by Joshua Price
“You’re going to hurt yourself if you keep playing with that thing,” Charlie said.
Too distracted by an unforeseen development, Captain Rescue ignored Charlie’s words. At a shoulder’s length away, he could see his finger sticking back out of the force field as if it were a mirror image flipped around. He wiggled his finger about and watched it move. The hero stuck the rest of his hand into the force field and it emerged almost immediately. Captain Rescue reached his opposite hand forward, tickled his palm, and giggled at the amount of fun he could have with this marvel. He pulled his arm out of the force field and scratched his chin while planning the next steps in these experiments. He shoved his entire right arm into the force field, and after a handful of milliseconds, it shot back into the room and punched himself in the left shoulder.
“Whoa.” He rubbed his sore shoulder with the spatially displaced arm, a quirky sight to say the least.
Captain Rescue pulled his arm out of the field and inspected it to make sure the journey had not caused any damage. When he was sure enough that all of his molecules were still intact, the hero shoved both arms through the energy field. The pair shot back out and punched him square in the chest. He stumbled, righted himself, and then took a deep breath. Captain Rescue erupted into a sprint and charged headfirst into the field. Both it and the room quieted as the hero made his journey, a journey taken more quickly by his arm and his finger. After a couple seconds, Captain Rescue came rushing back out of the energy field.
He came to a stop and bent over panting. “I think I saw God.”
Too enamored by his efforts to refute this claim, the others just kept quiet. Slowly, Captain Rescue backed away from the field and pressed himself against the wall. He took another deep breath and galloped forward. Just before passing into the field, Captain Rescue launched himself into the air like someone trying to fly. With a whoosh, he flew into the swirling force field. Soon afterwards, he came careening back out. The hero smashed against the smooth white floor and slid until the wall stopped him. He got to his feet and brushed himself off.
“Are you done having fun?” Charlie inquired.
Captain Rescue looked genuinely offended. “Fun? I am conducting experiments to discover this thing’s weakness.”
“Really? It sure seems like you’re just having fun,” the bunny argued.
“I am doing my best to get us out of here the best way I can.”
“Well, as long as you’re doing your best, then we have nothing to fear.”
“Good, I’m glad we’re on the same page here,” Captain Rescue said as he shoved his leg into the force field. It flew back out and kicked him in the knee, buckling it and sending the hero to the floor. The commotion finally stirred the sleeping giant. Freight groaned and sat up, still a little out of it.
“Where are we?” he asked as he rubbed his sore head.
Dr. Malevolent laughed. “Another cell, of course!”
Freight shook his head, gasped, and shoved his hand down his pants.
“What on earth is going on in there?” she questioned.
Freight smiled at her and then pulled out the small laser pistol.
“Wow, that’s part disgusting and part amazing, I’m impressed.”
Freight rose to his feet with laser pistol in his hands. He quickly scanned the room, walked to the force field, and then inspected it.
“What on Earth are you doing?” Dr. Malevolent asked. “Just call the guards here so we can shoot them.”
“I have a better plan,” Freight said.
He looked out into the hallway, saw the control panel on the other side of the force field, and smiled. The giant man then positioned himself directly behind it and pointed his small laser rifle at the wall while the others stood by and watched the master work. Freight started to charge the weapon as before, and after a few seconds, it began vibrating violently. He unleashed the pint-sized pistol and it melted a couple inches into the wall.
“You’re a genius,” Dr. Malevolent complimented.
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Freight replied as another glob of plasma inched closer to the control console.
Another couple of shots and the lumberjack struck gold by melting the control console’s innards. The force field flickered and then dissipated. He smiled at the others just as a rush of footsteps approached. A pair of bigfoot ran into the cell and Freight gunned them both down like a professional assassin, quickly firing off a shot into each of their chests. The apes fell to their knees and dropped their laser rifles to the ground. Freight nonchalantly tossed the pistol to Dr. Malevolent before picking up one of the rifles and handing it to Charlie and taking the other for himself.
“COURTNEY!” Freight bellowed as they left the cell and entered the cellblock, but the smooth white walls held little room to hide a personified shotgun.
What it did hold, however, were dozens of similar force-fielded cells like the one they had called home for the last few hours. Inside, human prisoners looked as though they had seen better days, days in which dolphins from the future were not holding them captive. Upon seeing the helpless innocents in need, Captain Rescue switched into savior mode. He ran straight for one of the cells, passed through the force field, and seconds later came back out.
Charlie sighed. “Here we go again.”
Captain Rescue, if anything, was a fast learner—most of the time. He slammed his elbow into the control panel, which short-circuited and the force field disappeared. Inside, the three prisoners waved the heroes away.
“Get back!” one of them yelled.
“Have no fear, citizen, we’re here to save you,” Captain Rescue said heroically.
“You don’t understand! They did something to us, it’s not safe!”
“Just stay calm and keep up with us, we’ll have you out of here in no time,” the hero replied as he broke open more cells while ignoring their warnings completely.
