Eggmen: Mercenary Legends: Chapter 4

Eggmen: Mercenary Legends:
Chapter 4

The night was waning and the crack of dawn approaching as Water-Egg emerged from a large sewer pipe located roughly halfway across South Egg City's Eastern district from the Northern pipeline he'd previously travelled through, carrying the injured and still unconscious Fire-Egg over his shoulders like a backpack and with the both of them being covered in fecal slime. The simple-minded young mutant had, in his brutal slaying of the Ohgroid, experienced a state of temporary physical and mental breakthrough during which his innermost strengths had briefly surfaced, overriding his usual stupidity just long enough for him to accomplish the task at hand in that crucial moment. However, not only had that phenomenon worn off completely by the time he returned to the surface, with Water-Egg returning to his normal, idiotic self, but it also seemed to have been just as quickly "forgotten" by him as well, with the simple fact that he had successfully slain the vicious demon being the only key detail of the ordeal that he remained aware of or cared about.
After exiting the sewer, Water-Egg was unsure of where to go and what to do; though he understood that his friend Fire-Egg was badly hurt and in need of medical attention, he did not know the locations of any nearby hospitals, nor did he possess adequate knowledge of any immediate first aid techniques that he could/should utilize in the meantime. Ultimately stumbling back across town and returning to his own home, dripping sludge behind him all along the way, Water-Egg approached and knocked on its front door in the same casual manner as he would have under any other circumstance. Following a short delay, the door was opened by his and Nancy's adoptive father who, being more than eighty years old and with the maximum lifespan for most average Mulshians being around ninety years, was quite decrepitly elderly indeed. Upon seeing his boy in such a filthy condition, the old man briefly mistook him for a monster, potentially even the Ohgroid (he had never actually seen the beast himself, and therefore had no preexisting idea of what it looked like), but fortunately recognized him sooner than he could do anything stupid.

"…Water-Egg?" he asked bewilderedly. "Is that you, my boy?"
"Yes." Water-Egg flatly and simply answered, as if no further explanation was owed.
"What in the galaxy happened to you?" his adoptive father understandably inquired.
"I killed Ohgroid!" the blue one proudly stated.
"You what?" the old man questioned; he would normally be elated at such news, yet seriously doubted what his adopted son was telling him in this moment.
"That right, it's dead." Water-Egg confirmed.
"Amazing… but, why are you covered in sewer sludge," his dad went on querying, clearly overwhelmed and confused, "and what - or who - is that you're carrying?"
Water-Egg then rather foolhardily dropped Fire-Egg onto the ground in front of him, where he proceeded to lie, still unconscious.
"Oh my God; is that…" the elder fearfully asked, "is that the monster?"
"No!" Water-Egg exclaimed, somewhat offended at the mere idea of associating or conflating the two entities in any way, even as an honest mistake. "It's Fire-Egg;" he corrected: "he's new friend, and I want to go with him!"
The old man looked down at this person, initially unsure whether he was dead or alive, and upon hearing that he was a "friend", he quickly arrived at a concerning realization regarding his status.
"Water-Egg," he frantically explained to his hapless son, "whoever this man is, he's seriously injured; we need to get him to a hospital, and fast! Nancy!"
At this calling of her name, Nancy instantly stepped out into view, seeming to have been standing right behind her adoptive father the whole time.
"Water-Egg, Fire-Egg!" she greeted exultantly. "I heard everything; you guys really did it!"
She would have hugged her brother at this point, were he not so visibly filthy, while upon looking down at Fire-Egg, she could plainly recognize that his condition did indeed look fairly bad.
"Oh dear… Water-Egg," she told her brother, "father is quite right; Fire-Egg here doesn't look so good… in fact, he seems to be knocked-out cold. We really should get him to a hospital; in fact, even if he was conscious, I'd still recommend heading to an infirmary for the sake of cleansing and detoxification: I seriously doubt that normal showers would suffice for how badly both of you guys need to get cleaned up right now… no offense."
The party then rushed to the nearest hospital, where their arrival at such an obscure hour took all of the live-in staff members by surprise. Nevertheless, they proceeded to provide, or at least attempt to provide, the requested services regardless; both mutants were washed of all traces of sewage and given vaccinations to prevent any contraction of illness that might have resulted from their exposure to it, but upon examining Fire-Egg and his injuries, the doctors pronounced him dead. Any dismay that came about from this declaration was short-lived, however, as Nancy was quick to point out that he was still very much warm as well as clearly breathing, and that the ill-equipped doctors and nurses were simply too incompetent to wake him from his knocked-out state.
To make a long story short, Fire-Egg was then transferred to a better hospital, where his condition was swiftly upgraded to "Alive", and in time, he subsequently recovered and awoke there.

