Battle at the Dump-star

I couldn’t believe my eyes, or the tingling sensation of muscular arms holding me tightly. I was actually looking at one of my own characters in the flesh! Like, it was actually him! HE WAS HIM!

If that wasn’t enough, that character was my favourite of them all. Cal the Barbarian! I was so excited that I totally couldn't stop staring at him.

“Cal, is it really you?” I asked. “Like, I’m not dreaming, right? This is really real? For real?!”

“Fair princess Aurilia, your eyes do not deceive you…” he suddenly locked in on June, like a wolf spotting weak prey. “But I can’t say the same about that witch there.”

“W-what…?” June's face of shock evolved into horror as my heroic creation turned sour to her. “What are you talking about!?”

“Witch! Are you the one who has brought tears to my fair maiden’s eyes? I shall bring a swift end to you!”

June couldn’t even respond to his accusations without making a bunch of jumbled squeaks of fright, kinda like a squeaky toy in the jaws of a junkyard dog. She was scrambling to stand and run for the building. “Auri, help me here!”

“Cal no!” I shouted, putting my hands on his chiseled face, rubbing the recently shaved stubble and gorgeous cheeks… I need to stay focused! “Cal, listen, that’s my friend June! I was crying because I was about to throw away your story. She was trying to stop me.”

“My story?” he was actually holding the notebook, so he must have caught it the same time he caught me. “This flimsy collection of parchment?”

With a single hand he flipped through the pages, starting from the back, skimming over things until he reached a picture of himself. “By the gods! I’ve never seen such a strange language before. And this painting of me is very…childish.”

Hearing him call my middle school manga style ‘childish’ really hit like Truck-kun on a foggy day. But in his world, I did remembered mentioning somewhere that art was very important to his culture. Even he was supposed to be good at painting the walls in monster blood.

Cal closed the book, then set me down on my feet. He humbly walked up to June and bowed deeply to her.

“Forgive me for my accusations. I was too hasty to call you a witch. However, you must understand that I’d rather stay on guard than be stabbed in the back.”

Where he comes from, that’s kept him alive on so many occasions. In a world of trickery and evil shape shifting liars, he didn’t have the luxury to lay off the suspicion. That was a reflection of how little I trusted people in school up till I met June.

“Uh…” June finally came to her senses after staring death in the face. Cal was a big guy with a scary face when he was mad, so she was brave to turn back and accept his reconciliation. “It’s alright…I think?” Her brow raised and she looked past Cal at me. “Auri, who, what, where, when and why?”

“Don’t you recognize my boy? This is Cal from the notebook.”

“I don't know of this notebook, but I am Cal of Calidum.” He struck a power pose, flexing his ripped muscles like a bodybuilder. “It seems my quest has taken me to this strange land,” he said, looking around at all the buildings. “Why does it smell of foul and skunk? This is no place worthy of my princess.”

*Squeel!*

He called me his princess! I think I'm in love♡

“Well, since Auri's too busy swooning over there,” June rolled her eyes, “that smell is coming from that dumpster behind you.”

“Dump-star? He turned around to look at the big blue metal container covered in slime. “Strange, that smell reminds me of the gelatinous creatures from the land of Gell-oh.”

“Seriously, Auri?” June glared at me. “You named a land after a jiggly snack?”

So, I named an evil country after that because some bully slapped a gell-oh cup in my face that day. I was really upset about it, so I made him into a ruler of slime monsters in my story. I totally forgot about that though. What was the bad guy's name again? Octu…Octa…Octo…? It was on the tip of my tongue.

I threw my arms up in a shrug to June. “I was…hungry that day, alright?”

“Why do I not believe you?” Her eyes narrowed, seeing through my lies.

While June was suspicious of one of many weird details in my story, Cal was inspecting the slime covering the trash.

“This dump-star… What is it for?” He had such a concerned look on his face, which made me feel like he was sensing something wrong. He had good intuition for that sort of thing.

“You throw trash in it, big guy.” June answered as if it was the plainest thing in the world. And I mean, it kinda was to us.

Cal wasn’t stupid, so he understood the point, but he kneeled down and poked a stick into the slime oozing all over the trash in there. A little smoke rose up from where the stick had touched the slime.

His eyes went wide and he threw his arm out toward us to push us away from the bubbling substance, which started to pool into a growing mass.

“Get back!” Cal shouted. “I will deal with this filth!”

The slime came to life in the form of a blob with very poorly shaped arms. Cal’s fist struck the slime creature, blasting it backwards before it could press an attack.

