As he fell for what seemed like ages, Zurg cursed the fact that he didn't have his rocket boots on. "And I got them on sale too!"
As Zurg contemplated whether he should make rocket boot bunny slippers, for nighttime purposes, Zurg landed with a thud onto the marble tiled floor, forming a miniature crater. Cracks formed like spider webs around the site of impact. Dents covered his bucket head, and lacerations crisscrossed his arms, allowing a hoary blood to seep out of his body. Why, even his yellow teeth were chipped, with cracks spreading every time he grimaced. Oh this would not do for his self-image.
"Uuuuggghhh," Zurg groaned. Every part of his body hurt. At this rate, his nerve-endings would short-circuit themselves. His wounds felt like knives were continuously eating away at his flesh, and for his smile, well, someone might as well have taken a hammer to them. "Pains only fun when you're inflicting it on someone else." Zurg struggled to stand; limbs shaking in the process. "And I am NOT soft. I happen to take my exercising schedule seriously. I didn't get these rock hard abs from sitting on my throne."
As Zurg brushed his suit smooth, his eyes opened wide in surprise. "This is not my suit! This, this has lace! And frills! And all manners of girly medieval clothing," he discovered that he was wearing dark green trousers, yellow stockings, red leather shoes, and a ruffled puffy white shirt, covered by a smart royal blue jacket with red buttons. "And what tomfoolery is this?" he whispered, as he discerned that a bright green hat topped his sorry outfit, complete with a long bright blue feather. Realization dawned on him quite painfully. "ACK! I look like a colorblind Tangean! Oh the horror! There's not even a trace of purple anywhere on this attire. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" He shook his fists angrily at the sky, fighting back the urge to say i"Curse you Buzz Lightyear!"/i It wasn't right to give the bloke credit for everything bad that happened to him. He didn't deserve such an honor.
When Zurg got over that little episode, he surveyed his surroundings. He seemed to be in a glistening maroon maze of sorts, (the walls showed his horrid reflections from multiple angles at once), with so many twists and turns that it looked like those crazy lines from Disneyworld that were sure to drive even the bravest of mortals mad, and give them pretty bad blisters too. Zurg decided to try to get out of this funhouse, before something ielse/i changed for the worse.
As the hours passed by, Emperor Zurg's long strides grew shorter, his breaths became more labored, and his feet really started to smart in these uncomfortable shoes. Nevertheless, he pressed onwards, for fear of what would happen if he were to stop moving altogether. "I don't care what Brent Starkisser says. My robe is quite manly compared to this tragic couture." He sighed, "What I wouldn't give to be in my closet right now, with wardrobe fit for a king…"
As Zurg kept trudging onwards, his mind barely registered that the present section of the maze seemed all too familiar. Zurg's mouth expanded with rage, "What? I'm all the way back at the beginning? This is so not my day!" He reasoned, "It must be Monday. Curse you Mondays!" Zurg foolishly decided to sprint down random hallways, twisting like a crazy Jo-Ad with Bunzel fever, keeping his legs pounding, heart racing, adrenaline running. "There just has to be a way out of here, I know it!"
As expected, the alien man got hopelessly lost, stuck in a different section of the maze far below the asteroid's surface. He could feel the air getting colder, nipping his skin that felt so exposed.
When his rugged body couldn't take it anymore, Zurg fell with a thud onto the ground, too tired to move. His body surrendered to his pretty prison, but his mind was still free to nag him half to death. "Is this what it was like for Warp and the grubs?" he wondered silently, as his mind went on a rampage.
i"I can't perish now! There are so many things I never got to do! I never ruled the whole universe (for some reason, he could only conquer every other plane of existence except this sole galaxy. Where did you think all his vast resources came from? The flea market?), never got Vicki Vortex's number, or that second date, never got around to annihilating Buzz Lightyear, and never ever ever got to fulfill my lifelong dream of having my own television show, staring Zurg 24/7. Evil fun for the whole family!"/i
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," his hand waved away the nonexistent thought bubble. "I'm trapped in here, and that's all folks. It's not like I can magically end up at the exit by clicking my heels three times, or saying 'open says me,' or whatever that Arabian Nights book said." He slammed his fist against the cold hard ground. "This is worse than the time that buzz called me on making up the word trandibulator—" the ground suddenly opened up beneath Zurg, causing him to plummet once more through the inky black darkness. "Would it kill someone to install some light bulbs around here?"