"Wh-where am I?" were the first words uttered by the veteran adventurer as he came to, followed by: "Water-Egg? Nancy? Some old guy? What happened?"
"My name, young man, is Jaysimun." rectified the adoptive father of Nancy and Water-Egg, whose name was indeed Jaysimun.
"Oh… well, in that case:" Fire-Egg then corrected himself, "Water-Egg? Nancy? Jaysimun? What happened?"
"I killed the Ohgroid!" Water-Egg proclaimed proudly.
"You… you did? Good." Fire-Egg stated soundly. "Plus, I see… I see that you've saved my life as well."
"Yes!" his imbecilic acquaintance succinctly affirmed.
"Yes, 'yes' indeed…" the fiery one muttered, partly to himself, as he began sitting up in his hospital bed despite the doctors' recommendations that he try to remain idly restful for at least a little while after waking up (which he hadn't even been conscious to hear anyway).
"Now," he then went on out loud, "about becoming my apprentice, Water-Egg…"
Everyone present was visibly taken aback by Fire-Egg's quickness to resume pressuring them over his personal agenda almost immediately after recovering from a state that had previously been mistaken for death (albeit by idiots).
"…I, again, want you to come along with me." he continued, evidently either failing to notice or being unfazed by their shock. "With my help, you could unlock your true potential, see, experience and do many great things, and finally have a true purpose in this world, and maybe even amid the larger galaxy one day… but I know your sister would not want that…"
"That's right." asserted Nancy as Fire-Egg then looked over at her with a slight glare in his eyes. "I appreciate your help in stopping that horrible monster, but Water-Egg is my brother… okay, well, not really, but still: he's my adoptive brother as well as my best friend, and I need him to take care of and protect me, especially now that I'm missing a freaking hand!"
"You've made your position very clear, Nancy," Fire-Egg replied, "and I wholly understand where you're coming from, but for all your adorableness and all the sympathy I will stress that I do have for you, the combined matters of my own quest for glory and my desire to mold Water-Egg into a true hero constitute a far greater concern. Is there anything I could give to make you change your mind?"
"Like what?" Nancy asked rhetorically. "What could you possibly offer to replace a brother?"
"What about someone else who could take care of you?" Fire-Egg rebutted in the form of a straight answer. "What about money to support you?"

"I would never trade… well, wait, just how much money are we talking about here?" Nancy inquired, revealing herself to me more open to the suggestion at hand than she would have liked to admit.
"Potentially quite a lot;" Fire-Egg answered before going on to reveal further details regarding his previously-alluded-to ongoing dealings with the president: "right now, I'm in a position to request just about anything I want from President McMonkBur, having accomplished what he specifically sought out and hired me for. I can see to it that you and your daddy here get a new home, away from these slums altogether, as well as a sum of egg'n that will leave you set you for quite some time!"
His delivery of the latter statements here was almost akin to that of a salesperson.
"That does sound great," Nancy admitted, "but any finite payment you could realistically provide us with would run out eventually; it's quite easy to underestimate how quickly massive-sounding sums of money end up being spent. Again, father is too old to work, and I'm obviously in no condition to; Water-Egg is the only viable source of income we have."
Fire-Egg thought for a moment before replying again.
"Well," he asked, "do you know anyone else who might be willing to fill his financial gap?"
Nancy, too, thought for a moment before giving her own answer to this query: "Well, there is one…" she started, "but she's pretty old, not to mention married… although she is still pretty active for her age, and has expressed concern for, and even lent aid to, our family before; her name is Sabahrba."
"…Wait," Fire-Egg then began inquiring as he felt himself experiencing something of a "Eureka!" moment, "would this Sabahrba lady happen to be particularly hairy, by any chance?"
"Well, yes," Nancy replied, initially confused, "but I don't think that makes any differ… wait, how would you know that about her?"
"I met her on my way to your house yesterday;" Fire-Egg explained: "she's the one who first clued me in to what Water-Egg here was capable of, and she did indeed seem to care for your family; she could very well work, and furthermore, I did, after all, save her husband: she owes me a favor of this magnitude! Although… would her husband represent any sort of problem, assuming he'd be moving in as well?"
"That guy is just a sack of old sacks," interjected Jaysimun, "even more-so than I am; he doesn't do much, doesn't need much, and generally won't be a problem to take care of… and besides, the more the merrier, I say!"

"Well, this is starting to sound very promising," Nancy spoke with cautious optimism yet still skeptically, "but Sabahrba is old, as is daddy and Sabahrba's husband as well, and, let's be honest here: they won't be around all that much longer… no offense meant, dad."
"None taken." the easygoing Jaysimun reassured her.
"Anyway, with my crippling injury," Nancy continued, "I'll need someone to take care of me over a much longer term than any of them will be alive for; probably for my whole life…"
At this point, the young girl started lightly sobbing again, although Fire-Egg bore some suspicion that this may have been part of a calculated bid on her part to deter him from continuing to press his negotiations.
"You're underestimating yourself, Nancy." he nonetheless consoled her, outwardly assuming good faith. "I lost both of my parents at your age," he divulged, "and have been living all on my own ever since; as far as I'm concerned, that's a much bigger handicap than one missing hand. Don't say you 'need' special care until you've at least tried to make it on your own, and… and as the final part of what I offer you for Water-Egg's custody, I swear to see to it that you receive the most sophisticated mechanical hand that Ergnoplis' top engineers can make for you!"
He added in that last part on a whim, and once again spoke like a salesman while announcing it.
Nancy looked at the stump on her left arm, longingly imagining a fancy robotic mitt where her original hand had been.
"…It's a done deal." she then said less-than-enthusiastically yet still decisively.
"Excellent; I'm very glad you finally see things my way, Nancy." Fire-Egg somewhat smugly declared. "Anyways," he then continued, "you guys are free go home, make any preparations and say your goodbyes for now; I will be visiting you again as soon I've secured all the arrangements we've agreed upon."
With that, Fire-Egg leapt out of his bed and swiftly departed the hospital; mere moments later, and before the others could leave or otherwise react to the paradoxically altruistic-yet-self-centered mercenary's abrupt exit, a nurse walked into the room with several doses of medicine and anesthetic in hand, looked around confusedly, and asked: "Where has Mr. Fire-Egg gone to?"

