Nightmare was sitting cross-legged atop a barrel, the wind blowing in his hair. He raised a hand and grabbed a fistful of dust, disturbed by the wind, and smelled it.
"It is a fine day to be hunting monsters," he said.
Nightmare’s crew-mates, Thernz and the Afrodisiac, bantered near the stern.
With a huge screech echoing for miles, Nightmare caught the silhouette of a colossal creature. Resembling a mountain range wading through the hot desert sand, the shadow boasted two peculiar spires, undoubtedly the famed tusks of a Jhen Mohran.
Gemmy Hurt's shrill voice answered the Jhen Mohran's call: "Slammers and rammers, here we present to you today the finest in WHAMESCO entertainment! First, we have the famed, the fabulous, Nightmare, current WHAMESCO Hardcore Champion for three weeks, four days, and seventeen hours! The world record! Up against — !"
Nightmare grinned as the sails of his sand sailer rustled loudly. They arrived, Nightmare thought to himself. A sand galleon with two smaller frigates at its side erupted from the sands behind him. Seated on top of the sand galleon's mast were the chiseled Dag Infinite and Basil Gorgeous. The mast itself consisted of his various servants.
In the other frigates were other proud members from the The League of Bodacious Bodybuilders: Hefty McRiled, Mike Jam, Baxter Ramms, and the WHAMESCO traitor, Terry Boulder…
As Dag's galleon began to sway in front of Nightmare's vessel, Dag laughed and said, "What was that? Are you talking to my ass? I can't hear with my ass!"
Nightmare was not talking. Gemmy Hurt, however, was continuing to list the dozens of names that Nightmare’s team was up against.
Nightmare pointed to Dag Infinite with his thumb while gesturing inquiringly to Thernz. Thernz shrugged, but then the Jhen Mohran shrugged even harder, exploding out from underneath the sands, bellowing enormously.
"But, soft! what fight through yonder desert breaks?? A Jhen Mohran!"
He jumped, still in a sitting position, and sliced through the air as if he were the wind itself. With a swift movement, Nightmare drew his scimitar and attempted to attack, but immediately aerially backflipped, noticing a Giga Dracula Hole ahead of the Jhen. The Jhen, in its frenzy, went plummeting into the hole.
Dag and Basil's galleon was still in front, and struggled to turn. As it began to tip into the vortex of Dracula sand, Dag cried out, "Hold on tight!" Unfortunately for him, having a mast constructed of men meant that holding onto the mast was akin to holding onto a man holding onto a man holding onto a man, and so forth. The grip strength required for the first gripper would be beyond reckoning. This gripper, a strongman known for his carrying capacity, had a grip power of zero. In seconds, his grip broke, sending the mast of men into a spiraling mass of madness.
The sight of Dag and his men being swept from the collapsing galleon signaled applause from the audience. To them, this was another act, though perhaps it was over-selling the whole thing. Nevertheless, to see the heels in this event scattered to the winds aroused much delight.
A panicking Basil, seeking to foot himself from death, vaulted onto the deck of the ship and broke it in half. As splinters swerved through the air, Dag and his men were impaled by their pride, the galleon — a bloody maiden voyage, to be sure.
On the other side of the madness, Nightmare and his crew of two were struggling fiercely to keep their sand sailer from veering into the Giga Dracula Hole. The crowd's cheers empowered them, and in a moment of excitement, Nightmare jumped out and tried to divert the sand sailer's course by hand. This he accomplished by lifting the sand sailer and throwing it two hundred miles away, just on the edge of the giga quicksand. The Afrodisiac's giant afro helped to make this a soft landing.
But where was Nightmare now? Dag and Basil looked on in delight as they saw Nightmare, who had hurled his ship and crew away to safety (much to their chagrin), now struggling to outrun the giga quicksand. They didn't have much time to keep looking on, however, as the quicksand's threat engulfed them as well. Yet their worries and struggles were seemingly unfounded, as the quicksand suddenly stopped being so quick, and turned into normal sand.
Cries of "What the hell just happened?" and "Go on with the show!" were abuzz among the audience. Gemmy Hurt tried to pacify them with his masterful commentary, but even that didn't do much to stave their anger.
In minutes, it appeared as if Basil, Dag, and Nightmare had all vanished. The mysterious Giga Dracula Hole became covered in an instant. Thernz and the Afrodisiac looked at each other in horror. Thernz blurted, “Nightmare hasn’t updated his will in ages!”
