LotS/The Story/The Prince & The Pixels/Monkey Business
Monkey Business
"What happened?" Talia asked. "Wu said it was an assassination attempt."
"Yesterday the prince met with Moto Zair, a representative of Envision Armaments," Bermund Pelar replied. "During King Salastro's reign, Envision supplied most of our planetary defense force's weaponry. She wanted to renew those agreements with the prince. But..."
"No," Telemachus said.
"But Your Highness," Zair replied, "your father was always satisfied with our products."
"That was before your weapons killed him!"
Moto Zair coughed. Her beautiful face reddened, making her seem young and shocked. Innocent and aghast at the accusation. But the seneschal had done his research. The woman was twice as old as she appeared, and she hadn't become an executive at Envision by being sweet and naive. Perhaps her employers thought Zair's synthetic youth and beauty would win over Gallea's young ruler...
"It's true that we sold weaponry to the Centurian Collective, among many other human and alien powers. But I promise you, we wouldn't have dealt with them if we'd known they intended to carry out an unjustified and barbaric attack on Gallea. King Salastro wasn't just a client to us, he was a dear and respected friend. His tragic death was-"
"You kept selling to them afterwards!"
"We had to honor our contracts, or the UHW would have-"
"Your. Weapons. Killed. My. Father. I won't have them on Gallea!"
"That's... unfortunate, Your Highness." Zair sighed. "But my superiors believe that the contracts your father signed with us are still valid in spite of the period of... interruption... caused by the occupation. If Gallea refuses to uphold its end of the arrangement, they may take the matter before the UHW."
"Get out."
"I-"
The prince jumped to his feet.
"Get out or I'll grab my chainsaw!"
Moto Zair stood as well.
"Your Highness..."
She stepped forward, dropped to one knee -- bringing her eyes almost level with his -- and clasped Telemachus' hand. The gesture was unexpected enough to make the prince's brow furrow, and the snarl retreat from his mouth.
"I'm sorry. I told my superiors that this mission was a terrible idea. And for what it's worth, I always considered your late father to be a decent and honorable man. I'll do my best to make them release Gallea from its obligations."
"Oh..."
Telemachus glanced at the seneschal, who could only shrug. He certainly hadn't anticipated any such kindness from Envision's representative.
"Thank you," the prince said.
Moto Zair held his hand for a long moment and bowed her head. She continued to hold it even as she stood, before finally releasing it, bowing again -- from the waist this time -- and leaving the chamber.
"We believe she infected him," Doctor Yien said, "with some kind of engineered psionic ailment."
"Did you catch her?" Talia asked.
There was a calm coldness in her voice that made the Bermund Pelar shiver. If Moto Zair had been in a cell, he knew that nothing could have saved her from dying there with a pistol wound in her face. The mental image didn't displease him. But the seneschal sighed.
"It was almost a full day before the prince fell ill," he said. "She'd left Gallea long before then."
"That incubation time was meant to be the perfect alibi," Doctor Yien said. "If Arla hadn't detected the psionic aspect, we mightn't have known his illness was inflicted."
"You're sure it was Zair?" Talia asked.
"I contacted her, and told her the prince had reconsidered," the seneschal said. "I invited her back to Gallea for fresh talks. She told me she was in negotiations with the Novocastrian government, and couldn't leave their space until they were concluded. But Prime Minister Wu spoke with Lady Hollister. Moto Zair lied."
"Then when Tel's better, the two of us will hunt her down. He can bring his chainsaw."
The gunslinger tightened her grasp on the boy's hand and leaned towards him, bringing her lips close to his ear.
"Hear that, Tel? Wake up, so we can hack that bitch to pieces."
"Talia..." the boy murmured.
"Talia..." a voice echoed.
"Talia?"
Telemachus opened his eyes. The first thing that met his gaze was the framed picture on his bedside table. He and Ronald Reagan were standing side by side, cramming greasy wedges of battered pizza into their mouths. Good times...
"That's right, Talia!" the voice said.
The TV... Telemachus sat up.
A pixelated news anchor with a blocky blue suit and equally blocky blond hair was on the screen. Yes... The boy remembered. He'd been watching one of the 8-bit news channels when he fell asleep.
"Talia has been abducted!" the anchor continued.
"What!?!" Telemachus threw the blankets aside and jumped out of bed.
