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159. Square Peg
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2021-09-13 17:13:34Related chapters
How to Avoid Death on a Daily Basis 160. Sweep the Leg
Comfort rose from the ground in a jerking motion. The pounding he received had staved in the back of his head so it was dented and flattened to give him an unsettling appearance. It probably would’ve looked even stranger if his long fur wasn’t covering it.He was unsteady on his feet but he managed to stagger forward, one of his spikes raised towards Cheng’s face.Jenny had her dagger half-drawn. I put my hand on hers and pushed it back down.“He hasn’t lost yet.” I didn’t mind that she was willing to do what was necessary to send me back in time — it was probably the only way it would get done — but would it be so hard for her to be a little hesitant? You know, just for show.Unscathed had Cheng immobilised. He was clearly stronger and there was no way for Cheng to slip out of the hold. From the looks of it, there was no way for him to even breathe.There was an intake of breath around the amphitheatre as Comfort drove his spike towards Cheng’s face.
Last Updated : 2021-09-13How to Avoid Death on a Daily Basis 161. Dad Talk
I looked upwards, eyes searching the skies. Somewhere up there, giant fish swam through the clouds. If I could tempt them down, maybe they would fight my enemies. Who was I kidding? The first thing they’d do was eat me.The Kraken were a better bet with regards to being helpful (especially if we introduced them to Motown classics) but they had the slight disadvantage of not being able to walk on land. Or maybe they could, very slowly. Either way, as Socrates once said, you don’t bring a lobster to a shark fight. I think it was him. Might have been Plato.Cheng landed in the middle of the arena, both his opponents out cold. He lifted Comfort out of the pool of blue liquid he was lying in and tried to carry him. The difference in size was too great, and Cheng too exhausted, so he had to drag the body out of the arena, back to the palace. A trail of blue trickled behind them.Unscathed rose to his knees, collapsed, and tried again. After a couple more aborted attempts
Last Updated : 2021-09-13How to Avoid Death on a Daily Basis 162. Free Your Mind
Once they’d confiscated Phil’s device, the Masters lost interest in us and returned their attention to the fighting below. The combatants were barely visible as clouds of green dust billowed over the arena, emanating from the rotund Master who was mainly a head. Special gas attack?Cheng’s father had his arm around Cheng’s shoulder, proudly claiming him as his own. Despite the method of his victory (or maybe because of it), Cheng was now considered legit. He was worthy of being a Darkholme demon.Cheng turned his neck to give us an apologetic look. Well, I say that, it’s hard to tell what six eyes blinking in sequence is supposed to signify.No one seemed to be forcing us to stay and there weren’t even any snacks, so I didn’t see the point of hanging around.“Is it okay if we go?” I said to the accumulated backs ignoring us. It was a good indicator of just how little threat we posed that despite our magic and powerful devices, we weren’t considered worth loc
Last Updated : 2021-09-13How to Avoid Death on a Daily Basis 163. A Winning Plan
“Was there anything in the manual that could help us defeat the Masters?” I asked 288. He’d read it back to front so if there was anything useful in there, he would know. And now that he had seen the light, maybe even tell me. Hallelujah!The mention of the manual made the imp’s beady little eyes gleam. He looked up at me as I leaned over the partitioning wall and said, “The Book is the answer to all questions.”He sounded like a newly baptised religious nut. Just what I needed, a Jehovah’s penis.“That’s great but was there anything in the Book—” I thought it best to sound as reverential about his new Bible as him “—that could help us against the Masters?”“No,” said 288. “The Masters cannot be defeated.”Well, not with that attitude they couldn’t.“What if all the golems were to attack the Masters? Could they win?”“No,” said 288.“There’s only nine of them,” I pointed out.“All the war golems together wouldn’t be a
Last Updated : 2021-09-13How to Avoid Death on a Daily Basis 164. In the Huddle
No plan is perfect. There’s always a chance a great idea will flounder, just as there’s a chance a dumb one will flourish. One thing’s for sure, though — you can’t call a plan successful if you never get to the end of it.If we ended up dead, then I would loop back to the beginning and have to do it all again. If I managed to get back to this point, it would just be the same as before. This is why time travel is so stupid. Nothing matters if everything resets again and again.288 flew off to speak to his fellow converts. I fully expected it to be an established religion a thousand years from now, possibly with me as a saint. St Colin the Irritable, who walked among all creatures and didn’t see them as good or bad, but as equally annoying.I sat down with my back to the stall wall. There had to be a way around the minor obstacle of us getting killed. Hiding was my first thought. Let them all have their big moment while we crawled into a hole and hoped they didn’t fi
Last Updated : 2021-09-13How to Avoid Death on a Daily Basis 165. Martyr Dome
It’s tiring having to come up with ways not to die. Lying there with a girl playing with your hair might seem idyllic, but when monsters are waiting outside to eat you, it makes it hard to relax.Somehow I drifted off to sleep. Ideas can sometimes come to you when you stop trying so hard to think of them. Spend hours trying to figure something out and get nowhere. Go off to do something else and the answer pops into your head.Unfortunately, that’s not what happened.I woke up and still had nothing. What had woken me was a breeze in my face. 288 was hovering over me, his wings fanning cool air over me. It was quite nice, if you resisted thinking about what 288 was and where that tangy odour was coming from.“The final fight is about to begin,” he said.I sat up, waking Jenny in the process. She had dozed off leaning against the wall and was now all stiff and stretching. Girls are so obvious. They claim they hate guys eyeing them up, and then they wake
