Calvin's father was a lot of things. He was a patent lawyer, for a start. He was also a bicycle enthusiast – or a bicycle lunatic, as Calvin would put it. He loved jogging, even if it was in the middle of a blizzard, and he loved eating stuff like dried prunes. He was also an early riser, who enjoyed getting up at the crack of dawn and doing loads of chores before noon on his day off.
But most of all, he really enjoyed camping. Not just any camping. Not camping where you go out in the back yard in a tent and still have access to your bathroom. He likes the kind of camping where you have to travel out to a faraway place, rent a deserted island for a week, paddle in a canoe, go fishing, swim in icy water and brave the elements the whole time. While the rest of the family usually hides out in the tents until the trip is over, he gets unadulterated pleasures from getting bitten by mosquitos and sleeping on rocks.
So really, it was no surprise to anyone that he was planning something utterly ridiculous for the family vacation this year. Judging by the luggage that had been stacked neatly in a pile near the stairs, it seemed as though he was planning something particularly staggering this time.
The man in question – again: Calvin's father – was wearing a fishing vest over a plaid shirt, a fishing hat, and had on a large pair of rubber boots. He was grinning away like he'd just one the lottery.
Calvin stared up at him cautiously. "Dad? What are you planning? Why have you gotten all the suitcases out?"
"Calvin, I have great news!" his father replied.
"How great?"
"Your mileage may vary," his mother answered from the kitchen.
Dad ignored her. "We're going fishing!" he exclaimed, holding his arms out in absolute rapture.
Calvin's response left a lot to be desired. In fact, it left absolutely everything to be desired. He just stared at his father for a full five seconds, while the older man never dropped his pose.
"…Fishing?" he repeated.
"Fishing!"
"Fishing…"
"Fishing!"
"…Fish…ing?"
"Yes, Calvin, we're going fishing!"
Calvin stole a glance at Hobbes, who was looking at him with growing apprehension – a sentiment that he found himself agreeing with.
"…When?" he finally decided to settle on as his response.
"Tomorrow! We leave in the AM."
"I see…"
He looked at Hobbes again and raised his eyebrows for a brief moment. Hobbes' own eyebrow twitched in response – message received.
"RUN!" Calvin shrieked, grabbing his friend by the arm and running up the stairs as fast as he could. They made it to their bedroom and dove inside, slamming the door behind them.
Without missing a beat, they grabbed Calvin's footlocker and proceeded to push it in front of the door, followed by the dresser and the chair from the desk. Then, once vaguely certain that it was secure enough, they both turned and dove under the bed.
After a few tense moments, they heard the doorknob turning, followed by the sound of Dad grunting as he tried to push the door itself open, pushing as hard as he could, but it was no good.
"Young man, open this door," he said sternly.
"We're not going fishing!" Calvin shouted. "I'll hide under my bed all summer if I have to! I'm not going to sit in a boat with you and Mom all week!"
"Oh, come on, Calvin! You'll have fun once we get there!"
"You say that every time we try to go somewhere, and I never do! In fact, if I recall correctly, none of us do! We just sit around on a big rock in the middle of a lake, griping at each other!"
"True, but we build character."
"Oh, that old chestnut! Face it, Dad! No one in this family likes building character!"
"Nobody enjoys building character! That's the point!" Dad snapped back. "Now come on out here! You need to start packing!"
"No! I categorically refuse! You can't make me!"
"Calvin, if you don't open this door and let me in right now, I'm calling Rosalyn, and I'll have her babysit you for an entire week! Is that what you want?"
There was a long silence.
Calvin and Hobbes looked at each other, properly stupefied.
"…I think my brain just crashed," Hobbes murmured in amazement.
"What do you think I should say?" Calvin asked.
"You're going to have to do a risk/benefit analysis. Which would be worse – a week with your parents on a lake, or a week in your own home with Rosalyn?"
Calvin groaned. "I really don't need this on the first day of summer…," he sighed, rubbing his forehead.
Dad's voice suddenly carried through the door. "Calvin…?"
"I'm thinking! Don't rush me!" Calvin yelled back.
There was a long tense pause.
Finally, Calvin pounded the floor in frustration and crawled out from under the bed. He approached the door, proceeded to push the furniture out of the way, and then, after a moment's hesitation, he finally opened the door. He looked up at his father's expectant face.
"… Where's this trip?" he asked cautiously.
