"The Adventures of Captain Knutz" - Part One

 

Part One

            The Kingdom of Morocco was majestic, no matter the dimension of Earth it could be found in the Infinite DC. The one Kara and Mireya came to happen to have one British Secret Service Agent by the name of James Bond. There were many Bonds across the Infinite DC with many faces. All of them sharing the same characteristics and features: tall, muscular, British, and white.

            But the one Kara and Mireya found in this reality was unique – he was a middle-aged black man who reminded them of Stacker Pentecost, an ally from a previous journey. It was difficult for Kara not to fall head-over-heels for him from the moment their paths crossed. He was as suave as his Caucasian counterparts, which made it that much harder for her to resist his charm. This lack of resistance was primarily the reason Kara and Mireya were roped into one of Bond’s assignments.

            An oil tycoon named Sayid Muhammed was the prime suspect in a plot to launch nuclear missiles on North Korean soil, triggering a possible war that could waste the entire earth. The codes to the missiles were kept in a silver briefcase that Muhammed always carried around with him, securely handcuffed to his left wrist. The only way to get close enough to him and the codes was through a Moroccan casino that he managed.

            Being an upmarket establishment, Kara and Mireya had to transform their usual garments into something more upper-class. That meant Kara had no choice but to ditch her signature black hoodie, which she was rarely ever without, for a tight black mini-dress with split sleeves. She felt uncomfortable in it every second. Mireya, by contrast, wore something close to her usual attire. For the mission, she put herself in a striking black evening gown.

            “Stay alert, ladies,” the women heard Bond over their earpieces. He was elsewhere in the casino, opting to split from his female acquaintances in favor of covering more ground. “Muhammed could show at any second.”

            “Right,” Kara acknowledged. “We’re looking for an Arabic man of five-foot-ten with a long grey beard, a white pressed suit, gold loafers, and a gold turban.”

            “How can he even wear a gold turban?” Mireya pondered. “That sounds like it’s putting quite a bit of pressure on the neck…or maybe it’s not solid gold? Could be just the fabric?”

            Kara shrugged. “The heck if I know. The villains in these types of worlds are some weird dudes.”

            “Can I have the gold turban when you guys catch him?”

            Another voice spoke through static over the comms, surprising the three spies. It was supposed to have been a private frequency, allowing no one else to tap into their communications. However, someone did…and it sounded like a ten-year-old boy to the ears of Bond. “Who is that?” he asked.

            “Craig?” Kara recognized the preadolescent voice. “Is that you, lil’ bro?”

            “Honey, how’re you reaching this channel?” Mireya inquired.

            “On my phone,” Craig said. “Ya’ll upgraded it to call through the Infinite DC from my world, remember?”

            “Who is this kid?” Bond asked, increasingly agitated by this interference. “And what’s an ‘Infinite DC’?”

            “We’ll explain later, James,” Kara said. “Craig, could you please call us later?”

            “But this is an emergency!” Craig alerted.

            The urgency in his voice concerned Kara. “What kind of emergency? What’s going on, lil’ bro?”

            “Kara, stop touching your ear right now!”

            She wasn’t sure why Bond told her to do that, until she suddenly found herself locking eyes with a man fitting the description of Sayid Muhammed. “Oh, crud!” she exclaimed.

            “What’s wrong?” Craig overheard.

            There was no time to answer. Muhammed had bolted out of the casino.

            Removing their pumps, Kara and Mireya chased after the tycoon. They assumed Bond followed suit, if he had eyes on Muhammed as well; he must have, to tell Kara not to touch her ear; doing so gave away their position. She felt like an idiot, being so worried about Craig that she failed to remember that she was undercover.

            Her mini-skirt rode to discomforting proportions as she sprinted through the alleys in pursuit of their target. Mireya, on the other hand, might as well have been gliding from the way her long skirt flowed in her own sprints. Kara could have almost sworn that her pace was much faster.

            When she saw Muhammed make a sharp left turn around the corner of a spacious two-story complex, Kara made a risky, last-minute decision. She climbed up the drainpipe that ran along the side of the complex, reaching the rooftop. Darting across the rooftop, she used her Time Lord intellect to calculate the trajectory in which Muhammed would be at the time she leapt over the edge of the roof.

            Her calculations were spot-on.

            Without so much as looking over the edge first, Kara leapt and dropped a good twenty feet down atop of Muhammed. Her bare knee clocked the tycoon across the face, although it felt a little weird to Kara. It was like she wasn’t striking skin but plastic, as if Muhammed was a mannequin. Regardless, it was an effective maneuver that brought him to the ground, unconscious.

            Bond and Mireya caught up no less than a few minutes later, just as Kara used her trans-temporal sonic screwdriver to unlock the silver briefcase. Opening it, she verified that it contained the laptop to insert the launch codes. Once again using her sonic, she rendered the device inoperable.

            “I’m not going to ask how you did that,” Bond said. “I’m just glad you did.”

            Kara smiled, knowing that she impressed the handsome secret agent.

            “Whoa!” She suddenly heard Mireya cry out. Turning to her, she noticed how she was analyzing Muhammed’s unconscious body, which was dissolving right before their eyes. Every portion of him melted, save for his grey beard, gold loafers, gold turban, and white pressed suit.

            “An Auton!” Kara exclaimed in wide-eyed shock.

            “A what?!” Bond cringed.

            Neither Kara nor Mireya knew where to begin in explaining this to Bond.

            The best Kara could do was walk straight up to 007 and deliver a long, passionate kiss right on his lips. It was something that she wanted to do for the longest time, since the moment she arrived in his world. She hoped it would have gone much further than that, but this kiss was not entirely inspired by romance.

