Wat: Part Deax

This has been sitting on my hard drive since December, but I didn't think it was good enough to show to anyone. It's a sequel thing to the first story I posted here, only it has a darker tone and isn't nearly as over the top. Well, mostly.

“Attention prisoners, there is a mandatory cell inspection on Monday” announced the PA system.

            I just sat in my cell, scheming on how I would escape from this latest complication. The initial extraction of the target had gone flawlessly for most of the operation, but of course that means that the one problem they had would be the one to derail all of their plans like a steel girder on a train track. No one had expected for the office building to launch up 200 feet in the air, forcing me to waste too much energy just slowing down my fall. It took me 3 minutes to regain my strength, during which a division of Dr. Loboto’s men surrounded me, and shoved me in shackles. Before I could even call for backup, they had slapped a sonic dampener on my throat, preventing me from speaking, and thus preventing me from retaliating.

            I could at least take solace in the fact that Shabalabadingdong had escaped, so my mission was not in vain. Hopefully, he could make it to the cave where the robot Mars lay, and learn how to pilot it without any outside assistance. He was the Chosen One, so it shouldn’t take too much effort for him to pilot Mars, but I was still unsure whether or not he could do the right thing while piloting it. I didn’t give him any information on what he was supposed to do, and being a cat, he could go join Dr. Loboto’s personal army because Loboto had more food than I did. And the only thing worse than losing Shabalabadingdong was to have him fall to the side of pure evil by being recruited by the Evil Space Communist’s greatest general.

            There was no way I could leave something like that to chance. I was going to free myself from this prison, to find my way to Shabalabadingdong and Mars, even if it cost me everything. I just needed time to get the materials for my escape together. And time was one, of the admittedly many, things that was not on my side. I only had half the components to create a Tesla coil, and I still had no way to take the sonic dampener off my neck.

            Without the means to voice out my determination and willpower, there was no way for the world to hear that I was about to break every law in existence, be they laws of physics, thermodynamics or international copyright. I had tried to just pry it off, but that only resulted in a very sore throat where the tools had been. The most successful attempt I had by far was with a solenoid of platinum wire, a featherless chicken, and a can of standard issue bacon fat, but I discovered that the collar would deliver a painful 3 billion volt shock to me if the collar got more than 1 inch away from my throat, and it only got more powerful the further away from my neck it got. The only way to break it, it seemed, was to find the warden and rip the key out of his slimy, dark… back pocket.

Before I could think of how to figure out how I could even figure out which of the Evil Space Communists was the prison warden, the loudspeaker above my bed crackled to life.

“Attention Prisoner 12-2619-91: The date of your execution has been set. Your hearing has been set to one day before the execution. Premier Vissarionovich will be present at both your hearing and execution. You have 3 days to prepare your defense.” Then, just as suddenly as it activated, the speaker shut down, showering my cell with sparks.

Well, that put a bit of urgency in my planning. The commissars that would normally be present at a hearing are hard enough to deal with on their own, adding the Premier himself made my escape during the hearing all but impossible. Even disregarding the amount of soldiers that would accompany him as his bodyguard, he was an extremely capable fighter, and had overpowered me the last time we fought. Of course, time spent dwelling on the obvious and restating things that I have already said was getting me no closer to freedom. As my grandpa, the famed commie buster, always told me “When in doubt, don’t think it out, just do something!”

A guard walked close to my cell, and with a plan that was all about making it up as I went along, I sprang into action. Bracing myself for the slight tingle that would inevitably come, I ripped the loudspeaker off of the wall. Exposed wires jutted from where the loudspeaker was, giving off more electricity than a lightning storm near a nuclear power plant. With one quick motion, I grabbed the guards hand and shoved it to the exposed wires, lighting him up like a hill made of thermite.

His brain didn’t even have time to realize it was dead before I dragged his body as close to the cell as the bars allowed me. Ruffling quickly through his scorched belongings, I tore the keycard to my cell, and pressed it against the door. With a loud clang, the cell door shot open, throwing what was left of the guard across the prison. Look out Premier, for I am free and mostly ready to kick ass.

Mobility, speed and the ability to outmaneuver my enemies are my only advantages at the moment. That, and being able to react to situations in ways that most people would call “suicidal” or “exceptionally lacking in foresight with a severe lack of self preservation”. Also, I guess the fact that no person had ever escaped from an Evil Space Communist prison probably meant that I had an element of surprise on my side. With a bit of luck, I could get my equipment back, smash the sonic dampener and get out before anyone even noticed I was gone. Of course, I don’t make plans for the simple reason that they always go wrong, plus the long internal monologues that go into making a plan annoy me.

“Stop right there enemy of the state! Return to your cell, or face the consequences!” came a voice from above. “You have 1 second to respond!”

