Episode 7:1- The Beast in Space
Disclaimer- Close, but no Brazilian Dancing Monkey.
The console room was unusually empty for the middle of the day. Or, as much as 'the middle of the day' can be when you're suspended in no time.
And since we have the opportunity, let's look around the main room of the Time Machine.
When Calvin had originally decorated it, he had realised he had the opportunity to go all out in color and ridiculous design. All those years Mom and Dad had refused to let him paint his room black and fluorescent orange, and now he could do whatever he wanted in an endless space.
So, he went wild.
The central console was covered in all sorts of weird dials and switches that really had no business being on any sort of vehicle, let alone a super advanced Time Machine. At a glance, bits from a deluxe Lego set could be seen, and little twiddly dials that just begged to be pushed blinked innocently from a raised level. A whole row of over- and under-sized levers, as well as the normal-sized ones, were spread out along the side of the dodecahedron-cal setup, some pushed up, some pushed down, and some broken off in a Calvin-esque fit of fury. In the center, a Big Red Button sat, just waiting for someone to slam their hand down on it. Hard.
For some reason, bits from a typewriter sat below the scanning module, presumably instead of a normal computer keyboard, or a holo-board.
The floor was a light blue marble with sparkly bits inside it, which made an excellent distraction if you were the type to be distracted by said sparkly things. A plain marble strip ran from the middle of the room to the door that led towards the rest of the endless hallways.
And the walls were something that would have made M. C. Escher stare and drool for hours. They sloped gradually up from a 89 degree angle, tilting until they reached a complex array of wooden, metal, and other beams that were strung crazily about the room. Of course, halfway up was the gap for the exit. Below that, was the trampoline.
The actual color of the walls is something that can only be fully appreciated by Pure Mathematicians with several degrees in color-variable theory. Hobbes had dropped in to help with the color scheme, and, armed with a room full of buckets of paint, and an unnaturally large brush, he had attacked the walls with reckless abandon.
He did it artistically, of course.
Therefore, the walls were covered in a gradual rainbow pattern, that faded from white, to orange, to red, to yellow, to green, to blue, to purple, black, grey, and back again to white. It was quite stunning, really.
Oh, and look! Up, in the tangled mess of not-so-supportive beams in the roof... wait. What the heck?
"What in the name of Brazilian Dancing Monkeys are you doing up there?" Rose asked, stopping where she stood, and staring.
"We are the society of G.R.O.S.S.! I am Calvin, the Dictator-For-Life, and our purpose is to Get Rid Of Slimy GirlS!" Calvin yelled, his head poking out from the rough wood of the treehouse that was perched precariously on a thick metal beam. He was wearing a hat made out of newspaper from the 32nd century. "We will now sing the G.R.O.S.S. National Anthem!"
Hobbes popped his head up next to them, also wearing a newspaper hat, and they began singing in perfect two-part harmony.
"When the sun of summer calling falls,
The force will rise upon the walls,
The enemy will die a death,
Grizzly and horrible, they'll take their breath,
Army of men, we must unite,
To bring our war upon the fight,
OH-OH-OH, G.R.O.S.S,
BEST CLUB IN THE COSMOS,
WE BRING THE FIGHT,
THEY'LL SEE THE LIGHT,
GET RID OF SLIMY GIRRRRLLLSSS!"
They finished with a triumphant crescendo, and Charles the dinosaur jumped up onto the edge of the treehouse, letting out a few cute cheeps. The tiny folded-newspaper hat on his head wobbled a bit as he twisted his neck about.
Rose clapped slowly and ironically at their performance, and Hobbes took three grand mock-bows.
"Very nice," she accoladed. "Can I come up?"
"NO!" Calvin yelled. "You. May. Not. PASS!"
"You have to say the password," Hobbes added helpfully.
Calvin shook his head. "She'll never figure it out. It's way too long. And way too complex. And way too demeaning."
Rose had a pensive look on her face. "Hm. Do you accept password substitutes?"