The surviving frigates from Dag and Basil’s team stayed stuck in the sand, and the sand sailors crawled out of their immobile vessels with heavy hearts, sorrow, and a taste for vengeance. As the commotion in the audience heated up, Thernz and the Afrodisiac rummaged through the captain’s quarters for tools to dig through the desert. Meanwhile, Dag’s men sleuthed through the sandy wasteland, scimitars in hand…
Thernz and the Afrodisiac were almost ready to go, when Thernz held the Afrodisiac back for a second. “Wait,” he said. “I sense something…ominous.” They looked on as Dag’s men went closer and closer to the site of Dag and co.’s disappearance. “Looks like you were imagining things,” the Afrodisiac chuckled. Just as he said that, an enormous creature erupted from beneath the sands, devouring Dag’s men. The crowd went wild with cheers. At first, the creature seemed unrecognisable to those who were present, but those with keen eyes, such as Gemmy Hurt, Thernz and the Afrodisiac, noticed it was the very same Jhen Mohran that plummeted into the hole — only much different now. Much more … Satanic!
Now dubbed the Satan Mohran, the creature went towards the crowd and decimated everyone. Well worth the admission price, eh? The WHAMESCO officials were in a panic, and soon it devoured them, too (except Gemmy Hurt (too important to be devoured flippantly)). The Satan Mohran left the area, and as soon as it did, Thernz and the Afrodisiac rushed to the site it emerged from. Sure enough, there they found the three men who had vanished, all wounded and infected by the Satan Virus.
“This is serious…” Thernz muttered, coming to Nightmare’s aid. “The Satan virus is such a rarity that apothecaries haven’t had the chance to examine it in isolated study. There’s no known cure.”
“What does this Satan virus do?” asked the Aphrodisiac.
“These men are susceptible to becoming the hosts of Satan.” Thernz adjusted Nightmare’s turban. “In other words, they become the ultimate losers [ga].”
Thernz began to rub ointment and glutinous rice onto Nightmare’s chest and suggested to the Afrodisiac to do the same to the other two fallen men.
The Afrodisiac shrugged. “Can’t be that bad. Peklo and Satan are practically twins.” The insult awoke Nightmare: in a sudden jolt, he grabbed the Afrodisiac by his afro. With a harsh glare in his eyes, Nightmare said, “That’s what they said about Mega Demonz…” Nightmare slumped into the Afrodisiac’s arms, unconscious.
Thernz, having examined Dag and Basil, said, “The virus hasn’t spread far yet, but it’s only a matter of days before the virus consumes them, and they become extensions of Satan’s psyche. In no time, they’ll start doing the most immoral of things: snacking on the couch, emitting intense flatulence… that sort of thing.”
The Afrodisiac answered, “Let’s carry them back to town and get a better sense of what to do there.”
In the town, the three men were resting soundly in the inn, while Thernz and the Afrodisiac played a game of shogi.
“Do you think Satan is really evil?” the Afrodisiac asked, moving a piece.
“So they say,” Thernz said, “but we can’t be certain until we meet Satan himself. Maybe all these stories are made up.”
“No,” a third voice said. It was Nightmare. He slowly entered the room and slumped into a chair. “He really is evil,” he continued, tiredly. “I saw it… Down there, I felt it in my bones. He was there, but in my resistance, I managed to become enlightened as to what the cure of the Satan Virus is.”
Thernz and the Afrodisiac became wide-eyed. “Then, what is it?” Thernz said.
“We must defeat the Satan Mohran," Nightmare answered. "It holds an unusual concentration of Satan. It’s almost as if he’s Satan himself, but even more Satan than Satan…!”
“So that’s why no one was able to truly identify the cure… The cure was to kill Satan all along!” Thernz said. Sweat drops of excitement formed on his temple.
“Precisely.” Nightmare sat up straight. “A perfect opportunity has shown itself: to kill a Satan who is not Satan. This is possible, and we can do it. But we only have a short time left, and I will need all the rest I can get.”
“Rest easy.” Thernz got up and put a hand on Nightmare's shoulder. "My guillinggao will rejuvenate you in time for the battle.”
“I win, by the way,” the Afrodisiac said.
