Post by Fluff Hopper on Jun 4, 2017 2:30:51 GMT
The battered and beaten space pod shot down to Shikk, a fiery meteor flickering orange against the bright blue sky. Fluff huffed in and out of a Standard-Issue Vomit Rocket Bag, his big brown eyes rolling. He hated flying. He hated landing, too.
He hated big, splashy, fireball landings most of all.
His pod smacked into the side of a gnarled, moss-covered mountain. An explosion of rock and dust heaved up, blotting out the sun for miles. Half the big old mountaintop was pulverized, sliding down the slope in a river of pulverized stone, tearing up shrubs and other vegetation until it was a great wave of debris. The wave crashed on the valley floor, tumbling through a mass of stalky shrubs that passed for a forest on Planet Shikk.
Fluff groaned, one leg flopping away from the protective ball he’d made of himself. He pulled his ears out of his eyes and glanced around dizzily. He’d hit a mountain.
Tossing the filled SIVRB aside, he opened up his group comm and groaned, “Snailsy… come dig me out.” It was all he could do before blacking out.
“Wait til’ tomorrow and you’ll have a Saiyan boot up your… your whatever,” The Heran woman said, looking up distastefully at the big Ikondan.
The pink goopy alien glared back. “The slaves are too tired to cut new ore. They need a day to rest. You keep pushing quota up like this, and you’re going to have to run them all through the medibath after each shift.”
“No I won’t,” The Heran said, folding her arms. “The slaves can work until they die for all I care.”
“What?!” The Ikondan’s eyes widened. “I heard Prosit the Pusher was colder than an Arcosian winter, but I didn’t know she was stupid, too. Think slaves just fall from the sky?”
A boom rattled the small command center. Another unlucky slave hit a gas deposit, likely. It’d been happening more and more since Prosit took over and decided the subterranean scans took too long. The Empire was at war, its biggest one yet, and didn’t have time for niceties. That’s what she thought, anyway.
Besald had other ideas, but he wasn’t in charge anymore. Some bureaucrat from House Coliflo had seen to that. Tempo increase, they’d called it.
Prosit smirked. “We’re at war, Besald. There will be plenty more slaves. And the androids can patch the shifts and fill in the gaps in between shipments. That’s the whole beauty of the Empire. It feeds itself.”
Besald grunted, taking his North City Narwhals baseball cap from the door. He’d never been to Earth and never watched baseball either, but he liked the look of these Narwhals. Fierce and deadly fighters, they must be, to have such horns. Fierce, like him.
“You want to run the whole operation into the ground?” Besald asked, stuffing his sloppy head in the cap. “Fine. But when fortunes turn sour, as they do in war, and the flow of new slaves drop to a trickle, it’ll be on your head. Not mine.” Prosit might be good at upping the numbers, but she’d never been in war like Besald had. He’d been in the auxiliary, on Arcose and later, on Earth. In war, nothing was a sure bet.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Prosit asked, folding her arms. “I’m not seeing you sending any fresh work orders.”
“I’m going to go check on that boom,” Besald said. “Scrape up whatever’s left of the slaves that made it. Patch whatever holes were made. We’ve already had one prison break on our hands. We don’t need another.”
“I’ll send the orders myself, then,” Prosit said hotly.
“You do that,” Besald agreed, walking out the door.
Fluff woke up to someone knocking on his space pod. He lifted one eye, peering out the shallow red bulb. It was a mean-looking Ikondan his face shadowed by a baseball cap. Fluff cracked the door of his pod open with a hiss of steam.
“Narwhals blow. Whaddya want? I’m tryin to blackout here,” Fluff huffed.
Pudgy, slimy fingers scraped at the lip of the door. Fluff yawned and scratched his cottontail, burping his puke-breath out the opened sliver at the oozy Ikondan before closing the hatch back up.
“You crashed into my mountain, and made a landslide on my transport rail! What unit are you in? I’ll have you reported to Cacumber Capital!” The Ikondan pounded his fist hard into the pod, making a dent.
Fluff opened up the hatch. “I’m not in a unit, dopey. I’m a Stargoon. Now go away,” He closed the hatch.
The Ikondan laughed. “Stargoon? You? You’re a tattered up furball!”
Fluff opened up the hatch, tossing out the filled SIVRB, which landed at the Ikondan’s feet with a splat. The bag had the crossed star of the Stargoons on it glossy exterior. The hatch closed.
