Running Away

A short story about a professor running away from a cyborg tiger in a different world.

The air felt like refrigerator air and smelled like Epsom salt. A large tree obstructed the part just in front of Professor Frederick R. Lunary seeming to have fallen in the blizzard the previous evening. 

No problem, thought Lunary. I used to jump hurdles way taller than this back in the training simulators, surely I should be able to make a leap such as this. 

And with that, he leaped with gusto, throwing all his weight into his right foot when it struck the hard icy ground and giving a strong push. Sadly, in all of the excitement of the chase, he had forgotten that he had changed his shoes earlier and was now porting the special Pogo-Shoes that he had invented to sell to the Topographic Institute of Death.

He didn’t usually sell to those guys, because they liked to kill everyone, which, killing everyone, in Lunary’s mind, just seemed a bit pointless. Everyone dies anyway whether you kill them or not so… what’s the point, right? It would just be more natural to let the people die from sicknesses and stuff. If you go and rip out a guy’s intestines and strangle him with them, then it just gets a little weird - especially if he had eaten recently. 

Lunary wondered, not for the first time, why normal people didn’t really seem to understand that, but then, he realized that he was arching through the air, much higher than the treacherous snowy log, like a shooting star wearing a lab coat.

Oh s**t, he thought. I forgot that I had changed into the fricken Pogo-Shoes at the demo meeting and I put so much gusto in my jump that they pogo’d me!

The ground sped by below him as he planned to form a plan to not die soon, only, before he could actually do it, out from the east the green-eyed cyborg tiger launched out from behind the snow ghosts, clearly using his rocket paws on full blast and surrounded by the familiar swirling, fish-eye effect of a powerful gravitational distortion field.   

Instinctually, he performed a wicked aerial twist (also courtesy of his custom training simulations, thank you) aim his the heels of his Pogos at directly at into the face of the approaching silvery beast.

At the moment of impact, Lunary screamed in pain, struck by the odd sensation of his legs shattering like glass, yet, he held his composure, like a boss, and managed to strike the beast just as he had planned. He watched it’s green eyes flash, momentarily bright aqua blue, as his Pogo’s together released a strong burst of stored mechanical energy downward, torquing the front of it’s chassis/body toward the earth.

Lunary himself lost sight of it as he sprung high into the air in a controlled full-extension back-flip with the intention of landing on his feet in the snow in a badass kneeling position, in spite of the fact that it would result in his lab coat getting a bit soiled. Yet, it didn’t quite work out because he ended up landing on some stupid little sharp pebble right in the middle of his right foot that, once again, triggered the Pogo, which had already had time to store up the energy from its previous discharge because he designed it so well. 

Thus, it blasted him chaotically sideways head-over-heals to his left where he randomly encountered a level 7 frozen tree with his face, shattering his both lens of his specialized lab goggles, and leaving him disoriented, wondering if his skull had actually been caved in. Unfortunately, before Lunary could determine the answer, something grabbed him by the boot and started dragging him away. 

He did a half-sit-up and swore seeing the same damn tiger. He knew he had no choice, now.

Reaching into his lab coat pocket, he pulled out his Lead Beacon. Pressing the record button, he yelled, “The Topographic Institute has me, and there this crazy cyborg tiger here so, Ahhhhh! Come save me.”

He configured it to signal any of the Frail Wandering Worker and watched it fly off into the sky like a tiny, phosphorescent, yellow butterfly.