All the King's Horses, and All the King's Men

✟JUU✟

The sun hangs high in a royal sky, a perfectly frying yolk of a thing. From handback, I take in my surroundings and kip my heels into the valiant Billy the Goat Steed, sallying him forth. I ride past rolling hills, peaceful villages, and idyllic waterscapes.

After ten long days, I’ve come across a kingdom with an alarming number of necks posted on stakes along the castle battlements, flies buzzing hungrily about. The smell invades my beak, it's fierce and foul, my tiny penguin belly begins to complete a shooting star press within my felt insides and I want to spew my Wolf Stix luncheon all over the ground.

Take heart, for I’m a stronger penguin than that.

A multicolored (but not basilisk green) lizard appears atop the castle wall and raises the visor on his sallet, eyeing me suspiciously. He begins shouting in French, and he sounds quite angry and I flap my wings frantically in reply, not quite sure how to converse with a lizard that possesses such élan.

The lizard drops beneath the wall, and reappears quickly, brandishing a massive flame-bladed sword and swings it menacingly over his head.

“I come in peace!” I sound up to my prospective coldblooded friend. “I seek the Great Egg Bandit Wall and humbly request your guidance in seeking the correct path!”

While the lizard continues to scream his lizardy “zut allors!” and “allons y!” to me, the commotion causes a second figure to appear on the battlements, a fine looking man who was once most likely a sickly Victorian child, but he made it through the illnesses and neglect, and look at him now, on top of a castle wall! Wow.

“Hail penguin!” the Angloman states with a posh sniveling accent. “Explain why you’ve got mon ami in such a state, or I'll snap your flipper from your body!”

“I’m Pious Penguin representing the Five Star Kingdom of His Word and Light and I seek the Bandit Wall. Can you assist me on my quest?” I ask the threatening popinjay.

“Those crumbs!?” He’s more incredulous than I expected. He huffs and puffs, pointing north. He continues speaking, mostly about his upbringing and how he eschewed fame and wealth to be some great warrior, but definitely not for the fame or wealth, and I kinda started tuning him out because man can he talk about himself and not seem to run out of things to say or air in his lungs. I finally decide to move on while he continues talking about himself and the properties of glue. He must be sniffing it.

✟KYU✟

You’ve been the Five Star Champion for nine months. You’ve made it your championship. As of yesterday, nobody has ever done it longer in the history of PRIME. Does that make you feel like something? Does it make you feel like you’ve accomplished something in this sad, sad existence?

You look at yourself in a filthy mirror. Do you recognize the face that stares back? You’re looking a little thinner. A little worse for wear. Kerry sure did a number on you, didn’t he?

Your face was the market special the next day. Fresh hamburger.

It stirred something in you though.

Made you feel alive in ways you hadn't since you were last under Koji’s yoke in the Asylum.

When you thought you had something stronger than blood with Kinkade.

Every drop of blood you lost against Kerry was a love letter to the life they allow you to live.

Your eyes twitch along with the corners of your lips.

You feel that too, don’t you?

Ravenous.

The insatiable sort of hunger that rumbles and roars first inside your gut, but then into your bones, sucking out the marrow and filling that hollowness with a pain so severe you want to grit your teeth with enough foot pounds to shatter your jaw.

Still though, you persist, locked away in your Yokohama hotel room, not because you want to, but because you must.

The Man depends on it. So do Kinkade, Koji, Touma, and of course Mother Superior.

You mustn't disappoint Mother.

You can’t fail her Sisters of Absolution.

For we are one.

Look at you, smiling at the mirror now. It feels good.

Now open that mouth and say the words.

“We are Legion.”

Laughter.

✟HACHI✟

As I traverse past the Glue Plains and enter into bear-filled coniferous forests, I can think of nothing more fearsome than running into the Bread Army while I’m here, terrifying bears that believe in communism and exclusively using the word “our” and let me tell you, they absolutely hate your hero, Pious Penguin.

I don’t think it’s just hatred though. It’s fear. They fear Pious Penguin and all he stands for as they hoard all the bread of the forest for themselves. That’s not sharing. That’s not communism. That’s being a selfish old, fat, mean, big old… oh, oh my.

“Can I help you, little penguin?”

Billy the Goat Steed comes to a halt in front of a massive bear wearing a ushanka and crimson suspenders, happily munching on a loaf of Borodinsky. He must have weighed eight tons, no lie. This penguin tells no lies and that bear was as big as a church subdevelopment, but not nearly as holy, or pious, like me.