The Ikondan squinted down at the bag with a low growl of anger. But now there was some doubt in his voice. “No one’s seen or heard from a Stargoon in years. Word is, they all got zapped on some mission in deep space.”
Fluff sighed sadly, his tied ears falling behind his head. If word had spread about the Stargoons getting zapped already, that must mean that their contract with Lord Sebsero had been voided. Even their contract insurance, in case of a failure. Nobody paid corpses. All that Zeni. Poof.
He looked down at himself. His armor had gotten blasted to bits on Eros. All that was left was his scuffed up and torn underarmor. He clicked a few buttons on his pod. The Blue Pirate Coin tumbled out of its slot, fanning him with azure light. He was sparkling like an exploding firecracker.
“What’s that? What are you doing in there?” The Ikondan demanded.
Fluff kicked the door open. The hatch blew off, knocking the Ikondan ten meters back. He stepped out, resplendent in shiny new battle armor. A field of crossed stars gleamed proudly on the right of his armor, and a blue patch was set upon one winged pauldron.
“Whoa, whoa!” The Ikondan gasped, jumping to his feet. “You really are a Stargoon!”
Fluff put his fists on his hips, grinning his bucktoothed grin. “That’s right.”
“B-but, you’re all supposed to be dead!”
Fluff’s grin faltered. “The rest of the gang didn’t make it. I guess I’m the last of them.” He twirled into a quick pose, legs tilted, one knee bent low, arms crossed above his head. “Blue Pulsar, hiyyah! The Blue Stargoon doesn’t back down!”
Ikondan clapped enthusiastically. “W-wow. What til everybody gets a load of this! A Stargoon on Shikk. What’s your name, Mister Blue Stargoon, sir?”
Fluff jabbed a thumb into his breastplate with a pleased wink. “Fluff. How bout you, big fella?”
“I’m Besald.”
“Know where I can make an interplanetary call around here, Besald? My scouter busted, and the pod’s long-range is dead.”
Besald thought for a moment. His command center had an interstellar antenna, of course. But if he brought Fluff back to the command center, there’d be trouble with Prosit. “I know a little bar on the beach outside of Turnip Town,” Besald said. “You can probably use the phone there.”
Fluff followed Besald to Turnip Town. It was slow going, since Fluff (whose ears were too tired to fly) had to make do with leaping and lopping from hill to hill. He’d been feeling pretty ragged from his travel, so his hops were half-hearted. By the time they got to a quaint little tavern right on the beach, Fluff was panting with effort and damp with sweat.
“Sure you’re a Stargoon?” Besald asked. “You look pretty weak.”
“Bite me,” Fluff breathed, giving the finger. “You try going fifty thousand lightyears without any nutri-gas and lemme know how you feel.”
Besald shrugged. “Just don’t go all fainty in there. The owner, well, he doesn’t like weaklings.”
Fluff followed Besald inside.
“Well, well. Look what the cat dragged in,” Someone sneered. The raspy voice came from a Saiyan kid behind the bar. Was this the owner? There were scars on his face.
Fluff stepped around Besald to get a better look.
“The old failure of a taskmaster and oh look, a disgusting creature from Planet Dirt,” The kid smirked.
Fluff gave winning smile, waggling his ears hello. He’d been called worse plenty of times.
“What are you doing bringing that into my pub, you blood booger? I told you I don’t like Dirtians.”
“W-were just here to make a phone call, Lord.” Besald stammered nervously.
Dark eyes turned to Fluff. Sizing him up. Fluff tensed his toes, ready to sprint. He didn’t like those eyes. They weren't the eyes a kid should have. “The symbol on your armor. Are you really a Stargoon?”
Fluff bobbed his head. “Yep, Lord, you betcha. Fluff Hopper, I’m the Blu-“
“Okay,” The kid interrupted. “Sure. Whatever. Go ahead and make your call, Stargoon. Then get out.” The young Saiyan turned, moving down the bar to converse with other patrons.
“That went better than I thought,” Besald whispered. They went into a small back office behind the bar, where a big handphone, antenna spike, and receiver dish sat on a rickety wicker desk.
Fluff picked up the handphone and punched in some relay codes, drooping one ear upside down and shouldering it. Besald politely waited outside.
“Yealo, this is Twobit, what’s happening?” A voice crackled.
“Twobit!” Fluff cheered. “It’s Fluff!”
“Who?” Twobit asked, bewildered.
Fluff’s ears fell. “Fluff Hopper?”
“What?”
