Book 1: Covered
It was raining again.
I walked outside anyway and let the rain fall on me.
I saw other people outside too, but they had umbrellas.
One person walked up to me and said, “What are you doing!?! This rain is deadly!! Here! I have a spare umbrella, so use it!” and she handed me the umbrella.
I opened up the umbrella and held it above me, even though the rain couldn’t hurt me because I was from another planet and this rain wasn’t harmful to me like it was to most humans.
But I wasn’t supposed to let them know about that, because they would supposedly run experiments and whatnot on me.
But would they?
I mean, what if they were kind like the person who had just handed me an umbrella had been?
Then I saw my girlfriend Pru walking towards me with a furious expression on her face.
“You could’ve been exposed, you miscreant!” she said in frustration, “How many times have I told you that not all humans here would value your personal liberty like I do?”
“You’re right…” I sighed, and then I added, “Do you wanna come over to my place for a bit and get cozy by the fire?”
She got a happy look in her eye, and said, “Sure!” and then followed me over to my house and we went inside.
When we reached the fire though, there was a man sitting there already who was snacking on a doughnut.
“Oh,” Pru said in an interested tone of voice, “I didn’t know that you had a friend over! Hello, Ru’s friend!”
“I wish that he was my friend,” I said worriedly, “but this looks like the Dreaded Doughnut Dropper to me, and he’s certainly not our friend…”
“The Dreaded what?…” Pru asked uncertainly; and the man smirked and said, “It’s good to know that at least one of you knows about me! I’m supposed to be feared across the multiverse!, and that only works if enough people know who I am!”
“So what’s your deal?” Pru asked curiously, “You’re a villain who eats too many doughnuts or something?”
“My deal is that I capture miscreants and bring them to my rehabilitation center so that they can go through the program and change for the better! Some call me a miscreant though, and I don’t really care because even if I am I’m still bringing justice to lots of miscreants who 100% deserve it! Muahahahahahahahaha!”
“So are we miscreants?” Pru asked, “I mean, is this the plan? Capture us and make us go through your program?”
“Yup, that’s the plan,” the Dreaded Doughnut Dropper said cheerfully, “though I’m having to rest in here for a little while because some of that rain outside hit me. This is really strange, because I’m virtually indestructible, or so I thought. What happened here that made the rain get so toxic?”
“Environmentalists warned and warned and warned that modern technology was putting toxic fumes into the air that our planet couldn’t handle,” Pru explained, “but did humanity listen? Nope! And the worst part is that far too many humans are STILL putting those toxic fumes into the air! I mean, wouldn’t it seem like the rain itself becoming toxic to us would wake all of the miscreants who are still putting those horrifically high amounts of fumes into the air stop their villainy!? But, nope, they blame cows or some such nonsense. Like, cows are just munching on grass and whatnot, and it’s humanity who has been putting all of these unprecedented amounts of toxicity into the air with a lot of our unhealthy technology!”
“Sounds like there’s enough miscreants on this planet that I should just turn your entire planet into a new rehabilitation center,” the Dreaded Doughnut Dropper mused, “and I think that that’s what I’m going to do.”
“No!” I said in a panicked tone of voice, “Humanity is starting to turn things around already! We don’t need your help!”
“Well, you personally clearly don’t, you miscreant.” the Dreaded Doughnut Dropper said interestedly, “I mean, I saw you walking out there without an umbrella for a bit. Why are you able to do that when that rain’s toxic even to me?”
“I’m from another planet,” I admitted, “and for some reason I have an immunity to the toxic rain.”
“Hmmm…” the Dreaded Doughnut Dropper mused, “If I were a cynical person I’d say that you want for this world to get more polluted so that people from your planet can move here and have another planet to rule. Am I wrong?”
“Of course you’re wrong!” I said indignantly; and then the Dreaded Doughnut Dropper began eating another doughnut and said, “If I was wrong then you would be taking the problem on this planet more seriously. You know what? I think that you might just be the biggest miscreant on this planet! Muahahahahahaha!”
“Just because he doesn’t want this planet to be turned into a “rehabilitation” center by a villain like you doesn’t mean that he’s a miscreant!” Pru said angrily, “You’re just projecting your villainous sickness onto him!”
“Excuses, excuses; the miscreants always have excuses, lol.” the Dreaded Doughnut Dropper replied with a chuckle, “If only lie detectors weren’t so famously unreliable then I could prove my accusations to people, but instead I just have to go with my gut. And my gut says that you and your boyfriend are a couple of miscreants! Muahahahahahahaha!”
“How long do you think that it’ll be before you recover from the toxic rain and get back to normal?” I asked; and the Dreaded Doughnut Dropper shrugged and said, “Hard to say, since this has literally never happened to me before. I’m going to have to have a special suit built for when I make this planet into a giant rehabilitation center so that the suit can block the rain from doing this to me again. But it should be pretty easy to get the suit designed, and then I’ll be able to do whatever I want here! Muahahahahahahaha!”
“And what if we were to capture you and prevent you from doing that?” Pru threatened; and I quickly said, “Not a good plan, unfortunately, Pru. He’s got a powerful team of villains who will find and free him, and then things will just go even worse for us because of what we did!”