Last Updated : 2021-09-13How to Avoid Death on a Daily Basis 166. Betray You, Betray Me
Their plan made sense. If the Masters had no form of food to sustain them through the welding, then no welding today.Of course, they had to sacrifice their own people to achieve their goal. And not just kill them — people didn’t die in Nekromel — they had to be eaten.I had limited sympathy for these idiots who believed the Masters were going to bestow some kind of spiritual enlightenment on them, but that didn’t make it any easier to watch them being slaughtered. It was even harder for the others who hadn’t seen the weretics in action before, at least not in this timeline.Jenny gripped my arm so tightly it hurt. Claire had turned away in horror while Maurice watched slack-jawed. Flossie had her head buried in Dudley’s chest and whimpered while Dudley buried his head in the top of her curly hair, also whimpering.The weretics, grotesquely misshapen and more monstrous in appearance than any of the Masters, waded through the crowd, claws slashing and teeth t
Last Updated : 2021-09-13How to Avoid Death on a Daily Basis 167. The Long Way Home
For someone who goes to such great lengths to avoid danger, committing honourable Subaru might seem a little out of character.Just as Claire had suggested, only losing one of our group was a more than reasonable price to pay for surviving a very unpromising situation. Count yourself lucky and move on with your life, would be my advice if someone had asked for it.And yet, I didn’t like it. Claire had almost known things were going to end up like this, she even gave me the long goodbye. It was like she was doing me a favour. It rankled.There’s something about getting an unwanted gift and then being expected to be thankful for it that has never sat right with me. Imagine if you left someone house-sitting while you went on holiday, and when you came back, they had redecorated as a surprise.They didn’t ask you, and the new look was their taste, not yours. Would you thank them?When they got upset at your lack of gratitude for what had taken them a grea
Last Updated : 2021-09-13
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How to Avoid Death on a Daily Basis 244. Don’t Forget to Breathe
Claire stabbed me. She didn’t know I was in here, but would that have made a difference?The moment the blade entered my chest, I felt a rush of cold go through me like smoke through a keyhole. Everything began shaking. I was falling apart.“What are yo’ doing?” screamed Flossie.“It’s not him,” said Maurice. “Colin’s safe. This is just his body. We have to stop them now, or we’ll never get another chance.”It had never been a great body, but ‘just his body’ seemed a little harsh.Was this part of some big plan? Maurice had always been good at seeing patterns and drawing conclusions. He wasn’t always right, but he was starting to have faith in himself. They all were. Dangerous times.If you joined up the dots and they formed a picture, it would make sense to assume that’s the picture you were meant to find. Maurice had decided this was the picture he had seen. Kill Peter, kill Wesley. Leave no one powerful enough to threaten the rest of us.
How to Avoid Death on a Daily Basis 243. The Older Woman
By this point, I considered darkness to be an old friend. Considering how my friends had been treating me of late, my buddy darkness was probably hiding monsters that would eat my face.The voice I’d heard had sounded feminine, although I wasn’t about to assume gender. These days, that sort of thinking can get you in all sorts of trouble. If it was a woman, my track record with females in dark places wasn’t good, but I wasn’t about to generalise about that either.Yes, women had treated me poorly, often trying to kill me, torture me and nag me to death. I didn’t hold a grudge. Women aren’t all the same. I never think, Oh, yes, she’s just like all the others. They’re all individuals. They each have their own preferred method for ruining your life. Some of them even do it by ignoring you. They’re my favourite.I listened for any follow-up threats. There were always follow-up threats. Everyone had too much fun arranging my demise to not announce their plans.No
How to Avoid Death on a Daily Basis 242. Further Beyond
It wasn’t like Claire suddenly transforming was a bad thing. When the Fire Nation attacks, you want someone to change into their Avatar state. She was more Korra than Aang, but who knew what she was capable of now?I suddenly felt a sense of loss at not having Maurice around to swap pop culture analogies with. It’s all very well having people standing beside you in times of trouble, but it leaves an unsatisfactory feeling when they don’t understand your references.We had a giant Elf with a handful of twats coming at us, so Claire going blue-eyes white dragon was a good thing, even if she had no idea what a blue-eyes white dragon was. Whatever had been behind the wall in the crypt, it had presumably exited via Claire and taken up residence.Normally, that would be a cause for concern. How often has the thing bricked up inside a church been a chill dude who got trapped by accident? No, it was always some abused child whose vengeful spirit was now going to wreak havo
How to Avoid Death on a Daily Basis 241. Sister of No Mercy