“Hi Guy!” I say as cheerfully as I can, hoping not to be this bear’s exquisite mid-afternoon snack.

The bear stares at me thoughtfully as he slowly chews his bread. He considers his choices, and frowns deeply.

“No birds,” he says sternly. “And no Byrd.”

“Why is that?” I ask.

Without missing a beat, the old bear replies between bites of bread.

“Eat all the bread.”

I stare at him blankly. Incredulously. Penguincredulously. I’d best keep my thoughts to myself though.

“Could you tell me how I might find the Bandit Wall?” I ask as nicely as I can muster.

“You promise not to eat our bread?”

“Absolutely, I won’t eat our bread.”

The old bear glares at the sarcasm and takes another hunk from his loaf, lifts a single massive paw and points north. I thank him for his time and consideration, but he rolls his eyes and continues pointing the way. I swear I hear him laughing as I ride away.

✟SHICHI✟

You were tied to your bed after being medicated when you learned defense number seven of your Five Star Championship would be Cancer Jiles.

He beat you once.

Don’t you remember?

Of course.

You never forgot.

You secretly obsess. It invades your thoughts more than Diamonds does. Why is that? Why is he the one who truly drives you mad in the atrocity exhibition?

The smell of eggs still makes you sick to your stomach.

You’re weak.

Nobody thought you would ever beat him. The newcomer. The upstart. There were no expectations.

And yet.

You’re haunted by the real Bandit King.

Koji took great delight in giving you the news. Shoving the phone in your face, laughing that deep raspy laugh.

It made you angry.

Carry that anger with you.

What else fosters it?

Remember how Jiles beat you?

He cheated.

That pisses you off.

The victory was unearned.

And there he is. He gloats, holds it over you, lords it over you.

You can’t let that stand.

YOU are the Five Star Champion.

Does he even know your title exists? Saying anything outside of the main event, anything outside of the Universal Title is beneath him.

Jiles fancies himself a snake slithering on his belly down to your level.

He thinks he smells opportunity.

Show him what you do to snakes.

Show him what it means to be pinned beneath your heel.

Show him what makes your garden grow.

✟ROKU✟

My journey continues through the forests and into the hinterland. I could feel the incline and change in altitude were beginning to take its toll on Billy the Goat Steed and carpal tunnel may have set into the hand cozily up my puppethole, but upward we climbed.

As the air thins and the needles on the pines become scarce, I’m suddenly stopped by a single vulture wearing a Stetson, picking over the remains of six catering tables. Behind the massive bird is a large signpost reading “VAE CONVIVIIS” (Woe to the Banquets!, bet you didn’t know I knew Latin. I’m a clergy member folks, I know the secrets, trust me.)

The vulture appears to be the saddest vulture I have ever seen in all my days. He looks constantly on the verge of weeping, but between his talons, I spy a hunk of something that looks a little familiar from the forest. In fact, it looks exactly like…

“Say is that Borodinsky?” I ask, remembering the very same loaf the Bread Army bear had been eating.

Without a word, the suddenly defensive cowboy vulture devours what remains of the bread in his talon and takes great effort to fly to the sign. It clutches sharp talons into the top of it and scowls menacingly at me.

“Are you the Byrd?” I ask what I think is a less insulting question. “The Bread Army says you’re not allowed in the forest because you eat all their bread, and let me tell you my guy, I think you should eat all their bread.”

The Byrd nods its sad vulture cowboy neck in agreement.

“Like, it’s nothing personal about those stinky bears,” okay, maybe a little personal. What’s a white lie between avian species? “They claim to be these great sharers and they won’t share their bread with you or me! So, yeah man, eat it all up. Like, aren’t we part of the ‘our’ they’re so big on?”

The Byrd continues nodding along.

“But say, Byrd friend, could you point a wing in the general direction of the Great Egg Bandit Wall? I’m on an epic quest!”

All The Byrd does is open his beak, and from way down in that throat of his a terrible sound, like a cowboy country ballad pours forth, but he has only one single refrain.

“Food! Food! Food! Food!”

I sigh a penguiny sigh and look through my pack, tossing out a couple packets of Beef Explosion Wolf Stix. The Byrd nods approvingly and drops down from the signpost and begins to peck away at the offering. He unfurls a wing, pointing along the same path I’d been traveling.

✟GO✟

The Members Only Club. I was told there are five members, but there are only two visible on my approach. One of them is Bloodmodefred and my normally chill penguin cool begins to lose itself. I can’t help it. I strongly dislike that guy, he’s so irritating, like nails on a chalkboard or catsup on a hot dog, uncouth and unruly. Unrefined. Awful. Ew.