Hobbes's tail waved in the air. "Sometimes. Do carry on."
Rose cleared her throat.
And began to sing Roar by Katy Perry.
"WHAT?!" demanded Calvin. Hobbes bobbed his head to the beat.
"I got the eye of the tiger, the tiger, dancing through the fire, 'cause I am the champion, and you're gonna see me ro-oar!" Rose sang.
"Come on up!" cheered Hobbes. "Anyone who sings that song is an honorary member of G.R.O.S.S. as far as I'm concerned." He dropped down the rope ladder, batting Calvin away with one paw, who was trying to stop his tiger friend from doing just that.
"No, no, no, no, nononononononnnnnooo," whimpered Calvin. "She can't come up."
"Hi, Calvin!" Rose waved, climbing over the side and into the treehouse. "Nice place."
"NOOOO!"
In desperation, he grabbed the first thing that came to hand, and threw it as hard as he could. It was a water balloon.
Sploosh!
"I'm wet," Rose said calmly. Then, more loudly. "I'm wet!"
Calvin whimpered, and jumped off the side of the treehouse.
Crunch!
"Ow!"
"You'd better be taking us somewhere good today," Rose warned Hobbes. "I am in a bad mood. For several different reasons."
Calvin pressed the invitingly shiny buttons all along the blue side of the console. "Hobbes can decide."
Hobbes twisted a dial. "To the future!"
With a shudder, and a dimming of lights, the Machine rocketed forwards in the Vortex, and blasted off.
"You're going to have to show me how to fly this thing," Rose noted. "The future? Haven't we already been there?"
Charles clambered up onto the console, and peered at a blinking red button. He chirruped loudly.
"Yeah, but we went way into the future that time. Today, we head to the 43rd Century!" Hobbes declared, not noticing the tiny dinosaur. Charles made a louder noise.
"Hey, little guy, what's wrong?" Calvin asked the dinosaur, who didn't respond. Of course not. Dinosaurs don't talk. Instead, he tapped at the flashing red light with a foot. Calvin noticed, and gulped. "Ooh. That's Not Good."
"What's not good?" Hobbes queried.
"That."
"What?"
"That button. It's Not Good."
"What's so bad about it?" Rose wondered.
"No, the actual name of the thing is 'Not Good'. It's the thing that lights up when a paradox has occured around the Time Machine. One of us has something that caused a paradox," Calvin explained.
"Charles?" Rose asked.
"No. Can't be." He tapped the light, which had turned off. "Huh. It's gone now."
Hobbes spun around in a triumphant circle. "We're here! And I'm a better driver than Calvin is, 'cause I think I actually got us there!"
Rose snorted sceptically. "I'll believe it when I see it, cat." She held out an arm for Charles to climb up and into her hoodie. "Right. Up!"
"Me first, me first!" chanted Calvin, and jumped off the trampoline and up into the future. Whether if it's the right future remains to be seen.
Rose bounced out, and promptly banged headfirst into a wall. A heavy wall. An unusually solid-feeling wall.
"Ow! A wall!" she exclaimed, rubbing her forehead. "I think I've got a concussion." She paused. "Wait, why did I bang into a wall?"
Upon closer inspection, it appeared to be a ceiling. A really low ceiling. We're parked on top of a shelf, she realized. In a cleaning cupboard.
She slipped down from the shelf, and opened the door. And was confronted with the busy, bustling activity of a space station.
"Hobbes?" she called. "Calvin?"
"Rose!" called the tiger. "Over here!"
They were next to a futuristic-looking lemonade stand, which appeared to be run by a duck.
"Lemonade?" offered Calvin, holding up a cup. Rose declined.
"Knowing you, you probably poisoned it."
The spaceport was actually a lot like an airport, with the obvious difference of it having spaceships instead of jumbo jets. That, and the aliens everywhere. The north side of the incredibly large room everything was packed into contained the space shuttles and Customs. Most of the other bits were market stalls, places offering anything you could ever want on a galactic cruise. There was even a McDonalds.
