The Secondary Saga

[Mickey Mouse]

This post is rated M for some graphically violent scenes, specifically in regards to violence against animals. If you don't like that, please don't read or be extremely mindful when reading. Thanks.

In the eyes of the angry ape, the hunter saw his soul.

* * *

Mr. Clayton had a sister. Miss Clayton, if you will.

In actuality, her name was Mary, and on this day, she looked more beautiful than the hunter had ever seen her. She stood before her mirror, her white wedding gown barely scraping against the floor. Clayton leaned against the opposite wall, watching as she gussied herself up one last time. He’d dreaded this day for as long as he could remember, but it had finally come—by the end of the day, Mary would no longer be Miss Clayton; she would be Mrs. Muntz.

It seemed like fate. Charles Muntz had been one of Clayton’s closest friends for as long as he could remember. Certainly, they had seen so much of the world together—from when they’d met in college, the pair had gone on adventure after adventure together. The chance meeting of Charles and Mr. Clayton’s younger sister had occurred during one of their more relaxed adventures, and needless to say, the pair hit it off almost immediately. By the end of the trip, they were as thick as thieves, and anyone could guess what direction the relationship headed in. Of course, Charles practiced only the most perfect, civilized courting customs; never once would you catch the adventurer touching Miss Clayton in the wrong way, or making unseemly advances toward her.

So, on this day, Clayton found himself all too happy to see his little sister marrying his best friend. He had always wanted the best for Mary, and could see no better option than for her to marry the man he trusted most—the man he’d trusted with his life on more than one occasion. Yes, this arrangement would be incredible all around, he was quite sure.

“Does it look alright, Billy?” Mary asked, gesturing to her veil. It did not look alright; in fact, it sat quite lopsided on her head.

“Let me take a look, darling,” Mr. Clayton smiled, crossing to the bride-to-be and gently turning her to face him. As he adjusted her veil, he gazed down into his sister’s eyes until her gaze rose to meet his. The crystal-blue eyes that sat just beyond her lids looked at him with a mixture of hope and dread. She loved Charles, that much was certain, but she had never lived outside Clayton’s shadow. Since the day she’d been born, he had protected her, like a mother ape protecting her babies. Soon, he wouldn’t be able to any more.

Once the veil had straightened, Clayton’s face became overwhelmed with a sudden sense of joy. At last, his lovely little sister looked like a perfect bride—just like he’d known she would. “You look absolutely beautiful, Mary,” the hunter smiled, a certain redness flushing over his cheeks. She did look beautiful. Absolutely.

She blushed, too. “Thank you, Billy,” she giggled, and brushed past him toward the door. “I suppose it’s almost time to start, hm?” she asked, spinning around and grinning at her brother. She seemed a bit hesitant; perhaps, Clayton thought, she wanted to enjoy her last moments of freedom, before she got shackled (willingly, of course) to Charles for the rest of her life. The hunter dusted off his tuxedo and followed her.

“Almost,” he smirked, reaching up and cupping one of her cheeks in his hand. “I truly wish you the best wedding in the world,” he gently caressed her face, relishing this moment when he could look on Mary as just his baby sister and not as Mrs. Mary Muntz, “and I do hope you enjoy the venison—I went out and shot a doe just for you. Tried to get her baby, too, but alas, no luck.” Mary pouted the slightest bit.

“She’ll do, I’m sure,” she frowned. “Dear me, Billy, always so violent.” She laughed again.

Clayton pulled his sister’s face close to his chest and leaned down, planting a kiss on her forehead before meeting eyes with her once again. “Don’t let Charles get you into too much trouble on your honeymoon, alright? I won’t have that.”

“You worry too much about me,” she shook her head, “The place is called Paradise Falls—how much trouble could we get into?”

With another tiny chuckle, she swept out of the room. “You could fall?” he called after her, but she was gone. He sighed—she was right. He truly did worry too much about her, and now she would be in Charles’ capable hands. Nothing would happen.

The door swung shut behind her, and Clayton smiled.

* * *

“Charles, please,” Mary protested as her husband stormed about the parlor of their little cottage, tucked away in the hills of the English countryside. “I was there. I saw it. I know it was real, you don’t have to convince me, I believe you.”

