Hey guys! Sorry for disappearing for like two years lmao. I'm back and ready to finish this thing cause I hate leaving my fics hanging. I'll be completing this story in about 5 chapters, so keep an eye out weekly for updates.
Chapter 14: Ride or Die
Keeping up as 'employees' for this ongoing Halloween fiasco remained simple at the time, at least outwardly. Even as Dave, Classified and I gathered among the other humans dressed like zombies and ghouls, we remained unseen.
Yet, inwardly, my heart continued to race.
A new beat finally dropped in the main circus tent with the Halloween colors flickering on and off on the main staging area. An announcement blared, introducing the night's "ringmaster", which queued Dave's seamless transition to his role. He gave me two thumbs up, with his larger-than-life smile before he walked his Abraham-Lincoln-looking ass out in front of hundreds of people.
We watched from behind the tent entrance as he entered center stage and grabbed hold of a microphone. "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Monster Mania Circus Ole!" he announced, and applause erupted around him.
I didn't pay much attention after that. An odd sensation of silence slowly overtook my senses, where my pulse seemed to be the only thing that filled my ears, like the sound of a giant's footsteps in a nightmare. The colors bouncing off the tents merged, creating a void where the two colors closed, a void of only colors of orange and green fighting for dominance.
"Pull yourself together," I heard Classified say. That, and the sudden moving forward of the monsters of entertainment around me, pulled me out of whatever the hell I was going through.
"I swear to God, I only have done weed once and that was a long time ago," I muttered, trying to put the blame on something else.
"What on earth are you talking about?" Classified stated sternly. "You're making yourself stand out when you do that; try and act human. You are one, after all."
"What am I doing exactly?" I replied, but at that point Classified had begrudgingly begun moving with the crowd to center stage. Like a confused duckling I followed, moving under the spotlight once again.
There were so many faces in the audience, obscured by a thin black veil of shadow, that made it feel like they were the creepy creatures here.
I had it in me to just start staring again, for a moment. Even from the distance I was at, I saw the small details in the audience's faces. Enjoyment, happiness; the creases at the sides of their eyes and smiles for whatever reason started morphing into anger and aggression. Once I realized I was falling back into some weird daze like I had been doing, I fought it, trying to stay present. It might as well have been a bad night at the club.
Some of the zombies started dancing, while some others began doing complex routines with spins and jumps. On either side of me, for the most part, there was no coordination or plan; people were just acting like ghouls or showing off some kind of acrobatics.
Me just standing there wasn't doing anyone any good, so I tried coming up with weird stuff to do that fit in with the crowd. To be honest I felt like a complete idiot, but at least it helped me blend in.
After a while, animals were introduced to the performance, elephants appearing in the center with black light stationed right behind their ears that cast outward, making a strange shadow in front of them with the likeness of bat wings.
My heart dropped for a second when little cages were lowered right above everybody, containing some of the smaller animals like the penguins, Julien, and Mort. They wailed and growled. To my relief, I realized this was not some part of another kidnapping sequence, rather it was just part of the performance.
I took note of little details again: the white portion of the penguins were painted with little Jack-o-Lanterns and little ghosts, while Julien's crown of ferns was traded in for a crown of wheat with a little crescent moon in the middle.
From that point on, I wasn't sure what was so cool about all this, but the crowd seemed to love it. A soundtrack of meshed songs about being a ghost, being watched, and other creepy titles kept the performance going for quite some time, as the crowd in their chairs continued to smile and applaud the show.
One after another, I took in different faces, each the same as the other… that was until I saw a different face, this time familiar, and one that didn't have a smile.
I rubbed my eyes, attempting to be forthright with myself. I considered that I was falling into another weird dissociation episode, but this time the image lasted. This person wasn't just angry, he was furious, and that fact didn't help me, as I was able to perceive him from the crowd like a hawk would see a rat in the brush far beneath it. Only this rat had a weapon.
"He has a harpoon gun!?" I shouted, panicked. As I continued to watch this furious person in the audience, I saw that it wasn't just anyone with a harpoon gun, it was Chef Hiroto.
