Volume 01, Story 8
Two delivery guys with no car: Chino and Homeboy are hauling boxes down a dead street in matching Mrs. Dealer’s Edibles shirts and hats, complaining about being sent out on foot. Homeboy asked Mr. Dealer for a bike and got looked at like he’d lost his mind. Then the alley up ahead goes white with lightning. Homeboy’s first theory is the Terminator. Chino points out the Terminator would be about a thousand by now, and when they creep up on the corner and find a man on his knees with smoke coming off him, a headless body standing rigid beside him with a sword still in its fist, Chino’s follow-up objection is that the guy isn’t naked. The man on his knees is Killian. He notices them, sheathes his own blade, and bolts. That leaves two idiots alone with a corpse and a very old sword. By the time Chino has finished checking the street for witnesses, Homeboy is already holding it. Putting it back doesn’t fix anything. His prints are on it now. They take it.
Homeboy is convinced the sword is magic. Chino is convinced the sword is a sword and the vato who took a head off with it is where the magic actually lives. Selling it is out. They work at a weed shop now, Trixie and Lexi keep them stocked with chiba and edibles, and the pawn dealer makes his living selling other people’s shit and would rat them out in a heartbeat. So they do the only other thing they know, which is wake up Uncle Rob at midnight for an expert opinion. “We’re delivering edibles.” “I didn’t order any.” He takes the thing into the garage anyway, past his Mexicans and their half-built contraptions, breaks out a magnifying glass, studies the hilt like a man who might actually know something, and then drops the whole sword in the trash can. “Nope.” Then he asks where they got it. The word decapitated changes the mood: he fishes it back out, wipes his own fingerprints off the hilt, hands it to Homeboy, says “Get the fuck out,” and walks him off the porch. Homeboy, to a closed door: “There was lightning, Uncle Rob! There was lightning!” A minute later it opens again, just long enough for him to get his hopes up, and Chino comes through it into him. Then the locks.
Chino’s read is that the swordsman is halfway to Russia by now. Homeboy’s read is that he’s across the street under a flickering streetlamp having a cigarette. Homeboy walks at him; he walks away; Homeboy walks faster; he runs. Then he stops, turns, sees the sword in Homeboy’s hands, and draws. Homeboy blocks the first swing on reflex alone and spends the rest of the fight insisting he only wants to talk, right up until he panics, steps in too fast, and puts his blade through the man’s chest. He apologizes immediately. It does not help. Chino tackles the guy off his feet, Homeboy strips him of his sword, and then the man, gasping, on his knees, absolutely not staying down, reaches for the hilt buried in his chest and starts pulling it out. Chino decides the moment calls for a second sword. “Is he dead?” “I hope so.” So naturally they drag him to Uncle Rob’s by the ankles, which is how Uncle Rob ends up opening his front door one more time that night and finding a dead man at his feet. “I think we killed him.” It was self-defense, Chino swears. The Mexicans mop the blood off the street; the three of them stand in the garage over a body with two swords still in it while Uncle Rob delivers the verdict (they are in some deep shit), which Chino and Homeboy respond to by immediately blaming each other. Then the swords come out, the trash bags go on, the beers come out of the cooler, and the only question left is where a person puts a thing like this. Homeboy votes for a rock and the ocean. Uncle Rob has a better idea, and it involves that Ominous Forest nobody goes into.
The trash-bag mummy twitches. “I can’t breathe,” it wheezes, and Uncle Rob rips the plastic open to find their corpse very much alive and introducing himself: “Name’s Killian.” He’s from Wales, and he’s immortal (immortal, not a vampire, as he clarifies later), and he takes the whole thing with the composure of a man mildly inconvenienced. The burial proceeds anyway, because Uncle Rob doesn’t do witnesses: out to the Ominous Forest with shovels, Chuy, and the Mexicans, Killian bound at the edge of his own six-foot hole, chatting amiably about the decades: he was a spy in Her Majesty’s service, met Hitler back when he was still a mediocre painter in Austria, and has strong opinions about which Highlander movie doesn’t suck. He buys his way out with money: a thousand each for Chino, Homeboy, and Chuy (“That’s racist! He is not an it!” when Killian objects to paying the Sasquatch), and a million for Uncle Rob, who counters with something better than money. Killian owns a neglected mansion on a hundred twenty acres he hasn’t visited in decades; Uncle Rob wants to move in and run his experiments there. Deal. The trunk ride over, the hacked phone (“I hacked it while you were dead”), Chuy’s hand around Killian’s neck for insurance. The story closes with the whole crew sprawled on Killian’s one uncovered couch, eating the edibles Chino and Homeboy were supposed to deliver, Killian included: “Mmm… these are really good. Give my best regards to Mrs. Dealer.”
Featuring Chino, Homeboy, Uncle Rob, Killian, Chuy, Killian’s Opponent.
Read the full story in The Adventures of Chino & Homeboy, Volume 01