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Holy ** that was tense reading.
Well done you!

That’s not even mention groups like the Court of Owls and League of Assassins with their lazarus pits

The hut, larger on the inside than it is on the outside, filled with shadow that swirled like a thick fog. From the midst of the fog emerged a haunting cackle of a voice

"So..." the voice croaked as a pair of glowing yellow eyes appeared from the darkness. "Quite the group of hopefuls has come to our little home seeking our magicks."

The cloud of shadow cleared slightly and the inhuman silhouette of the speaker was revealed.

"You must know, that everything has a price..." The form said, a gleeful note in its voice.

"Are you prepared to-" the voice cut of unexpectedly as the fog cleared enough to reveal my party standing in the doorway of the hut more clearly to the speaker.

"GRETA! ASTRID!" the voice suddenly called, all croakiness gone. The voice suddenly sounded like any mother you might find in a hundred different cities. "Kiki is back! She brought her friends!"

As one, the other four members of my party turned to look at me as I half huddled in the doorway. Their expressions very clearly expressing incredulous confusion.

Light suddenly flared in the hut as the shadow-fog vanished, revealing the slightly larger than human sized form of Madame Morrigan, first of the swamp witches, and one of my adopted mothers. Her skin was a pale greenish color, and her hair looked like bunched seaweed. The excited grin on her face softened her otherwise rather alarming features.

There was a matched pair of popping noises as two more figures appeared on either side of Morrigan. The one on Morrigan's left was inhumanly tall and veiled from head to toe in thick black cloth. The top of her head brushed the ceiling of the hut, a good seven and a half feet off the ground. While the figure on Morrigan's right was indistinguishable from any middle-aged human woman you could find anywhere.

​

Clegg's eyebrows had risen so high on his craggy forehead that they had nearly vanished underneath his pot helm. And our priest, Vasta, looked like she torn between fainting in fear or exploding with curiosity.

​

I hastily stepped forward into the space between my party and my mothers.

"Everyone," I said, glad my large hat and high collar were hiding the blush creeping up my face. "These are my adopted parents."

​

The hero, Rexin, made a small choking noise at that, which I chose to ignore. I gestured to the tall black robed figure. "This is Nana Gretta." Gretta gave a willowy bow. "Mother Morrigan," I continued, gesturing to the toadlike form in the center, "And Momma Astrid" I finished, indicating the human-looking woman.

​

"Moms," I said, turning towards them. "This is my adventuring party," I pointed at each member as I said their names. "The hero Rexin, our fighter Clegg, Vasta the priest, and Ranger Mordin."

​

There was an awkward silence as both groups looked at each other, with me standing uncomfortably in the center.

​

Thankfully, Astrid broke the silence by sweeping forward. "We're delighted to meet Kiki's friends!" She said, genuinely, beginning to usher my still stunned party towards a side door. "Please, come in, have a cup of tea!" She paused briefly to pull me into a hug as she passed.

​

As my party was mothered out of the room to the kitchen, both Gretta and Morrigan pulled me into their own hugs, though Gretta did pause to speak quietly to me as she did so.

​

"You should have said something when you left." She said in a voice that sounded like a hundred whispers. "We were so worried when you just vanished."

​

Morrigan nodded as she pulled me into another hug. "The letters have been nice, but we miss you so much!" She said, some real croakiness returning to her voice.

​

I returned Mother's hug, feeling my own eyes starting to prick with tears. "I'm sorry." I said in a small voice. "But I didn't think you would let me go be an adventurer."

​

"Certainly not," Nana said as the three of us started for the kitchen too. "You definitely weren't ready to go out into that dangerous world."

​

Mother, her arm still around my shoulder, gave me a sideways look, "Now though," she said, sounding thoughtful. "Now you look every inch the black mage we always knew you could be."

​

I looked down and smiled, glad again for the hat and coat to hide my embarrassed blush.

​

As we entered the kitchen, Momma was pouring tea from an enormous floating teapot into eight mismatched cups as my party sat around the rough wooden table, looking confused.

"The Hero's party?" Momma was saying, sounding truly impressed and proud. "I always knew our Kiki was destined for great things."

​

"I'm still just a Hero candidate Ma'am." Rexin said modestly as Momma swept around the table, offering cakes and biscuits from a tin that shouldn't have been able to hold quite so many baked goods. "We're still only B ranked at the moment, retrieving a potion from..." he hesitated apparently unwilling to say 'from the three great swamp witches' He cleared his throat to cover his hitch and continued "...From you is part of our promotion exam to rank A."

​

"What kind of potion do you need?" Momma said as she swept around the table again, this time catching me in an embrace before I realized what was happening.

Rexin launched into an explanation of how one of the Duke's daughters had fallen ill and needed a special healing draught to recover as my three mothers and I sat ourselves around the table too.

​

I felt myself relaxing as I sipped Momma's excellent tea and took in the indefinable homeliness of this hut. I hadn't realized that I was drifting off until Momma was gently shaking me awake. I glanced at the window, slightly shocked to see that the sun was already setting.

​

"Your friends are going to stay the night." She said, pulling me into another hug as she helped me to my feet. "We'll figure out what kind of potion you need in the morning." She didn't mention what we both knew, that there would still be the matter of cost. The type of magic my mothers practiced involved cost and sacrifice as an integral part of the spellcraft. Even if they didn't inflate the price for us, as they tended to do for others who came seeking boons, the cost of such a potion as we were likely to need would almost certainly not be counted in gold coins.

​

At the door to my old room, Momma paused to give me another hug. "We're so proud of you." She said into my shoulder. I was vaguely surprised to find that I had grown taller than her while I was away.

​

As Momma began to pull away, didn't let go of the hug immediately. "I've missed you Momma," I said, trying valiantly not to start crying "But I can't stay, the party needs me."