Later that morning, Fire-Egg sought out Sabahrba back out in the slums. He had to ask around a bit before he could locate her, which was ironic since his previous encounter with her had occurred entirely by accident, but in due time, he found his way to her house. As Fire-Egg knocked repeatedly on the front door, the old woman immediately recognized him upon looking out through its eye-slit; his appearance was, after all, not exactly easy to mistake for any other Mulshian's.
"You!" Sabahrba exclaimed as she opened the door, apparently surprised to be seeing him again so soon. "How goes the hunt for that monster?"
"The Ohgroid is dead." Fire-Egg flatly stated, sharing what was already old news to him by now.
"Oh, God bless you, son!" the woman elatedly congratulated him. "You've done a great service to us all, Mr… uh, what is your name, exactly?"
"You may call me Fire-Egg, Sabahrba," the mutant hero formally introduced himself, "but for your information it was not I who slew the beast, at least not singlehandedly; it was Water-Egg who dealt the finishing blows."
"…Is that true?" Sabahrba replied with legitimate surprise evident in her voice and facial expressions. "Well then, I suppose the simple little guy has special potential in him after all."
"Indeed, ma'am;" Fire-Egg agreed: "so much so, in fact, that I wish to take him and shape him into a companion and apprentice in my ongoing adventures. To make that happen, however, I need your help."
"Ah, but of course!" the hairy lady concurred. "I do still consider myself to be in your debt, after all."
"Now, this proposal will sound strange and sudden," Fire-Egg warned, "but please hear me out on this; I'm confident it will work out for the best for you, myself, Water-Egg and all others involved."
"Go on;" Sabahrba said: "I'm very much listening."
"I need you and your husband to go live with Nancy and Jaysimun to help accommodate her for the remainder of her youth;" Fire-Egg told her: "it is only on that condition, among others which you needn't personally concern yourself with, that she will allow me to take her brother under my proverbial wing."
"Oh my… well, that would be a strange and sudden shift in the course of our lives indeed." Sabahrba admitted. "Nevertheless," she then added, "life has admittedly been rather boring as of late, and I would be lying to say that I was too busy nowadays to take on a child, at least one of Nancy's age and maturity; I accept."

"A wise decision, ma'am; thank you." Fire-Egg then spoke in proud support of her choice. "Again," he said, "I assure you that this undertaking of yours will not be without great benefits, for I additionally plan to have President McMonkBur provide all of you with a new home in the Western side of South Egg, along with a large sum of money."
Sabahrba paused. "Fire-Egg," she warned, "I will do as you've requested of me, but I advise you not to count on all that other stuff. As far as my vast memory can recall, Yunk McMonkBur has never done anything of that sort for any of us living down here in Eastside, and I doubt even you, having done what you have for our city, can convince him to change that."
"It was he who informed me of the Ohgroid problem in the first place, and specifically summoned me here to put an end to it as a special contract;" Fire-Egg once again explained: "the guy owes me, and I'm confident that he will see all of my requests through here. After all, it's not like I'm asking him to renovate the entire… oh crap."
It was in that precise instant that Fire-Egg remembered his previous promise made to the old peasant known as Frobhiy regarding aid being provided throughout all of Eastside. With this in mind, he swiftly came to realize that negotiating that with the president on top of all these other arrangements that had been unforeseen at the time of his making that first promise really would be a problem.
"Crap!" he exclaimed again, uttering the swear much more loudly this time, and snapped three of his fingers together as he did so, inadvertently producing small, sparking flames which briefly startled Sabahrba before he quickly put them out.
"What's wrong?" the hairy woman inquired worriedly.
"I've just realized that McMonkBur really is unlikely to heed all the requests I've promised people I would make of him," Fire-Egg explained with similarly concerned sentiment, "and that I really do need to go think this over… Regardless, please do grab your husband and go over to Nancy and Water-Egg's home whenever you can; they, plus their father, provided he isn't asleep again, can fill you in on anything else you might want or need to know about all this…"
With that, he proceeded to turn around and dash off without saying another word nor waiting for any further response from Sabahrba.

A short time later, Fire-Egg was once again standing before the entrance of the South Egg City capital building, having thought out what he would say to the president as he'd made his way back over here from the Eastern slums. The doorman recognized him and opened up the doorway for him straightaway upon seeing the mutant approaching.
"Do come in, do come in…" he greeted, "but wait… have you accomplished your mission?"
"Yes I have, sir," Fire-Egg answered, "and I now seek another audience with the president to discuss my rewards."
"Well, did the president promise you any rewards?" the porter asked incredulously. "Besides, I thought you only did what you do to help others…"
"That's not entirely true;" Fire-Egg explained: "it's kind of complicated, actually, but in this particular case, it's partly for me, partly for a very special peer I've recently had the good fortune of meeting, and partly for the people of Eastside… all of them."
"Um… newsflash, sir:" the doorman then bluntly informed him; "the people of Eastside don't exactly matter all that much in the president's eyes, nor in the eyes of most others up here in Westside, and I myself am no exception."
"Well, McMonkBur kind of owes me here," Fire-Egg reasoned out loud, "and plus, he did seem to care enough about the peasants to send me in after the Ohgroid for the sake of their safety, did he not?"
"Well, yes, I suppose so…" the porter halfheartedly admitted.
"Move aside now, concierge;" the red one then announced: "I'm heading in to speak with the president himself on these matters…"
"Right, of course;" the doorman said apologetically as Fire-Egg proceeded to walk past his station: "sorry for holding you up, Mr. Fire-Egg."
Fire-Egg walked inside and went straight up to where the fake wall with the hidden elevator was.
"Secretary," he demanded, "have the express elevator show itself to me again… please."
"…And just what is your business this time?" inquired the secretary, who was now wearing a different hat than before (a yellow bonnet, for the record), somewhat disinterestedly.
"I'm here to claim my justly-earned reward from President McMonkBur, specifically in the form of certain arrangements to be made regarding the people of the Eastern district," Fire-Egg stated, "in exchange for a job well-done on my part."
The secretary did not appear to take any issue with this reasoning as she pressed the hidden button on the underside of her desk without argument, whereafter the seamless-looking segment of wall retracted, revealing the elevator again.