"The Oregon Coast," Dad replied, beaming. "Calvin, you're going to love it."
"I haven't said 'yes' yet!" Calvin sharply reminded him.
"You're going to anyway."
"How do you deduce that?"
Dad leaned down and smiled pleasantly at Calvin, looking him right in the eye. "Because I told you to," he replied simply.
Calvin stared at his father for a moment before he growled to himself. "Drat."
"Get packing. Bring only the essentials."
And with that, he walked triumphantly away.
Hobbes crawled out from under the bed, stretching as he did so. "Well, I think essentials would include paper for our Last Will and Testaments," he remarked, dusting himself off.
Calvin growled and went off into the closet and pulled out his old suitcase. "Come on. Help me pack my clothes."
Hobbes nodded and went across to the dresser, pulling out several folded up striped red shirts. He handed them over to Calvin, who proceeded to pack them into the open suitcase. He then pulled out several pairs of black pants, and he passed them on as well. Then he reached into the top drawer to pull out several pairs of socks, and as he was passing them over to Calvin, he was rather surprised to see that the neatly-folded clothes had already become unfolded and were being crammed into the suitcase. Calvin took the socks and proceeded to chuck them inside as well.
Hobbes rolled his eyes. Some people, it seemed, were just naturally messy.
"Okay, that's the clothes done," Calvin said, pulling the lid of the suitcase shut. "Now then… What do we need to survive this trip?"
"Tuna," Hobbes said instantly.
Calvin glared at him. "Not in my suitcase, we're not. Every time we put tuna in a suitcase or bag or anything, it smells for weeks afterwards."
"Tuna," Hobbes insisted.
"I'm not packing tuna, Hobbes, and that's final!"
Hobbes looked at him for a long moment before he held up a paw, revealing his claws. "You know, most people don't deal well with an angry, hungry tiger sitting next to them on a boat in the middle of a lake…," he remarked casually.
Calvin looked at him for a long moment. He could never tell when Hobbes was serious or not.
"… We'll pack the tuna in a separate bag," he said at last.
"Wonderful," his friend said with an appeased smile.
Calvin sighed to himself and looked over at his desk. "I'll pack my inventions too. Just in case, you know?"
"Just in case what? In case you decide to transmogrify the boat into bowl of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs?"
"No, I… Wait, do you think I could do that?"
Hobbes groaned.
Calvin shook his head and took his Hypercube off the desk. "Relax. It's just in case anything goes wrong. I'll use them in the gravest of emergencies, like in case a sea monster attacks the boat, or Dad starts to tell one of his amusing stories about work."
"Ohh, what could be worse…?"
"Good question."
Calvin gathered up all the inventions he had that were lying around and proceeded to feed them into the gaping maw of his Hypercube, which absorbed them all in a blue flash. Content that that was done he set it down on the desk again and looked around the room for a moment.
"Anything else we need?"
"Well, I notice you haven't gotten around to actually packing the tuna yet…"
"Comic books!" Calvin exclaimed. "We must pack comic books! It's either that, or read the brochure all week, and that can only carry you so far."
Hobbes sighed with disappointment, but he helped to pack up some comic books anyway, slipping them into a duffel bag.
Well, as we leave our two heroes packing for a trip that will invariably end in them cold, wet and miserable, let's pull out for a second. Let's take the focus off of them momentarily and look out their bedroom window. Let's have a look at the orange-bluish-ness of the sky.
Now let's leave the bedroom window behind. We're travelling through the window – without breaking it, mind you – and we're heading towards the ever-growing bluish section of the sky. You know the bit – the bit with the twinkly stars winking down at us. We're heading over there.
In fact, we're focused on one star in particular. It's a star that is definitely winking at us.
We're heading towards that winking star. We're going faster and faster…
We're leaving the Earth's atmosphere now. Here we go, still focused on that star in the distance. Here it comes…
Now, here we are, moving at several thousand miles per hour, heading towards our goal.
And that star? It's looking less and less like a star.
At least, it's looking less and less like one single star. Now it's starting to look like a bunch of stars. How remarkable!
And now there appears to be something behind those stars. In fact, maybe whatever it is, it appears to be producing the stars.
If you haven't figured this out by now, they aren't stars at all.
They're headlights.
And not just any ol' headlights – they're headlights that belong to a spaceship.
Three guesses as to whom that spaceship belongs to.
