A One-sided Smack Down

Polly struggled desperately against the rope that bound her, but to no avail. How a rope that she was guessing was made out of a beam of light was even tangible, let alone strong, was beyond her. The laser lasso wrapped around her stomach jerked her into the waters that were still unwelcomingly icy despite having been blasted by the sun's rays for at least an hour.

However if she was going down, she wasn’t going down alone. Inhaling deeply just before her head joined the rest of her body in the sea, Polly grabbed Fethar, and within moments they were both underwater.

Just like pretty much every other human being she knew, Polly couldn’t breathe underwater, or at least to her knowledge she couldn’t. She had never actually tried because she had a little more than half a brain cell floating around in her head. Though she doubted they would stay there, Polly stuck Fethar in her hair and hoped that the accessory would stay in her hair long enough to help them wiggle out of the tricky situation they had found themselves in.

To her great surprise, now that she was in the same state of matter as the fish, she could hear them. She couldn’t understand them because they weren’t speaking the international language or her language, but at least now she didn’t have to watch them arrange bubbles into letters to know they were talking.

Evangeline’s voice was a lot higher pitched than she had expected. Her voice was a cross between a squeaky toy and a squirrel who had just gotten all their acorns stolen. If Evangeline waltzed into a music production studio and someone threw in a beat and some autotune, she could have dropped a dubstep track right then and there.

Qwertyuiop sounded strikingly similar to the drone of a laptop fan, and Polly decided that if she was picking sides based on whose voice she liked better, it would have to be Evangeline’s. There was just something about the buzz of laptop fans that brought a frown to her face and a twitch to her eye.

Polly didn’t know how she was going to tell Evangleline she didn’t have gills and wasn’t an amphibian, in fact she was pretty sure Evangeline should have already known that, but that wasn’t going to stop her from trying. As far as she knew, her life depended on it.

With great fervor, she tugged on the surprisingly sturdy rope that tied her to the tiny fish and made like a wacky-waving-inflatable-arm-flailing-tube-man in an attempt to get the fish’s attention. Yet the fish paid her no mind and continued to eye Qwertyuiop, who they had also wrapped up in red, warily. Polly sure hoped that she wasn’t the new hostage because she doubted Qwertyuiop would try as hard to save her, someone from a totally different species, as he did to save the last fish.

“Polly!” exclaimed the last voice Polly had expected to hear.

Swimming straight toward her like torpedos were none other than the kiwis she had thought were still playing near the rock, and Wiki was waving a wing. The lass could have cried on the spot right then and there given how happy she was to see those familiar faces. Then it hit her.

“That wasn’t Wiki speaking, was it?” asked Polly to herself. “Nah, I’m probs tripping.”

Polly almost opened her mouth to ask Wiki if she had really just popped her beak open and spoken, but common sense stopped her right before she would have taken in a mouthful of salty water.

“Surround her,” cried Wiki, sounding very much like a general calling for her troops to gather around the enemy. Polly couldn’t even ask why.

The three kiwis circled around their human pal and stretched out their wings.

“Here goes and good luck,” tee-hee-ed Wiki before she began chanting.

Polly felt faint and she wasn’t sure if it was because she had been holding her breath for just that long or because she felt like she was about to get sacrificed to a higher power by the birds she had taken on as her shipmates.

“Fear not,” said Fethar to Polly, and if the pirate could have breathed a sigh of relief, she would have. Her faith in Fethar was strong, and now wasn’t the time to be worrying if it was misplaced.

“The chant they’re uttering is one that is usually reserved for the High Offishals when they’re bestowing the ability to breathe and communicate underwater to foreign guests. I had no idea it would retain its effectiveness if used by outsiders. I suppose while we were meeting these fish, our companions were having a meeting of their own.”

Wiki wrapped up her chant, and as soon as she finished, Polly felt like she had just been punched in the stomach. Her mouth opened involuntarily as she spluttered, and she could feel salt water rushing into her mouth. A second later, she was breathing fine and dandy in the water as if she had never said a sad autumn goodbye that made her cry to her summer love that was the surface.

“Who decided that a punch was necessary? I just want to talk. You know, exchange a word or two, or a punch...” said Polly. As she spoke, bubbles floated out of her mouth, and it took all her willpower not to start swatting at them.

“Ya got that right fledge,” said S.A.T. “I almost straight decked ‘em myself.”

The arrival of the kiwis had been enough to grab Evangeline’s attention. From the same eye that the lasso holding Polly came from, three more strands shot out and ensnared the clueless kiwis. They jabbed at it with their beaks, but just like Polly, they couldn’t get free.

“Hey switch over to Mimglish or something,” shouted Polly. “If you’re gonna hold us hostage or whatever, shouldn’t we at least be able to listen to your convo so that we can judge you for it.”

“Your captive makes a compelling point,” said Qwertyuiop in his annoying, buzzy voice, and most importantly, in Mimglish.

Polly wished he’d stayed silent. She didn’t think the one holding her bound would become extra sympathetic to her cause if she was being supported by that fish’s very enemy. Yet in a move totally untrue to her character arc thus far, or maybe because she felt like being reasonable for once, Evangeline switched to Mimglish.

“Spill the tea now or I’ll chuck them at you,” snarled Evangeline.

“You wouldn’t,” gasped both the possible projectiles and the one who would be the victim of them.

“Bet.”

The stakes were a little too high for Polly who had too much pride in the fact she was a human to settle for becoming a replacement rock. She was sure her bird buddies felt the same way.

“Well wotcha’ waiting for?” squawked SAT who evidently dislike the idea of being thrown just as much as Polly, if not more. “Get blabbin’.”

