"Love and Monsters Redux" - Part Six

Part Six

            The following day, Giles rushed into Kara’s TARDIS and alerted, “Something’s wrong with him!” Kara and Mireya already knew who he was referring to, wasting no time in following Giles to Elisa’s bathroom. There, they saw Elisa with the Amphibian Man, who was wheezing in the tub, as if he were on dry land.

            Craig brought up the rear with Bryson and Hellboy, also taking notice of the Amphibian Man’s condition. “He doesn’t look so good,” Craig indicated.

            “But why?” Bryson asked. “He’s in water.” His point was further emphasized as Elisa poured some of the bathwater onto him, to no avail.

            “He needs to return back to his natural habitat – the ocean,” Kara proposed.

            Giles placed his comforting hands upon Elisa’s shoulders. “You understand what she’s suggesting, honey? You’ll have to let him go.”

            Elisa gave a slight nod, a tear falling from the corner of her left eye.

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            “STOP IT!!! JUST STOP IT!!!”

            Zelda’s pleas fell on deaf ears.

            Strickland and Krasko turned most of her lovingly decorated, humble home upside down. Porcelain sparrows, adorned on the walls, were shattered by a book that was tossed from the bookshelf before it was also knocked over. Everything was in tatters, except for the TV set and the Barcalounger, which was still occupied by Zelda’s husband, Brewster. He opted not to get involved, keeping half of his attention on the set.

            “It’ll all be over as soon as you tell us what we want to know, Zelda!” Krasko cackled, taking great pleasure in the chaos.

            Strickland, on the other hand, was on the verge of collapse. His blackened fingers were wrought with pain, strained from all the ransacking, which was all Krasko’s idea. “Just tell us where it is, Zelda,” he huffed.

            “I don’t even know what ya’ll are talkin’ about!” Zelda cried.

            “The thing in the lab!” Strickland found his second wind through his swelling rage and impatience. “Where is it?!”

            “I’m sorry, Mr. Strickland,” Zelda whimpered. “If I knew anything, I would surely tell you, but…”

            “Would you?” Strickland hissed. “Perhaps you would, if you knew exactly what was at stake. If you knew that all can be taken from you…if you were to – out of some misplaced loyalty to a traitorous friend – be untruthful.” He advanced threateningly on Zelda, his sanity declining. “I read your file, Zelda…Zelda D. Fuller. The ‘D’ is for ‘Delilah,’ right? Like the Bible?”

            Zelda was quivering. “Y-Yessir.”

            “Delilah…she betrays Samson…lulls him to sleep, cuts his hair. The Philistines torture him, humiliate him…burn his eyes out. Turned him into a thing. Samson then asks God for the strength he needs and, at the last minute, he is spared. For Samson is a good man and a man of principle, and the Lord gives his strength back to him…one last time. And he holds the columns of the temple with his powerful arms and crushes them, bringing the whole building down on the Philistines!”

            As Strickland recounted the biblical tale, he used his blackened fingers as a metaphor, gripping them and ripping them loose, much to the disgust of Zelda and even Krasko. He tossed the fingers towards the stove in Zelda’s kitchen, landing them in a skillet that already had brussels sprouts and bacon frying on it.

            Now missing two fingers, Strickland’s hand bled profusely, prompting him to tear away the cleaning towel from Zelda’s hands and clamp his hand, gauzing it. “Now, do you know what that story means for us, Delilah? It means that if you know something you’re not telling me – either before or after I bring this particular temple down upon our heads – I am, for the time being, the true plight of the Negro!”

            Krasko smirked, relishing every moment in seeing this side of Strickland. A psychopath after my own heart. He wanted to see what would happen next, hoping Zelda would continue withholding information. That was until Brewster finally stood up and caved, “Gal done stole that thing right out of the lab! Whatever it is! I hear her and those white women talking and talking, and I have made my mind about it!”

            They all glanced at him, surprised that he spoke.

            “Thank you for your assistance, Mr. Fuller,” Krasko saluted. He then looked to Strickland and ordered, “Let’s go. We got what we need from these people.” Both men walked right out of the house, right out into the pouring rain of the night.

