On other side of the teleportation I had enough time to register a metal ground. A huge hand grabbed my shoulder and flipped me over. Before my stomach could decide if it needed to throw up or not, something sharp pierced my neck.

The world swam instantly. My eyes watered and the figures around me were nearly mist.

My first thoughts should have been of the student’s safety. They weren’t. It could have been of a loved one, such as Alice. It wasn’t.

Instead, my thoughts were focused on the world’s largest bitch, who stood over me on legs that went up to heaven. Or perhaps it might have been classified as hell. Either way that ass on the top end was pure sin. I couldn’t tell for sure.

“Hey. I’ve been there before,” I slurred at her while lifting an arm to point above me..

The blurry woman kicked me in the head, and my already fading world clicked out like a light.

Then my vision blacked out.

Now, I could tell you about the nightmares that followed, but that’s boring as shit. I mean, so’s this next bit but we should be able to handle it easier.

Queue up the self-reflection monologue.

I hadn’t thought about the students, who were on the run from mole people hell. Instead, I’d taken the time to be irritating toward my new captor. What does that say about me?

Let’s start somewhere simpler. Do I consider myself a good person? Sure do. Do I consider myself a well adjusted person. Do I? No, not really. I carry around more badly handled guilt than a military platoon. This messed up combination should explain why I try to do the right thing action wise, but the stuff that comes out of my mouth is antagonizing.

Or so I’m told. The fun thing about being internet famous is that everyone and their dog feels free to chime in on my character traits. I’m called unredeemable pond scum by the masses. Those who tune in for my obituary blogs hate me for somehow mocking those who died around me.

I’m also told that at some point what came out of my mouth didn’t qualify as sarcasm. It frequently morphed into borderline bitter hatred at the world. Which almost feels justified because I won the lottery, and my prize was being sent into slave labor.

Despite the hatred for my general existence, I liked to think there were obvious signs of my improvement as a person. I actively tried to help people. I attempted not to think snidely about everyone. Not very well, and the general sense of inevitable failure ran deep in my soul, but dammit everyone’s a work in progress. Some of us just need a lot more work and progress than others.

Back to my initially snide remarks. Some people set me off. Especially when they stood above me with a damn smirk like they’d won the lottery and didn’t get relegated to a life of running from one shit thing to the next.

Someone smacked me awake. My eyes rolled from side to side trying to find anything to focus on.

Words registered. “Time to wake up you unmitigated asshole,” came from a female voice. One that sounded lost in the depths of a cartoon of cigarettes.

“Me?” I mumbled. “I’m the nicest man you’ll find in seven galaxies.” My brain slowly sharpened as I justified my stance. “I hold doors open.”

“Yes, you. Adam. Adam fucking quacks like a duck mallard.”

“Millard,” I corrected the unclear figure. “Flour mill.”

These drugs were good.

“Quack,” they responded. “And you still think you’re so clever. You’re not. A monkey shits in it’s own hands and throws it at people, and they’re clever. You’re a mouth breathing retard that couldn’t find his own dick if someone pointed it out to them.”

“One time,” I responded. “One time and it was dark and,” it registered that I was oversharing. My head shook slowly as I truly tried to see where I’d ended up.

The last of the fuzz vanished enough for me to see my captor. The last image before blackness sprung to mind. I stared for a long minute. She looked much the same as ever, just double the size. Which became even more impressive when you consider Vivian had been a wrestler back in high school. Not that it made her a mass of muscle, but she’d been tall enough to fight the boys.

“Hey again. Vivian.”

She grinned at me. The mad kind that promised pain. The kind Alice used when she promised a good time. I saw some parallels there that worried me but decided not to bring them up out loud. I would never try to explain to Alice that women with a screw loose were attractive. I mean, if she ever hears this then she’ll know.

In Vivian’s hand sat a glorified hamster ball. Inside the orb stood a man with a wide legged stance and military outfit. His bushy eyebrows were lowered and hair nearly cropped.

I eyed the tiny man in a glass globe. They didn’t make sense as a couple. Vivian was a giant. That guy wasn’t even close to a giant. Unless like, microscopic people were looking up.

“Lord Purple?” I ventured.

“Indeed sir,” He grinned a cocky, evil, tiny as shit grin. Which made the whole thing look utterly stupid. “And you are a captive of my lovely spouse, Lady Purple.”

Her giant head tilted down at him. He coughed then continued, “You foul abandoner of such a lovely lady. Prepare to suffer!”