“As do I,” Mr. Clayton added, puffing a bit of smoke out of his pipe.

Nothing would dissuade Charles Muntz from his rant, though. He slammed the newspaper down on the table in front of Mary.

“Look at it, Mary,” he oozed frustration, “Look at it.”

She read the headline aloud. “Museum of Natural History accuses famed explorer Charles Muntz of faking one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time,” she read. Clayton could’ve recited it along with her; Charles had forced him to read the article time and time again. It went on to say that the skeleton Charles had brought back from his honeymoon voyage to Paradise Falls was not, in fact, that of a giant, new species of exotic bird, but rather common dinosaur bones that Muntz had put together in a new configuration, to try and pass himself off as one of the world’s premiere explorers. Mary had supported Charles’ claim that they had seen live versions of the birds all over Paradise Falls, but the fact that they’d been unable to capture one of the live specimens seemed to discredit their findings.

“They’re calling me a liar,” he snarled, leaning close to Mary’s face. The former Miss Clayton slid backward in her chair, separating herself from her angry husband. Meanwhile, over on the sofa, Mr. Clayton kept a watchful eye on his long-time friend. His bouts of anger over this whole situation had grown the slightest bit worrying, and not at all like someone of his manner and status. He was showing no class.

“I know you’re not a liar—Billy knows you’re not,” Mary bit back, “Isn’t that enough for you, sweetheart?” She stepped toward him, reaching out to touch his face, but he quickly batted her hand out of the way. The force of his slap knocked Mary to the ground with a shriek, and Mr. Clayton stood almost immediately in his seat.

Charles stood frozen for a moment, not completely sure that he’d actually been the force behind the slap that had sent Mary to the ground. “I—I’m sorry, Mary,” the adventurer stammered; he looked over to Clayton. “William, I—” he started, but the sound of a loudly barking dog broke through the tense air and distracted him for a moment. Clayton’s icy stare remained fixated on the distracted Charles, who eventually returned his attention to the situation at hand.

“Perhaps you should see to your pup, Charles,” Clayton offered.

Charles Muntz turned and disappeared into the kennel.

* * *

Clayton burst through the door to Charles’ and Mary’s little countryside cottage, shotgun at the ready. “Oh, good,” Charles said upon meeting him at the door, “you brought firepower—we’re going to need it.”

The adventurer led Mr. Clayton into the back garden, where somehow or another, a few of his crazed dogs had been released and were wreaking havoc. In his madness, Muntz had decided to make a return voyage to Paradise Falls—a voyage he planned to not return from until he had caught, alive, the exotic bird that so many now accused him of never having found at all. In order to effectively capture it, Charles had taken to training more dogs to help him on his quest; the results had varied. Some of the pups had turned out fine—well-trained hunting dogs, the lot of them. The rest of the group had gone mad from the training; overtly violent and completely unreliable, Muntz had kept them all locked away until he had time to euthanize them all, but sometime that day, the whole lot had escaped their pens.

Mary’s garden was an absolute wreck. As the pair of men lumbered outside, Clayton with his shotgun and Charles with a machete, shreds of green and various different colors of flower petals flew like confetti through the air. The dogs were not difficult to find, and one by one, the pair of men put them out of their misery. The bang of Clayton’s shotgun was accompanied by the squish of Charles’ machete; one after another, the men bested the beasts, working together to take them down until they had just one left.

“Here, puppy,” Clayton called out as he worked his way through the mess of vines and plant life his sister had worked so hard to grow. Too bad, he thought, that it had all gone to waste thanks to these vile creatures—he scoffed a bit at the thought; he’d never liked animals all that much to begin with, and this just added wood to the fire.

That was part of the reason he had taken up hunting in the first place, if he were being completely honest. Since he’d been just a little tyke, he had always seen much more value in other humans than animals—the creatures were unnecessarily violent. He’d had a particularly scarring experience with a snake in his backyard when he was very young. The good doctors said that if the creature had bitten him, he might have died. Clayton couldn’t understand why the thing had lunged at him in the first place—after all, it had slithered its little body into his property, so truly the serpent was the one trespassing.