            With the file they also had on Elisa Esposito, the men knew right where to go – a movie theater downtown. Once Krasko pulled up to it, Strickland dashed out of the car and into the building straightaway. Krasko tried to get him to wait up for him, but his calls were drowned out by the rain.

            The inside of the building was a basic, rundown theater that threw Strickland off initially. He had the idea of checking the upstairs portion, which proved beneficial, as he heard voices coming from one of the rooms.

            “Where’s the nearest shore we can take him?”

            “Elisa’s been planning to take him to the docks, so that’s where we’re going.”

            Strickland knew those voices – they belonged to the two “alien” women.

            Kicking the door down, he found the perpetrators in the apartment, with the black monolith that was also stolen from the lab. However, as Strickland well-discovered, a door had opened on the monolith, leading to a much bigger space inside – the confines of some sort of alien spacecraft. “How 'bout that,” he said in a hushed, amazed tone. “Krasko was telling the truth.”

            He saw the female aliens and their young negro companions helping Elisa load the Amphibian Man into their spaceship. “Freeze!” he demanded, holding them at gunpoint.

            Kara and Mireya held their hands up, shielding their friends from Strickland’s line of sight. “Please don’t shoot, Colonel,” Kara beseeched.

            “Like I’m gonna listen to some alien witch!” Strickland barked.

            “Now you believe us,” Mireya scoffed.

            “I didn’t buy it at first, when Krasko told me, but the proof is right there,” Strickland nodded to the TARDIS. A confident grin developed on his pale, unraveling face. “I bring all you freaks in and General Hoyt will happily reward me…might even get me a medal from that commie-lover Kennedy himself…and I just might tell him to—!”

            WHAM! Something hard clocked over the back of Strickland’s head, dazing him.

            Kara and Mireya saw that it was Giles, who stepped out of his apartment to lend a hand with the Amphibian Man but did even more than that. “Nice work!” Mireya approved. “Now, c’mon! Get in the TARDIS!”

            Enticing as it was, Giles waved them on. “Go,” he urged. “I’ll be fine.”

            “We’re not leaving you here with him!” Kara motioned to the stunned Strickland.

            “Oh, he won’t be a problem,” Giles boldly claimed.

            “That’s what you think!” Before they knew it, Strickland made a fast recovery, firing a shot right in Giles’s lower abdomen.

            “NO!” Kara roared, rushing up on Strickland and kicking him in the side of the head, knocking him out cold while Mireya quickly caught Giles, who was staggering from his fatal gunshot wound. She unbuttoned his suit jacket and white shirt, which was already stained with his own blood.

            Kara and Mireya brought him into the TARDIS, dematerializing it out of Elisa’s apartment afterwards.

            Krasko ran in at the exact moment he witnessed the ghostly outlines of the black rectangular solid fade out of existence. Seeing the unconscious Strickland, he grabbed a glass of water from the kitchen sink and splashed its contents right across the face of Strickland. Crude as it was, it was an effective method in bringing the colonel back around. “Rise and shine! Tell me you know where they’re headed.”

            Coughing and hacking out water, Strickland glared at his partner and confirmed, “As a matter of fact…I do.”

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            Giles was grateful that his last moments would be spent inside the technological marvel that was Kara’s TARDIS. The alien décor around him took his mind off the agony of his gunshot wound. Everyone crowded around him, speaking all at once and trying their best to save his life. “Don’t…worry about me,” he said, but his voice was too weak to carry over all the others.

            In his blurring vision, he could see Elisa weeping over him, signing for him not to die. He wanted to say something that would dry away her tears, but in his current state, the right words were lost on him. Not that it would have mattered, as the Amphibian Man crawled to him, taking Giles’s hand and placing it on his own head while tenderly holding Giles’s head. With his other hand, the Amphibian Man placed it onto Giles’s gunshot wound.

            Suddenly, Giles felt a strange tingling sensation come over his abdomen, as well as his scalp. The Amphibian Man’s body glowed in correspondence with the sensation and, before Giles knew it, the pain was gone…and so was the gunshot wound!

            “Oh, my!” Giles gasped, sitting upright and feeling thirty years younger.

            “He healed you!” Craig exclaimed.