We're still zooming in on this spaceship. The headlights are still blinking at us.
Oh, look – another window! What a lovely bookend to this section of the story!
This time, though, let's go through the window.
And there, within, we can see someone on the other side…
"Dave!" Earl shouted irritably. "Stop playing with the headlights! You'll kill our batteries!"
Dave looked up from his button in surprise. "Oh, sorry! I got bored."
Earl glared at him for a long moment before he shook his head, depressed. "Yes, I suppose I can't blame you. After these several months, I'd say we're just about out of ideas…"
"Are we?" another voice from a crewmember named Biff asked. "What did we need ideas for?"
Earl savaged him with another angry glare.
Lenny, who was working next to him, leaned over and whispered. "Rupert's still trapped on Earth, remember? The Earth Potentate tricked us and got him banged up in an Earth prison."
Biff blinked, and then he laughed. "Oh, right! I remember now! Boy, that kid sure made fools of us, did he? I mean, pretending to be a member of our crew and leading us straight into a trap – ha!"
Earl growled angrily at the pair. He proceeded to vent his frustrations on a nearby computer console, which he promptly smashed with a single tentacle.
The other aliens stared at it in shock. They watched as a plume of smoke curled out of the computer's ventilator.
"… Are you mad now?" Lenny asked worriedly.
Earl glared at him again. "Why no, Lenny, I'm not. Whatever gave you that impression?"
"Because you just smashed our navigation computer in a fit of blind fury, that's why."
Earl blinked, and then he stared at the computer. He let out another howl of frustration and pointed at it. "Get this thing repaired again!" he shouted.
Another alien named Luke slithered over holding a tool kit, and he proceeded to get to work.
Seething at his own lack of self-control, Earl slumped down on a swivel chair. "Nine months, we've been at this," he moaned. "Nine months, we've been coming and going from this planet, trying time after time to free our king. Nine months of trying to break him out of that primitive Earth prison, and how far have we gotten? Nowhere! He's still trapped! Our planet is falling apart! We need him back, or we'll be in ruins."
Earl sighed and leaned back in his chair. "It's not right. How could we have allowed ourselves to be fooled so easily?"
"Er, Earl?" Lenny spoke up. "You've been asking us that question for eight months now, and we still don't know the answer."
Grumbling to himself, Earl turned around checked one of the screens. "It's getting late where Rupert is," he noted. "It's almost time to implement our latest plan."
"Oh goodie!" a few aliens cheered.
"Right then," Earl said, reassuming authority by getting out of his chair. "Lenny? Carl? Come forward."
Lenny and Carl slithered forward and saluted stupidly.
"Now do you two nimrods know what you're supposed to do?"
"Yes, sir!" both aliens chimed, grinning eagerly.
"Then repeat it to me."
"We're supposed to go down to the planet and save the big boss," Lenny said.
"You guys are going to guide us from the space ship," Carl added.
"And we'll slip in wearing our human disguises."
"And we'll activate that device thingy that you told us to."
"And we'll leave the prison, and then we return that night."
"And we'll break the big boss out of prison!"
"Good!" Earl exclaimed, sighing with relief. "Okay, I think you've finally got it. And it only took me telling you over and over again for three weeks."
Lenny and Carl just grinned proudly.
"Okay, we'll teleport you down to Earth. Get your human disguises ready."
The two aliens returned to their desks and pulled out their holographic disguise units, which were in the form of wristwatches. They slipped them over their tentacles and prepared to activate them.
Earl activated the teleport controls. "Are you ready?"
"Ready!" the two aliens replied.
With no further encouragement and a small hint of discontent, Earl pressed the button, and in a flash of light, Lenny and Carl vanished.
They reappeared in an alleyway on Earth a few moments later.
After taking a moment to recover from the teleport, they activated their human disguises. Lenny was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, Bermuda shorts, a Panama straw hat and cheap flip-flops. Carl was wearing a plaid shirt with jeans, sneakers and a baseball cap.
They took another moment to adjust to their new human forms. They leaned against a building for support as they got used to only having two legs.
"I can never get used to this," Carl sighed, practicing walking for a moment.
"Yeah," Lenny agreed. "How do humans handle only having two legs? My sense of balance is completely off!"
Just then, they both heard ringing in their ears. They reached up and activated the communications devices Earl had given them.
"Lenny? Carl? Are you two reading me?" Earl's voice said.