A flurry of footsteps echoed down the hallway as more bigfoot came to investigate the prison break. Charlie and Freight quickly and mercilessly gunned them down as Captain Rescue broke more prisoners out of their cells, more prisoners that insisted they be kept inside and away from his friends and him. The hero kept pulling the humans into the hallway and coercing them into following him and the others. They ignored his words, broke away from Captain Rescue and the others, and gathered against the wall at the end of the hallway.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Dr. Malevolent asked. “There’s clearly something wrong with these people.”
Captain Rescue brushed her off. “There’s nothing wrong with any of them. They’re just scared. They’ve been cooped up for years now with nothing to do but get poked and prodded by sea cows. They probably don’t even know what’s going on.”
From down the hallway, one of the prisoners yelled to him, “Quickly, get out of here! I can feel it boiling inside me, we don’t have long now. Run!”
“See, they’re just scared, they want us to get them out of here as quickly as possible.”
Dr. Malevolent’s jaw dropped. “That’s not what he said at all. Are you even listening? And also, dolphins aren’t sea cows. Manatees are usually called sea cows.”
“How do you figure? Manatees stay in the coastal waters, Dolphins are the ones usually found out to sea. Hence, sea cow!”
As the two argued on the technicalities, one by one the prisoners bent over moaning as their insides wrenched. The pain clouded their minds and drove them instantly insane.
Dr. Malevolent continued to argue with Captain Rescue, “Yeah, but manatees are the ones that actually look like cows. Literally. They look like a ‘sea cow’.”
“But they don’t live out at sea. I would accept ‘water cow’, but dolphins live out at sea,” he replied.
Behind them, the prisoners had begun their transformation as their skin grew bright red and painfully thickened into some kind of hide. Freight and Charlie kept watch on the opposite end of the hallway, picking off the handf
ul of apes that came around the corner. Eventually, they glanced over their shoulders and noticed the monsters in the making. The two of them motioned for the bickering duo and laughed quietly to each other before turning back around and killing more apes.
Dr. Malevolent, clueless to the prisoners, strained to wrap her head around Captain Rescue’s logic. “How did you come to call dolphins sea cows in the first place?”
“Well,” he hung his head, “when they killed my parents, I had to come up with something to call the monsters.”
Behind, the other monsters began to morph and twist into freak abominations as their thick hide-like skin cracked and their bodies grew.
Dr. Malevolent, still clueless, shook her head. “So, dolphins kill your parents and you decide to get back at them by christening them ‘sea cows’?”
The prisoners, if you could still call them that, now towered near the hallway’s ceiling with their swollen arms dangling close to the ground. One by one, the monsters began lumbering towards the escaped prisoners. Along the way, they bumped and growled at each other primitively.
Charlie tapped her on the shoulder. “If you two are done, we have ourselves a situation.” He motioned to the enraged abominations at the other side of the hallway.
Captain Rescue turned around to scold him for interrupting when he saw the prisoners. “HOLY HELL, WHAT THE [INCOMPREHENSIBLE NONSENSE] ARE THOSE?” his brain spewed out as it filtered the curse word. He continued staring at them and then his eyes went wider than before. “Tetanus! They have tetanus! Don’t’ let them touch you!”
Dr. Malevolent’s backed away. “Tetanus?! Are you insane?! Whatever they are, whatever happened to them, we should probably get out of here. Quick.”
Before anyone could agree, the super villain sprinted in the opposite direction as fast as she could with Charlie and Captain Rescue right behind her. Freight lingered for a moment with his laser rifle at the ready. He fired at one of the monsters and saw the laser burst bounce to the wall, reflected by their thick skin. Freight leisurely turned around and faced his back to the abominations before sprinting off at full gallop. He tossed the worthless weapon to his side, but after a few seconds, he stopped and went back for it thinking that it might still come in handy.
The fleeing fleers turned down the first hallway they could find in an attempt to break line of sight with the prisoners turned freaks of nature. They hoped that if these abominations could not see them, it would prevent them from ripping their heads clean off. Down the hall, a symphony of moans played out, sending shivers down their spines. The bigfoot within this prison had apparently learned of the situation, because now they seemed less interested in recapturing the escaped prisoners and more interested in getting the hell out.
“You just had to go and let them all out of their cages didn’t you?” Dr. Malevolent growled.
“I’m sorry!” Captain Rescue cried out as inhuman moans carried through the halls. “I just wanted to rescue them!” He heard a particularly gruesome wail and then added, “Would someone please rescue me?!”
As Captain Rescue saw a massive red form lumber into view, and then another and another, all of which drooling uncontrollably all over themselves, he had the sudden realization that this was not the first time he had glimpsed such things. He thought back to the video game he had seen while escaping his capture. It amazed Captain Rescue how far graphics had come in only three years. The others started to glance back as well, and the abominations, no fan of being stared it, grew increasingly enraged as they slammed their giant fists against the ground, leaving behind bloody, broken white tiles.
“Why is it that wherever we go, you’re pissing things off?” Dr. Malevolent yelled to Captain Rescue while sprinting as hard as she could.
“I just have that kind of personality, I guess!” Captain Rescue yelled back.
“Yeah… you do!”
