Monday, June 6, 2011

CAPTAIN MAKEMAKE'S "MOUSE TRAP"!



Jun 6th 2011, 15:38 by E O Hatterpol | 755 AU FROM SUN


I THREW my feet under me, made some whirring noises and then sprang bottle-first towards Makemake's massive chest.  I was going to CUT that bastard.


But instead of digging my jagged Whale Ale deep into the salty pirate's guts, I smacked right into a wall of soft flesh.  Somehow, Hungry Hungry Hippos had put himself in between the two of us with remarkable speed; his agility would have been admirable for anyone, let alone a fourteen-foot tall 817 lb. hippopotamus of a man.



"I eat marbles faster than anyone!" he roared, palming the whole of my space helmet as if it were no bigger than a basketball.  He lifted me into the air, then sped over to Captain Makemake's twisted life-size version of Mouse Trap. My legs dangled willy-nilly like a limp Buzz Lightyear action figure.


"Hey, put me down - where are you taking me?!" I demanded. I was trying to sound tough, but my space boots were knocking.


"Hey, no no no no wAUGGHHH yee-ha-ha-hooooooo!" That's as close as I can get to transcribing the silly sounds I made after Hungry Hungry launched me through the air up to the top of the Mouse Trap.


I flew straight into an enormous boot - "OOF!" - then tore at it frantically for a handhold. I didn't even have time to fear how high up I was because the trap was already in motion, and I  was the one who had started it.


When I hit the boot, the boot hit a giant thimble.  It toppled over, releasing what I thought was a massive marble. I looked again & saw it was actually a bulky space rock as cratered as Makemake's head!


Down it went, crashing over a series of steps on its way to a smooth, winding chute. Makemake had crammed nearly half the Flybrary's crew onto these precarious steps and there was no where to go; the asteroid crushed some & forced others to jump to their deaths.


But most of the crew ran down the steps, jumping into the chute. It didn't get any better from there. After avoiding a falling cage trap, one had to scramble up a latticework of rickety pipes, dive into a bathtub, swirl through the drain & hit a plank that finally tossed you into a giant pool of volcanic magma.


It's the kind of elaborate contraption that you'd actually admire if a psychotic space pirate wasn't forcing you to catch your death on it.


"THE COORDINATES, SHATTERPOL!" Captain Makemake shouted from below.  "TELL ME WHERE THE HOMESPHÆRE IS & I'LL STOP THE GAME - I PROMISE. PIRATE'S HONOUR."


I didn't know what to do.  I and the entire crew of the Starship Flybrary were running away from massive asteroids down chutes and ladders towards a pit of blazing hot lava and I had no idea where the Homesphære was, let alone its exact coordinates.  I wasn't special enough to know that kind of information; I was just aboard for the ride!


My mind was racing at near-lightspeed; I analyzed 527,387 different scenarios in the blink of an eye and none of them turned out well.  And then the simplest solution, the one I hadn't thought of, happened right in front of my eyes.


My friends came to the rescue.


"You will stop this nonsense immediately," Ravisius said quietly.  He drew himself to his full height - ten feet tall - and squared his body to Captain Makemake's.  He put his left arm - the weak one I had made fun of earlier - behind his back, then stretched out the Arm of Neil Gaiman with an open palm to the ceiling, almost as if he were beckoning Makemake to take advantage of his blatantly passive stance.


"WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?" Makemake bellowed in confusion. "YOU LOOK LIKE A PILE OF SNOTTY RAGS."


"At least my nipples aren't the size of dinner plates," Ravi fired back, almost in a whisper.


Makemake's eyes widened.  He looked down at his bare chest, then back at Ravisius, then at his chest again, then back to Ravisius with a fire in his eyes.


"THAT'S IT!! I'M GOING TO RIP EVERY SHEET FROM THAT DUSTY PILE OF BOOKS YOU CALL A BODY, YA DEWEY DECIMAL-HUMPING FREAKTARD, AND HERE'S THE NAME OF THE GAME: CROSSFIRE!!"

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