"You landed us in the wrong spot," Rose accused Hobbes.
"What makes you think that?" he protested. "We could be on a spaceport on Earth!"
"That." She pointed. Calvin and Hobbes turned around.
Most of the western wall was a huge glass panel, probably reinforced, otherwise everyone would spill out into space and die of asphyxiation. Outside was the black starry void of outer space. A comet streaked across the serene landscape, spilling sparks out as it went. And far in the distance... was Earth. It looked the same as ever, really.
Hobbes paused in mid-construction of an argument that explained, exactly, why they hadn't mislanded. "Uh, right. We landed in the wrong spot. But on the plus side, look at the pretty!"
They looked, and were forced to concluded that the pretty was, indeed, extremely pretty. They spent some time just gazing at the amazing view, before they managed to tear themselves away.
"So, try again?" Hobbes suggested.
Calvin shrugged. "Yeah, why not?"
Charles popped out of Rose's hoodie, and sniffed the air, raising a claw up as if trying to catch something.
"Hey, what's up with the dinosaur?" Hobbes asked.
"Probably just smells food," Rose diagnosed. "There's a lot of interesting smells around here."
The tiny dinosaur squealed and hopped up and down within the fabric, becoming more agitated by the second. Hobbes looked slightly intrigued.
"You know, some people say that animals have extremely good intuition nowadays, but prehistoric animals had better instincts? Like, they could predict the future?"
Rose snorted, rubbing her pinkie finger along Charles's spines. "What, Charles is predicting an imminent disaster?"
"Doesn't have to be a disaster he's feeling. Maybe it's something... just, out of place."
"What could possibly be out of place in a place like this?" Calvin demanded, waving his arms around. "Everything's not normal. Not normal is normal here. Normal stuff just fits in."
A motorbike crashed in through a pair of large double doors, and squealed to a stop.
Practically all activity paused. Everyone stared. The rider lifted their helmet off their head, revealing a 20-year old girl with long brown hair.
"Hello," she said with a British accent. "Have you seen anything large, black, mysterious-looking, and scary around here lately?"
Rose turned around, and poked Calvin in the chest. "See," she said. "That's what happens when you say something like that."
The girl had been taken away by the police, protesting all the way, and making threats related to some sort of explosive. Rose, Calvin, Hobbes, and Charles snuck up behind an abandoned stall. It still had some loopy writing scrawled over the front, that used to say Intergalactic Xox Burgers! Sale! Half of the letters had faded, so that it now read nt rg c ic ox urger ale! instead.
"What makes me think that there's something going on around here?" wondered Calvin.
"Maybe it's the fact that they arrested her on sight," Hobbes said.
"Or maybe it's, you know, that nobody was wondering what was going on," added Rose, who was feeling remarkably perceptive today. She had noticed that as soon as the girl had crashed in on her motorbike, every single person in the space port had stared for a moment, then turned away and got back to what they were doing, like they were ashamed at looking at her. "Why don't we ask around?"
The first stall they went up to was run by an alien non-gender-specific person with a bald head, and a flat monotone.
"Hello," he said emotionlessly. "Is there anything you want to try today." He gestured at his samples. They looked like white bread. Hobbes politely took a slice, and gagged on it. It was apparently as bland and tasteless as the seller was.
"Uh," ventured Rose. "We were wondering if you'd seen anything out of the ordinary...?"
"NO!" the seller exclaimed, his face becoming animated. "NOTHING OUT OF THE ORDINARY! NEVER!" He paused, composing himself. "Will that be all."
"Yes...?" Calvin said, startled.
They walked away.
"That was unusual," Rose commented.
"You're telling me!" Hobbes exclaimed. "That was the worst bread I've ever tasted!"
Rose sighed.
The next few stalls they visited had much the same reactions. Anytime they suggested that something might be out of the ordinary, he/she/xe/it would start screaming about them about how everything needs to be normal, then go back to pleasant salesman mode.