"You heard me! Talia has been abducted. Pay attention, kid. Now, in other news, authorities have reported a massive increase in fatal traffic accidents involving oversized frogs..."
The boy ran towards the TV, reached into the screen, grabbed the anchor by his poorly rendered lapels, and pulled him close -- until they were nose to nose.
"Tell me what happened to Talia!"
"Okay! Okay! Geez..."
Telemachus let go of his jacket. The anchor collapsed back into his chair.
"Talia has been abducted by Grislak, a blue gorilla-like monster," the newsman said.
An image appeared to the upper right of his head, showing the creature in question and confirming his status as being both blue and gorilla-like.
"Grislak was an attraction at the local zoo, until this morning -- when he inexplicably broke out of his cage and rampaged through the city. Fortunately this rampage was largely limited to 8-bit neighborhoods, so the damage isn't-"
"Get to the part about Talia!"
"All right! All right! Grislak smashed through her apartment building, grabbed her, and took her to a local construction site."
The anchor disappeared, replaced by animated footage of the blue ape. Grislak was standing on the shell of a partially constructed building, a framework of haphazard girders. Talia was next to him, looking as vexed as the area's 8-bit ambiance permitted.
"Police officers tried to apprehend him," the invisible anchor said, "but Grislak seems to have found an inexhaustible supply of barrels -- which he's prepared to use as weapons."
On cue, three pixelated cops appeared in the bottom corner of the screen and ran along the lowest girder. It was angled to create a convenient ramp, either by design or as the result of shoddy construction. But as the officers of the law made their way across it, the ape started throwing barrels. Each missile hit the uppermost of the sloping girders, then proceeded to roll down its angled length. When it reached the end, it fell onto the next girder -- which was angled in the opposite direction -- and continued rolling. It occurred to Telemachus that Grislak might have arranged this himself. If so, he was quite the engineer... At least as far as apes went.
The cops ran one way, using the slanting girders to ascend the structure like bold defenders of law and order. But the barrels were coming down the other way. When they met, something had to give...
"Here we see the police officers' tragic demise!"
One of the barrels ploughed through the cops, smashing each of them in turn before rolling off -- leaving the poor souls spinning in a circle before the momentum ebbed and they finally collapsed dead on the girder.
"Who can stop this monster?" the anchor asked.
"I can," Telemachus replied. "I can."
"He's strong," Arla said. "His mind, I mean."
"He's a tough kid," Talia replied. "I guess they breed you that way on Gallea."
The girl smiled. Its brightness only accentuated the weariness etched into her young face. Red lines crawled across the whites of her eyes, and dark patches tainted the fair skin beneath -- making her look like a tired little panda. She was on her feet, stretching legs that had been bent for too long, leaning against Bermund for support.
"He's a gamer," Norux said.
The Snuuth nodded towards a holo-poster on a nearby wall. It depicted a wizard hurling a fireball at a plate of roast chicken, perhaps to indicate his disdain for poultry.
"They always have strong minds," he continued. "Playing so many games changes the way they think. They get used to fighting against any situation, no matter how strange and ridiculous it is. That's why they don't get as many nightmares."
"If that's true," Talia replied, "this psionic illness thing doesn't stand a chance against Tel."
The Snuuth smiled and took his seat -- an especially wide one which had been brought to the room to accommodate the sizable dimensions of his posterior. He was the second psionic healer to arrive at Wu Tenchu's behest. The first, a Piscarian female whose clothing seemed to consist entirely of imitation seashells, was already entranced. Her eyes were closed, like Arla's had been. And like her young human counterpart, she now held one of Telemachus' hands. She'd relieved the girl, allowing her a welcome respite. Soon Norux would join her, then the others who were making their way to Gallea and its palace. Together they might be able to do what Arla alone could not...
"Does the boy have a pet?" the Snuuth asked. "A dog, perhaps? Its presence, the feel of its fur, might help him."
"No," the seneschal said.
"Not unless you count his mech," Talia added. "And I don't think we want to stick that on his bed."
"How about a teddy bear?" the Snuuth suggested. "Or another favorite childhood toy? Anything which evokes strong, happy emotions could aid us."
The gunslinger looked up at Pelar.
"How about-" she began.
He nodded.
"I'll go get it," he said.