Vivian smiled brilliantly. My eyes went wide at watching their interaction. They’d been insane on the intercoms when we were flying through space. Seeing them in person made the whole thing a circus show.

“Men! March him to the torture chamber, post haste!”

I snorted. Tiny green half sized people in spiky armor grabbed me by each limb. They hefted me into the air and carried me off. They could have easily put me where ever they wanted while I’d been drugged out of my mind. The stuff they gave me had been pretty good, so I should have been out for at least an hour.

They were surprisingly nice about the entire progress. Clinton had been tossing me around for days and these exploding minions were practically saints compared to him. Minus the possibility for overloading and going boom. I mean, who’s bright idea was it to have self-destructing small minions?

They weren’t robots. I could hear them breathing.

For those that forgot about these minions, I’d run into them when jumping from a space ship. During my last adventure with Ted I’d been “rescued” then “politely questioned” by Show Stopper. A mother of two other super powered kids and worked with General. The point being, Vivian’s ship attacked their ship and I found out my ex-girlfriend hadn’t been butchered horribly by aliens and killed. And she had an army of little half sized guys in power armor that exploded when mad.

Those flying bombs were politely carrying me to certain annoyance. Part of me hoped they’d try to explode. We were so close together that my powers would pull something heinous out of their ass just to keep me alive. A force field malfunction? The exploder might turn into a dud and be left there with a constipated stance and no boom-boom.

Maybe he’d start to explode, his friends would dog pile him to stop the idiot from putting a hole in the ship, and I’d be left in the corner with guts splattered all over my face and Vivian just fuming.

I wanted to see a twelve-foot woman fuming. That’d be sort of new. Then I could utter snark about how she didn’t get a corsage because she wanted to be a strong independent woman and I didn’t need to buy her any pointless gifts.

Looking back, I’m not sure how we ever started dating. I mean, I could see why. Still. Especially from this angle because Vivian strode next to us. My gaze had this perfect view of her long legs and her husband probably couldn’t tell.

Lechery aside, nothing interesting happened. We made our way through the ship’s innards while I wondered about a sort of sticky feeling on my chest and back. It felt like my pants had been messed with. They rode a bit too low and were tight around the front. And get your mind out of the gutter. It took a lot for me to react, even if my mind had one set of thoughts, my body didn’t care. It’d been shell shocked and teased by powered people across the board.

I need smooth jazz and some candlelight to be properly wooed. Or Alice in a mood.

As a man who’d woken up many times in strange locations and had to retrace his steps, I knew two things. One, these pants sucked. Two, someone had taken them off and inspected the goods. The realization made me snort in amusement.

As a sign of my self-improvement, I managed to keep any witty thoughts to myself. Minute later we were at our destination. The armor encased minions carrying me placed me down, gently, and pushed me upright. The lot of them then prodded me in the back until I stepped forward into a tiny cell.

“Welcome to your new home,” she said.

“Pretty poor accommodations. I mean, if you want to consummate our failed relationship then I think there’s a few kinks to work out first.”

“Ha, ha ha ha. HA, HA.” Vivian kept going. “You’re so witty Adam! Ha.” She wasn’t really laughing. I lifted an eyebrow then she smiled.

I guess that counted as a win for her but what kind of man would simply stop there.

“Plus, there’s our current relationships. You’ve got Lord Purple there,”

“I am indeed a Lord! A prince of my people,” he chimed in.

My head bobbed in a slow nod. The tiny man in a glass ball had issues. For starters, how could he breathe in that contraption? He also had to operate the ship somehow while Vivian was out being a pirate.

“And there’s Alice,” I continued.

“Oh don’t worry. I wouldn’t sleep with you if you were the last man on Earth.”

“We’re not on Earth,” I added before anyone else could beat me to the punch. “And I have it on good authority that,”

“It’s okay, Adam. You’re still the same scared little boy who couldn’t get it up.” Remember how I’d mentioned I was technically a virgin before Alice? It wasn’t for lack of trying. But the one night Vivian and I had attempted to take our teenager drives to the next level, I’d been having rough nerve wracking days at school.

She’d also been intimidating. So my defense against that somewhat truthful statement is that Vivian was half a gorilla and I’d been going through some shit. Instead of pointing out those obvious flaws I simply rolled my eyes. Alice knew my package delivered. Apparently, there was secret content on hero Watch’s website that also let the world know.

My mind derailed from the poor attempts at banter, right down a track labeled “Reasons to punch Ted”. From there it went into a brief study of our surroundings.

