Blackjack Villain (51 page)

Spending five minutes wondering what went into building a scuba tank was enough to make me wish for another Dr. Retcon enigma machine to copy. Haha, disconnected from his data core, was no help. We were thus left with Madelyne’s limited diving experience, which was far from technical, and a whole lot of guesstimation and conjecture.

The tank was made of pounded out pieces of hard metal soldered into a semi tubular form with a high pressure valve stem to which I had attached a flexible rubber tube. It was ugly and only semi-functional, and we had no time to test how it would respond to the extreme pressures at depth. Instead of a regulator, the air flowed freely and I’d be forced to bite down on the cable while at the same time leaving my mouth partially open to relieve the air pressure. Filled to an almost dangerous (as in explosive) level of air, we still estimated that I had no more than fifteen minutes of air. The tattered, hole-riddled scrap of a plan that required me to swim down and piss off some huge beast, then bait it into attacking the massing army.

“You can’t possibly believe he cares for these people,” Apogee scoffed from her perch overlooking Cool Hand and I.

“It’s crazy,” I told her, “and real stupid-”

“Unbelievably stupid,” she added, disgusted and bewildered, but I could figure no other alternative, no idea of how to face and defeat 10,000 alien warriors.

The more I thought about it, the more foolish the plan sounded, the more likely it was I wasn’t going make it back, making Zundergrub a very happy man. I guess that was what was motivating me now; I wanted to see the look on Zundergrub’s face when I brought that big bastard out of the water, destroyed the alien army, and saved his stupid village. I was beaming already, imagining the surprised look on his face.

Cool checked the straps one last time, his complaining muted and slapped my shoulder, “Glad it’s you and not me. That’s all I have to say.”

“Cool why don’t you go see if Haha has any other parts for the tank?” Apogee asked.

He looked at both of us, a conspiratorial smile flashing across his face and he leaned into me, again talking loud enough for Apogee to hear.

“A good luck quickie? Hell’s yeah!” Cool said and walked off leaving us alone.

“This will work,” I said in almost drone-like fashion.

“Just saying it won’t make it so,” Apogee scoffed.

“I’ll make it work.”

“Can I say something here? Why the hell aren’t they helping with this,” she motioned to Haha and Zundergrub watching us from a hill that overlooked the lake as Cool sped up to join them. “Why is it you that has to do everything?”

“Well, who else is going to do it? Cool’s a fucking coward, Zundergrub is trying his hardest to not do a damned thing.”

“What about Haha? He’s perfect for this. He doesn’t even breathe, and he’s near indestructible.”

“He said something about his avatar being disconnected to the core and it would end him forever or something.”

“It’s the same thing that would happen to one of us,” she said, her frustration bubbling over. “Maybe he’s programmed to be yellow.”

I shrugged. “It’s all on me, Madelyne. I have to do it”

“No you don’t,” Apogee snapped. “You want to do it. You’re dying to get killed out here, aren’t you? Or are you trying to show off to me?

“I’m trying to get us back,” I said, glad that the shadows were concealing my blushing. “You ever think of that? I mean, what the hell do you care about me anyway? Hell, the other day you were dying to kill me.”

She crossed her arms and cocked her head to one side. “Really? Now you’re mad at me now? I’m trying to keep you from doing something stupid.”

I softened my tone, “You ever talk Superdynamic or Epic our from doing something because it’s dangerous?”

“It’s not the same thing and you know it.”

“Why, because I’m a villain?”

Apogee walked into the water and came up to me.

“I don’t see another way around this,” I said as she checked my straps.

“You should let me go.”

I reached for her and took her face in my hand, “What kind of gentleman would I be?”

“Is that what you are now?”

“If I am, it’s because you bring it out in me.”

She gave me a bashful smile. We stared at each other for a few moments. So much to say, and so little time, I thought.

“Be careful, Dale,” she said finally.

