Back to Alveus

Back to Alveus is the eleventh episode of Cyberpunk. The previous was Revelations and Revolution, and the next is Now or Never.

Story
Joe, the Alvean chief of police, dragged his feet into his office at the police station after yet another night with no sleep. Arthur, his son, was still out looking for the fugitive SpongeBryan, and he hadn’t given Joe a call on his wristphone in over a week. Something inside Joe was telling him that something was wrong, that something terrible had happened to his only son. He didn’t have time to investigate, however, because of a recent string of robberies in the Upper Ring. Most of the items lost in the robberies were laptops, food, and furniture, and it was of grave concern to Joe, whose job was already on the line after the fiasco with SpongeBryan.

Joe started to look through the details of the cases again, hoping he’d catch something he missed, when the lights in his office shut off.

“What the hell?” whispered Joe.

Joe walked out of his office and found that the lights in the entire police station were off. He walked out of the station and found that the lights were off everywhere.

“A blackout,” said Joe. “Perfect.”

Suddenly, Joe heard a thundering of footsteps, and the thought dawned on him: If there was no electricity, what was keeping the prisoners in their cells?

Joe turned around and saw a stampede of convicts heading right towards him. Without thinking, he turned back around and ran, pressing a button on his wristphone to contact the mayor.

“Oh no!” cried Joe. “There’s no signal!”

Joe tripped on a rock, twisting his ankle and sending him straight into the seabed. He tried to get back up, but the pain in his ankle was too enormous, and he fell flat on his face again.

“Well,” said one of the prisoners as he caught up with Joe. “Look what we have here.”

The rest of the prisoners surrounded the defeated police chief and took various sharp objects out of their pockets. They looked down at Joe with menacing smiles on their faces.

SpongeBryan was only a few feet away from the Upper Ring of Alveus, flying there with rocket boots courtesy of Cyclops and his mutant army, who weren’t far behind.

“Look at our work,” gloated Cyclops. “I assembled a team of hackers from all parts of the Lower Ring to figure out a way to disable the town’s electrical and wireless grids. Now that we’ve succeeded, there’s nothing that the Establishment will be able to do to stop us. This war is ours!”

The mutants cheered. SpongeBryan reluctantly joined them.

“Here’s a good place to land,” said Cyclops. “See those stout trouts gathering in the middle of the street there? I say it’s time we show them their executors.”

The mutants cheered again and dove through the shallowing water. SpongeBryan lingered above them for a second then quickly followed.

The crowd of Upper Ring denizens continued to grow, and as it did, they became more agitated.

“What the hell is going on?” said one fish in the crowd.

“It’s the end of the world!” said another.

“People, people, please.” Cyclops lowered himself in front of the crowd, with SpongeBryan and the mutant army at his back.

“Who are you?” said someone in the crowd.

“What are you?” said someone else.

“My name is Cyclops, and I have all the answers you want, though you might not like them.”

Murmurs trickled through the crowd.

“For years, our kind has been oppressed by you all,” said Cyclops. “For years, we’ve done nothing about it. That ends today.”

Cyclops took a firecracker out of a bag he had strapped to his shoulder. He pressed a button on the firecracker that ignited it immediately, and he threw it through the window of a nearby house. SpongeBryan recognized the house as once belonging to Old Man Rogers. He shielded his eyes as the house exploded in a colorful commotion of debris..

“This is what will happen to all of your homes,” Cyclops announced to the crowd. “And none of you will live to tell anyone about it.”

“No!” came a shriek from the crowd.

A female fish with a baby in her arms struggled out the crowd.

“Please,” she said. “You can kill me, you can kill all these people, but please spare my child. He’s done nothing to deserve this.”

Cyclops stared at the woman for a moment then struck her with the back of his hand. She fell to the ground with a swelling cheek, still clutching the baby in her arms.

“None of you will live!” repeated Cyclops. “You all must atone for your sins against the common man!”

“Coward!” came another cry from the crowd.

“Who said that?” roared Cyclops.

“I did.” The owner of the voice revealed himself, and SpongeBryan couldn’t believe who it was.

“Octhomas?” blurted SpongeBryan.

“You two know each other?” Cyclops said, moving his head back and forth between them.

“Yes,” grunted Octhomas. “He’s paid many a visit to my house. I never thought you’d be working with terrorists, SpongeBryan! I thought you were just a petty thief!”

“You will respect our leader!” screamed Cyclops.

Octhomas laughed. “Is that what you’re calling him?”

Cyclops pulled a laser gun out of his pocket and pointed it at the cephalopod’s forehead.

SpongeBryan jumped in front of him. “No!”

“Why are you protecting that insolent worm?” snarled Cyclops.

