PeeDee3, Intergalactic, Insectiod Assassin in:
Battle Royale with Cheese
season one, episode ten
T.A. Cuce’
&
RyFT Brand
This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to
persons living or dead are purely coincidental.
Copyright 2014
PeeDee3, Intergalactic, Insectiod Assassin in:
Battle Royal with Cheese
T.A. Cuce’
and
RyFT Brand
PeeDee3 is dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatsoever about that. Old PeeDee3 is dead as a cross-dimensional portal stabilizing ring bolt. But still I remember…
So it comes to this, a fight to the death with Spider Murphoid, the galaxy’s deadliest Arachnoid ultimate fighter. Hand, hand, hand, hand to hand, hand, hand, hand, hand, hand combat. He was pretty good with his feet too. I’m no slouch with the clawsticuffs, but Spider Murphoid was the best. He’s the guy that pulled the wings off Superfly Snorka. He’s the guy that killed Ralph ‘The Intestinal Parasite’ McNebula in three separate choke holds. He invented the Flying Toupee, the Wormhold, the Two-and-a-half Nelson, and several other deadly and illegal moves. He stopped mid fight with Studs Turtle and grafted a nose onto his reptilian face only to break it with his combination left/right jab-upper lower cut-double reverse haymaker. He killed the undefeated Bulk Brogan and then went to the funeral and put his widow in a headlock.
This guy was going to murder me.
I did the only thing I could think of. I leaned out of the ring, found a bookie in the first row, and placed a large bet on myself getting decapitated in the first round.
I glanced at the other spectators and saw the usual crowd; gangsters, roughnecks, trophy wives polishing their shiny gold husbands, a fat kid scarfing down popcorn from a bottomless inter-dimensional vortex container that opened directly into the All-Popcorn alternate universe, and an assortment of bloodthirsty ultimate fighting fans eager to take home an arm or severed head as a souvenir. Then my complex eyes locked onto the guy responsible for this whole dilemma, Don Corporealeone, the nastiest mobster in the galaxy, head of the New Milky Way crime syndicate, sitting comfortably in the front row, tail curled around his waist, smoking a cigar and purring as he stroked his own thick, black fur. I swore if I got out there alive, I’d personally skin him and then swing him by the tail in my office just to see if it was big enough to do so.
The bell rang for round one.
The alarm went off in my sleeping pod. The ship was entering low orbit over New Crimea and I was bringing in a bounty. Normally I didn’t bother with Loanshark debtors, but this guy had a high price on his head and he’d practically thrown himself at me. He hadn’t even put up much of a fight. Of course I bruised him up real good to make it look like I worked hard for my dough. These crime lords don’t part with their money easily and they like to think they got a good deal.
I docked in front of Don Corporealeone’s garish mansion. It had the usual gangster motif; gold plated diamonds, diamond covered rubies, platinum plated anti-spacecraft guns, Moonmink-fur covered gates ten meters high topped with laser-wire, and some of the meanest, ugliest guards I ever saw being guarded themselves by even bigger, meaner, uglier guards. Also some statues peeing into fountains. I strolled up to the gate with my bounty tied up and slung over my shoulder like a sack of crater fungus while my three other claws hovered around their weapons in case I had to blast my way out of any trouble. “I got a bounty for the Don,” I growled at the closest guard. He smirked through his tusks as he opened the gate and moved aside. I stepped on his tail as I pushed past him and headed up the oozeway towards the mansion—I like to show ‘em who’s boss. He stifled a squeal and got back in place and I thought I saw him smile at one of the other guards through my ocellus, the primitive eye in the back of my head. That should have been my first clue that something wasn’t right.
