Pew! Pew! - Bad versus Worse

by M. D. Cooper

  “Tell me, do you have medical training?”

  “No?”

  “Then you have no idea how the human body works!” the interpreter was speaking so fast her words were getting jumbled, and yet the cat was still frozen mid lick. “You created shells, but will they be able to eat? Breathe? Reproduce? What is inside that you forgot to create?”

  “So I go back and add to them,” she shrugged, “It shouldn’t be difficult. Taste the banana, now.”

  “That’s not the point,” the cat scoffed, putting down the leg and sitting up tall. “The point is, you’re getting yourself into things you do not understand.”

  “But I want to understand. That’s why I’m here. That’s why Vale took me to you!”

  “And we don’t have much time,” added Vale, “Beb-Sha-Na could be here any second, and we’re no closer to having Katra ready to defeat her!”

  “Fine, we’ll train her, then,” the cat seemed to sigh, “Now, Gods are notoriously hard to kill. But the weapon you have has been forged by Beb-Sha-Na herself, so you can wield it against her. Whether it works or not is up to you. Let’s start with a soft warm up: create a target at the end of this room, a safe distance from us. Now come up with ten different ways to destroy it, and implement them.”

  This was all easier said than done. By the end of an hour, Katra was sweating profusely, something she never expected to come from wielding the powers of her mind. She had created missiles and tanks, filling them with explosive force enough to make massive damage. She created fire that burned hotter than the heart of stars. She warped space around her target, sending it to the far reaches of the galaxy. She called the target’s mother forth, and had her shame it until it died of embarrassment. Nub-Nub seemed to approve of her efforts, despite constantly demanding head scratches from his entourage.

  “You have the creativity,” he said, “and the drive. Beb-Sha-Na did well choosing you as her Chosen One: if you were against us, the universe would be putty in your hands.”

  “That is most kind, professor,” she replied politely, screaming in excitement inside.

  “Now the amulet gives you the power to influence probability, and thus distort the fabric of space-time itself. This means, the larger change you need to make, or the biggest probability to adjust, will take up your energy. This is how you will burn from the inside: the bigger the change, the bigger the damage.”

  “So if I do nothing, it leaves me alone?”

  “Not exactly. If you leave it alone, it still slowly corrodes your body, and you would also implode.”

  “Lovely,” Katra scoffed. “Either way, I’m dead. But if I kill Beb-Sha-Na…”

  “Her power dies too, and the amulet will be nothing more than jewelry.”

  “But how do I kill a god?” she insisted, “you say I can use the amulet, but what are Beb-Sha-Na’s weaknesses? Where do I strike to hit her hard, and how?”

  At this, Nub-Nub was silent. Katra clenched her fists by her side: open, close. Open, close. Finally, it was Vale who spoke.

  “We do not know,” she replied, “we know the lore that keeps her sleeping. She is not one who requires ritual sacrifice, but she is still appeased monthly.”

  “With… what?”

  “A gift of jam tarts, which we burn under a full moon,” Vale shrugged, “don’t ask me why, it just seems to make her happy.”

  “So I have nothing to go on?” she stammered. “You’re kidding me! We have a space god floating around and no plan of attack?”

  “Well, we have you,” Said Nub-Nub.

  “And a fat lot of good that will do! I don’t know what to do with amulet! And if Beb-Sha-Na is so powerful, where is she? If I can warp space, she can too, she could be here any second, drawn forth by the power of the amulet.”

  “I agree, that is quite odd,” said the cat. “If only we could…”

  “Uh, professor?” squawked one of the men in the entourage. “I’m sorry to intrude, but outside the window?”

  “What is it, Salugi?”

  “Well, it appears Beb-Sha-Na has appeared,” he shivered, “and she brought friends.”

  Chapter 6: Sloths Versus Sharks and Other Bad Ideas

  Jesipax

  The moment she heard the screams, Jesi reached for her shirt and slipped it on, getting dressed faster than the clothes had come off. Marcus stirred beside her, his hands going for his eyes, wiping the exhaustion from them.