​

"I know sweetie," Momma said, sounding slightly tearful herself. "Just be careful, and know you'll always have a place here with us if you need it."

Dubious food intensifies.

Sidenote my friend is apparently one of those monsters who paraglided right off the Plateau and rushed Ganon in his underwear with a pot lid and a spoon. Pause menu + apple + apple + apple + apple....

I sigh and put down the scroll.

Time to get ready.

This is the most fulfilling, but also the heart-rendering part of my job.

The kid who turns up in a bit doesn’t look a day older than 7, although I know he is 10. His frail body can barely hold up his oversized bald head.

Also, he is dressed in the most ridiculously colourful attire ever.

“Come out, Demolisher!” he shouts, with a confidence only little kids have.

I step out, dressed in my best.

“Prepare to meet your doom, hero! Tell me your name, so that I can put it next to your skull in the hall of the vanquished!” I thunder.

“I am called Aggo-prefect, and I will subjugate you and rid the world of your evil!” responds the little boy.

I take to the sky, sending out bolts of energy at the boy while taking care not to actually hit him.

The boy dodges (or thinks he does), and fires back at me with his nerf gun.

I pull the darts towards me using tractor waves (at this range they would never even come close to me otherwise), and make a show of dodging them.

This goes on for a while.

Finally, when the boy is down to his last few darts, I let one of them hit me.

I make a show of flailing about while I fall to the ground.

“Curses on you, Aggo-prefect! Not even the Gods can defeat the Demolisher!”

The little boy walks upto me, with great effort. He says, softly: “But I have defeated you.”

He takes out a pink coloured plastic lightsaber, a cheap thing, and pokes me in my ribs.

I stop moving and close my eyes.

Six weeks later, I receive a letter.

“Mr. Demolisher,

Jason passed away peacefully in his sleep last night. For the last six weeks, he couldn’t shut up how he was a superhero who defeated The Demolisher!

We couldn’t thank you and the Make-a-wish foundation enough for bringing such joy to our little boy in his last days.

Gordon and Bella”

I sigh. I have been lying low since the encounter with Jason, with no public appearances. All so that Jason can really believe he has defeated a supervillain.

I get up to make myself some coffee and get ready to make a public appearance. Maybe today I’ll rob a bank.

Being a supervillain does not come cheap.

Man never heard of Shaggy 😔

Thank you. I tend to like the oddball/creepy ones!

Tarare is that you?

Part 2 please

That’s pretty much my biggest problem with religion, the involuntary nature of belief. I see everyone arguing about all kinds of things during debates on religion and atheism, but no one seems to address the fact that most religions claim their deity is fair and good and just, while also holding that the most fundamental part of belonging to that religion is belief in their deity, which absolutely no one can control.

Kothar: Darth Vader's 'Nooooo!'

Hero: Murloc gargle, while pulling a live hog out of their pack.

For 12 months butcher did a tweet

So uh.. (nicely) part two please?

"Well duh, it was so easy!"

"Still, can't believe it worked" the other janitor replied, dumping another crate of DVDs in the incinerator.

"So all they had to do was register a trademark on the scaly tosser, use it to make a movie so shitty everyone promptly forgot it even existed, and then just send a C&D to the owner of that website to take the page down. And we were throwing it into black holes and stuff."

"And the Sun. Don't forget that time with the Sun."

"Man, it sounds so stupid in hindsight."

"Speaking of which, did you actually watch the thing?"

"Yeah, they screened it at the cafeteria in Site 18 once. It's bad. Like, BAD bad. Makes Shark Exorcist look like Oscar bait by comparison. Half of the personnel just walked out halfway through."

His colleague burst out in a fit of laughter.

"What's so funny?"

"I just realized, if we want to keep the rights we'll have to make another one in a few decades."

Let me tell you about my favorite case ever.

These people were the worst. Whole rich ass family went down on their luxury yacht somewhere off the coast of Malibu.These people. Quite deserving of the tortures of hell. Sweatshop owners. Human exploiters. Republicans. And don't even get me started on their personal lives.

Anyway they were filthy rich and imagined themselves tasteful, but in fact they had no taste whatsoever. Which is to say they had very bad taste, But could occasionally pay someone with taste to provide them with certain kinds of advice. I promise, it's relevant.

You see what they demanded was high society. They wanted a whole bunch of rich asshole friends to socialize with. And they wanted everyone. To have "immaculate, elegant" taste and style.

You know. Like they imagined that they had.

So. For once I made something exactly to order. Exactly. A whole glimmering set of stylish erudite jet setters. Power brokers with money and taste. For my victims to pal around with.

And I'm sure you can predict what happened. They found themselves wildly inadequate. They found their own dilettante level of exploration of art and taste and culture to be an embarrassment. They were shunned from this group they created for their enjoyment. Forever humiliated. Forever outcast.

They have spent decades plotting and scheming, trying to regain entry into the popular social group. So far they have failed every time.

Honestly, with a few tweaks I feel like I could license this one to HBO. Because they are STILL going at it. I will admit, I check in on this one more than the job requires.

Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of work I've done here that I'm very proud of. But this one. Chef's kiss!

Love this take 👏🏼👏🏼

Huh, so like the concept of Djinn? "You can make any wish but all that you'd wished will turn to hell"?

I want Stephen Merchant to read me this story.

This is just what I needed to read! What a wonderfully happy story to think of and share!

You had me early on. And then you made my heart stop and lose my breath. Full sincerity and honesty. I’ve never had a reaction like this to a story here.

Edit: A word

pretty much what Kimuru does

gotta loot the villain as an object to consume them

turns out Satan was Santa all along

I can sorta hear stephen fry narrate this in a pratchett/gaiman style of book. Well done