“Stay where you are, foul villain!”
A particularly heroic voice snapped Tomas out of his internal whinging. He looked up to see himself standing defiantly between him and a beautiful, dark haired woman, “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me! Every time I entrust my body to someone I wake up looking at myself. I was just getting used to that one too dammit!” he looked down to see what body he had awoken into this time and was surprised to see it hadn’t changed, “Huh?”
“You think to deceive my sweet Wanda’s eyes by copying my look do ye? I shan't allow it!” The man kept calling out awesome heroic stuff and distracting Tomas from his confusion.
“Oh Ricky!” the lady behind him swooned, “Fear not, for the power of true love would never allow me to be deceived by such a pathetic replica!”
“Pathetic?” Tomas asked.
“Silence Fiend! How dare you interrupt beautiful Wanda’s words!” Ricky bellowed.
"I was finished talking, my love. But thank you.” Said Wanda.
“I long for more of you with every fibre of my being.”
“Oh Ricky!” Wanda threw herself at him and they began kissing passionately.
Tomas waited for them to finish so he could ask for some information about his current situation. After some time he realised that they weren't stopping. He cleared his throat to get their attention but even then they didn't stop. Things were starting to get a bit intense between them so he felt it was time to take his leave.
He walked off in a random direction down a street, a few ducks followed him for a while but turned back after he went too far.
Tomas was in a strange land with strange people, he knew nothing and had no clothes. This was becoming his new normal. He was feeling a bit depressed. The sun shone down brightly and he was thankful for his sunglasses. They were the only thing that had gone right for him in recent memory.
A rock flew and smashed his sunglasses. If he hadn't been wearing them, it would have hit him right in the eye.
"Put some clothes on you weirdo!" The random man on the street who had thrown the rock shouted out.
Tomas sighed and took off his broken sunglasses. He threw them aside and sighed again. He began running towards the man.
“Whoa, hey there buddy. I don't want no trouble. You're the one at fault for running around naked.” The man said, backing away. Tomas kept running towards him so the man started to flee. With a whip of his arm, Tomas transformed and wrapped a tentacle around the man’s leg, tripping him. “Get away from me you freak!” He screamed, as tentacles wound around his neck and body. Tomas squeezed and the man lost the ability to make noise. Other passer-byes screamed and panicked as Tomas squeezed the life out of the man.
Tomas then stopped all of a sudden, and let go. The man gasped for air. Choking a random jerk was therapeutic, but not what Tomas needed right now he decided. Instead, for the second time that day, he just walked away. This time he didn't walk along the road or have any ducks following him. Instead he walked towards the ocean. He kept walking right into the ocean and transformed when his feet couldn't touch the bottom anymore. He walked and walked until he was too tired to walk anymore and just lay down on the ocean floor.
Not too long later, Destiny and Laser happened to swim by. “Thanks Deffy, you really know how to cheer me up.” Laser said cheerily and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
Destiny tried and failed to dodge the kiss, “No worries Lashy, that's what friends are for. Anytime dude.”
“Hey look at that weird octopus over there, doesn't it look super sad?”
“Uh… how can you tell if its sad or not? It looks just like an octopus to me.”
“Trust me, I know. It's a laser thing.”
“Detecting sadness is a laser power?”
“Yes, I'm surprised not many people know about it. Anyway you should totally go cheer it up. You're so good at making people happy!”
“Lashy, cmon, I’m not like a therapist or anything. The octopus will probably be weirded out if I approach it all of a sudden. It's got issues of its own, apparently.”
“Just go do it. For me, please. I gotta go check in with divination fish. So ill leave you to. Good luck!”
“Dude, you're just gonna leave me with the depressed octopus? Not cool.” Destiny complained as Laser fish swam off and blew him a bubble kiss. He smiled and shook his head, then cautiously approached the octopus. “Heyyyy dude, I know this is kinda out of the blue and all, but are you ok?”
“No.” the octopus spoke, surprising Destiny because octopi usually communicated through colours and ink.
“Oh for reals? That sucks dude. What's the matter?”
“My mum tried to eat me. Then this guy stole my body and he keeps smoking in it. Then i got stuck in uncomfortable space on a psychopath spaceship. Everyone tricked me into eating gorilla goop off of my mothers arm and made me go into a fart chamber. And then I woke up here and saw myself making out with a beautiful woman. And then,” the octopus broke into tears “, then this random butthead broke my sunglasses.” The octopus started wailing.
