and give whatever they pay to charity.”

“Oh really? That’s very sweet of you! Them!” Plum hastily recovered.

“Yea… it’s funny. I thought Charity was some lady who really needed money until I was like… 16. I kept thinking ‘How’s this lady so bad with money? We keep giving her all this stuff.”

The two shared a stilted laugh. Beedle pulled awkwardly at his shirt collar.

“Say, is it kind of warm out here?” he excused conversationally.

“It certainly is!” Plum hastily agreed, willing herself to sweat as formally and confidently as possible. “Fan harder, Wilkins!”

“Wilkins is busy,” Atlas answered for the unconscious manservant.

Plum whirled around, but Atlas caught the grip of her bulky weapon. He swiped it from her hands  and hefted it over his head before she could fully realize what was happening.

“What the… how dare you, you loathsome oaf!? That’s MY property! Give it here!”

Plum scowled hatefully at the bigger brother and started hopping up and down, grabbing at the massive firearm. She was several feet too short as she flailed at the air around Atlas’ chest. Goliath finally caught up to what was going on and frowned.

“Come on, Atlas. You don’t have to be mean about it.”

“Literally had a gun on us, Gol,” he reminded her dryly. “Besides, I’m not gonna hurt your girlfriend. She’ll tire herself out eventually.”

“She’s not my girlfriennnnd!” Goliath whined through pursed lips like he was wary of even using the word around her.

Whatever Plum was to them, she was certainly exhausting herself. A few bounces in the jungle heat had her sweating even more than her nerves alone could muster. Her ranting became more breathless and her flailing slowed over the following few seconds. A brief and catastrophic attempt at climbing Atlas took the last of her strength. The spoiled Plum flopped back off of him, landing flat on her back and heaving for air. With her properly worn out, Atlas detached the ammunition from its weapon and brought it down across his knee to dent a few important looking parts. He tossed the gun aside and plucked the jewel back out of Goliath’s hands to head back towards the plane.

Goliath let it go and meekly reached for Wilkins’ unconscious form. The largest little brother picked up his old fashioned fan and started waving it over the breathless Plum.

“Thank… you… Goliath. Such a gentleman,” she wheezed.

“Oh! You think so?” he asked as the redness raced back into his face to accelerate his lovestruck buffoonery.

Baum grunted as he hefted Plum’s manservant off the runway.

“Well if we don’t want them to cook like a couple of eggs, we should get them off the runway,” the ingenious brother warned, draggin Wilkins off with him.

“Ah,” Goliath replied as speechlessly as one could speak.

“So perhaps maybe for the sake of helping keep you from roasting alive in your very nice dress maybe I should take your hand or something,” he rambled out hastily.

Plum averted her widening eyes.

“Oh! Perhaps so! For the sake of not dying and getting revenge on your brothers someday, of course,” she carefully but eagerly agreed.

She started to raise a deceptively gloved fingers at a melodramatic pace towards Goliath’s catcher's mitt of a hand. They were a mere inch away when they were interrupted by a sour knowitall of a voice.

“Never mind! I’ve come to gather my lesser siblings,” Nathan growled.

The dusty, sweaty, Weevil grouchily approached the Beedles. His distaste for them was of a weary flavor rather than aggressive, clearly defeated with his underlings (including the ones he stooped to calling his siblings) disposed of. He ignored Goliath completely as he grabbed and hoisted Plum back to her dainty feet. Plum stared purest daggers at Nathan like her groomed eyelashes could extend and stab right through him, but she kept her lips pursed bitterly shut.

Nathan scanned the area, hands impatiently on his scrawny hips.

“It’s safe to assume my incompetent brothers are about as well,” Nathan asked without asking, grimacing at Hercules.

“You incompetented first!” Beech shouted back from inside the hangar.

“We’ve got him tied up in the usual Weevil knot for you,” Baum assured Nathan, gesturing to guide him towards his bound brother.

“I hate that damnable knot,” Nathan grumbled as he followed his lead.

Baum returned to his plane and dragged Beech up to his unsteady feet.

“He took a wrench to the head, but he ought to shake it off as always,” Baum said.

“Yes… taking blows to the head seem to be a specialty of his,” Nathan grumbled.

They had done this sort of exchange several times before. Some depiction of asking for returned hostages and shrugging off defeat may as well have been on the Weevil family crest. The Beedles found them to be either ultimately harmless or mildly bothersome, but they’d occasionally provide just the right amount of interesting to an otherwise dull adventure.

“I could use a ride home too,” Longinus sulked as he poked his head up from the window.

“Oh good. Not even a scratch on you. At least your yellow belly let you camouflage yourself during your hiding.”

Longinus stared for a moment and discretely checked that his occult token was secure in his cloak.

“Yep,” he agreed dully.

“Well, no hard feelings,” Baum offered as he led the Weevils back out of the hangar. They were defeated but he still didn’t trust them around his things. Even his brothers tended to mess those up.

“You win some, you lose some. Usually lose, from what I’ve seen of your track record.”

Nathan forced a miserable excuse of a laugh.

“Yes, well it wasn’t a complete loss. I’m sure the Explorer’s Guild will still be impressed to see several elephants’ worth of bones. By the time we’d pulled Mitchell out of that skull, I’d figured…”

Baum slowed his pace a little. “Elephant bones?”

“Of course. If you weren’t going to use them, I figured bring them back to proper society as an exhibit…”

“Right right right. But HOW many of the formerly animated cursed skeletons? Percentage wise? Because with the average radius of a curse, that’d be…”

The ground rumbled as if dramatic timing itself reared its massive head. The stacked remains of colossal bones formed a skelephant right on cue, looming over the humble structures of the town.

“Great Caesar's ghost!” Nathan shrieked, nearly leaping out of his skin.

“It’s actually called a skelephant, thank you,” Atlas pointed out while the others stared at the reviving monstrosity.

“Whatever you call it, call it in the plane,” Baum sighed.

“Wait! That thing was in our truck! That was our base of operations! You have to help us get out of here!” Nathan exclaimed.

Baum looked to the other Beedles. After a few shrugs, Hercules waved towards their latest assailants.

“Fine by me. It’ll be a little cramped, but no funny business.”

“I assure you that I’ve never been funny in my life,” Longinus replied as he hurried towards the hangar.

For once, they were all inclined to believe him. Beedles and Weevils alike hurried into the cargo plane as Baum went to prep for a hasty takeoff. Goliath hopped inside before holding out a hand to those behind him for a boost. Longinus nearly took it before Plum swiftly sucker punched him in the ribs and cut in front of him, finally squeezing Goliath’s powerful hand. She sighed melodically to herself before nearly tumbling over as the plane revved to life and flew out and upward. The skelephant unceremoniously crumbled to pieces once they were back out of range.

The Weevils awkwardly settled in for the flight. Hercules hadn’t been kidding about the roomy plane still being tightly packed with three Beedles occupying the space. Even with nowhere to slip off to, Atlas secured the Jewel of the Jungle closeby.

Nathan made his way up to the cockpit, steadying himself with whatever he could brace against.

“We have a summer home on an island near here. I’ll give you the coordinates and you could drop us off there,” he informed Baum.

He noted that there was still not so much as an apology or a thank you.

“You’re lucky I don’t drop the lot of you off in prison, you glorified, glory hogging thieves,” he scolded him. “Consider yourselves lucky if I slow down enough to pass you a parachute before I shove you off my plane!”

Nut blanched and shrank a bit at the threat. Baum vented with a steadying breath.

“Alright. But you all are paying me back for the fuel.”