Part 14

Experiment Six-Two-Six groaned as he sat up, shaking his head to try to clear it and rubbing at his eyes. He was an extremely hardy creature, but even he needed some time to rest after being run over by three very heavy ground transports. As he took in his new surroundings, he discovered he had been imprisoned again.

The green quadrupeds who ruled this planet were sadly mistaken if they thought stone walls and a puny wire fence could hold him! Grinning wickedly, he reached into his jumpsuit to pull out his blasters and rid himself of the obstruction immediately. When his hands came up without his trusty weapons, he looked down in astonishment to see that his jumpsuit was gone, and with it, his blasters.

That wasn't good.

Across the corridor, he could see the cell of another prisoner, a dark brown quadruped only slightly larger than he was. Unlike the green being he'd encountered before, this one, at least, had the sense to be afraid of him. It was cowering in the far corner of its cell, whimpering.

That was more like it!

He looked up and saw that the enclosure did not connect directly with the ceiling above it, leaving a gap that was sufficiently-sized for him to climb up to and through, claws digging into the wooden ceiling for support. He walked down the prison corridor upside-down, sneering at the inmates as they shivered and shook in response to his presence.

This was how creatures should behave toward him! The complete lack of respect he'd been shown by the being he encountered in the forest had been terribly insulting, but these displays of fear were almost gratifying. When he reached the end of the hall and was preparing to crawl down a wall through an open doorway, he glanced back at a wall full of smaller cells, several of which contained prisoners, too. These insouciant creatures, however, merely blinked their large yellow or green eyes and resumed grooming themselves or napping.

Ignoring the slight, Six-Two-Six crossed into the next room, moving quickly and quietly so he wouldn't be seen or heard. He paused briefly when he heard voices, and looked down to see three pink bipeds conversing.

Perhaps the green creature in the forest hadn't been the highest form of life on this planet after all! Bipeds and tripeds were so much more common out in the galaxy anyway, if only because they so often had limbs which were used for things other than locomotion. These creatures also seemed to be wearing garments, too.

They were of three different sizes and the shortest of them wasn't much taller than Six-Two-Six. The being immediately beside him was nearly twice his height, with the third figure somewhere in between the others in size. They were inconsequential, however, as Six-Two-Six's goals were to locate a suitable spacecraft to escape the planet and wreak destruction on suitable metropolitan areas... though not necessarily in that order.

Crawling down the wall, he opened the front door of the prison building and escaped onto the wooden landing just outside, pausing for a moment to attempt to gain his bearings. He hadn't the first clue where he was, of course, but he hoped to maybe catch some hint as to where he should go to accomplish either of his goals.

He had only a fraction of a second's warning--a tiny red dot on his torso--before a bolt of energy was headed his way. He leapt out of the line of fire, dodging onto a signpost and a tree before ducking behind a pile of rock. In the distance, he heard a very familiar, classicly-trained Evil Genius Laugh.

"So nice to see your pretty face again!"

Six-Two-Six felt his ears perk up. "Jumba?" Could it possibly be his creator?

"Come out quietly so I can shoot you."

Wasn't the appropriate cliché "or I will shoot you"? It sounded like Jumba desperately needed to review some of his old class notes. "Nuh-uh," he answered, looking around for better cover than a pile of rocks.

There were trees, trees, and more trees, but there was nothing he'd consider to be suitable protection for any length of time. In fact, the only shelter of any type was the building from which he'd just escaped. Growling to himself, he re-traced his route, zipping back inside the door and crawling across the ceiling.

This could be a problem. For Jumba to be trying to shoot him, that meant that the meanies in charge of the Galactic Federation had convinced him it was in his best interests to rein in his own creation. Six-Two-Six didn't believe for a moment that Jumba had any desire to destroy his greatest invention, which meant that all he needed to do was supply the scientist with a sufficient reason to not shoot him.

Dropping to the ground, he began to pace back and forth, thinking furiously. Since Jumba hadn't yet annihilated the very building in which Six-Two-Six hid, then he must have been under strict orders from the Galactic Federation to not harm the local lifeforms. Somehow, he'd have to convince one of the natives to "protect" him from his assailants.

A two-dimensional image on the wall caught the fluffy blue monster's eye. It showed one of the furry qadrupeds enthusiastically embracing a pink biped. Perhaps, instead of a prison, this was some sort of meeting place?

"Are you sure I can't adopt a cat?" asked a young voice.

Thinking quickly, Six-Two-Six retracted his lower set of arms, the spines on his back, and the antennae on his head. Now, he guessed, he looked reasonably like the typical residents of this adoption center. All he needed to do now was convince the native that he should be the quadruped it took home with it.