Casey D. Johnson

Creative Writing Per. 3

Individual Project – Short Story

01/15/00

"So long, you miserable mutts," the ex-soldier yelled. "You’ll never find me now!" With one last evil laugh, Captain Zachary Storm dematerialized in a flash of light. Most of the eight cano-sapiens stood where they were, dumbfounded that the villain had escaped them once again, even when cornered in his own bedroom. However, one of the heroes, a rookie female Golden Retriever named Dawn, ran to where Storm had just disappeared.

While most of the dejected heroes filed out of the chamber, Dawn searched the immediate area. After a moment of searching, Dawn called over the only Rover still in the room; the orange-and-white-furred Shetland Sheepdog named Dervish. "Hey Dervy, why’d everybody leave like that? Aren’t we supposed to search this place even though Storm left? I mean, the manual says we’re supposed to search for clues…"

Dervish knelt down and placed a hand on the pretty Retriever’s shoulder. "Well quite frankly Dawn, we’ve done this before. I mean, once every few months Storm or some other villain will show up and wreak some havoc. Then we’ll come in and fight for a while. We’ll occasionally catch the villain, but usually they escape." Dervish glanced at Dawn, who now had her arms crossed across her chest.

"You’re not answering my question, Dervy-Derv."

"Normally we search the area," he said with a grin, "but we never find anything. Since the other guys saw you searching already, they figured they’d let you do it. It’s not like you’re likely to find anything anyway…"

At that Dawn took on a haughty pose and said, "Well for your information fluff-butt, I have found something." The rookie then quickly pointed to a hole in the room’s carpeting. "See? For one, I found out that Storm shouldn’t have had carpet in here, since he has such nice hardwood floors."

The Sheltie gave her a sarcastic look. "Well I’ll be. You’re right. You know, with insight like that, it’s a wonder we don’t bring you along on more missions!"

Dawn gave a happy smile and exclaimed, "Thanks Der—Hey!"

"Alright Goldenrod. Now, please tell me you found something that perhaps pertains a little more to this mission."

"Fine. If you would’ve let me finish before, you would have known by now!" The Retriever quickly gave a tug on the loose carpet, which revealed a large brown button set in the wooden floor. "See? I found a button!"

Dervish’s eyes widened, and a grin took his muzzle. "Ooo…button!" He quickly reached into his trenchcoat and pulled out his special pair of sunglasses. He put them on carefully, then pressed a certain point on the right side of the sunglasses’ frame. After a moment of looking around the room he nodded solemnly, and muttered, "Well doesn’t that just beat all…"

"What?" Dawn exclaimed. "I wanna see! Let me see!"

Dervish shrugged his shoulders and took off the glasses. He gave them to Dawn and said, "Be careful; it’s kind-of shocking. I’m going to call for somebody to come have a look at this."

With a giggle the rookie said, "Okie doke!" As Dervish walked to the room’s doorway and called out for somebody to come back to the room, Dawn slipped the glasses on. What she saw almost overwhelmed her. The room was now colored in shades of orange, and along the wall a fiercely glowing grid of lines ran to a central, dimly glowing circle. Gasping at the sight, Dawn accidentally took a step backward onto the hidden button in the floor.

Hearing his friend gasp made Dervish whirl around quickly. When he saw the worried look on her face, he immediately assumed the worst. "Let me guess…you were shocked at the sight, took a step backwards and are now pressing the button down with your heel." Dawn slowly nodded. The Sheltie quickly ran over to Dawn and asked for his glasses back.

When he got them and put them back on, Dawn asked, "Umm…was that circle getting a lot brighter a bad thing?" Seeing his jaw drop a bit, Dawn knew something was wrong.

"Yeah, I’d say so, Dawn. That bright circle would definitely fall into the bad things category." Both heroes were standing still in shock and fear as the room’s lights flickered for a second and they both disappeared just as Storm had.

A moment later Dawn and Dervish’s teammate DJ walked into the doorway. "Oh jeez. Another prank from those two, eh?" The mutt sighed and turned around. "Well I’m not falling for another one of these. You two had better get your tails back to RRMC. The Master’s waiting to debrief us." With that, DJ walked off without knowing that his two friends had just mysteriously disappeared.