  “Where are you going?” he asked, “we have time…”

  “Apparently not,” she replied, shoving her foot in her boot, “I hear screaming.”

  “And… why are you going towards it?”

  She rolled her eyes, grabbing her utility belt and buckling it tight on her front. Two holsters slung on the side, a blaster in each. She reached down to caress their grips, impressed by how small they now felt in her hands.

  “Because, I don’t know, people could be in trouble?” she replied, practically mumbling, reaching for her coat and slipping it on.

  “You’re a pirate,” Marcus pointed out, “you usually don’t care about other people’s feelings. Those generally come last.”

  “Well, Katra’s out there,” she replied, pointedly. “And I’m sure as hell not letting her fight off this giant space pig-whale goddess by herself. Are you coming or not?”

  “I don’t particularly want to get into a firefight. Not when I have a new body. And one so… effective.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Jesi scowled. “You were my first lay in years. Doesn’t mean you were exceptional. Now shut up, and come help your ex fiancé!”

  “I told you,” he said, more coolly this time, “I don’t want to destroy what I finally have.”

  “You disgust me,” scowled Jesi, “You couldn’t be happier to be trapped inside Katra for all eternity. You were the one going on about trying to make it all work. And now that she gave you exactly what you wanted, and that she actually needs you, you just nope out and go back to sleep? Froz you, Ash hole. When I come back to the ship, I don’t want to see you here. Got that?”

  Jesi didn’t wait for an answer. She marched out the door, slamming it shut behind her. It was only then that she let out the breath she didn’t know she was holding, leaning against the ship’s hull to gain balance.

  It was also then that a shark swam past her knees.

  “What the…” she stammered, following the shark with her eyes. Was she hallucinating? The creature was swimming in nothing but air, minding its own business as it made its way down the corridor and around the bend.

  Jesi shook out her head. A hallucination, here, now? She had never had any problems seeing things that were not there, nor was she sure what she had seen at all. She decided not to let the thought linger and grow.

  So, she opened the door to the gangplank, saw the mayhem outside, and shut it right back up.

  It had been carnage.

  In the split second the door had been open, Jesi had seen the end of the planet. The sky was orange and glowing, as the massive form of a turtle swam overhead, honking like a tug boat. The lush forest outside the window was full of massive sloths, each one with blood matting its fur and claws. They were massacring anyone outside, viciously throwing themselves at the men and woman going about their work.

  Jesi would open the door again, but not before she had her biggest gun, and baddest boys.

  “Owaitt, Podulk!” she called, storming through the ship, “End of the world outside the window! I need you both in the armory!”

  They were already there when she got there, gearing up in their reinforced body armor and putting proton packs in the artillery slots of their belts. Jesi smiled as she joined them, taking a plasma thrower and lashing it to her back.

  “Did you see…?” she asked, and they both nodded. “Was Katra out there?”

  “She fights back,” said Podulk, as Owaitt nodded slowly. “The apparitions. I believe they are hers.”

  “Splendid,” said Jesi, feeling relief wash over her. Katra
was alive: alive and fighting. Maybe they would be surviving this, yet. “Are you ready boys?”

  Owaitt snapped a proton back into his blaster, a sick smile growing on his usually impassive face.

  “Let’s go kick some sloths into the realms of eternity!” he bellowed, running from the armory with what could be construed a scream.

  “What he said,” agreed Podulk. Jesi was impressed: both men were surprising her today.

  And with that, the two of them bolted out of the armory, and into the carnage outside the ship.

  Jesi’s hands were full with the blasters, each light as a feather but powerful like a stampede. Every shot would kick a grown man back five meters, if it didn’t kill him first. But shooting at the sloths was ridiculously ineffective: the sloths, it seemed, had completely lost any sense of impending doom, and a shot kicking them back could only keep them down long enough to blink.

