hay guiz. I'm here to drop the dox of the true story of what happened to AoD, and what caused our eventual fall, and what caused Ozzy to turn into an evil jerk for a short period of time. Spoiler alert. It was all King's fault.
EDIT: A list, for you uninformed people. Also, I'm too hard boiled to describe locations. srsly.
EDIT AGAIN: No, most of you will not understand a bit of this story. I think Ozzy might be the only one, actually.
Hyphen: Narrator / AoD -
Ozzy: Ozzy.
Potato: AoD Doompotato
Pandy: Pandy
King: Thoroughly explained.
It was a cold, dark night. The wind howled against my office like a banshee chorus. I propped my legs up on my desk and took a long swig from my whiskey bottle. Then, my door burst open. A pretty dame came through, with a loose coat that had no right to remain unbuttoned in this weather and legs that went down for miles. She looked distressed.
I raised an eyebrow, "Close the door behind ya', woman."
She blinked, her pretty, distressed face overcome by nervousness or confusion. She reached for the knob, missed it once, turned it, and closed the door quietly. No click. I tugged the brim of my hat down just over my eyes, and motioned for her to sit. She was going to be trouble.
"Whad'ya want?"
"Well, uhm, my... brother, Ozzy has been acting strange lately, and-" My lighter met my cigarette. They were a hot couple. She stared for a second, possible regret clouding her features, but continued, "I want you to... No, actually, I don't think I want to hire a chainsmoking drunkard. I'm sorry for wasting your time, but I'm going to find someone else."
At this point, I interrupted again, "First, I don't need no nosy dame to tell me how to do my job." I leveled my gun at her head.
"Now give it to me straight. I know Oz ain't got a sister 'cause he don't have kids, and if you lived with him when you were young, you would've never heard of 'birth control' until after your nine months. He's from Kansas, you know. Don't give me any crap about throwin' 'em in the dumpster, neither. Those are Ozzy's kids we're talking 'bout, and no sane broad wouldn't kill to have those genes in her bloodline. And you're sane.
You're no normal woman, either. And you ain't his mom. Too young for that. So you must be Female Ozzy. That explains the Stickam fiasco with him turning into a woman. My partner and I were the only ones to piece it together. The dolts there thought he was showing your feed through his camera. As if that was possible.
And the drugs? My bottle's full of water, and the cigarette is stuffed with seaweed I found and diced at the dock. Yes, there's a dock in Kansas. There's always a dock in these stories. I don't do drugs, but I've got an image to keep. Now give me the real story and the money and get out of my office before I pump you full of lead."
I grunted.
"Among other things. Oh, and seriously, button up. It's freezing outside."
The name's Hyphen. Hard-boiled private eye. I've done some things I'm not proud of, like waving guns at weepy dames and leaving bullet-strewn corpses in the streets. But at the end of the day, I'm still a private eye. I deal with the gritty underbelly of society that most people have the pleasure of being able to ignore.
Shortly after she left my office, I made a call and locked up. And then I hit the streets in search of information.
My source, Pandy, was on the wrong side of the law. But a good source nonetheless. Unfortunately, he wasn't hard-boiled or skin-flinted, and putting his dialogue here would be an embarrassment. The basic gist of it is that Ozzy, my quarry, once kind leader of the Alliance, had begun to act strangely starting on September 11, one or two years ago.
My mouth dropped. Only after I left, of course. Being a hard-boiled private eye gives you incredible mental reserves that let you hold your jaw in place until after no one can see you.
I had a suspect. It was impossible, but it couldn't be a coincidence. Someone had joined our forums on that very day. He called himself King, though he had many, many names. Stag, Satan, and the Antichrist being a few of them. Pandy didn't even know what he'd stumbled upon in the first place, the poor, lucky fool. Then again, that's why I'm a private eye.
That was that, though. I knew what was wrong. King had unleashed a deadly pathogen that would cause everyone to change into his likeness, and achieve immortality by becoming all of mankind. And he'd be a woman, too. That was kind of creepy.
Anyways, I think it's pretty reasonable to say that it was time that I went to check on Ozzy for myself. A proper private eye would check him first and then look for sources, but Ozzy's a special case. Special as in very, very easy on the eyes. I called my partner, Potato, P.I, and told him the deal. Then I took a very, very cold shower.
We met at Ozzy's house later. He was the leader of our fair clan, and he forgot to put us in his new one's roster. We hatched a plan. The basic gist of it was that Potato would go in first, to talk to Ozzy. Because talking never works out, I would go in through the back door and back up Potato if necessary. Yes, that is foreshadowing.
Anyhow, I walked around to the back of his house and went in. I found Female Ozzy snooping around, her back turned to me. She was obviously listening in on the commotion. I greeted her in a friendly fashion, and this apparently startled her enough to make her turn around. I promptly punched her in the face and threw her unconscious body in the kitchen.
Then I oriented myself towards the yelling. When I got there, my partner was walking ominously towards Ozzy with a very large knife. Ozzy happened to be against a wall. The room was empty, except for where Potato came in and the door where I was coming in, which happened to be on the same side as the wall that Ozzy was on. Why he didn't run through his door, no one knows.
When I walked in, wrapped my arm around him, and pointed my gun at my long-time partner, Ozzy looked surprised. So did Potato.
For those of you unfamiliar with this kind of situation, this is usually where the heroes, having cornered the villain, are betrayed by the woman who hired them in the first place. With a gun. Guess who screwed that up.
I took this opportunity to make my obligatory traitor statement.
"Sorry for the surprise, detective, but Ozzy's too much man for me to hate."