He sighed. “The Blue Stargoon.”
“Oh. Oh yeah, the fast Earthling kid. Look, I’m pretty busy cosmic entity guy, you know, I can’t be expected to remember every-“
“Everybody else got zapped on Eros but me,” Fluff said quietly.
“Yeah, so I’ve heard. Very sad. I warned you guys, didn’t I? I said to your captain, I said, it’s no good to travel all that way to a very bad place for some nutjob Arcosian. And how’d it turn out? No good, am I right?”
Twobit, their technological benefactor and self-styled God of Pirates, had actually said the opposite. He was a Demon of the highest order (or so he claimed), and also a very greedy one. He’d never warned the Stargoons against taking any job. If anything, he’d always complain that they weren’t working more.
Fluff didn’t try to argue, though. Arguing with Twobit was like arguing with a katchin wall. “I’m going to need a new scouter. Old one is busted on Eros. My pod’s falling apart, too. Needs fixing. And we’re going to need to make all new Stargoons.”
“You got it, you got it,” Twobit quickly agreed. “I’ll help you get back on your feet, little buddy. And I’ll sling over some new Pirate Coins.”
“Hey, Twobit?”
“Yeah?”
“Why do you help us? I mean, why do you make Stargoons and give us our tech? You don’t need any money.”
“Bragging rights,” Twobit said instantly.
“Bragging rights?”
“Yeah, bragging rights that I can use against my many, many enemies in the Universe. All the haters and losers. See, I play cards with these guys from the other galaxies. And they’ll be like ‘Oh, you know Bozo So-and-So the Destroyer? I did that, I got him started out.’ And I’ll be like ‘Oh yeah? That’s nice. I got the most fabulous bunch of pirates you’ve ever seen. With the most fabulous armor. And the most fabulous poses. I mean, these poses will really knock your socks off! The best, okay? Totally glamorous. Nobody does pirates better than me.’ And then they shut up about Bozo So-and-So, and I can tell, they get so mad.” Twobit chuckled.
Fluff laughed with him, swelling with pride. “You really think so? That we’re the best?”
“I know so, Fluffy Boy. You know what else I say to them? I say, I got this guy Fluff and he’s faster than a banana on a buttered floor, okay?”
Fluff beamed. Even though he knew that Twobit was lying about it, because he hadn’t remembered Fluff at all when he first answered the call, it was a lie that felt really good to hear. “Well, Twobit. Ya know I won’t let you down!”
“I know,” Twobit said warmly. “Anyways, I gotta go do some other business. But uh, I’ll send you the Pirate Coins, okay? They’ll be ready whenever you find someone that can withstand saying the words.”
“Okay,” Fluff agreed. “Thanks a zillion.”
“No problem, no problem. See you later, Blue.” There was a click.
When Fluff walked out of the bar with Besald and started down the pathway through the dunes, it felt like he was walking on clouds instead of sand. Just getting that pep talk from Twobit had doubled his energy. And now that he had the support, he could reform the Stargoons, and they could get back to being the very best pirate mercenary squad in the Universe. The most fabulous! The most –
An energy blast sliced through the air. Fluff leapt away, but Besald wasn’t quick enough. The white wave of power caught him straight on, tearing the upper half of his body off and blowing it to little smoking bits.
“Yikes!” Fluff yelled, backpedaling as more balls of energy erupted in front of him, trying to catch him. He dodged the explosions, barely.
Sand floated through the air like a golden haze. The silhouette of a woman walked through it. Fluff’s eyes widened. A Heran woman.
“I thought I recognized you,” Prosit the Pusher said. Back when Fluff had known her, she was Prosit the Pitiless, one of the most vicious cutthroat pirates in the galaxy. “I thought the Stargoons were dead.”
“You got a nice energy blast, lady,” Fluff said cheekily. “Too bad it won’t do you any good against the Blue Pulsar!”
Another wave raced towards him, but Fluff was ready to dance this time. The blast closed in, nearer and nearer until it lit up his body. Fluff could see Prosit smirking as it reached deadly proximity. Then the energy wave sailed harmlessly through his body. The smirk vanished. Prosit’s jaw dropped. “What?! No one is that fast!”
She was still gawking at his speed shadow when Fluff kicked her hard in the keister. So hard that she flew up into the air. And up into space.
“Get fluffed!” Fluff yelled.
“I’ll kill you!” Her scream trailed off, her body became a dot in the sky, then a wink of light. Then it was gone.
