Chapter Seven: Bluuue Meanies!
Author's Note: Heh. Heh. Heh. I have just seen the Beatles movie Yellow Submarine. Ideas have flown thick and fast (mostly snitched from the movie) so this will not be the last chapter after all. I estimate one more in the works, containing recycled elements like The Glove, levers, clocks, a deserted city, REALLY bad puns, and cameo appearances by "Bluuue Meanies!" and, yes, the Beatles. Those of you who have seen the movie know what I'm talking about. Those of you who haven't will find out.
Disclaimer: Last time I looked in the mirror, I was Le'letha. That means that if TPTB sue me for recycling all this stuff, I won't be able to buy the next Rurouni Kenshin book. Spare me. I'm really looking forward to that book.
ON WITH THE SHOW!
"Hey!" Tom shouted for the lack of anything better to shout. "Say what?" he added, which wasn't any better.
The four were tossed across the compartment as the other submarines bombarded them with missiles, creating enormous echoing noises that, quite naturally, echoed throughout the yellow submarine.
"Wait a second!" B'Elanna complained, picking herself up and stumbling over to a porthole, stepping on Neelix in the process. "What the heck are they shooting at us?"
"I dunno. They look like apples. Big green apples," Kim said unhelpfully, but correctly.
"They are apples," Tom informed them through a bite of one that had just come sailing through the window. "Sour apples, I might add." He tossed it back out the window at the attacking subs. It flew across the gap, through another window, and clunked one of the inhabitants over the head.
"Is it just me, or does everything go clunk today?" Neelix asked.
"Just you," Tom assured him, sitting back down in the pilot's chair. He spun the steering wheel wildly.
Clunk, clunk, clunk, went the steering wheel as it spun.
"O-kaaaaay," he drawled. "Maybe it's jammed."
"But it's spinning," Kim pointed out. "Ow!" An apple had just flown in the window. "Hey, look, it's blue."
"So it is. Can I eat it?" Neelix asked.
"Get your own," B'Elanna told him, taking the apple straight out of Harry's hand and biting into it.
"Hey! That was mine!"
"You want it back?"
"Not anymore."
"Good." She took aim and flung it at a velocity nearing Mach 2 out of the mysteriously insubstantial porthole, scoring a direct hit on an equally blue submarine, producing a clunk of epic proportions.
"We should shoot back!" Neelix said excitedly. "Where's the weapons console?'
"I don't know, just press a button," Kim said, scrutinizing the banks of buttons, levers, and switches.
"Any button?"
"Sure."
"Ok, how about this one?" the Talaxian prodded a raised round button with a starburst on it. Like everything else, it responded with a clunk and, at first, nothing else.
"Well, that didn't do anything," he said to the accompaniment of green and blue apples pounding the bulkheads, although none flew in through the windows.
"Are you so sure?" B'Elanna said waspishly, pointing at a prodigious stream of blue bubbles that issued from a pipe ascending the wall.
"No." He pressed the same button again, shutting them off, although the bubbles that had already emerged floated around the cabin happily until they popped one by one with a short burst of music each time. It doesn't take much to make a lot of musical bubbles happy.
"Look!" said Paris, sitting at the helm, such as it was.
Just in front of them was a blue submarine, the biggest of the lot. Ripples were emanating from its prow, heading towards them.
Moments later, as the sub shook with the first impact of the waves, a crazy voice started talking.
"We are the Blue Meanies!" it said. "You shall be bluified. Resistance is futile!" it—he? said—then trailed off into hysterical laughter.
"Someone's been taking lessons from the Borg," B'Elanna complained. "And what the heck is bluified? Where's the off switch?" She jiggled three different switches and depressed a button, but all she managed to do was activate whirling colored lights that spun around the submarine's interior.
"I think," Harry said, observing the submarine in front of the carefully, "that the waves traveling through the water are conveying the sound."
"How could they do that?" Neelix asked.
"Maybe they're radio waves," Paris suggested brightly.
Thunderous groans echoed around their ship. "Tom, that's terrible!" Kim informed him with an enormous sigh.
"Sorry. Right, let's get out of here. Hold on!"
"To what?" Neelix asked, glancing at the helmsman nervously.
"Your last meal," Tom replied with a very ominous laugh. "Here we go!"
Tom spun the steering wheel in a circle and let go. It kept spinning wildly, and the sub responded, spraying apples from its hull with centrifugal force. Inside, Harry, B'Elanna, and Neelix clung to railings and seats and tried not to fly into the very hard metal walls.
