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anonymous-dentist · 1 year

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Stupid Idiot Death Knife

My piece for @dreamoirezine. I am now the c!punz expert. Go to the Dreamoire blog to download the zine itself, it's literally even badass.

Once upon a time in a land not too far from our own, there was a tower, and inside of that tower was a man on fire. Why he was on fire is not important, nor is the question as to how he came to be on fire. What is important is that there was a man, and that he was on fire, and that he was very unhappy with his current situation.

“Fucking Tommy,” he swore (for that was the name of the absolute jackass that had set him on fire in the first place), hurriedly rushing to the nearest water basin to try and douse himself. “I’m going to kill him, I swear to god.”

(And that was where his troubles began, because when you swear to the gods, they sometimes even listen.)

He was in so much of a hurry to put himself out that he didn’t notice the sudden flash of light or the sudden trumpeting of angelic horns so high up in the heavens that even his tower couldn’t reach. He didn’t notice the sudden change in air pressure, nor did he notice the rise in temperature.

What he did notice when he turned around from the basin was a tall golden table standing right in the middle of the floor where there was no table before. And then on that table was what appeared to be, by all means necessary, a dinky little rusty-ass dagger, and a neon green index card next to it covered in scribbly red-ink letters in a language he didn’t know. The only word he could make out was his name, Punz, and that alone was worrying enough to keep him from approaching fully.

“What the fuck?” Punz asked, voice barely above a whisper. It was not terror that gave a notable termor to his voice, though it really should have been. No, it was confusion, and, above all, annoyance.

He stared at the dagger, hair still smoldering and hoodie singed beyond all recognition. He was insulted, frankly, just a little. Just a little. Not because of the sudden divine intervention, but because whatever force had decided to bother him gave him the shittiest fucking knife that he had ever seen. Fae, demon, god, whatever it was, it obviously didn’t know his reputation. Because he was a mercenary, the best of the best. Diamonds were beneath him; how could iron even think to compare?

But still, he found himself picking the dagger up and turning it over in his hands. It had a good weight, at least, and the edges were still sharp. The rust almost looked like a bloodstain spread across the entire blade.

Once more, he repeated, “What the fuck?”

His eyes shifted from the knife to the card that had come with it. What were scribbles a moment ago were suddenly clear and legible English.

Use Me :)

And, now, Punz wasn’t a stupid man. He might not have been Dream or Wilbur levels of intelligence, but he knew enough to know that suspicious knives with even more suspicious labels were baaaaaaad news.

“Fuck this,” he declared, dropping the knife back onto its pedastal and backing away.

He looked up at the ceiling as if it was watching him. (It was.)

“Yeah, no thanks,” he told the ceiling.

On a whim, he flipped the card over and written on it was, And Get Your Just Rewards.

And, now, Punz wasn’t a stupid man. He was not stupid, no, but he was greedy. Greed makes the world go ‘round, so they say. So when he saw the word ‘rewards’, his brain momentarily shut down. Little green dollar signs floated above his head, and he himself felt as if he was floating on a cloud.

“I mean, I dunno…” he muttered, running a finger along the knife’s edge. It came away bloody, but he couldn’t tell his blood from the rust on the blade. “It’s just kinda fishy, y’know?”

He glanced back up at the ceiling again, waiting for a reply. No dice.

As his eyes traveled back down to the dagger, they caught on a shine on the table that wasn’t there before. A single chunk of raw gold right where the dagger had been.

Oh, Punz thought. The gold was cool against his burned palms.

“My just rewards, huh?” he mused. He nodded. “Alright. Bet.”

And with that, he slipped the dagger into an empty sheath on his belt, and he stuck his bleeding finger in his mouth, and he took the gold to a chest upstairs, and he thought, Alright. I can work with this.

There are very few things more powerful in this world than greed. Spite is one, hunger is another. (And then there was fear, but that was hardly relevant.) The other three he could work with.

One, greed. He never liked to consider himself a greedy man. The word left a bitter taste in his mouth. Greed, no, he was just… well, he was greedy, but not in that way. Who wouldn’t want money? Money makes the world go ‘round. If he was broke, he wouldn’t be able to afford food or clothes or fancy decorative swords to hang on his walls, or Fortnite V-Bucks. It was just simple economics. Not greed; stonks.