Fluff jumped up and dusted his feet together, smoothing his ears. “Another one busted!” He almost reached out to high five Snailsy, then remembered the big goof wasn’t there. None of them were. The Stargoons were gone. He was the only left.
And it was up to Fluff to change all that.
He hated big, splashy, fireball landings most of all.
His pod smacked into the side of a gnarled, moss-covered mountain. An explosion of rock and dust heaved up, blotting out the sun for miles. Half the big old mountaintop was pulverized, sliding down the slope in a river of pulverized stone, tearing up shrubs and other vegetation until it was a great wave of debris. The wave crashed on the valley floor, tumbling through a mass of stalky shrubs that passed for a forest on Planet Shikk.
Fluff groaned, one leg flopping away from the protective ball he’d made of himself. He pulled his ears out of his eyes and glanced around dizzily. He’d hit a mountain.
Tossing the filled SIVRB aside, he opened up his group comm and groaned, “Snailsy… come dig me out.” It was all he could do before blacking out.
👺
“Wait til’ tomorrow and you’ll have a Saiyan boot up your… your whatever,” The Heran woman said, looking up distastefully at the big Ikondan.
The pink goopy alien glared back. “The slaves are too tired to cut new ore. They need a day to rest. You keep pushing quota up like this, and you’re going to have to run them all through the medibath after each shift.”
“No I won’t,” The Heran said, folding her arms. “The slaves can work until they die for all I care.”
“What?!” The Ikondan’s eyes widened. “I heard Prosit the Pusher was colder than an Arcosian winter, but I didn’t know she was stupid, too. Think slaves just fall from the sky?”
A boom rattled the small command center. Another unlucky slave hit a gas deposit, likely. It’d been happening more and more since Prosit took over and decided the subterranean scans took too long. The Empire was at war, its biggest one yet, and didn’t have time for niceties. That’s what she thought, anyway.
Besald had other ideas, but he wasn’t in charge anymore. Some bureaucrat from House Coliflo had seen to that. Tempo increase, they’d called it.
Prosit smirked. “We’re at war, Besald. There will be plenty more slaves. And the androids can patch the shifts and fill in the gaps in between shipments. That’s the whole beauty of the Empire. It feeds itself.”
Besald grunted, taking his North City Narwhals baseball cap from the door. He’d never been to Earth and never watched baseball either, but he liked the look of these Narwhals. Fierce and deadly fighters, they must be, to have such horns. Fierce, like him.
“You want to run the whole operation into the ground?” Besald asked, stuffing his sloppy head in the cap. “Fine. But when fortunes turn sour, as they do in war, and the flow of new slaves drop to a trickle, it’ll be on your head. Not mine.” Prosit might be good at upping the numbers, but she’d never been in war like Besald had. He’d been in the auxiliary, on Arcose and later, on Earth. In war, nothing was a sure bet.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Prosit asked, folding her arms. “I’m not seeing you sending any fresh work orders.”
“I’m going to go check on that boom,” Besald said. “Scrape up whatever’s left of the slaves that made it. Patch whatever holes were made. We’ve already had one prison break on our hands. We don’t need another.”
“I’ll send the orders myself, then,” Prosit said hotly.
“You do that,” Besald agreed, walking out the door.
👺
“Narwhals blow. Whaddya want? I’m tryin to blackout here,” Fluff huffed.
Pudgy, slimy fingers scraped at the lip of the door. Fluff yawned and scratched his cottontail, burping his puke-breath out the opened sliver at the oozy Ikondan before closing the hatch back up.
“You crashed into my mountain, and made a landslide on my transport rail! What unit are you in? I’ll have you reported to Cacumber Capital!” The Ikondan pounded his fist hard into the pod, making a dent.
Fluff opened up the hatch. “I’m not in a unit, dopey. I’m a Stargoon. Now go away,” He closed the hatch.
The Ikondan laughed. “Stargoon? You? You’re a tattered up furball!”
Fluff opened up the hatch, tossing out the filled SIVRB, which landed at the Ikondan’s feet with a splat. The bag had the crossed star of the Stargoons on it glossy exterior. The hatch closed.
The Ikondan squinted down at the bag with a low growl of anger. But now there was some doubt in his voice. “No one’s seen or heard from a Stargoon in years. Word is, they all got zapped on some mission in deep space.”