The walls were boring and metal. There were three other visible cells, and based on what I rememberd of my escourt, we were in some sort of dead end near the rear of the ship. The cargo bay on these buckets typically sat in the middle. The helm normally went up at the front.

That being said, two of the visible cells were occupied. I’ll tell you who they were later. For now, let’s pretend I managed to ignore the other prisoners and resumed proving my superiority over the giant woman through witty banter.

“What’s the plan here?” I asked.

They couldn’t kill me. That would simply cause my powers to go into defensive mode. People would show up. Ships would crash. Dooms day lasers would test fire at a location I happened to be near. All her minir minions would get the urge to self destruct and the ship would go up in flames. But Lord Purple had like seven more of these in dry dock.

Vivian pointed at me. “Oh, I’ve paid a bunch of idiotic doctors to try and reassemble your body with gummy bears for testicles and penis’s for arms. I figure it’ll end poorly for them because of your powers. But then I remembered something.”

My eyebrow shot up. “That the good lingerie doesn’t come in your size?”

She grinned. Gas hissed out between her teeth and the air warped.

“That you can be hurt. You can be hurt badly. And sure, by the end of it you’ll be in one piece again. But all I need to do is tell them to be quick, record your screaming, and make sure I’m far, far away before they start.”

I blinked slowly then shrugged. It would probably hurt but rule one of dealing with insane people, don’t let them notice you’re allergic to pain. The reason you don’t tell them is because it’s a known factor. Everyone hates pain, even masochists. It’s just a matter of how much is needed to motivate someone.

I nodded wisely then continued my earlier train of thought. Mostly because Vivian wore sweatpants that were too tight around her thighs and cut off just below the knees. Or perfectly tight. “Must be hard to find a decent pair of pants. Hey. Lord Purple. She show you the tongue“- My ears rang abruptly as Vivian backhanded me.

Being slapped by a woman never taught me any lessons. The joys of being unkillable. Either way, I fell back into my little jail cell and put a hand to my face. Both eyes water and my nose ran with fresh snot. Ringing assaulted my ears.

There were no signs of blood but the world kept tilting to one side. I fumbled around until my ass ended up on the cot. As soon as Vivian left I’d go to sleep.

Yes, that’s a lie. I managed to get upright on my feet after a moment.

“You’re a rather uncivilized and uncoth nave, aren’t you Mister Millard?” Vivian shot her husband a glare. He coughed then said, “Mallard. Pardon.” He glanced around then back to Vivian’s disapproving glare. “Ah. Yes dear. Of course. Quack. Quack, Mister Mallard.”

“If anyone’s the duck around here,” I said. It earned me a second neck popping slap. My eyes rolled.

“You’re such an asshole. I don’t know what I ever saw in you,” she said.

And, because I reacted well to being called names, I moved on to my next trick.

“Bet you could jerk off a horse with those hands. I know a unicorn”-

She reached way down to my level then punched me in the stomach.

I fell down again and gasped for air. That didn’t work. I kept on trying to breath. My body lay there, trying to roll from side to side but not finding an ounce of strength to do so. Both legs jerked repeatedly.

Vivian said something insulting, or so I assumed. The tone lingered in my ears but none of the words make sense. Her undecipherable nastiness continued while I fought for air.

“You broke up with me,” I shouted then kicked rapidly. “On a fucking spaceship!” My lungs burned. “You fucking ran off before they rescued us! Now you’re kidnapping me, on another fucking spaceship. You raging lunatic.”

I continued trying to breathe right and mostly failing. Hlel, my yells much have been mush filled mumbles that no one understood. Whatever the case, Vivian ignored my cries. The globe clinked as she set it down on a counter outside the cell. Onto her knees she went, patting me down and searching my pockets with zero gentleness. Vivian pulled out a piece of paper from a pocket I’d never bothered to explore.

“What’s this?” she asked.

Somehow, she expected me to know what was in my new pants pocket. I had zero worldly belongings. Even the mug I’d managed to steal for all of a few hours had been lost while we were running. Somewhere out there a mole knight ran around with a dented helmet.

So, I pretended the note didn’t exist. “What’s what?” I stayed on the floor. She’d have to stay on her damn kenes if she wanted to slap me again.

Vivian’s eyes rolled while she muttered flatteries under her breath. She read it once, flipped it around, and pointed at the name with her other hand. “Wilhelm? Is that The Walker’s real name?”

That note? Well, it said “Tell Adam, I hate you,” with Wilhelm’s fancy cursive signature.

I nodded.