Evangeline looked at SAT approvingly, though she didn’t release them from their bindings.

Qwertyuiop squinted his squinty fish eyes and then wiggled violently as if some miracle had occurred and Evangeline’s eye laser lassos had lost their strength. They hadn't.

“The truth is more often than not a double-edged sword,” said Qwertyuiop darkly.

“Even with my magical overpowered eyes I still can’t see where I asked for excuses. I said what I said. Start speaking.”

Evengeline drew Polly closer to Qwertyuiop, and though she wasn’t the one who was going to be hit with something over triple her size, Polly felt scared.

“Fine,” said Qwertyuiop, sounding anything but complacent. “I’ll speak not because you’re threatening me but because I want to.”

“Sounds like something someone being threatened would say,” muttered Wiki in a voice so low that Polly suspected the bird hadn’t expected to be heard.

“It didn’t have to be your clan,” began the prisoner. “They were simply unlucky. The cult that I am one of the leaders of had decided to have a dance competition in honor of one of our sacred holidays, and the song that had been chosen for the tournament was the ‘Murdered Mash’. We told your clan that they had to swim upwards and be blasted by a bolt because it was their destiny, and in our defense it wasn’t a lie. It was their destiny to be used for my team’s performance in celebration of our sacred day that honors our lord and savior Pisces, the Great Fish of the Starry Sea.”

“The lightning storm was but a coincidence. Originally I would have murdered them one by one with my book of spells. I am not a cruel fish despite what you may believe, and I would have killed them peacefully in their sleep had the lightning storm not come and provided the perfect opportunity to wipe them all out at once in a relatively painless manner.

“I will say that the bodies were difficult for me to collect. Back then I didn’t have any spells for gathering bodies, and since it hasn’t been all too long since then, I still don’t have any. In fact you captured me right as I had finished dropping them off and was about to report to my team that I had gathered my share of the props. I’m sure they’re waiting for me as I speak.

“So now you know, it was mere misfortune that killed your clan. They were simply too easy to convince that an early death was a part of their destiny. They never questioned it, not even once. Though I do have to ask, where were you? Not that one less dead fish makes a difference to my team of course. In fact it’s at the perfect number right now, if I do say so myself.”

Polly had not the strength in her soul to look at the enraged Evangeline. She feared a look at the fish that was emitting a positively killer aura would be enough to shave a solid ten years off her life. The murderous intent that was radiating from the quaint body was enough to darken the water around her. It wasn’t unlike a squid shooting out ink in order to escape a predator, except the black in the water wasn’t ink and if anything, Evangeline was the predator.

“And for what? You did this for what?” said Evangeline with a snarl that could have had her passing for an alpha werewolf defending their territory with flying colors. Polly closed her eyes and hoped to the skies above she wasn’t about to become the spiked ball at the end of a morning star (the medieval weapon with a spiky ball attached to a chain attached to a stick).

Qwertyuiop was either a fish with no fear, a fish who didn’t know how to fear, or blissfully ignorant of the fact that he was one wrong word away from execution by sentient weaponry.

“Did I not just explain why?” he replied, as if his reason for sending a whole clan of fish to their deaths was not only justified but also a trivial matter.

Polly didn’t have time to mentally prepare herself for being hurled at the fish whose body was so small that in all honesty, she didn’t even feel herself making contact.

Evangeline rotated between Polly, Wiki, S.A.T., and Ed as she mercilessly assaulted Qwertyuiop. After a few minutes of being swung around like the body of a yoyo, Polly found herself getting used to it. In fact she found it almost fun. As she was in water, the speed at which she was being jerked around wasn’t neck-breaking, and thanks to Evangeline rotating between her and the kiwis, she had time for a brief break between swings. She felt like she was on a rollercoaster...but not.

Polly wondered how Qwertyuiop was holding up. She cringed inwardly at the idea of being slammed with a ten story building, which she figured was as large to her as she was to the fish.

Polly also wondered how Qwertyuiop’s fellow cult members were feeling at the moment. Polly didn’t think cult leaders capable of orchestrating mass murder would be the types of fellows to be worried because their partner in crime had yet to return, but she supposed it wouldn’t be unreasonable for criminals to worry about their equally as criminal cohorts.

Evangeline sent Polly crashing into Qwertyuiop for around the fifth time, and as she was exchanged for Wiki, Polly noticed that Qwertyuiop appeared astoundingly unscathed.

Whether it was because he was being hit with blunt objects or because he was simply that mighty, she wasn’t sure, but he had not a scratch on his scales. Polly was both awed and kind of concerned. She peeped at Evangeline out of the corner of her eyes to see if she could guess what the creature-swinging-bringer-of-destruction was thinking.

Her minimal observational skills didn’t give her much to work with. If her judgements based off of the blurry image of Evangeline that was unfortunately the best her eyes could do, were correct, then Evangeline hadn’t noticed Qwertyuiop had taken basically no damage. She didn’t look angry enough to have realized it.

It was around the twentieth time Polly was sent crashing into Qwertyuiop that the fish that had been non-stop flinging folks about decided to assess the damage she had caused. Evangeline released Polly and Co. from the tendrils that had connected them to her eye, and the ropes that absolutely did not resemble red licorice in any manner slowly retracted into their owner’s vibrant scarlet ocular orb-shaped organ.

With all the cautiousness of a student with a borderline grade quadruple checking their work on a test before giving it up to be graded, Evangeline drew the fish she had so brutally beat towards her. Save the motion that came along with being dragged toward a certain doom, Qwertyuiop was still.