New Story: A Cautionary Tale

[tekuno]

Here's a story I came up with about a week ago, but which I have been too busy working on that rewrite to actually write up. Just a short one.

This is NOT one of the two multipart stories I'm going to be putting out soon. I'll be posting those starting tomorrow. And then, once those are done, I'll be working on another rewrite with the original author/idea generator's permission: Vga518's "Caveman". I already sent an outline over, and it has been approved. So, lots of stuff coming up.

The "physics from another universe" concept in this story is blatantly ripped off from Kia Asamiya's Silent M?bius. I've never seen the anime of it, but I have read the manga, and Wikipedia suggests that the two are pretty close. Even though I stole that idea, this is not set in the same universe.

This story contains sex and a certain amount of macro-ness, no incest.

Oh, and sorry if you don't like this style of narration. I just felt like having the character narrate directly.

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A Cautionary Tale

Whew! Okay, did we get everybody? Sorry you had to do all the work, but as you can see I'm not able to get around very well. You can go sit on the ledge, if you'd like. Or you can just stand.

It's time for the other half of my training duties, then. Maybe you should sit, after all. This may take a while. Make sure you can hear me over the machine, though.

I know you've been vetted for loyalty and secrecy, or they wouldn't have let you come in here in the first place. How much have you been told about this organization? You know we're demon hunters? Yes? What else?

Damn. I swear they're getting lazier with the training every year. When I joined up, you didn't even get to come to headquarters until they told you what we were doing. Now they leave it to me. Of course, back then they didn't have anyone like me to do the teaching, so maybe that was just as well. And of course old Petrie died last year, and he used to be the one who taught theory to beginners. I guess I can muddle through again. Ready?

Anyway, so we're demon hunters, right? Anyone know what a demon is? No? Tsk! Didn't they tell you anything at all besides where the bathroom is? They didn't even tell you THAT? I'm going to have to have a word with our recruiters, one of these days.

Okay, demons... demons come in all shapes and sizes. They do all kinds of different things. We know for a fact that practically all supernatural creatures in old stories and legends are technically what we call "demons". Maybe all of 'em; we haven't found an exception yet, but it's technically possible that there could be one. Some of them are benign, or at least harmless, some of 'em are serious threats to humanity.

This world we live in has as a basis: numbers. That's why physics works. Ultimately, everything in our universe is just a lot of numbers rolling around in patterns. There's no souls or afterlife, when you die, you're dead, and that's it. Sad but true.

But there are other worlds out there -- no, stupid, I don't mean out in space; think "alternate dimension" type of thing -- where things don't work by numbers, they work by color, or sound, or narrative. We actually found one once which operated by rhythm. Don't ask. And don't ask me to tell you how to move between worlds; I was never a big theory wonk, right? Ho, ho, yeah, just a big wonk, sure. Kid, if I could get over there I'd give you a smack for that.

Demons come from other worlds. 's tempting to claim that we call them "demons" for "dimension" 'cause they come from an alternate one, or something cute like that, but actually we just use the term because it's a convenient label that everyone knows. The organization's records call them "demons" going back all the way to at least 1500, but "alternate dimension" is a science fiction shtick from the 20th century.

Now, when demons come to our world, if they're not capable of interfacing with our world's basis of numbers, then they just kind of vanish. We actually managed to catch the process on film once, it looks really gross and messy but there's actually no cleanup afterwards, 'cause they disintegrate completely. Turns out that running the world by numbers makes it really, really stable, so if whatever the demon is made from can't work with numbers, then they get rejected completely. We tried sending people to other worlds for a while, and it turns out that some worlds are fragile, and just putting one of us over there blows the whole thing up. But numbers don't have that problem.

Some of 'em, though, the demons, I mean, can exist once they get here. And that's where things get messy. See, when you get a demon over here, the whole "numbers" thing only extends as far as the demon itself. Sometimes not even that far; some of 'em can push the boundary back outside themselves a bit. And inside the demon, and any space around the demon where the numbers have been pushed back, the demon gets to use the physics they had in their own home world. Which is why all those mythological critters in stories have magical powers. They aren't using magic, they're just using physics we haven't got.

Now, whenever we discover a demon, we always try to give it the opportunity to go home quietly. And you'd be surprised how many of 'em actually take us up on it. Most of 'em, in fact, just wanna go home, and who can blame 'em?

But, of course, there's always a few who decide they like it here, where instead of just being another shlub, they're a super-powerful creature with amazing magical powers. They get off on it. Tend to eat people, too. Bunch'a perverts.

So the organization was formed, a few millennia ago, and we go out and negotiate where we can, and when we can't, we exterminate 'em and then send the corpses back. Not a fun job, but it's gotta be done.

And it's gotta be done fast, too. Even the nice ones are dangerous.