“Can’t you see?” said SpongeBryan. “You’re treating these people exactly the way they treated you, the way they treated your mother.”

SpongeBryan pointed to the woman with the swollen cheek. “That baby she’s holding could have been you.”

Cyclops reddened with anger. “How dare you compare my mother to those bottom feeders!”

“Well, it’s true,” asserted SpongeBryan. “Look at all you’ve done! All the destruction you’ve caused! Can you really say that you’re better than them?”

“You’re starting to sound like your starfish friends.”

“My starfish friends were right! This whole thing is going too far! You, all of you are becoming the monsters you’re fighting!”

Cyclops pocketed his laser gun and addressed the mutant army.

“I think we know what needs to be done here,” he said. “All in favor of impeaching SpongeBryan and re-appointing me as leader of the insurgents, raise your hands.”

Every mutant in the army raised his hand except one.

“I’m sorry,” said Cyclops, turning back to SpongeBryan. “But you are no longer our leader. And as the new leader, I order that you leave this city and never return!”

“Fine!” SpongeBryan ripped off his uniform and threw it to the ground. “I never wanted to be a part of this stupid revolution in the first place!”

With that, SpongeBryan ignited his rocket boots and flew into the distance. The mutant that didn’t vote to impeach him snuck away from the rest of the army and flew off after SpongeBryan when he was sure that the others wouldn’t notice him.

Pat and Ron, their arms and legs tied together by strong rope, were sleeping in a dark cellar under the insurgency’s headquarters. They were awoken by the sound of the cellar door opening.

“Huh? Are you letting us go now?” asked Ron..

“Don’t count on it,” said the guard before throwing another prisoner into the cellar and closing the door.

“Hey, Pat. Hey, Ron,” said the prisoner.

“Jim Carpfish?” Pat and Ron said at the same time.

Jim laughed. “Yeah, it’s me.”

“What are you doing here?” asked Pat.

“Well, during yesterday’s waking hours, shortly after Electric Man left his boat with you two, I managed to hop out of the boat and roll into a deep trench a couple of yards away. I rubbed the rope around my arms on a rock at the bottom of the trench in the hope that it’d be able to cut through.

“After about an hour of rubbing, I heard some noises near Electric Man’s boat, and I peeked out of the trench to see what it was A pair of weird-looking fish started going through the boat, looking for me, and I heard one of them mention that I’d get them and their ‘boss’ a lot of money. Hearing that, I knew I couldn’t trust them, and I ducked back into the trench. Once I was sure that they were gone, I started rubbing on the rock again, and I was almost completely through the rope by the time the weird-looking fish came back.

“This time, the fish were determined to find me. They looked around the boat until one of the fish found my wallet. I didn’t even realize that it fell out. Surprisingly, I didn’t hear any other noises after that, and once I was sure that the coast was clear, I started rubbing on the rock again.

“It took another hour, but I managed to get all the way through the rope. With the restraints around my arms gone, I was able to pull the towel out of my mouth and untie my legs without much difficulty. Climbing out of the trench, I saw that the weird-looking fish were sleeping in Electric Man’s boat. They had apparently figured that I’d come back for my wallet and fell asleep patrolling from the boat. I actually spotted my wallet in the back seat of the boat, and like the idiot I was, I decided to try and retrieve it.

“I tiptoed to the back of the boat and reached for my wallet, but my legs had been tied together for so long that I was barely used to standing on them, much less leaning. Basically, my legs gave out right as I got ahold of the wallet, and I fell onto the top of the trunk with a loud clang. The fish woke up, and I tried to run away, but my legs were still weak, and the fish caught up with me easily. They threw me into the trunk of a different boat, and then they drove here, where they had me thrown into this cellar. Guys? Guys?”

Pat and Ron were asleep.

“I don’t think they liked your story,” said a different voice.

Jim yelped. “Who said that?”

“Don’t worry,” said the voice. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Jim followed the voice to a corner of the crowded cellar, where Sam, looking several years older than when Jim last saw him, sat with a gloomy expression on his face.

“Do Pat and Ron know you’re here?” inquired Jim.

Sam nodded. “They didn’t really want to talk to me. So I left them alone.”

“How do you know I want to talk to you?” Jim said with as much coldness as he could muster.

“You seem like you would talk to anyone right now.”

Jim sighed. “You’re right. I just never wanted things to be like this. I escaped to Insulam so I could have a new life, and now my old life is coming back in the most unpleasant of ways.”

“I know how you feel,” said Sam. “I took up this bounty hunting job so I could be away from home as much as possible. What with all the celebrity pressure and having a son who-“

“Wait,” interrupted Jim. “How did these mutants manage to capture you in the first place? Don’t you have that superpower that lets you shoot electricity from your hands?”

