Every strike of the axe against the Black
Forest trees sent a shiver of rage up and down Saito Kabaka’s
spine. The gigantic lumberjack’s swings created the deepest wooshing noises and
seemed capable of tearing off a person’s head with one slice. But instead of
human heads, the massive battleaxe chipped away quickly and efficiently at the
thick redwoods. Saito watched from the bushes with a contorted frown, dying on
the inside with every chop. This was ecocide. This was murder. The lumberjack
wasn’t just chopping down trees; he was violating the spirits of this very
forest.
After a while of nausea and gritted teeth, Saito couldn’t
stand idly by any longer. When the elf samurai chucked one of his daggers, he
forgot instantly that this man-beast was twice his size and ten times as
lethal. The dagger missed its mark, but the flannel shirt and jeans wearing
titan stumbled back a few paces and sucked in air at a rapid cadence. Saito’s
fiery eyes bore a hole through the giant’s nervous baby blues. Decked out in
golden leather armor, donning a glowing green crown of plant roots, and drawing
his slender katana, the forest guardian made his presence and fury known.
“I don’t intrude into your home and eat your food. I don’t
laze on your bed and fuck your wife. I don’t snatch your valuables from
underneath your booger-encrusted schnoz. So why then do you believe it’s
acceptable to come to my home and cut down my trees?” asked Saito while
pointing his blade at the lumberjack. He slashed at the air and continued his
slithery oratory with, “This forest is not your urban dystopia. It doesn’t
exist so that you could build fancy hotels and burger joints for overfed human
scumbags! Take that piece of shit you call a weapon and leave this place before
I rip your intestines out and lynch you with them from the same tree you tried
to cut down!”
The baldheaded beast of a man’s eyes darted frantically in
every direction while cold sweat poured down his forehead. And then the shtick
was over when he laughed his ass off and slapped his thick knees with an
echoing thud. “Are you kidding me? A teeny tiny elf like you is going to lynch
me with my own intestines? Goddamn, you’re a funny motherfucker!” The yuks
poured out of his mouth like verbal diarrhea as he struggled to say, “Listen,
man: that environmental bullshit is overrated. Take off that stupid hat; it
looks fucking ridiculous on you! You might as well walk around with a salad
bowl on your head!”
The lumberjack’s chuckle-filled tirade was cut off by a
flying shuriken that narrowly missed his ear. But instead of feigning fear
again, he dropped his axe and gave an even less sincere double slap on his
cheeks with a wide open mouth.
“Perfect timing, Tifa, as usual,” smiled Saito. Floating
down to the dirt like a feather was the silken dress wearing, golden haired
female elf counterpart Tifa Croft, armed with claw bracers around her wrists
and wearing a plant root crown like her fellow guardian. The two of them shared
a peck on the lips much to the overdramatic coughing dismay of the seven-foot
lumberjack.
“You guys actually fuck in this forest?” the man giant
asked. “Is that how these trees grow, by the two of you sprinkling your seeds
all over the ground?”
Tifa folded her arms and treated the lumberjack to a
ball-shrinking death stare. “You have the sense of humor of a fucking five year
old and probably the intelligence of one too. Saito here is the King of Elves
and Trees and I am his Queen. Respect the crowns, you ignorant little shit!”
The lumberjack waved his arm dismissively and scoffed,
“Well, I see a whole lot of trees out here, but very many elves, so I guess
this ugly ass forest could do with some urban development.” He heaved his axe
in the air and pointed at various parts of the forest with his weapon. “We can
put a Mickey D’s over there, a Chicas Bonitas over there, and maybe a school
all the way over there. You liberal whack jobs like schools, right?”
Saito swung his katana in the air and slithered, “And what
do you plan on teaching this new generation of ignoramuses: how to eat a whole
bucket of fried chicken in less than thirty seconds? Maybe that’s something you
can teach the elves of this forest, who will be here sooner than you think.”
“You’d better hope those little pointy-eared fags run for
the hills,” smirked the lumberjack while leaning his face into Saito’s. “I
wasn’t planning on committing genocide today, but I just might change my mind
if the two of you don’t fuck off and leave me to my work. I’m getting a lot of
money for this project and I’ll be damned if you two hippies rip it away from
me and my family! Remember the name of Rudiger Seran, but fuck it, you two are
going to call me Daddy by the time I’m done with you!”
Rudiger threw the first swing of his axe and would have
covered the whole forest in blood if Saito and Tifa didn’t duck out of the way
in time. The two elves rolled and flipped their way out of every slash that the
giant threw. They bounced off of trees hand in hand and found refuge at the top
branches. They smiled down upon Rudiger while the lumberjack shouted, “You two
cowards better get your asses down here and fight me before I cut this fucker
down!”
Saito whispered in Tifa’s pointy ear, “You’ve got the
supplies up here right?”
The lovely assassin brushed her hair away and pulled several
pinecones out of an otherwise empty bird nest. She grinned, “It wouldn’t be the
same without them.” With a wink, a nod, and a kiss, Tifa threw one of the
pinecones down upon an unsuspecting Rudiger. The biomass exploded in a flash
bang upon making contact with Mr. Seran’s thick skull. The giant hopped and
head-banged in pain while belting every swear word known in the English
language.
