by Joshua Price
Proving that super villainy had its strengths, Dr. Malevolent grabbed both of the hero’s wrists, turned them inward, and instantly dropped him to his knees. He gazed upwards in pain, but he was still happy due to the view. She gazed down at the stupid grin on Captain Rescue’s face, and with a disgusted sound emanating from her throat, the super villain released the hero. He tipped over backwards and lay there smiling on the grass.
She turned her attention towards Harold. “What do you know about this building they’re making?”
“I’m a shaman, not an engineer.”
She nodded. “And your engineers wouldn’t know how to build anything with materials other than dirt and leaves.”
Freight just grumbled as their conversation melted away. All around the mammoth man talkers talked and he did little to catch what they were saying. Tiny tidbits filled his ears, tidbits about protecting themselves, keeping an eye on the enemy, training for war—all these tidbits and nothing about kicking their asses. Freight just wished they would shut their mouths and move forward with whatever plan they had in mind, if any. He hated nothing more than standing around talking things over. Freight was a man of action. If he could, he would waltz out of this tent and through the forest, where he would single handedly snuff the bigfoot from existence.
Suddenly and without warning, Freight could no longer hear these tidbits over the sound of a foghorn. The others ceased their incorrigible mouth moving and looked at each other with concerned faces, and within a few seconds, silent shouting ensued, drowned out by the noise. The foghorn led them out of the tent and into the camp as the gang tried to locate the source. All around, the apes ceased their training and congregated along the forest’s edge, and Ralph, certainly not a fan of loud noises, stuck his snout high into the air and roared at the sun. It just stared back down at the dinosaur and refused to shut off its foghorn. Ralph eventually gave up and hung his head in shame, where he found additional delightful grass to lick.
Freight glanced towards the tree-lined cliff side, where he soon noticed a slight glimmer, a reflection. The longer he stared, the more movement and activity he could see. The giant man slapped Dr. Malevolent and Charlie and then pointed at the trees. He left Captain Rescue to his own devices, which were surely malfunctioning by this point. The commotion along the cliff side soon drew everyone’s attention, and the entire camp became an agitated anthill, stepped on by some gigantic, invisible child. Captain Rescue lay flat against the grass, taking the metaphor a little too literally and hoping that when the bigfoot came to murder them all, they would assume that the hero was already dead.
One by one, bigfoot emerged from the trees and lined the cliff side, encircling the rebels and leaving them little room for escape, not that scaling a sheer cliff would be the best method of escape. Somehow, their enemy had launched an assault in mere hours. Freight couldn’t really wrap his mind around how quickly they did this, but he sure was impressed. These apes were either organized, fast, and quite badass, or something more peculiar was afoot, something transcending time and space. Perhaps these bigfoot had help from an otherworldly source, such as super-intelligent dolphins from the distant future.
The foghorn finally ceased and so did the subtle movement of brainwashed feet amongst the trees. Soon thereafter, something large emerged from within, the alpha male bigfoot Captain Rescue saw dragging a group of prisoners into the settlement. While many of the other apes adorned their signature loincloths, the alpha’s masters allowed him to adorn a more intimidating ensemble. The bigfoot wore a dark black jumpsuit with silver plates of armor covering all of his important bits. Uncovered, however, was his carpeted chest hair, which a part down the middle of his shirt revealed. His dolphin overlords modeled the armor straight out of the many science fiction movies they researched while planning the brainwashing and subsequent occupation of the human race.
The weapon mounted on his shoulder dwarfed even him; a futuristic rocket launcher held in both hands. From within the silver monstrosity, an unknown projectile peaked out. An emitter embedded into the side of the launcher displayed a virtual targeting system that showed all relevant information. Right now, without a target, it just read target something so you can kill it. The alpha stared down at his enemies with a wide smirk across his face. He waved his mammoth rocket launcher across the battlefield, over the bigfoot, over the heroes, and over Captain Rescue playing possum in the grass. Finally, the giant weapon pointed directly at its target, not the bigfoot, not the heroes, not even Captain Rescue, but on Ralph, the only real threat against him and his brainwashed horde.