They swung around a corner and stopped a moment to catch their breath.
“They remind me of a video game I saw the bigfoot playing back when they captured and whipped me,” Captain Rescue said.
“And you didn’t think it was pertinent to tell us? That they were experimenting on human prisoners?”
“Experimenting?! They were just playing a video game!”
She grabbed the back of his head and shoved it around the corner. “Do those things look like a video game to you?”
“I know what you mean! Technology advances so quickly. They look so real. It’s outstanding.”
Dr. Malevolent shook her head to exorcise his words from it. “What? They are real.”
“THEY’RE REAL?”
“What are you, stupid? Of course they’re real.”
Captain Rescue glanced around the corner again. “No wonder they look so good.”
“How close are they?” Charlie asked.
“Close.”
Charlie glanced around, and sure enough, the abominations had closed in. “Yup, let’s move.”
They raced down the hallway trying to outrun the abominable red flood. As the gang stumbled around a corner, they noticed a stairwell beckoning them halfway down this hallway. There was no telling where it led, but hopefully these monsters would be incapable of scaling stairs. Captain Rescue, who had somehow pulled ahead in this little relay race, felt the plush hands of a bunny rabbit grab his shoulders and, like a backseat driver, lead him to the stairwell.
“Oh God,” Captain Rescue yelped as they ascended the stairs, “are we going to end up like that?”
“You might, but I think the rest of us will be okay,” Dr. Malevolent snickered.
“What!? Why do you say that?!”
Dr. Malevolent patted him on the shoulder. “Who knows what they did to you that fateful night you were captured.”
“You’re right!” Captain Rescue gripped the sides of his head. “I think I can feel it!” He squinted, “Yes, my mind! It feels weird. I think I’m turning into an abomation!”
Dr. Malevolent, laughing at his mispronunciation, slapped him against the back of his head. “You’re fine, idiot. That’s just the realization of your own stupidity.”
He breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “Whew! I was really worried.”
Before Captain Rescue could get bored of these steps, they reached the utmost floor. A pair of opaque white doors opened with a rush of air and the heroes spilled into another narrow hallway with cells lined on both sides. Hairy apes were nowhere to be seen, which implied that they had fled from the abominations and now the gang was on their own. With the roar of those enraged monsters no longer within earshot, they slowed their pace and kept their eyes on the cells, watching for anything else that, if free, could gouge their eyes out. The first cell on their left housed nothing but a harmless goat.
“Help!” a voice cried out as they passed by.
Feet screeched to a halt and everyone backpedaled.
“You’ve got to get me out of here!” the voice added frantically.
Dr. Malevolent coughed, almost choking on the air. “What the hell.”
The goat had donned an excruciatingly sorrowful look. From behind the force field, it begged, “Don’t leave me in here!”
“You can talk!” Captain Rescue exclaimed.
“Who cares, just let me out of here, they’ve done dreadful things to me!”
Dr. Malevolent shook her head. “You’re probably safer in there; we might have just released a slew of crazy people.”
“I can take care of myself!”
She laughed. “If that were the case, you wouldn’t be in there in the first place.”
“Poppycock! When they first captured me, I was nothing more than a stupid goat. Now, I am so much more. I am… super goat.”
“He’s so cute,” Captain Rescue cooed, “can’t we keep him?”
“Well,” Dr. Malevolent scratched her cheek, “I guess if you’re aware of the dangers, there’s no harm in letting you out; and no, we’re not keeping him”
Captain Rescue frowned.
“Okay.”
“Yeah! I can help you guys get out of here, and then I will be on my way.”
Freight shrugged and gave the cell’s control panel a good whack with the butt of his rifle. It flickered briefly and then dissipated. The goat walked out from the cell, gave the heroes an appreciative nod, and then simply erupted into a sprint as it headed down the corridor.
Halfway down, it yelled back, “So long, suckers!”
Freight picked up the rifle and took aim, but Dr. Malevolent pressed the barrel downwards. “Why bother. It’s just a goat.”
He dropped the rifle to his side. “Some malevolent super villain you are.”
“Hey now, there’s a time for malevolence and a time for accepting that…it’s just a goat.”
Freight threw his indifferent arms into the air.
“And besides, chances are it’ll run into abominations and be torn to pieces,” she added.
Captain Rescue and the others continued with their self-guided tour of the research laboratory, or prison—whatever it was. The dolphins had conducted experiments on countless animals; most of which looked normal at first glance, but Captain Rescue giggled hard at one of the experiments: a tiger with furled wings. In reaction to his giggle, the cat spread its wings and hissed. He held up his hands and apologized profusely as the tiger furled its wings once again and wandered to the corner of the cell to lie down and curl into a ball.
“So,” Dr. Malevolent began, “where exactly are we going and what are we doing once we get there?”
Charlie shrugged. “I thought we’d head to the roof.”
“…and jump off?”
“We’ll figure that part out once we get up there.” Charlie pointed to another stairwell. “To the roof!”
Captain Rescue started to panic. “But what if this prison is three hundred stories tall?”
“No,” Charlie said, “the only building even remotely near three hundred stories was that spire.”