Vivian smiled and complied with the paper’s orders. “I hate you.”

My lips pulled back in a weak grin that mimicked her smile. “I get that a lot.”

“I’ll bet you do.”

She stood back up and pressed a button outside the door. A speaker beeped then bars slammed down. They sizzled and electricity arced across them. Following that the four armored guards that had carried me in marched to the entry way, where they’d have a good view of anyone trying to break us out.

I waited a few minutes before using the edge of the cot to get myself off the ground.

The world spun as blood relocated to it’s proper location. Fingers tracked along the rib line. Nothing in there felt broken, but there’d be a bruise all over my midsection for days. Maybe longer unless some miracle came along or science mumble-mumble nanites fixed my body.

As promised, this is where I finally talk about the men in the other cells.

The man in the cell across from me had a butler suit and rather long shackles that covered most of his forearms in a mesh of some sort. Blue lines of energy raced up and down strands that linked his arm bindings to a collar around his neck and equally thick boots.

“Dad,” I said dryly.

“Adam! My first long lost first born,” he answered with the same dryness and a slight smile. “What brings you to our neck of the woods?”

I thought about it for a moment. “I didn’t take your advice five years ago and kept dating her?”

He busted up laughing and it felt like dad again. Until his voice box stuttered.

I swallowed a lump and pretended not to notice. Life had to be hard for him. Though maybe there were perks to being a cyborg android or whatever. He wouldn’t grow old. His back probably didn’t hurt. He could get the daily news right away and probably never had to deal with head colds.

“Hindsight. If we’d known then, what we know now, eh?” He lifted a artificially perfect eyebrow then shrugged. Energy lanced up and down his body as a result of the moment but he didn’t react. “We’d be different people entirely.”

He sighed. Once again energy arched up his arms. This time an eye twitched and a spark leapt off him into the bars. They flared and the guards stationed at the door shuffled around uneasily.

“Hard to believe that’s the same young lady you used to date.”

I chuckled and nodded. “Yeah. She was, intense back then. Now? I don’t know.”

“You were a bit rude. I didn’t raise you to treat women that way.”

I said nothing. He had a point but it didn’t mean Vivian just smiled sadly and took it laying down. She’d shaken me to death, expecting that I could somehow save her from certain doom.

“She really dump you while you were abducted?”

She had. It’d been a lot louder and angrier. It’d involved half a dozen witnesses who’d also been taken with us, most of them school friends. Not like I could go to the class reunion. How would that even work. “Hi, I’m Adam. Remember all those times you almost got killed? My fault.” Then they could go “Yeah. We’ve been watching your blog. You’re an asshole and we’ve decided to tar and feather you.”

“Not really right to make fun of her though.” His chastisement made my eyelids flutter. “It’s not her fault that she ended up that way.”

“End up what way? As a pirate? As a kidnapper? As a lunatic? She said she’d kill you dad. If she even can.” I waved a hand dismissively. Who knew if robot body could be destroyed easily. Then it hit me a second later that his life was still fairly fragile. People died all the time. “And I get there’s a certain amount of history shaping who we are. I’ve met hundreds of people that were practically driven into a role by their powers. But we all still get to make choices, right?”

“Of course we do,” he said.

“See, I listened dad. And I’ve had so much time to try and remember the good days where you and mom spouted life lessons. And I get that I missed all of them when I was a kid. But that one I remember. Whatever shit is thrown at us, we have a choice.”

“That’s right,” he smiled proudly. Which was almost as bad as the evil grin on the man in a glass ball.

“I’m going to chose not to have a heart to heart today. It’s been a long week.” Or two. I didn’t even want to ask how my dad had ended up in this jail cell but it probably didn’t mean anything good. Whatever offensive he and the others were meant to be doing, must have gone sideways fast.

Knowing my luck, Lady Alexandria would break down a wall and murder everyone on the ship.

So, dad shifted the subject. Like he always did. “What’s with the new tattoos?”

“Frat hazing?” he asked.

“What?”

“You’ve got drawings all over you. Lots of them. I mean, tattoos are one thing, but no son of mind would be that tasteless.”

I scoffed at that last remark then gave myself a once over. After the first review, I searched for a mirror. My dungeon cell came with a toilet and mirror. That meant this was a fancy jail cell. For fancy people like me, who came with marker all over my skin.

There were insulting words slurs, dicks, and arrows labeling parts of my body. One on my chest pointed upward toward my skull and said “empty”. The one pointing down said “Needle dick”. I frowned. Vivian knew better. I mean, her current boyfriend probably had a literal needle dick, and here she was, taking time out of her busy pirate life, to give me the wrong description.