"Holy shit!" I cried, running up quickly to Dave, who was still taking pleasure in doing tricks on his pedestal for the audience.
"Oh! You're really getting into it too, dearest; I love the dramatic flair you are giving off," Dave said as he saw me approach.
Breathing heavily, I said, "The chef! He… is HERE!"
"Chief? I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying," Dave said, poking his pinky finger into his ear. "The music is rather loud."
"THE CHEF!" I cried, jumping onto the pedestal and grabbing his face.
He paused for a moment, staring into my eyes as he processed the thought. "Hiroto is here?" he finally hissed. "Where?!"
I turned his head in the direction of where I saw Hiroto, and lo and behold, there he still was, festering in his anger with an actual weapon in his hands. Yet nobody around him batted an eye.
"This is bad," I said. "We need to get out of here!"
"You're right; maybe it's best we slip out while the crowd is preoccupied," Dave agreed. "Let's alert Classified and get moving."
We moved in unison as we jumped off the stage, rushing over to Classified to alert him of the situation.
"Change of plans! We have an enemy in our midst," Dave said. "We might need to figure out another way to get back to New York."
"How?" Classified asked, rolling his eyes. "You're telling me you've done similar tactics before and now you've blown your cover?"
"Look, there's no time for your smart ass, you can do that shit later," I cut in. "We need to leave, like, right now."
Classified rolled his eyes again. "This is the last time I leave David in charge of anything."
"As if you have a choice!" I snapped back. A bundle of anger welled up inside my chest, but it was best to leave it aside and not argue with him right now. We were both in the same situation with this whole Medusa Serum mess, so I had to try and stay on track, even if he was going to be a little bitch about it. I desperately wanted to get to where we were going and find a fix at Dave's lab.
With the crowd preoccupied and the ghouls and zombies continuing their performance, we wiggled through and out of the circus tent, got Penny and Kenny's attention (who had been on standby, (God bless them) and headed for the parking lot. It didn't quite click with me yet what we were going to do, but I felt in the back of my mind it wasn't going to be… well, legal.
"Let's take this truck," Dave said, gesturing towards a large modded white Chevy. "Nobody is going to miss it."
"Miss it!?" I gasped. I don't know why I continued to be shocked by this. "A guy with this truck is definitely going to miss it."
Without missing a beat, Penny and Kenny were already on it. Kenny busted the window open as Penny crawled in and started wiring the truck. The loud crash of the window made me turn around to look at our surroundings, but the blaring music from the circus tent was simply too loud for anyone in there to actually know what was happening.
I was starting to feel a sigh of relief when, like a freaking Terminator or something, Hiroto walked through the tent exit and started to scan the parking lot. Within a matter of seconds, he spotted us, and started walking in our direction.
"Good Lord, hurry!" I cried at Penny.
Penny gobbled at me a few times, perhaps insisting she was working at it the best she could. In the meantime, I was doing double takes, back and forth, at the truck and back at Hiroto, who was growing closer by the minute.
The truck finally roared to life, but Hiroto started running in our direction instead of doing his creepy power walk.
Feeling like I was going to nearly piss myself, we all finally jumped into the vehicle. Dave took the wheel, Penny and Kenny the passenger seat, while Classified and I rode in the back. Thank God I was too preoccupied with Hiroto coming after us to start freaking out about Dave driving.
I watched Hiroto get smaller and smaller as we drove away, and soon the tight corner we took around the tree line hid the circus tent and Hiroto. The passing sounds of the circus' music slipped away the further we drove.
. . . . . . .
Night was turning into day when we were still a few hours from New York, according to the GPS. We were slowly making our way to the lab to get everything fixed, but the pinging in the truck told us that we were running out of gas.
Penny and Kenny gobbled at each other for a moment before they turned to Dave. It seemed they were trying to plan ahead for us, considering the dire situation that was slowly building.
"Okay, you're right. Better now than later," Dave chimed.
"What did they say?" Classified asked.
