Akiko on the Planet Smoo

by Mark Crilley

  GA-GUNCH . . . GA-GUNCH . . .

  Whatever was approaching sounded like some sort of big, heavy machine in a factory. As the noise got louder we could actually feel the ground shake. Finally we saw the thing come out into the daylight. As Gax’s opponent entered the ring, the crowd erupted into cheers.

  And what were they cheering for? It was the biggest, ugliest robot you can imagine. It was about thirty feet tall and moved around on two legs, each supported by huge clodhopper feet that made that horrible noise every time they hit the ground: GA-GUNCH . . . GA-GUNCH . . . The robot had two big arms shooting up out of its body like giant crab’s claws, and a tiny little head that was covered with at least a dozen electronic eyes. It was nearly ten times bigger than Gax, and a lot faster, too.

  “H-Heavens!” Mr. Beeba gasped, his mouth dropping open in amazement.

  “Lordy! It’s a ’57 Shnum-Crusher!” Spuckler said, obviously impressed. “In pretty good condition, too.”

  “Oh my goodness!” I gasped. “Gax is going to get torn apart by that thing!”

  “Hey, have a little faith, ’Kiko,” Spuckler said. “Gax is a lot tougher than he looks.”

  The huge robot made a quick run around the ring and the crowds cheered him on. You could tell that this robot had won just about every fight he had ever been in. No matter what Spuckler said, I didn’t see how Gax had a chance of defeating such a monstrous opponent.

  “Keep movin’, Gax,” Spuckler called out. “Look for his weak spot!”

  “ALL HIS SPOTS LOOK QUITE STRONG TO ME, SIR,” Gax replied warily. By then the ’57 Shnum-Crusher was right on top of him.

  FWAK!

  The huge robot smacked Gax with one of his claws and sent him flying. Every head in the stadium slowly turned to follow Gax’s path through the air.

  SPOOT!

  Gax hit the ground and bounced up into one of the walls, leaving a little indentation where he struck the stone.

  SPU-KANG!

  He finally landed upside down a few yards from the wall, surrounded by little bolts and scraps of metal that had been knocked loose from within him.

  “That's the way to do it! He's rolling with the punches,” Spuckler said, squinting and nodding to himself. “That’s good strategy.”

  The crowd was going wild. They’d have been perfectly happy to see this robot smash Gax into pieces. Fortunately Gax was still able to move, and he quickly righted himself with the help of two mechanical arms that folded out from inside his body. Then he wheeled himself over to the gigantic robot and began to speak.

  “LOOK, SURELY WE CAN WORK THIS THING OUT. . . .”

  Unfortunately the Shnum-Crusher didn’t seem to hear a word. He backed up a little and then came after Gax again: GA-GUNCH . . . GA-GUNCH . . .

  SMAP!

  Gax went flying again, this time even further across the arena and higher up into the air. The giant robot followed Gax wherever he landed, attacking him again and again. Every time Gax hit the ground or bounced off the wall he seemed to lose another little piece of himself. He must have gotten knocked across the arena about twenty times. (I sort of lost track after a while.)

  SKASH!

  When Spuckler began to look worried, I knew Gax was in trouble.

  “Aw, man,” he said to himself, grimacing. “I don’t know how much more of this the little guy can take.”

  As the noise of the crowd grew to a steady roar, the big robot moved in for the kill. Gax lay motionless on the floor of the arena, his body bent out of shape and flipped upside down. Only his head was right side up, quivering at the end of his neck as he turned to face his opponent.

  “I’M BEGGING YOU,” Gax said in a last-ditch effort to save himself, “AS ONE MACHINE TO ANOTHER . . .”

  But the robot would hear nothing of it. He reached down and picked up Gax with both of his gigantic arms, one claw gripping his body and the other locked onto his neck.

  Spuckler grabbed the bars of our cage and began pulling at them with all his might. I could tell he wanted to go out there and save Gax, but the bars just wouldn’t budge.

  The rest of us sat there helplessly as the Shnum-Crusher started pulling Gax’s neck out as far as it would go. It stretched out two or three yards before it reached its limit, and then we could hear this terrible squeaking sound. Gax was still functioning, but he had lost his ability to speak properly.

