Beating a Bully

Cal was going to lose this fight if it went on any longer. There was just too much water around for him to power up his lightning without hurting me, and I wasn’t ready to be fried like a donut.

Actually, I’d be more like a churro, because churros are thinner and healthier.

I had to do something to help him, but what was I going to pull out that’d take on someone I wrote to have boss villain energy?

Wait! I had an idea! Cal fought this guy once before when he went to the lands of Gell-oh. He might not have killed him, but he did beat him somehow… But what did he do?

I flipped through my notebook, hovering over it with my body to keep it from getting wet from the sprinklers.

“Here we go…”

The battle wasn’t too far in, so I started reading. I was even clever enough all those years ago to put little notes off to the side of the page.

“Octo-bar was a sensitive man, easily upset by mocking words and slander.”

That was easy enough. I just needed to bully him to the point that he’d start crying. But why would I put such a silly weakness? Oh, wait, I knew why.

It’s because its exactly how I turned the tables against that bully from middle school. I told him off and called him a lot of mean names, and he started crying like a baby. What was worse, I was the one who got in trouble for it!

Stupid Ms. Dishwater gave me a repo sticker on the good behavior board for it…

“Hey! Octo-bar, your name sounds like a trendy pub for fishermen!” I shouted.

“What!?” he growled, blushing. “My name does not! I’ll have you know, my name translates to Royal Worrier in my tongue!”

See, I knew that was a lie, because I made him after all. The bully I based him off always lied about things to sound cooler. You could really get him yapping if you asked the right question.

“Is that so?” I said. “That’s a really great name. How do you spell it?”

“Well, its A-H-K-D-O-P-B-A-H-R-R.”

Ahkdopbahrr? What the…? I never wrote that in here…

“Your name is spelled stupid!” I gave a hearty laugh. “S-T-U-P-I-D-E! I mean, forget that last E!”

“H-How dare you?” *Sniffle* “My parents were very proud of that name.”

“Aww, why don’t you go home to mommy and cry in her arms about it?”

“Sh-shut up!” *Sniffle* “How would you like it if I made fun of your name?”

“My name’s a hundred times cuter than yours,” I brushed my hair like a snobby teen. “Aurilia. I sound like a mermaid!”

*Sniffle* “Oh-oh yeah? Well, y-you're like a mermaid dried up in the sun! And y-you suck too!”

*BONK!*

Cal got behind Octo while he was distracted and smacked him in the back of the head, knocking him unconscious. He then grabbed him and tied the metal legs of the food court chairs around his arms and legs to bind him up.

Cal made sure to also rip off any clothing articles that might have had slime hidden in them. For his own dignity, or however much dignity a dude running around with gell-oh in his pockets had, we left him in his tighty whities.

“Excellent work, fair princess!” Cal said. “I remember now that I scolded him with something similar during our last battle.”

I was about to smile and accept his congratulations, but honestly, I felt like a real jerk. Making fun of him was great in the moment, and he wasn’t exactly a good person, but I sure knew how it felt to be ridiculed.

Octo woke up not long after Cal tied him up. He blushed and looked away from me.

“W-were are my pants?” he asked.

“At the laundromat over there.” I pointed to a washing machine spinning. “It should get off all those slime stains.”

“Did you make sure to wash it cold at least?” he asked. “My clothes will shrink otherwise.”

Opps…

“I hope you enjoy a new pair of shorts,” I shrugged.

“Darn it.”

Octo was really bummed out. He just looked pathetic. Like, I didn’t feel bad for him that much, but it was enough to at least try to reason with him.

“Hey, Octo…” I said sincerely as I crouched down. “What’s up with you? Why do you want to use slime to cause chaos?”

I never wrote a proper motivation for a lot of my villains. They just kinda were evil for the sake of it. But that had a lot to do with the fact that I really never understood my bullies either.

“I… uh… I was jealous that Cal is your true love…”

“What?!” I looked disgusted at him. “You’re jealous?”

“I’ve always found you quite pretty, princess Aurilia. Being cruel to you was how I showed my affection because I never had the nerve to be honest.”

Holy crap! Somebody actually thought I was pretty?! I-I mean, of course I was pretty! But I never knew people thought of me that way. Could it have been the same thing for that bully?

“Fiend!” Cal grabbed him like a hog-tied pig and tossed him so hard that he went through a concrete pillar. “Nobody should ever harm a woman to show their love! You are truly evil and unworthy of forgiveness.”

“Cal, oh my god!” I shouted, tugging on his bicep. “I mean, you're right, but…”

The longer I looked at him with that wet hair and shiny skin…I-I… Uh… I forgot what we were doing again.

“Do not waste precious sympathy on this middle of a man.” That was Cal’s way of calling someone a ‘beta-male.’ “We should finish this quickly and move on to the next activity this mall has to offer.”

-(^&^)-

We didn’t have any idea what to do with Octo-bar. We did give him his stuff back when his clothes finished cleaning, but he looked like a grown man trying to wear kids clothes now.

“Fair Princess, shall I finish him off?” Cal asked.

“No!” I shouted. “Actually, if we could send him back to his world, that would be better.” I turned to Octo. “How did you even get here?”

He shrugged. “I just woke up here and took advantage of this world's abundance of gelatinous waste. There’s so much of it, and it tastes surprisingly good.”

It was pretty much the same for Cal. Both of them just appeared without much rhyme or reason and enjoyed eating junk food.

“You think there’s a way we can send him back?” Cal asked.

“I don’t know,” I shook my head. “In the meantime, can we keep him tied up somewhere safe?”

The way they imprisoned him before was by forcing him to sit in a bath. I did have a bathtub back home, so that was always an option.

I heard footsteps coming down the mallway. Which was a word I just made up for a mall hallway. I turned and saw it was June, and she looked like Alice exploring Wonderland for the first time, but if Wonderland had a nuclear fallout.

“Please, tell me this mess wasn’t them…” she had her fingers crossed. “Please, tell me I won’t find the two of them standing there like idiots in all this…”

“Hey June,” I waved.

“Hey Auri…” she waved back, and forced a smile. “Say, you didn’t make this mess, did you? Especially when I told you not to destroy the mall. That guy Cal is holding like a freshly hunted dear sure looks suspicious.”

“Eh, yeah… Funny thing about that…” I brushed the back of my head. “People kinda’ went crazy because their phones fried again and started looting. Ha ha! So I guess it really wasn’t our fault in a way.”

“Oh, and why did their phones fry?” June lost her smile and frowned. A single brow raised up on her face.

“Uh…” I pointed to Octo. “He did it. It was all his fault.”

June turned to Cal, suspiciously.

“Yes!” Cal held up Octo like a prize catch. “Blame this slimy fool.”

“Mhm…” June didn’t believe us. That was her, “yeah no” tone. Not surprisingly, I heard it an awful lot…