Fire-Egg entered the lift, rode it up to the top floor again, and stepped off into President Yunk McMonkBur's office, where he, being as keenly observant as he was, nigh-immediately noticed some rather bizarre differences in the room's features compared to how it had looked during his previous visit. The clock upon the president's desk now bore the likeness of Mr. Waver Wocker instead of Captain Quantaizmic, and music of the classical genre was loudly playing over a stereo. In addition, Paul was there, as were half a dozen burly, armed men in military-issue green combat fatigues… wait, what?
"What's going on here, McMonkBur?" Fire-Egg frustratedly demanded to know as he marched up to the main desk behind which the president of South Egg was sitting, initially facing the window and with his back turned to his hired hero.
"Well done, Fire-Egg!" McMonkBur proclaimed as he promptly turned around in his swivel chair to face the visitor approaching him. "The Eastside is now safe once more; you may go on your way now." He said all this in a feigned, hollow fashion, like that of a terrible actor reciting scripted lines for the first time.
"Wait just a minute here;" Fire-Egg spoke, dismissing the president's dismissal of him: "I have certain favors to ask of you, and in recognition of my services, I demand that you listen to them!"
"Demands?" McMonkBur queried, taking apparent offense to such a notion being brought up before him. "Just how are you in such a position that you can make demands of me?"
"I saved your slums from a demon," Fire-Egg stressed, "and not just any demon, either. I consider it to go without saying that you owe me quite a fair bit in light of this, and I speak to you right now on behalf of the people down in those sorry excuses for neighborhoods."
There was a pause.
"Look:" Fire-Egg then asserted; "the reason so much bad stuff happens down there is because you and your inner circle neglect half of this city and its people, and encourage all the other wealthy residents to do the same! You blatantly have the money and resources to help, and yet you don't. Now, fame and glory may be adequate rewards to satisfy my ego most of the time, but I'm a mercenary, dammit, and for once, I'm making a point of demanding my payment, which in this case entails that you stop turning a blind eye to the poverty in your city, and help out one special family in particular!"
"Fire-Egg," McMonkBur then "reminded" him, "aren't you forgetting that I've very recently done a great service to the lower city in seeing to it that the Ohgroid problem was swiftly dealt with?"

"What?!" Fire-Egg yelled, offended to the point of being downright flabbergasted at the corrupt president's audacity. "I'm the one who did all the work," he then insisted, stating the obvious, "with special mention going to the help provided by a young man named Water-Egg; you deserve no credit in the matter other than for fulfilling your own mandatory, routine responsibility in contacting me… which proves you have no excuse for your constant failures to fulfill that same responsibility with regard to more nuanced issues!"
"Do I look like I care?" McMonkBur bluntly, rhetorically blurted in response to this. "You were nothing but my errand-boy; the public will thank me for what you've done. Do not take this personally, now; this is simply the way things go around here. Now leave, Fire-Egg, before my guards here have to escort you out…"
"Are you kidding me?!" Fire-Egg furiously screamed before making one final attempt to reason with the wicked president. "Look, these are my demands, which I'd say are more than reasonable;" he said: "listen to them, and don't interrupt me. Jaysimun, Nancy, Sabahrba and her husband, at this location…"
He pulled out his map once more and pointed to the spot where Nancy's house was already marked.
"…Are to be moved to a new home in the upper city and given a reasonably large sum of egg'n, with Nancy additionally needing a mechanical hand of the highest possible quality. In addition, Frobhiy, at this location…"
He pointed to the location of Frobhiy's home, which he had marked himself.
"…Is owed an additional 2,000 egg'n. Finally, several social aides are to be sent down to the lower city to begin reconstructing and renovating it; the revolting sewer system, for instance, was probably what facilitated the Ohgroid's appearance, and is in particular need of improvement in any case."
There was then a second, longer pause.
Yunk McMonkBur burst out laughing, and Paul joined in as well. "Fire-Egg," the president said, "I think you need to leave… now."
He made a gesture that signaled the armed men to raise and cock their Concussive Machinegunners, as if Fire-Egg had't already noticed the weapons.
"I don't think you understand, Mr. President:" the mutant began stating as a clear ultimatum while entering a battle-ready stance and setting his arms aflame; "do as I say and as you know you should, you Iltazan-spawn, or I'll burn this whole place down along with everyone inside!"
This was, of course, and idle threat - after all, there were innocent (or at least relatively innocent compared to McMonkBur and his inner circle) people inside the capital building as well - but Fire-Egg did his best to make himself sound convincingly threatening.
There was a third, final pause, which was the longest of all.
"Kill him." Yunk McMonkBur gleefully ordered his men.