As he prepared to land "splat" against the ground, as this drop was much longer than the first, he found himself astonished to be levitating a foot above the ground in one piece. Strong electromagnets over a super cooled conductor upheld Zurg's massive form. Zurg tried to touch the ground, but the magnets propelled him every time, so he was forced to do the breast stroke to swim/fly (swy) out of the situation, landing on his feet as he exited the circular room. "I guess trandibulator was a real word after all. A code word to get me here. HA! I knew it. Buzz'll be so peeved!"
His victory was short-lived, as Zurg realized that he was in a different cavern at the base of the structure. "Well this just dices my deviled eggs. This place doesn't even have proper upholstery!" Zurg was irked by the room that dared to be as nature intended, with jagged rocks, Stalactites dangling dangerously from the ceiling, and pebbles just the right size to trip careless feet. A pigsty!
"And what is this? I can't believe it." The color scheme involved white stones with green moss coating the edges of the wall. "AHH! I hate those two colors, especially in combination! I would say that Star Command is behind this operation, but they're not nearly so intelligent. I mean, come on, the dense Buzz Lightyear is their top operative. Sure, he's got the pex, but there's nothing going on upstairs, if ya know what I mean." He pondered in thought, "Hold on a second, why am I speaking aloud? It's not like there's anyone here worth talking to," he commented while eyeing another shriveled corpse in the background. "I must be going bonkers."
Zurg stopped psychoanalyzing himself when he spotted a dim light of in the distance. "Maybe that's a way out," he hoped, as he found the strength to run yet again, forgetting about the sharp pain in his side. "Zurg's back in business!"
He arrived at his destination.
"Must've gone bankrupt. Darn fluctuating economy."
Before him was a tall cylinder, at least twelve feet tall, filled with a sky blue jello-like substance. Small bubbles were dispersed through the entire mixture, coming from a bulky breathing device strapped to the evil white man's head!
Zurg nearly had a heart attack before he admitted that he jumped to conclusions too easily. It wasn't the same guy at all. Rather, it was a girl, with a slim figure, a lanky stature, and her body was many shades of blue. She looked like a diamond of sorts, crafted by a skilled artisan. Her arms were crossed against her chest, and legs dangled uselessly beneath her. Wires wove across her body, swaying softly in the liquid, just like her hair. The most striking thing about her was her eyes, lacking pupils of any sort. "She's at least a head shorter than the other guy. I'd say this sculpture's roughly what, five feet? Five foot two at the most?"
Upon closer inspection, Zurg jumped back in horror worse than anything he had ever felt, covering his eyes in the process.
"Eeeeeww, she's not wearing any clothes!" the sheltered guy screeched in a high-pitched voice. He couldn't bring himself to say "naked." It was unbecoming. At least, to spare his sanity from further trauma, the wires unintentionally acted as a saving grace, hiding her more delicate features from the elements. "I swear, as soon as I get back to the Dreadnaught, I am going to blow this place sky high!"
As Zurg shambled away from the cylinder, trying to avoid the rocks littering the floor without looking, he tripped and fell right into the glass, with his face pressed up against the tube. "Okay, just open your eyes for a quick second, use your eyesight to get the heck out of here, and then make a break for it," he formulated a plan. He pressed his hands against the glass, scratching it in the process, as he used the structure for balance.
"One…two…" (Zurg was a diehard fan of countdowns), "three." He opened his eyes, and what he thought was a vulgar statue moved towards him, hands separated from Zurg's metallic fingers by a thin layer of glass; blank eyes level with his.
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