I smiled, loving that she had called me by my real name and paddled out to deeper water. My skin was tough, but nerve endings still registered the cold. Silty residue, a mixture of fish shit and the metabolism of various fungi clung to my clothes, skin, and hair. I shuddered in disgust and put the hose in my mouth, unscrewing the tanks release valve. Rubber tasting air filled my mouth, and for an unsettling five seconds, I got used to breathing that way. It was like someone blowing air down your throat mid-kiss. I chanced one look back to shore. Apogee stood there, statuesque. Before she could acknowledge me, I submerged wondering if I’d ever see her again.

* * *

Our jury-rigged SCUBA system was an absolute failure. The tank had several leaks, and would soon be nothing but a well-strapped weight around my back.

I was still in the shallows, but visibility was poor as long kelp-like algae forests rose up from the bottom and intertwined in the surface. I sped up and soon cleared the area, finding much deeper waters where I could look for this huge beast.

And there were certainly big creatures submerged beneath the calm waves of the vast lake. In the distance, a few giant marine apex predators saw me and moved closer for a look. The enormous fish were slow, armored swimmers, some as large as fifty feet.

I headed straight for the nearest nasty, figuring to establish my dominance one way or another. The most likely scenario was it would eat me, and I would domineer it’s intestines for the better part of a few days. But there was the off chance that I could tear it apart from the insides. Sometimes, the odds weren’t in your favor and you still had to roll the dice.

Besides, I’m pretty nasty too.

I studied the fish that was so intent on eating me, and from a first look, there was no way it could possibly swallow my form. Its mouth was tiny, and teeth non-existent, a maw more suited to grazing on the long seaweed that covered the lake floor. It had two long tentacles where its pelvic fins should be, and they reached out to me, like antennae probing for a blind termite. It reminded me of fish from the early Carboniferous period, with heavy bony plates around their heads and shoulders and long muscular hindquarters. Then I realized the fish, if it was that, had no eyes, and had a toothed funnel mouth like that of a lamprey. It didn’t mean to swallow me, bore a hole in my side and suck my blood.

But it wasn’t ready for what I did, swimming right at it.

Its sensory antennae retracted and the creature retreated, lowering its tail and turning sideways for an easy escape. I kept going, sensing weakness, powering my legs towards the huge fish. It panicked and splashed away despite being almost ten times larger than I was.

Once I got to open water and dove deeper, visibility was marvelous and the water crystal clear if a bit tinged with a purplish glaze. The light from above shone through brightly, but the greater source of illumination was from below, a bioluminescence from various sources I had yet to explore.

The monstrous creature I was searching for was larger than even the huge fish around me, and had to hide in the deepest water. I surfaced and gauged my location before diving again and heading towards the middle of the lake before diving again.

A school of gargantuan jellyfish avoided me, even though one tentacle in the smallest of the specimens was easily three times as wide as I was. Yet the whole school raced away.

Below was a kaleidoscope of light from the entire spectrum. As I dove, things grew brighter and more visible, illuminated by a forest of bioluminescent waterborne fungus that lit a forest teeming with life, including ammonite mollusks, trilobites, and mollusk-like brachiopods. My tank was dangerously low in air, every breath becoming more and more forced, when I noticed a reddish glow that reflected off a school of discus-shaped silver fish as they sped away from me.

I sank deeper, searching amongst a thick layer of moss and weed underbrush and coming closer to the red hue that dominated the depths. The area was lit almost exclusively by this source, and streams of crimson slashed through the rippling kelp-like forest. I ripped foliage aside and swam deeper, revealing the rocky lake bottom, and a six-sided crimson prism, almost as tall as a man. A crystal I had been looking for.

Dr. Retcon’s gem.

It was in its raw form, tall pillar of rough quartz-like rock, but with Haha’s veritable arsenal of weapons and near endless ability to create tools, I was certain we could whittle it down to the exact size.