How dare it try to take out Clayton on his home turf? It seemed so… insolent. And that, he had long decided, was the root of the problem. These creatures were so undeniably idiotic that they had no sense of when they were invading on the grounds of another. They so freely took what they wanted, without so much as a considerate thought toward who they might be stealing it from. Take these dogs, for example—he wondered if they even had any clue how much hard work his sister had put in this garden. How much work had gone to waste because of them.

Of course they didn’t. They were foolish. They were embarrassments to God’s creation and Clayton felt no remorse about wiping them off the face of the planet one by one to be someone’s meal or someone’s decoration. Or just for fun, sometimes, as he had gotten into quite recently. Mary had never particularly liked his hunting hobby, but she had especially not liked the fact that he had recently gotten into killing for fun; but Clayton did not mind his sister’s disagreement. He had always let her live her own life of cotillion and balls and being a perfect lady, and he had always had his own life, his honest mission to better the human race by destroying others.

Besides, at the end of the day, it all came down to her. She was his life force. She kept him tethered to his humanity, and he needed to feel like he was creating a better world for her. And if that better world involved dead dogs, so be it.

Suddenly, she screamed.

Clayton spun around, his shotgun at the ready. There the last dog was, clawing his way on top of Mary. The girl fought and beat at the beast with her tiny little hands, but it soon became clear that she was losing this battle. Scrapes appeared through rips in her dress, and crimson blood oozed out, staining the pristine pink fabric of her gown. Up ahead, Charles stood gawking, wondering what the bloody hell to do.

“Here,” Clayton tossed the shotgun to his friend. Charles dropped the machete and caught the weapon handily, and the hunter surged forward, running to try and wrestle with the dog—

BANG.

A single shot rang out, and the squeal of a rabid, angry dog taking its last sad breath echoed in the air. The beast slid off of Mary, rolling onto the ground in a pile of gored flesh. Blood seeped out from different bullet holes in the creature, pooling up on the ground around it and mixing in with that from Mary’s own bullet wounds—

…bullet wounds? Clayton’s gaze turned to his sister, who had not only gashes from the dog’s teeth and claws littering her body but also holes where shotgun shrapnel had pierced her pristine skin. A guttural howl escaped Mr. Clayton’s throat.

Behind him, Charles Muntz could only stare. His wife lay—basically in pieces—on the ground of her garden, that she had spent so much time and put so much work into over the past few years while he had locked himself away, preparing himself for their return voyage to Paradise Falls. Their return voyage so that he could prove, once and for all, that he was the greatest adventurer of all time.

Clayton scooped his sister into his arms. Not a single breath remained in her, no moment for her to choke up a good-bye as the life drained from her veins. The shotgun’s fiery blows had brought her to death’s door in an instant, and now her eyes carried a sullen emptiness as she hung limply in her brother’s arms, dripping blood into the green grass beneath her. Mr. Clayton, for the first and only time in his life, openly wept, his tears dripping onto her lifeless body. Perhaps, he thought, some of his tears could wash away the blood. He would discover that that would not be the case. No matter how much he sobbed, there was always more blood.

When the water in his eyes had been almost drained, a fire lit up within them. His gaze turned to where Muntz had stood, but the greatest adventurer in the world had made the greatest escape since Harry Houdini himself. Clayton’s shotgun laid on the ground, sparkling in the persistent light of the afternoon sun.

But Charles Muntz had already begun his second voyage to Paradise Falls.

* * *

He released the hefty body of the female ape.

She crashed to the floor of the Swamp of Sadness, looking altogether nothing like his sister save for the similar wounds; she, too, had several gaping holes where his shotgun had pierced her, and her skin was ripped in various places, although they looked more like victims of a machete slicing than a dog bite. Probable.

The hunter spun around in the fog to see the whole conglomeration of them gathered around him, encircling him and their dead brethren. He took a few steps backward before realizing that he should be stepping on the dead female; a quick glance down revealed that her corpse had disappeared entirely when he’d looked away from it. He glanced back up at the gathered crowd, and suddenly, the pieces began to fit.