ANYWAY he’s sitting outside with Little Timetraveler Annie outside of their gross little trailer with their plastic lawn chairs and it’s all a little weird and maybe too adult for Pious Penguin. I’m not sure how, but it feels that way.

There's real bad things happening in that trailer, guys.

“Whatcha guys doin’ outside?” I ask.

“Mine yo bizniss u nasty ace penkin,” Bloodmodefred retorts beautifully.

I feel so feisty around him. It’s like overdosing on Wolf Stix. I’ve totally forgotten the quest for the Great Egg Bandit Wall and I.. must… own… Bloodmodefred.

“Or is it because the two of you got no members!” I chortle and cackle and squeal with delight at my joke.

The trailer door opens and Dastardly Diamonds pokes his head out, obscenities too coarse for these ears being strewn about without so much a care. La la la la la I can’t hear them.

When it finally dies down, I clear my throat and ask, “Could you please point me toward the Great Egg Bandit Wall?”

Bloodmodefred and Diamonds jut their thumbs eastward and mutter, “It’s fuggin thataway.”

I doff my imaginary cap and continue on my way, and can feel them laughing as I continue forward. What do they find so funny?

✟SHI✟

Jess St. Cloud hasn’t slept in weeks. It’s still early on New Year’s Eve in Boston. His phone still rests on her nightstand, fully charged. She’s not looked at it once since reaching out on jabber and getting no help. It was shortly after that the account started posting strange messages from his account and she decided it was best to stop using it.

The phone remains dormant.

It’s been four weeks since she last saw him, disappearing in the middle of dinner after excusing himself to the bathroom. She found it weirder still when he appeared at Colossus, defending his Five Star Championship, but nary a word from him found its way to her. His typical recalcitrance and aloofness around bookings were normal, especially around title defenses, and that’s all everything seemed to be anymore.

She wonders what a woman in her early forties is doing with a man like him. A divorcee, she knows prioritizing stability and reliability should come first over what she has with him, but there’s a magnetic pull to his personality that she can’t avoid. She knows there’s something more at play, her journalistic and investigative instincts have finally started to kick in.

She has spent the past few weeks looking into the church, into his past, but the information is scant. People who worked with him in the past, be it fWo, Asylum, or otherwise, are even more difficult to find, or completely unwilling to talk. It’s almost as if he’s a ghost, except in the moments when he appears, made whole of flesh and blood standing right in front of her.

She rolls over in bed and sighs, thumbing the screen of her phone on, adjusting her eyes to the glare. The checkout page on a travel site stares back at her, and against all better judgment she confirms the booking.

✟SAN✟

You can’t stop thinking about her when you’re in these moments of lucidity, but they are fleeting.

Just three things on your mind.

Jessica St. Cloud.

Cancer Jiles.

The Devil in your veins.

The thing you can’t have.

The thing you can’t defeat.

The thing you don’t want.

Life is so cruel to you.

You can feel Touma and Koji still laughing at you, but you haven’t sussed it out yet.

Your head lolls, you feel like the last few threads of the screw are about to work their way out and your head will roll itself onto the floor for their amusement.

The way you pray to God, wishing it would happen is so funny.

You don’t need God anymore.

Not here. Not in the caring hands of Yokohama’s finest.

They won’t let you down.

More importantly, they won’t let the Sisters down.

You are working toward the greater good.

“Hi, Guys!”

They titter away, louder.

✟NI✟

I’m laughing now too as I finally approach The Great Egg Bandit Wall. Eggshell white, but clearly in need of a good power washing. These dirty little bandits. I thought their king would pay more attention to them, but when you are the king of the entire Universe, I suppose there is a lot to keep track of daily.

They say the entire kingdom is tattooed to his forehead, and when they take new lands, his forehead grows to accommodate the space.

Do you think that’s true?

I sure do.

I’m using my keen penguin sight (it’s real, trust me), and at the tippy-top of the wall I spy Humpty Crumbty, alfredo pompadour tousled by the wind, t-shades on, smiling in the yolky sun like the annoying bombast he is and I devise a grand plan.

The plan to kill Humpty Crumbty.

I wonder where Humpty Crumbty came from. Such an abomination, almost unspeakable. Was he delivered by the Hess Express? Did he come out of those tubes? You remember the egg tubes don’t you?

So weird. These guys are real freaks, don’t let them let you think otherwise.