The backdrop of my forming bruise blotted out some of the stomach marks.

I sighed then pull my shirt back down over the mess.

“Any rescue coming?” I asked.

The four guards shuffled at the posts. I ignored them because it made no difference to me one way or the other what the answer might be.

Dad shook his head then put a finger over his lips. That meant help could be on the way but he didn’t want to talk about it while we were being guarded.

I turned to the third man in our little corner suite of the world’s best hotel.

“What about you? You smuggle anything we can use to blow this place up?”

The man snorted and eyed me through the bars. His big lips curled into a frown while a hand grasped around the handle of something he didn’t have. “What happened to the stuff I sold you, you shit eating puss rag?”

He’d given me a bag of trinkets, including a real microphone. It’d lasted a little while then been burned in lava. Or maybe lost on the moon. Either way the items were pretty handy. Ted had a whole bag of them. Bio-gradable he’d called them. Items that assembled themselves using dirt. Not that this ship had much dirt laying around to turn into a hand lazer.

I shrugged. “Flux is all that remains. I think he ate the other stuff.”

The man’s eyes went wide and he searched around for the floating camera. I shook my head. “Don’t worry. It’s around somewhere. Where you least expect it, Flux’ll show up and”- Flux beeped at cut me off. “It’ll do that.”

He raised a hand and banged into the electrified bars. He took it better than me and tensed the arm. “Keep that left-nut fucker away from me. Jinxed. My entire life’s been one miserable Molotov cocktail up the ass after another since it woke up.”

“Really? Me too!” I coughed as the chest pain set in. Shouting would be problematic.

For those who haven’t figured it out, the third man in our jail house blues band was the same man who’d built Flux. Only he hadn’t built Flux yet. Because Flux couldn’t possible exist.

He also gained all his superpowers through the usage of cursed objects. His curse involved cursing violently. The only control he had, or choice as my dad would have put it, was that he could control which words he used. I guess he had to say it with feeling though because some of his combinations were jarring.

I just didn’t remember his name. We’d only met for an hour or so.

After that bout of cursing he refused to talk again, and my dad seemed to have shut down or gone into power saving mode. Whatever it is cyborg dads did when they needed to conserve energy after dealing with their children.

Sometime later the doors slid open. In came a minion carrying Lord Purple in his hamster ball. If the man had been any smaller, he could have ridden around Ham Star. Before the cosmic rays.

My tired mind chose that moment, as Lord Purple’s carrying cage came closer, to laugh. He bristled turning an impressive seven-inch height into nearly eight. His minion came to my doorway, lifted the globe to normal height, and presented me an up-close view of Lord Purple.

If it wasn’t for the whole boy-toy size issue, he’d cut and impressive figure. Somewhere a room full of little girl dolls swooned.

Lord Purple looked around then whispered, “Good sir, I implore you. Save me from that insane woman.”

My brain reset a good six times trying to process how that statement made any sense.

Character Dossier

Name: Lord Thistle Purple the III

Gender: Male

Age: 28 Earth Standard Years

Generalized Ratings as Follows

Strength: 1 (No leverage)

Intelligence: 5 (Has minions for that)

Agility: 6 (Does yoga)

Luck: 4 (Met Adam’s ex)

Attitude: Royal, there are no other traits

Items of Note

Is a prince. Technically a king. Married below his station. Has a kingdom spread across five moons orbiting a gas giant. Used to dream of conquering the main planet his moon kingdom orbited. Finds it terrifying he’s now married to a gas giant. Parents did not send wedding gifts.

Powers

Royalty is a superpower.

Minions are a better one.

Minions with cloning technology, a mulcher that eats other people’s tech and recycles it for their own use is also handy. Blueprints stolen from a dozen different worlds makes the mulcher even more useful.

But it’s mostly the royalty.

Fun Fact

Was originally engaged to a rather charming tiny woman who wore glass slippers. She was a visiting princess from another kingdom that orbited the other three moons of their planet. A giant in an escape pod fell from the sky and crushed half the visiting delegation.

War ensued. During which the woman proceeded to decimate half the enemy population, enslave half of his kingdom with a gas concoction, and drive six ships straight into the core of the gas giant their planet orbited.

Somehow at the end his parents agreed to marry him of, if only the giant woman would leave them alone. She agreed immediately, conscripted him and half the planet’s resources as a dowry, and they’ve been raiding alien planets for nearly a year as a result.