🦾Edison🦾

Psyching himself up as he went, Edison rushed to his room, pulled off his gaming arms and replaced them with his fighting arms. He then marched over to the exit ramp of the flying saucer and looked down at the town below. The epic music playlist he had tasked the computer with was now ready so he switched it on, spread his arms out wide and leapt off the ramp. During his descent, he flew dangerously close to several drones that were ascending. He spotted that one carrying Fred up.

He only had a brief moment to ponder how weird it was that the drones picked Fred up despite a) earlier saying it was impossible due to the damage he had received, and b) not being ordered to. Edison never got to finish that thought however as he reached the ground moments later.

A large crash into the middle of the street further shattered the already ruined asphalt and signalled Edison’s rival. He made sure he landed in an awesome, super-hero crouch just as the music peaked. He felt so rad.

The remaining Earthlings on the street had dwindled down to just a few groups, here and there, still fighting. Tear gas had mostly persuaded the crowd to calm down.

Nodding to himself, Edison turned the volume up on his voice box and shouted, “EINSTEIN! WHERE ARE YOU?” Heads turned his way but none of them were Einstein’s. He checked his map and saw that Einstein’s last known location was nearby. Grabbing a passing Earthling and picking them up by the shirt, he asked, “You there, Earthling! Do you know where Einstein is?” The Earthling shook his head, so Edison flung him aside. “Hmmm. EINSTEIN!” He strode onwards, continuing his search.

Approaching a bus, Edison paused to inspect a large earthling-shaped indent on its side. That's a cool design, he was thinking when a noise approaching from behind drew his attention. He looked back and raised his arms just in time as a truck ploughed him into the bus.

The truck backed up slowly and Edison fell to the ground. His fighting arms had protected him but had also fallen off in the process.

The truck driver, a crazed earthling woman, stuck her head out of the window and shouted at a gathered group of cultists, “Grab that thing and chuck it in the back quickly! We’re getting out of here!”

The cultists did as ordered, Edison kicked and screamed as they grabbed him and threw him into the back of the truck. They then loaded themselves up into the damaged buses and fled Chook's Creek.

In the sky above, the Flying saucer began to make a loud "powering up" sound and soon after shot away from Chook’s Creek, over the horizon.

It was almost happy hour at the Chook’s Creek pub. The police officers and members of the local cricket team picked themselves up and dusted themselves off. Satisfied that the trouble was over, they all trudged towards the pub together, laughing as they walked. All in all, it was a pretty eventful day in Chook’s Creek.

👽Fred👽

A flying drone flew down and grabbed his battlesuit with its large three-pronged claw, “Edison you marvellous idiot!” Fred exclaimed, “Thank science! You didn’t abandon us!” Tears of joy streamed down his face.

His suit rocked gently as it was lifted off the ground. Fred watched through the little window as he and the drone drew nearer to the flying saucer. The drone carried him up through a hole in the bottom of the ship and whisked him through the interior tunnels too fast for him to keep track before placing him down on the floor and flying off.

Fred waited in silence for Edison to come get him out of his battle suit and into the med-pool. Minutes passed, but Edison never came. The machines in the med-pool room had a distinct hum to them, listening carefully, he did not hear that hum now. Instead, all he heard was the buzz of drones flying about, “Hello,” he called out, getting no answer, “Edison!? I need treatment!” Again his words were met only by the buzzing of drones.

Panic set in as Fred tried unsuccessfully to raise his shattered arms to open the cockpit. He heard the sound of more drones flying in and out of the room. Some stayed and hovered about, “ANYONE HELP ME!” he screamed. No reply.

He was trapped, broken, and alone.

It was getting harder to breathe. He didn’t know if this was because his suit’s ventilator was busted or if he was just having a claustrophobic panic attack. He couldn’t reach up to open the sealed cockpit either way. The edges of his vision grew blurry and dark. He felt himself start to drift off but was snapped back every time his eyes fluttered shut by the pain waking him back up again. He almost missed it when footsteps passed nearby.

"Hey! Get your hand out of my pants!" A man’s voice called out.

🐙Tomas🐙

Tomas roused from darkness for the second time in recent memory and regretted it even more than the first. He hurt everywhere. Lightning burns joined the collection of cuts and bruises covering his body.

He lay, face down, on a solid, cool surface. It smelled like antiseptic. Perhaps I’m in a hospital? He thought. The only sounds were that of several people snoring loudly and a familiar buzzing from above.

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Prying his eyes open, he saw he was laying on a pure white floor. He raised his head and wiped away the drool from his mouth with a muscular arm that didn’t belong to him. He experienced a moment of startled confusion until his sluggish memories caught up and reminded him why the strange arm was to be expected.

With a groan, he pushed himself up off the floor, or rather, he peeled himself up off of it. There was a lot of dried blood sticking him to the floor. He got up and sat with a thud. The bright lights of the room pierced his skull. Blocking the light from his eyes with his huge arm, he squinted up and saw the source of the buzzing sound.