With that, the president pressed a button tucked away on the underside of his desk that triggered a hidden hatch beneath his chair to open, and it, with him still sitting in it, lowered down into the floor as his men all began to shoot at Fire-Egg, with even Paul producing and brandishing a Shock Pistol.
Knowing that trying to dodge the imminent barrage altogether would do him more harm than good, Fire-Egg held his arms in a crossed position across his face and torso as he braced himself for the initial volley. His skin being immensely tougher than any normal Mulshian's as a result of both his innate mutant nature and intensive training he had imposed on himself over the years, the fiery-hearted one's extra-mortal hardiness was such that, when the correct defensive stance was assumed on his part, regular bullets had almost no serious effect on him. "Almost", however, stands as a key word in the previous sentence, for minimal though the sizes of the holes they left in his body and the resultant blood loss were, the lead pellets still hurt. Nevertheless, Fire-Egg had no choice here but to work against his body's natural reactions in order to endure this pain, knowing as he searched/waited for an opening through which to counterattack that allowing it to affect his composure in this moment would mean certain death. As soon as he saw that one of the gunmen's initial clips had run out, he made a sprinting dash toward the guard in question, grabbed his gun from him, snapped it in half, and finally punched him directly in the forehead with such force that his head crest caved in as he fell to the ground. Fire-Egg then kicked his unconscious body aside as he went for the next guard, whose arm he grabbed and pulled until it popped out of its bone socket with a rather loud and crunchy noise. Moving on to a third target, he simply grabbed this guard's gun from him as soon as its ammunition was depleted before bludgeoning him over the head with its blunt end a few times.
As Fire-Egg did his best to withstand the discharges of the remaining gunmen, whom had been able to reload by this point, he fired some well-aimed shots of his own with the firearm he'd just borrowed, aiming at each of their legs; one of them even took a bullet directly in the knee, and was never quite the same again afterwards. All three attackers eventually fell, crippled, to the ground, and before they could reach for their weapons again, Fire-Egg ran over, snatched the guns up from the floor and snapped all three in half with at once, using his own leg and knee as a solid surface against which to break them.
As Fire-Egg began to catch his breath, as well as pick various pieces of lead out of his body, in the aftermath this skirmish, it turned out that the fight was not quite over yet as an additional burst of bullets suddenly flew at him from behind and struck him directly in his back while his guard was down. Reeling with pain, Fire-Egg immediately turned around to see that the second gunman he had previously incapacitated was still holding his Concussive Machinegunner and managing to continue accurately firing it with his one remaining working arm; some people just don't know when to quit. Having no tolerance for such futile doggedness on wicked men's parts, Fire-Egg held his fingers together and formed with them a sort of flaming "dagger", and in a single bound, he then leapt across the room, landing directly on top of his foolish attacker and burying this "blade" into his forehead, killing him instantly. Now rightfully certain that the battle was actually over, Fire-Egg proceeded to recover in peace. The five surviving guards, meanwhile, were still groaning in pain on the ground, with some starting to drift out of consciousness, and were definitely no longer a threat; they would all live… probably.

A few minutes later, Fire-Egg, having sufficiently recollected himself, walked over to the president's desk to examine it and whatever mechanism McMonkBur had used to disappear from sight. It was here that he found Paul crouched behind the cover of the desk and cowering in fear, having discarded his own pistol as soon as he'd witnessed what quick work Fire-Egg was making of the other, far more competent and better-armed gunmen; he had, in fact, never even fired a single shot at the mutant.
"Oh God, please don't hurt me!" the portly president's aide whimpered pathetically. Fire-Egg grabbed him by his sides and held him up against the fragile glass of the massive window overlooking an equally-massive drop.
"I want answers," he demanded threateningly, "and for your own sake, you'd better have them. What the hell is your boss's problem; does he 'thank' everyone who does him favors this way?"
"Well, actually, yes;" Paul bluntly answered: "yes he does… please don't kill me!"
"Well, I take it this treatment has been sufficient to scare everyone away until now, right?" Fire-Egg inquired, disgusted at the notion.
"I guess so… don't kill me!" Paul replied before pleading for his life again.
"Look, I'm not going to kill you… probably." Fire-Egg "reassured" him. "Now," he went on, "give me some answers: why does your boss go so out of his way to not help the people of the lower city?"
"Well…" Paul started, gulping: "I need you to promise me you can keep a secret."
"'Promise I can keep a secret'?" Fire-Egg scoffed. "Listen here, buddy: you are in no position to be making any conditions right now!"
"Okay, okay, I'll tell, I'll tell!" Paul conceded. "…President McMonkBur has been causing most of the crime and incidents in the Eastern city, while sending people like you down to solve the problems he creates to produce the illusion that he's doing at least something for the people there. In fact, it was he who… he's the one who summoned the Ohgroid to Ergnoplis!"
There was then a fourth palpable pause; we were lying when we said the third pause was the last one.
"What the fuck?" Fire-Egg asked in utter shock as he struggled to hold back a rapid onset of anger and disgust whose likes he had not felt since the night his parents were killed. "WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!"
"Look, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Paul pleaded, rightfully terrified. "It wasn't my idea; none of this was ever my idea! I swear, all I ever did was follow ord-"*SLAM!*
Paul's futile attempts to explain himself were at that point abruptly interrupted as Fire-Egg slammed him into the desk as hard as he could, knocking it over. The chubby president's assistant then slumped over before managing to sit back up again just in time to see Fire-Egg's flaming fist crashing into his face; the brutal blow left a bloody, smoldering hole where its recipient's nose had been. Paul slumped over again, this time landing face-down and prostrate on the ground and with his injuries having now rendered the simple act of breathing a struggle for him to accomplish. Fire-Egg then picked him up once more and held him up against the window again, looking him directly in the face.
"I'm done talking to you;" he told him with finality: "you've forfeited your life simply by being a willing accomplice in all this. May God have no mercy on your wretched soul."
With that, Fire-Egg delivered another flaming punch to Paul's gut before pulling back and hurling him through the window, sending McMonkBur's minion plummeting more than a hundred feet to the ground, still on fire and amid various shards of shattered glass. His already broken and bruised body literally burst into several separate, chunky pieces as it hit the concrete, with some of his blood and guts splattering into the face of a random passerby and the rest flowing into a nearby gutter, and with that, for better or worse, Paul was no more.

