Hadi B

I was having that kind of day. The day when an idiot comes and makes you spill gore from his head. The day when your overweight godparents programme your personal jet pack to shoot into an abandoned cave. That's the kind of day I was having. Sitting there in my V.I.P. barren cave, feeling sad for my sorry butt, a strange man decided to strut in. He consulted a strange scroll.

“Max William Adams, you are a cyborg. Correct?” I nodded glumly in response. “Lovely. Max you will be going on an adventure. An adventure where you will protect the world from the sun exploding, a supernova, larger than any before. If you return, good for you! If not, you will have failed and nobody will be alive to praise you for your efforts because we’ll all be dead.” I was confused.

“An evil genius evaporated gun powder. He is pumping our sun with it. You will help us now, cyborg!”

He said the word ‘cyborg’ like it was a crime to be one.

“I am quite offended,” I remarked, putting my hand on my chest. “How dare you insult cyborg kind!” He snorted.

“Cyborg kind! Isn’t that just... you?”

“Humph. Go chase a doughnut,” I grumbled. ”I am quite sure that my face’s expression tells that I will not go on this quest. I will not save the world. I will, however, sit here and there is nothing you can do ‘bout it ... human being!”

“But you’re half robot!” he persisted. “You, of all creatures, can do it!”

I took an extremely deep breath.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, NO!”

“Yes! You are!” he grinned.

Suddenly, the ground beneath me unsolidified. The last thing I remembered was being swallowed up by what seemed to be endless darkness. I opened my third eye to find everything looked huge. I had zoomed in in my sleep, I thought. I zoomed back out and opened my other two eyes. I opened my mouth to scream but I couldn’t muster anything up. I was looking at a green blob of mist. I fired volleys of bullets and lasers, but the blob just shot a column of red hot - no- green hot flames back, causing mini firework explosions in between us. He fired an icy stick at me and when it made contact with my skin, I froze completely I couldn’t even inhale my next breath.

“Woah, kid! I was helping you there! I’m done now though. Look, all of your bruises are gone.” I didn’t move. The blob blushed greener than he already was.

“Sorry! I’ll fix that!” He snapped his fingers and the odd stick came back to the blob. I gasped for breath, grabbing at the air.

“My name is Rafael,” he added. “Raf for short. What’s yours?”

“I am- “

“Max?” Raf supplied. “And you are on a quest to save the universe from an evil person who is pumping the sun with evaporated gun powder, etcetera, etcetera!”

“What-how-how do you know?”

“You talk in your sleep,” Raf told me.

“Oh.” I blushed.

“Alright,” Raf grinned.

“Let’s find some uranium and neptunium and -

“Yeah,” I said gruffly, “- plutonium and hydrogen.”

“Well!” Raf smiled. “Let us proceed.” I couldn’t help but smile.

“So, Maxy - can I call you Maxy?”

“No!”

“So, Maxy, why aren't you a normal human being? Why are you a cyborg? What is your -”

“Alright, alright. My mom was a human - she still is - but she fell in love with a high tech robot, and as you can see, the result was reasonably stuffed up.” I wiggled the fingers on my hands that were connected to arms that sprouted from my mismatching ribs.

“Cool,” he said.

“You are very slow, Maxy. Hop on my back. It is faster.” I saw an unusual glint in his eye and he looked like he was hiding a smile, but curiosity got the better of me.

“Is it safe?” I asked.

“Oh, very so,” he smirked. I attempted to hop on but I went right through him, though my head was the only thing still in the green body of mist.

His voice boomed from high, “Whoops. I’ll just solidify.”

“No! Wait!”

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSPP! I felt laughter rippling through Raf’s misty body as he shot off.

***

After what seemed like a day, Raf unsolidified. I landed on the floor in a crumpled heap.

“Ow!” I muttered.

“Get up,” Raf said to me. “Look what I found!” A silvery metal glittered, suspended in mid-air. It was imprinted on the side: URANIUM.

“Uranium, eh?” Raf mused. “Watch this.” He swiped the nugget out of the air and held it high above his head. For a moment, nothing happened. I was about to make a really downputting sound when a blinding flash, temporarily dazing me, appeared.

A minute passed. It took all my willpower, but I finally managed to open my eyes and get up. Rafael was now pulling another nugget, marked NEPTUNIUM, off the block of uranium.

“What?” I warbled, “How?”

“That happens in Lampgor,” a strange voice said. “Uranium can attract Neptunium, just as Plutonium can summon Hydrogen.”

“What’s Lampgor?” I whispered to Raf.

“Here.” he answered simply.

“Oh, that explains it. I mean, what is it?”

“Oh, sorry how rude of me. I forgot to introduce myself,” the voice interrupted again.

A dark, humanly figure melted out of the thick shadows.

“I am professor Alexander.” Rafael narrowed his eyes.

“Oi,” he snarled, “you're the guy that escaped from prison!”

“Now! Now! I don’t know what you’re talking about, my dear superbeing.”

“Yes, you do,” Raf shot back.

Alexander slowly shuffled back into the corner. Raf followed.

“Oh, him,” Alexander said.

“Didn’t you know he is my evil twin?” he yelped.

“A likely story,” Raf roared. He grew in size until he was almost three times as tall. He raised a gigantic fist, ready to pancake-ify poor Alexander.

“Yo Raf!” I yelled up to him, “C’mon! We have to get all the help we can. Even with you, this mission might be hard! We gotta trust him.”

Immediately, Raf shrunk back to his normal size.