I reach into my pack and produce a compact ladder that through the magic of Jesus will reach unimaginable heights to scale the top of this silly wall.

I’m scaling my ladder and nearing the top of that stupid Bandit Wall and that idiot Humpty Crumbty barely gives me a glance. I shriek a mighty shriek. I feel his eyes roll behind those dang sunglasses.

“Ha.”

Now, I’m a pretty level-headed Pious Penguin, but this is absolutely infuriating. I’m seething, which wasn’t part of the plan but enhances the plan. Steadying myself on the ladder, I lean back as far as that hand up my puppethole can muster and just before I take my action, I stare him dead in his t-shades and shout:

“HEY CRUMBTY, FULL COUNTER THIS!”

SHOVE!

Oh no. What have I done? I gasp and grin mischievously. Humpty Crumbty begins to fall, it seems to be happening slowly, but all at once. He topples, tumbles, spins, and screams like the [censored] he is.

It happens so rapidly with a crack and a splat that the ground instantly runs yellow with the yolk of the unspoken leader of the Bandits.

He always tried to get over easy, but I scrambled Humpty Crumbty like no one ever had before, and I decided to sing.

“Humpty Crumbty sat on a wall, Pious Penguin caused him to fall, All of the crumb’s horses, and all of the crumb’s men Couldn’t be bothered to put Crumbty together again”

After the song, two Bandits appear, predictably Tiny Wagers and Rotund Bobby. They struggle with a mop, sopping up as much of Alfredo’s runny remains and squeegee it into a bucket.

Suddenly the sun feels very bright in my eyes and I’m struggling to see what’s happening. I start to feel dizzy and my puppethand falters.

✟ICHI✟

“…counn’tbebofferedtoputcrombtogethagaiiin”

You’re rambling incoherently. Something about Tiny Wagers, Rotund Bobby, and Humpty Crumbty. Koji’s laughing so hard he’s crying.

You can feel the haze of the drug wearing off.

Relief. Revulsion. Obsession by omission.

Touma is flashing a light into your eyes, trying to make sure you’re somewhat put together.

You finally feel the cold tile and runny yolk on the floor. You look down to your feet.

They’re bare.

As is the rest of you.

You reflexively try to cover yourself.

You’re so modest.

They’re like hyenas, your tragedy is their great comedy.

Look down.

What’s that covering you?

Your left hand aches.

Flex it into a fist.

You can’t.

You bring your hand to your face.

Two beady black eyes staring back at you.

“Hi Father Don!” Your hands make the motion inside the puppet as your voice finds a higher pitch.

“Hey Pious Penguin, how are you today?” You ask innocently.

The two men in the room with you are in stitches. Watching you play puppet theater while you’re zonked out of your brain.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

You can’t help yourself, can you?

It feels like the right thing to do.

“Hi, guys! What are you laughing so hard at!” Pious Penguin asks Koji and Touma. “I want to be in on the joke!”

There’s no response. They’re just waiting and watching for your next move. Can you blame them? It appears to be high comedy. One of them might even be recording you from their phone, but you don’t care.

You can feel that exhaustion setting in as the drug’s final effects peter out. Your knees are weak and you collapse to them and push Pious Penguin into your other hand to pray.

Koji steps toward you and grabs a handful of hair. He smiles into your face, the tobacco-stained teeth make you want to recoil. Through his brusque accent, you just about make out the message.

“One last thing before we leave you for the night.”

You lift your eyes to Koji’s, and the puppet slumps as you slide down the egg-stained wall.

“Oh?”

Broken eggs cover the room.

What have you been doing?

Your stomach churns.

Keep it all in, son.

“Akemashite omedetō.” Koji chuckles.

Outside you hear a different sound.

Pops.

The “oohs!” and “ahs!” from the crowded streets of Yokohama.

When was the last time you saw fireworks?

You can’t remember.

Oh, the things you’ve done that are being held against you.

The ransoms you don’t even know exist.

A freedom you can never bargain for.

The only thing that belongs to you is the Five Star Championship.

The only thing that makes you truly feel alive.

What will losing it to Cancer Jiles do to you?

“I’m afraid to think,” Pious Penguin says.

Soulless eyes are piercing.

“Father Winters is in its thrall Father Winters waits for his fall All the King’s Horses, and All the King’s Men Shoved him way down in the hole again.”

You sob.

You swear the penguin smiles.

Covered in bits of yolk and shell, his head turns.

“Happy New Year, cromb.”