Wow, I have seriously been dropping the ball with this story haven't I? Sorry to anyone who enjoys this story. *I DO NOT OWN ANY OF THE CHARACTERS, SETTINGS OR INDIVIDUAL PROPERTIES*
Within the dark confines of his laboratory, the mad boy genius continued his work. With his arch nemesis Dexter not being active for months, Mandark had taken this prime opportunity to begin his rise as the world's most powerful genius.
"Robot, configure the Plutonian coordinates to match pacific time." he ordered his robotic servant.
The Robot Jones Project, as Mandark discovered when he hacked the government's database, was a government program dedicated to crafting artificial intelligence capable of learning on a human level. After one was integrated into society, the researchers learned that the machine was more sentimental to humans rather than being dedicated to its mission. They seemed to want hyper-intelligent soldiers, not friend machines, so the project was scrapped and the original Robot Jones was destroyed. Mandark on the other hand, refused to allow a design of such potential to go to waste, with a few improvements of course.
"Configuring data." Robot announced in the monotone, robotic voice that replaced the original human voice they had. Robot hummed as he analyzed the data, but finished so quickly it took the genius by surprise. "Insufficient data."
"What? Preposterous. Run it again."
Robot hummed once again. "Insufficient data."
Mandark groaned in annoyance. "You idiotic bucket of bolts! It's Pluto! It's not going anywhere! Put it on the screen, I will prove to you you're wrong!"
Robot headed his master's order and displayed the coordinates of Pluto on the extravagantly large monitor in front of them.
"You see? There is Pluto right where it always is. Exactly where that empty, space, is." He couldn't believe what he was seeing. "This is impossible! Scan for obstructions, I want to see everything in the immediate vicinity."
"Scanning. Object found." Robot announced.
The monitor now displayed a different planet. One that appeared far grander in size than Pluto.
"What on Earth? Robot analyze this thing. I want to know everything."
Drew Saturday slammed her hands down onto the mahogany desk angrily. "Mr. President, this is a serious matter!" she exclaimed with enough anger that Fiskerton leapt into Doc's arms with a yelp.
"Drew, please." he calmly rebuked his wife.
She took a deep breath to calm herself. "Mr. President, the specimen was recovered from a cult with terroristic ties and can and will pose a risk to humanity. Yet you seem to think this as a joke!"
The vice president raised his hand to silence her. "You must understand Mrs. Saturday, what you and your family are suggesting is a matter of national security. If there were a, what is it that you call it?"
"Space Parasite." Zak answered.
Vice President Miller rolled his eyes in mild amusement. "Yes, well if there really were a "space parasite" in the hands of terrorists I'd think that we'd know."
At that very moment, Ms Bellum opened the door.
"Miss Bellum, I told you this was a private meeting." the President told her mildly annoyed.
"Mister President," she announced completely ignoring him, "we have an emergency."
"What is it?"
"The International Space Station ran the Saturday's diagnostics as you requested, they found a match. A big one."
Drew looked over to the President and Vice President with a smug "I told you so" look. Miller gave her an upset scowl, but the President seemed more concerned with what Miss Bellum just said.
"I think it is time the Saturday's left."
The President waved his small hand off "Now now Stuart, the Saturday's made this shocking discovery, I think it's best they be here to settle this problem. Where is it?"
She placed the electric file onto the desktop as everyone loomed in. The file buzzed and projected an enormous structure.
"The object is seemingly composed almost entirely of the substance the Saturday's brought us."
"An entire planet made of this stuff?" Zak asked rhetorically.
"There's more. It's moving."
The display showed the rest of the solar system with the giant threat at the end.
"It's already devoured Pluto. It will have Neptune in an estimated three hours. And it's not showing signs of stopping. At this rate, it will reach Earth in ten days."
The news filled the entire room with an uncomfortable silence, it's not everyday when you find out the number of days the world has left can be counted on your hands.
"Okie dokie then." the President announced "Miss Bellum, initiate the Fist Protocol."
"What's that?" Zak asked.
Before anyone could respond, the ground suddenly began shaking violently. Zak lost his balance and fell into Fiskerton's arms.
Through the front window, the grounds of the White House split amongst the shaking, and burst upwards as something rose from beneath the ground. An enormous vehicle lurched upwards and landed vertical to the White House, destroying the fountain in the process. The vehicle was the most ridiculous thing Zak had ever seen his whole life. A nearly the size of the White House itself, it was completely covered in weapons to a comical degree. But the oddest part was the front of the rover, instead of a regular hood, was a giant, closed fist.
The hatch of the fist car opened and an equally large man leapt out and smashed through the window. He looked like he just came from a cheesy, action movie from the eighties with his mullet of red hair, eyepatch, five o'clock shadow, and to top it all off, a metallic hand where his left hand would be.