For an instant that seemed like eternity, the two heroes plunged backwards through a twisting myriad of shapes, colors, and pictures. Swirling images assaulted the duo from all around, and neither knew quite what to make of them. Before the two were overwhelmed, the confusing scene abruptly disappeared. .

Against a now peaceful backdrop of blue sky, Dervish popped back into existence. Rather than appear on level ground however, he made his entrance into reality at an altitude of ten feet above ground. His quick reflexes allowed him to brace himself for the fall and roll safely through the impact.

The Sheltie pulled himself to his feet and coughed a couple of times. After removing his sunglasses and placing them back in his jacket, he realized that Dawn was no longer with him. He blinked in surprise then did a quick turn to make sure she hadn’t landed behind him. Had Dervish been a bit quicker in turning, he might have spotted an interesting sight coming his way. Instead, a small shriek above him diverted his attention.

Dervish quickly came to realize that this was most likely his partner. He looked up, braced himself, and deftly caught the plummeting Golden Retriever in his arms. Dawn was quite confused at this point as to what had happened, where she was, and just how she had managed to stay uninjured from her fall. In order to answer two of these questions, she reached up and brushed away the curtain of golden-brown hair that had fallen in front of her eyes and was obscuring all her vision.

When she could see once more, the smiling face of Dervish greeted her from an awkwardly close distance. She quickly realized that her orange teammate must have caught her, and was now holding her above ground. After recovering from the initial shock, she asked with a grin, "Mind telling me what’s going on here?"

"Umm…well, to tell you the truth, I have no idea. But it seems you’ve fallen right into my arms…"

Dawn blinked.

"…And I’m guessing that what I just said absolutely should not have left my brain and gone into my mouth, and is going to create a very uncomfortable silence between us…"

Dawn nodded slowly and blinked a couple more times. Dervish nodded back in a similarly slow manner. Thankfully, the uncomfortable tension building at the time between the two heroes was abruptly broken by the sudden appearance of a horse into the clearing. The two Rovers’ heads snapped towards the intruder. Over the horse’s back was the slumping body of a man in armor.

The horse, when it saw that it was not alone in the clearing, was quite startled. Not knowing what else to do, it bolted away. The armored man, who was obviously unconscious, fell off the back of the horse and landed with a thump on the ground because of the sudden turn.

Dawn dexterously hopped out of Dervish’s arms and ran over to the man. The Sheltie quickly followed. Even though the man’s chest was shallowly rising and falling, Dawn checked his pulse. When sufficiently convinced that the man was indeed alive, she turned to Dervish and said, "Well, it looks like this guy’s alive and well. Just unconscious."

She turned her gaze back to the unconscious body next to her, and for the first time looked him over carefully. He was about six feet tall, and was covered almost completely with metal body armor. Only his head went uncovered, which revealed a full head of long black locks. His face was long and battle-hardened, but not unkind. Unfortunately, his face was marred by blood, which streamed from a wound on the side of his head. "Kinda cute…for a human, that is," Dawn muttered to herself.

"Mmm? What was that Dawn?" Dervish asked, leaning in closer, then digging a bandage out of his jacket.

The Golden Retriever blinked and pulled a stray hair away from her eyes. "Oh…Nothing. Dervy, what do you make of this guy?" She then snatched the bandage away from her orange partner and began patching the man’s wound.

Dervish licked his suddenly dry nose and replied, "Well I’m not positive on this, but it looks like this bugger’s a knight from medieval times."

It took the Golden Retriever a moment to realize the significance of that statement. "You mean…" Dawn flashed Dervish an astonished look. He nodded in response.

"I’m guessing that button you pressed activated a time machine. That would explain how Storm got away."

"And that funky light show we went through…"

"Was most likely the trip back through time."

Dawn hastily slapped a Band-Aid on the knight’s forehead, then placed her fingers on the chin of her muzzle to think about the situation. "So…if we’re back in time, we’ve got to be careful. I mean, anything we do could potentially ruin the timestream or something."

"You’re just saying that ‘cause you saw it in a movie," Dervish replied with a laugh. Dawn responded by sticking her tongue out at Dervish.

"Well, yeah. But that’s beside the point. Think about it Dervy. What if that movie was right? That means we can’t really do much of anything without changing the future for good?"

The Sheltie cast his eyes to the ground and replied with a sigh, saying, "Yeah, I guess you’re right. That means Storm can change the future, too." Dervish’s brow furrowed in frustration. "Blast! If only we knew where he was headed, we might be able to stop him from changing the future…If he hasn’t done so already, that is."