"Hey, boss!" Lenny exclaimed. "I can hear you talking, but I can't see you anywhere!"
He heard Earl sigh heavily. "Yes, Lenny, it is a novelty. Now then, you two – we need to get started. According to my sensors, you need to leave the alley and turn right. Go up the street for three blocks."
"Check," Carl replied. "Come on, Lenny. Let's go for a walk!"
"It's a nice enough day for it," Lenny replied, looking around the town admiringly as they left the alley.
They turned right and made their way up the street. At first, they managed to make good time, and they made it across the first block without too much trouble. They'd been on Earth enough times now that they recognized the basics of living here.
But of course, by the time they got to the second block, they ended up getting distracted by something.
"Ooh, look: Pizza!" Lenny exclaimed, looking through the window of a pizza place.
"Ooh! Ooh! Can we get pizza, Earl?" Carl pleaded.
"No!" Earl snapped over the earpiece. "You're supposed to be rescuing Rupert! Our king! Remember?"
"But it's not like he's going anywhere! Just one slice?" Lenny pleaded.
"NO! Now focus! We need to rescue him NOW!"
Disappointed, Lenny and Carl took one last look at the pizza and stalked off down the street.
After a few seconds, they seemed to be back on track, but then they stopped when they saw something else.
"Ooh! Ooh! Look!" Lenny exclaimed again, pointing eagerly. "It's the mall!"
"Can we go to the mall, Earl? Pretty please?" Carl asked.
"No! For crying out loud, you're supposed to be rescuing the leader of our planet! You're not shopping for shoes!"
"But… But we just want to check out some action…," Carl whined.
"What action could you possibly want to check out at the mall?"
Lenny's eyes flitted to a couple of teenage girls who were watching him. "You'd be surprised…," he murmured, tipping his straw hat to them with surprising smoothness for an alien dressed like a tourist.
"Focus on the task at hand, you morons!" Earl snapped. "Get going!"
Sighing bitterly, Lenny and Carl turned and continued walking down the street. They made it to the third block and were halfway along it before they noticed something odd in the air. They looked up and saw several clear spheres floating through the air with a slight bluish-purple tint to them.
"Bubbles!" Lenny exclaimed, clapping excitedly.
"They're coming from that building over there!" Carl squealed, pointing in the direction of another building. "It's a clock factory!"
"You don't need any dang clocks! Get back to…," Earl trailed off in mid-rant to realize what they were saying. "Why's a clock shop spewing bubbles into the air?"
"Pretty bubbles," Lenny giggled. "Maybe there're more bubbles inside!"
"Ahhh…," Earl noted. "That's why – they're luring in clueless idiots like you two. Stay focused. Both of you stay focused."
Carl was disappointed again. "Ohh… But… But bubbles!"
"MOVE IT!"
Jumping in surprise and clutching their now-aching ears in agony, Earl and Carl set off once again.
The prison building was a large and intimidating building. It was several stories high, painted an off-putting gray color, and it was lined with patrolling armed guards. It seemed to always have bad weather around there, with swirling black clouds looming overhead.
Lenny and Carl stared up at it, somewhat unnerved by the sight.
"Are you there yet?" Earl demanded through the earpiece.
"… I think so," Lenny replied, clasping his hands nervously.
"Good. Now get to work. Visiting hours end in thirty minutes."
Swallowing hard, the two aliens in disguise walked up the street, across the parking lot and made their way to the large building ahead of them. They smiled innocently at the guards as they made their way up the steps to the large double doors. Not sure what to do, they knocked.
After a moment, one of the doors opened, and a grumpy-looking man with a thick mustache and glasses glared at them. "Can I help you?" he asked in a gruff voice.
Lenny doffed his hat shakily to the man. "Hello, Earth citizen," he said shakily. "We're not too late for visiting hours, are we? Er, you've got a friend of ours in there, and we'd like to see him."
"Who is he?" the man grunted.
"Rupert Chill."
The man turned out to be the Warden of the Prison. He gave the order for two armed guards to collect Rupert Chill from his cell.
The cell was dark and dank, not to mention cramped.
Rupert had been deemed too dangerous to have a cellmate, so he was locked up with his own crummy bed, small table, rickety chair and a single toilet.
But Rupert hardly ever used any of these things. He lay in his bed, wearing his orange jumpsuit, carving into the wall with his fingers. He'd been trapped in his human disguise for the entire he'd been here. He could barely survive much longer. Although the disguise unit took care of him to some degree, he felt he was a mere shadow of his former self.