Just as an example, a couple thousand years ago, there was some joker who got pitched into this world from an idiot loony-tunes cartoon universe. 'S far as the records show, totally nice guy. Went around feeding people by taking more food out of a bag than he put into it, pulling the diseases right out of sick people, walking across water 'cause he wouldn't fall until he looked down, stuff like that. Perfectly friendly, wouldn't hurt a fly, just wanted to go home to his Dad, but didn't mind helping folks out a bit while he was here. We sent him back, no harm done.

But of course word of junk like that gets around, and a bunch of con men jokers claimed the dope was killed, and that they were his representatives. One of 'em hadn't even been anywhere nearby, and just said he had a vision. And two thousand years later there's a worldwide death cult hoping for the end of the world, raping kids, defrauding people of their life savings, and claiming tax exemption for all of it. And, remember, that was one of the NICE ones. There was another one, thousands of years earlier... well, let's just say that wooly mammoths didn't go extinct when the zoologists say they did, okay?

So: demons bad, need to be removed pronto, even the nice ones.

Anyway, are we up to speed now? Okay, so now it's time for me to tell my story. The idea here is that you will listen to me, and not be as careless as I was, and maybe not end up locked up in headquarters for the rest of your life.

So, at that time I was a local agent for Chicago. Most of you will eventually be posted like that. You get to cover a few hundred miles of territory, submit regular reports, do occasional patrols, that kind of thing. You'll get about one demon showing up every six weeks, on average, maybe a bit more or less depending on the size of your territory. And you'll have to have some kind of cover, too.

Me, I was an accountant. Little mousy guy, glasses and a vest. Go on, laugh. It worked. Nobody wants to ask too many questions about an accountant's work. It's like being a mortician, only without the chance of goths trying to get close.

So there I am, sitting at my desk pretending to be busy when I get a call from the organization. Succubus type demon, first discovered over in California, been moving east, now probably in my territory. Just great.

Now, succubus types are kind of boring, I don't care what you've been told. There's all kinds of demons who go in for sex crap, it's part of the whole "rarr-I-am-super-powerful-and-you-are-a-mere-human" thing. If we had pulled Freud into the organization, he would have had a field day, I tell you what.

We use "succubus" and "incubus" as shorthand for a couple of common types. A succubus is a low-powered demon which looks like a woman, tricks men into having sex, and then usually kills 'em during or after. Every once in a while there are some variations, like they only feed on semen or something, but most of 'em just go for the neck right away. Sometimes they can seduce you if they touch you, sometimes they can overcome sexual preferences too, but the general type aren't very powerful, so if you just stay well back from 'em, you're safe. Oh, and "incubus" is used when the demon is male and goes after women, otherwise pretty much the same deal. Useful to know the jargon, just in case.

Anyway, so I get the message. Succubus somewhere out in the far west suburbs. Been targeting athletes and bodybuilders and those types. Smarter than usual, 'cause it's been averaging two a week for about eleven months and hasn't been caught yet. (The coverup department had their work cut out for 'em, I can tell you that!) It's moving east, seems to like basements of tall buildings.

All pretty straightforward. Succubi are easy; now, when you gotta face a werewolf, then it's time to worry, but your basic succubus is simple. They even provide their own secrecy, so you don't even have to worry about getting caught on the job. Just make sure you catch it in the act or you'll get in trouble.

So I head off. The little physics abnormality sensor -- we've got better ones now, but they're still not very accurate -- keeps me heading west until I'm in Aurora, which isn't the furthest suburb but it's far enough from Chicago proper that it's the edge of my territory, more or less.

I wander around town trying to look like a harmless geek, holding on to the sensor. You have no idea how useful it was when Pippin released the Newtown Messagepad back in the 1990s -- that was the first real general-purpose handheld computer, back even before smartphones. Before that, we had to hide the sensors. Ever since then, we just make 'em look like PDAs and everyone thinks we're just overproductive corporate weenies with Blueberries or whatever.

Anyway, it doesn't take too long to figure out that there's something in this old hotel in the downtown area. I check in, wait until nighttime, and go exploring.

Bam! First door I try leads to the basement. Whole place is damp and reeking -- Aurora's along a river, so that's kind of a common thing, there -- but there's lights on. I lock the door behind me, wander around a little, and sure enough, sitting in the middle of this big open space is a great big bed, bronze bedstead, satin sheets, the works. And sitting on top is Miss America in the nude, going at it with this great big dumb-looking-but-handsome guy. Not that I'm jealous.