After committing this cold-blooded (or would "hot-blooded" be a more accurate descriptor in his case?) murder, Fire-Egg calmed down for the moment as he looked around in search of the mechanism McMonkBur had used to escape. He examined the toppled desk; all the objects that had previously rested on it had fallen to the floor with the sole exception of a purple-colored, unlabeled button, which was wirelessly attached to it. Upon his pressing this button, a circular hole just wide enough for him or any other average Mulshian to comfortably fit through opened up in the floor nearby, and without looking into it beforehand, Fire-Egg jumped down through this hole and plummeted about twenty feet, crashing into the president's chair at the bottom and breaking it in half without sustaining so much as a scratch on his own body.
He stood up from the chair's wreckage, brushed himself off, and looked around: Fire-Egg was in an almost pitch-dark room, narrower but longer compared to the office above, where the only source of light came from a sole bulb on the ceiling across from him, below which stood a sight that constituted a most disturbing revelation indeed. Though Fire-Egg was initially unsure of what he was looking at, he soon recognized this as a homemade wooden shrine to Genome, the darkest and cruelest among the Underworld's four primordial overlords, crudely built by Yunk McMonkBur in the helix-shaped image of the dark lord. The evil president himself, meanwhile, was kneeling in front of it, facing away from Fire-Egg and mutteringly chanting something in an indecipherable and presumably demonic language; he did not seem to notice his intruder, likely due to being affected by some form of ritualistic trance.
"McMonkBur!" the heroic mutant, who had no intention of stealthily taking advantage of this, shouted, his voice then echoing throughout the chamber. "You are truly worse than an Ohgroid, and I will thoroughly enjoy burning you… slowly."
Fire then engulfed his whole body as he initiated a sprinting charge. McMonkBur quickly turned around, revealing a pair of Plasmic Pelters held in either of his hands. Two pre-charged streams of raw energy were released from their barrels and towards Fire-Egg, but he effortlessly avoided either projectile as he continued dashing towards the devil-worshipping despot. Upon reaching McMonkBur, Fire-Egg made a point of not knocking the guns out of his hands, opting instead to tear the hands themselves off of their arms. McMonkBur howled in pain as Fire-Egg did so with little effort before holding him down and setting fire to both freshly-created bloody stumps. The unbelievable intensity of the excruciating pain the president was now experiencing was evident in the increasingly loud and unnaturally warped-sounding screams he produced as he then ran back across the dark chamber, desperately trying to escape to his office, only to find his chair - his only means of doing so - had already been destroyed. Moments later, Fire-Egg grabbed him again and gave his feet the same treatment that his hands had already received, setting fire to their stumps as well. He then picked up McMonkBur's squirming, extremity-less body for the last time and dragged him back over to the shrine of Genome before shoving and lodging the president into it, breaking some of the DNA-like "strands" of the dark lord's form, which here consisted simply of colored wooden planks, in the process.
As Fire-Egg then proceeded to watch as the flames burning upon the stumps of McMonkBur's limbs spread to the wooden statue and started engulfing both it and the rest of his body, the resulting blaze's fiery glow was abruptly joined by that of a strange, dark-purplish energy which gradually grew more intense, eventually overshadowing the flames themselves. As Fire-Egg took a few steps back, legitimately - if only slightly - afraid at the sight of this, Yunk McMonkBur's eyes then suddenly lit up with an even deeper-hued and more intense form of a similar foreign energy, and to the mutant's shock, the burning body began speaking.
"You impudent wretch…" a demonically-echoing version of the president's voice was heard saying as a uniquely mist-like form of the purplish energy could be seen seeping from his body's unmoving yet open-hanging mouth; "you and all you hold dear will PAY for this… EVERYONE will PAY… the SUFFERING has only BEGUN… I… WILL… RETURN…"
With that, the mass of energy dispersed as McMonkBur's body became charred and mangled to the point where not even a magical, demonic force could animate it any longer, and the flames then died down, ultimately leaving both the body and Genome's shrine in a distinctly devastated yet surprisingly recognizable final state.
"…Yeah," Fire-Egg remarked, "I'll believe that when I see it."