One of the guards come to retrieve him ran his nightstick across the bars, rattling the slumbering alien-in-disguise. "Hey, Chill!" he shouted. "Wake up! You've got visitors!"
For the longest time, Rupert didn't move. He just lay there, staring into space.
The guard rattled the bars again. "Hey, Chill! You still alive? Come on! You've got visitors!"
Rupert finally decided to speak. "What…visitors…?" he rasped.
"We don't know. Two weirdoes dressed like freaks. They say they're friends of yours."
After a long silent moment, Rupert Chill rolled over in his bunk and glared at the two guards.
"… Take me to them."
Lenny and Carl were sitting in a booth. It was a booth that was in a row of booths that stretched across the room. Each booth was open in the back, and had a desk and plastic window in the front, as well as a phone hanging from each wall. The two crewmates were crammed into the same booth, eagerly looking through the glass.
After a few minutes of waiting, Rupert was led into the room by two guards. They had him in handcuffs, and they could tell that he was ill just by looking at him.
But they were undeterred, and they waved at their leader pleasantly.
Rupert thudded down in his chair. He looked at them blearily. "Ohh…," he moaned. "It's you two idiots."
Lenny motioned for Rupert to pick up the phone, which he did after a moment.
"Hey, Your Royal Highness, sir!" Lenny said, saluting. "You look like you've been horked up by a cat!"
Rupert growled. "At the risk of sounding like an alien cliché, these people are human scum. This is how they treat their offenders: locking them up in cages with next to no brain stimulus or decent nutrition. Plus, I haven't had any sort of special care. I've told them of my different biological system, but these fools won't acknowledge the truth!"
"On the plus side, this is the first vacation you've had in years," Carl pointed out with a dopey grin.
Rupert glared at him. "What's the situation?" he demanded, trying to change the subject.
"Earl's sent us down here to set things up for your escape," Lenny replied casually.
Eyes widening, Rupert glanced around, not sure if the guards had heard that. "Keep it down, idiot. They might be listening."
"Well, how else can we explain the escape plan to you?" Carl asked, looking confused.
"SSHHHH! Where's Earl?"
"Up in the ship. He sent us."
"Why?!"
Lenny shrugged. "Darned if we know. But here we are."
"Anyway!" Carl said. "We're going to break you out with this little doodad that Earl gave us. It should help you out immensely."
Rupert glanced at the guard again, who were raised an eyebrow at him before he looked back. "Keep it down. What device?"
"Some little thingy that's supposed to kill the electricity in the building. It'll take down the entire building's security systems and we'll be able to break you out under the cover of darkness! Neat, huh?"
Rupert massaged his temples in frustration. "Whatever. Just do what you're going to do. Get on it."
"Okay," Carl said with a nod. "Should we go now?"
"Just one thing… What news of the Earth Potentate?"
Lenny and Carl looked at each other for a moment before shrugging. "We don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know? Haven't you guys been keeping an eye on him?"
"Not really. We've been trying to think of a subtle way of breaking you out of jail. Earl's been saying that we can't just waltz in and take you back because it would go against everything we stand for and yadda-yadda-yadda," Lenny replied.
Rupert sighed heavily. "Well, go get to your little plan. I want to be out of here soon. Understood?"
"Crystal!" Lenny replied.
"Good. Get moving."
Lenny and Carl both saluted, hung up the phone and then they left the room.
Rupert hung up his own phone and walked back over to the guards, who were looking at him funny. He tried his hardest not to look too suspicious as they shoved him through the door and down the hallway back to his cell.
Lenny and Carl went through the cavity search once more before they were allowed to leave. They were just going past the front desk when Lenny turned to one of the guards. "Do you have a restroom I can use?" he asked innocently.
One of the guards nodded and pointed towards a door that said Men's Room. "Just over there. Make it quick," he said.
Lenny nodded and scurried off inside.
Once he was in there, he looked around and saw one of the sinks. Checking to make sure no one else was in the room, he quickly reached into his pocket and pulled out a small round yellow device with a magnetic back, which stuck to the underside of the sink. Switching it on, he turned and left the restroom.
Earl stood before the teleport platform on board the ship, and he waited for a few moments before a light on the desk lit up, signaling that someone was trying to contact them. He keyed in a few commands, and a few second later, the machine hummed loudly, followed by a flash of light.
