Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12
Chapter 7: Great Balls of Slime
The thing that crashed into our living room looked like a two metre ball of gelatine; dark green, wobbly, and smelling vaguely of lime. The differences were the giant eyes and the mouth.
“Oh, you picked the wrong apartment,” I said, happy to have a problem I could punch or electrocute.
“Wait!” yelled Mel. “We should get out of here and let the police or superheroes deal with this. I gave her a confused look and she pointed at her eyes. We all decided it was best to not argue with her as the ball started to slowly move towards us.
We made our way into the stairwell and Mel said, “If those things have eyes and if the Puppeteer sent them then he can probably see everything they do.”
“That’s a lot of if’s,” Jane started, “But I guess we need to be careful. Let’s suit up. I’ll take James and we’ll come in from the roof to throw off suspicions. You two, go this way.”
Mel drew on our suits and we moved back towards the apartment. The large gelatin Pac-man was stil there and still moving slowly towards the door. I looked at it and then looked at Mel. “What do we do to fight this thing?”
“Why would you fight me,” boomed the deep accented voice of the gelatin.
“You crashed into our—” I cut myself off and paused before continuing, “city and your friends seem to be eating parts of it.”
“We are peaceful creatures from Alpha Centauri. We’re here to establish peaceful relations with your people.” It sounded like a slow speaking movie trailer voice.
“I can see your peaceful people eating our people outside.” Mel stuck out her hip and gave him her best unimpressed voice.
“Those are not your people. We’re here for those you call superheroes. They are the superior species. The rest are only good for food.”
“Thank you for making this an easy decision,” I said and threw a bolt of electricity at the thing. It absorbed the electricity and started to move faster.
I formed a sword and got ready to attack it when James arrived and started shooting it with water. Every jet of water shrunk the gelatinous mass until there was nothing left but the eyes.
“Aliens that are taken out by water. Now that’s just silly.” Jane sounded amused.
I walked over to one of the eyes and sliced it in half. It was hollow inside with complex looking electronic parts. I looked them over and saw that they were a combination speaker, microphone, camera, and control chip to move the eyes.
Before I could inspect it more Jane said, “We should really get out there and stop this.”
I looked out the hole in our wall and saw the destruction this was causing. The ships were still shooting out gelatinous creatures and the creatures were eating people and things but mostly causing property damage. “Plati-Power and Tele-Porter, get out there and splash those things into oblivion. Animator and I are going to go visit those ships.
When they’d left Mel asked, “How do you plan to get to the ships? Should I draw us some jet packs?”
“Nope. I’ve been working on something. Hold on.” I motioned to my back. Mel held on in a piggy back ride style. I concentrated my power on my hands and feet and pushed. We took off a lot faster than I’d expected.
“You can fly?” Mel sounded excited and amazed.
“I’ve been reading a lot of science fiction and I thought maybe I could use electromagnetism to fly and it worked, but the more I think about it the more I think I’m actually generating ion thrust.”
“I have no idea what that means but yay.”
We flew towards the first ship and it started firing gelatinous balls at us. I was more maneuverable than they could shoot and we made it to the ship without being slimed.
The ship felt like cheap plastic and I could hear the whirring of some sort of fan. It was probably just a really large drone.
I touched my helmet and changed what I could see. It wasn’t X-ray, but it let me see into the electric workings of the ship. I had been right, it was just a giant version of a quadcopter with a rotating gun that shot out gelatinous balls with eyes.
“Do you know of any way to trace these things? They are being remote controlled.” Mel asked.
“That’s radio or light waves, not electricity. I wonder why the Puppeteer would go to this much trouble.”
“And why hasn’t he demanded his pile of gold?”
We both shrugged and I started shooting powerful blasts of energy at the other ships. The first exploded and released all of it’s balls at once. I gave it more power and the next was disintegrated but we still had the problem with the gelatin.
Mel started sketching something and suddenly the sky above us was filled with clouds. The air smelled of dust and pepper. The wind started out feeling warm but quickly turned to biting cold. I could feel the energy in the air before I saw the first lightning. The thunder struck as soon as I saw it and the city trembled.
As the rain started to fall in large droplets, I saw Mel desperately trying to erase her paper. The sky was filled with light, water, and sound. Over the now deafening roar of wind and constant thrum of thunder Mel tried to say but only managed to mouth, “I can’t stop it.”
Read Chapter 8
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