AnimeCon Harem 14: The Masters Arrive pt 1 (Patreon)

Several hours later

   “Fresssh meat, fresh meat!” Chad hollered, slapping the hood of each parked car as they walked down the row. “How you wanna do this, faggot? Good cop, bad cop? Hell, how ‘bout we go in with the ‘yer a wizard, ‘arry.’ That’d be some top shelf shit, right there. Ain’t ‘xactly wrong, neither. Am I RIGHT?!”

   Judas didn’t humor the kid with a response. The young Masters all seemed to be degenerate memelords, and enjoyed playing up a big persona for kicks. Chad in particular was the quintessential younger generation Master, in his estimation—each and every body modification the younger guys went for was as overt as possible, until their own forms looked like hypermasculine caricatures and their thralls ballooned out into bimbos.

   Bimbos or worse, Judas suppressed a grimace. Least Chad isn’t one of THOSE. The whole ‘ahegao e-girl’ thing he’s into is nowhere near as bad as some of the genuine pedos—the Masters of the outer circle. You never want partnered up with one of those for a gig like this.

   “C’mon Jewd,” Chad tried to cuff Judas on the shoulder with an enormous fist.

   The punch missed—or rather, any kinetic threat to his body was going to miss. It would be stupid and sloppy not to wear your magic around yourself in that way for protection, and Judas didn’t particularly care to allow his suit to get rumpled by thoughtless frat-boy gestures.

   “We’ve gotta haze the new guy a li’l bit, or what’s the point?” Chad spread out his hands. “I’ve got a great one this time, you just let me do all the talkin’. Trust me bro, I’ve got this.”

   “You’re just here to look good,” Judas said. “Don’t open your mouth and ruin it.”

   It was hard for him to say Chad looked good, but Chad’s oversized jawline opened and a ridiculous smirking grin appeared. Because Chad was seven feet tall and muscled like a poorly photoshopped body builder—down to the gray monotone colors—it was an unsettling smile. Chad simply didn’t do subtlety. The onset of nearly godlike power had cooked things like that out of his brain. Judas had only even convinced him to wear a shirt this time by remarking upon the fact that the singlets were colloquially called wife beaters, which Chad thought was hilarious.

   “C’mon, don’t Jewd this up, Jewdy-pie,” Chad laughed, slapping another car hood. “Damn, still no fuckin’ alarm. The hell kinda people live here?”

   “They’re soft,” Judas shrugged in annoyance. “Our boy here’s not shaping up to be much of a Master either, if he’s already put himself in the hospital.”

   “Soft, that’s it—they’re soft!”

   Chad took offense to the car alarm not going off, and dropped into a lower stance, musculature rippling, to shove the car back out of his parking space. The sedan’s parking brake was engaged, and its tires protested as the vehicle slowly skidded several feet out of line, to where it would block future traffic going through.

   “Fuckin’ soft.”

   It wasn’t unusual for the emergence of a new Master to make minor waves—that’s why the newbies that popped up were collected by a pair of veterans. A friendly faced knucklehead-type like Chad would take the new Master under his wing and keep him in line until he learned the Rules, and then the grunt work of wiping memories, clearing police reports, and keeping absolutely wild shit off the news fell to someone like Judas. It was work, a lot of work sometimes, but with his suit and tie, handsome face, and mirrored sunglasses, Judas’ entire demeanor screamed ‘government spook,’ which was plenty entertaining when you found the right people to intimidate.

   Which he always did.

   “Soft, sooooffft, mm-Mmm, though. Sometimes? Sometimes I do like ‘em soft,” Chad said, turning his rictus of a grin towards Judas. “He’s too soft though, then wheww-buddy! Boy, I’m gon’ butter his bread.”

   “Uh-huh,” Judas said. It was best to just let Chad talk, sometimes, even when he didn’t seem to be saying anything of substance. The younger guys were like that, they loved to hear themselves talk. It was the worst when you got a bunch of them together at once, the mid-circle meets became unbelievably obnoxious. Their very nature meant that each of the Masters had their own sizeable ego to wield, and there was always going to be talk and posturing and ‘flexing’ on each other.

   Talk stopped when it met the Rules, though, because when the Rules weren’t respected, things got violent in a hurry.