  The forest around the ship was full of them. Unlike their counterparts from the present, these sloths seemed to be from when Beb-Sha-Na had last woken up, so they were of the massive, 9 feet tall, razor-sharp talon variety. One swipe was enough to shred a FunCorp employee into ribbons of gore.

  “We’re going to need something stronger than a blaster,” said Jesi, scowling as she gritted her teeth. Still, she aimed a shot square in the chest of a beast that was about to strike another employee, and fired. She watched as the burst of energy rippled through the creature’s chest, making its eyes roll back in its head. It toppled backwards on the ground, twitching. The employee took off running down one of the dirt paths.

  “A thank you would have been nice!” shouted Jesi, but it was no use. The woman was gone. And the sloth-creature was already getting back on its feet.

  It rushed her, galloping on its hind legs, moving like a gorilla with its long arms to give it more speed. As it got closer, it raised the arms, swinging talons in the air in a show of strength.

  Jesi stood her ground, aimed, fired. Once again she saw the blast hit the beast, but this time, it didn’t crumble, no; it sped up. It was only then that Jesi’s heart fell, and she began to feel something she had rarely, if ever, felt: sheer, unadulterated panic.

  She reached in her boot and ripped out her trusty laser dagger, flicking it on and watching the red beam burst into existence. As the creature reached her, she rolled out of the way of the swinging arms, pushing herself up to a crouch, and stabbed the blade into the belly of the beast.

  The sloth howled, a terrifying, haunting sound like that of a trash compactor discovering the meaning of its own existence. Blue slime fell from the wound, showering Jesi with gore. She spat it out, rolling out from under the beast, narrowly avoiding a swipe of its arm, which seemed even more unhinged now that it was in pain.

  It swerved around, trying to find her. Jesi kept her stance lose and ready to fight, tightening her grasp around the only weapon that seemed to do the trick. It was too close range to use the plasma thrower – it would blow up the sloth, and her with it, if she used it wrong. She was stuck with a rinky-dink laser dagger, against a beast a full three meters taller than she was.

  Thank whatever god was actually looking out for her that Katra had solved her size issue a mere hour ago.

  Another honk filled the sky: the turtle was warping into a bear now, swimming in the red-orange clouds like it was its own personal pool. It seemed to be swatting at something – a swarm of tiny monstrosities were swimming around its limbs, like mosquitos.

  Jesi didn’t have time to figure out what they were, however; the angered sloth was doubling down, ready to eat her alive. Jesi put the dagger between her teeth, grabbing both blasters, and letting out a stream of blasts from each.

  Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew!

  The repeated force of the blasts were beginning to wear on the sloth. It roared, losing its balance, tripping over the leafy soil. Slowly, carefully, it tumbled to the earth. Its crash made the entire ground shake, nearly making Jesi topple over: she wasn’t quite used to having a high center of gravity yet.

  Before it could get back up, she leapt onto the sloth’s fleshy belly, taking the dagger from her mouth and stabbing it right into the beast’s neck, tearing a gash across the entire tree trunk of a limb. Blue goo oozed from the slot she had created, a fountain squirting into the sky when she hit the jugular.

  One down.

  A thousand more to go.

  Jesi looked up to inspect her surroundings, trying to scope out her allies. Podulk was busy somewhere off in the distance: she could see a trail of smoke, the result of his many explosives detonating one after the other down the length of the forest. Every time a new blast went off, the turtle in the sky honked, and Jesi could imagine that her Alien ally was doing an incredible amount of damage.

  Another shark swam past her knees, and she shooed it off, but the thing didn’t seem concerned with her in the slightest. Instead, it was homing in on the next sloth, shooting to it and biting the beast as hard as its little teeth could.

  “Katra!” Jesi exclaimed, then shut her mouth. She hadn’t realized she would scream the name out loud. But the woman had to be responsible for this: her way of attacking back. Sharks versus sloths.

  She looked up at the swarm in the sky again. Each one was a shark of Katra’s own creation, a hive of tiny bitey fish trying to take Beb-Sha-Na down.

