Chapter 50: Chapter 33: The New Adventures of Vell Harlan

“Hand me a towel.”

Vell obliged, trying not to stare as he did so. Harley noticed his wandering eye anyway.

“Well I’m glad you’re getting a good view out of it, at least,” Harley huffed. “Shower sex is not half as fun as I thought it would be.”

“I think it’s the height difference,” Vell said, as he ran a towel through his hair again. “All the weird arranging we have to do combined with the slipperiness makes it real awkward. You could probably try again with someone closer to your own height.”

“Good point. I’ll give it a shot some other time.”

With that, silence returned to the bathroom, and Vell and Harley continued toweling themselves off to face the rest of the first loop. Vell got himself as dry as he was going to get and hung up the towel. The ends of the towel started to drift upwards as it sat on the rack.

“Uh, Harley,” Vell said. “Your towel’s floating a bit.”

“What do you mean ‘a bit’,” Harley said, without looking his way. “Like an anti-gravity bit?”

“You know in a Studio Ghibli movie when the protagonist is doing something and their hair does that floaty thing? It’s like that.”

“Oh, huh,” Harley said. She turned around to examine the towel and immediately sighed loudly. “Vell, plug your nose and hold your breath.”

Vell obeyed. A few seconds later, the air started to get warmer, and then there was a brilliant flash of light. Once he could see again, Vell checked up on Harley. She was fine, and had stopped holding her breath, so Vell followed her lead.

“What was that about?”

“Oh, the Theta Beam doesn’t bring ambient oxygen with when it teleports you, so if you don’t hold your breath it’ll suck all the air right out of your lungs.”

“Theta Beam?”

“Yeah,” Harley said. “Every now and then some aliens snatch me to be their hero.”

“What aliens?”

“Those aliens,” Harley said, pointing behind Vell. He turned around to see that the two of them were standing on something that resembled a stage, and the “audience” was a crowd of diminutive, ankle-high purple aliens. They numbered in the thousands, and they were all staring up at him with glowing green eyes. Vell became very conscious of the fact that he was naked, and tried to cover himself with his hands. Harley scoffed.

“They’re aliens, Vell, they don’t know what a penis is,” Harley said. “Just tell them it’s a sensory organ.”

Harley walked forward without shame, much to the excitement of the crowd. Or at least Vell assumed it was excitement. The little aliens were wiggling and blinking a lot, which seemed good. Vell managed to follow her lead and feign confidence as he walked forward in his birthday suit. As he made his own approach, the presumed jubilation of the crowd reached a fever pitch. A single purple alien, whose skin was a much deeper purple and whose eyes glowed much brighter, made his way to the stage and settled the crowd with a few gestures of one clawlike appendage.

“It is a most blessed day, my fellow Rogorians! Our great hero Hara-Lee has once again returned to us in our hour of need, and brought with her a much larger Hayoo-Man warrior!”

“Yes, hello, my lovely Rogorian friends,” Harley said, with a wave. “As always, I am overjoyed to answer your summons. This is my trusted companion, Vell.”

“All hail the great hero Vah-Ell!” The crowd cried. Having a crowd cheer something that was close enough to his name was a decent ego boost. Almost enough to make Vell forgot that he had his dick out.

“Harley, can we get dressed now?” he said quietly.

“Yeah sure,” she said. She turned back to the crowd to address them. “My warrior consort Vah-Ell wishes to throw himself into battle for your cause!”

“Yes! I do! Battle is that for which I, uh, hunger!”

“Don’t oversell it, big guy,” Harley whispered. “Bring us the Armor of Bah-Uck!”

The crowd gave another squeaking cheer and began to surge off in all directions. Harley took a seat on the edge of the stage and waited. Vell joined her, trying his best to ignore the cold stone beneath his butt.

“So, uh,” Vell began. “What’s going on?”

“Oh, every now and then somebody gets zapped to this planet to deal with their issues,” Harley said. “I’ll explain a little more later, the Rogorians are back.”

The Rogorians were in fact scuttling back in their direction, with a few hundred working together to shift a massive pallet. The “Armor” of Bah-Uck turned out to be two skintight suits made of a bright-red spandex like material. It was an improvement over being fully naked, but, as several conspicuous bulges on each of their suits proved, not by much. Vell pulled on his suit a bit to avoid a wedgie and tried to get comfortable.

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“The Dark Emperor GorDoom once again threatens the prosperity of all Raymondia!” The lead Rogorian cried. “From his dark fortress Mingceless, he prepares an army with which to conquer us all.”

“Fret not, peaceful citizens,” Harley said. “The mighty heroes of the Hayoo-Man will soon return to you victorious!”

After wrapping up her overly dramatic proclamation, Harley got a running start and leaped out over the audience, soaring overhead and traversing the entire length of the Rogorian settlement in a single bound. She landed on the other side of the settlement walls, which came up to about her waist, and beckoned for Vell to follow.

“Come, Warrior Vah-Ell,” she said, hands placed dramatically on her hips. “The gravity of this planet is but a fraction of our native Oo-Arth’s, enhancing our already prodigious strength and speed!”

Vell shrugged and followed Harley’s lead. He leaped across the settlement, sailing even further than Harley did, coming to an awkward landing a few feet away. Harley covered for his clumsy landing and bid a final farewell to the Rogorians before dashing off with Vell. As soon as they were out of sight, she started bouncing off of every bit of the landscape within reach, bidding Vell to join her.