A series of beeps began and grew faster and faster as the rocket launcher locked on its target. Clueless to what this alpha ape had in store for him, Ralph was busy roaring at the sun. The weapon finished its locking sequence and the bigfoot pressed the fire button, which released a projectile that whizzed through the air. Everyone dropped to their hands and knees, expecting this to be an explosion for the record books. Soon, the tip of the intimidating rocket opened and a long thing metallic spike slid out.
Ralph realized that the sun was not his main concern and that a dangerous projectile screamed towards him just as the metal spike pierced the thick hide above his shoulder. His snout shot towards the tree line and he started to roar, but the sound did not make it far. The giant dinosaur had already begun to teeter and lose his balance. He opened his mouth to roar once more, but before anything could happen, Ralph’s legs gave out from under him. The dinosaur crashed onto its stomach before losing consciousness and beginning to snore. The alpha bigfoot lowered the oversized tranquilizer and the battle began.
Chapter 6: Possum Perspective
Captain Rescue heard yelling from every direction, but he refused to look up from the grass. For all he knew, his friends were dying one by one, but the hero wasn’t sure he cared. He had larger concerns, namely the few hundred apes that were intent on killing him any way they could. Wavering from his possum plan now would be most foolish. So instead, he just crammed his face further into the dirt as grass filled his mouth. With any luck, this would muffle his whimpers and cries as lasers flew overhead. Captain Rescue stayed perfectly still for a few minutes until he heard footsteps crushing the nearby grass.
“Do you plan to help us out?” a familiar voice asked.
“No,” Captain Rescue replied to Charlie, his words muffled by the grass filling his mouth, “I’m fine down here, thanks.” The hero felt a foot knock his side, but it caused little pain. Those plush shoes were not made for kicking, that’s for sure. After a few seconds without a verbal reply from the bunny rabbit, Captain Rescue added, “So… how goes it?”
“I don’t exactly have time to carry on a conversation right now, what with all these monkeys trying to kill me.”
“Actually, they’re apes if anything. Like you, me, and the gorillas!” Captain Rescue corrected.
“Don’t you think I know that?”
“Evidently not!”
“I just meant monkeys as an insult, like when people call you idiot.”
“Oh, I get it.”
Charlie kicked him once more. “Now shut up, I’ve got work to do.”
Captain Rescue did as the bunny asked and shut his mouth. He then opened it, let the grass out, and closed it once more. He listened for some time—to Charlie, to lasers, to monkeys, and after five or so minutes of absolute boredom, Captain Rescue opened one eye and looked around at the world outside. The hero, while certainly no math genius, could tell they were outnumbered as these monkeys swarmed in from every direction his one eye could see.
All around, hordes of scantily clad sides of meat fell fighting for what they believed in—that death outweighed being brainwashed by dolphins, and most intelligent creatures would agree. Captain Rescue watched Charlie briefly and began to wonder why none of these apes had shot him dead yet. One would think that a bright blue bunny rabbit would make for an easy target, but apparently, this was not the case. If Captain Rescue was sharp, he might h
ave considered that the brainwashed apes had orders to take him and his friends alive, but Captain Rescue wasn’t sharp, so this insight was lost on him.
The hero freed his mind of thoughts he likely never had in the first place and searched the fray for Freight and Dr. Malevolent. He soon found the two standing side by side. At first, Captain Rescue assumed they had spent the battle bonding while he spent it possuming, but it was not long before the hero learned the truth. Freight, who was clearly not enjoying himself, was trying to slink away from the super villain. She, in return, made escape exceedingly difficult by following him around like a lost puppy.
Captain Rescue turned his attention away from the pair just as a bigfoot leapt for the bunny and went in for the kill. Charlie grabbed the ape and flung it to the ground before gutting it like an animal. The possum tried his best not to vomit from the grotesque mess. Captain Rescue had not seen anything so frightening since, well, the zombies, but they were already dead and already quite disgusting. So, by the time he and his friends got around to bashing their skulls in, zombies lost a lot of the disgusting charm to be found in the deaths of the much livelier apes.