Still laughing, Paris, who was seat-belted into his chair, leaned heavily on a convenient lever to his right, and the ship shot forward, barreling into the tunnel dead ahead, leaving the Blue Meanie fleet floundering behind them.
It took the Blue Meanies a few seconds to recover; then, with a concerted howl of rage that was audible even through the hulls of submarines and the steadily increasing volume of water between them, set off in full pursuit.
"Tom, stop spinning!" Kim yelled over the squeals, bumps, bangs, and, oddly enough, trumpet blasts of the engine.
"Ok, Harry," he said happily, bringing them back onto an even keel. "Is that better?"
"Yes, much," he replied, relieved.
"Right, which way?" he inquired of his friend, who was trying to stabilize his legs. The poor ensign was weaving in circles as he stumbled forward to join Tom at the driver's seat.
"How should I know?"
"Make something up."
"But—"
"Put it this way, buddy; we can't get any more lost than we already are."
Kim shook his head silently. "All right, turn left here."
"Right."
"No, left!"
"I am turning left!" Paris protested, as he turned left.
"But you said-"
"Forget it, Harry."
"Whatever. Turn left again up ahead."
"No problem," he drawled as they reached a four-way intersection.
"No, wait, turn right!"
"You said I was supposed to turn left!"
"I lied."
"Ok, we'll turn right."
"No. Go left."
"I thought you lied!"
"I lied about that too."
"Huh?"
"Just turn left, Tom."
"That didn't make any sense, Harry."
"It's ok. Don't think about it."
"Aahh!" Neelix screamed suddenly, pulling his head back inside from where he'd stuck it out the mysteriously insubstantial porthole. "There's something coming!"
"Let me see," Torres moved him to one side and looked out herself.
"What the…" she muttered. "You better speed up, flyboy," she called to Paris. "Those 'Blue Meanie' jerks are coming after us, and they don't sound too happy."
"Ok," he said, leaning on the lever again, "but I sure wish we had a map or something."
"How about this one?" Neelix enquired, waving a piece of scruffy-looking paper around like a flag.
"Give me that!" Harry near-shouted, leaping to his side and snatching the paper. "Ha hah! Well done, Neelix! Ok, where are we…" He stood still for a second trying to figure out their location. The Talaxian tried to peer over his shoulder, standing on tiptoe, but gave up and moved to just behind his elbow.
"How about the moving, blinking, yellow dot that says YOU ARE HERE?" he asked.
"Of course!" Harry said, waving it about in the air much like Neelix had been doing not a minute ago. "Turn right just ahead, Tom!"
Three seconds later the submarine skidded to a halt in front of a seemingly blank wall.
"Oh, brilliant directions, Starfleet," B'Elanna said sarcastically. "Are you sure you weren't reading it upside down?"
"Yes."
"How do you know?"
"It says THIS WAY UP in big letters with a nice big black arrow," he said, showing her.
"So…"
"So what?"
"So, let's recap." Tom counted off on his fingers. "We've got a horde of Blue Meanies, whatever they are, right behind us in submarines howling for our blood, we're facing a blank dead end, and a crazy thing that looks like a glove on steroids playing shadow-puppets is emerging from the wall with a smile on a face that shouldn't even exist."
"Yeah, that sounds about right—WHAT?" Kim yelped, looking out the front window.
A blue glove, folded into a fist, with the pointer finger, appropriately, pointing straight at them, laughed by moving it's third and fourth fingers apart. It was a most interesting creature, except it suddenly lofted upwards, folded itself into a tighter fist, and slammed down where the submarine had been a brief moment ago. That, of course, made it slightly less interesting and substantially more annoying than it already was. Luckily for them, Paris was paying attention and had moved them away in the nick of time.
However, he had also cannoned them into the wall.
"Sorry!" he shouted unnecessarily.
"Tom, try to get past it!" Kim cried. "There's a gate of some sort opening!"
"Where?"
"In the wall!"
Harry was right. The seemingly blank wall had changed appearances, and now, two interlaced hands had sprouted. Slowly, pausing to shove the homicidal glove aside irritably, they opened, revealing darkness beyond. Only a lit sign hanging from the ceiling broke the darkness. The sign read EXIT in bright red letters.
"Ok, hold on again!" Paris yelled, and jammed the lever all the way into the wall. The submarine shot forward with a protesting screech, zooming straight through the grasping glove, which caught hold of the first Blue Meanie ship to catch up with the yellow submarine, which had vanished into the now-closed gateway.
TO BE CONTINUED. SOON.