Doc recognized the monster hunter that just made the grand entrance and pinched his fingers against his eyes in annoyance. "You've got to be kidding me."
"Doc, please." Drew responded with a cheeky grin, playfully retaliating to her husband's earlier remark.
"Who the heck is this guy?" Zak asked intrigued.
"Name's Delgado." the enormous man answered. He suddenly raised his right arm above his head, pressed his face directly into his armpit carpeted with manly pithair, and took an uncomfortably long wiff. He pulled his face out of his armpit and looked back wide eyed in his one good eye. "Hoss Delgado. Spectral exterminator, and leader of Underfist."
"Mr. Delgado and his team are the best of the best." The President proudly announced.
"You can't be serious." Drew retorted the ridiculous remark. "By "spectral exterminator", he means he beats up kids in halloween costumes and falls for every cryptid hoax on the internet hopping to make a quick buck." she turned back to Hoss, now angry "people like you give actual scientists like us a bad reputation."
"Well my team and I saved the world from the singing dinosaurs of the Underworld attacking. Where were you when that happened?" Hoss mocked her.
"Where were you guys when we were saving the world from V.V. Argost?" Zak retorted with an even more smug look.
"Ooh! Ooh! I know where we were!" Fred Fredburger, a green, furry creature wearing a matching blue uniform as Hoss was, shouted as he entered the room through the hole in the window.
"I think that was a rhetorical question Fred." the nearly always contempt voice of the giant spider Jeff responded as he and the other Underfist team members joined them. "Oh, hello everyone." he then said waving at the Saturdays, polite as always "My name's Jeff. These are my best friends Fred, Hoss, Irwin, and Mr. Skarr." He extended his front leg to Doc to shake his hand.
Doc humored the giant spider and shook his hand before returning to the matter at hand. "Regardless Mr. President, I don't think that Underfist is qualified to handle a catastrophe of this magnitude."
"We were qualified enough for President Mandy yo!" Irwin, the half vampire, half mummy with a wannabe gangsta attitude argued. "We were her go to team!"
"President Mandy and her policies are of no concern with the present administration." Miller responded almost angrily at the mere mention of the previous president's name. "With that in mind Mr. President, I suggest the Saturdays be the one to helm the mission, not Underfist."
Drew looked at the Vice President surprised. The entire meeting he had been seemingly against them, now he had completely flipped and was arguing for them?
"I assure you Mr. President," Skarr insisted, his thick German accent coming through with each word spoken making his already intimidating presence with his scarred, blank eye and long mustache, more intense. "We're overqualified."
"Yes!" Fred screamed blissfully ignorant to his surroundings.
"Besides," Hoss reassured them "our newest member is more than capable of handling himself."
"What new member?" the Vice President asked looking around seeing nobody else.
His question was answered immediately when the shadows of every corner of the room slithered to life and joined together in the dead center. Fiskerton again jumped into Doc's arms in fear and Komodo began hissing at the figure that began to emerge from the inky blackness. The boy that was now standing in front of them looked no younger than Zak, with an awkward gaze through his thick glasses, and his black, coat and red scarf gave him a creepy vibe.
"Hello." he spoke in a high pitch, creepy voice.
"Nergal Jr. here is half demon yo." Irwin explained placing his hand on his socially awkward friend's shoulder.
The President clapped his hands together "Then it's settled! Underfist shall go destroy the threat! And the Saturdays will uh, get the credit for discovery."
"Mr. President!" both Drew and Miller exclaimed at once in protest, but the president's word was final.
"Thank you Mr. President. You won't regret this." Hoss stated with a pleased look. "Underfist, ho!" he then exclaimed as he lead the others out the window and back into the vehicle.
The outside of the Genius Grove townhouse had been heavily trafficked with police, reporters and concerned friends and relatives in the past month since Kyle's disappearance. But today only one person stood on the front porch taking in the fresh air. The young man stood outside holding a cup of coffee. With his enormous periwinkle hair and matching soul patch combined with his bizarre mahogany, sleeveless shirt and orange scarf and boots, he looked as if he didn't belong in the middle class neighborhood.
"Hey there, Prohyas!" Dexter's father addressed him as he stepped outside to collect the morning newspaper as he got ready for work. "You sleep alright kid?"
"Huh? Oh yeah, I slept alright." he answered with an awkward chuckle. "Just getting a bit of fresh air while thinking of home."
"Oh, well, hopefully you'll get to return to Canada soon enough."
Prohyas chuckled even more uncomfortably with a fake smile as he squirmed back inside the house to avoid talking about where he really was from. Truthfully, he was from the distant past in a medieval land known as "Rhyboflaven", brought to the future along with his sister Vambre and one other, and simply told the family they were foreign exchange students from Canada to protect Dexter's secret lab.
He quickly snuck through the living room to the kitchen, where Dee Dee was sitting eating breakfast.