After using his tongue to clean his vomit-lined mouth, Captain Rescue glanced at Ralph, who still slept comfortably drooling over the grass. As his dinosaur’s slumbering got to him, the hero started to whistle with boredom before making farting noises with his mouth. He had no idea that battles could last this long, and in an attempt to alleviate his boredom, Captain Rescue cupped his hands over his ears and started to open and close them rhythmically, creating an entertaining reverb. His ear echoes ended abruptly as an ape’s corpse fell on top of him. Its head landed right next to Captain Rescue’s and its dead eyes stared into his living ones. As the blood began to soak him, the hero gagged and screamed like a scared child.
Charlie, who still stood over the hero, asked him, “You okay down there?”
“Do I look okay!?” Captain Rescue replied.
“You look… uncomfortable.”
“Well, get it off me!” the hero squealed.
Charlie laughed and knocked the hairy ape from Captain Rescue with one of his plush boots. As the bunny went back to killing, he saw a red laser just narrowly miss his head. Then, the unthinkable happened. Like a feather lost on the wind, Charlie’s plush ear floated slowly to the ground, making the battle all around simply fade away. He watched in great sorrow as the ear fell to the ground and kicked up dust as it settled. Choking back tears, Charlie picked up the severed ear and slid it into his pocket in hopes of reattaching it later—if he survived. Now, nothing was certain. Not life, not death, not even the sanctity of plush ears.
The bunny looked up from the ground and found a most unpleasant sight: the snarling face of a brainwashed bigfoot as it tackled him. The battlefield suddenly flipped to its side and Charlie crashed to the ground. He caught a short glimpse of the motionless Captain Rescue before an oversized hairy hand quite literally smashed his face in, denting the pliable plastic and sending his head ringing. As he felt a follow up slam into his side, Charlie jerked his knee into the ape’s groin. The bigfoot’s head lurched forward and instinctively the bunny went to head butt him. As his soft head bounced off the ape’s thick cranium, Charlie realized just how stupid he was to head butt anything. Another fist connected with his side, sending pain through his stomach.
Then, out of nowhere, a purple blur smashed into the brainwashed bigfoot and knocked it from Charlie. He then watched as Captain Rescue wailed on the ape with his leather-clad fists. The hero took his eyes off the monkey for a moment, glanced over his shoulder to Charlie, and smiled widely. The hero grabbed the tuft of hair covering the bigfoot’s chest and lifted the ape from the ground. Captain Rescue spit into the brainwashed cretin’s eyes and then threw it to the ground. The man dusted his hands of the primitive beast and rose to his feet a hero. He strutted over to Charlie as his cape billowed in the wind and laser fire streaked past, and then he extended his hand to the bunny rabbit, locked their hands together, and pulled his friend to his feet.
Captain Rescue gave a satisfactory nod before switching his heroic side right back off again. The arrogant smirk he wore melted away to lunacy and the slight double chin he had tucked away to form his chiseled jaw fell back out. Subconsciously, he must have known that if he left his heroism on for too long, the very real possibility of getting himself killed would arise in some way, shape, or form.
The hero’s eyes grew wide and he grabbed Charlie’s shoulders. “We’ve got to get out of here before we’re killed!” Captain Rescue released the bunny, fell to the ground once more, and then buried his face in the grass.
Right on cue, Dr. Malevolent and Freight screeched to a halt before them. She still gleamed with feminine beauty and showed no signs of the last two hours spent fighting for dear life and for the opportunity to conquer the world once again, or at least—the opportunity to try. On the other hand, Freight must have spent the last thirty minutes in a much different manner, for now blood drenched him from head to toe. Charlie glanced to the pristine super villain and then stared at Freight, who just gave a clueless shrug. The giant man didn’t have a clue how to explain his appearance. The sight evoked memories of their first meeting with him, only now he wore a lumberjack outfit and not a police uniform, which, oddly enough, suited him more anyway.
Captain Rescue lifted his head from the grass and cried out, “We’ve got to retreat, retreat I say!”