Two, spite. Punz liked to consider himself a pretty chill guy, all things considered. He wasn’t Sapnap or Tommy; if someone pissed him off, he just let it slide. Usually. Sometimes. Well. The thing about spite is that it mixes with anger and makes a kind of pissy kind of soup. Punz knew that soup well. He had it for dinner every night alongside caviar and imported English iced tea.

Three, hunger. Punz liked food. Enough said.

But fear? Nah. That wasn’t his style. What did he have to be afraid of? Dying? He couldn’t die. He was badass. Kickass, even, all of the -asses. Death feared him.

Death rewarded him, too. One lazy afternoon Punz took his new knife out to the forest to test something out and came home to a pile of gold on the table and five rabbit pelts and ten wolf skins slung over his shoulders. Death wasn’t a scary thing. Death was just a capitalist. He could fuck with that.

But there was a difference between killing animals and killing humans. Punz preferred his kills to be clean and efficient. Nothing’s worse than getting blood on your white hoodie, he figured, and maybe he should have just changed his aesthetic. Maybe he should have done that. But what he did instead was do things meticulously, so meticulously, and it worked.

And it worked.

And it worked until there was a battle for a country he had no part in and that he didn’t care about. A dethronement, and then a war, all in the same day. He would have stayed home and ignored the whole affair in favor of catching up on Grey’s Anatomy if he wasn’t getting paid enough money to drown a cat with. (And, being friends with Sapnap, he knew plenty about drowning cats.)

It was in the heat of battle when Punz stabbed his first child. Pogtopia wasn’t the most populous nation in the world (if you can call it a nation to begin with), but it had enough supporters to make Punz’s attempts at getting at the commanders really fucking hard. He had already lost his sword in the initial rush, and that was fifteen minutes ago. Fifteen minutes and a couple of chunks ago. His ax was stuck in the chest of a woman on the ground, and his shovel really wasn’t up for battle.

So when the kid snuck up on him, Punz grabbed the only weapon he had on him and plunged it into their chest blindly, eyes defocusing as they stared up at him in shock. His face was warm from exertion and blood. Sticky. His hands were sticky.

A small tickle in the back of his mind told Punz that he got blood on his hoodie. A much larger tickle told him that there was a good chance that he had just become a gold ingot richer. A gold ingot could pay for so many chocolate bars.

It wasn’t too hard a decision to make. His hoodie was already ruined, anyway. He could just buy a new one after the war.

Yanking the dagger out of the kid’s cold body, Punz slipped it into its sheath just long enough to wrench his ax free of the corpse holding it.

By the end of the war, Punz was a half stack of raw gold blocks richer.

This, he decided, looking down at the chest of gold in front of him. This would be enough to last until the next war.

Three weeks later, the dagger slipped between a crack in Sapnap’s armor. It was almost worth enough for an ice cream cone.

One, greed.

Punz was not a greedy man. He was just a capitalist. Big difference. Greed requires a certain amount of other, some extra oomph to give it meaning as anything other than just plain old want. It isn’t greedy to want a new pair of boots. It isn’t greedy to want a Robux gift card. It isn’t greedy to just want.

There is a difference between wanting something and craving it. Punz never craved the rewards he got for killing. He wanted them. Big difference. He could put the dagger away and never touch it again. He simply chose not to. He liked getting money. Money is cool as hell. So are the things you can get with money. Like a new PlayStation. Or a hamburger at the McPuffy’s when you don’t feel like baking a fresh loaf of bread.

Punz liked explosions. They were loud and, well, explosive, and they reminded him of happier times when all he had to worry about was childrens’ attempts at war and Sapnap being a fucking idiot. Punz had always been one for chaos, and nothing, nothing was more chaotic than an explosion.

But as the butchers scattered before him like headless chickens, there wasn’t the usual rush of adrenaline. Punz was almost bored as he chased the L’Manbergians around. He was bored when he let them chase him around.

The knife on Punz’s belt itched.

He wasn’t explicitly told not to kill anyone, but he wasn’t told to do anything other than distract. But he was bored, and that was making him sloppy. He let himself get hit in the shoulder with an arrow and grit his teeth into a grin at the sudden burst of energy he got in response, blade singing in its sheath.

Fundy had a crack in his armor. The butchers’ armor was ragged and worn, obviously leftover from the war, and Fundy had a crack in his armor.

It wasn’t until Punz felt the weight in his pockets that he realized that the knife had made contact.

Fundy let out a cry, and Punz felt the knife shaking in his grasp, but he wasn’t moving. Punz wasn’t moving.