            “It would appear so,” Giles said, stroking his fingers across the area where Strickland had shot him and feeling only baby-smooth skin.

            Unfortunately, the Amphibian Man didn’t fare any better. Whereas Giles was rejuvenated, the creature was faltering more so than before, collapsing beside Giles. “I think he used a bit of his life force in that healing,” Kara surmised. “We need to get him to the ocean now.”

            She dematerialized her TARDIS to the docks that Elisa had in mind. The night rain was coming down hard, soaking everyone as they stepped out of the ship. It had quite a profound effect on the Amphibian Man, who regained much of his strength in the thundershower. He looked at the cold, dark murky waters of the canal and let out a quiet, heartbreaking whimper, moving towards Elisa.

            “Go…Alone…Without Me,” she signed.

            The creature stood in the rain, streaks running down his face and cheeks like tears.

            Mireya wiped away her actual tears that were mixed in with the rain. “This is so sad,” she sniffled.

            “Yeah, really tugs at the heartstrings,” Hellboy dismissively said. “Can we go?”

            Kara shook her head at him. “Well, you’re all heart,” she ridiculed.

            “Hey, as a fellow monster myself, I sympathize with the guy,” Hellboy admitted. “But there are bigger things that we need to—”

            BAM! BAM!

            The Amphibian Man’s back exploded in a cloud of blood as he dropped to the ground. The gunshots they heard came from behind the group, turning to see Strickland and Krasko, the former’s gun aimed on where the Amphibian Man was standing.

            “These guys are really tickin’ me off!” Hellboy growled, returning fire with his oversized, four-round revolver – the “Good Samaritan” – that rang louder than the thunderstorm with every shot he took on Strickland and Krasko.

            The two men took cover behind some crates. “Demon’s got a gun now?!” Strickland griped. “What next?!” As he exchanged gunfire with Hellboy, he noticed that Krasko was struggling to react. “What’s the matter, kid? Lost your nerve?”

            “No,” Krasko grunted. “That’s not it.”

            “Then help me out here!!!” Strickland demanded, yet Krasko still struggled to respond. “What’s the matter with you, Krasko?!”

            Distracted by his partner’s sudden cowardice, Strickland failed to see the recovered Amphibian Man advance on him. He tried to fire again, but the chamber was empty, and there was no time to reload the gun. The creature, its bioluminescent markings ablaze, snarled on the petrified Strickland.

            “Knew I should’ve brought the prod” were Strickland’s final words before the Amphibian Man, deploying a claw from one of his fingers, swiftly and calmly sliced Strickland’s throat. Down Strickland went, bleeding clear into death.

            A horrified Krasko looked on, still motionless.

            He waited for the creature to do the same to him, but it merely stood, looking on him. “What’re you waiting for, you bloody freak?!” Krasko challenged, dropping the American accent he kept around Strickland, in favor of his natural English accent. And yet, the creature remained unmotivated to kill him.

            “Hey,” a woman’s voice beckoned out of Krasko’s line of sight. He turned to see Kara looming over him, hands confidently rested on her hips. “Sup?” she teased, right before she knocked Krasko out cold with a right hook.

            The Twelfth Gladiator relished in her act, but not for very long.

            “Elisa’s been shot!” Giles alerted the group, cradling Elisa’s frail body in his lap. Sure enough, she had a hole in her red coat, courtesy of a stray bullet from the gunfire traded between Hellboy and Strickland – a bullet that was in her chest.

            The Amphibian Man went to her, embracing her tenderly.

            Elisa’s eyes still held enough life to meet with his, caressing each other’s faces.

            Lifting her from Giles’s care, the creature carried her to the edge of the pier, jumping into the water and disappearing together.

            “They’re finally together,” Mireya smiled.

            “Yes…I believe they are,” Giles concurred.

            Mireya glanced at him, amused to see fragments of hair starting to grow from the elder gentleman’s previously hairless scalp, exactly where the Amphibian Man touched him earlier.

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            Krasko awoke with a loud snort after an unspecified amount of time being unconscious. His clothes, soaked from the rain, had completely dried. His hands were tied behind his back. He found himself in quite an uncomfortable position, sitting on the floor of an alien spacecraft – Kara’s TARDIS. “So, this is what they look like on the inside,” he observed.