            I came back to reality, and discovered that while I was sitting there planning what I was going to do next, every guard in the prison had surrounded me. There were no clicks, no sounds of guns cocking; they had their rifles ready to rock and roll. For one second, the world was quieter than an old movie; not even my breathing seemed to pierce the veil of silence. Then, with the sound of twenty seven and a half million firecrackers going off, they opened fire. My life flashed before my eyes, as the bullets crawled towards me. My muscles began to move, desperately trying to take me somewhere, anywhere that was not a bullet filled hell. Then, just as suddenly as it began, everything went dark.

            A small point of light appeared in front of me, indescribably bright, yet it only seemed to be the size of a pea. There were no other details I could make out, nothing but a barren field of darkness. A massive urge filled my body to walk to the light, which I couldn’t fight no matter what I did. My legs had minds of their own, and my arms had stopped responding to my thoughts. I wasn’t even breathing at that point, just slowly walking towards a point of light in the distance, and trying to get my arms to move so I could break my legs and stop walking.

The light had begun to swell, and as if in response, the darkness seemed to get thicker. Where there was just a very cloudy haze, there was nothing but infinitely dark… stuff. It was simultaneously brighter than the sun, and darker than a black hole, an entire world created from contradictions. My eyes screamed for release, my brain shut down, nothing seemed to make any sense. In the midst of all this, a robed figure appeared.

Actually, robed figure wasn’t the right way to describe it. It was as contradictory as the rest of the world I had ended up in, both as solid as a piece of Toledo forged meteorite steel, and yet, still able to move in ways only a puddle of mercury can. Billowing colorless green gas, it slinked towards me. Part of its robe extended to me, slowly creating the figure of a hand. It reached up, and pulled back its hood, revealing nothing. Then, a skull appeared where the hood was, constantly shifting its form. Every time I got close to identifying what species of animal the skull came from, I’d notice some details that would completely throw off my guess. After only 30 seconds, I had gone through 7 different, unrelated animals, and was still no closer to describing what it was.

Voices suddenly appeared in my head, thousands of them all vying for attention. Come with me, the voices said, it’s time to move on. You have done well in life, but everyone must learn to let go someday. You must pass on, so that the next generation of heroes can emerge.

It made sense, but there was something off about how it was talking. Every voice was in near perfect unison, except for one. One voice, which was beginning to rise up above the others, coalescing into another being, something that was not a contradiction. It was solid, and spoke with a clear voice. It, or rather he, finally solidified wearing a gaudily colored trench coat and a pair of boxers covered with flying pigs wearing sombreros. I couldn’t believe it, only one man on Earth had ever dressed like that, and he had been dead for years. Before I could even think of what to do next, he punched the robed figure and turned to yell at me.

“What are you doing here, maggot? I didn’t raise you for you to die!” he yelled, leaving me no doubts as to who he was. “I didn’t fight up against the entire ESC fleet so you could up and die on me!”

“What do you want me to do? It’s not like I can do anything against that… thing” I said

“I want you to do what I raised you to do! It’s just a personification of every person you’ve ever met who died; it’s not like it’ll be that hard to beat up.”

Right when he finished that sentence, he began to disappear again. It was the same as watching him coalesce, but in reverse, as the colorless green smoke from the figure reabsorbed him again. Ignore everything that the HERETIC said, HE was merely a figure conjured by your imagination, to trick you into staying. Disregard all advice he gave you, and come with me.

Derp that, I’m no Evil Space Communist! It’ll take more than a few million bullets ripping through my body to stop me, and I was going to make sure this thing would remember that next time it approached me and told me to die. There was only the slight problem of not being able to move my arms. Or the ability to move my legs, for that matter, but these are only minor inconveniences.

“ Ten-Thousand Flying Ram Head Butt of the Apocalypse!” I yelled.

The thing couldn’t let out one plea of mercy before my head blew it apart with the force of a planetary impact. It was a thing of beauty, like a pigeon smashing into the window of a supersonic fighter. The wisps of colorless green smoke began to take on a form that actually made sense, becoming thicker, and losing the colorless quality that made my head hurt. Its robe was shattered into infinitesimal pieces, blown apart with such force that every small fragment of the robe combusted, creating an inferno which spread out as far as I could see. Massive winds came billowing from where I came, feeding the flames, making everything burn like an Australian brush fire.

The fires went out as quickly as they came, leaving behind nothing again. It was different though, almost as if I had awoken from a dream, but my eyes were still closed. There were no sensations, just a feeling of peace. Actually, that’s a lie, the only sensation I felt was the pain that comes with a few hundred pounds of lead tearing through my body, but I prefer that over being dead any day.