  Jesi had to get to Katra, to defend her. She had to give the woman enough time to destroy the goddess. But she had no idea where to even begin looking for the woman. She wasn’t the one with super powers, here.

  She leapt off the corpse of her recently desecrated sloth, grabbed her plasma thrower from her back, and, clutching it tightly in two hands, dashed off into the forest in the direction of the epicenter of the action. Every step made the screams around her louder, the trees red and blue with the blood of violence.

  The captain emerged into a clearing, right into a horde of sloths devouring what appeared to be a giant spider. Instantly they turned upon Jesi, thrashing their claws and gnashing teeth.

  “Come and get me, boys,” she sniggered, switching on the plasma thrower. A blast of pure ionized energy came shooting out of the torch, catching the first sloth completely by surprise, and burning its head to a crisp before it had even moved. Its companions watched as it fell to the ground, headless.

  They didn’t get the message. They roared, looking far more pissed off than ever before. Jesi found her confidence wavering as they rushed her. She turned the plasma thrower to a higher setting and squeezed the trigger, hard. The wails and screams of the sloths as they fell were music to her ears.

  Until she felt the talons rake across her back, ripping skin from bone.

  She screamed, falling forward, the plasma thrower ripped from her hand. Before she could roll over, or try any move at all, she felt a stabbing pain in the middle of her back, as a talon slowly stabbed right through her.

  She was lifted in the air, screaming and wailing as the beast that had snuck up from behind now thrashed her before it. It seemed to take some kind of sick pleasure from toying with its prey, having fun shaking about the woman that had just killed four or more of its friends.

  But then, it was the sloth’s turn to scream.

  Jesi was thrown into the air, spinning head over heels before falling into the mud of the clearing. Her eyes widened with shock as she saw what had saved her: a massive metal man, holding a sword. The thing looked ridiculous with its blue racing stripes and golden crown, but it easily stabbed through the sloth, cleaving the beast in twain with its massive sword.

  Jesi sat up, panting. How she was not dead, she did not know. She ripped her eyes from the robot, staring down at her chest: there was a hole clear through it. She could see right inside her own body, see the…

  Strange, her guts were not supposed to be covered in little red sparkles, were they?

  Gingerly, she took a hand, and prodded the interior of the hole. She felt no pain there, only in the skin surrounding the opening. Her heart fell as she reali
zed she had no idea what was inside her.

  Katra. Katra had built her insides wrong.

  But before she could ponder that fact any longer, the robot turned to face her. Jesi watched as the head split open in half, only to reveal Owaitt, grinning ear to ear as he waved at his captain.

  “Captain Jesi!” He said excitedly, “Look, I saved you!”

  “Owaitt!” she shouted back, “You have no idea how good it is to see you!”

  “Are you injured?”

  “I am, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem!”

  “Good! Then I shall continue to dismember these atrocious beasts!”

  “Wait!” Jesi rose to her feet, casually ignoring the random squirts of blood from inside her own body. “Have you see Katra?”

  “Who do you think gave me this?” he said, “Oh! And who gave me an upgrade! She made me a memory card large enough to store everything. So now I know who I should be killing. Which I should really get back to.”

  “But where is she?”

  “Currently?” he pointed a long metal hand far behind Jesi. The captain turned, her jaw dropping. “I would say that is her, in that glowing ball of light. You might want to stand aside, captain: the final showdown is about to start.”

  Chapter 7: The Mad Tea Party and What Katra Found There

  Katra

  Katra held Nub-Nub tightly in her arms as she began to ascend. His interpreters were long since dead, and the poor professor was terrified. He clung to her like his life depended on it, which it most definitely did. Especially now that they were about fifty meters off the ground.

  When the terrible Beb-Sha-Na had first appeared in the sky, she had unleashed wave upon wave of her terrifying minions. They were all grotesque, sometimes even deformed. Katra had retaliated by creating hordes of her own, scanning her memory for her own fears and materializing them to fight back. But it did next to nothing to prevent the bloodshed.