Broderica was so proud of herself. All she had had to do was lower her shirt a little bit, jiggle her rump around and giggle more than anyone would find necessary and she got right up front and center to the godfight. A kind creeper had even offered her a drink. Though she highly suspected the drink to be drugged, Sir Broderick the Shitfaced had long ago developed immunity to any and all drugs anyone saw fit to mix with alcohol for any reason, only slightly because when times had been tough he had resorted to wetting his beak with discount fantasy aftershave.

As she sipped from her drink of dubious origin, Broderica beheld two of the gods in their splendor.

Splendor was generous. They both looked either geriatric, hypoglycemic, stricken hard with leprosy, to be hoarders, to be kleptomaniacs, to be psychosexually repressed, to be physically abscessed, or and odd melting pot of all of that and more.

The gods’ feathers were sparse peppers instead of brilliant plumage. Their eyes were yellowed, as were their souls. Their combs were uncouthly and their wattles were swaddled. Their sickles were sickly and their shanks were rank. Their spurs were cloaked in shining gold armor. Or was it magic molecule painted as gold? It was definitely that, Broderica saw the paint rubbing off all over the bigger god’s toes.

“This clucking sucks,” she loudly announced to herself.

Broderica saw up near the fourth floor of the arena people throwing food or rocks or feces or all three at the gods.

“I’m gonna clucking kill somebody if these clucking gods don’t clucking kill eachother! I mean wow! What the cluck!”

One of the gods’ eyes nearly rolled into its sockets as it sloshed around onstage like its legs were moldy quilts. The other god coughed up a belch of smoky flame that could embolden a lantern. One of them flapped its wringly wings and it looked like a bone broke and twenty muscles pulled out halfway through.

“This fight really blows, doesn’t it?” winked a grisly figure to Broderica’s right.

“Cluck yes. Worst show I’ve ever seen. I think if I look at it too long I might end up with an ulcer,” Broderica agreed.

The figure paused, put off by her air of comradery and lack of reaction to his blatant attempt at sexual suggestion when he’d said the word bones, and how he’d said it, and how he’d thrown in a slight gyration, and what about the wink? Was he bad at winking or something?

“Um, hello? Sirrah? Were we having a conversation?”

“Huh? Oh! Yes, sorry ‘bout that, chup,” replied the man, surprising himself. Chup? he pondered. Am I going mad?

“Hey lady!” yelled a voice full of gravel.

Broderica did not respond, staring still at the man, waiting for their conversation to continue.

“You theres, what with the bigs tits and all!”

Broderica swiveled around at attention.

“If you’re wantings to sees for yourself a hoods fight, come over heres!”

Broderica followed the voice to a grubby man, of which there were many. There was a crowd thicc as clam choder circled around cock knew what. The man held out an open palm.

“Nows nows nows, there’s a ones chickensfeed covers charge for this fights.”

“What in cock’s name? I’m already here at the godfight aren’t I? The nerve of you, asking me for pocket change!”

Broderica stepped off to the side of the man, only to be battered around by sloppy fight-drunk oafs like a piece of driftwood. She found herself back in front of the man.

“One chickensfeed, you say?”

After paying her fare, the man bulldozed Broderica a path through the crowd so she could see what was going on. And what she did shook her to the core with painful, gut wrenching laughter.

In the center of the circle was none other than Lady Krumbumbum, dress torn to bits and fire in her eyes like she was some sort of exhuberntly crazed leopard person (leopard people were generally fairly crazed). At the opposite end was a gargantuan, grotesque elf, a sickening looking fellow that Broderica almost didn’t notice even though he was quite a spectacle and right in the middle of the makeshift ring, because after all he was an elf.

Lady Krumbumbum stepped forward, scuffing at the mucky ground and kicking up dust, which she promptly inhaled. This resulted in a loud, blood curdling screech that so markedly struck everyone’s eardums that it sounded like the gods themselves had even stopped their ‘fighting’ to pay attention.

