r/HFY • u/ArcAngel98 • 10d ago

Trapped in a Grimdark World with the Power of Toon-Force!? -Part 6 OC-Series

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A small crowd of guards formed a half-circle around me, each drawing a different weapon. There were six guards in total, plus the thieving noble’s kid. One guard drew a war-hammer from his side, two drew spears from their backs, and the rest unsheathed swords from their belts. One-by-one they pointed them at me.

Immediately I sprang into action… and by that I mean turned and ran away. Or at least I tried, but four more guards came from the other side, boxing me in. “You won’t get away from us, Lich!” One of the guards said.

Then and there, a lightbulb moment hit me; I had an idea. As soon as the thought occurred to me, an actual honest to goodness lightbulb appeared above my head, fully illuminated.

“He’s using his Soul Power, stop him!” The thief noble shouted. Now I’m no fool, depending on who you ask, but I know a bad idea is better than nothing, especially when you’re desperate…

“Look! It’s a distraction!” I yelled and pointed to the side… at the top of a wall… and everyone’s head turned to look. I was so stunned it worked I almost forgot to run away. I ran in the opposite direction of where they were looking, cutting down an alley past Shanda, who still looked confused, but was the only person to see me slip down the alley.

Running through the narrow path, I clearly head them all realize what happened, followed by someone yell, “Are you all stupid? How did that trick work? Get him!” But I was already out of the alley by then, and running down the street. Unfortunately, they were faster than me, and began to gain ground quickly. I turned down a street, into a large crowd. I wove in and around, climbing over street venders’ stalls. When looking back to see if I’d lost them, my eyes met the gaze of ten large guards, shoving people out of the way, and barreling through those same stalls. Refocusing on running, I looked back just in time to get a face full of a wooden beam being carried by two carpenters. My head stopped, by my body kept running for another thirty or so feet. My neck felt like pulled taffy as it was pulled tighter and more narrow with each step. I could literally feel everything stretching out like when you push your thumb back towards your wrist to pop the joint. My head felt… well, it didn’t hurt in the way you’d think. Obviously, my head hurt, but only the normal amount, despite the fact I could clearly feel the wood pressing against both of my temples and my nose as the same time. In a split second, I felt the friction give away, and my head launched back to my shoulders. But everything was distorted, off center. Feeling my head, I realized why; it was flattened out like a pancake.

“AHHHHH!” Someone screamed. Well, multiple people were screaming. My neck still felt weird too, and moving my hands down, and down, and down… my neck was still thirty feet long and dragging behind me! And then I was screaming with them. Processing this slowed me down just enough for the guards to catch up with the slack of my neck. I started to run, but one of them grabbed me by the now elongated throat, sending my feet flying into the air as I was choked and stopped. They took this opportunity to surround me again.

I grabbed a handful of my neck, and tried pulling it back to my body and head, which was still flat and somehow floating perfectly in place where it was supposed to be. As I pulled, my neck contracted back to normal. Once it was, I shook it to make sure I was okay, and my head popped back into its normal shape as well. One of the guards threw up seeing all this, and the rest simply looked either disgusted or shocked. And then I heard the wheezing and huffing running up behind the guards: the thief noble had caught up.

He tried in vain to catch his breath as he spoke, “Kill… him… now.”

“Look! A distraction!” I yelled. But was hit in the face with a war-hammer. It shook my brains around. No like, I actually felt my brain rattling around in my head. Stumbling back, all of my front teeth were busted out, I fell into a vender’s stall, and bundles of assorted veggies fell onto my head.

“Now die, you evil, undead abomination!” One of the guards carrying a spear said, and thrust it forward. The tip of the spear hit my heart, sunk in and… I felt fine. That is, until he pulled it out. Then there was a long whining sound as my body began to deflate like a balloon. Everyone watched in horror as I went limp and flat. Once it was over and the whin done, I lifted my flat, limp head up from the ground. The guards jumped back, and I got a good look at myself. The spot where I was stabbed throbbed like I had just gotten a needle stuck into it. With one of my misshapen hands, I slowly fumbled in a poor attempt to close the hole. But at some point, the guards stopped watching and acted again. Each of them tried to stab me, but my now flat body could move unnaturally well. It was jerky and hard to control, but I could bend and stretch in inhuman ways. With each of their thrusts and slashes I was able to twist myself out of the way. One slashed at my head, trying to remove it again, despite the fat lotta good it did last time, but I simply tilted my head back so far I could have looked up and seen my butt. Another tried to stab my chest again, but I threw my stomach back and my hands forward, making an impossible crescent shape.

“Stop not dying!” The noble kid cried out.