            The red shade of lipstick she wore that evening had hallucinogenic properties. She figured it would have been useful in this secret spy mission, but she never intended the target to be James Bond…until now.

            Spellbound from the kiss, Bond looked into Kara’s sparkling aquamarine eyes. “Not that I ever complain about a kiss that good, but what was the occasion?”

            “Just a way of saying ‘Congratulations’ on a successful mission,” Kara said.

            Still baffled, Bond looked away from her and back towards Muhammed’s melted body. “I think something may have been in that martini I drank,” he muttered, clutching the side of his head. “I could’ve sworn I saw Sayid Muhammed melting like the Wicked Witch there, a second ago.”

            “And what do you see now?” Kara guardedly asked.

            Bond went to the silver briefcase near Muhammed’s remains, which he paid very little attention in as he closed the case and plucked it off the ground. “No Muhammed, just the launch codes that are going back to MI6. Not quite a ‘successful’ mission…but I’ll still accept that kiss.”

            Kara blushed as 007 bid farewell to her and Mireya.

            After his departure, Mireya breathed a sigh of relief. “Hallucinogenic lipstick never fails. Remind me to thank Professor Song the next time we see her.” She then pondered, “I wonder how an Auton got all the way out to this dimension. Most importantly, how did it get its hands on nuclear launch codes?”

            “We’ll find out when we comb this world for any others,” Kara organized. “Worst case scenario is that we find the Nestene Consciousness anywhere in this realm. Although there’d be way more Autons, if that were the case.”

            “What about a certain lil’ someone calling about an emergency?” Mireya questioned, her hands on her lips and an eyebrow raised.

            Kara groaned. “One headache at a time, Pop.”

--------------------------

            Relieved to be out of the mini-dress and back into her hoodie, along with a few other street clothes, Kara worked at the console to scan Bond’s world for other Auton presences, using a sample of Muhammed’s remains. Thankfully, the results came up clean, with not a single sign of the Nestene Consciousness on any of the scopes. This was only a temporary relief, however, as there was still the mystery of where the Consciousness operated within the Infinite DC.

            Of course, that had to be shelved in favor of checking up on Craig back in his world. It had been a long time since Kara and Mireya done so, having a few of their own adventures across the Infinite DC – some too dark and too perilous for Craig to be involved in. Such a lengthy time away made coming back feel that more wholesome for the Time Ladies.

            Craig waited for them at the usual spot in the creek – near the hollowed-out tree stump that served as the headquarters for him and his friends, J.P. and Kelsey. With the Type-Z TARDIS’s means of traveling across time and space (in addition to reality), there was no telling how long Craig had waited.

            “He either has the patience of a saint or no time has passed for him at all,” Mireya surmised once.

            As soon as she and Kara disembarked from the ship, they rushed right over to Craig like a pair of concerned mothers. “What’s the emergency, lil’ bro? Has your world been invaded?”

            “Whose butt do we need to kick, sweetheart?” Mireya clenched her fist.

            “Nobody’s,” Craig said. “I called ya’ll because of this.” Taking his phone out from his pocket, he showed them a pic he snapped within a grotto of some kind. Among the space cluttered with collectible action figures and Choco Roll wrappers, there was a pirate sword that looked like it might be part of the collection.

            “You called us halfway across the multiverse for a toy sword?!” Kara gritted, trying not to explode into rage in front of her best friend and surrogate little brother. “Craig! When I upgraded your phone, I did it under the pretense that you’d use it for real emergencies!”

            Seeing that she was angry, Craig struggled to reassure her, “But this is an emergency.”

            “Sweetheart, you know we love you very much,” Mireya told him. “But we just don’t see how a toy can be an emergency. Not unless you’d like one for your birthday, which I’m sure we can—”

            “That’s just the thing – it’s not a toy.” Craig zoomed the picture on the hilt of the sword. “Take another look.”

            Kara did so frivolously at first, but then her focus intensified as she finally saw what Craig wanted her to see. Not only was it a genuine pirate sword, but it was engraved with the signature of one “Captain Knick Knutz.” “Oh…my…gosh!”

            “What is it?” Mireya noticed her wide-eyed look of surprise.

            Taking Craig’s phone out of his hand, a giddy smile manifested on her face. “This is Captain Knutz’s sword!”

            “Captain Knutz?” Mireya knew she heard that name somewhere before. “You mean that wacky show Dale starred in and you grew up on? The one you and Craig can’t stop watching every day in the TARDIS?”

            “That’s the one!” Both Kara and Craig exclaimed.

            “Oh, lil’ bro!” Kara swiped Craig in for a big hug and several kisses across his sizable head (luckily, she removed the hallucinogenic lipstick beforehand). “I’m so sorry that I yelled at you. Do you forgive me?”

            “I will once you stop kissing me!” Craig pulled away. “You promised you’d stop doing that in this regeneration! It’s like being kissed by my mom!”

            “Sorry, sorry!” Kara politely said, gingerly handing his phone right back to him. “Where did you find Captain Knutz’s sword? If I’m not mistaken, that’s Elder Rock, isn’t it?”

            “That funky-smellin’ cave those three hormone-driven teens longue out in?” Mireya identified in disgust.

            “That’s the one,” Kara said. “Captain Knutz’s sword. It doesn’t belong in this dimension, yet it got here somehow. And we need to get it to further analyze it. Which means…”

            “We’re going to the funky-smellin’ cave,” Mireya groaned. “That’s just super.”