The slime collided with the dumpster at high speed, destroying the metal container. A shockwave followed, crackling across the trees and setting them a blaze with spiraling fire.

“Woah!” I cooed out in awe while June tugged me behind a car. “Did you see that?! He totally just thunder punched that gell-oh monster!”

“We are so dead!” June screamed. “We're going to die!”

We weren't going to die, not as long as Cal was here to protect us!

I peeked over the car, seeing Cal standing there with electricity jolting all across his skin. His muscles were swelling up, meaning he was serious.

“Gelatinous fiend of the land of Gell-oh, I, Cal of Calidum, will slay you for threatening my princess!”

That announcement was crazy sick! But it also made me realize how uninspired my naming culture was back then…

The gel monster rose up like the slimy beast it was, gurgling its bubbly threats at my hero. It's mouth stretched wide, threatening to swallow him in a single bite.

But Cal was not afraid! He had seen and conquered this enemy in greater numbers in less convenient surroundings.

Like a torrent of lightning, his body flashed forward and struck the unrefined face of the gel monster, sending its slimy head backwards. But it thrust back at him like a slingshot, slamming hard into the hero.

Cal came down like a meteor, kicking up dust and asphalt of the parking lot, only stopping once hitting a fire hydrant. Water kicked up and doused him in liquid.

That attack was hardly strong enough to keep him down! But he had a disgruntled glare in his powerful gaze.

“If only I could recall its weakness…” Cal grunted. “I could make short work of it!”

Most of the enemies I created in the story had a major weakness, some were simple, some were complicated. In the case of the slime thing, I remember it having something really silly. With that inspiration, I flip quickly to the part of the book that Cal defeated one of those things. It sucked because I didn't have a chapter index yet, so finding it was a pain.

While Cal was heading back into the fight, the gel monster started crashing into walls and absorbing organic material like trees and other plants, becoming bigger with each bite.

Once it grew double its size, its appetite expanded to stone and metal things too. It got huge when a full size car became a victim.

“Not my Geep!” June rolled up her sleeve and marched out from behind our cover. “That’s it! Let me at that thing! I'll serve it up at an old folks home!”

“No June!” I grabbed her by the skirt and pulled her back in. “I know it just ate your car, but let Cal handle this.”

“I just finished my last car payment!” June screamed. “And my insurance won't cover giant Gell-oh monsters! Don't ask me how I know that…”

“But, that's such a specific thing to…”

“I said don't ask!” June interrupted.

While we were trying to find a weakness, Cal zapped back in and struck the slime. It was about to tip over onto a large pickup truck, but cal zapped in and punched that four-wheeler out of the way.

The slime fell over him, but using his thunder aura he caught the gelatinous monster, slowly lifting it up into the air. He had a good enough grip on it that he started flying up, keeping it from causing anymore havoc.

“He can fly too?” June questioned.

“He can defy gravity with his electricity powers,” I passively answered, finally finding what I was looking for in the notebook. “I found the weakness!” I cheered, pointing to a page with a big hot chocolate ring stained on it. “Water and ice are the slime’s weaknesses!”

“That’s right!” Cal’s memory was jogged, and he looked around and saw a pool had collected in the big crater where he’d broken a fire hydrant. “Time for a bath!”

He dropped the slime into the pool and made sure to shove it further into the water with a bolt of lightning. The electricity scattered across the liquid, ensuring an even more devastating demise to the slime.

It dissipated quickly into the water, becoming nothing more than a slimy green colored pool of yuckiness.

*Quack! Quack! QUACK!*

Uh… For some reason, a bunch of rubber ducks floated to the surface… Followed by car tires and insulated wires.

“Gasp!” June announced, running over to collect each of the ducks from the slimy water. “They survived!”

“W-what?” my brow raised.

“You know, the ducks I keep on the dashboard. Everyone with a Geep’s been doing it for some reason.”

That really didn’t explain why, but who cared! I was more excited that Cal just saved our lives from a slime monster!

“Cal!” I jumped at him and clung on like a koala. “That was so awesome! You’re so cool!”

Cal blushed, but power posed and heroically accepted the praises. “Fair Aurilia, it was my passion for you that gave me strength.”

“Oh yuck!” June laughed. “Get a room, Auri.”

“Jealous?” I grinned.

June took a look around, noticing all the people surrounding us and trying to record what was going on. All of them seemed frustrated as their phones were unresponsive to their tapping.

“Actually, why don’t we really get a room? We need some privacy to figure out what just happened.”

June was right. Instead of waiting for the paparazzi to show up, we all made a beeline for my apartment and hid in my room.