"So, what does this prove?" Hobbes asked, after being thrown out of a tent when Charles decided to go sniffing about. (Apparently, this 'wasn't normal'.)
"Everyone here's extremely xenophobic?" offered Calvin.
"Maybe," Rose allowed. "Or maybe that girl on the motorbike knows something."
Calvin stopped, and crossed his arms. "Are you suggesting we break her out of prison?"
"No!" exclaimed Rose. "I never said-"
"Great idea, Rose!" Hobbes nodded. "Let's go break her out of prison!"
"But-"
"Let's go, now!" Calvin agreed.
"Wha-"
"We can use the Transmogrifier Gun," Hobbes suggested.
"Now-"
"No arguments, it was your idea, remember?" Calvin scolded. He produced the Gun from his pocket, and aimed it at Hobbes, Rose, and himself, hitting the button in quick succession.
ZAP!
ZAP!
ZAP!
"Okay," said Hobbes. "What are we?"
"Snails," Calvin said.
There was a long, long pause.
"...I'm sorry, did you just say snails?" Rose asked.
"Yeah. Why?"
"Why on Earth would you turn us into snails?" she stormed, wiggling in a snailish way.
"Well, have you ever seen the movie Turbo?"
Hobbes wiggled his antennae. "It's about a decade into her future, so she wouldn't have seen it."
"Just try to go as fast as you can," Calvin sighed.
She tried. A curl of blue flame ran up from the centre of her shell, spiralling outwards, and she shot forwards.
"Whoa!" she gasped, and stopped abruptly with a screech like tyre brakes. "Okay. Okay. Okay. Where's Charles?"
As one, they all looked up. The normally tiny dinosaur was now huge. Absolutely gigantic.
"Meep," Hobbes articulated.
"Zap him! Zap him!" Rose panicked. Calvin whipped out the Transmogrifier Gun with an antennae, and somehow managed to hit Charles. He shrunk down, and jumped on Hobbes's shell.
"Let's go!" Calvin declared. They zoomed off through the spaceport and towards the doors the girl had been dragged through, along with her motorbike. Charles chittered with excitement.
"This way!" Rose decided, swerving left.
"Why?" Hobbes asked, following her.
"I can hear voices!"
"That's generally not a good sign," Calvin said.
"Uh... door!"
"Duck!"
They ducked, speeding underneath the small gap at the base of the door. Inside was a swirling black vortex. And it looked (and had the general vibe of being) evil. Really evil. Whispering voices were emanating from it.
"Do you hear that?" Rose asked, staring at the vortex.
"Yeah," Calvin said.
"Great. I'm not going insane."
"Maybe we're all going insane together," Hobbes suggested.
"Great!" she said sarcastically. "I may be as insane as a Brazilian Dancing Monkey, but at least I'll have company. Whoopee."
"The signs will rise," said a voice from the vortex. It was husky and dry, and exactly what you'd expect an eldritch horror from the ether to sound like. They all glanced at each other again.
"Did you-"
"Yeah."
"Me too."
"The signs will rise, the God of Chaos," another voice said, this one being vaguely female. But only vaguely.
"The God of Chaos," the voices repeated together. "Dischordia. Dischordia. Dischor-discordi-discordia-" The voices were getting gradually more scrambled, like a record player that had a scratched disc in it.
"Right, let's go," Calvin decided, inching towards the door. Rose was inclined to agree.
"No, wait," Hobbes stopped them. "What's that?"
Rose looked. "What's what?"
"That!" Hobbes said, wiggling his head in the general direction of the vortex. "Can't you see-?"
"No," Calvin said. "All I can see is a swirling black mess."
"There's something in the mess," Hobbes insisted. "It looks like an arm."
"An arm?" Rose asked. "Are you sure you aren't going insane?"
"I thought we discussed this," the tiger-turned-snail sniffed. "It's a really big arm. Even for us. Like, a giant's arm."
Calvin peered closer. "Can't see anything. Let's go."
Hobbes frowned, but allowed himself to be led away. He cast one look back.