"It's just now sunrise, which means there is less likelihood that a gas station will be busy," Dave explained. "While we fill up the truck, I can slip into the station and make a call to my other henchmen to meet us with some choppers. It will be faster; the longer we drive this stolen truck, the more likely we'll be stopped by a police officer."
"Or the FBI. Or that freak," I commented.
"As much as I despise the idea of you going indoors anywhere, that sounds like our best bet," Classified replied. He reached forward from his seat in the back, pointing at the GPS monitor. "There looks to be a station in three miles. Pull over there."
"Hey, just because we're working together doesn't mean you get to tell me what to do," Dave said, sticking his nose up. "I'll stop wherever I want."
The car was silent for a few minutes before he finally said, "Hey look, a gas station!" and then proceeded to slow the car down and park poorly next to one of the pumps.
"Hey, great idea, but like, how are we supposed to pay for this?" I asked.
Dave, Penny and Kenny started fumbling around in the vehicle, looking behind the mirrors, in the center console and in the glove compartment before they collectively found sixty buck's cash.
"With this," Dave responded, turning around to look at me and wave the money in my face. I watched him get out of the truck, and (I cannot emphasize enough, in his horrible disguise) head inside the gas station.
I wrapped my arms around my torso and sunk in my seat. It took a moment to get comfortable, due to my new Medusa horns bumping into the seats and the back window of the truck, but once I got somewhat situated, I sat there and sulked for what seemed like forever.
Penny doodled with the GPS for a moment, but other than that, the truck was completely quiet. That's why I heard little bumps and knocks from the truck bed directly behind me.
"Hey, ummm, do y'all hear that?" I asked.
The two henchmen in the front turned around from the front seat to look towards the back window and shrugged.
"I hear it, but I don't think there was anything back there," Classified said.
Along with Penny and Kenny, we joined them by looking behind us and out the back window. At first the trunk showed, indeed, nothing that would indicate anything was back there, but after a bit of staring, a small figure jumped up and grabbed hold of the window.
I screamed, only for a brief second out of surprise before my surprise turned into concern. "Is that Mort!?" I asked.
Through the window I could hear him say, very faintly, "Um, can you please let me in?"
Classified complied quicker than I could and opened the back window so Mort could crawl inside. Sitting then between the two of us, he looked up at us with his big yellow eyes and with a tiny grin on his face. "Whoa, that was a long drive!" he commented. "Where are we going?"
"Where are we going?" Classified asked, incredulous. "You should not be here at all! What are you thinking, following us?"
"Well, Private said that I should come with you to—"
Classified continued his ranting, cutting Mort off. "What are we going to do with him? He's in danger and has no business being here with us!"
The driver's door opened, and Dave climbed in, now back from the gas station. He said over Classified, "Penny, Kenny, start filling up, we're paid and ready to go," before he saw Mort.
"Can somebody please tell me who kidnapped… this cute rat thing? Because it wasn't me." Dave side-eyed Penny and Kenny, who wiggled their tentacles back and forth, gesturing that they didn't do it.
"I came here by myself!" Mort said, defending his presence. "Private actually said—"
Classified turned his attention and irritation to the two henchmen, growling, "You heard David! Get to filling up the truck so we can leave!"
"Literally how many times do I have to tell you, wolf," Dave snapped as Penny and Kenny slipped out, "Don't tell me what to do, and especially don't tell my henchmen what to do!"
"You octopi are the most unfocused, unprepared batch I have ever seen work in my entire career! I am surprised that the North Wind has had so much trouble taking you down."
"You mean you have trouble taking us down," Dave said. "If I recall correctly, you've led every mission since the beginning to try and stop me. Looks like maybe you're the unprepared one here!"
"Oh my God, please do not start this again or I'm going to lose my shit!" It was my turn to express myself. My moments of tranquil silence were so far and in between; I wasn't sure how much more stimulation I could take before I hit my limit. "We just need to hold on and work together a bit longer, then we'll be at the lab, and we'll put this all behind us."