  “XGRBLE PPRYPT FFFKGHFFT,” was all he could manage to say as his neck stretched out yet another inch.

  “I can’t bear to watch,” said Spuckler, putting his hands over his eyes and turning away.

  Me, I couldn’t help looking. And I’m glad I did, because otherwise I’d have missed something pretty amazing. You see, just when we thought it was all over for Gax, a little screw popped off him and dropped down into an opening a few inches from the base of the much larger robot’s head. It was quite a tiny little piece, just a bolt or a loose screw or something, but it must have worked its way down into the Shnum-Crusher’s insides and knocked something out of whack. All of a sudden he started shaking like crazy and making this horrible squealing noise. A hush fell over the crowd. Spuckler took his hands off his eyes and looked up at the Shnum-Crusher. He was rocking wildly from side to side as if he were trying to dance.

  “Get down, everybody!” Spuckler shouted. He covered his head with his hands and threw himself onto the floor of the cage. “The Crusher’s gonna blow!”

  Mr. Beeba and I covered our heads just in time.

  BA-DOOOOOOOOOOOM!

  The mighty Shnum-Crusher exploded into a million pieces of metal, all of which shot out in different directions, leaving white trails of smoke behind them like bottle rockets. A few pieces shot right through our cage, and others flew way up into the highest seats in the arena, sending spectators scrambling for safety. When the smoke finally cleared (and it was a few minutes before it did), there was nothing left of that robot but a little crater in the middle of the arena.

  As for Gax, he had rolled loose from the Shnum-Crusher’s claws just before the explosion. He’d gotten kind of charred and covered with soot, but otherwise he was okay.

  The crowd booed and hissed. I’m pretty sure most of them hadn’t bet on Gax. In fact, I think we were the only people in the whole place who were happy that Gax had won. When they put Gax back in our cage, we congratulated him on a job well done.

  “That was real good, Gax,” Spuckler said as he wiped some of the dirt off Gax’s helmet. “Blowin’ him up was pretty much your best option at that point.”

  “Were you scared, Gax?” I asked.

  “NOT REALLY,” Gax replied calmly in his low electronic voice.

  “Gax ain’t scared of nothin’, Akiko,” Spuckler chuckled. “His fear circuits blew out years ago.”

  Spuckler was the next contestant. They didn’t have to drag him out of the cage, though. He practically volunteered. When the big fat guy came over to take him into the ring, it was Spuckler who ended up leading the way.

  “Don’t worry, pal,” Spuckler said to the man, sounding like someone who did this sort of thing for fun. “I know the drill.”

  Having just seen Gax beat an opponent many times his size, Mr. Beeba and I were a little less nervous. Spuckler, after all, was a fairly tough-looking guy, and we were pretty sure he could handle whatever it was they would send out to fight him. No one had as much confidence in Spuckler as Spuckler himself, though.

  “Relax, everybody,” he called back to us as he approached the center of the ring. “I ain’t met one yet I couldn’t lick!”

  Again the giant steel doors slowly creaked open to reveal the dimly lit passage behind them. I strained to get a good look, half expecting another Shnum-Crusher to come out, claws waving in the air. But whoever it was who set up these fights had found a much more frightening opponent for Spuckler.

  There was a low growling that clearly came from some kind of animal. At first all you could see was the snout. It was big and green and covered with smooth, shiny ski
n like a salamander’s. Then slowly, bit by bit, the creature moved forward into the light until we could all see exactly what it was: a giant lizard, about fifty feet tall! It looked sort of like a Tyrannosaurus rex, except that its head was about twice the size of its body, and its teeth were . . . well, they were just plain unbelievable. I mean, this animal couldn’t even shut its own mouth, that’s how big its teeth were. It also had beady black eyes, pointy claws, and a long shimmering tail. But all you could see were those teeth, I swear.

  “A d-dinosaur!” I gasped.

  “Technically it’s a Jaggasaur, Akiko,” Mr. Beeba corrected, “but I’m sure you have the right idea.”