The call to retreat, Dream’s voice in Punz’s ear telling him to get the fuck out of there.

Three dollars. Chump change. More next time, Punz hoped.

Two, spite.

Once upon a time, Punz used to feel spiteful. Angry, too. Sad. Betrayed. But it’s kinda hard to feel betrayed when you don’t have anyone to betray you. And maybe that was Punz’s own fault, but, really, who could fault him? The server was an active warzone six out of seven days of the week. How the hell are you supposed to keep a friendship going with someone that might stab you in the back at an Olive Garden?

Punz was no diplomat, and he never pretended to be. What he was was a mercenary, and a damn good one. No loyalties when someone can buy yours for a stack of gold pieces and a Chili’s gift card.

It might have occurred to Punz once that maybe he would be the guy to stab you at an Olive Garden.

Well. So be it. You probably deserved it, anyway.

Punz had a child. He refused to think of the dead chicken at his feet as his child, but it was his child. Its head was snapped clear off its tiny body, but Punz remembered seeing it blinking up at him in its first moments of life.

The puddle the dead chick was in had long dried by the time Punz got around to visiting it.

There’s something to be said about the death of a child. Your child. Punz had chicken for dinner two days ago, and he killed the chickens himself and got a pocketful of gold for his troubles. But this thing? This miserable little wretch of a dead chicken?

Punz scoffed and lightly nudged its body with the toe of his boot. His boot came away stained.

He wrinkled his nose. Fucking gross.

The spirit that had so graciously come to hang out and talk about dicks for an hour was long gone, but Punz still felt the familiar urge to dig his knife into something and not let go. If he stabbed something longer, would that give him more money in reward?

The knife on his belt twitched like it was shrugging. Punz pretended not to notice. Not his problem. Sentient capitalistic daggers were the least of his problems. He had wars to fight in, battles to decide, chickens to avenge.

Vengeance has gotten a bit complicated recently. You can’t just blow someone’s house up and call it a day. No, someone always has to get pissy about it, and that was fine by Punz’s standards. He was a mercenary; his trade depended on people getting pissy. No pissy people meant no paycheck, and a life without a paycheck would be a sad one, indeed.

There was the rush of battle, the adrenaline-charged thrill of removing a motherfucker’s head from their body and immediately getting a broken rib for the trouble. Punz missed his broken ribs. There wasn’t enough going on to warrant a broken bone. What, the L’Manbergians were causing trouble? That was old news by that point.

War was profitable, but war was also getting just a tad bit boring.

A chicken war would at least be interesting.

“Cock war,” Punz absently said. His voice echoed around the wilderness sounding entirely unfamiliar and too much like someone from a YouTube anti-depressant medication commercial.

He smiled at his own joke anyway and looked back down at his dead child. The little thing wasn’t quite important enough to him to warrant revenge or anything, but it gave him an excuse to go and stab someone on his terms. Maybe that’d make the whole thing feel a bit more worth it.

Three, hunger.

Punz had a fridge full of leftovers. Chinese, mostly, some Chipotle. Homemade stuff. There was a veggie platter he put together for a failed Christmas dinner he was supposed to have with some friends.

That went well.

He liked food. He loved food, actually. Didn’t mean his stomach wasn’t empty all the time, or that he wouldn’t constantly be feeling like he needed… more. More. His fridge was full, but his pockets were empty. He could look out the window and see Tubbo and Ranboo walking down the path with their pickaxes hitched up on their shoulders. A couple of minutes’ walk away, Bad and Skeppy had their mansion. Punz had a tower, and he had a knife, and he had Dream.

And he had Dream.

Maybe hunger isn’t exclusively for food. Maybe it’s for something else. Like companionship. Or a Planet Fitness membership.

Punz killed a dog. Two gold coins added to the pile.

Across the growing crater that used to be New L’Manberg, the world was ending, and that was just fine. None of Punz’s business. To steal a phrase, it was never meant to be. (Or something like that, anyway.)

It was weird being on this side of the war. Punz couldn’t see Dream in all the chaos, but he had his orders not to look. Can’t act too suspicious…

And so Punz stabbed another dog and ignored the way he wanted to cry over it. They were just stupid dogs. No big deal.

Somewhere, Tommy was screaming. In all the racket, it was hard to pick it out from every other scream of pain, fear, agony, desperation –Technoblade’s triumphant rambling and Philza’s relative quiet. Dream above watching silently (somehow, Punz knew that he would be looking right at wherever Tommy was.)