Lady Krumbumbum grew red in the face, half embarassment half from nearly choking. She flapped her arms around like a fierce serpentine beast, and then launched herself at the elf, fingernails pointing like talons at his face as she scratched and scrawled. The elf tumbled back and cried, knocking a few crowd members over like bowling pins as he fell to the floor, his dense body shaking the earth below them like a minimature quake.

The crowd ooed and aahed, some people adding their couple cents.

“What a graceful display of natural beauty!”

“How terrifying and taboo a fight!”

“I’ve never before wanted to be beaten up by a lady so badly!”

It was then that a short, stumpy warlock looking fellow (he just had that look) in a thicc leather vest and stained white tunic pushed his way into the center of the ring like a battering ram and shouted at the top of his scarred lungs:

“We don’t condone illegal fighting at our illegal fights! Everybody cluck off! Nothing to see here!”

The crowd booed and started pelting the man with cabbages and tomatoes and shitty pints of ale.

“Go to hen you soggy blanket!”

“Eustace! Eustace, where the clucking hen are you?!”

There was a loud grumble from the crowd as a giant moleman lumbered over to the warlock’s side.

“Hello…sirrah,” it slowly anunciated in its molemannish drawl.

“Eustace, throw that clucker who called me a soggy blanket into the pit!”

“Yes, sirrah.” Eustace slogged over to the offending fellow, picked him up with one gargantuan hand and slung him over his back. Eustace started walking off.

“Wait, wait please, please!” cried the captive, “I don’t want to go to the pit! Please! Jeffrey with a J please come on man don’t do this to me!”

“What the cluck did you just call me?” grumbled the warlock.

“…Jeffrey with a G?”

“That’s not what the cluck you said. You called me Jeffrey with a J!”

“L-look, Jeffrey, it w-was an honest mist—”

“Did you just clucking call me Jeffrey? Just Jeffrey?”

“I-I’m s-so s-s-sorry. R-really. P-please don’t send me to the pit.”

“You don’t wanna go to the pit?”

“N-n-no.”

“Are you’re s-so s-s-sorry?”

“Y-yes.”

“Okay.”

“Th-th-thank y-y—”

“Eustace, to hen with the pit. Feed this guy to the gods!”

The crowd cheered as the man began to bawl wildly, thrasing around like an upended saltwater ferret, hitting Eustace’s brittle mole hide with weak fists and kicks.

All eyes watched as Eustace slowly trudged up to the fencing in the nosebleed section. He took one hand and bent the wires into a hole, squeezed the man and tossed him through it like a fleshy javelin, landing him right between the gods in the center of the stage. He whimpered like a stuck puppy as Eustace bent the wires back in place and backed off as the crowd watched eagerly, patrons pushing eachother over to get a hood look at what was certain to be a scene.

Jeffrey with a G shook his head with a smirk, walking away from the crowd and up to Lady Krumbumbum, who was still lightly fuming and clearly unaware of her surroundings. Broderica had made her way there at the same moment, having been lost in the torrent of the crowd.

“So. You’re the lady who was upstaging my godfight. How do you do? Jeffrey with a G and your service.”

Lady Krumbumbum was still staring off into space, exhaling like a cockatoo. Broderica stepped in, jiggling her boobs with such force that she actually felt them bruise.

“Why hello there Jeffrey with a G. I’m Broderica.”

“Hey lady. Nice rack. But I wasn’t talking to you.”

“Oh you don’t understand. We’re together,” Broderica clarified, pointing at Lady Krumbumbum, who was unconscious, ass in the air.

Jeffrey with a G perked up. “Oooh.”

“Not like that. Creep.”

“Ohhh.”

“We’re on a mission.”

“A mission to run me outta business?”

“No! A mission to find you. We need your help.”

“Then why is she starting fights at my fight? What the hen’s with that?”

“Oh she was just…getting emotional, you know, being a woman and all. Surely you understand.”

Jeffrey with a G considered the compelling supposition. “Well. You sure know how to appeal to my implicit biases. I guess you’re alright, Broderica. Weird name though.”

“Oh like you’re one to talk.”

“What? What do you mean?” asked Jeffrey with a G, getting slightly red in the face.

“Nothing, nothing at all, nevermind.”