PRL Serials

“Yo, Z! What you doing in there?” Jordan screamed from the back porch. 

Zacchaeus was at Mavis Turner’s house and he was digging through the hot tamale pot on her stove top. He was looking for the biggest of them for himself, he had already fished out a smaller one for Jordan who was waiting for him on the porch.

“If you don’t get your hands out of my pot, I’ll break ‘em off and throw ‘em in the sauce!” Mavis Turner yelled from behind him and Zaccaheus practically jumped out of his skin. 

“I’m just getting one,” Zacchaeus pleaded, hand still searching. 

“You got one right there on the counter!” Mavis Turner yelled. 

“Jordan on the porch,” he said. He had touched every tamale in the pot and he decided to just grab one before Mavis Turner smacked him with a wooden spoon. 

“I didn’t know Bradly here,” Mavis Turner said and turned her attention to the back door as Zacchaeus carried the two tamales wrapped in paper towels in each hand out of the screen door. “How you doing, Bradly?” she said as she leaned out of the door, sounding sweeter than Zaccaheus remembered she was capable. 

“I’m good now, Ms. Turner,” he said as he ate the tamale. “He had his hands in the pot?” Jordan asked with a mouthful.

“Mmmhmm, and ain’t no telling where his hands been. You know he ain’t wash ‘em before he grabbed them out. I hope it don’t mess up how my tamales taste.”

“It ain’t like I palmed it,” Zacchaeus said defensively. He sat next to Jordan on the porch and he stopped eating long enough to defend himself. “Two fingers,” and he craned his fingers like a picker in an arcade game to demonstrate that he only touched the tamale that Jordan was eating with two fingers.

“It better not be no ass chips or nothing on my tamale,” Jordan said seriously, but the thought of the chips hadn’t stopped him from eating the tamale. “Ms. Turner, these things is so good.”

“I’m glad you like ‘em,” she said graciously “Zacchaues told me you was gone be around this weekend and I had some corn husks the neighbor was giving away so I made you some.”

“Don’t spoil me, Ms. Turner,” Jordan said with a hint of flirtation in his voice, “you gone mess around and have me showing up here sniffing around for hot tamales all the time. You gone get tired of seeing me.”

Mavis Turner laughed with childish giddy. “I ain’t never gone get tired of seeing you. You the only friend this one got that ain’t a knucklehead.”

“Stop flirting with my grandma,” Zacchaeus groaned and nudged Jordan’s shoulder. 

“Boy shut up, ain’t nobody talking to you,” Mavis Turner said. “You going to the Canned Heat while you in town? That five card game been paying out big this month.”

“You know it, tonight and tomorrow. Z going with me, we gone run it.”

“You don’t need me,” Zacchaeus said. “I wanna get on that tunk table. Them fools just so sure I ain’t as good as I am, they don’t respect the skill involved.”

“I need you to help me figure out everybody’s tells,” Jordan explained. 

“No you don’t,” Mavis Turner said and made a dismissive sound by sucking her teeth. “Them fools that been playing ain’t that sophisticated. They always bluffing when you think they are ‘cause they be drunk as fuck and can’t help it. You know when they got something for the same reason. Don’t overestimate your opponents. That can be just as bad as underestimating them.”  

“The fuck is a Minyak?” Zacchaeus asks loudly, even though he is trying not to yell. He stands just behind Issac Washington, the Master of Universal Arcana, and Maria Moreno, also known as Wazad the Wonderful, in the common space of the Guardians’ dormitory. He has been trying to control his emotions since the explosion in the Smiting Chamber that magically blasted them all into another universe and onto this planet called Bludon, and since the very same Guardians who stood before him had tried to attack him and his friends when they arrived there. The Guardians are a sight, Zacchaeus has seen a lot of crazy things since he first traveled to the Fonlands, but the Bludonians are surreal in a different way. They are a race of bipedal, sapient turtles and Zacchaeus can’t help but geek out that there is a planet in the multiverse that is populated by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It is like his childhood dream come true and even despite the dangers that he has encountered, and the fact that the Needy had managed to bring its entire metaphysical being into the Fonlands and is spreading around the caverns of Sakpata’s Disc, Zacchaeus is having the time of his life. He wishes that someone was filming all of this and even though it seems that the Bludionians, who are lead by Maxx the Superguardian (cool ass name) who Raphael must be based on, are currently hostile toward him and his friends, he is determined to make friends of them while earning their respect. 