Dismissing the dying threats of his foe despite it being obvious that a supernatural force had been underlying them, Fire-Egg then moved on to coping with the fact that he had just murdered a president. Granted, said president had been the leader of a mere city, rather than a whole planet, in addition to being, well, fucking evil, but still: the adventurer had never before heard of a hero doing such a thing; "presidents" were almost universally thought of as more inherently just rulers compared to "kings", "emperors", etc., and in spite of McMonkBur being an obvious exception to that rule/stereotype, the novelty of what Fire-Egg had just done still stuck out prominently in his mind. On a related note, he was, in a most peculiar way, almost disappointed, as he'd half expected some sort of demonic transformation, especially when the burning body had started speaking. After all, no matter how evil and deserving of a violent death a villain was, Fire-Egg found it much harder to enjoy killing enemies that couldn't/didn't put up a decent fight.
Chief among all Fire-Egg's concerns regarding the brutal act he had just performed, however, were the potentially numerous new problems that the killing might have just brought into existence, its sound justification notwithstanding. The foremost and most self-concerning among these was: how would he get out of this (quite literally) God-forsaken chamber of darkness now that the only obvious exit had been destroyed? Fire-Egg was ultimately forced to go with the only apparent solution available, that being punching his way through the walls in order to escape to the room which he deduced through architectural logic must be on the other side. Upon finally completing this process which took several boring hours, Fire-Egg found himself in the "porn stash" room that he remembered being mentioned in the private elevator's list of floors. Two other people were in this room, and what they were in the midst of doing was thankfully in no way relevant to the major events retold within this account, and therefore won't be described at any length here… or anywhere else, for that matter. These two looked at Fire-Egg, confused and embarrassed, but he simply ignored them as he quickly continued through to the elevator, lest they notice what was on the other side of the wall he had broken in through while he was still in their presence, and he consequently have to explain himself in this most awkward of environments.
Back down on the first floor, Fire-Egg was faced with three further, and far more complicated, problems that had arisen from his murder of the president: how would he explain himself, who could be trusted to fill South Egg's newly-created power vacuum, and finally, as well most importantly to him, where was he going to get all that stuff he meant to ask the president for now? Fire-Egg determined to make dealing with the first of these three problems his priority for the immediate time being as he walked up to the secretary and began speaking to her.
"Um, hi…" he started nervously.
"What may I do for you now, sir?" she asked with the smiling expression she was contractually obliged to maintain.
"…Listen," Fire-Egg said, trying to sound as reasonable and sane as possible, "I sort of… just killed President McMonkBur."

Yet another pause.
"That's not funny, sir." the lady replied with a condescending frown. "Now, do you have any actual further business here?"
"No, I'm serious." the mutant hero insisted. "It turns out he was a deranged Genome-worshipper who, among other things, was responsible for the appearance of the Ohgroid in Eastside. It had to be done; the demon-spawn utterly deserved it, and if you don't believe me, there's proof in his office on the top floor… as well as in McMonkBur's secret chamber beneath it."
The secretary was shocked and stupefied. "In that case," she then ordered, removing her fashionable hat to signify the seriousness of the situation, "you're coming up there with me right now, and if any part of what you've just claimed isn't factual, then you, sir, are dead meat."
With that, she walked out from behind her desk and grabbed Fire-Egg's hand harshly, and so as to send an implicit message that he wasn't lying and therefore had nothing to hide, he did not resist this roughness as he was led back into the V.I.P. elevator and subsequently up to the top floor. Once there, the secretary was horrified to see the gruesome mess that lay before her, including the shattered and bloodied window, the toppled president's desk, and the five injured men plus one dead one sprawled across the floor.
"Oh my God…" she uttered; "did you do this?"
Fire-Egg nodded.
"I swear," the secretary then said in an openly threatening manner, "if your explanation for this is anything short of one-hundred-percent true, I will see to it that you are executed… so go on, do show me your 'proof' that President McMonkBur was the monster you say he was." It was clear that she did not yet believe Fire-Egg's claims.
His confidence just-as-visibly undeterred by this, the red one showed the secretary to the still-opened secret hatch in the floor behind the desk, where the president's chair would normally be.
"Allow me to carry you down there;" he insisted: "I wouldn't want you to get hurt trying to make that jump yourself."
Seeming to trust Fire-Egg slightly more now that he had shown her this dark and ominous-looking hidden passage which she had no prior knowledge of, the secretary was nonetheless rather reluctant as she crawled into his arms, while he made sure to handle her respectfully as he jumped down through the hole with her in hand, controlling his fall in midair so as to avoid landing upon the mangled chair again. It was then that the secretary finally bore witness to Fire-Egg's principal item of proof, that being the charred yet unmistakable remains of a madman's shrine to the foulest of all demonic lords, with the scorched and mutilated corpse of said madman still lodged within those remains. She fell to her knees and wept, and Fire-Egg petted her gently, assuring her that she needn't shed any tears for a psychopathic Genome-worshipper, and that everything would be alright.
The two made their way back up to the office to discuss what would now need to be done, not yet sharing the news with any other personnel.
"I've never experienced anything quite like this;" the secretary admitted: "what do you suppose we do now?"

"Well, first of all," Fire-Egg asked, "and since we'll probably be spending some time talking here: what is your name?"
"My name? Genjria." answered the secretary, who will henceforth be referred to by her proper name.
"Well, Genjria," Fire-Egg addressed her, "first things first: what should we do with these guys?."
He pointed around to McMonkBur's incapacitated henchmen.
"You can consider me, for one, impartial as to their fate;" he went on: "they may have been working for McMonkBur, but I highly doubt they were in on the depths of his depravity. Most likely, they were just hired guns, simply following orders. The same probably goes for most of those under his employee, although I also suspect there are multiple others among your staff who were in on everything."
"Quite an understandable presumption;" Genjria noted: "I agree that all of McMonkBur's aides and enforcers should be personally investigated… although, you surely trust me not to have had anything to do with his awful conspiracy, right?"
"Should such investigations be carried out properly," Fire-Egg more-or-less assured her, "then you should have nothing to fear when you yourself are subjected to them, provided you aren't hiding anything, which I'm not saying you are."
"Fair enough, I suppose." Genjria conceded. After how she had treated Fire-Egg earlier, she couldn't exactly complain about the prospect of being scrutinized, provided she would ultimately be found innocent of any and all suspected connections to McMonkBur's depravity.
"Thank you for understanding, Genjria. Now," Fire-Egg then continued, "since I, for one, really do trust you, and given that you're the only staff member here for whom that goes right now, I would propose that you temporarily take over South Egg's 'presidential' role until we can find and elect a more proper replacement to fill the position. Would you be willing and adequately able to take up this responsibility?"
"Absolutely;" Genjria returned with surprisingly decisive enthusiasm: "the only reason I was relegated to being a secretary here is because I'm a woman, and a pretty one at that; my original application was for a position in the city council!"
"That is awesome;" Fire-Egg replied, nodding, following this convenient revelation: "that is, the fact that you're qualified to fill the president's seat is awesome, not that whole issue of sexist job placement… Anyway," he then added, "while you're in the position to be making changes, there are certain things I'd like you to do, partly on my own behalf. My making these same requests of McMonkBur was what caused our situation to escalate to violence, but I'm quite confident you'll see things much differently…"
"Well, it depends;" Genjria stated open-mindedly yet skeptically before asking: "what kind of 'requests' are we talking about here, exactly?"