I then covered Ozzy's eyes and pulled the trigger. The shootee crouched and grabbed his kneecap and groaned, but in a totally hardboiled way. That's what we do when we get shot. But only when we get shot in the kneecap.
And then I walked over and clubbed him on the back of the head. He slumped to the floor.
Ozzy, surprised, said, "Hyphen, I- I never realized you felt this way about me."
I shirked off the fact that he just used a dash and said, "It's okay, Ozzy. We're no strangers to love. You know the rules, and so do I."
"Is a full commitment what you're thinking of?"
"You know I wouldn't give that to any other guy. Oh Ozzy, I just want to tell you how I'm feeling. It's so hard to make you understand."
I edged in a bit.
"Understand what?"
He moved in closer.
"Ozzy, I'm never gonna give you up. Never gonna let you down."
"What about running around and deserting me, making me cry, saying goodbye, and telling a lie and hurting me?"
We both leaned in at the same time, and I said, "Never."
I looked deep into his eyes, and then we totally made out for like over nine thousand hours. It was awesome. By now, I hope you realize that the foreshadowing I mentioned wasn't about the backup.
When we finally broke the kiss, he, perfectly composed because he's that smooth, said, "We've known each other for so long. Your heart's been aching, and I didn't realize you were too shy to say it. But now we both know what's been going on. We know the game and we're-"
"I JUST LOST THE GAME." He deserved it for using another dash like that. Potato mumbled a profanity.
Ozzy, however, just held me tight and said, "I don't care."
And then we made out again.
"Hyphen, I wish you'd told me how you were feeling. I'm sorry I was too blind to see."
Potato hummed the chorus in the background.
We dragged his body to Ozzy's room and got on the bed.
"Talk dirty to me, Ozzy."
"I'm going to capitalize the words in my forum posts. But I'm still not going to put periods at the end of my last sentence because as a guy, I still hate periods. But I totally understand the need for them."
We vigorously agreed with each other and then cuddled and went to sleep.
I woke up feeling great. I got up and dressed, exchanging my robe and wizard hat for my (Hardboiled leather) duster and hat. Then I remembered Potato. You know, the guy I shot in the kneecap and knocked out. There was a huge puddle of red underneath where he was laying. I checked his pulse. It was very slow, but there. With all the blood on the floor, though, there was no way he'd last until we got him to a hospital.
I poked him and checked. His pulse sped up a bit. Okay. I don't really know how pulses work, so I just let him lie there for a while. Keep in mind I called him in the middle of the night, so he was not only exhausted but shot and knocked out, which is a reasonable explanation of why he didn't wake.
That was when I noticed that I really needed the bathroom. Don't worry, Checkov's gun is in effect here. King bursts from the ground, bats my gun to the side, and then starts to strangle me.
That being said, I walked into the bathroom and tugged my pants down a little. Then I pulled the toilet lid up. Ozzy was always courteous. Then a very large thing burst from the ground. I whipped around, gun in hand, but it batted it aside. Then it began to strangle me. I flailed violently at his arms while my trachea was being constricted for a while. And then I reached down and zipped my pants. Seriously, I don't want to die with my pants down.
He took this opportunity to monologue. I noted that his voice had this strange evil reverb to it and that it would take an improbable amount of time for me to run out of air.
"You fool! I was fine with letting you live until the virus took hold of the entire world, but it seems you've thrown a temporary wrench in my plans and cured Ozzy through the power of true love. You make me sick. Now I'm going to have to kill you."
I began to see spots, but felt otherwise fine.
"Do you even understand what I'm going to do to this world? You're too late to stop it, though I admit this is only because I have my fingers wrapped around your throat. Since I'm going to kill you, I might as well tell you every detail of my master plan. See, this virus I've unleashed is a magical virus, an STD if you will, one powered by the undying hatred that binds me to your mortal world. You're too late. The only possible way you could stop me now is by killing me. And you're in no position to do that. Once I kill you, I'll reinfect Ozzy, and he'll infect the rest of the world! Ah hah hah hah hah. Now, say good bye."
Clearly, he was so evil that he was no longer capable of laughter, and had to say the equivalent. It didn't really matter, though. Everything was beginning to go black, and I drifted towards unconsciousness.
Then he dropped me on the ground, which only amateur stranglers do. Or maybe because Potato, P.I, had a gun pointed at his skull and told him to drop me.
What, you don't think I'd really shoot my business partner and good friend for no reason, do you? Covering Ozzy's eyes was to keep him from seeing the lack of blood bursting from his joints. The poke was, of course, to wake him up. And trenchcoats are notoriously good for concealing things, such as goat blood.
The fling with Ozzy was one of the benefits.
I felt exceptionally smug for a few moments before I felt an irrational wave of massive hatred flowing through me. I felt compelled to join a forum on 9/11 and tell someone with a grammatically themed name to stop spamming and making useless posts. Once.
King looked at me strangely. Since the virus was powered by his pure evilness, it figures that he can tell who's infected. Clearly, I should be fine if I was the one that Ozzy loved, and that was what cured the infection.
If it wasn't me, then the only other person in the area (Kansas being a sparsely inhabited hick wasteland) was Potato.
I looked at him, flabbergasted and in shock. He nodded grimly at me, confirming my suspicions.
I tried to piece together the situation. Ozzy and I fell asleep, and then he got up, checked on Potato, figured out our clever plan, and then they fell madly in love. Ozzy was FAST.
My jealousy wasn't the most important thing right now, because King was still alive. Potato therefore shot him, and then we talked it out.
He and Ozzy got married the next day, and their story was so touching that Kansas and every other place in the world permanently allowed gay marriage the second they tried to get married. They saved the world and everyone lived happily ever after. Except for me, because I was pretty darn lonely. Oh, and King, because he was dead.
