Street cobbles. Big enough that I could see the dirt between them was in my vision.
I gripped tight.
Formed a bond and-
I closed my eyes
Screamed-
blackness
Chapter Eighteen
A Dictator’s Brawl/ Ebenezer’s Fall
* * *
Fear can make a lion into a lamb, while courage will make a sheep into a squid. Envy makes a ram into a grasshopper while true virtue can turn the humblest flea into mighty oyster. As for greed? Look at a narwhal. Was he not once a whole herd of sparrows?
Dimbelby North
A Cube By Any Other Name
Ѻ
A sensation took over my body.
A falling sensation. Was this death?
Before I could open my eyes, I felt the heel of a size nine shoe crack against my forehead.
That was not, I decided, what death felt like.
I opened my eyes to see one of my hands wrapped tight around one of his trouser legs and the other, fending off his thrashing foot. Around us both was the welcome sight of the shifting lava-lamp membrane of the tunnel. I must have caught his trouser cuff at the last possible second and transported both of us back here. A moment of gratitude passed over me unbidden, but it left quick as I saw the man himself glance down at me and mouth an unkind and untrue thing about my mother and her sexual exploits. No more invitation was needed. I released my grip, made two fists and laid myself flat until I was even with him in our fall.
He struggled away but I gripped the man now, tight as an amorous squid and twice as violent. I belted him around the chops a few times. He cried out and banked left. Entwined, we tumbled through the psychedelic lightshow and toward what I guess I could describe as the ‘wall’ of the tunnel. This would be a short trip indeed and I could make it our last if I could just best the chap now. He elbowed me in the ribs but I only lashed myself tighter to him and tried to grip his throat. He bucked away again and I felt us pass through the membrane. Back into a reality, somewhere not too far from Victorian London. We both settled into a mutual punching as reality made itself real around us once more. Wherever it was would be a surprise.
---=◈◆⬤◆??◆⬤◆◈=---
Surprise is the most important element there is. More than helium, more than potassium, even more than zinc and I’m a man who values his zinc.
It’s important in birthdays, in military manoeuvres, for the centres of chocolate eggs, in sucker punches and at the end of paragraphs. SCORPIONS!
The survivors of the holographic massacre? We were outnumbered, outgunned, outmanned, out-skeleton-ed and outmanoeuvred. They expected us to come into the room cautiously, maybe with a proposal, a treaty, a bargain. This was a room full of the universe’s biggest and baddest villains after all, and they were set to enjoy their victory. As the doors had opened I saw Rasputin seated, legs crossed, a tumbler of holographic vodka in his hand, flanked by his three companions, with Premmel guarding the control console. As the doors had opened, I dimly heard Rasputin greet us both with a suave “Zo, Gentlemen, Here ve are at last-”
But I didn’t let him finish. I didn’t even speak a single word.
Instead, I charged full speed at the room full of madmen like a jetfighter made out of uppercuts. I entered the room sprinting at full speed, screaming at the top of my lungs.
Surprise!
I’m not used to being the ‘distraction’ but if I was set to be one, I would be the most glorious one I could manage. Without stopping my sprint, I clobbered Hitler on the far right of his head. Kicked Stalin in the abdomen and caught both Rasputin and Premmel on both of my shoulders as I charged at them like a sexy rhino. All four of them grappled onto me trying to take me down but I was fuelled by an unstoppable rage.
If I wasn’t a leader in this scenario, I was damn sure I could still beat the hard light out of all the rest of them.
With all of them safely on some part of my person I did the logical thing and ran full-force into a wall while screaming as many historically accurate insults as I could. It was a tumbling ball of fists and feet. With all of them focussed on me, I had only one other objective- eliminate the only weapon from the equation- my pistol, the one Rasputin had taken from me at the start of this affair. It lay on the armrest of his chair and I needed to remove it from play (or use it to shoot everyone at least six times). I swung myself around in a tight circle while gripping Stalin by the waist. His arms flew out and, using the torso of the madman as my cudgel, I swept him over where the gun lay. He thudded into it and the chair with gratifying force and I heard my sidearm clatter away into the other side of the room.
The only thing left to do was keep punching until there was nothing left to punch.
“Delroy!” I cried around a mouth full of dictator, but he had needed no prompting. He had taken his position and began typing up a storm, shutting down the whole damned resort. It was good that he would be the one to save the day, I thought. He’d earned it and I was glad of it and it was fine. Good for him, I thought genuinely. I was glad and it was all great. No regrets.
The computerized voice of the faculty, finally responding to an organic lifeform sounded over the speakers as he activated systems at lightning speed.
“HOLOGRAPHIC GENERATION INTERRUPTED,” it brayed almost immediately, “HARD RESET IN PROGRESS.”
“Keep them off me,” he hollered as he focussed himself.
Not a problem.
“RESET AND SHUTDOWN IN PROGRESS”
“Have a right, a left, another right, a left and a THIRD REICH-T,” I yelled at Hitler as I sat atop him raining blows down upon him. “This is Goering to hurt!” I promised. “You’ve made me Fuhrer-ious!”