Inside, I was led to a room with a large desk and a tall, mammalian skin chair facing away from the door. I dropped my bounty on the desk and couldn’t help but notice a relieved smile lurking behind his fishy lips. That was two smiles too many, and should have been my second clue, but all three of my complex nerve plexuses were overly consumed with collecting bounty. The chair spun around and there was the Don himself, curled up and licking his paw. He looked up at me with those long, slit, pupils, and then nodded towards one of his henchmen. The goon reached towards the desk. Fast as a flash I had my Oric 3000 Whispersonic Bowlingball cannon pinning his head to the wall and my tuba-blaster aimed point blank at the Don.
“Relax, Mister...what was your name?” the Don purred, twitching his whiskers. The henchman slowly and deliberately reached for a pitcher, filled a glass of water, and poured it onto the fish’s open mouth.
“Let’s keep this professional—no names,” I shot back. I lowered the weapons but kept them in claw. “I got your man and you owe me forty-thousand sqwarbs.”
The Don hacked up a hairball. “You’ll get what’s coming to you, bug. It looks like you worked over Gills here pretty good.”
“I’m okay.” The fish coughed. He flapped around a little on the desktop, his fins still bound to his sides.
“Yeah, he put up quite a fight”.
“I’m sure he did.” The Don poured two foaming glasses of Ether Eel venom and dropped a maggot in mine. “Let’s drink to a successful capture.” He smiled through needle-sharp teeth.
I threw mine back and swallowed, clicking my mandibles in satisfaction; it was a good vintage. “Mazel tov. Now how’s about that money? Forty large.”
He chuckled and stroked his fur. “Ahh, Mr. PeeDee3, you’re worth far more than that.” His eyes narrowed like he was staring at a helpless songbird instead of a seven foot, seven inch exoskeletonized and heavily armed Kacekan. “Is that your ship out there? The little Legume class pursuit special? It looks like a modified Galaxy patrol vessel...and kind of stolen.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” The room spun and my cold blood began to heat up.
“Don’t you usually ride a Unicyclone?” He flashed a smile that suddenly descended into an angry sneer. “A very destructive Fastnet 2150 Maelstrom-Drive Unicyclone? Capable of destroying a very profitable bookmaking business and all of its incomes that just happened to be located in the Boatloadsofcrap Asteroid Mall?” He screamed, sending a wave of spit flying, his tail twitched aggressively.
Ah-ha. Despite the growing fog in my complex nerve plexuses, he’d started to make sense. That little incident with me, the borrowed Unicyclone, and the destruction of the asteroid mall. “Maybe,” my voice slurred. “So what, you’ve got insurance, right?”
“Yes!” he shouted, stood on the chair and started raking his claws across the desk. “A very profitable insurance company located in the same asteroid mall, which was a front for another even more profitable loansharking business!”
Frass. I knew if I was going to get out of there alive I’d have to make my move. With the room spinning and my nerve plexuses feeling like I’d been riding an inter-dimensional tilt, whirl, ‘n puke, I tried to focus as many retinas as I could manage on the Don. My body was going numb. I concentrated on my left upper arm and willed it with all my might to squeeze the trigger on the Tuba blaster. My antennae were pointing in opposite directions, and one was turning lazy circles. I stared hard at my left upper arm, which had gone blurry and unsteady, but instead of liquidating the don and his ugly chair, it just lowered slowly to
wards the floor as the room seemed to stretch out really long. I felt myself teeter backwards until I crashed to the floor in a tangled heap of weapons and crisscrossed appendages. I passed out to the sound of Gills’ gurgley laugh as he flopped around on the desk.
I woke up here.
“Round one!” the ref yelled as he ran like hell to get out of the ring. Spider Murphoid snatched him just as he got to the edge, broke him in two and tossed the halves out to the clamoring spectators. He turned and grinned at me. So this was Don Corporaleone’s game. Spider Murphoid was such a deadly fighter no one would dare get in the ring with him, and since his fights brought in more revenue then all the other ultimate fighter matches combined, his opponents, or rather victims, had to be shanghaied. The whole bounty had been a setup to get revenge on me for my small role in the