First appearance: S2E12 — Blood Cookies — Wandering Willy v Martin Messiah Malenko · watch it on YouTube
Martin Messiah Malenko is a sun-blessed gunslinger with an eyepatch, a rifle he calls his wife and a pair of revolvers he calls his kids. He was pulled into The Void to fight Wandering Willy to the death for a plate of sugar cookies. Instead he ended the night as one half of the Bone Brothers, after a strangely gentle Deathmatch. Martin hit hard, then hugged harder, and he proved that a champion can win by refusing to finish the job.
Story
Blood Cookies
Martin arrived in S2E12 — Blood Cookies — Wandering Willy v Martin Messiah Malenko sounding like a man who had recently been shot, or had just come back from the dead. When he asked how he had got there and the Grandmaster answered “Magic,” he sighed: “It’s always goddamn magic every time.” The Arbiter cheerfully admitted he had picked Martin and Willy as “the most nat one rolling individuals in the entire universe,” and Martin protested that it was “one game, one bad game.” When the Grandmaster offered the winner any cookie they liked, Martin chose sugar cookies. “It’s because you’re so sweet, Martin,” she told him. When the Arbiter asked what goes well with cookies, Martin had the answer ready: “Blood!”
In the moss-choked graveyard arena, Martin got off to a slow start and a bad deal. He gave Gerald his lucky bullet, the one he saved “for just the occasions where I have to fight to the death.” In return he got the Orb of the Veil, which sharpened his mind but was cursed to halve his fire. “I’m a light cleric, I have lots of fire things!” he wailed, while Gerald cackled and shut the lid. Martin then introduced his family: his songbird “daughter” Shiloh, who hates music; his wife Val, the rifle; and his twin revolvers Machiel and Cassandra. Val and the twins had all been polymorphed in “a long, drawn-out story.” He tried to adopt Doug the Pug and magically ordered him to roll over. Doug obeyed, then bit Martin’s hand for his trouble. That drew the night’s first blood. “There’s blood, guys, there’s blood! For the cookies.”
The fighting, when it came, was pure Wild West with a holy shine. Martin started a game of fetch with Willy, who had turned himself into a dog, and threw him a holy hand grenade. He lifted his eyepatch so the sun god’s symbol blazed from his eye and fanned six flaming rounds from a revolver: “Time to turn up the heat!” When Willy’s earthquake woke three zombies, Martin’s eye flared gold to throw off the two that came for him. Then he declared “It’s at noon somewhere in the world right now” and unloaded rifle and pistols in a barrage that parted the clouds and brought dawn over the graveyard. He healed by shooting himself with a blue-and-white stim pistol, and finally rose on wings under a golden halo. “Well, it’s time that we finish this, boy. It’s high noon,” he announced, and he fired a divine shot that should have ended the fight. Willy rolled a natural 20 and survived. “You got some fight in you, I’ll tell you that much,” Martin conceded.
Willy healed himself, went invisible and sat at the arena’s edge in tears. Martin went looking for him to apologize and offered a snack party afterwards. When Willy suggested they team up instead, Martin agreed at once: “I never really enjoyed fighting.” Willy healed Martin in a glowing hug, and the two pitched the Grandmaster a future tag-team match. She accepted on one condition: they forfeit their cookies. The Arbiter wanted blood, so he had Gerald fire Martin’s own lucky bullet at them from behind. Martin leapt in front of Willy, his eye flaring, and both shots missed. The Grandmaster rebuked the Arbiter, who stormed off. She declared a shared victory, raised bones from the graves to weave the pair matching friendship necklaces, and lifted the newly named Bone Brothers into the air so they could throw snacks to The Acolytes. Afterwards Martin offered his own moral: “Even when people tell you what to do, always try to do what you believe is right.”
Personality and Abilities
Martin talks like a laid-back cowboy and fights like a preacher with a six-shooter. He wears an eyepatch, and beneath it shines the holy symbol of his sun god. That eye is a weapon too: it can flash blinding gold to throw off an attacker’s aim. He is a sugar-cookie man, proudly pro-adoption, and quotes his mama (“four hands are better than two”). He also remembers someone named Gona who called him “little tiny son.” Under the bluster he admits he is “trying to get away from all that sort of stuff.”
His powers are holy light dressed up as gunplay. He has holy hand grenades, fanned incendiary rounds, a dawn-bringing gun barrage, a stim pistol that makes his wounds shine with searing light instead of closing, and a shot to his own heart that glows and turns dark purple to guard him against death. At full strength he grows a halo and wings and fires a divine rifle. His songbird Shiloh fights at his side and clawed at Willy’s neck in the graveyard. She once ripped someone’s head off after being sung to. In the graveyard he carried the cursed Orb of the Veil, which kept his fire at half strength, and a potion of healing he dug out of a grave.
Relationships
- Wandering Willy: his opponent, then his best friend and fellow Bone Brother. Martin took a bullet’s worth of risk to shield him.
- Doug the Pug: Martin wanted to adopt him, magically made him roll over, and got bitten for it.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: set the cookie wager, rewarded Martin’s pro-adoption stance, and granted the Bone Brothers a shared victory.
- The Arbiter: brought Martin to the arena as a notorious bad roller, then tried to have him shot in the back.
- Gerald: took Martin’s lucky bullet, handed him a cursed orb, and later fired that same bullet at him.
- Shiloh: the giant songbird Martin calls his daughter.
Memorable Quotes
- “It’s always goddamn magic every time.” (S2E12 — Blood Cookies)
- “There’s blood, guys, there’s blood! For the cookies.” (S2E12 — Blood Cookies)
- “This here’s my wife Val.” (S2E12 — Blood Cookies)
- “Well, it’s time that we finish this, boy. It’s high noon.” (S2E12 — Blood Cookies)
- “I never really enjoyed fighting. I’m trying to get away from all that sort of stuff.” (S2E12 — Blood Cookies)
- “Even when people tell you what to do, always try to do what you believe is right.” (S2E12 — Blood Cookies)