Written By Epicstu Wyyvernwriter

Firing a stream of bullets surrounded by fallen friends and allies, I stood with my back to the door hiding my most treasured possession. Every bullet I fired would have hit their marks had they not been blocked by the bullets fired from a single pistol. The assassin pulled a second sidearm and shot my shoulder causing me to drop my weapon. Before I could regain my footing he struck my skull with the butt of his gun. My ears rang as I told him, “you want her? You kill me first!” I slowly stood back up keeping my back to the door. He told me that the contract wasn’t for me and then he struck me again. The last thing I could hear other than my own heart beat was my only daughter’s screams being silenced by the pull of a trigger.

Agent 0 woke up suddenly, “the dream again?” his Wyyvern telepathically asked through a series of chirps. Agent 0 answered by picking a small metal case up off the end table next to the bed he had spent the night in. Still under the covers, a woman lay asleep there. Ignoring her existence entirely he opened the tiny metal case, pulled out a hand rolled blunt, lit it as he put it to his lips, and inhaled. “Did you ever find out who had taken the contract out against your daughter.”

Agent 0 exhaled and closed his eyes to enjoy a brief moment of silence before answering, “no.”

*          *

Nine Years After His Daughter’s Funeral…

Standing at his daughter’s grave stone as he often did, this time with a gun in hand. He had spent his every waking moment searching for whoever had been responsible, but found nothing and no one. Rain fell hard as he brought the barrel to his mouth with a once steady hand driven to shake. Shouting into the muzzle he held his finger on the trigger as the thunder cracked and the lightning illuminated his daughter’s grave. A shadow from behind caught his eye so he turned, put the barrel to the stranger’s head, and pulled his trigger at the morbid site before him. Kicking the lifeless body he could not believe what he was seeing, “some sort of rotting cat zombie?”

“Sabertooth Cat, actually,” said a voice from behind him. He turned around and saw an identical body floating before him. “Sorry for the intrusion, but I…” He shot the Cat dead before it could finish. “I would like to extend…” Again he interrupted the Cat with a bullet through the skull. “Alright… Fine… I… Wanted to see… What… You… Could… Do…” All around him the Cat seemed to respawn instantly after each death. He turned and shot one in the gut, then the head. Turning again, he shot one in the heart, another in the chest then head, and aimed to take out a third only to have his gun click with the sound of an empty chamber. Dropping the weapon he took a small metal case out from his jacket pocket, opened it pulling out a hand rolled joint, lit it as he put it to his lips, and inhaled. Before the Cat could say anything, he snapped its neck, but, “Feel better?” it had spawned again behind him.

“Fuck you,” he turned to face his daughter’s grave again.

“She told me you’d be a mess,” the Cat said to him. “She never mentioned marijuana.”

“I lit my first joint the night she died,” he replied falling to his knees and putting a hand on her head stone. “Who are you?”

“The Wyyvern of Undeath,” the Cat replied. “My friends call me Stu, the Nekolich, Writer. Meow do you do?”

He turned to the floating feline corpse held together by emerald green light and shook the outstretched paw-like hand before him, “Meow do you do? What do you want? My daughter better not be a fucking zombie.”

“Your daughter is with her afterlife. She is worried about you,” Stu put a paw-like hand on the grieving father’s shoulder. “She has asked me to help you.”

“I do not need your help, rotten pussy?” He flipped Stu over his shoulder and snapped his neck before walking away only to suddenly find himself back at his daughter’s grave. “What the…”

“Allow me to rephrase,” Stu cleared his throat. “Your daughter signed for you. You work for me from meow on.”

He sighed with disgust at the black Cat’s pun, “what will I be doing?”

“Making sure this never happens to anyone else,” Stu replied. “If that is what you chose. Diplomatic immunity wherever you find yourself. Freely explore an entire Multiverse as your own boss doing essentially whatever you want. Only catch is you can never return to this Realm.”

He inhaled the herbal smoke from his joint into his lungs and held it there for a moment before exhaling, “When do I start?”

* *

In Edward’s home Realm in a Galaxy far far away from Edward’s home world. Present Day…

Staring down from the open door of his ship at the MTMGA Inc. headquarters, Agent 0 put on a pair of sunglasses, said to his Wyyvern “let’s get this son of a bitch” and lit a joint as he fell forward out of his ship.

Alarms blared as armed men and women of varying species formed a firing line in front of a closed blast door. Behind it was the sound of gunshots, various snaps and thuds, and the panicked screams of MTMGA Inc. private military personnel. Then silence. “Hold!” shouted the commander of the firing squad. The doors opened, “FIRE!!!” and the team shot blindly into a thick cloud of smoke. “Cease fire!” the commander signaled his best three men to breach the fog, but once entered they disappeared and after a brief moment a scream, a snap, and a gurgle was heard followed by three thuds. A round object rolled out from the smoke, “grenade!” A flash and a bang followed as Agent 0 caught the shotgun his Wyyvern dropped for him. Putting slugs into anyone in his path he made his way through the hall and entered the next set of doors.

A slow clap greeted him, “Drak Mountainhiem? You’re the head of this snake who has eluded me for so long?” Agent 0 greeted in return. “I thought Edward cut off your ugly mug.”

The pure-bred Fennec Fox of the Northlands stood up. “I did tell him I would return.”

“In his home Realm too, smart,” Agent 0 complimented him. “Edward and Aleister can never return here so you never have to deal with them knocking down your door. You’ve effectively eliminated your two biggest threats.”

“Indeed,” said Drak. “You, however, have managed to be an unrelenting nuisance to my organization. Thwarting our every attempt at bringing a future without Wyyverns to this Multiverse.”

“I try,” Agent 0 replied winking at the personnel pointing guns at his head.

“It is all for not, I am afraid,” Drak smiled. “Soon you will have never been in our way and we will finally make this Multiverse great again…”

“Incorporated, yeah I know,” Agent 0 interrupted. “You were saying about me not doing my job for some reason.”

Drak looked at his watch a moment and grinned, “do you know what is about to be forged?”

“A special place in Hell just for you?” Agent 0 commented.

“In addition to that,” Drak replied. Then he waited a moment and waited some more. Then he waited longer.

“Will you hurry it up,” Agent 0 requested after nonchalantly clearing the room of all MTMGA Inc. personnel except Drak. “I’m really stressed for…”

“Time,” Drak finished his sentence for him as Agent 0 found himself in his home Realm inside his old house in the last room his daughter was alive in. The door busted down and the assassin aimed his gun at Agent 0’s screaming daughter. Catching a pistol as his Wyyvern dropped it, Agent 0 unloaded the clip into the assassin and then turned to look at his daughter. “It’s okay, you’re safe now,” he went to hug her, but found himself in a space of infinite darkness.

“You have no Idea, what you’ve done,” Aleister stepped out from the darkness. “Do you?”