“But why?” asked Claire, her hands shaking by her side.Maurice had a ferocious grin on his face, the kind only severe embarrassment can produce. Despite any reasons and justifications he might have, when you get caught doing something you know you shouldn’t do — because all the Pixar movies you’ve ever seen have clearly identified it for you — there’s no way to stop your body from producing all the ‘oh fuck’ hormones it contains, and sending them to your face.“You went inside my mind and took my memories from me.” This was what Claire was really upset about. Not that Maurice had betrayed us and aligned himself with the enemy, but that he had crossed her personal boundaries.“It wasn’t like that,” whispered Maurice. He was keeping his words quiet as though they would hurt less that way, but they filled the silent crypt we were standing in. “I did what I thought was best.”“Best?! You thought lying to me was best?” The surprise of it was wearing off now, and
How to Avoid Death on a Daily Basis 240. Cockblocula
It might have seemed a bit risky to call out Joshaya. He was the person I’d been trying to avoid, after all. If him catching up with me unravelled Maurice’s power, meeting him could kill me. But that was also why it was safe to do so.If this version of Arthur was really Joshaya, then I’d already been in his presence, even told him I was dead, and was still alive.If I was wrong, it wouldn’t change anything, and if I was right, I should already be dead. Unless there was more to this whole being dead business than first appeared.I didn’t need to understand exactly how all this mumbo jumbo worked to realise whoever was holding death over my head as a threat, was also making sure I didn’t die.Not to blow my own horn (every boy’s dream), but I was important enough to keep alive. They needed me. Which gave me some leverage. Until I became so irritating that they gave up on their plans and killed me anyway.Joshaya rose to a vertical position like some un
How to Avoid Death on a Daily Basis 239. Planning for the Future
We headed out of the temple with two of our members in wheelbarrows. Normally this would require some explaining. People don’t just push around unconscious bodies in gardening equipment, unless it’s a stag do that’s going very well.In this case, however, we were aided by the presence of druids, the local religious weirdos who everyone did their best to ignore.Coupled with the fact we were coming out of the temple everyone believed could do no wrong (never fails to amaze me how ready the faithful are to confuse turn the other cheek with turn a blind eye) and they assumed we must have had a good reason to use this particular form of public transportation.The crowds in the square simply parted for us as they went about their business. My own thoughts were preoccupied with the strong suspicion that Arthur, the one in the crypt, was another manifestation of Joshaya. The roleplaying was of a very high standard, and the cosmetic touches were really well done, but there
How to Avoid Death on a Daily Basis 238. Lead Me Not into Temptation
“Destroy? You mean as in kill? You want to kill Peter.” The voice, for all its unsettling menace — hard to come across as anything else when you’re emanating from a stone coffin — had a tinge of genuine shock to it. He was horrified by the prospect of what I’d suggested. “Oh, I couldn’t do that. Absolutely not.”Disappointing.“You don’t control dead people, then? You aren’t a necromancer?”“I told you, I’m a vivimancer.”“I’m sorry, I’ve never heard of that before. What does it mean?”“It means I can heal, I can prolong life. Other people’s and my own. It’s the reason I’m in here. My body was starved of food and air, but my life force abides.”“You aren’t dead?”“I am and I am not.”“And Peter put you here, but you still don’t want to get him back?”“Not by robbing him of life. I mean, I wouldn’t like it if someone did that to me, so why would I do it to someone else?”Someone had done it to him. I didn’t point this
How to Avoid Death on a Daily Basis 237. Hold the Moan
There were four lights in all. Three smaller one, and the big one that seemed to do all the talking. The red balls hanging in the air suggested eyes, but not in a Sauron ‘I see everything’ kind of way, more a HAL ‘Hello, Dave’ kind of way. A harmonised version of Daisy, Daisy could break out at any moment.There’s a rumour, strongly denied, that HAL, in the movie 2001, was meant to represent the firm IBM. If you take a letter away from each of the letters in I-B-M you get H-A-L.But it was never the hardware that was going to be the problem for the future of mankind. If you made the same kind of movie today, the insane AI watching your every move would be something more like Facebook, but you’d face the same problem. You couldn’t use the name without getting sued. You’d have to take a letter away from each of its initials to make up a completely fictitious evil company. FB would become... Oh, wait.“You have returned to set us free,” said the big light. There was a
How to Avoid Death on a Daily Basis 236. Freedom for All
Jenny was not happy. She was the sort of person who prided herself on not being a nag. She presented herself as a supportive partner willing to back me up in whatever retarded idea I came up with. She’d tell me it was retarded, but that wouldn’t stop her having my back.Which is cool. People should only tell you not to do something if they have a better option. One they know works due to experience and wisdom, not because they think it will help them whore karma on Reddit.Under those conditions, hardly anyone would get to tell anyone else what to do. People would make mistakes, of course, but they would be valuable mistakes that would help the person grow and improve.This time, however, Jenny was not in the mood to stand by and allow me to go skipping off into the jaws of danger. Not without her mooring line firmly attached.“If he disconnects himself from me,” said Jenny, “won’t he die? I thought I was the only thing keeping him alive.”“Yes. Techn