“Not anymore. They used this strange device on me that got rid of all that. Now I’m just as much of a useless cripple as I was before I got that ‘superpower’.”

“Strange device? Oh no. That must be the electrosonic raygun that somebody stole from my dad’s company.”

“Electrosonic what now?”

“An electrosonic raygun. It combines sound waves with electromagnetic energy to create a beam powerful enough to defeat you in combat. My father had it made with the intention of getting the Pacific Ocean’s enemies to bid on it, but I managed to talk him out of doing so, and he had it stored in the company vault from then on. Right before you kidnapped me in Insulam, I read in the news about an important weapon being stolen from the FutureWorks headquarters. From the description, I knew it was the raygun.”

“So, the one-eyed freak must have known that he’d be facing off against me. He said something, right after shooting me with that electrosonic whatever-you-called-it: ‘When you’re at war, you leave no stone unturned.’”

“Well, he sure didn’t.” Jim looked up at the cellar door, worry lines developing on his forehead. “He sure didn’t.”

SpongeBryan floated in the sky, staring into Alveus from just outside its city line. A pair of fins tapped him on the shoulder, and he recoiled in surprise, seeing a fish with four arms floating next to him.

“Wh-who are you?” SpongeBryan stuttered.

“My name is Wally. I’m with the insurgency.”

“What are you doing out here?”

“I just wanted to let you know that I agree with what you said about us going too far. I joined this army thinking that we could do some good for this city, and all we’ve done is cause more pain and devastation. I’m ashamed that I didn’t desert earlier.”

“So you aren’t with them anymore? You quit?”

“That’s what I’m saying, yeah.”

“Good.” SpongeBryan turned and started speeding off.

“Where are you going?” asked Wally, catching up him.

“I’m flying to HQ to free my friends. Even if they did betray me, I’m not going to be a jerk and do the same thing to them.”

Wally sighed. “I know what it’s like to betray somebody. My father is locked up, too, and I was so angry at him for abandoning me that I didn’t even try to help him.”

“Who’s your father?”

“You probably know him as Electric Man.”

SpongeBryan gasped.

“My dad was always in the public eye,” Wally continued. “And he always had to hide me. I guess he was embarrassed to have a mutant son. One day, he just decided to leave me and my mother and take up a career as a bounty hunter. We never saw him again. That was three years ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. We were drifting apart, anyhow. I moved to the Lower Ring a year ago to be with other mutants, and that’s where I heard about the insurgency. I thought it’d be a good way to reform our broken system, but had I known how they wanted to go about it, I would have never joined.”

SpongeBryan looked at his watch. “We’re getting closer to the HQ. Once I free my friends, I’ll figure out what to do from there.”

“Well, the public execution of the Upper Ring-ers won’t start for another 8 hours or so. Cyclops wants everybody in the Lower Ring present for the ceremony.”

“Then we won’t have much time.” SpongeBryan pressed a button on both of his rocket boots. “I’m putting these babies on overdrive.”

Wally did the same with his rocket boots, and both of them hurtled for the headquarters, steadying themselves with their hands.

Jim was the first of the prisoners to see the light enter as SpongeBryan opened the cellar door.

“SpongeBryan?” Jim rubbed his eyes. “SpongeBryan! It is you!”

“What’s this about a sea lion?” Ron muttered as he awoke.

Pat was already awake. “Not sea lion, you idiot! SpongeBryan!”

SpongeBryan pulled Pat, Ron, and Jim out of the cellar, and Pat and Ron embraced him with all their might.

“Listen,” said Ron. “About what happened at the police station…I was drunk, and-“

SpongeBryan cut Ron’s apology short. “It doesn’t matter. We have bigger things to worry about now.”

Wally peered into the cellar. “Dad?”

Sam looked up from his corner of the cellar. “Wally?”

Using a sudden burst of strength, Sam grabbed the edges of the cellar’s doorway and pulled himself out. Wally wrapped his arms around his father’s neck, and Sam couldn’t stop the tears gushing from his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” choked Sam. “For everything.”

“I know,” whispered Wally.

SpongeBryan poked at an unconscious guard on the floor with his foot. “These guys won’t stay knocked out forever, so we should probably leave. I’ll explain everything on the way back to Alveus.”

SpongeBryan, Pat, Ron, Jim, Sam, and Wally rushed out the headquarters. SpongeBryan climbed into the jet-boat situated just outside the HQ and beckoned for the others to come in with him,

“I hope I remember how to do this,” SpongeBryan said as they piled into the jet-boat.

SpongeBryan pushed his hometown’s coordinates into the boat’s touchpad, and a millisecond later, they were gone.