"We've been talking about the lab for so long," Classified commented, "but since you put it that way…" He turned from me to Dave. "At your lab, do you have a cure? Do you even have your old Medusa Serum records?"
Dave laughed, his deep laugh that he usually did when he was doing his "I'm evil, I got you" type thing, and said, "Of course I have the means to fix this; I'm not an idiot!"
"Dave… not to like, ruin your moment…" I gulped in between my words, trying to calm myself down. "But if I recall, the entire reason we were here to begin with was because you were trying to steal back the serum from North Wind. Didn't, uh, all your stuff blow up this summer when North Wind attacked you? Your submarine and all?"
Dave paused, grinning toothily. "Of course! I mean, I don't really have anything that concrete anymore, but I can whip something up!"
"Dave, are you just winging this cure thing?" I asked, sighing with regret. He told me he had everything together just hours ago, and now he was saying he didn't have any decent remnants of his Medusa Serum to work with for a cure.
"Might I make a suggestion?" Classified said, sighing as well, placing a paw on his face as if trying to hide shame or something. "I can see that we are a long way off now from any sort of cure. While I don't doubt you can re-create your serum, I'm afraid there's just no time for that. As a result of these unforeseen events, I suggest we retrieve the records of the Medusa Serum and confiscated samples from the North Wind base."
"Didn't we blow that up?" I asked, raising a brow in confusion.
Sighing again, without taking his paw from his face, Classified responded. "You did. But when you attacked that ship recently in our recent confrontation, we weren't just flying around for fun. We've been shipping supplies to our new base of operations. The new base isn't occupied yet, but all our archives of Dave's Medusa Serum are in there."
"Why are you sharing this with us now?" I said, bewildered.
"It didn't occur to me that David was playing by ear."
I chuckled at Classified's response, and he looked up from his paw and scowled at me. "Well, I guess we're both dumbasses," I mocked out loud.
"Hmm, I suppose we can head to your new base for a pickup. It would save us some time," Dave mused. "So long as you're not going to betray us in there or anything."
"I won't betray anybody," Classified assured. "I want to get back to normal just as much as Kailey here needs to get back to normal. The longer this goes on, the more danger we'll be in."
There was a click at the pump. The tank was finally filled, and Penny and Kenny crawled back into the truck. The two made sure the GPS was set as if we were still headed to New York when Dave spoke. "We'll meet them on this main stretch. It will be less time than anticipated until we're picked up. Then we'll head into the second phase of our plan: going to the North Wind base. That was Classified's idea."
The truck once again started moving, and I exhaled in relief. Now at least we had a solid plan and would no longer be winging it. I imagined getting back to normal and seeing my family in time for Christmas, opening presents, watching Christmas Vacation, and eating pie while sitting on a comfy couch. Oh, and sleeping. Good Lord, I needed rest.
We had hit the main highway and were beginning to speed up when I phased out for a bit. Through the lull of the tires rolling along the concrete road, I suddenly heard Dave grumble. Penny and Kenny kept an eye on the rear-view mirror before the two of them turned around to look out the rear window. I didn't think much of it at first.
They gobbled to each other before Dave grumbled again.
"Really? He's a quick one," Dave said, chuckling nervously. "Well, he won't be on our tail for long; my other henchmen's arrival with the chopper will be imminent."
I closed my eyes for a moment, attempting to take in a few more deep breaths before I turned around to look at whatever was behind us. I thought, it's always something, isn't it?! before I gathered the strength to turn around to see him.
In a beat-up black Ford truck, Chef Hiroto glared.
I tried to make easy of the situation. "Well, it doesn't look like he has a spotter, so unless he wants to play Destruction Derby with us I highly doubt…"
I began to trail off when I saw him do something to the console of his truck before he grabbed hold of the same freaking harpoon gun from before, fully loaded and ready to go. Hiroto rolled down his driver's window, leaned out and shot the harpoon at us.
Some kind of sixth sense kicked in, and I ducked just in time, the harpoon barreling into the truck's rear window, smashing the glass everywhere. It flew through the front window, shattering it too.