Lenny and Carl appeared in the room, grinning stupidly between bites of pizza.
"Where the heck have you been?" Earl demanded.
"Well, once the job was done, we figured we could stop for a bit," Lenny replied, swallowing another mouthful.
"Pizza, boss?" Carl asked, offering him the rest of his slice.
Earl scowled at him and turned to leave the room. "We'll send you back at midnight. You did remember to switch the device on, didn't you?"
"Sure did!" Lenny replied. "Little button the side, right?"
Earl sighed with relief. "Little button on the side. Good work. For now, anyway."
Missing the insult, Lenny and Carl beamed with pride.
The prison cells became pitch black as Lights Out started up. Time for all the prisoners to go to bed for the night, looking forward to a long day of being nameless nobody's tomorrow.
"Alright, everyone!" one of the guards shouted, rattling the bars with his nightstick. "Time for bed! Everyone get into bed and go to sleep! No trying to tunnel out, no eating stolen snacks, no reading by flashlight, and no suicides. Clear? Now go to sleep!"
Rupert grunted as the guard went past without even looking at him. He checked his watch, but it was taking a long time for his crew to come to his rescue. He rolled over in his bed, glaring at the ceiling.
At last, there was the sound of a buzzer going off, and all the lights turned off, plunging the alien king into darkness. He hated it when the lights went off. The people of Planet Zok had evolved into a race of beings that lived on extreme heat. They ate magma and drank lava. Compared to Zok, Earth was a very chilly place. Even taking global warming into consideration, the place was a floating Popsicle in space. Having the lights off just made things worse. The room suddenly felt even colder than before.
You could feel sorry for this guy if he wasn't out to destroy the planet.
He decided to get some shut-eye before his rescue. He suspected he'd need the energy.
An hour later, a flash of light appeared behind the fence outside the prison, and from out of it emerged Lenny and Carl, who both looked around eagerly. They looked up at the fence before them, giddy with anticipation.
"I can't believe this!" Lenny squealed. "We actually get to go on a stealth operation!"
"We're secret agents!" Carl agreed, bouncing up and down. "Our mission to save the King – such a responsibility!"
"Right, so this has to be handled with absolute professionalism. Let's activate the doodad."
Carl nodded and pulled a small remote control. "Okay, this should cause an electromagnetic pulse across the entire complex. The whole prison will be plunged into a cover of permanent darkness."
"Let 'er rip."
Carl pressed a button on the remote.
This sent a signal to the device that Lenny had left under the restroom sink. A series of little red lights lit up, and a few moments later, it sent a powerful pulse of energy through the building.
From outside, Lenny and Carl watched with interest as the whole thing shut down. Various search lights all blinked off, plunging the area into darkness.
"Excellent," Lenny said. "All the security cameras and electrical locks are offline. We can move freely about the premises now."
"Ten-four," Carl replied. "Let's get to it."
And in the pitch-black darkness, they both walked straight into the fence, hitting it very hard.
"OW!" they cried, rubbing their noses in pain.
They stood there for a moment, confused.
"Did we forget something?" Carl asked.
"Not sure…," Lenny said. He thought hard for a few moments before he snapped his fingers in realization. "Oh, right!" He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of heavy-duty goggles. "Night-vision goggles!"
Carl smacked his forehead. "Oh, right!" he laughed.
Undeterred by this momentary setback, they slipped the goggles on. Now they could see the world around them.
"Okay, agent," Lenny said, pretending he was in a spy movie. "We're going over the wall…er, the fence."
"Ten-four," Carl replied with a thumbs-up.
The two scrambled up and over the wooden fence, landing on the other side rather haphazardly. Picking themselves up off the ground, they snapped their dislocated limbs back into place and made their way towards the front doors.
They hid behind the bushes when they saw that the doors were being guarded by three men, but then another man came out, said something about some sort of power outage and told them to come back inside.
"The entrance is safe. Proceed with caution," Lenny said into his hand, pretending he had a walkie-talkie.
"Ten-four," Carl replied into his own hand.
They slipped up the steps to the doors and cautiously pushed them open. They looked around. They could see the guards taking off down the hallway, leaving the main room clear.
"Perimeter secure. Search out target, Lenny whispered.
"Ten-four," Carl replied.
Tiptoeing their way inside, the two aliens snuck around on their holographic toes towards the doorway that led to the jail cells.