Telemachus craned his neck and stared up at Grislak. The blue-haired beast was just standing there, alternately scratching himself and halfheartedly beating his chest.
"Hey, monkey!" the boy yelled.
The creature stopped scratching his genitals, shifted them back under a swath of pixelated fur, and glared down at him.
"Grislak not monkey! Grislak ape!"
"Whatever! Let Talia go!"
"No! Grislak keep girl! Grislak obey boss!"
"Who's your boss?"
"Ha! You think Grislak stupid? Grislak not tell you King Mega is boss!"
"You work for King Mega?"
"No! Stupid human! Grislak said Grislak not tell you that!"
"Tel!" Talia shouted. "Do something about this guy!"
"Why don't you just shoot him through the eye?" he yelled back.
"I don't have my guns!"
"Okay! I'll save you!"
"Ha!" the ape roared. "You not save girl! You get smashed instead! Smashed by Grislak's barrels!"
The beast's brutish hands grabbed one of those containers and brandished it above his head. Then he hurled it down at the boy. Telemachus broke into a sprint. The barrel crashed onto the ground behind him, close enough for the some of the smashed pixels to plink against the back of his head.
Grislak bellowed. The boy was on the angled girders now. The blue ape couldn't hit him from here. Not with a direct shot, anyway...
As Telemachus ran up the sloping metal, he heard the rumbling high overhead. The barrels were rolling. But still the boy kept on running, up one girder and then along the next. He couldn't leave Talia in the monster's clutches.
On the next girder he saw them, revolving towards him. A barrage of barrels, too many and too close together for him to jump over...
"Here it is!" Pelar said.
"What's that?" Norux asked. He stared at the object in the seneschal's arms.
"It's a laser-edged chainsaw," Talia replied.
"Oh..."
Bermund Pelar laid it on the bed beside the unconscious prince, and placed the boy's hand on top of it.
Telemachus' eyes lit up. There, suspended above him...
He jumped up and snatched it from the air. It fell into his grasp with a satisfying chime. He didn't know where it had come from. Perhaps one of the construction workers left it there, though he had no idea what a builder might have wanted with one of these things. That didn't matter though. What mattered was that it was his now...
The boy pressed the button. The laser-edged chainsaw whirred to life in his hands.
The barrels rolled towards him. He laughed and ran at them. Pixelated wood chips rained through the air. Big chunks of barrel fell this way and that.
He ran up the girder, swinging and thrusting with his newfound weapon -- obliterating barrel after barrel, laughing with the thrill of destruction. The ape must have heard him, because he gave a confused bellow before throwing down more barrels. They were chainsawed to bits just like the others.
Telemachus strode up the last sloping girder, onto the horizontal one that Grislak must have left undamaged to serve as his platform.
"Tel!" Talia cried. She was on a smaller girder-platform above.
And there ahead of the boy was the massive ape.
"Time to die, monkey!" he yelled. Then he ran towards his blue foe, swinging his chainsaw.
"Grislak not monkey!" the ape howled. "Grislak... Aaaaarrrrgggghhh!"
The blue beast clutched his injured hand. Even his mighty jungle flesh was no match for a laser. Or a chainsaw. Let alone the two combined into one weapon of considerable homicidal might.
"No fair! Human has sharp stick!"
"It's a chainsaw, you idiot!"
"Grislak not... Aaaaarrrrgggghhh!"
A slashing wound across his broad chest was enough for the ape. He turned and ran. He wasn't very fast.
"Aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!"
Some heroes might have allowed the ape to flee, slink away to his nefarious lair (in this case his cage at the zoo, nefarious or otherwise), lick his wounds, and plot his revenge. But Telemachus wasn't one of them. Thus he drove his chainsaw at the routed ape's butt.
Grislak leapt at least a dozen feet in the air. Then gravity decided to put him out of his misery by grabbing him and slamming him onto the hard, unforgiving ground below. A pool of blood and splattered 8-bit organs gushed out of his blue body. It was game over for the ape.
"Nice job, Tel," Talia said. The gunslinger dropped down and landed beside him.
"Thanks. But it isn't over yet. You heard what he said -- King Mega was behind it."
"The boxer?"
"I guess so. I'm going to find him and beat the truth out of him."
"You're in luck. He's fighting at the Genyo Arena tonight..."