'You just don't know when to quit, do ya Jones?' jeered Thrax, taking a swaggering step forward.
But then the virus hesitated, staring down at his frozen claw as if he had completely forgotten his nullifying handicap.
Ozzy seized the opportunity to strike the first blow. The smirk that flashed across the T cell's face was greeted by a counter-punch square in the jaw. He managed to morph out of the way of the next few jabs, getting a sneaky head butt in.
As more blows were exchanged, he felt the nucleic acid pumping through his system. This feeling was what he lived for. What being a white blood cell was all about.
Cockiness overtook him in his exhilaration, and he attempted a flash kick that connected with the virus's chin. It was a move that had no place in a down-and-dirty fight, and Ozzy realised his mistake in the frozen nanosecond before Thrax backhanded him mid-air with so much force it sent his head spinning, twisting his neck like a Twizzler. He also thought he heard something shatter, presumably internally, and hoped it wasn't anything important that he would need later in life. The strike sent him flying nanometres backwards, landing face down in the sclera coating of Shane's eyeball.
Heaving himself up, he felt his neck unwind itself to let in air, as he attempted to regain equilibrium.
'You know what, Jones? You want this chain so bad, Big Daddy Thrax is gonna let you have it.'
Ozzy's breath was suddenly cut off again as he felt the cold pressure of Thrax's chain constrict around his neck, the pulsating beads grinding against his jugular. His hands instinctively flew up to grasp desperately at the cord, as he gasped for air and tried vainly to create some slack.
'Looks good on you Jones. You wear it well!'
The compression on Ozzy's throat intensified as he felt Thrax pull back on the chain. He flailed wildly as consciousness began to slip away from him, delirious visions of his head popping off like a bottle cap, fizzy blue cytoplasm spilling everywhere, swam across his oxygen-starved mind.
He was only dimly aware of the rushing roar of Shane's eyelid closing in a blink, and Thrax's yelling.
Once again he was tumbling backwards, so he threw out an arm, managing to grab hold of a ridge near the tip of the eyelash before he was thrust out into oblivion.
Yanking the cord away, he sucked in a rattling breath, letting out a pained groan and massaging the depressions in his neck.
Notches caused by deoxyribonucleic beads.
Beads with the power to regulate body temperature.
Conveniently linked together in a chain.
He had Thrax's chain, clenched in his fist.
Ozzy's eyes widened with the realization that he had just snatched the key to saving Frank's life. To saving them all. He let out a triumphant laugh.
'Who's the germinator now?!'
Then he felt a jolt as the eyelash supporting him began to break away.
He heard the thundering whip-crack of the tendrils holding it in place straining and snapping, the entire row beginning to subside. A quick wrap of his knuckles against the shaft's surface confirmed his suspicion: it was a falsie. And it was falling off. He had to get his feet back on cutem firma.
He turned around just in time to see the seething virus making a lunge at him. Thrax's deadly claw was headed straight for Ozzy's abdomen, no longer glacial, but glowing with pestilence. The last thing that crossed Ozzy's mind before the claw connected was: Well that explains the shattering sound. 'Least it wasn't my vesicles.
Given the short amount of time his body had to react, it faired pretty well. His membrane cleft apart to form a donut around Thrax's fist, away from the intensity of the virus's contagion. But not fast enough for him to avoid it completely unscathed. The tip of the spur grazed across his belly, penetrating a receptor. It stung, but it wasn't too painful.
'Can you feel the heat, Jones?' hissed Thrax, chuckling darkly.
A little bit, yeah. But it was mostly radiant heat. Ozzy wasn't boiling or blistering. That could only be a good sign. He stared into the virus's unrelentingly psychotic yellow orbs, pupils like pin pricks. Watched as his crooked sneer formed around the words, 'Too bad you won't be here to see me break my record, when I take down Frank's pretty little girl.'
Like halitosis was Ozzy going to let that happen.
Glancing down quickly and seeing that he had avoided impalement, Ozzy grinned defiantly back up at Thrax as he delivered the stinger, 'She ain't goin' down. You are.'
Okay, so not the best comeback in all of Frank. But it got the point across.
The virus's face contorted in confusion. He shot a glare down at Ozzy's abdomen, taking in the sight of the gaping hole around his embedded hand. He tugged vainly at his wrist, but the claw was stuck steadfast in the false cuticle.
Ozzy grimaced as he coerced his upper body to split down the middle, extricating himself from under the incapacitated virus. Thrax made a clumsy grab for him as Ozzy staggered to his feet, teetering slightly as his membrane began the unpleasant process of knitting itself back together.
He was already running by the time he looked down at his newly re-meshed torso. There was a hair-line slice clean through his t-shirt. A thin, cauterised wound was barely visible through the hole.
He hugged a protective arm across his injury, urging himself forward. Behind him he heard Thrax cry out in anguish.
Nearing the base of the false eyelash, Ozzy lurched forward as it jolted again and slipped further down, more strands of glue wrenching free. Recognising his only chance for survival, Ozzy made a desperate leap, one hand outstretched, the other still grasping the chain. The row of eyelashes began to fall nanoseconds after he had propelled himself into the air. He managed to grab hold of one of the pendulous glue strings, bouncing slightly in the recoil.
Using his body weight, he swung around to watch the eyelashes descent, as they fluttered to rest in a beaker of clear liquid. He could make out the tiny figure of Thrax swimming furiously for the surface. But as the virus broke the waterline, the blazing red hue of his matrix blanched to a sickly green.