“He bears more than a passing resemblance to you and your Beefy friend,” Maxx says and Zacchaeus is surprised that he speaks English, then he thinks back on all of his journeys through strange universes and realizes that every strange being he encountered spoke English. 

“It’s the Needy,” Zacchaeus corrects him. 

“Whatever,” Maxx says dismissively, “Goldie has filled me in on your situation and I assume you all will be leaving to return to your home universe.”

“No one has explained what brought us here,” Issac says and he glares at Owuo, the dark-skinned man in the sharp suit and the resting poker face. 

“He did it,” Goldie says, matching Issac’s glare at Owuo, “but he’s not explaining why.”

“Maybe I can cut it out of him with my sword,” Maria offers. 

“Feisty,” Owuo says. “The fates have chosen well.”

“What story are you telling, Owuo?” Issac asks suspiciously. “You do have some grand scheme in all this?”

“Me?” Owuo says and puts the fingers of his right hand to his chest dramatically. “Am I even capable of a grand scheme? Tell me Outsider, who has encountered me and my contemporaries in a different context, what is my purview?”

“Death,” Issac answers, but Zaccheus also knows the answer. He would have guessed it even if Issac hadn’t already told them all before. 

“And you all are protectors of life. Except the Needy, Zacchaeus is trying to make him good, but let’s see how that goes with the Needy mixed with Divine Essence.” Owuo gives a knowing nod to Zacchaeus who realizes that he hasn’t told Issac and Maria that the Needy is now gone from the Dark Universe Earth and now resides in the Fonlands. “True, I brought you all here on purpose, you got me. But know that it was not my idea. Know that I was happy to sit on the sidelines and watch the smiting commence. But I owe a debt that will be paid when I have shown you all what you are brought here to see.”

“Whatever is happening between you, Owuo, and these Outsiders, I think it best that you deal with it in the Fonlands,” Maxx says. 

“And I agree,” Goldie says. “Take us back now, unless the Master of Arcana or Wazad would like to do the honors.”

“We need just a little more time to acclimate to this time space,” Issac admits. “I should be able to do it in an hour.”

“And that should be plenty of time for the thing to arrive. I had hoped to time this all better, but I was ad-libbing in the Chamber. I had to convince you all that everything that was happening was haphazard so that you would not prevent me from bringing you here. Now you are here and when the sky darkens, you will all band together to stop the coming darkness that threatens everything.”

“Superguardian,” one of the Guardians says with exasperation, “why are we entertaining this Fonlander. They only bring trouble. We should send them on their way…”

As the Guardian speaks, the sky begins to darken, as though there is a solar eclipse that gradually blots out the sun. 

“Is that normal?” Zacchaeus asks as they all stream out of the dormitory and onto the lawn to look up at the gathering swarm of black in the sky. “I’m guessing that’s not normal.”

“Is this the Daemon colony finally come to destroy Bludon?” Maxx asks and his body begins to glow yellow with the Superconsciousness. 

“The Needy says that this swarm means death and he will not allow it,” Zacchaeus says and his body is covered in a smoky haze of black. He flies fast into the sky and leaves everyone with him stunned. Even the Superguardian is taken back by Zacchaeus’s speed and he looks to his companion, the Queen Rowen.

“Do you sense death from the swarm like I do?” Zacchaeus hears Issac Washington in his ears as though he wears a communicator, but it is magic. “Not death exactly.”

“A hunger,” Zacchaeus says. “The Needy recognizes it and it concerns him, if you can believe it. The Needy only wanted to consume, but the Fonlands changed him. He says this thing reminds him of…”

“Omega,” Issac says. “I guess there’s one in every universe. Can the Needy stop this swarm? Or contain it so that we can confirm what it is and figure out if the Guardians can blast it away?”

“I’m sure,” Zacchaeus says and he stops, realizing that the swarm is still coalescing in space and he lifts both his hands. Oily black issues from his hands and he creates a barrier between the swarm and the planet that eventually wraps it in a smoky bubble. “This is not Omega itself, but it must be its scouts. I should be able to contain this easily for as long as we need.”

“Good work, Zacchaeus,” Issac says proudly. “We’ll figure out a plan down here. The Superguardian and his Queen Rowen are headed your way. Tell them what you know and find out how the Omega operates in this universe. If there are scouts, there’s bound to be something worse on the way.”

“We must protect the turtles,” Zacchaeus says, and even though he says it as a joke, he means it with all of himself.