  Spuckler suddenly looked very small and harmless in comparison to the Jaggasaur. When the lizard creature saw him, it let out this incredibly loud roar that echoed all over the arena. The spectators cheered and whistled and just generally went crazy. They were looking forward to seeing Spuckler get gobbled up right there in front of them!

  Spuckler turned around and started running away from the creature as fast as he could. It looked like he had lost his nerve and had decided to make a run for it. The Jaggasaur took off after him, and the crowd roared with glee. Though Spuckler was really quick and had gotten a pretty good head start, the monster lizard was closing in fast. Before long Spuckler was only a few feet ahead of the creature, who was snapping wildly at the air with his enormous teeth missing Spuckler by just a couple of inches.

  Then I realized Spuckler wasn’t running away at all. What he was doing was sprinting as fast as he could toward the wall of the arena. And when he got so close that he was only a few yards from the wall, he suddenly changed direction and trotted off to one side. The Jaggasaur, of course, was far too big and heavy to change direction that quickly, so he flew head long into the wall at about a hundred miles an hour! Chunks of the wall went flying, and the Jaggasaur flopped over onto the ground, leaving a big dent in the wall where he’d hit.

  There was an astonished gasp from the crowd, followed by booing and hissing. Spuckler didn’t seem to mind, though. He strutted around the ring with his hands up in the air, acting like they were cheering him on.

  “Thank you, thank you!” he said as the crowd shouted even more angrily. “ ’Tweren’t nothin’.”

  By then the Jaggasaur had recovered and began slowly creeping up behind Spuckler. Mr. Beeba and Gax and I tried to warn him by yelling and waving our hands, but he couldn’t hear because of all the noise from the crowd. Spuckler had no idea the Jaggasaur was anywhere near him until the creature reached out and grabbed him around the waist with one of his outstretched claws.

  Next thing we knew, Spuckler was being spun around in circles like a lasso. I was getting dizzy just looking at him. He must have gone around fifty or sixty times before the Jaggasaur let go, sending him soaring up into the sky like he’d been fired out of a cannon. We all just followed him with our eyes as he rose higher and higher into the air. He went up so high, in fact, that I thought he might fall somewhere outside the arena.

  “Heavens!” Mr. Beeba cried, following the curve of Spuckler’s skyward path. “He’s going to land right on top of us!”

  Sure enough, Spuckler came crashing down onto the roof of our cage, nearly crushing it as he bounced off and landed on the ground nearby. I think the cage actually broke his fall a little. But he was still in pretty bad shape. He lay flat on his back and showed no sign of moving. The crowd cheered wildly.

  “Spuckler!” I called out to him. “Are you okay?”

  “That you, Gax?” he asked, squinting at the air. “C’mon, boy, take them Bropka steaks off the grill. . . .” His eyes had this weird dizzy look, like he was half-asleep or something.

  “Bropka steaks?” I asked, turning to Mr. Beeba. “What’s he talking about? He’s not making any sense!”

  “Well, that’s nothing new, Akiko,” he replied. “The problem is he’s no longer in any condition to fight!”

  “Fight?” Spuckler asked, slowly coming out of his grogginess. Suddenly he blinked and seemed very alert.

  “Fight!” he repeated, jumping to his feet.

  The Jaggasaur, annoyed to find that his opponent was not dead, turned to face Spuckler and growled menacingly. The crowd was buzzing with excitement. I think they knew that this next round was going to be the last and that whoever walked away from it would be the winner. Maybe Spuckler knew this too, because he leaned forward and braced himself with both legs, as if he were prepared to give his all.

  “Okay, Jaggs,” he muttered, already having come up with a nickname for the creature. “Let’s see what you got.”

  The Jaggasaur opened his mouth as if to roar loudly, but instead a blast of fire shot out of his mouth and hit the ground a foot or two from where Spuckler stood. Spuckler leaped out of the way just in time and landed flat on his back. For the first time a look of fear came over his face.

  “A fire-breathin’ Jaggasaur?” he said in disbelief. “This ain’t my day.”

  The Jaggasaur must have had a pretty good supply of fire in him, because he kept shooting flames out all over the place. Spuckler ran from one place to the next, but everywhere he fled the Jaggasaur followed with another burst of flames. Finally he had Spuckler surrounded by a ring of fire. The roar of the crowd grew louder.