He nodded to himself. “The Swamp of Sadness,” he said aloud, “…so none of you are real at all. I suppose I look rather ridiculous.”

Still, despite the fact that he knew the apes were just a mirage, one of the Swamp’s illusions, he could not help but feel that the yellow-eyed stares they gave him were very, very real. They stared deep within him; they had pulled out memories that he had not dared think on in what seemed like forever. Certainly not since he had arrived in the Omniverse—no, he’d left all hopes of finding Muntz behind when he’d gotten here. Certainly the odds of that despicable man—the man who’d murdered his sister, accident or not—having been pulled into this strange new universe with him were zero to none.

A part of him had always hoped, though.

His memory flitted back to that day. He remembered laying his sister down and scouring the house for Charles, to no avail. He remembered checking the kennel to find the troop of well-trained dogs gone, and then reading in the papers the next day about how Charles’ famed aeroplane, The Spirit of Adventure, had taken flight for a return trip to Paradise Falls.

He had made his own trip there, of course. Meaning to find Charles and show him the proper punishment for what he’d done. But by the time he’d made it to Paradise Falls—by the time he’d gathered up enough resources—the man had disappeared, nowhere to be found, sucked in by the remote locale’s mystery. Clayton would never know this, but Charles Muntz would have no human visitors until fifty or so years later, when an old man and a young boy would fly a house into Paradise Falls using balloons. He would never catch his exotic bird.

So, in the absence of finding Charles, Clayton had devoted his life to becoming the best hunter in the world. The more he practiced, the more he felt he would one day find the man who had murdered his sister. Perhaps if he was even better at being the best hunter in the world than Charles was at being the best adventurer, one day he’d catch up to his old friend. That hope died a little bit when he’d gotten to the Omniverse, but hunting still motivated him—after all, with folks like the Empire willing to pay a pretty penny, it turned out to be a very marketable skill. And it was still practice—the possibility of cashing in on all that practice was smaller, yes, but it was practice nonetheless.

And this… this was the perfect test. Faced with the hardest hunt of his life… the hunt for a bloody god. Nothing else would matter if he could take Omni and wring the creature’s neck, and then bring him to those bastards at the Empire. As long as they’d agree to let the hunter hang the god’s smirking countenance on his wall when they’d finished, Mr. Clayton would deliver.

“You justify your violent nature with this?” one of the apes said, regarding the memories that had just played out before their very eyes. Hmph, Clayton thought, Talking apes.

“No,” he stated simply, “I justify the hunt. Violence has always been a necessary tool.”

“You manipulate, you lie, you push people,” the ape responded.

“Violence of a different sort,” Clayton shrugged, “Hunting is a game. To win the game, I have to convince the other players to lose. To do that, sometimes I have to twist literally, and sometimes I have to twist figuratively. You understand.”

The apes conferred with each other, but Clayton did not know why. They were figments of his imagination—mirages conjured up by the mystical powers of this swamp. They had tried to bring him to heel with images of his sister, but they didn’t realize that he already saw her every moment of every day. They didn’t realize that she had fallen victim to every single person he’d killed, every single animal he’d slaughtered. He’d written ‘murderer’ on their face, made them complicit in her death, and with that in mind, he felt no remorse.

And he never would.

“We cannot let you pass,” the lead ape said. The group clustered together in his path. Mr. Clayton scoffed.

“Move out of my way,” he ordered, “Now.”

The apes shook their heads. “No,” another one said, “You must stay here until you have been swallowed by your grief. Then, and only then, may you climb out of it.”

Clayton smirked. “I feel no grief,” he replied flatly, removing his shotgun from his shoulder.

He clicked in the little round object he’d found months before and aimed it for the spirit that stood at the head of the pack. The shotgun let out a loud bang and the bullet sailed through the body of the leader ape; as he fell back, the rest of the mirages washed away, lost in the misty air of the foggy swamp.

“I feel only vengeance.”

The hunter lifted his chin, his gaze looking at the clear path that lay ahead of him. At the end of it, he saw Charles Muntz reflected in Omni’s toothy grin. At the end of it, he saw victory.

Used: One-Shot Kill Shotgun Shell