"What the fuck!?" I yelled.
Our truck swerved, Dave attempting to adjust to the situation. I tried desperately not to think about him driving, now with a lunatic on our tail, but like a stack of cards it all came tumbling down.
"Give Penny and Kenny the driver's seat!" I cried out, putting more faith in them as I at least knew they knew what they were doing.
"I can handle this; don't worry, dearest! Besides, if a police officer saw us I'm not sure how I would explain my henchmen driving the vehicle…"
I looked back and forth at the two shattered windows. "You think that matters!?"
I was in fight-or-flight mode again, but with nowhere to run. I managed to peek over the now long-gone window behind me to see what Hiroto was doing, and I saw him loading another harpoon.
"Penny and Kenny, please get us out of here!" I shouted, and like clockwork the two nudged Dave over to switch seats with him. Penny worked the steering wheel while Kenny rammed the gas pedal, flooring it.
That gave us some distance, but once Hiroto realized we were moving more quickly, he completed his reload and raced forward. Once he was closer, he worked his truck's console, I now realizing he was putting the truck on some kind of autopilot. He leaned out of the truck again, readying the harpoon gun.
I didn't think much about what I did next, but I found myself quickly crawling out of the shattered back window and to the truck bed. Once I stood upright, I was met with Hiroto aiming right at me, although this time, once he pulled the trigger, and the harpoon flew in my direction, I… I shit you not, I watched it fly at me, and then with some kind of wild calculated timing, I caught it. I caught the harpoon.
I must've been in fight mode officially at that point. Like a dream I felt my body move, and the highway scenery moving quickly around me like a warp stream as I turned the harpoon around and hurled it back at Hiroto.
"Eat this, bitch!" I screamed.
The harpoon hit Hiroto's windshield, penetrating it but not quite shattering it. The glass shriveled and warped to where it was impossible for him to see out of it.
He scrambled to get back into the truck, once inside trying to take back control, but instead the vehicle began to swerve.
After a moment or two he shot through his own windshield, completely shattering the glass, and another harpoon flew my way.
I didn't have as good timing, but I managed to smack the harpoon down, away from myself and the others in the truck. It ended up falling into the bed, lodging in the metal.
"You think you can get away from Hiroto!?" he screamed at me, his eyes blazing. "You ruined my restaurant!? You mess with Hiroto!? You fake as a person?! I'll kill you!"
"I'll kill you first!" I screamed back, almost mirroring his aggression exactly. "Shoot another harpoon at us and I won't miss your shitty face!"
"David, where are your henchmen? Your wife is about to commit murder!" I heard Classified yell in the truck.
"They'll be here in a few miles; we just need to hang on for a bit longer!" Dave replied.
Hiroto was already loading up another harpoon at that point. Briefly I wondered just how many harpoons this guy had, but the situation was just too urgent to try and contemplate something idiotic like that. Seriously, what kind of freak has this many harpoons!?
In the distance the choppers roared. It was like a countdown of sorts as I contemplated every movement Hiroto was playing at this point. Once his weapon was loaded, instead of sticking his body out of the driver's window, he simply remained seated where he was, aimed, and fired.
As he made his attack, I made mine. The prior harpoon that had landed in the truck was easy game, and I grabbed hold of it, and just as he fired, I ripped the thing out of the truck and threw it at his harpoon, causing the two to ricochet and go flying off the highway and into the woods.
The choppers were close now, and I snapped out of my fight mode and turned around. A few of Dave's choppers came flying overhead and past us, then made a tight turn back at us to fly as we drove, one lowering ladders for us to climb onboard.
Classified was the first to join me in the truck bed and start up the ladder, when Dave tapped on my shoulder, saying, "Dearest, we need to leave now."
"I couldn't agree more," I said.
The rest of us quickly climbed the ladder, and when I was just about to be brought onto the chopper, I turned around and gave Hiroto the finger before Dave helped me aboard.
Finally, we flew off, watching as the poor truck we stole, going like 80 miles an hour and falling without someone driving it, went off course and exploded on the highway.