   The pair passed the last car of the parking lot and stopped at a small driver’s loop before the entrance to emergency care, where cars were still going through. Or rather, Judas stopped Chad, raising a hand to prevent the maniac from simply walking into traffic with the stupid idiotic grin of his. Sure, cooking a few more brains to forget their car had plowed into an unmoving behemoth of a man who appeared to be from some internet meme was easy—the problem was, once you started zapping minds left and right, Chad would take that slack and run with it, getting up to increasingly annoying antics.

   “Pssh, outta the way, faggot,” Chad smacked Judas’ hand out of the way and stepped onto the pavement, causing the next car to jerk to a halt with a screech of brakes. “Beep beep, mother fucker.”

   The horn blared in response, and with a tired sigh Judas lifted an arm and pointed at the driver. It was a simple cantrip, and honestly his most practiced one—the driver, some guy in his late forties—fell into an immediate hypnotic daze of confusion. So long as the two Masters kept moving, they wouldn’t linger in his memory at all.

   “C’mon,” Judas said. “Let’s go. Don’t make me have to point twice.”

   “Don’t make me have to point twice,” Chad mocked in a high-pitched voice. “Faggot, you put more goddamned oomph into it, you’ll never have to point twice. Y’know what I’m sayin’? I look like I’ve ever once had to point twice? Ask me if I’ve ever had to point twice.”

   “We’re wasting time,” Judas reminded the much taller man.

   “My name’s JEWD~ASS and I say we’re wasting ti~me!” Chad taunted. “Gimme a fuckin’ break, bro. Some dumbass wants to come throw hands? Let ‘em.”

   When they finally managed to get moving again and pass through the automatic doors, the decade-old ward set up by the Masters chimed loudly from the marker in Judas’ pocket. No one else but him could hear it, but he pulled the marker out anyways, revealing an old plastic hospital token from some vintage board game. With a surge of power into his fingertips the token was silenced, and Judas looked up just in time to see Chad strutting up to the front desk.

   “Awww hey shawty, what’s cookin’?” Chad called, clapping a hand down on the counter. “Dayum, girl. You fat and ugly. Lotta junk in dat trunk though, why don’cha turn that big ol’ brapper around and gimme a look, huh?”

   The woman at the front desk looked confused, and had no way of responding.

   She registered his presence, but couldn’t quite identify his absurd appearance or make out exactly what he was saying—the obfuscation on Chad in particular was three hexes thick, rendering him into a bad memory but in real-time. Chad already knew this, and Judas knew that Chad knew this; the oaf was just being obnoxious as per usual. Judas was the face of this operation when it came to dealing with others; his half hex allowed him to talk to bystanders freely. Chad was here to make nice with the new Master and impress upon him the Rules, he would just be an unidentifiable blur of humanoid in recordings and for the most part an unpleasant idea to anyone who actually met him unless they had the magic to see through a few hexes.

   “C’mon girl, gimme kiss,” Chad leaned his massive upper body over the counter and into the woman’s personal space. “Lay it on me, gimme a big ol’ smackeroo. Right here. Gimme kiss!”

   “Don’t demean yourself by engaging with the help,” Judas chided him in a dry voice. “Our man is this way, come on.”

   It was hard to say whether sticking to a firm business-only stance with Chad helped keep him in line or if it just encouraged him to act out even more. The weight of those hexes already seemed to subconsciously push the psychopath to be as bombastic as possible. The man loved attention, and the shroud of magic further enabled him to play around. As they ventured on down the hospital corridor, the seven-foot-tall Chad swaggered, holding his chest high and thrusting his arms out in an exaggerated sway to each step.

   “I’m comin’ back for her later, fuck it,” Chad laughed in his bassy deep voice. “Every hole is a goal. Soft all over, shiiit, I’ll get her lookin’ real nice. Be a good demonstration for the fresh meat.”

   “I’m sure you two’ll have a great time homo bonding over… old hospital meat or whatever it is you find to fuck here,” Judas smirked as they stepped into the elevator. “Our man’s deeper in still, either second or third floor. I’ll have to sense around as we get closer.”

   “HAH! Damn, son,” Chad tried—and failed—to slap Judas on the back, instead smacking the elevator wall hard enough to slightly shake the entire lift. “Old hospital meat, alright. That’s a good one. Shit.”

/// Nope, leaving this one without comment.

Brian dreamscape bit seems like a better way to show time passage for gluing together the epilogue sections, so tabling it for now.