“Retreat?!” Freight replied with a hearty laugh, “Look around, little man. There is no retreat!”
Captain Rescue looked around, and sure enough, he had spent too much time with his face buried in the grass to realize that this battle was already lost. Tears filled his eyes as he thought of the poor prisoners he just failed and would soon have to meet. Before Captain Rescue finished contemplating on that, he felt a sharp pain strike his side. Someone had kicked him, and while he refused to look up from the ground, judging by the size and general shape of the weapon used, he recognized it instantly as Dr. Malevolent’s foot. This was, after all, not the first time she had kicked him.
“Leave me alone! We are done for!” Captain Rescue cried from the ground.
She sighed. “Nothing is ever done. What kind of pathetic hero are you? Do you know why we fall, idiot? We fall so that we might…”
“This isn’t a movie!” he wailed, “Save your motivational speeches! We are dead, we are all dead!”
He finally lifted his head from the ground and looked to the brainwashed bigfoot closing in from every direction. Captain Rescue then glanced at their ape allies, who were gradually collapsing to where the heroes were. Heroes who, for the record, were just standing around staring at each other rather than helping to repel the enemy.
“See.” Captain Rescue motioned to the hordes of brainwashed apes encroaching on their limited territory. “We’re all dead!” He buried his hands in the grass once more and got back to weeping like a child.
Charlie surveyed the corpse littered battlefield and shouted to the others, “Seems like they want us alive!”
Dr. Malevolent laughed a hearty super villain laugh. “What gives you that idea? The mountain of corpses surrounding us?”
“Well, yeah, and the fact we’re not among them. They could have easily killed us by now.”
Their conversation amplified Captain Rescue’s weeping as he considered what would happen to them if the apes took them alive—no doubt more torture. He brought himself some temporarily relief as he remembered that his back had little space left for whipping, but that relief left just as quickly when it realized he had other more important parts left to whip. He collected his composure, dumped it out on the grass, and then went back to playing dead. It was his only way out of this mess.
Harold emerged from the corpse-littered battlefield and stopped before the heroes. Blood speckled every inch of his rifle-staff, and he had a wild, battle-hardened look in his eyes. That old fart still had a few years left in him.
&nb
sp; “It would appear that things have gotten rather dire,” he stated plainly.
“Dire?” Dr. Malevolent joked as she kicked one of the hairy corpses at her feet. “That’s a slight understatement, wouldn’t you say?”
Like a sun to their solar system, Captain Rescue lay face down in the grass with his fellow humans and Harold orbiting him. The shaman’s followers closed in and protected the important people while they made their last stand, a last stand that would not last too long. One by one, the rebels fell to laser fire, a fate much better than being brainwashed into servitude. When the last of Harold’s followers died, a single foghorn trumpeted across the battlefield, and the brainwashed bigfoot ceased their assault and encircled those who remained.
Everyone accepted their defeat by dropping their weapons to the ground and throwing their hands into the air. Freight, however, did not live by such constricting rules. No battle was lost while he still drew breath. The man would give every one of these mangy monkeys a taste of Courtney’s medicine. With an animalistic roar, Freight sprinted into the thick of hair and went to town. When Courtney finally ran out of ammunition, the giant man turned to picking up the nearest lifeless corpses and flinging them at the enemy. It took four of the bigfoot to subdue the crazed man and force him to his knees.
Still on the cliff and out of harm’s way, the alpha ape grabbed one of the ropes and slid down, letting his thick calloused palms prevent his hands from splitting open and showering blood all over himself. He met the ground with a booming crash, leaving a subtle crater in his wake. Immediately, his army of brainwashed bigfoot parted and gave him a direct path to the prisoners. Three of the apes forced Freight to kneel, and to his knowledge, he had never kneeled for anyone or anything before. The prideful man watched the leader ape strut down the path created for him by his men. He ignored the corpses under his feet and stepped on them as if they did not exist. The ape soon stood with its waist against Freight’s face, and then the beast knelt down to look the feisty man in the eye. The alpha picked up Courtney from the ground and rolled her over in his hands, inspecting her handiwork closely.