So I squat down around a corner and watch. Yeah, yeah, go ahead and laugh. I told you, we gotta catch 'em in the act. It's not actually LIKELY that, you know, a model or someone would put a fancy bed in a smelly hotel basement and then use it to fuck the local college wresting champ, but it's not actually impossible. They could just be really kinky that way. Same deal for incubi: the only proof it's really a demon is when suddenly the thing opens its mouth and takes a big bite out of the victim. Up until then, it could just be a couple of weirdos. Kinda hard on the victims, but that's not our concern.

And, in fact, that's just what happens. The guy strips, like he's in a daze, and starts fucking the woman. After a while, he comes, and then they sit up in bed and embrace, and suddenly the woman's mouth opens like a snake's, and she's got a million big teeth, and she chomps the guy's head off like the end of a candy bar. Blood squirts everywhere, woman just sits there chewing away.

Well, that's my cue. So I jump out, run up to the bed, and throw a handful of physics enforcers at the woman. Yeah, they're these little things, look kinda like paperclips, dunno how they work, but demons can't push back the numbers when they're surrounded with 'em.

I whip out my trusty anti-demon gun, and let the woman have it. She falls over on the bed, dead.

I wait a couple of minutes, just to make sure, but the woman doesn't move at all. Neither does the guy, of course, but since he's gone from the neck up that wouldn't be expected anyway, right?

So, mentally I'm patting myself on the back for a job well-done, composing my expense report for the hotel stay, and rehearsing the phone call to the organization telling them that they need to come arrange to make the guy's death look like an accident. And kind of wondering how they'll do it without his head, but they've had a lot of practice. I'm so distracted that I sit down on the bed.

And that's when it all went wrong. See, the first rule for agents in the field is never to treat any object a demon may have had contact with as though it were harmless until it has been tested. But I wasn't thinking.

Suddenly the sheets slither around and grab me, and I'm being held up. Turns out, this wasn't a succubus after all. This was some kind of bizarre higher-powered thing. From up in the air, where I'm held, and now that the sheets aren't on the bed any more, I can see that the woman's toes are actually connected to the bed, like it's all one big thing. Which it is. The woman's body changes shape, and the bed gets sucked into her, and suddenly there's this big muscular horned guy with a mouth full of fangs standing there, holding me up by the waist with his tail. You've probably seen pictures of that kind of thing. Demons seem to like that shape for some reason. Not sure if artists gave them the idea, or picked it up from them.

Anyway, lucky for me, this demon is kind of stupid. Since he actually WAS the bed, the physics enforcers weren't surrounding him, so he still had any and all of his powers. And as he's changing shape, he just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger, with his muscles popping out all over. BUT since he was colossally stupid, he didn't disarm or disable me, so I just shot him a few more times. So he's still getting bigger, but I can tell he's also dying.

So, you're thinking, "close call, but why is this supposed to be some kind of life lesson", right? Yeah, well, turns out this demon isn't going to die quietly.

"Foolish mortal! How dare you harm me?" I swear these guys all have the same dialog. "I have the strength of hundreds of men in this body!" He puts up his arms and flexes at me, like I'm supposed to be impressed when he's about to keel over 'cause he didn't use his head.

So I give him some kind of sass about how it doesn't seem to stop the bullets I just pumped into him, and he gets all mad. His tail starts to loosen, and I drop to the floor.

"Perhaps I shall perish. But the power I have collected shall destroy you, my enemy!" You'd think they'd drop the fake-old-fashioned grammar, it's not like they've been in this world since then. But I guess if you're enough of a weirdo to have sex with people and then bite their heads off, talking like it's 1800 is small potatoes.

So, of course, I'm getting ready for him to swat at me with his huge arms or try to stomp on me or something. And that's why I didn't notice the tail. It suddenly whips around, grabs me by the neck, and forces itself down my throat. I'm sitting there struggling, and suddenly I notice "gee, this isn't a tail, it's a goddamn cock!"

The demon laughs at me like I'm the funniest thing he's ever seen. "Now receive the essence of my strength, mortal! You shall perish here, a fitting testimony to my greatness!"

And suddenly he's pumping some kind of demon jizz down my throat. And as he does it, I can see him getting smaller and smaller, like he's a balloon and all the air is running out through his dick. And I can feel my stomach filling up, and I think to myself "Oh, great, I'm going to be drowned in semen from another world. I'm gonna be a punchline down at headquarters."

But I didn't. Turns out the son of a bitch was transferring all the muscle he ate over to me. I think he thought I'd go immobile and starve to death down there. But like I said, he was a dumbass. When he finished, and keeled over, I was about 12 feet tall and probably a few tons, but I wasn't actually immobile. I just called the organization on my cell phone, and they came the next morning, gave me some food and a magazine to read, and then got me out of there the next night.

Of course, now I was 12 feet tall and built like a whole acre of brick shithouses, to say nothing of having a cock that hung between my knees, so there was really nowhere to go, and they brought me back to headquarters.