For the sake of bypassing the needless reiteration of information that has already been established within the context of this narrative, let it simply be said here that at this point, Fire-Egg listed all the arrangements he needed made for the people of South Egg's Eastern district, including those regarding specific parties, the personal reasons for which he found himself having to explain to Genjria in full detail as well.
Furthermore, to make a particularly long story even shorter than the short versions of other long stories, all of these requests were subsequently fulfilled. Upon further investigation of the late president's records and possessions, it turned out that the miserable state and staggering crime rates of Eastern South Egg had, in fact, been almost wholly attributable to the calculatedly deliberate neglect and trouble-sowing of McMonkBur; with him gone, bringing decency to the lower city was easy. Keeping the situation and its implications under wraps from public knowledge for the time being, Genjria, effectively pretending to be the deceased and soon-to-be-disgraced (to say the least) president, issued orders to completely reinvent the slums to an even greater extent than Fire-Egg himself had expected or intended to see done. The overall plan would take several cycles to complete and utilize hundreds of thousands of egg'n, most of which would be taken from the personal funds of the city's Western-dwelling population; some of the more selfish wealthy folks complained about and protested this to no avail. Nancy and her newly-unified family, meanwhile, came to benefit from the special accommodations arranged for them after only a few days' time, learning of what they were to receive just as they were beginning to think that Fire-Egg might have forgotten about, or even decided not to follow up with, them.
Later that same day - the fourth since Yunk McMonkbur's demise - Fire-Egg and Genjria finally announced the former president's crimes and death to the public, and once their collected proof regarding these matters was presented and all doubts over their honesty dispelled, the mutant's bold actions and the ascended secretary's new methods of leadership were both met with widespread praise and approval. As he took his leave of Genjria and the capital building the following morning to go pick up Water-Egg at his family's new home, Fire-Egg couldn't help but feel overwhelmed by how impressed he was with the young woman's handling of affairs, with which she had required very little help from him throughout their period of close cooperation. In fact, he speculated, she could very well go on to be elected as the next full-time president herself…

It was around midday when Fire-Egg, having followed directions given to him by Genjria upon his departure from her, arrived at the fancy-looking new mansion located just west of the border between South Egg City's two halves and overlooking the Eastern district below, as if to remind its designated residents of their humble origins. His ringing of the doorbell was answered by Sabahrba's husband, whose voice and mannerisms were strikingly similar to Jaysimun's.
"Hello, Fire-Egg." the old man greeted, instantly recognizing the visitor based on his red coloration. "The name's Baillmer, and my wife has told me quite a bit about you; thank you so much for doing all this for us… as well as for saving me from that fire a while back: you took off from that scene before I had a chance to express my gratitude, and I thought I'd never get to personally thank you, but just look at us now!"
"Don't mention it, Baillmer." Fire-Egg spoke back with a sense of humbleness in which he took great pride. "Now, I assume you've already heard the news of how I 'arranged' all of this for you and yours, plus what I'm here for now?"
"Indeed I have… Water-Egg," Baillmer then called out with a sudden burst of loudness in his voice, "your friend is here to see you away!"
Steps coming down two different, opposite flights of stairs were heard from inside the house, and moments later, Water-Egg stepped out into view, carrying a suitcase.
"Ready!" he happily and eagerly exclaimed as he proceeded through the doorway and joined Fire-Egg's side.
Shortly thereafter, Nancy appeared, complete with her shiny new robotic hand.
"Oh, big brother," she said as she hugged the subject of her affections as they were being expressed here, "I'm gonna miss you so much! Oh, Fire-Egg, please promise you'll take good care of him and be understanding of his limitations, and Water-Egg, please promise you'll come back to visit at least once in a while!"
"You have my word, Nancy:" Fire-Egg assured her; "Water-Egg will lead a great life at my side."
"Yes, I promise to visit!" said Water-Egg.
"We'll see about that…" added Fire-Egg.
Nancy, as well as Baillmer, Sabahrba and Jaysimun, the latter two having shown up to the scene just in time to hear this questionable remark, all glared at him strangely at this point.
"…That is to say:" Fire-Egg then "explained", "we'll see to it that time is found for him to visit during, provided he wants to!"
The reality was that he wanted to see a considerable degree of improvement and growth on his new apprentice's part before letting him visit his old home again, and was in fact willing to withhold the opportunity to do so from Water-Egg as a means of "pushing" him to apply himself more intensively.
Once all goodbyes had been said and all formalities dealt with, Fire-Egg and Water-Egg took their leave, marching off into the horizon toward parts unknown with the latter following after the former's lead. Thus marked the official formation of the soon-to-be-legendary team which, from that day forth, would be known as… the Eggmen.

TO BE CONTINUED…