            “Take it all in…because you won’t be seeing it again.”

            That advice came from the platform across the room. On it stood four individuals – the young, attractive blonde in the black hoodie, the demon, and two black kids. Each of them looked on Krasko with great contempt. “Krasko, was it?” the blonde questioned.

            POW! A sucker punch came in from the left, striking Krasko’s face with enough force to draw blood from his mouth. He spat it out, leaving a red splatter on the clean, polished floor. He saw that his accoster was the other woman, who nursed her hand after striking him.

            She would’ve unleashed another had Kara not said, “No! He can’t tell us what we want to know with a broken jaw.”

            “She’s right, luv. Let’s play another time, eh?” Krasko made a kissy face at Mireya, sickening her. Resisting temptation to strike him again, she settled on shoving Krasko’s face. She joined at Kara’s side, both women folding their arms authoritatively. “So, what would you beautiful girls like me to tell you?”

            “For starters, why a Stormcage escapee from the 52nd century would be in 1962 Baltimore in a parallel universe?” Kara asked.

            “You did your research, eh?” Krasko gave a flattered grin.

            “Mass murderer with a death tow of over 2,000 people?” Mireya detailed. “Yeah, I tried not to vomit as I read it. Though I did enjoy the part about you being subjected to rehabilitation. That neural restrictor installed in your brain prevents you from harming or killing any living being…also makes it easier to kick your butt.”

            “You didn’t answer my question, Krasko,” Kara asserted. “Why are you here in the Infinite DC?”

            “It’s not like I had any other choice than to come here,” Krasko said. “I ran into another one of your people – The Doctor – when I was in Montgomery, Alabama during the Bus Boycott. One of her friends left me trapped in the past. I tried to get back on track with the little tech I still had with me. And then, one thing led to another, and I ended up in…What did you call it? The Infinite DC? Or whatever it is. I detected your TARDIS in the area, but I could only get close enough to it by pretending to be a government agent. I figured your ‘magic’ ship could bring me home.”

            After he finished telling his story, Mireya pulled Kara aside and whispered, “Think we should take him back to Stormcage?”

            “Nah,” Kara shook her head. “I know a perfect place for a racist animal like him.”

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            Kara brought her TARDIS to the headquarters of the Spartans Interdimensional Police Force, an elite squad that enforced stability across the omniverse, with the Infinite DC falling in their jurisdiction. As such, Kara knew their unescapable and impenetrable prison facilities on the ecological moon of an undisclosed dimension to be just the place for a criminal like Krasko.

            The B.P.R.D. was their next stop, returning Hellboy to his proper dimension.

            He walked out of the TARDIS and into the halls of the top-secret base, this time able to differentiate it by the bureau’s insignia (a hand mightily gripping the hilt of a sword), engraved on the floors. “I’ll keep an ear out for your future self,” he told Kara, who saw him off with Craig at her side. “Although I’m surprised that she hasn’t reached me by now.”

            “She will,” Craig reassured the big, red demon. “Neas never forgets a friend.”

            Kara smiled and lovingly rubbed his head for the kind words.

            “Good point, kid,” Hellboy winked. “Take good care of this one, will ya?”

            “I’ll do my best,” Craig promised.

            With Hellboy returning to the world he had been away from for so long, Kara and Craig returned inside the TARDIS and back into the Infinite DC. “Oh, I figured out who your Valentine is,” Kara claimed upon departure.

            “Y-You did?” Craig stammered.

            “Mm-hmm,” Kara confidently hummed. “It’s Kelsey, ain’t it?”

            “Kelsey?! No! Ew!” Craig retched. “It’s Wildernessa!” His hand instinctively covered his mouth after blurting out his Valentine’s identity. He then noticed the knowing smirk Kara gave him and realized, “You tricked me into saying it was her, didn’t you?”

            “Mm-hmm,” Kara hummed again. “I wanna know everything, lil’ bro.”

            Craig groaned in annoyance, outsmarted again by his big sister’s Time Lord intellect. “Man! When am I gonna learn?!”