They then went to bed. Yet Dag and Basil were missing…
That night, at the League of Bodacious Bodybuilder’s Certain Country headquarters, Dag and Basil sat themselves near a smoldering bonfire of jaggi carcasses in the Slam Cave. Basil, with his illuminated text, The Bonner Guide to Immanent Bonners, stretched his hand out to Dag. “This Satan virus is exactly what we needed.”
Dag was covered in a dozen flowered blankets. “Why?”
“This is our chance to make Satan pay his membership fees. Using the infected as a medium to communicate with Satan, we can coerce that rascally devil into giving what’s rightfully the League’s treasury’s.”
Dag cried, “Satan would never pay!”
Basil held a finger up. “That is correct to an extent. Satan would never pay…” Basil grinned, “…with his own money.”
“Find a way to make that man, Nightmare, remain infected," Dag implored. "But not us. I don’t want to end up paying for someone else, especially Satan.”
“Oh, I have something…” Basil answered.
Both howled deep into the night, inciting indictments from a quarter of the town.
The next morning, Thernz begrudgingly paid the fee for Basil and Dag’s dormant room.
“Are you feeling fine?” the Afrodisiac asked.
“Yes, it looks like all I needed was a good night’s rest,” Nightmare said, “but there’s no more time for rest and rejuvenation. We must track the Satan Mohran.”
The trio went out into the sunlight, set the sails on their sand sailer, and searched the great desert for hours on end. But they could not find the Satan Mohran, despite Nightmare’s expertise in tracking monsters.
“This is queer…” Nightmare said. “I have never been met with failure before. Not since I was an amateur at this, anyway. Could it be that the Satan Mohran cannot be tracked? Or could it be … could it be that it’s not in the desert anymore?”
“That’s not possible,” the Afrodisiac chimed in. “We’ve hunted so many Jhen Mohra—”
“Exactly,” Nightmare interrupted, “we’ve hunted Jhen Mohrans before. But not Satan Mohrans. I have a feeling that thing is far, far away from here now. Perhaps it is attracted to something. Something evil, for example … ”
“Something raw and adult … ” the Afrodisiac said.
“A kindred spirit, maybe?” Thernz added.
“A similar creature … ” Nightmare trailed off.
The three paused for a moment.
“Peklo!” each one exclaimed.
In the halls of Resonacia, Peklo was getting drunk on mead. Wait — who are we kidding? Peklo was and is impervious to the effects of alcohol. With every step he took, the world around him grew colder by a few parsecs. It was a perfectly normal day in Resonacia. Peklo's mood was at an all time low, and the grim around him took physical form as a dark mist. He looked out a window, and on the horizon saw a moving, writhing mass. It was red, black, and fiery, as if it had arrived from hell. The sight was not unfamiliar to Peklo, so he only shrugged and went back to drinking mead and harassing newcomers (inadvertently).
“What’s wrong, buddy?” the Successor approached him, boldly stepping into his grim aura (because he was practically invincible). Peklo only grunted in response. “Ha-ha-ha! Still the same old Peklo, huh?” Successor smiled. As he turned around to go back, his eye caught the flaming, hellish mass. It was now closer, and moving towards Resonacia at a tremendous speed for something of its size. Successor, too, just shook his head, smiled, and went off to play on his guitar.
As the beast tore through Finland, farms, goblins, and entire encampments blew into the air. Trees were ripped straight from the ground and the lingering undead who had retreated underground were tossed into the air. Nightmare, the Afrodisiac, and Thernz approached Resonacia from air. From their slam gliders, they witnessed the swath of destruction and shrugged.
However, upon sighting a fragment of a Pumpatron statue fling towards the group at the speed of Mach 100, Nightmare rose atop his glider to surf on it. He smashed the religious projectile with his scimitar back to the ground, and exclaimed, “This must be the work of the Satan Mohran!”
The trio swooped down to the blazed ground. Nightmare sniffed the dirt, then pounded it with his fist. “A level of violence unparalleled is happening underground. My fist can feel the kindredship. A lust for killing, not unlike my own,” he said, scooping out the brains of a nearby hobgoblin.
“That’s something that can only be cultivated in Certain Country,” Thernz added, giving the last rites to the decapitated hobgoblin.
The ground burst — an insignia emblazoned with the letters "DAG" were all the three men could see until the floor beneath them began to give way as well. Dag Infinite riding at the very top of a bestial drilling machine laughed at the top of his lungs. Coincidentally, the machine began to bellow in Dag’s voice as well.
