November 23, 1973 – Total multiversal war!!!!!!

I haven’t met many Spanish speakers in Madripoor, but enough that it seemed a little odd.  Dan (that’s the news guy) explained (by way of pointy hair translator) that Madripoor is a place where communists like to hang out, so there’s a decent contingent of Germans and South Americans in the mix.  Although, with that having been said, my hostess is from the Caribbean states rather than south of the equator.   

Said hostess looks like she’s ancient but I swear she said something that made me think she’s “only” in her fifties.  If she is (in her fifties) she’s had one hell of a hard life to end up looking like that.  I guess raising four sons by yourself could do that to you, before you even get what seems to be a variable number of grandkids in the mix.  I swear as soon as I felt like I had them all identified, a couple more kids would run through the place.  Camila and her boys took over an old hotel from its previous drug dealer owners (by shooting them) and converted half the place into greenhouses for a variety of exotic intoxicants they grow and sell (they are manufacturers not dealers), a quarter into living spaces for them, and a quarter into “safehouses” for people like me.  People with broken limbs and enemies.   

A couple different doctors came to see me while I was laid up at Camila’s.  One was clearly drunk enough that he had trouble standing up.  One I’m pretty sure is more versed in the care and maintenance of sex workers than tending to fractures.  And one of them I’m convinced was a veterinarian.  Luckily (for me), a broken arm and a sprained ankle are pretty basic medical scenarios.  I don’t know how long those things should take to heal normally but I was basically fine after three weeks.  Which seems quick.  Not fast enough to be all that useful, but maybe a minor super power?  Hard to say.  My life before didn’t involve a lot of injuries so I can’t compare. 

A bomb went off outside the “safehouse” at one point, followed by gunfire, and I’m pretty sure a flying guy, but Camila assured me that it wasn’t someone trying to kill me, it was related to something else.  Which was not reassuring in the slightest, on account of bombs being notoriously indiscriminate about who they kill.  Camila was harping at me the entire time about the amount of food I was consuming.  What did she want from me?  You need proper nutrition to heal.  And my proper nutrition is a lot.

In return for my story about the fight (such as it was) with Mr. X, Dan and his spiny-haired gal Friday found Blue and Martialla for me.  While I was out front with the Red Rocket, those two knuckleheads claimed they were chasing after the Shadow Lord assassin and the next thing they know, they’re on Callisto, Jupiter’s moon, where an “alien with a big head” force them to fight against other “champions” from around the galaxy to determine the ultimate fate of good and evil in the universe.  They didn’t think it was very funny when I asked which side they were on.  The whole story is bullshit anyway.  I’m sure they just got lost or something.  Probably Martialla got her head trapped in a fisherman’s net and had to marry him by the laws of the sea.   

They claimed once they had saved the universe by defeating a variety of colorful aliens and super people (many others were killed, they claim) in a flash they were back where they had disappeared from and it was several days later.  They said they were “searching high and low” for me when Dan found them.  I’m sure they were just lazing about. 

I can tell this moon battle thing is going to be annoying.  I just know they’re going to keep bringing it up like a stupid inside joke.  So you traveled to outerspace and battled the omniversal forces of evil for the fate of all life that exists and ever will exist.  I charted three times and you don’t hear me winging on about it.  I tell you, those two get on my last nerve.

When I asked them about Elvis, they looked confused.  They said he was dead.  I told them when I went back into the clinic, nobody was there so I assumed he went with them.  They said that LBK was with them but Elvis had already been killed by the assassin, which is why they were chasing him.  Or her.  Or it.  They claimed the assassin was a shapeshifter.   

They didn’t know what could have happened to the body.  Up until that point, I hadn’t really considered that Elvis might be dead.  As soon as I found out, I had Blue help me hobble to his grandmother’s house to ask if she had seen him.  When she said that she hadn’t, I told her what happened.  She was pretty blasé about it.  She said that she was sure he was fine.  She said that Elvis was always getting into one scrape or another and he might disappear for a few days but he always turned up.  I tried to impress upon her that was unlikely to be the case this time, that he was most likely gone, but she said that without a body she wasn’t going to worry about it.  It was a little surreal. 

So we’re basically back to square zero, only now we don’t have a robot-suit to sell for millions.  Our lack of forward momentum is starting to put me off my feed (not really – I’m eating more than ever – it’s an expression you see).  On top of that, Camila presented me with a large bill for services rendered.  I thought it was more of a charity type thing.  It was not.  The “good” news is that she’s willing to let us work it off.   

Things are going great.   

I want to say that what’s happening to me is not fair, but my grandma told me that only children complain about fairness.  She said (about fairness) “Death is the only thing that’s fair. Everybody dies, and everybody stays dead the same amount of time, forever.”