Suddenly the knight on the ground let out a pained groan, startling the two cano-sapiens. Shutting his eyes tight against his pain, the man managed to say, "The…castle. Must…protect the…king…"

Dawn looked down in shock at the man as he slipped back into unconsciousness. "Convenient," she said, raising her eyebrows.

"I’ll say," Dervish said. "So there’s a castle and a king nearby…That must be where Storm’s headed." The orange hero once again pulled his orange sunglasses out of his trenchcoat and placed them on his muzzle. He tapped a different point on the frames of the glasses then he had before, then began to slowly turn in a full circle. About halfway through his turn, his hand shot out, pointing at some unknown location. "There," he began, "that must be where the castle is; there’s a pretty big heat reading coming from that direction."

Dervish took off his glasses and offered them to Dawn with a sly grin. The female held both of her hands up and pushed the glasses away. "No thanks. Maybe next time, Dervy." The Sheltie laughed and slipped them back into his jacket. Dawn stood up, then glanced back down at the unconscious knight. "What are we going to do now, and what do we do with him?"

"We leave him," Dervish said. "He’s a knight; he’ll be able to find his way back when he wakes up." Running a slender hand through his long white hair, he continued, "As for us, we head for that castle…" With that, Dervish began to walk in the direction he had previously pointed.

"…And?" asked Dawn as she jogged to catch up to the Sheltie.

"And," said Dervish with a sidelong glance towards his partner, "we hope that the movie you saw was wrong about time-travel."

Zachary Storm steadied his outstretched arm and tracked the horse-riding knight across the square. He narrowed his eyes and squeezed the trigger, then put a satisfied grin on his face as he saw the rider hurled off the back of his mount. Storm quickly surveyed the square to make sure no more knights would attack him, then stood up from his kneeling position and holstered his weapon.

"That was too easy," he said to no one in particular. The ex-U.S. military captain turned towards the castle and began walking; he had already wasted too much time dealing with those pesky knights. "Not that I have to worry about ‘time,’ per se, anymore," Storm thought to himself with a cruel chuckle. Still, his fun had taken him over an hour, and the military portion of his mind frowned upon taking any more time than necessary when dealing with enemies.

Storm callously stepped over the sprawled knights in his path. He knew full well that within fifteen minutes they would regain consciousness and rush to the castle to protect their king, —he realized that he would need a force of soldiers to command in this time, so he only stunned them—but by that time he would be the king.

As he walked purposely towards the castle, he repeatedly glanced to his left and right to look down passing alleyways. What he saw made him strike an even more commanding pose as he walked down the main street. In each alley were numerous peasants, all cowering in fear as he walked by. "Oh, it’s going to be good to be the king."

The door to the king’s antechamber flew open as the villain from the future kicked it in. When Storm stomped into the large, well-lit room, the only sign of life he saw was a figure standing with his back turned to him, facing a window looking over the city. Noting the silky red robes, the long, flowing white hair the figure had, and large jewel-encrusted crown that he was wearing, Storm figured that this must be the king. "All the servants must have run away," the villain thought. "But here the foolish king is, going down with the ship so to speak."

The king stood silent and motionless as Storm tromped up to ten feet behind him and stopped. After a moment of silence, the king finally spoke. "I see thou hath finally made it up here…"

Although he couldn’t quite place his feelings of misgiving, Storm somehow knew that something was wrong. Perhaps he recognized a peculiar twentieth-century accent coming from the fifteenth-century king. But rather than dwell on his feelings of suspicion, the villain replied. "Yes," he began with his thick southern drawl, "I have. You know, those knights of yours certainly were trained well…for medieval knights, that is. They almost came close to hurting me."

The king’s shoulders rose and fell in a great sigh. "I suppose thou hath come to take mine own crown for thyself."

"It would be…how shall we put it…beneficial to your own personal health, your highness, to hand it over without any fuss."

"You wish me to hand over my crown…" Saying this, the king reached up to touch the large crown which covered his head. This revealed the king to have a hand covered in white fur. Abruptly the ‘king’ whirled around, revealing himself to be not the king at all, but Dervish in the king’s robes. "Well I don’t think you can have it! I’ve grown quite fond of the thing, you see."