"Hi Prohyas!" she exclaimed with a mouthful of rainbow munchies cereal.
"Hey Dee. Is Jack outside?"
"Yeah, he's doing his whole "meditation" thing."
In the backyard, Jack, the third lost time traveler, sat on his knees with his eyes closed in concentration. The samurai clenched his mystic sword tightly in its sheath as he focused on his inner zen. His journey had taken him far, what with being sent to the distant future by the demon Aku from his original timeline in ancient Japan, now he's closer than ever to returning to his original time, all the while preparing to deliver to fatal blow to his advirary with his blade, forged by the gods, the next time he sees him.
"Sup Jack." he suddenly heard from the back door, taking the warrior by surprise. In his fit of shock, he unsheathed his sword and aimed it towards his neck. "Woah! Woah! Jack wait! It's me! It's me!"
The pure fear in Prohyas's eyes looking back at him brought Jack back to reality, and lowered his sword.
"My apologies. You took me by surprise."
"Aw don't mention it. I totally would've done the same. By the way, Dexter needs us for the time thingy experiment."
Jack retracted his blade and followed him. Prohyas pulled the proper book back on the shelf of Dexter's room, exposing the secret chamber to the laboratory behind it.
The mechanical vibrating of robotic joints pressing together echoed through the long hallway as a figure approached them. She resembled a woman with her curvy body and curled hairdo but was purely mechanical with her blue glow and illuminated eyes.
"Hello Jack. Hello Prohyas." she addressed them with her monotone, mechanical voice "Dexter will see you now.'
"Thanks Computress."
Despite being his loyal assistant and the physical embodiment of his lab, Dexter truthfully created a body for Computress to act as a protector of his lab after Dee Dee's intrusion seemingly cost Kyle his life. The machine lead the two men to the time machine at the furthest end of the lab where the boy genius stood with Prohyas's sister Vambre.
"Morning boys." she said, her british accent showing in full.
Dexter ignored the friendly conversation and pointed towards the remains of his time machine. "Step on the pad." he demanded coldly with little to no emotion. In the months since Kyle's disappearance, he had lost a part of himself. Falling into a deep depression, he began to spend his entire time trying to bring him back. Unfortunately, because he was never able to calibrate the coordinates, Kyle was possibly lost in any timeline. To make things worse, his attempts to bring Kyle back lead to Jack and the Warrior siblings being lost in his timeline now.
"You sure this will work?" Prohyas asked stepping into the pod.
"Has it worked the previous fifteen times?" He slammed the door to the pod shut and inputted the new time coordinates. The machine hummed again, and emitted a heavy amount of smoke.
"Turn it off!" Vambre screamed in concern for her brother.
"Not yet! We're so close!"
But Computress had already shut down the pod. It hissed and opened, flooding the room with steam as Prohyas stepped out, shaken but unharmed.
Dexter furiously looked towards his mechanical assistant. "Computress! Why did you do that? We were so close to bringing him back!"
Sensing just how angry he was getting, Jack stepped between the two firmly. Granted, he himself had slaughtered robots without a second thought before, but Dexter's fury seemed unmatched, and even he was concerned with Computress's safety.
"My calculations determined a ninety five percent chance of failure and the resulting death of the sub-" she began to explain herself.
"I do not care! When you are given an order, you are expected to accomplish it!" he screamed behind Jack's grip.
Computress backed away with a hurt expression. "Dexter please. What happened to Kyle Taylor was not your fault. His fate was an accident, and yet you have treated yourself as if you were the sole cause. The previous weeks you have not been the same Dexter that saved me from Mandark, who freed me. Now, you act no better than him."
The comparisons to his arch nemesis sunk the boy genius's heart. He looked down to the polished floor into the sunken and damaged eyes of his reflection and felt destroyed. As tears fell down his face, he raised his hand and waved Prohyas away as he tried to console him. "Please. Just leave me alone."
"Aw come on Dex-"
"Please."
Seeing the desperation, depression on his face, Jack, Computress and the Warrior siblings left him in his thoughts, and his ruined time machine.
Across town in the other secret laboratory of Mandark, the mad genius paced back and forth as he thought out loud to Robot Jones.
"A terrible dilemma Robot. There is no doubt that the government will be looking for these files and that I risk going to federal prison. But if what the content of these files is true, then the fate of the world rests in the balance. This could be the defining moment that puts me ahead of Dexter. What do I do?"
"Perhaps sir, you should begin your plan to take credit for defending the world, and send the files away?"
This idea caused Mandark to stop dead in his tracks and grab his robotic servant by the shoulders.
"Robot, for once you've had a great idea!" he exclaimed shaking him excitedly. "I take all the credit and let some fool take the fall. And I think I know the perfect scapegoat. Ah ha ha, hah hah ha hah ha!"