Fluff sighed sadly, his tied ears falling behind his head. If word had spread about the Stargoons getting zapped already, that must mean that their contract with Lord Sebsero had been voided. Even their contract insurance, in case of a failure. Nobody paid corpses. All that Zeni. Poof.
He looked down at himself. His armor had gotten blasted to bits on Eros. All that was left was his scuffed up and torn underarmor. He clicked a few buttons on his pod. The Blue Pirate Coin tumbled out of its slot, fanning him with azure light. He was sparkling like an exploding firecracker.
“What’s that? What are you doing in there?” The Ikondan demanded.
Fluff kicked the door open. The hatch blew off, knocking the Ikondan ten meters back. He stepped out, resplendent in shiny new battle armor. A field of crossed stars gleamed proudly on the right of his armor, and a blue patch was set upon one winged pauldron.
“Whoa, whoa!” The Ikondan gasped, jumping to his feet. “You really are a Stargoon!”
Fluff put his fists on his hips, grinning his bucktoothed grin. “That’s right.”
“B-but, you’re all supposed to be dead!”
Fluff’s grin faltered. “The rest of the gang didn’t make it. I guess I’m the last of them.” He twirled into a quick pose, legs tilted, one knee bent low, arms crossed above his head. “Blue Pulsar, hiyyah! The Blue Stargoon doesn’t back down!”
Ikondan clapped enthusiastically. “W-wow. What til everybody gets a load of this! A Stargoon on Shikk. What’s your name, Mister Blue Stargoon, sir?”
Fluff jabbed a thumb into his breastplate with a pleased wink. “Fluff. How bout you, big fella?”
“I’m Besald.”
“Know where I can make an interplanetary call around here, Besald? My scouter busted, and the pod’s long-range is dead.”
Besald thought for a moment. His command center had an interstellar antenna, of course. But if he brought Fluff back to the command center, there’d be trouble with Prosit. “I know a little bar on the beach outside of Turnip Town,” Besald said. “You can probably use the phone there.”
👺
Fluff followed Besald to Turnip Town. It was slow going, since Fluff (whose ears were too tired to fly) had to make do with leaping and lopping from hill to hill. He’d been feeling pretty ragged from his travel, so his hops were half-hearted. By the time they got to a quaint little tavern right on the beach, Fluff was panting with effort and damp with sweat.
“Sure you’re a Stargoon?” Besald asked. “You look pretty weak.”
“Bite me,” Fluff breathed, giving the finger. “You try going fifty thousand lightyears without any nutri-gas and lemme know how you feel.”
Besald shrugged. “Just don’t go all fainty in there. The owner, well, he doesn’t like weaklings.”
Fluff followed Besald inside.
“Well, well. Look what the cat dragged in,” Someone sneered. The raspy voice came from a Saiyan kid behind the bar. Was this the owner? There were scars on his face.
Fluff stepped around Besald to get a better look.
“The old failure of a taskmaster and oh look, a disgusting creature from Planet Dirt,” The kid smirked.
Fluff gave winning smile, waggling his ears hello. He’d been called worse plenty of times.
“What are you doing bringing that into my pub, you blood booger? I told you I don’t like Dirtians.”
“W-were just here to make a phone call, Lord.” Besald stammered nervously.
Dark eyes turned to Fluff. Sizing him up. Fluff tensed his toes, ready to sprint. He didn’t like those eyes. They weren't the eyes a kid should have. “The symbol on your armor. Are you really a Stargoon?”
Fluff bobbed his head. “Yep, Lord, you betcha. Fluff Hopper, I’m the Blu-“
“Okay,” The kid interrupted. “Sure. Whatever. Go ahead and make your call, Stargoon. Then get out.” The young Saiyan turned, moving down the bar to converse with other patrons.
“That went better than I thought,” Besald whispered. They went into a small back office behind the bar, where a big handphone, antenna spike, and receiver dish sat on a rickety wicker desk.
Fluff picked up the handphone and punched in some relay codes, drooping one ear upside down and shouldering it. Besald politely waited outside.
“Yealo, this is Twobit, what’s happening?” A voice crackled.
“Twobit!” Fluff cheered. “It’s Fluff!”
“Who?” Twobit asked, bewildered.
Fluff’s ears fell. “Fluff Hopper?”
“What?”
He sighed. “The Blue Stargoon.”
“Oh. Oh yeah, the fast Earthling kid. Look, I’m pretty busy cosmic entity guy, you know, I can’t be expected to remember every-“
“Everybody else got zapped on Eros but me,” Fluff said quietly.