“What an ungainly sight,” Nightmare muttered as the three tumbled down into the hellhole dug by Dag. Although they tried to regain their footing several times, the hole was unrelenting and became bigger with every attempt. Finally, they fell down into what they felt was like Hell itself (it was actually Hell’s entrance).
“Good evening, people! Welcome to the show!” Dag said, flexing a guitar. Basil was seated atop a throne on a nearby cliff.
“This is…jigoku da yo?!” Thernz exclaimed.
“No, you fool. We are far from jigoku itself. No…we are only at the entrance.” Basil gestured to Dag. Dag, with his signature smile, pulled on a rope and a giga Hell cage dropped on the trio, trapping them.
“Now stay calm,” Basil said. “We are only here to negotiate with you.”
“By treating us like animals,” the Afrodisiac retorted. “Okay.”
“Do not test my patience, hairdo man. You are not qualified to make deals with me!” Basil bellowed.
“I’m more qualified than qualified, nerd,” the Afrodisiac said.
Basil gestured to Dag, and Dag released a Hell Moser. The (literally) infernal machine made its way through the cage’s holes swiftly, surely, and pounced upon the Afrodisiac. After a short struggle, the Afrodisiac strangled the Hell Moser and held its corpse by the cable triumphantly, though with a little less hair than before.
“Really? That’s the best you can do?” he sang.
Basil slammed a fist on his throne, but swallowed his anger. “Never mind that,” he snapped. “Let’s go on with the negotiations, shall we?”
“You want to kill Satan, a member of OUR club,” Basil continued. “I believe a bit of equivalent exchange is required in this matter if you wish for peaceful relations to continue between the League and WHAMESCO.”
“Peaceful?! You’ve destroyed countless villages here in the past hour!” the Afrodisiac yelled.
Dag twitched. “Those aren’t under the jurisdiction of WHAMESCO, you oaf."
“What are you suggesting?” Nightmare asked. “Do you want to kill me after I kill Satan?”
Basil laughed, “No, I want you to kill …” Basil pointed to himself and DAG. “… the largest heels in WHAMESCO history. Us! End the greatest feud in WHAMESCO’s lifetime, and end WHAMESCO itself!”
Dag flexed his arms. “Or are you too afraid to be killed yourself?”
Thernz, bewildered, said, “They want you to kill them? The end of a single feud won’t end WHAMESCO! Feuds end everyday! What do you think is their game?”
Nightmare smirked. “Regardless of whatever conceit they’re hiding, they know what I like… Killing.”
“This doesn’t seem right — killing those who want to be killed. How is that killing at all?” Thernz stammered.
“Nngh…” Nightmare gritted his teeth. "You’re right. But this urge is too hard to contain!!” He let out a monstrous roar that bent the hell cage outwards. Basil and Dag were taken aback for a second, then regained their composure and jumped onto the cage to bend it back into position.
“Muri da yo,” Thernz said and poked a pressure point on each, paralysing them. Nightmare took the cage, turned it over and imprisoned Dag and Basil in it. He jumped up and down on top of the cage to make sure it was firmly set into the hellrocks.
“I’m sorry, you two,” Nightmare said, dusting off his hands, “but our negotiations will have to wait until we are rid of the Satan Mohran. Perhaps another time, when you learn how to not be DICKS.”
The three of them jumped out of the hole in one move. Basil and Dag rammed against the cage for a couple of hours and finally managed to tear it open.
“This is an outrage!” Basil screamed, “An embarrassment, unlike any I’ve ever felt in my LIFE! That third-rate, no-good wrestler… He humiliated us! No: humiliated ME, more importantly!”
For a moment, Dag looked a little sheepish at the fact that he wasn’t included. In a second, though, he regained his composure. “Well, there’s always Plan B [purano bi].” Basil nodded, and the two flew out into the stratosphere.
Rewind to a few hours back…
The Satan Mohran was almost at Resonacia. The newcomers felt threatened, but all the veterans just shrugged it off as another gimmick, or believed it was the northern lights acting up. It wasn’t until Nightmare jumped onto the beast’s back and pulled it by its tusk, and Thernz and the Afrodisiac tried to stop it by stationing themselves in front of it, that the residents of Resonacia, old and new alike, realised this was a serious threat. They assembled outside Resonacia to protect their dear home, and although they all charged the beast, the Successor flew in front of everyone and gave the beast a mighty uppercut. The Satan Mohran was not damaged greatly, but the force of the uppercut threw it outside the G-Urth’s orbit, making it land on the moon … with Nightmare still on it!
