A Case of Time-Travelling Shorts

A Time-Travelling Frog with Super Powers Pt. 2 of 2

Lars stared down his fiendish adversary, whose lengthy body had been concealed deep within the miniature trunk. To disable the reptile, he would have too cool it down. Quickly. He began to move towards the water pool. The snake tracked his movements. Lars' tongue balled up even tighter. 'Heartbeat accelerating' the sensor in his cuff informed him. He could feel it pulsing in his earflaps. When one foot reached the water's edge, he knew it was time. It's now or never, he thought. Lars swept his slimy green flippers into a ball.

***

Snake watched on, as frog began to dance, his tasty-looking body being led by his front flippers. Snake liked the flippers best of all: nothing felt quite as good as frog flipper sliding down your gullet. This frog looked different. It had some sort of... Snake didn't know. It was as if frog had two skins. A dark, thick outer skin, with vibrant green skin hiding beneath it. Snake had never seen a moulting frog before. He tasted the air: Frog was scared. That was good. Scared frog tasted better. Snake prepared to strike. He coiled up his body, in preparation for the the death strike. Odd, Snake thought. The two-leg-servant had gifted him with mouse only last sunrise. Another offering sssoo sssoon? Snake hissed softly to himself. Two-leg-servant was so eager to please.

***

Lars saw the snake coil. Immediately, he pushed his hands outwards, releasing the ball of pent-up energy that he had summoned. The was a loud bang, and Lars was thrown backwards into the air. He collided with the glass for the second time in ten minutes.

The slime trail my face left on the glass looks funny from this angle... Lars thought, not noticing the cracks that were spider webbing up the left-hand side of the cage. Everything hurt, again. His froggy legs were tangled up in an upside down heap. He righted himself. Luckily, the Amphi-suit seemed to have kept his bones in the right places. Lars inspected his handiwork, sometimes it helped to be evolutionarily advanced. He dislodged the ice crystals that had attached to his legs, snapping off the needle sharp icicles where they made contact with his Amphi-suit.

***

Cold... Snake thought lethargically. Why isss it ssooo cold? Snake had seen frog dance with the water. The water had danced too. It loved frog. Trusted frog. It did whatever he said. Frog didn't like snake. Water had attacked him. Water didn't usually attack Snake. Snake quite liked water: cooling and calm beneath his belly. Now it was everywhere... Snake tried to blink, but his eyelids wouldn't move. Cold... Snake's body refused to move. Something was biting it. Everywhere. Was frog responsible? Too cold... As snake's vision began to fade, he saw frog approaching his eye. Snake hissed, his breath visible in the frosty air. Rage flooded snake. It burnt in his eyes. Death to frog. He vowed. Death to all frogssss...

***

Lars watched the fire fade from the snake's eyes. It was not everyday that you got to ice a snake! He looked upon his handiwork: icicles radiated from the snake like porcupine quills, sharp and blue, and already melting in the heat of that accursed lamp. Lars thought. He looked around the terrarium. A fake plant spiralled into the air, brushing against the enclosure's roof. You beauty! Frog thought, not because it was beautiful, (it was fake, and slippery- his feet could hardly grip it) but because it a way out. He shimmied up the slippery vine, and pressed against the roof. The alien mesh hurt his flippers to push against, but he managed to lift up a section just large enough to squeeze through. Triumphant, Lars surveyed his new environment. He was free! CRACK. His ear-flaps turned to address the source of the noise. It was coming from directly below him... surely the snake wasn't alive. No primitive reptile would've been able to survive a shock like that to their system. CRACK-CRSCK-CRACK.

It sounded like something solid was being lynched. Lars walked over to the left side of the enclosure, when there was an almighty crash. Then he was falling through the air, along with the left side of the glass enclosure. The lamp went out abruptly. Tossed about three times in one mission? Lars thought. Surely this has got to be a record. Then another thought hit him: I'm going to be an interesting shade of brown tomorrow. Deidre would be so angry with the Base.

Falling onto glass proved too much for Lars' Amphi-suit. It was leaking- the brown material bleeding out its reservoir of water. Lars hauled himself upright, and contacted Base in the darkness, which seemed to be lifting.

"Flippers to snorkel. Come in. Initiating return travel. Injury has left me unable to continue mission. Flippers out."

He tried to come up with a description for the room in the predawn room. Time-travel was an inexact science: the chances of finding this place again, in the same timezone, were a billion-to-one. But until Base gave him a countdown, he would just have to wait where he was. He limped over to the edge of what appeared to be a shelf, and swung his aching feet over the edge. Aahh... Lars' stomach rumbled. Nearly getting eaten made you hungry, it seemed. Lars sat, as sunrise gently brought the room into focus.

He was surprised to find the room occupied with cages. Empty cages. Excepting the one he had accidentally crushed, which was all frozen snake and glass slithers. Where am I? The Transporter had to be glitching. This was not a human nest.

Alarm bells went off in Lars' head. Something to do with humans and cages. He felt certain he was in a laboratory. The pit of his stomach began to ache, not with hunger, but with trepidation. What happened in laboratories? He raked his mind. His time zone was set to be somewhere between 2080 and 3500... Laboratories...

"This is snorkel to flippers. Return scheduled in 60 seconds from receiving this message. Snorkel out."

The countdown started to tick down on his Transporter. 60, 59, 58... What was it? Come on, you idiot. What's so important about laboratories? THINK!

Lars flicked his eyes around wildly, looking for something, anything, that would give him the answers he was searching for. But he found nothing. The lab had been gutted, emptied and spider-webbed long ago. Except for the snake... 36, 35, 34... What was the snake doing in an abandoned laboratory? In a lit terrarium nonetheless. There was something he was missing. Something to do with the humans and 2080 laboratories... 15, 14, 13...

The realization didn't trickle in softly, but rather, flooded his consciousness with the power of a tsunami. "By the flippered Gods! No!" Lars croaked aloud. His tadpole lessons came flooding back to him. Humans. Genetic modification. Secret Experiments. Devastating, secret experiments. 'Heart rate accelerating' his Transporter warned.

...9, 8, 7... Lars' gaze flew to the snake in the crushed cage. An illegal experiment. The glass stirred. No, no, no, no... He repeated it like a prayer. If he could just destroy the snake. Fire snakes. The enemy of frog-kind everywhere. And I've just released the first one in existence! Lars gulped. He had to kill it! Had to! It was the only way. ...4, 3, 2...

Lars sprung towards the snake, pulling a shard of  glass from the wreckage. If I can just get it through his eye! He thought desperately. Just a littl-

Snake opened one blazing, yellow eye. Death to all frogsss... only to see frog dissappear into nothingness. A shard of glass fell harmlessly on Snake's cold nose. Snake hissed. Snake was cold, and... he tasted the air. Snake was free! He wriggled his body free of the debris, and landed on the ground with a frosty smack. Revenge on frogs! Snake slithered away, Steam evaporating off his scaled, orange skin. Snake let out a gas filled-hiss, and ignited it with his flint-like incisors. The fire burned bright in the predawn air.

This is the part where I implore upon your better nature to comment, vote, share and such. If you enjoyed the Lars' adventure, feel free to do any or all of the above.