Return of the Nightmare Beam

Super C here. I think I know now what was causing Leo the Patriotic Lion to have that bad dream about Wildcat City separating and becoming its own stand-alone nation. Yet it was all I could have expected; old nutso fatso is at fault once more. Bendraqi once before had used a specific beam of his with a five-year-old raccoon as the guinea pig. Instead of hypnosis, the beam ensured the one asleep would have bad dreams, and sometimes they would have the same dreams repeatedly. In both cases, the raccoon and Leo had the bad dream only once, but the memories of it were vivid, and could easily be made into a 400-page novel. (Leo didn’t bother to write anything down; he’s already had quite a few books published. Some are on his field of expertise, percussion and marching music, and others are books expresses his outspoken and sometimes outlandish opinions on his intolerance of technology and what’s it done in terms of those using it are nothing but lazy. This doesn’t apply to everybody, just a specific group of people. He’s bashed everything and everybody from our culture to the morons elected to run our government. Those were his words, not mine.)

“I should have known it was Bendraqi’s doing again,” he said to me today as we flew off to battle old nutso fatso. “And boy, am I in the middle of a decision. I mean, I’m not going to bellow for reasons we’ve stated already, but I’ve got the perfect set of choice words for him.”

“Don’t say it,” I advised. “Just do your duty in fighting the battle. Actions speak louder than words, after all.”

“Indeed they do. All I have to do is show up and a miracle occurs. Russia was the exception, but I had no choice; they wouldn’t have listened to me unless the walls came tumbling down. No wonder there are those world leaders who call me ‘the great lion of the heavens’ or ‘an angel sent by God.’ Frankly, I’ve never been called that before.”

“I don’t remember anybody calling you that, but we can ask Chuong and his friends when we’re done here.”

“Good idea.”

Our friends in the Lionmobile arrived, but while Crush and T2 kept a positive attitude towards things, it wasn’t so easy for Cripto. “Did it get you, too?” I asked my number one recruit.

“If the ‘it’ was Bendraqi’s nightmare beam he used on that raccoon a long time ago, yes,” Cripto replied with tears in his eyes, reaching for a tissue so he could blow his nose.

“That same beam gave me the horrible dream of Wildcat City separating from the nation because we could not handle all the outside hatred,” Leo put it. “What was yours, soldier?”

“Zanta tearing me apart after whatever I said angered him, and Gamma kicking me out of the D-19.”

“That’s impossible,” I objected. “That won’t happen in real life; you’re one of the seven princes of heart.”

“Of course. Still, I can’t bear the thoughts of it wanting to haunt me. But I wonder something. What do all these dreams have in common? They’re all based our personal fears. Aren’t they?”

“That’s a thought,” said Leo. “I had a fear Wildcat City would split apart if it ever would, and it all would be my fault, because I have the biggest mouth. That’s what Bendraqi wants me to think. That’s what Lucifer down below would want me to think, but I’m not bellowing so that I don’t go to hell and hear him gloat over me.”

“We can’t lose you for even one day,” I said. “We can’t lose Cripto either.”

“I may be the only female and the first G-52, period,” D.W. added, “but I got nothing on you two.”

We arrived at the base and let Boomcat blow up the front door to begin the battle. As always, it caught Bendraqi and his goons off guard since they were so lame and predictable. I led Leo and Cripto into the main control room so we could confront Bendraqi, and Leo dared not say one word the whole time we were in there. “So how do you like my latest creation?” Bendraqi gloated.

“We don’t, stupid!” Cripto shouted.

“Then you’ll love this one!” Bendraqi laughed as he enveloped us inside a bubble. Within minutes, we were prisoners. Yet whatever seemed to be on our minds became a clear picture, so we made sure we threw Bendraqi for a loop by thinking of positive thoughts and not the negative ones he expected. Leo made sure he kept himself positive by thinking of patriotic music and symbols. The rock songs playing in Cripto’s head became images of the correct music videos. I watched my favorite sports teams win big.

“AUGH!” Bendraqi exclaimed, banging his head against the wall. “What’s going on here? Those idiots are supposed to be scared of what they’re seeing!”

“Keep it up,” I advised. “And soon we’ll get out of here.”

“I can do that,” Cripto smiled. His imagination went to good use and soon a hole appeared in the bubble, eventually leading us to slip out of it and bring our feet back on the ground. It was by now our friends all finished dealing with all the goons. Super Slash wasted no time charging in and pouncing on Bendraqi, tackling him like a football player. This allowed Crush and T2 to trash the beam with T2’s methods. (The color allowed him to strip them with wire strippers, which Cripto summoned for him.) All the while, Bendraqi struggled to get the tiger of terror off his big fat body, and by the time he finally did, he pushed Super Slash into the wall, leading his power ring to hit the self-destruct button.

“Why did I ever install that?” Bendraqi griped as we dragged him out of the hideout, well before its explosion in a flaming burst of crimson and orange lead the island it was on to sink all the way to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. It had sank before, as Bendraqi knew how to resurrect sunken islands. Thunder Fox and Magnocat threw him back in Alcatraz before we began our journey home.

“Phew,” Cripto sighed. “That’s over. Now perhaps we’ll have better dreams tonight.”

“I sure hope so,” Leo added. “Especially me. I’ve had wild ones before, but never as wild as that.”

“That has been something I wondered about myself,” I said. “What causes dreams? Why do we have them, good or bad?”

“Amazing how our imaginations come up with these things, isn’t it, Commander?”

“It is. Was this separation dream the worst one you had?”

“No, ironically. The worst I ever had was one I thought of on my own. It was in 1977, at the end of my successful campaign, successful mainly because of the music of the Krieglandonians adding to the powerful effect. I was basically stripped of my citizenship and kicked out of the country, which is one thing I’ve heard people who hate our current President want to happen.”

“He can’t be deported. He’s a citizen.”

“There’s debate about that, too. But let’s not think about it. America’s still in great shape. And he cannot take any credit for it, even if he wants to, for it wasn’t him or anybody who bailed us out. It was Cripto.”

“Even if it was by a freak accident of my powers,” Cripto put in. “I was 15 when it happened. I was 16 when that second freak accident brought all those cartoon and video game characters to life and put them in the real world. Now the real world is getting way more cases than they can handle of what literature calls ‘deus es machina,’ where a problem that’s impossible to solve is suddenly solved by a miracle.”

“That’s been happening, all right,” Leo agreed. “You’ve got the powers to make that so. The global paranoia of my huge voice that will continue forever is also making that happen; I simply show up and the scene changes for the better, since the world leaders I’ve met think I’m there to condemn them, and I’m not. Sure is mind-boggling.”

“I think we should just continue out the day,” I suggested. “That will get our minds off this.”

“Good idea.” By now we arrived back home and we all went to swap wardrobes for casual wear before reuniting to eat lunch, and since we had eaten at Maximum Mighty Melt the night before, we chose to go to the newest Zaxby’s that just opened up, and it was proving to be very popular with the public. The TVs all playing coverage of soccer games and the dangerous sport of drag racing helped us to relax and think about something, and as always, we all had a good time talking to each other and just being friends.

That night, I’m happy to say, Cripto and Leo both had much better dreams, and woke up the next day both feeling inspired to write music based on the dreams; Cripto for his rock band, Furry Fury, and Leo for wind ensemble.

THE END

---

 chuong is Chuong and  16weeks is Zanta. All things UN1024 and D-19 are their ideas and are used with permission.