“Great. Look what you’ve done now,” Hero said, from among the many residents.
“Oh, come on. We all know Nightmare’s tougher than all that, right?” Successor said. Peklo grunted, Alis giggled, and the whole of Resonacia went up in laughter.
And now: we return to current events.
Two bodies crashed into Resonacia, creating gigantic craters in the Arts District and Commerce District. When the bodies were recovered, the entirety of Resonacia gasped.
“Basil… and… Dag!!”
Thernz stroked his nonexistent beard. “This doesn’t make any sense…” Feeling up the muscles of the cadavers, he continued. “These fine contours… There’s no doubt about it. These are the very bodies of Basil Gorgeous and Dag Infinite. But who killed them? It couldn’t have been Nightmare.”
The Afrodisiac followed, “If anything, Nightmare should still be making his way through orbit.”
“We need to figure out what happened on the moon,” Peklo said.
Upon hearing this, Diplo stepped out of the wreckage of a Slam Shack Memorabilia Store and said, “We can use my astronomical telescope” (which was, surprisingly enough, not another name for his penis). As the Chapelpeople prepared to leave the premises for Diplo’s house, a loud rustling came from the floor.
“This dark energy…” Thernz said. “I’ve sensed it before, but it can’t be…”
“The Satan Mohran!”
The Slam Shack Memorabilia Store smashed into oblivion as a mighty tusk rammed through from underneath. Inscribed on its tusk were various LiveJournal entries written by Satan.
“There’s no doubt about it… This is quintessentially Satan!” Thernz said.
“Then where is Nightmare?” Peklo queried after taking a gulp of five mugs of mead.
As the beast erupted from underground, everyone noticed it wasn’t coming out by its own force but rather due to Nightmare lifting it. Eventually, he reached the surface and held the Satan Mohran above him. He then slammed the beast into the ground and fell to the ground, panting in exhaustion.
“What the hell happened up there?” Diplo said.
“He was too Satanic for space,” Nightmare said. “You see, apparently Satan has this defensive mechanism that transports him back to Hell whenever he leaves the G-Urth’s orbit…and the Satan Mohran, being more Satan than Satan, also activated this defensive mechanism. But now…now, I think…after that exhausting trip, it’s finally weakened! Now is the time for the [Decisive Blow].”
With a quick consumption of a bowl of true guilinggao (made from real turtles), Nightmare regained the lost energy, and, together with the Chapelpeople, the gang made one final assault on the Satan Mohran. The beast, in its death throes, lashed about wildly and tried its best to keep the Chapelpeople from KILLING it, and it was almost successful, except for one thing: Nightmare’s urge to kill was too strong, and he thusly dealt the final blow…
The people of Resonacia cheered wildly, and the Satan Virus was slowly destroyed from everywhere ever. The Satan Mohran’s body was used to make vaccines for the virus, and the rest of the body was used to make up for all of the destruction that had been caused.
But as for Dag and Basil…
They made a reappearance after the commotion, despite the two bodies being kept under guard by the Undershaker. In a private room atop Bang Shake Clobber Palace, the two shared glasses of Mega Demon blood sangrias.
“Do you think he realized?” Dag said.
Basil scoffed. "I doubt the fool knows that the first strata of Hell itself, WELCOME TO NIGHTMARE, is his body.”
“Your plan was brilliant, Basil. Though, I do admit, ingesting all of that vaccine when you’re the size of a cell demanded quite the recuperative effort. I gained so much weight…”
“Working out is our life. How was that any more trouble than anything else?” Basil held up the toenail of a frost giant. “It was far more troublesome brewing the potion to regain our size once we made our escape.”
“No matter. When do you think Satan will make his move?”
“To occupy the body of the ho most ‘beautiful’ man in the world? What makes you think he hasn’t? Satan’s quite the actor…”
“Then shall we continue the plan?”
They smiled and finished the last of their Mega Demon blood sangrias.
In actuality, after their escape, Nightmare had taken a liking to Satan Mohran blood, and had ingested more of the vaccine.