So my search for the great beast had ended in failure, but I had found the missing item for the particle accelerator. My tank was almost empty and breathing was laborious. I had to force each breath of the remaining air into my lungs. I grasped the shaft of one and tried twisting it out, but it was deeply rooted, and I had to brace myself to rip it out of the rocky base.

It shifted, and eager as I was to rip the whole thing off, I yanked harder. The ground gave, and shuddered, but the crystal did not move even an inch. I pulled again, exerting all my strength, and the rocky bottom quaked beneath me, rising a dozen feet or more, moving so violently that I could only hang on to the crystal in desperation. We rose higher and higher and I clutched to the crystal for dear life. On the way to the surface, the ground shook vigorously from side to side. The tube flew out of my mouth, but the tank was now voided, banging against the crystals as I bounced around.

Up I went, not daring to let go, and a moment later I crashed through the surface, with falling water washing against me like a heaving wave. My grip almost faded, but I held long enough for water to rush off. I tried rising to my feet, but it was almost impossible, as the rock formation I was on continued moving higher pressing me down.

Then the ground stopped rising, as abruptly as it had begun, and I was able to come to my feet and get a look around. I was five hundred feet in the air, riding a swell of lifted earth that was covered in dripping moss, kelp and dying fish of all sizes. I rode the mound like a tiny flea as it trounced along the crashing lake, rippling outwards with massive ten-foot waves. Moments later, there was a vibration below me, like another earthquake, followed by a harrowing cry that shook the land.

I had found Zundergrub’s monster.

* * *

I hung from the top of the monster’s head, but I had a hard time understanding what it was, much less what it looked like. Frankly, my vantage point didn’t give me the best perspective. It wasn’t any one thing, and it had little similar with anything else. It wasn’t a gargantuan reptile like Godzilla, or like the enormous statue of Talos from Jason and the Argonauts. The beast was splayed out and from its gait I could tell it was four legged, with longer forelegs. It dragged a long powerful tail through the marshes, coming out of the lake churning up earth, tearing it asunder like a god-monster, and leaving behind a trail of devastation.

The monster had a body structure much like a Komodo dragon, but it’s head was shorter, truncated and massive. It was covered with wet moss, vegetation and foliage which gave it a shaggy look, like the coat of an English sheepdog, messy and haphazard. Thousands of gallons of the purplish water still streamed off the creature, like rivers and brooks down a rocky mountainside, spilling back into the lake.

I rode on the crown atop its head and the beast was oblivious to me like an elephant would be to an ant. Except, in that analogy, I was more like a bacteria on the carapace of the ant, that the elephant paid no attention to. If the beast was five hundred feet off the level of the water, it was easily five times as long, with each thrashing of its endless tail sending massive waves crashing over the banks at the sides of the lake.

I could see the village to my left and ahead the approaching Mist Army battleship, so my job was easy, as the monster ambled out of the lake towards my intended target. I had to ride the thing and look good. Overhead, a flock of the mounted manta rays flew in formation.

But to my shock, the huge creature’s head scanned to either side, and seeing the village as the nearer target, it ambled in that direction, intent on crushing everything underfoot. Zundergrub’s plan had gone terribly wrong, and there was nothing I could do to stop the monster from destroying and killing everyone in its path.

I looked around for anything I could do, but all I could see were those red crystal clusters, sprouting here and there on the creature’s head. I moved towards the front of the crown to get a better look at the monster’s face and slipped onto my stomach. The top of its head was abnormally flat, but slick with moist plant growth. I crawled on my hands and knees and I looked down at the monster’s face, which was like nothing I could have expected. Instead of a mouth it had a furrowed bridge like the front of a locomotive, from where spewed a burning cloud of steam. Above that, it had many crystalline eyes the size of a Buick, glowing in scintillating colors, but the beast showed no signs of life. Far below, the hoofed forepaws churned the ground, dragging the torso, rear legs and tail like an unwilling partner.