The distance between them spared Ozzy from witnessing the full visceral horror of Thrax's demise, but he could make out the virus's body writhe and twist as he diffused into nothing but a waft of smoke. Dissolving in alcohol. What a way to go.
Ozzy swayed helplessly on his glutinous life-line as two attending nurses started coercing Shane away from her father's bedside. He moaned feeble protestations as the distance between himself and Frank widened. He cried out his home's name. This couldn't be happening. He had gone beyond his duty as a solitary immunity cell, and destroyed the threat singlehandedly. So shouldn't everything be neatly resolving itself right about now? Shouldn't all the responsibility be being lifted from his shoulders? Shouldn't happily-ever-after come next? This was brucella spit!
Inching his way up the glue, Ozzy hoisted himself onto the cuticle of a real eyelash.
He looked up just in time to watch the feeble sputters of heartbeat on the ECG machine dwindle to a flat line.
Sinking to his knees, he barely registered that Shane was back beside Frank, sobbing apologies that fell on deaf ears. Dead ears. Frank was dead, and therefore, everyone else was doomed to the same fate.
Leah was a neuroglia; she would have only minutes left once the blood stopped circulating. He imagined her face, stricken, as she expends the last of her ATP and her ion pumps begin to fail. Clutching helplessly at her chest as she collapses in a heap. Small fissures splitting open across her membrane, mutilating her perfectly curvaceous form. Cytokines bleeding out from her in a sludgy pool.
His name rasping from between her voluptuous lips, repeated in a stilted, involuntary loop as she loses the ability to communicate any more cohesive thoughts.
He had no idea what would happen to Drix. The pill hadn't originated inside of Frank. He wasn't an organic, so did that mean he would last long enough to witness the full extent of the devastation?
Would he be left to watch the cells around him necrotize, the bacteria seizing control of the city? Would he feel the onset of rigor mortis, experience the chill of death? Frank's blood turning to acid, his tissue devouring itself from the inside? Drix would be trapped as the body around him decayed and putrefied. He would wish he had taken that one-way ticket out of the bladder when he had the chance.
A huge, dewy teardrop was forming in the duct above Ozzy. It gave him an idea: a last vestige of hope. His face cracked into a half-smile of determination. Osmosis Jones was never going to be the type of cell who just gave up.
He was running again, trying to outstrip the ebb of saltwater. If he could just get to the end of the lash in time, maybe he could outrun death too.
He saw the globular wall of liquid overtaking him in his peripheral vision. He was sprinting flat-out, his proteins screaming in protest as he moved faster still.
He reached the tip, and swan-dived into the abyss. The tear drop was already falling through the air underneath him, but he was falling faster. Its surface yielded under the pressure of his body and he was engulfed by the saline fluid.
o}{0}{o
The cushion of saltwater took the brunt of the impact, but Ozzy still landed with considerable force on the polyp of Frank's uvula. He lay sprawled on his side, eyes clamped shut as his only defence against the onslaught of ache and vertigo, leaving him momentarily paralytic.
He felt a large hand gently roll him onto his front. Saw shadows of movement through the delicate membrane of his eyelids.
Tentatively, he opened his eyes. Saw the looks of disbelief on his friends' faces. His head lolled to the side, as for the first time he eased up on the vice-like grip he'd been keeping on the DNA chain in his outstretched fist, letting the others see his prize.
The beads of the chain, which had been throbbing under the heat of his fingers, lay glistening on his palm.
'…oh, Jones…' he heard Leah exhale. It was the most glorious sound in all of Frank.
Somewhere above Ozzy's shoulder he heard the Chief bellow, 'Get that thing to the hypothalamus, now!'
He felt someone take hold of the chain, and lift it hurriedly away from his touch.
What happened next was inexplicable. He couldn't have previously conceived of the feelings this sudden separation triggered within him. It was as if someone had yanked an IV drip straight out of his arm. As if they had wrenched his newborn child out of his nurturing embrace. Instinctively, despite the pain and fatigue coursing through him, his hand sprang forward to latch back onto the cord.
'What the-' exclaimed the offending immunity officer, finding himself anchored down by Ozzy's resisting weight.
There was an awkward, deathly pause.
Ozzy realised that tears were tracking their way silently down his cheeks. He shook his head and closed his eyes tight-shut in order to focus his waning energy on keeping the chain in his grip, incapable of voicing the burning need he had to do so.
He felt slender, soft hands gently caress and cup the sides of his face.
'Jones, honey, its okay. You're safe now. You're back in Frank. You can let it go now. You have to: we need it, baby.'
He gazed blearily up into Leah's face. 'Ozzy,' she whispered soothingly, brushing a tear away from his cheek. He watched as her voluptuous lips formed to repeat his name again. Repeated in a stilted, involuntary loop as she loses the ability to communicate any more cohesive thoughts.
He had to stop that from happening. So he forced every fibre of his instinct into relinquishing the chain. Watched it being whisked away before Leah pulled him close, cradling his head in her lap.
Misery washed over him, and he was weeping now. Great, shuddering sobs that racked his body as he buried his face in Leah's thigh.
She would think that they were simply tears of overwhelming relief. That he was just venting the confounding emotions that came with having narrowly avoided near-certain death.
Later on, Ozzy would convince himself that this had been the case too.