He wilted under my blows and puns in equal measure. A bruised and beaten Stalin weakly grappled at my pistoning arms but I swatted him aside with a hefty backhand. “And you can….Don’t be…Um…Lenin….ah…”
I turned back to Adolf. “BET YOU DID NAZI THIS COMING,” I screamed. I’ll admit that my knowledge of history is not all-encompassing.
“RESET FIFTY PER CENT COMPLETE.”
Rasputin and Premmel took hold of an arm each and I felt myself become dragged downward, toward the floor. Too quick. They were getting on top of me already.
My foot rocketed into the beard of the Russian monk and he fell backwards toward the edge of the room. They were close to pinning me down now, I had to admit it. I was the buttery biscuit base of a dictator cake and they were smothered on top of me like far-right frosting.
Stalin was on my right arm, gripping it like a man riding an anaconda, Hitler was on my left side, clamping my anaconda of a left arm between his Nazi thighs and Premmel was sitting on my chest throwing feeble punches down on top of me with his thin and decidedly un-snake-like arms. But it doesn’t take a doctor to know that that leaves at least two legs unrestrained and they were doing what they did best- flailing around like violent hoses, landing knee strikes on every bastard in range.
Premmel leaned in and my forehead greeted him with great speed, knocking a few 0s out of his holographic code as I butted the bridge of his nose beautifully. He fell backwards and a double knee-ing to the small of his back was there to greet him. That pushed him back into headbut range and I obliged. I butted him backwards to the extent that I could knee him in the back again. This pushed him forward and I rewarded him with a headbut which fired him back within knee range. Well, I didn’t need an invitation to knee him so I did and this pushed him forward to where a headbut was possible. This went on for quite some time.
Hitler and Stalin- the man they called ‘The Iron Chef’ in his own time- were tiring me out though. My arm muscles screamed from the effort and my own ragged breath was a testament to the strain the fight was taking but as I looked over to the screens Deloux was working on hope kindled in my heart and my twin anacondas. The distraction was almost a success. The system almost rebooting. I turned a smile back on the bruised face of Premmel.
> Whose head exploded.
Before I could wonder if my smile could now somehow kill people he slumped below me and erupted into yellow light and I was greeted with the sight of Rasputin holding my very own blaster in his mad hands. Premmel’s smoking remains burned up into a stream of binary in the air and Hitler and Stalin both became still in my arms.
Deloux didn’t turn. Though he heard the shot he was working on the last few percentage points on the screen.
Rasputin, fired again and Hitler became an eruption of yellow too. Deloux flinched but did not falter. Another shot and Stalin was history (again). Deloux winced but didn’t turn. Finally, frowning, Rasputin turned the barrel to Deloux. As the progress bar on the screen dinged and turned green the observation window shattered as a laser round thundered through it. Deloux finally stopped, hands poised inches above the computer terminal.
Kneeling, I raised my hands and we both turned our eyes towards Rasputin.
“RESET COMPLETE. PLEASE PRESS ANY KEY TO RESTART ALL SYSTEMS.”
The screens blinked a pleasant green of completion and the computer systems hummed a chorus of readiness.
Deloux’s eyes flitted to the keyboard. His fingers twitched.
The shot tore through the air next to his head, hot, loud and deadly, like my dating profile.
“Hands up!” Rasputin demanded.
Deloux’s hands went up.
The facility’s system waited for one keystroke. It’s progress bars and displays blinked at us, telling us it had completed its job and was waiting, ready to shut everything down and start again. Any key needed to be pressed. Any one. ` or /. Even a % would do. A NmLk would end it all. F10 could defeat them all. I wasn’t sure if ‘Pause’ would do it. The ‘End’ key would be quite poetic, but I probably wouldn’t risk a ‘print screen’.
But our hands were in the air which is the opposite of on keyboards. Rasputin raked the gun between the two of us. As if spinning plates, Delroy’s hands would begin to wobble and descend slowly and then the mad Monk would point the pistol at him and they would raise again.
Rasputin smiled thinly at us, the only man with a loaded gun.
“Gentlemen. What a valiant last ztruggle. But I’m afraid you have lost.”
---=◈◆⬤◆??◆⬤◆◈=---
Lost.
Somewhere in darkness and water and the feeling of falling. Reality formed around us but the tumbling picture was too fragmented and confused. All I felt was wetness and clawing gravity.
Gushing water. Swiss, by the feel.
It was everywhere yet we were still falling. Falling through water that was itself falling. It must be some kind of waterfall. All signs pointed to that. But where?
Tempus elbowed me in the midsection and I doubled over in the air, still, somehow, keeping a grip on him. I lashed out with my right and it found some soft flesh to bruise just as I felt his knee fire out and do the same to me. We settled for a gripping on to each other then. We were about to hit something and whoever was on the bottom would get the brunt of it. We embraced like lovers and fell like apples, tore at each other like jackals and swallowed torrents of water like sanitation pipes.
We hit.
It’s amazing how hitting a solid surface at high velocities can serve to orient yourself; it’s almost the only positive thing about it. A gush of cold water rushed down my throat as I gasped in pain. The waterfall thundered down on me, cold and merciless and unclean as a gymnasium shower and I tried to surface. I let myself go limp and let the current carry me off.