“You’re the best queen a man could ask for,” grinned Saito
as he and Tifa threw more flash bang pinecones down upon their assailant.
Rudiger tried to smack some of them away like he was playing baseball and
managed to hit a few homers out in the distance. Others bounced off of his
massive arms and legs while popping like firecrackers. The mighty Seran had
struck out and his body ached with redness and scars. The King and Queen hugged
each other and laughed like children.
Bruised skin wasn’t the only reason Rudiger was seeing red.
He growled through clenched teeth and smacked himself on the cheek so many
times he actually bled. His rage became evident in the way he swung his axe at
the tree, ripping larger chunks out of the redwood and creating deeper wooshing
noises. “Uh-oh!” Tifa quipped while she and Saito held hands and leapt to the
next tree just in time for Rudiger’s ecocidal victim to crash to the ground.
Saito’s heart pounded in his chest like a war drum and the
cold wetness of Tifa’s hand brought chills racing through his own body. She
shook slightly and prompted the king to ask, “Are you okay, my love?”
“I…I think so,” Tifa stuttered before the branch underneath
her cracked and crunched, causing her to drop to the forest ground with a
resounding thud Saito tried to hold out
his hand and grab her, but all he could do was yell, “No!” as his wife crashed
and burned. She lied there in the dirt breathing heavily and coughing up a
geyser of blood.
Rudiger hung his battleaxe over his shoulder and strutted
around Tifa with a shit-eating grin. “I guess that vegan diet isn’t helping you
lose enough weight. And people call me a fat ass!” joked the lumberjack while
slapping his knee and chuckling again.
Watching Rudiger Seran belittle his wife clouded Saito’s
mind with scathing, bloody thoughts. As defenseless as she was, she still threw
her claws around in the air hoping to hit something. Her weakness multiplied
when Rudiger stomped on Tifa’s hand and crunched it so that it sounded more
violent than when he whacked down the tree. Her screams of agony and shame
echoed throughout the forest and caused nearby birds to fly away in fear. She
tried to slash Rudiger’s thick ankles with her other claw, but that got stomped
on too until there was just a bloody heap underneath his work boots.
Saito tried to remain calm and wait for his perfect
opportunity to stealthily strike. But Tifa’s screams filled his gut with
nuclear heat. Rudiger’s arrogant laughter filled his nerves with flaming
gasoline. The more his heart pumped diesel, the more he forgot about the
importance of his samurai training. With katana firmly grasped in both hands,
he screamed like a demon and leapt on top of Rudiger with the intent to slash
him in two vertically.
Saito could feel the ground hurtling at him at a million
miles per hour. The landing was going to break his ankles, but not nearly as
badly as he was going to break every bone in Rudiger’s body. And then the
lumberjack swung his axe and snapped Saito in two from the waist down. The elf
samurai could hear his wife roaring his name in pain as his vision went black
and his wrecked body bounced off the tree with a deafening splat.
Even as what was left of him slid slowly and slimily down
the tree, he could recall Rudiger asking in a mocking tone where all of the
elves were at. The now pouring rain soothed Saito’s burning wounds, but it was
already too late for the King of Elves and Trees.
The plant root crown slipped off of his sloppy skull and
buried itself into the earth below. The rain poured down violently enough to
represent the emotions of Mother Nature herself. She continued to weep as
Rudiger thoughtlessly cut down more and more of her trees with vicious whacks
while mocking her with cries of, “Where are your elves now, bitch?!” Tears of
ecocidal agony turned into monsoons and floods. The crowns formerly worn by
Tifa and Saito were drenched with nutrition as they began to take root
underneath the forest.
The more Rudiger laughed his ass off, the more the roots
spread across the ground. Even in the chilling rain, the arrogant giant chopped
and chopped like his paycheck was that important too him. Trees crashed to the
earth with sickening pounds, so much so that Rudiger was almost done with his
work. But as he jokingly wiped away forehead sweat, he took a look around him
and saw that his work was only just beginning.
“What the fuck?” he whispered as the tree stumps grew even
more beautiful plants. Not redwoods, not roses, not berry-covered bushes, but
the one species Rudiger kept asking for this entire time. Ask and ye shall
receive in the form of naked green-skinned elves with blistering red eyes and
thorn-covered swords. One by one they blossomed from the stumps and groaned
like an army of zombies. Rudiger dropped his axe and cowered on the soaked
ground, shivering for reasons other than the temperature.
The pathetic display did nothing to back off the hungry doppelganger
elves as they chanted in monstrous unison, “You will feed us! You will feed us!
You will feed us!” They closer they marched, the brighter their neon red eyes
glowed and the more Rudiger shivered and quaked in his clumsy body. And then,
the King and Queen’s beloved army of avengers dined upon the giant’s flesh like
the entire menu at one of the lumberjack’s planned Mickey D’s. Rudiger’s flesh
tasted more delicious than chocolate cake, meatier than a twenty-pound steak,
and juicier than a bottle of Ocean Spray. So much for that vegan diet that Tifa
Croft always enjoyed.