“Kickass, right?” She asked, as she did a backflip off a mountain.

“This is actually pretty nice,” Vell said. He grabbed a boulder and, thanks to the low gravity, hefted it over his head with ease. “Is this what Leanne feels like all the time?”

“I dunno, probably,” Harley said. “It’s a good thing she never got teleported here, she’d break the planet in half with a kick.”

“Oh yeah, what’s the deal with that, anyway?” Vell said. He hopped thirty feet in Harley’s direction and settled down next to her. He stared up at a bright red sun which dominated the sky above them. “Aren’t there rules about humans going to alien planets or something?”

“Oh, nah, that’s just our galaxy, we’re somewhere else. I think the far side of the Hydra-Centaurus supercluster.”

“Jesus.”

“Haha, yeah, try not to think about it too much,” Harley said. “Anyway, this whole planet is like, smaller than Pluto, and it’s made out of cosmic dust. Check this out.”

Harley spun on her heel and kicked at the nearest rock. The titanic boulder cracked like an egg, sending a massive fracture through the stone.

“There’s no heavy elements and the gravity’s super low, so the whole planet is like, made of chalk,” she said. “We’re basically Godzilla here, we can just fuck up everything.”

“Cool.”

“I know, right? I’m not even that strong and I suplexed a whole fucking building last time I was here,” Harley said. “Come on, let’s go trash Emperor GorDoom’s place.”

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The mighty fortress of Mingceless might have been more imposing had it not been only slightly taller than Vell. It looked like a toy replica of an actual fortress of doom. The imposing “emperor” GorDoom who taunted them from the ramparts was equally diminutive, standing at the same ankle-high height as every other Rogorian. The tiny purple alien wore some kind of flowy fabric sheet which Vell assumed passed as a cape. Even in this distant galaxy, evil overlords were obligated to wear capes.

“Foolish Hayoo-Man warriors,” GorDoom squeaked. “I knew those cowards would call upon you to fight their battles again.”

“Give it up, GorDoom,” Harley shouted. “Your wicked inventions and wicked heart can never conquer me!”

Vell didn’t really understand why Harley was talking like that, but she seemed to be enjoying herself, so he played along.

“Surrender now or suffer the full strength of our Hayoo-Man, uh, strength!”

While Harley chuckled at his slightly awkward attempts to join the banter, Emperor GorDoom had lost his patience.

“Fools!” GorDoom shouted. “Evil minions! Deploy the Lion-Tank!”

The gates of the fortress opened wide, and an RC-car sized tank wheeled out. A single cannon aimed at Vell’s chest and fired off a gumball sized projectile which bounced off of Vell’s chest with a soft thud.

“Deploy the larger Lion-Tank!”

The gates opened wider, and a second tank rolled forward, squishing the first one as it did so. Vell felt like he didn’t need to worry too much about it, but decided to sidestep the cannon fire anyway. He grabbed the tank and tilted it sideways, making sure to point the cannon away from Harley. An attempt to pry open the hatch resulted in him tearing the entire top half of the tank off, exposing the crew within.

“Hey, uh, if you guys want to get out of here, I’m gonna throw this tank at the mountain over there,” Vell said, pointing to the mountain in question. “Now’s the time to bail.”

The squeaking Rogorian crew fled for their lives, scattering in every direction. Emperor GorDoom shook a claw in their direction.

“Cowards! Your treachery shall be long remember by Emperor Gor- ack.”

His evil proclamation was cut short by Harley punching a hole through his fortress wall and grabbing him. She pulled him out of his hiding place and stared him down as Vell tossed his tank into a mountain.

“Thwarted again, vile Emperor,” Harley said. “Have you finally learned that your wicked ways shall never triumph over the good people of this universe?”

“Not yet, Hayoo-Man filth!”

“Right, okay then. Back to space prison you go.”

Harley kept a firm grip on GorDoom as they walked back to the Rogorian settlement.

“What’s space prison, by the way?”

“Oh, some other looper who got teleported here back in the eighties left a metal bowl behind. I just put him under it and that keeps him down for a while.”

“Cool, I guess. Do we, uh, want a slightly better solution? I mean like, long term?”

“Nah, it’s fine,” Harley said. “Frankly, GorDoom not only never hurts anybody, he’s also the only guy who ever invents anything. The Rogorian’s didn’t even have electricity until this dude came along.”

“And blast damn them for using my Electro-Blaster Death Ray to power their petty ‘lightbulbs’ and ‘microwave ovens’!” GorDoom shouted.

“So you just keep coming back every time this dude gets out from his bowl and slapping him back down?”

“Yeah, happens once, maybe twice a year from what I understand,” Harley said. “It’s pretty chill, as far as daily apocalypses go.”

“Yeah, it was actually pretty fun,” Vell said. “Will I come along every time now that I’ve been teleported, or-?”

“Not sure. Could’ve been you just got caught up with me, or maybe you got ‘chosen’ too. We’ll have to wait until next year to find out.”

The pint-sized planetoid meant it was a short walk back to the Rogorian settlement. Harley tossed GorDoom under a tiny metal bowl and listened to him clink futilely against the stainless steel walls.

“If you want to make sure you come along next time, guess you just have to keep sleeping with me,” Harley said with a wink. Somehow, Vell could live with that arrangement.