"Do we know which cell Rupert is in?" Carl asked suddenly.
"No, not exactly," Lenny replied. "But it can't be that many cells to look in, right?"
He opened the door all the way, and even in the night-vision goggles, they were stunned by the sight of hundreds of prison cells that were on multiple levels above them.
Lenny and Carl exchanged nervous glances as they realized just how hard this was really going to be.
"Oh, mama…," Carl muttered.
"Come on," Lenny said. "We'll find him eventually."
They ran up the gangway to one of the cells and looked inside at a large bald guy with several tattoos.
"Are you Rupert?" Lenny asked.
"No," the prisoner replied.
They moved onto the next, where they saw a little guy with a shaved head and a nose ring.
"Are you Rupert?"
"No."
They ran to the next cell which had a muscular dude with an eye patch.
"Are you Rupert?"
"No."
They ran to the next cell, which contained an elderly old man with a long braided beard, sunglasses and loads of tattoos.
"Are you Rupert?"
The old man threw his lunch tray at them.
They moved onto the next cell. They looked inside and saw a thin gaunt man with short hair and a book about Shakespeare that he was reading with a flashlight.
"Are you Rupert?"
"Afraid not, Old Bean. Now please move along before I'm forced to rip off your noses and force them down your throats," he replied very politely.
Nodding in reply, Lenny and Carl moved on.
Several guards were congregating in the middle of the main greeting room, all of them holding flashlights.
"Has anyone tried to break out?" the Warden asked.
"Not at the moment," a guard said. "But we've got guys on every floor keeping an eye out."
"Good. Now let's see about that darn fuse box…"
One guard raised his hand. "Permission to use the can real quick, sir," he said quickly.
The Warden rolled his eyes. "Permission granted. But be quick."
The guard nodded and turned and ran for the Men's Room. He aimed his flashlight through the room, making sure the other stalls were empty too. He was just heading for one when he noticed something out of the corner of his eye.
There appeared to be a bunch of red lights coming from under the sink.
Curious, he aimed his flashlight over in that direction. He saw the device that Lenny had left earlier. He got down on his knees and got a closer look at it.
"What the heck…?" he murmured.
He reached for the little round yellow thingy and clutched it, and he was surprised by how easily it came away from the sink. He examined it carefully, wondering what this thing was. As he was feeling it over, he eventually found the switch on the side, which he cautiously pressed, holing it out a safe distance away from himself.
And in that instant, the room lit up.
Lenny and Carl walked tiredly towards another cell. They saw a big guy holding a baseball bat with a nail in it.
"Are you Rupert?"
"No."
They moved to the next cell, which contained a tall gawky man with green hair, tattoos and thirty different body piercings.
"Are you Rupert?"
"No."
They moved onto the next cell, which contained some guy who was sound asleep in his bunk.
"Are you Rupert?"
The figure didn't answer.
"Excuse me," Lenny said, rattling the bars on the cell. "Are you Rupert Chill?"
But the figure merely snored in response.
"How can we be sure if he's Rupert or not?" Lenny wondered.
Carl looked around for a moment, but then he remembered something, and he reached into his pocket, pulling out a slice of pizza from earlier that had long since gone cold. He threw it at the back of the man's head.
It connected, and the man snorted as he woke up. "What the heck…?" he muttered sleepily.
"Are you Rupert?"
"What do you want?" the voice demanded as its owner rolled over in bed. He stopped when he saw Lenny and Carl. "You two!"
"Rupert?" Carl asked hopefully.
"Where have you been?!"
"It took us awhile to find your cell, but don't worry! We've found you, and we're going to get you out, and then we can resume our reign of terror!" Lenny said pleasantly.
"FREEZE!"
Lenny and Carl barely had time to react before they were suddenly tackled from the right by several guards, and they went tumbling to the hard metal floor.
"Owie!" Lenny wailed.
"Hurting! Hurting!" Carl cried.
Rupert watched with great dismay as his two crewmembers were arrested. "Great," he muttered. "Now I'm never going to get out of here." He slouched off towards his bed again and prepared to be forcibly removed from his cell.
He glanced at the floor for a moment, catching sight of the cold piece of pizza Carl had thrown at him. He picked it up and tasted it.
It was rock-hard, cold and had been in Carl's pocket for too long, but he finished it anyway.
It was the first decent food he'd had to eat in months.