“But isn’t that what we’re supposed to do with villains?” Pru demanded, “Shouldn’t we lock them up!” and she quickly got some rope out and tied the Dreaded Doughnut Dropper up.
“There we go!” she said once he was unable to break free from his bonds, “Now where do we put him?”
“We could lock him in the basement and then build bars and a jail door in there too, but I’m telling you that this is going to go badly for us.” I said in an exasperated tone of voice.
“Your miscreant boyfriend’s actually correct about this one” the Dreaded Doughnut Dropper said boredly, “but by all means proceed with this doomed attempt to lock me up in prison for all of eternity. It’ll be all the more satisfying when all of your efforts are proven to have been just a bunch of miscreant silliness. Muahahahahahahahaha!”
“We will indeed proceed!” Pru said firmly, “And how do you even know that you’ll recover? Maybe it won’t even happen at all!”
“Oh, he’ll recover.” I said unhappily, “He’ll be back to capturing people by hurling a bunch of sticky doughnuts at them sooner or later, and even if he somehow doesn’t his villainous team would still find us and capture us. This is a doomed capture attempt, just like he said it is.”
“And where’s your crystal ball?” Pru asked dismissively, “Because surely you must have some ability to tell the future, right? Or how else would you be so confident?”
“I don’t need a crystal ball to know that the Dreaded Doughnut Dropper hasn’t come this far just to be captured forever by us,” I explained, “but I guess we can just lock him up like you want to and see how it goes…”
Suddenly though, I noticed a doughnut begin to generate naturally into the Dreaded Doughnut Dropper’s hand, and he smirked and said, “This has been fun, miscreants, but now I’m back to normal!” and he immediately broke free from the rope that Pru had tied him up with and began hurling lots and lots of sticky doughnuts at Pru and I!
“Muahahahahahahahahaha!” he said villainously, “You two will now be the first two miscreants on this planet to be rehabilitated by my team and I, and every single miscreant on this entire planet will be next! Muahahahahahahahahahahahaha!…”
Then he left Pru and I by ourselves and still covered in sticky doughnuts.
“I can’t move!” Pru wailed as she tried to get the doughnuts off of her; and I said, “Yeah, the Dreaded Doughnut Dropper’s doughnuts are good for sticking people in place. Legend has it that even Satan themself is currently captured by him and his villainous team!”
“This is ridiculous!” Pru raged; but then her tone of voice changed a bit and she said, “I guess that’s good that they got Satan though. I mean, if anyone deserves to be captured by these sticky doughnuts it’s the Devil!”
“Yes indeed,” I said, “though the Dreaded Doughnut Dropper and his team could free Satan at some point, because they often like to get folks “rehabilitated” and then set them free. But I have my doubts that Satan would actually be rehabilitated just because those villains might declare them rehabilitated…”
“Yeah! I mean the Devil is the monarch of lies!” Pru said worriedly, “Maybe it would be possible for them to change for the better, but I don’t think that the Dreaded Doughnut Dropper should ever take the chance by setting them free! It’d be too risky!”
Suddenly!, a voice said, “Satan is a long ways away from being fully rehabilitated at the moment, but we’ll help them see the light eventually!” and another voice said, “Yeah! That miscreant (or should I say THE miscreant!) is gonna complete the program eventually!, mark my words!, but it’ll probably take many many years for it to happen.” and then I saw a two-headed person who was carrying an impressive-looking club come into view, and one of the heads said, “I’m Tila!, by the way!” and the other voice said, “And I’m Edge!” and then they both said, “And we’ve been assigned to turn this planet full of miscreants into a vibrant and marvelous rehabilitation center!”
“Have you heard of these folks?” Pru asked me; and I said, “Nope, but I can tell you that they’re an ettin! I’ve gotta say that it’s pretty cool to meet an ettin in person!, despite these terrible circumstances.”
“Why thank you!” Edge said happily; and Tila added, “We’ll get those doughnuts off of you soon, but first we’re gonna be smash!-ing every little bit of modern technology on this planet that’s polluting the air!”
“Yup!” Edge said excitedly, “And we’ve already discovered that the toxic rain here has no effect on us. It’s weird that it had such a bad effect on the Dreaded Doughnut Dropper!, but he’ll be back soon with his special suit that’ll protect him from the rain.”
“Anyhoo,” Tila said with a villainous grin, “It’s time to get to smashing! Toodles!” and then they exited my abode, and then I heard smashing sounds and car alarms going off, which meant that Edge & Tila had already started smashing away at pollution-causing modern technology with their mighty club!
“There goes my car…” Pru said mournfully, “And it was an energy efficient one too!” and I said, “I don’t think that Tila & Edge are going to be sparing any energy efficient modern technology. It sounds like they’re just destroying it all, so that a villainous rehabilitation center can rise up from the ashes!”
“Though maybe they will solve our pollution problem…” Pru said thoughtfully, “But at what price?”
“At too high a price…” I said unhappily, “At far, far too high a price…”