He could still see the arm. Its fist was clenching and unclenching.
He shuddered.
"The girl should be in the holding cells, right?" Calvin asked, attempting to scrutinize a map of the building from the floor. Hobbes had been unusually silent the whole time, and only now spoke up.
"I suppose so," he said.
"Where are they, then?" Rose posed.
"Oi! Scumbags! Let me out of here!" called a female voice.
The three of them froze, despite being snails and not easily seen.
"That answers our question," Hobbes concluded.
They all 'activated warp drive' as Calvin so eloquently put it, and sped over to the holding cell. The girl was sitting against the wall, calling out half-hearted insults to her guards. The guards in question were sitting around a table, staring at nothing. They appeared not to hear her. That is, until one of them whirled around and spat out, "Filthy deviant," before turning around to resume his staring.
The girl scoffed. "'Deviant'. You aren't that normal yourself, toerag. Getting rid of anything vaguely out of the ordinary. What's the matter with you lot? Can't you see that something's going on?"
The guards said nothing. Hobbes waved his eyestalks at the girl. "Hey!"
"Hm?" She glanced down, saw three snails, and looked around for the source of the noise.
"Down here!" Rose added.
This time she looked properly at them. "What, you snails?"
"Yeah," said Calvin. "Hello. We're the rescue squad."
"Snails. You better be ninja snails or something, otherwise I'm not impressed."
One of the guards glanced over. "Filthy deviant!" he stormed. "Talking to nothing!"
The girl scooped them up in her hand, and inspected them. "Huh. I've seen some weird things, but talking snails..." She shook her head. "Wow. So, how do you get us out of here?"
"Pick an escape method, any escape method," Calvin grinned.
She scratched her head. "Uh... explosion-related?"
Calvin wiggled around, grabbing the Transmogrifier Gun with an eyestalk. "Nice choice. Just a sec."
He aimed the gun first at himself, then to Rose and Hobbes. "We're not exactly ninja snails, but do two humans and one tiger work for you?"
"Ace!" the girl cheered. "Now. Explosions?"
"Yup," Hobbes snatched the Gun from Calvin, and pointed it at the door. "Duck and cover!"
Everyone dived to the ground. A shockwave of heat and sound washed over them, alerting the guards, and blowing the iron bars off their hinges.
"Run," decided Rose, noticing the guards who were approaching, guns held high.
"Great idea," nodded the girl, already beginning to sprint. "I never caught your names, by the way."
"Rose," Rose introduced. "And the boy is Calvin, and the tiger is Hobbes." She grabbed hold of the tiger's hand, dragging his forward.
"Seriously?" the girl asked. "The Calvin and Hobbes?"
"Wait, you know us?" Calvin interrupted. "How does everyone know us?"
"Are you his wife from the future or something?" Hobbes asked.
"No, we're saving that for a couple of seasons," Calvin said. "But who are you?"
The girl pointed down a hallway into a storage cupboard. "We can talk here. I'm assuming you're here about the Dischoria thing?"
"Dischordia.. that's what the voices said, right?" Rose directed this at Calvin and Hobbes. "Yeah. I guess we are."
"Wicked," the girl nodded. "Come on."
"Who are you?" Calvin repeated.
"Oh, I didn't say?" She turned to them and grinned brightly. "Ace McShane. Explosives expert extraordinaire. Nice to meet you."
(A/N-
Kudos to anyone that had the slow, dawning realization that, yes, that girl was Ace. Some clues may have included her motorcycle (see the New Adventure Novels), her love of explosives, and the use of the words 'wicked' and 'ace'. That was a bit obvious.
So, you may have noticed I completely revamped this episode. And I changed Boom Town too, to something a bit more awesome in this setting.
Dischordia is an actual god. Look her up, it won't spoil anything.
And... thanks to Phoebe, Anouk, Momo, Monet and Charli for providing me with the amazing Brazilian Dancing Monkey dialogue, which will come up next episode.
A Drama Queen is awesome, as always.
~Kitty)