A blurry handful of minutes later I found myself retching on the banks of the lake with a view of the impressive falls. I squinted up at them and there seemed to be a fight going on on a cliff underneath the great falls. Two figures jousting fists at each other, sparring expertly on a rocky outcropping underneath the falls. Still in Victorian garb it seemed. Tempus? I wondered distantly as I let some of the water out of my gills.
Then a voice called to dispel that notion.
“The Reichenbach Falls,” called Tempus from a rock behind me where he leaned nonchalantly. He was wringing out his own garments and tapping at his infernal trousers again. I pushed myself up, through the mud.
“Seems someone beat us to the punch. So to speak.” He motioned up at the duelling figures. “Nice place for a climactic showdown. Hero against villain no doubt. Some inevitable clash between adversaries. Not like us down here- all wet and muddy.”
I gained my feet unsteadily and swung at him. It was sloppy and desperate but it carried a weight of anger behind it (similar in many ways to my highschool girlfriend). It hit nothing but air. I let the blow carry me back down, huffing into the mud where I could let out a moan into the squelching muck. Tempus’ boots re-materialized above my head and they then proceeded to tap-dance a quick succession of kicks into my midsection.
“I just programmed the trousers to transport me one second into the future at the touch of a button. Don’t fight me, Mister Funkworthy. You cannot win. I’m telling you this as a courtesy. My quarrel is not with you. I invite you to stay here, in this period of time. You will be left out of the fight completely, plus, your knowledge would make you a god in this time. Just stay down, Ebenezer.”
I dragged myself to my feet and wiped the dirt from my eyes. I could finish this now if I just-
I threw out a jab. A quick one. Quick enough to surprise myself, quick enough to end a sentence prematurely in a dash. But not quick enough. Tempus clapped a hand to his side and a fraction of a second later my fist snaked out into empty air. As it fell to my side Tempus re-materialized. He was already halfway through an uppercut.
I felt the cold mud meet the back of my scalp before I even felt the pain in my jaw. The pain mingled with shame and impotence, which also mingled with the far more tangible taste of blood (also mud). I felt like I was hurling musical instruments at him and losing. I dragged myself standing once again, tried to fight back the anger.
He was standing there calmly. “Why are you so loyal to him?” An earnest inquiry.
“Why do you hate him?”
“I asked first.”
“‘I asked first’. Are we five years old?”
“We could go back to when you were if you like,” he offered.
“So you could kill me when I was just a child? Heroic. Almost as bad as going back and killing a primitive ancestor. In fact why don’t you just go back to a child version of him? No stomach for that order of violence?”
He was shaking his head sadly. “This isn’t about being heroic. You’ve been keeping company with him for too long if you think like that.”
He was speaking plaintively again. He had nothing to fear from me, nothing to flee from.
“Then what is it about?”
“Revenge!”
“For. What?”
I caught it. A second before he plastered over it with a condescending smile there was a look on his face of unfathomable sorrow. There for a moment and gone the next. Just like him. He blinked out of existence again. A second later as I looked around he must have come back as a fist sent me sprawling in the dirt.
“Have you ever been stranded?” A fresh blow to my side. Next a savage kick doubled me over, took the wind from me. “Ever been alone and desperate, needed help? You cry out in the darkness.” A handful of mud slams into my face and I choke it down. “You cry out for help but nobody comes?” I grab at the sound but only air meets me. A foot bites into my lower spine and I finally do cry out, just like he wants. “And there is a lie of salvation. There is a lie of what could have been.” A knee slams into my face. I fire my arms out grasping at it but there is nothing, only a voice from everywhere.
“What did he do to you?!” I yell finally.
I spit out the blood and finally wipe the mud out of my eyes and pull myself into a kneel. He’s there; a few feet in front of me, straightening his clothing again and tapping at his trousers. He looks me in the eye this time.
“Nothing. He did nothing.”
“Then why-”
“He. Did. Nothing.”
Tempus casts his eyes up behind me and smiles thinly.
“But enough about the Captain. You’re missing the object lesson. Look,” he points and I follow his finger.
I wipe the mud out of my eyes and look up. A hundred feet above us the men plummet finally, locked inextricably in their feud to the very end. They fall still trading blows and struggling in each other’s grip. We watch as the water consumes them too.
When I look back to Tempus he was standing on the verge of a fresh and shimmering portal, calm again.
“There are no heroes, Mister Funkworthy. A voice cries out in the darkness and darkness is the only answer. I learned that. It was a hard lesson and it is one I plan to share. This preening clown you babysit likes to pretend otherwise. He is a liar, and that? That I cannot abide. Do not follow me further, Funkworthy. You have been an annoyance thus far but beyond this point I cannot indulge you any further.”
He looked back up at the ledge of the Falls and down at the surface of the water then nodded to himself before stepping through his own portal which winked out of existence neatly behind him. I lay there and listened to the roar of water and look at the grey uniform sky as, somewhere outside of time, Professor Tempus slipped away yet again.
The Time Trousers of Professor Tempus: A Captain Space Hardcore Adventure Page 22