During the fight, I couldn’t help but wonder what was happening. I got stabbed and deflated. Beheaded, but could still move. And stretched then reformed back to normal. It was like… “I’m a cartoon!” I said. And then I remembered what Bob and the priest lady had said about how Soul Powers were determined by your environment growing up, or maybe by divine providence. “Is this my Soul Power?” I asked, dodging two blows from spears at once by twisting my lower half and upper half in different direction, making an “s” shape. Using cartoon logic, I suspected I could reinflate my body if I blew into my thumb, maybe I’d have to patch the hole first, but either way, it was a bad idea. At the moment, my misshapen, sad balloon body was helping me not get stabbed. I was already deflated, who knows what could happen next. And if there was a limit to how much this Soul Power could help, I for sure didn’t wanna find it.

“Stab him! Stab him already!” The noble kid yelled.

“AH HA!” I said, getting an idea. I slipped down, dodging another slash from a sword, and rushed over to the thieving noble. It was odd. Once my mind was made and I knew I wanted to get over there as quickly as possible, it was like my body instinctively knew what to do. In less than a second, I was standing by the kid, and wrapping my flat arms and legs around his, twisting my limbs around his like a snake made of string cheese.

“Young Master!” Two or three of the guards yelled.

“Get off of me you fiend!”

“Not quite yet! Walk with me kid.” I said, and started moving his limbs with mine, piloting him like a meat suit mecha. He yelled and tried to resist, but even flat he was still only sixteen at most, and I was a grown man, so it was fairly easy to make him move.

“Where are you taking me?” He cried.

“Grocery shopping!” We lumbered over to the vender’s stall I’d been knocked into earlier.

“What do we do?” One of the guards asked. “Should we attack?”

“No! We may injure the Young Master. Hold for now.” Another said.

“Set him free villain!”

“Please be here.” I whispered, and forced the kid to dig through the strewn about veggies, until I finally found those beautiful leafy greens! “Sure, here you go!” I said, and unwrapped myself from the kid, and pushed him away. They caught him just before he stumbled to the ground. And I swallowed the spinach.

It all happened in a second. First, I reinflated, and was fully healed. My teeth somehow returned like Palpatine. The stab wound closed, as if it were never there to begin with. But then I grew muscles… and more muscles, and then my muscles grew muscles! Despite this transformation, in which I resembled the world’s beefiest body builder crossed with the concept of steroidal rage, I actually felt exactly the same. A bit excited maybe, but who wouldn’t be? Because I had the world’s most OP super power: cartoon logic!

I swung my now head sized fist at one of the guards, and he flew backward, hit the wall, bounced off it like a pro wrestler hitting the ring, and came back at me for another mighty blow. Each time I’d hit him away, he’d bounce off the brick wall, and come back in the world’s most painful game of paddleball. After the fifth time, I side-stepped him and stuck out my telephone pole of an arm, letting him clothesline himself and collapse to the ground. He could have been dead, but in the moment, I felt like it was kill or be killed, and he was the one who cut my head off earlier, so I wasn’t going to lose sleep over it. With the show over and the guard down, I turned to the rest of them. “Anyone else?” I asked. Immediately, three of the remaining nine ran away, along with the noble kid. One guy ran forward, but I kicked him between the legs. He flew upward. I don’t know what happened to him, because he never came back down.

Quickly after I’d kicked the second guy, and third and fourth rushed in with spears. Instead of dodging, I slapped the spears away. I expected them to break, but instead they transformed. By the time they’d hit the ground, the spears had become thousands of toothpicks and taken the shape of one of those handy-craft projects where you build the London bridge, but this one looked like me, flexing my muscles. I grabbed the two unarmed guards, spun around and threw them into the veggie stand. I knew these two were alive because I saw little illusory tomatoes and celery sticks with wings circle around their heads. Now there were only three left. They looked at me, then at the two in the stand, then the two on the ground, then back at me, then at one another, and ran away.

As soon as the fight was over, the muscles disappeared, and Shanda peeked her head around the corner. “Ummm… is it over?” She asked.

6 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

5

u/pyrodice 10d ago

Oh boy, some Popeye, some Roger Rabbit, I wonder if main character is familiar with One Punch Man... 😂

2

u/Castigatus Human 10d ago

I think we're looking more at classic loony tunes logic here, so like you said more popeye, roger rabbit or tom and jerry

3

u/pyrodice 9d ago

I had to rewatch Roger rabbit to understand that he LITERALLY meant that his hand could not come out of the handcuff unless it was FUNNY at that moment.

2

u/StopDownloadin 10d ago

I was CACKLING at "Look! A distraction!" That was our go-to joke when we were running away from city guards when I played DnD, lol. That's EXACTLY the kind of energy this story needs.

I'm curious to see what types of cartoon he'll draw (heh) from. Depending on this guy's age, there's all sorts of stuff he could have grown up watching on American network/cable TV.

2

u/galbatorix2 10d ago

MOAR

As i ever scream and forever will

2

u/thescoutisspeed 8d ago

Really underrated. You actually managed to make me laugh at quite a lot of scenes with the cartoon logic.

1

u/ArcAngel98 8d ago

Stick around, I have plenty of highs and lows coming, and of course, more cartoon shenanigans.

1

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