  I felt sure that Spuckler was in very real trouble.

  “He’s . . . He’s going to be burned alive!” I cried.

  “Poor man. It’s a shame to see this happen to him after such a valiant effort,” Mr. Beeba said, as if Spuckler were already dead and gone. I couldn’t believe he was taking the whole thing so calmly.

  “Aren’t you going to do anything?” I shouted at him.

  “Now, d-don’t get me wrong, Akiko,” he stammered, a bit startled by the tone of my voice. “I hate to see Spuckler go. He’s a very dear friend of mine, you see. But we must take full account of the risks involved before we do anything too . . . er . . . risky.”

  I could see that Mr. Beeba wasn’t going to be any help.

  Meanwhile the flames were getting closer and closer to Spuckler. Sweat was pouring down his face, and it looked as if he’d completely run out of strength. It was a terrible thing to see, and I found myself wishing yet again that I’d never agreed to come on this adventure. If I’d known things were going to get this bad I’d have definitely stayed home, safely tucked under the covers of my bed!

  Suddenly I noticed Poog staring at me. He had this funny look in his eyes, and he’d moved up really close to my face so that I could hardly see anything but him. Then something really weird happened. Poog never opened his mouth, but I swear he said something to me. I know it sounds pretty crazy, but I think he said the word yes.

  And that’s when I knew what I had to do.

  When Spuckler had fallen on top of the cage, its bars had bent a little, leaving a much bigger gap between some of the bars than there had been before. And there was just enough space for me to squeeze through.

  “Akiko!” Mr. Beeba cried, trying his best to yank me back into the cage. “What’s gotten into you?”

  I pulled away from him.

  “I’m going to put an end to this nonsense,” I heard myself saying. And the funny thing is, I really meant it. Suddenly I felt very sure that there was no more time to sit around worrying about what would happen next. I had to take charge of things.

  I stepped out into the arena and started walking over to where the Jaggasaur was standing. When Spuckler saw what I was doing, he was just as surprised as Mr. Beeba.

  “Get back in that cage, Akiko!” he shouted from behind the flames. “This ain’t no place for a little girl like you! You’ll get yourself killed!”

  “Don’t worry, Spuckler!” I shouted, not even bothering to turn my head. “I know what I’m doing!” And so I kept walking and walking, all the way across the arena, until I was just a few yards from where the Jaggasaur stood. There was a lot of confusion in the stands. People just couldn’t believe I was doing what I was do
ing. Looking back, I can hardly believe it myself.

  Oddly enough, the Jaggasaur just stood there staring down at me. Small puffs of smoke were coming out of his mouth as he breathed in and out, but otherwise he was perfectly still. I guess monsters of that size aren’t used to little girls walking up to them, so he just stood there with this puzzled expression on his face.

  “You should be ashamed of yourself!” I shouted up at the creature. “Who do you think you are, bullying a scrawny little man like that? Why don’t you pick on someone your own size!”

  The spectators were astonished. They chattered among themselves, trying to figure out who I was and what I was doing. As for the Jaggasaur, he suddenly became very tame, like a dog who had just been given a good scolding. He sat down on his hind legs and let out another small puff of smoke.

  Just then two big guys snuck up behind me to stop me from interrupting the fight. I heard their footsteps and turned around to face them. They were both pretty tough looking and could have very easily just picked me up and carried me away. I don’t know what it was that happened to me just then. I guess I figured I had nothing to lose, so I might as well show these guys how angry I really was.

  “Don’t touch me or you’ll be sorry!” I shouted. It must have looked pretty ridiculous, a little girl like me telling those two guys they’d be sorry. In fact, all they did was sort of chuckle and keep walking toward me, which only made me angrier. I clenched my fists, closed my eyes, and yelled at them as loudly as I possibly could.

  “Look, I don’t have time to mess around with you crazy people! I’ve got a prince to rescue! I’ve got to find Alia Rellapor and . . .”

  Boy, did they jump when they heard that! They turned to each other and spoke nervously in their own language.