But that didn’t concern him, so he stabbed another dog. Up to six coins now, hell yeah. He can get a Happy Meal with this kind of money. Funds were drying up with all the battle prep, but he’d be able to treat himself after the apocalypse, at least.

Idly, Punz wondered if there would be a McPuffy’s left after this. He decided he didn’t care.

It was a little hard to care about anything when all there was was the splash of blood against his face and the panicked screeching of a bunch of idiots running around like headless chickens.

On his way to try and take down one of the withers (how much money could a wither get him?), Punz tripped over a root and nearly face planted into one of the dogs that Sapnap had butchered on his way to his dumbass fiance.

It was red. The root, that is. Small, barely poking above ground. Punz stared at it for just a moment longer than he should have before snapping out of it with the sound of a wither skull being shot at his head.

He narrowly managed to dodge out of the way, landing in an awkward half-roll that sent his dagger skidding across the ground out of reach.

Panicked, Punz lunged for it, scrambling around in the dirt and the bloodied mud to get it back before it got lost or (god forbid) someone took it from him.

He picked the knife up with both hands, lungs heaving, and, when he looked at it, his reflection in the blade was thin and sunken like a skeleton’s.

His hoodie was ruined. That was fine. He could just buy a new one.

Four, fear.

Punz was not afraid of anything. He wasn’t sure if he could be afraid anymore. He couldn’t be much of anything anymore. He could be cold; his blankets had begun wearing thin, and he needed new ones before the winter got too bad. He could be wet; his umbrella broke months ago and he never bothered replacing it, not seeing a point to when he had a hood. He could be tired; he never got enough sleep, not anymore, and even his sleep was restless thanks to the itch under his skin.

He slept with his knife under his pillow. The rust had long worn off, and he didn’t remember when he started being able to see himself in its reflection or when the mirror over his bathroom sink shattered, but he just blamed the mirror on yet another home intrusion and called it a day.

Use Me :), the note had read, and Punz had. There was a box under his bed full of gold coins, enough to make a pirate horny or a banker cry.

And Get Your Just Rewards, indeed.

Punz sure felt rewarded. The world was silent, and he could finally sleep.

What came first, the chicken or the egg?

Punz was a chicken once. He birthed a child, even, not that he chose to think about that too often, just when he was drinking and trying to think of fun weekend vengeance plans to fill his calendar with now that his friends were all leaving to join some weird breakfast cult.

Boredom, that’s what Punz could feel.

Boredom.

No wars. It was quiet. Any adrenaline was long gone. Maybe he was addicted, maybe he was going through withdrawals, but when a gigantic egg said that it could provide for him, well. It was more convincing than it would have been a couple of months ago.

Well? It asked.

“Well what?” he responded.

It looked down upon him judgmentally. A heavy feeling settled on Punz’s shoulders, one he didn’t like. It felt like hands curling, claws digging in. Into his skin, into his flesh, into his soul. (He didn’t even realize he still had one of those. He thought he lost it months ago when he first picked up that knife and his eyes were opened to the world for the very first time.)

Punz was alone. Bad had escorted him down and had left with only a smile and a wink and a pat on the shoulder. It wasn’t really anything out of the ordinary for Bad, honestly, but something about it left Punz on edge.

And then the Egg started talking.

What are you waiting for? the Egg asked. Its smile curled around Punz’s brain and squeezed.

He didn’t realize he was raising his dagger until he saw its blade glinting in the dim red light.

The Egg liked him, It had said. It heard all about him already from previous visitors. It had seen him Itself, because It sees everything. Knows everything. Is everything.

Punz wanted chaos, It had determined.

No, Punz wanted to argue. He wanted the money that just so happened to come from chaos. He wanted a cure to his boredom.

(He wanted to feel again, he didn’t say. That would be embarrassing.)

All the Egg needed was a show of loyalty. It couldn’t just accept any old merc off the street. It had to know he was being serious, and there was only one way of doing that.

The dagger shook with anticipation, level with his chest, aimed right towards where he distantly remembered his heart being back when he still had one. Punz stared his own reflection right in the eyes. His reflection was smiling; he was not.

The knife plunged in, and Punz bled gold.

#dreamoire zine #dreamoirezine #a.d.'s fics i suppose.#a.d.'s fics i suppose #guys im the expert now

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