"Rover!" Storm exclaimed, a shocked expression claiming his long face. "How did you get here?"

"Well for one, buttons on the floor are pretty susceptible to being stepped on accidentally. And for two, I figured you’d want to take over something once you got here. Say…a kingdom. What better place is there to take over a kingdom than a castle?" Dervish grinned, then discreetly glanced over Storm’s shoulder to make sure Dawn was sneaking up on the villain as previously planned out.

"Very clever, rover," Storm said, seemingly not noticing that he was about to be ambushed. "But how did you get the king to go along with whatever plan you have schemed up, eh?"

At this, the Sheltie cast a downward glance at the floor in embarrassment. "Well…he…umm…kinda fainted when he saw me, so he didn’t really have a choice in the matter."

Storm laughed. "Not surprising, considering you’re a freak of nature."

The Sheltie curled his lip in a snarl, then said, "Well, at least we ‘freaks of nature’ can protect the world from psychopaths like you." With that sharp statement, Dervish gave a quick and forceful nod in Storm’s direction, signaling Dawn to restrain the villain.

Suddenly, Storm felt two fur-covered arms closing around his head and neck in a hold intended to cut off blood flow to the head and cause unconsciousness. Though he was surprised, his years of military training and experience kicked in and Storm flipped the Golden Retriever over his shoulder, breaking the hold. Dawn landed hard on her back, and was unable to react when the villain quickly pulled out his laser pistol and pointed it directly at her forehead.

"Another one! I should have known that you wouldn’t be stupid enough to try and stop me alone…" Storm tightened his grip on the pistol, preparing to fire. Suddenly the crack of a whip sounded throughout the antechamber, as Dervish used the weapon to lash the underside of Storm’s hand. Flinching from the sting, the villain’s hand moved up ever so slightly and his finger pulled the trigger. The bolt of energy which was fired sparked and fizzled only inches above the Golden Retriever’s head.

Seeing her opportunity, Dawn kicked herself to her feet and abruptly wrapped her arms around Storm’s waist. The villain, not expecting this kind of assault, was too shocked to do react. Dawn jumped, using her deceptively powerful legs to drive Zachary Storm into the ceiling. The hard impact stunned Dawn, who then fell back down to the floor with another hard landing, and it knocked Storm out cold.

Dervish rushed over to the two sprawling forms on the ground, shedding the heavy robes while in transit. "Nice move," he simply said when he got over to Dawn.

"Thanks," the Retriever replied. "For the compliment and for saving my head back there."

"Hey, what are friends for," Dervish said with a grin. He then knelt down and began searching Storm’s prone form.

Dawn pushed herself to a sitting position with a pained expression, then asked, "What’re you looking for?"

"I doubt Storm would have wanted to stay in the past forever, so I’m guessing he must have some device that’ll allow him to return to the future…present…whatever." After a few more seconds of searching, he exclaimed, "Bingo" and pulled out a small box with a button and a red display. The display read as ‘1999.’ "All righty! Looks like we can get back to our time with the push of a button!"

"Just like we got here."

"Exactly," Dervish said with a nod. After a short pause, he turned to the Retriever. "Hey Dawn, what are we gonna do about the people in this time? Won’t they be affected by us?"

Dawn thought about the question for a moment, then answered, "Well, yeah. But nobody except the king ever saw us, and I somehow doubt he’ll go around telling his subjects about some ‘half-dog monsters’ he saw; they’d probably think he’s gone off the deep end…But what about all the people who saw Storm, and all the destruction he caused?"

"Hmm…The people here will probably put Storm’s attack in the ‘acts of revenge by God’ category. Let’s just hope they leave it at that."

"Yeah, that would make sense." Dawn paused and narrowed her eyes when she noticed the thoughtful expression that had taken over Dervish’s face. "So what’s with the heavy thinking all of a sudden? The ‘vengeful acts of God’ category not good enough for you?"

"No, it’s not that, Dawny. I was just thinking…Thinking that maybe we should stay here for a while."

Dawn’s ears perked up and her brow furrowed. "Why do you say that?"

"Well, there’s the nice clean air here…no crime…" Dervish took a deep breath, then grinned. "Cute medieval girls."

Dawn leaned over and smacked Dervish upside the head. "Just push the button, Dervy." Dervish laughed, then did just that. The trio from the future flashed once again back out of existence, headed back for their own time.