“Yeah, so I’ve heard. Very sad. I warned you guys, didn’t I? I said to your captain, I said, it’s no good to travel all that way to a very bad place for some nutjob Arcosian. And how’d it turn out? No good, am I right?”
Twobit, their technological benefactor and self-styled God of Pirates, had actually said the opposite. He was a Demon of the highest order (or so he claimed), and also a very greedy one. He’d never warned the Stargoons against taking any job. If anything, he’d always complain that they weren’t working more.
Fluff didn’t try to argue, though. Arguing with Twobit was like arguing with a katchin wall. “I’m going to need a new scouter. Old one is busted on Eros. My pod’s falling apart, too. Needs fixing. And we’re going to need to make all new Stargoons.”
“You got it, you got it,” Twobit quickly agreed. “I’ll help you get back on your feet, little buddy. And I’ll sling over some new Pirate Coins.”
“Hey, Twobit?”
“Yeah?”
“Why do you help us? I mean, why do you make Stargoons and give us our tech? You don’t need any money.”
“Bragging rights,” Twobit said instantly.
“Bragging rights?”
“Yeah, bragging rights that I can use against my many, many enemies in the Universe. All the haters and losers. See, I play cards with these guys from the other galaxies. And they’ll be like ‘Oh, you know Bozo So-and-So the Destroyer? I did that, I got him started out.’ And I’ll be like ‘Oh yeah? That’s nice. I got the most fabulous bunch of pirates you’ve ever seen. With the most fabulous armor. And the most fabulous poses. I mean, these poses will really knock your socks off! The best, okay? Totally glamorous. Nobody does pirates better than me.’ And then they shut up about Bozo So-and-So, and I can tell, they get so mad.” Twobit chuckled.
Fluff laughed with him, swelling with pride. “You really think so? That we’re the best?”
“I know so, Fluffy Boy. You know what else I say to them? I say, I got this guy Fluff and he’s faster than a banana on a buttered floor, okay?”
Fluff beamed. Even though he knew that Twobit was lying about it, because he hadn’t remembered Fluff at all when he first answered the call, it was a lie that felt really good to hear. “Well, Twobit. Ya know I won’t let you down!”
“I know,” Twobit said warmly. “Anyways, I gotta go do some other business. But uh, I’ll send you the Pirate Coins, okay? They’ll be ready whenever you find someone that can withstand saying the words.”
“Okay,” Fluff agreed. “Thanks a zillion.”
“No problem, no problem. See you later, Blue.” There was a click.
👺
When Fluff walked out of the bar with Besald and started down the pathway through the dunes, it felt like he was walking on clouds instead of sand. Just getting that pep talk from Twobit had doubled his energy. And now that he had the support, he could reform the Stargoons, and they could get back to being the very best pirate mercenary squad in the Universe. The most fabulous! The most –
An energy blast sliced through the air. Fluff leapt away, but Besald wasn’t quick enough. The white wave of power caught him straight on, tearing the upper half of his body off and blowing it to little smoking bits.
“Yikes!” Fluff yelled, backpedaling as more balls of energy erupted in front of him, trying to catch him. He dodged the explosions, barely.
Sand floated through the air like a golden haze. The silhouette of a woman walked through it. Fluff’s eyes widened. A Heran woman.
“I thought I recognized you,” Prosit the Pusher said. Back when Fluff had known her, she was Prosit the Pitiless, one of the most vicious cutthroat pirates in the galaxy. “I thought the Stargoons were dead.”
“You got a nice energy blast, lady,” Fluff said cheekily. “Too bad it won’t do you any good against the Blue Pulsar!”
Another wave raced towards him, but Fluff was ready to dance this time. The blast closed in, nearer and nearer until it lit up his body. Fluff could see Prosit smirking as it reached deadly proximity. Then the energy wave sailed harmlessly through his body. The smirk vanished. Prosit’s jaw dropped. “What?! No one is that fast!”
She was still gawking at his speed shadow when Fluff kicked her hard in the keister. So hard that she flew up into the air. And up into space.
“Get fluffed!” Fluff yelled.
“I’ll kill you!” Her scream trailed off, her body became a dot in the sky, then a wink of light. Then it was gone.
Fluff jumped up and dusted his feet together, smoothing his ears. “Another one busted!” He almost reached out to high five Snailsy, then remembered the big goof wasn’t there. None of them were. The Stargoons were gone. He was the only left.
And it was up to Fluff to change all that.