Take Away the Saints

Moon Rise : Drink 5 || L.L. Montez

"What is it?" Teeno asked straight, his features completely void of the revulsion he felt rolling in the pit of his stomach.

"Hyakan guts. You know the Hyakan, right? They're a drone colony similar to the Xani, but not so hideous. That's what she'd tried to put in me. She should have put me under. It got botched; didn't take so well. I'm still here, disobedient and kicking.

"But I have to say, I was pretty complacent for a while. I was an empty shell.

"By the way, did you know if you take off the breastplates of the Gilded, you'd find the same thing as me? I mean, far prettier. Grandel did a much better job when his subject wasn't awake and thrashing around.

"I can't tell you how long I wandered Olympi like a shadow.

"There was a little bit of my old self in me that was willing to make a small plan — to visit her and see if being in her arms would bring back something good and familiar.

"I stood by her door for so long, waiting for her to open it. Eventually, she did.

"At her side was a man. A beautiful man with dark skin and a large, thick beard. His hair fell in long curls down his back and his heavy whiskers went to the middle of his naked chest. He was beautiful. His chest was so broad and tight, I felt the first stirrings of an old emotion. Figures, the first thing I'd feel again would be lust.

"But watching them touch, her fingers on him and his flat palm on her, a new emotion came bursting through the fogginess like a solar flare: rabid jealousy.

"I needed to remind her who I was. That I was Juno's Moon and I needed to remind her what I'd done to make her happy.

"From somewhere in the most perverted depths of my broken mind, I remembered one of our first conversations.

"'I'll do it,' I said.

"She narrowed her eyes at me, confused.

"'I'll do it. I'll become a god for you,' I was serious. Dead serious.

"'You will?' she questioned, raising a finger to lift my chin to meet her eyes.

"'For you, Juno, I will.' I couldn't believe the words as they came out of my mouth, but there they were.

"She smiled at me again for the first time in so long. Warmth began to inch through my blood again, vessel by vessel. I needed more of this feeling. I needed to experience this again - I had to please her.

"This operation was beyond Grandel's capability. So we went to the source — to the disgusting orange bane of the universe. We went to Xanicut.

"I didn't know any specifics, but I knew what Juno had said before. This was a process to under-go if a desperate man wanted to become a god and he had nothing left to lose. My resume was perfect. I fit all the criteria.

"I hate the Xani and I will for the rest of my life. Their spindly six-legged crab-walk and their sour smell and the sight of their flaky skin, it's vile. The shapeless, orange form they take over their black mechanics, it's sickening. Those gelatinous blobs still come to me when my mind has nothing else to occupy it. I'm lucky I don't sleep anymore or I bet those shits would pop up in my dreams too.

"They put me under. For how long, I'm not sure, but I was there a while. Juno had left me in their care.

"From what I gather, they took out each bone in my body and replaced it with their mechanics. That whir you hear when I step up? That's what I've got going on underneath this vulgar patch-work quilt. That's what she did to me to make me a god. She made me half machine."