“Right, trust! I’ll just need a security deposit,” a smile creeping across his green face.

“A, what?” I asked, but before I could get an answer, Raf had his hand in his stomach and seemed to be digging for some handcuff-like instruments. Wait - no... they were handcuffs.

When the first part of the cuffs appeared, I could feel the air temperature rise to 100 degrees Celsius.

“Oh,” I thought and suddenly snapped; “There will be none of that,” blasting the cuffs with my lazer.

“Fine,” Raf muttered. “ Let’s go. The sun is being pumped up by the minute. We gotta hurry.” And, with that, the three of us walked into the cave system.

***

As we walked through the caves, we occasionally found a shortcut. I was baffled to find that Raf had sensors inside his head that could detect where metals were and what metals they were.

“Where's the way to the plutonium?” I asked.

“Through there,” Raf pointed into the darkest tunnel of the three.

“You sure?”

“Look for yourself.”

I slowly walked by a sharp corner to find a metal glistening at the far end of the tavern. It was marked PLUTONIUM. My jaw fell off its hinges. I picked it back up and put it on.

“How?”

“You thought I was kidding, eh? Well boy, I tell you, I usually never kid.”

“How about you race me there? Or are you too slow and fat?”

“You are wasting your time. I will beat you, for I am a SUPERBEING.”

“Just look at me run.”

I ran at a super fast speed (like, two whole kilometres per hour) towards the Plutonium. Behind my back, Alex gritted his teeth and flicked his fingers.

I ran towards the metal at a super zippy speed (three kilometres per hour) but when I was within a one metre circumference of the Plutonium, I hit an invisible force.

“Raf, was that you?” I said rubbing my head.

“No!”

“Alex?”

Alex found a sudden interest in his shoes and didn’t answer.

“Alriiiiiight.” I said.

“Well Raf, why don’t you do some taekwondo-superbeing mumbo-jumbo and kick some force field butt? That sounds pretty, good eh?”

“But you’ll die!”

“Nah. I live ninety per cent of the time. Fifty. Thirty. Five. Just assume I live, alright?”

“No can do.”

“Alex will die,” I coaxed.

“That does sound good. Get ready!”

“I am so ready, so ready that ready would be jelou -”

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!!

I couldn’t finish my sentence. No sound echoed through the tunnels because there was not even the slightest proof that the tunnel ever had existed.

I woke up to find Alex leaning over me, his eyes full of concern and Raf now holding a new little bottle with a sticky note stuck on it that read Hydrogen. I slowly got up and looked up into the starry sky. Strangely, the moon grew dangerously bright but after a while, the light died down. “The sun,” I thought, “its light is glowing on the moon.”

I got up and turned to my friends.

“Look, guys. I could build a rocket ship and a bomb but it will probably take me until morning.”

“Well what are we waiting for! Here, have these,” Raf told me, handing the radioactive substances to me. My cyborg powers protected me from taking in radiation and Raf wasn’t human but Alex was all human. However, the radiation didn’t harm him either.

“Well?” Raf demanded. “Are you gonna make some rockets and bombs?”

“Be quiet and let me work,” I seconded. And with that, I got to work.

***

“Finished,” I announced. “I am finished.”

Rafael and Alexander followed me into the control room.

“Wow,” Raf said as he ran his hand over the controls. Alex strutted up to the ‘self-destruct’ button and started hammering at the cap.

“Alex?” I asked.

“What - I mean, yes boy?” He stopped hitting the cap.

“Good,” I muttered. “The thing is made of plastic.”

“THREE!” the computer counted. “TWO! ONE! BLAST OFF!”

The engines roared to life as we steadily rose up into space.

“One hundred metres from the sun,” I announced. “Fifty...Twenty...Ten...” We stopped exactly five metres from the sun. I was about to admire my measurements until I heard a loud THUNK,THUNK. I looked back to find Alex, once again, hitting the cap of the self destruct button.

“Alex!” I cried. “You are acting super strange today! Why are you hitting that poor plastic cap! It does have feelings too, you know.”

“I was just... erm - I was - making sure that if we needed to self destruct, we wouldn’t waste any time.”

“Alex, I don’t think that’s the reason. Please, tell me the truth.”

Alex didn’t say anything but he pulled out his blaster and aimed it at my head. He pulled the trigger.

“That is the reason.”

The last thing I remembered was my only real friend roaring in rage and blasting Alex into a billion pieces.

I woke up in a fit to find the sun shooting out waves of energy. The alarm was blaring really loudly: “DANGER. DANGER.”

“Please,” Raf muttered, ”get up.”

“I’m up, I’m up!”

“Yes! Look I have blasted the hatch door and the bomb is released. Come on! Hurry!”

Raf pointed at the front window, and as he did, the bomb exploded, sending shrapnel whizzing past. He jumped into open space as fire erupted from his hips, propelling him outwards. I opened my jetpack and shot after him.

“Press the button! Make it explode!”

“We’ll di-”

“Just do it!”

I pulled out my remote and clicked it.

BOOOOOOOM!! BOOOOOOOOOOM!!

Rafael and I were propelled towards the earth by the not one but two huge explosion. We landed on the dirt with a depressing thud. We looked up into the sky.

“Night-time forever,” Raf mused.

“Nice. Hey, you know the guy that sent you here?”

“Yeah?”

Rafael’s form changed, slowly, until he became the man who had visited me in my V.I.P. cave before.

“You!” Anger piled up in my head. I shoved him “let’s go back to my home. I have a feeling my robotic dad will like you.”

And with that I chased him down the road.