Destiny Fish felt overwhelmed. He had no idea what he had just gotten himself into. For starters, he knew so little about octopi that he didn't know if these were common problems among their young adults. He really didn't know how to help. He decided to take a gamble and focus on the sunglasses, “Dang man, sorry to hear about your sunnies. Maybe we can go get another pair. Is there like an octopus store around here where we can… you know.”
“No.”
“Oh… uh… well how about we get you another pair made then? I know this super smart Scientist chick who can make like, anything. She’d be able to knock you up a new pair for sures.”
The octopus seemed to perk up a bit at that, “really? You think she can make me a new pair of sunglasses?”
“I’m sure of it dude. Come on let's go and I'll introduce you. Her name’s Einstein. You’ll love her.”
“Oh, ok. Let's go. Thank you.” The octopus wiped its tears. A pointless thing to do as they were underwater, “I’m Tomas by the way.”
“Nice to meet you! I’m the Destiny Fish, hehehe seems like today we were destined to meet.”
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New Matriarch city was in ruins. Most of the buildings were either collapsed or on fire. Scattered remains of the N.W.A. defence force lay scattered and broken among the debris. Any citizen who wasn’t dead had either fled or lay hiding.
The matriarch walked out of the city undisturbed. Perhaps it was the space insanity, perhaps it was just her nature, whichever it was, she enjoyed that. “There's nothing quite like a clean slate to start over with” she mused out loud to herself.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
But something itched at her. The slate wasn't clean yet, not completely. If she truly wanted to rid herself of the past and move into the future, she was going to have to eat Tomas. It was an evil thing to do, she knew. But at least she knew now, not like before, that reduced the evilness of it surely. And besides, when she had vowed to be a better mother and stop eating her children, that had been to wally not Tomas. Wally wouldn't look down on her for going back on her word would he? She'd seen him smoking all the time even after promising Tomas that he'd stop doing it in his body.
That brought up a good point, exactly who was she supposed to eat in order to gain the power. Clean slates were nice and all, but they were nicer when you were an all power super wolf. Theoretically it should be the body with Tomas’ soul. She'd start by eating that one and if that didn't work she’d eat the other. Simple.
First thing first, she was going to have to find them. Time for a hunt!
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DNA Jellyfish’s Elite lined up in front of him. There was Stallion, the seahorse. A human sized seahorse with the limbs and claws of a velociraptor. Mr. Abs, the hand crab. A modified hand crab with fantastic muscle definition, even on its outer shell. The quintuplets, 5 conjoined swordfish. One made up each limb, ending in their sharpened nose, and the largest sister made up the main body, sword pointed skywards. And finally Greg, the hybrid. He was a giant, genetic mix of all the main species on Siren. Human, Scientist, and all the races of the notorious B.I.G.. Although he lacked the killing potential of the others he could take the most damage due to his 3 metre hulking body and his many redundant organs.
These four were DNA Jellyfish’s handcrafted assassins. Similar to Fred, DNA had a hard time controlling his anger. He often wanted somebody to die for slighting him and found that delegating the task made him happiest.
Today he wanted Einstein to die, “That moron Scientist stood me up! ME! I waited hours for her to arrive at the meeting and she made a fool of me! She has to die for this, Don’t you agree?”
The elite nodded their heads.
“Yes, and once you're done with her, bring her little green friend to me. His screams were most pleasant to me and I think they would be a most fitting eulogy for that miserable scum Einstein.”
Mr. Abs spoke up, “DNA sir, I don't know if you've noticed or not but you've gone full ‘Evil Monologue Villain’ over this. Usually, I’m not one for superstition, but I think it bears pointing out that if you're going to speak like that, it's almost guaranteed, cosmically speaking, that we will fail in our mission due to some kind of heroic intervention.” unfortunately as DNA had not modified Mr. Abs to speak like he had the hand crab on Fred’s beach, his words came out as bubbles and clapping.
“Yes! That's the excitement i like to see Mr. Abs!” DNA cheered.
“Alas, ‘tis the fate of one such as I to endure such an end. My only hope is that I will be remembered after I'm gone for my rationality. My one regret I will remove now. Please hear me and understand: Stallion, I love you, I have always loved you and always will love you. You've made my time in this world a joy. I am forever yours.”
“Yeah murder!!!” Greg shouted, getting excited at Mr. Abs passionate bubbling.
Cling cling cling was the sound of the quintuplets' swords clapping.