At first I was just sitting around all day doing nothing but being a drain on the food budget, but eventually they started trying to make me useful. Turns out I'm too damn big for paperwork, just can't hold a pen or work a keyboard, so that was out, but eventually they hooked me up with this flywheel gizmo over here, and now I power the whole complex, twelve hours a day. That's why I haven't been taking time out from all this motion.

Of course, as you can see I'm a hell of a lot more than 12 feet now, more like 26, and keeping the machine going has made me even bigger than I was before. Watch. See those arms? Biggest ones on earth by a factor of 30. And -- let me switch back to the arm pistons for a minute -- look at those thighs. And my ass. And of course, as you can see that ledge was constructed to give me a place to store my cock while I'm at the machine.

Huh. I knew it. Make fun of me all you like, there's never been a male recruit yet who didn't pop a boner and start leaking pre when I started flexing. Of course, I didn't end up this big until I'd been here for a century or so. Kind of boring, but at least I'm providing a service.

But of course that's not all the weirdness. It never is; demons are just incredibly weird fuckers. After I started growing even bigger, I got so turned on that I started jizzing over myself on occasion. And it turns out that -- oh, you guessed that? Yeah, guys who drink my jizz get bigger and stronger, too. That's why I'm the first station on your training, and why you had to jack me off and have a nice full glassful first thing. If you'll look over in the mirror, there, you'll see you're all bigger than you were when you came in. You're also about 50% stronger than you should be at that size. By the time you're sent out to the field, I guarantee that every single one of you will be at least 6' 6" and 300 pounds, and able to bench a small car. 'S the least we can do for our agents.

No, don't jack me off again now. Dunno why, but it only works once a week on a single subject. Just more demon weirdness. But don't worry, you're all scheduled to come back in seven days for another dose.

So that's the cautionary tale. Don't let demons get the drop on you, or you'll end up like me.

What do you mean, "that's not a cautionary tale"?

[amauiguy]

Fun story with a nice and unexpected plot twist. Thanks for sharing.

[tekuno]

Originally Posted by amauiguy

Fun story with a nice and unexpected plot twist. Thanks for sharing.

I didn't want to waste the idea. Probably someday -- maybe even someday relatively soon -- I'll hit writer's block and have to stop posting completely. But until then I'd rather get things out as fast as I can.

[Rarity]

Demons are just dicks.

Also that's where I was going to take my story. Oh nooooooooo-ok.

[Mdlftr]

Nice combination of humor, fantasy, sci-fi and muscle growth.

--Oh, and also social commentary!

You packed a lot into this story!

I liked the breezy tone of the narrator: matter of fact with a hint of self deprecation - "I was an accountant - go ahead and laugh!"


If this is "almost writer's block" for you, I'd hate to see what you're like when the words are flowing!

Thanks for the story,

Mdlftr

[muscl4life]

Quite interesting, the casual way in which you have described very powerful situations was very refreshing. The storytelling POV is different and I really appreciated your efforts to build a whole universe around your stories, which gives them a great deal of logic.

Congratulations, again

[tekuno]

Originally Posted by Rarity

Demons are just dicks.

Also that's where I was going to take my story. Oh nooooooooo-ok.

So write it anyway! It's not like the concept is original to me -- there are all kinds of "secret organization devoted to killing supernatural entities" stories (heck, I can think of at least 4 anime/manga series which arguably have that plot, and I don't even follow non-comedy stuff in that realm), and the notion of "hero gets cursed by evil entity as he slays it" isn't exactly a fresh one, either. And maybe your version will have some really hot passages; this story didn't really go into detail on that stuff, so there's always room for more.

[tekuno]

Originally Posted by Mdlftr

If this is "almost writer's block" for you, I'd hate to see what you're like when the words are flowing!

No, no. I meant that, right now I don't have writer's block, so I can afford to take any little idea and throw it into a tiny short story, but someday I may start running out of steam, and then I'll probably have to start stretching minor concepts into bigger things.

[Rarity]

Originally Posted by tekuno

So write it anyway! It's not like the concept is original to me -- there are all kinds of "secret organization devoted to killing supernatural entities" stories (heck, I can think of at least 4 anime/manga series which arguably have that plot, and I don't even follow non-comedy stuff in that realm), and the notion of "hero gets cursed by evil entity as he slays it" isn't exactly a fresh one, either. And maybe your version will have some really hot passages; this story didn't really go into detail on that stuff, so there's always room for more.

I meant the nearly-immobilizing growth part; lord knows everything under the sun has been done at least 50 times. Fo' srs. I was going to use it as an ironic punishment to one of the characters, since demons are just dicks when it comes to doing things. It's like, the rule for demons to be dicks when people ask for stuff. Talk about being ruuuuuuuuuude, that's what people get for not saying please and thank you when they ask for stuff.