He was startled by four of the little flying saucers that had zapped him unconscious, hovering back and forth above him. Lowering his gaze, he saw that he was not in a hospital; he was in a jail cell.

The cell was oval-shaped, about six by four metres at its widest and narrowest points. There were no walls, instead, it was surrounded entirely by white bars with no discernable way in or out. Tomas felt exposed (more than just being naked), by the fact that someone could walk around the outside of his cell and look in at him from any direction. Adding to this feeling of exposure, was that the cell was completely empty except for Tomas and the flying saucers.

Through the bars, he saw the room his cell was in was a large white dome. Three more cells like his were spaced evenly around the circumference of the room, a few metres apart. They were all occupied, and loud snoring came from each. Tomas stood up and moved closer to see who was in the other cells.

First, he approached the cell to his right. His stomach dropped, it was the Matriarch. She slept on her back with several flying saucers hovering above her in her cell too. Tomas would best describe her snoring as dangerous, yet elegant.

He ducked his head and tried to make himself look small as he tiptoed away from her cell to the other side.

The cell to his left held what looked to be a broken white robot sprawled out on its back, it was also snoring. There weren’t any flying saucers in its cell, “Lucky robot,” Tomas murmured, turning back to eye the ones in his cell warily. Tomas would describe the robot’s snores as angry.

He looked over at the last cell, on the opposite side of the room from his. It held his doppelganger and twice as many flying saucers as his and the Matriarch’s cells combined. Despite the buzzing from so many saucers, he heard his body’s snores loud and clear across the room. The snoring was straight-up obscene, “I do not snore like that!” pouted Tomas.

Tomas didn't want to be stuck in a jail cell next to his mother when she woke up. The bars would do little to stop her. Also, he had unfinished business with his Wanda and the body mix-up to take care of. So, the choice of what to do next was simple: it was time to escape!

He reached out and touched a bar of his cell, then pulled his hand back quickly, looking back at the saucers. He was worried they’d zap him for trying to escape. No attacks came, they made no irregular movement, and the jail bars weren’t electrified; so far, so good. Keeping cautious, he stuck a hand through the bars, grabbed a hold of one and gave it a shake. Both the bars and the saucers stayed where they were. Satisfied that he wasn’t likely to be zapped mid-escape, he set to it.

“Can I even transform in this body?” Tomas activated his power and was pleased to see that he could still change into his were-octopus form. He approached the bars and paused. Octopi are famous for being able to squeeze through small gaps. Indeed, during his training, Tomas had squeezed through many small gaps, just to see that he could. However, his new body was a lot larger than his previous one which also applied to his octopus form. Still, Tomas believed in the power of the octopus and went about escaping.

He slipped all of his tentacles between one gap in the bars. He stretched and reached out, grabbing the bars of the cell to the left of his, using it to pull himself through. He squeezed and compressed his body through the tiny gap in the bars. After several minutes of struggling, he popped out the other side, “Heck yeah! OCTOPUS!” He cheered. Octopus power really shone today; he was so proud.

Sneaking around the outside of the cells in order to keep as far away from the one containing the Matriarch as possible, he made his way over to the one containing his original body. It was laying, head against the bars, neck bent uncomfortably with its mouth wide open. His stump wrist was stretched above his head through the bars, and the other hand was down his pants having a scratch.

"Hey!" Tomas shouted, "Get your hand out of my pants!"

His body responded by snorting and smacking its lips twice before resuming its snores.

Tomas was about to reach a tentacle in and smack him when a voice came from behind.

“Einstein? Edison? Is anyone there?”

Tomas spun around and leapt up backwards like a startled cat into the bars of the cell he was standing by. His eyes darted around the room, looking for the source of the voice. The broken robot in the cell nearby spoke up again, “I can't move. Please, anyone, answer me.”

“Hello?” Tomas called out.

“Who’s that? I need help. It’s getting hard to breathe. Please, I don’t want to die,” the robot said.

“Uh.. ok. I’m Tomas. What do you need?” Tomas asked. He wasn’t the kind of man who left a desperate robot in trouble!

“Tomas? Please come manually open up my suit. The computer is busted.”

Oh, It’s not a robot; it’s a suit! Tomas wondered who was inside as he approached the bars, “Ok hold on, it’ll take a few minutes to get there,” he told the robot and then squeezed his way into the cell. Upon closer inspection, the suit was in a worse condition than he originally thought. There were claw marks, burns, and shattered pieces all over it, “I’m here. What do I do now?”

“There should be an aquamarine button under a panel on the chest. Press it and type the code ‘√𖢘𖢐𖢤’ into the display that opens up.”

“Looks like the panel fell off because I can see the button already. ‘√𖢘𖢐𖢤’ was it? Easy-peasy, done,” Tomas pressed the button, typed the code and stood back as the chest of the robot split open.

Inside its chest, sitting on a small pilot chair, was a little green man, no taller than a toddler. He gasped in deep breaths of fresh air. He had yellow bruises all over and he leaked orange blood from his nose and eyes. He looked up at Tomas, “Oh, it’s you. You’ve rescued me twice now! Thank you, I owe you my life. My name is Fred.”