A single tear fell from Stallion’s eye and drifted into the ocean, “And I, yours” it whinnied.
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Fred was taking a rage nap on the beach after days of continuous creation. Einstein was now fixing up some of the parts Fred had made while he was merely ‘peeved’ rather than ‘furious’. She had been so genuinely amazed at his raw inventive talent that she had forgotten all about her meeting with DNA.
“Hand me the coconut clamp if you please.” she asked politely.
“Here, miss pretty lady,” the hand crab said, passing it over.
“Well, thank you and thank you. You know, I just realised I've been so rude. I don't even know your name.”
“Me have no name. Just ‘hand crab’ or ‘you’.”
“Oh, that won't do. How about we give you a name. Hmmm, let's see… How about ‘HandJob’? Because you have hands and you help me with jobs!”
“Miss Einstein, that name isn't appropriate. One of my babies, Wally, once explained to me what that means on his planet. It means…” S.S. Happiness Tugboat came to the crabs rescue with a graphic description. Einstein blushed a deep purple.
“Me likes name ‘Sonia’ . Can yous call me that?” the hand crab, Sonia, spoke over Tugboat.
“Yes, that sounds like a lovely name Sonia.” Said Einstein, still blushing.
“And of course, Wally being the poet that he is, knew dozens of words that mean the same thing. I was actually trepidatious about adding tugboat to my own name for the same reason. By the way, Something is approaching from the water my darlings.” Tugboat warned
Einstein and Sonia looked over to see what it was talking about. A fin, sticking out from the water ominously approached their location. Einstein's dogg growled. It grew closer and closer, then leapt out of the water.
“Dogalogue!” Destiny Fish whooped as he swam through the air and began circling around the dogg, trying to slap its butt with his tail. It tried its best to catch him and lick him. They laughed and cheered until Dogalogue got dizzy and fell down. “Hahaha, who's a good boy?!” destiny gave him a pat before leaving him and swimming over to the group.
Tomas emerged from the water too now and made his way up the beach in octopus form.
“Destiny Fish! What a pleasant surprise.” greeted Einstein happily. Destiny was one of the few fish that she got along with well and had convinced to allow free passage to and from Siren.
“Sup, Einstein! How’re ya doing?” He greeted back. “Dudes.” he said, nodding a greeting to Sonia and Tugboat as well.
“I’m great, thanks. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I came to introduce you to my buddy Tomas,” Destiny gestured to Tomas, “I met him earlier today and we've been chatting a bit. Turns out he's new on Siren and having a bad time, lost his favourite pair of sunglasses.”
“Tomas?!” Tugboat called out “Is that you? I hardly recognised you without your favourite pair of sunnies! You poor dear, you must be devastated!”
“Um, hello. Sorry, do we know each other?” Tomas asked.
Explanations went around. Tomas learned about Tugboat and the others heard Tomas’ story from when he arrived on Siren.
“Wanda and Ricky? I actually know them. He was a duck farmer right? She’s the leader of the WU-TANG. She was actually down on Earth back when you got abducted. Sorry about that by the way. I can totally make you some new Sunglasses to make up for it.” Einstein apologised.
“Wait, she is Wanda? As in Madame Wanda? Who is he then? Why does he have the exact same body as me?” Tomas asked.
“More importantly than that, my sweet pea. You Say the man who broke your precious sunglasses is still alive and in this WU-TANG faction’s territory?” Tugboat fumed.
“Um, yeah, why?”
“Never you mind, my pumpkin. Would someone be so kind as to show me the way to WU-TANG territory?”
“Me dude, I’ll show you,” said Destiny Fish who was super keen to get out of there now that Tomas seemed less depressed. He planned to point the meat ball in the right direction and then bail. “Lets go now?”
“Yes please. Tomas, my heart, I’ll leave you here with little Fred, he’s napping by the trees over there. Don’t you worry bout a thing. Mr. Destiny, If you’d be so kind.”
“Follow me hehehe.”
Fred chose that moment as they were leaving to wake up and sit up. Upon seeing a Fish on his beach he full panicked and screamed an ear piercing high scream. He ran towards his tropical island battle mech.
“We’d best leave quickly Mr. Destiny. It’s nothing personal against you. My Fred is ichthyophobic you see.”
“Poor dude. Let’s bounce,” said destiny zipping away with Tugboat rolling after him.
They were out of sight by the time the coconut milk reactor was online.