Schatzi Von Jiftofen (Part 5)

The Divine Art of the Punching Fist is a tough thing to learn.

You see, years ago, back in the ancient days before anything, fighting was invented here on Earth. The first form of fighting invented was punching.

Then came kicking, headbutting, scratching, biting, and about anything else you do in a fight.

With all these innovations in fighting, punching just got thrown in the mix for most people who fought.

But not with the Knights of the Punching Fist.

For them, punching was the only way to fight. They honed their punching skills and learned to do all things through their fists.

In short, nothing can stand in the way of a true master of the Divine Art of the Punching Fist. Entrapment, magic, disaster, nature, even death. It all just falls to the wayside.

I learned the Divine Art of the Punching Fist from Bijorik Baldursdóttir, just before I was banished from my home planet. He told me I learned faster than any other student he's ever taken on, and I'd learned more in my three years with him than anybody else had learned in a lifetime.

Even himself.

So, now, I'm faced with a problem. I'm miles above the city of Vincennes, surrounded by Nazis who are half-animals, and I'm in a steel coffin that will not only turn me into one of them, but will also make me a mindless zombie forced to fight for their cause to obliterate the human race and repopulate the Earth with real-life furries.

The Divine Art of the Punching Fist should only be used in dire circumstances.

If anybody can think of any circumstances more dire than mine, let me know.

I was holding my breath, and everybody outside knew it, "Ve'll just leave you in zhere until you haff to breaze, Chassit," Von Jiftofen told me, "It's inevitable. You vill be one of us..."

So I decided to bite the bullet and take care of the consequences later.

I took a breath.

The gas didn't smell particularly bad. It was actually kind of pleasant. A mixture between those old Strawberry Shortcake figurines and Play-Doh.

The thing I didn't like was the change I felt as soon as I took that first breath.

It started out as a mild irritation. By my second breath it was anger. By my third, it was rage. All of my bones seemed to liquefy with the fourth breath. Under all the anger and the rage and the pain of my bones rearranging themselves, I felt hunger. I was on my fifth breath when the hunger turned into this savage empty pit at the bottom of my stomach. I swung my arms and realized my fingers were all melting into one hard piece. All of the sneering faces outside the tiny window looked like prey. They were making me hungrier. I was ravenous. I wanted meat. I wanted blood. I wanted to rip into them with my teeth.

My teeth. I could feel them getting longer and pointing at the bottom. Another row was opening up behind the first row of teeth and my neck was expanding, absorbing my shoulders. I could hear myself screaming, but I wasn't scared. I was angry. It was a roar.

My muscles tensed and I felt stronger. That's when I noticed I was hitting the sides of the chamber I was in. That's when I noticed the faces outside were looking worried. That's when I noticed I was punching large holes in the sides of the chamber.

And the people outside looked absolutely...

Delicious.

My arm ripped another hole in the side of the tank I was in as I felt my eyes slide to the sides of my head. My nose was getting longer and pushing up, up, up to where my forehead should be.

"Gas masks!" I could hear everybody outside the chamber shouting, scrambling around.

With a few more well-placed rips at the metal around me, I was out. The red gas was everywhere, producing a thick fog in the room. Without thinking I grabbed the figure closest to me. It was another cat-man. I ripped into his throat with my new teeth and began devouring him.

"RELEASE THE MIND CONTROL GAS!" I could hear Jiftofen screaming, "UND OPEN FIRE ON HIM! DAT VILL ZLOW HIM DOWN!"

I tried to talk but all that came out were inarticulate growls and grunts. I threw the twitching body of my prey aside and lunged toward the source of the voice, moving like liquid.

That's when I realized what I was doing.

A superhero can't kill anyone.

I stopped dead in my tracks.

I just killed somebody... I... ate him? What have I become?

I fought down these new instincts and went back to my training. The Divine Art.

There's only one thing I can do to take this back, and it's risky.

And it may get me out of this mess.

I strode through the smoke in the room and I saw a figure dressed in black, cowering behind one of the computers.

"You're coming with me," I said as I grabbed him by his tie and drug him to his feet. I was growing accustomed to my new mouth. The back of my shirt ripped as a knife-like fin shot out of my spine.

"D-don't get hasty, Chassit," Jiftofen began, but I headbutted him with my new nose. It felt good.

"We're getting out of this." I said. "We're going back to where this all began."

"Vhat are you talking about!?" but it was too late. My fist was already moving through the air.

One of the most dangerous and most useful skills of the Divine Art of the Punching Fist is being able to punch through the fabric of time and space itself. The trick is to throw the punch before you ever even move your arm.

Easier said than done.

Luckily, I'd practiced.

As soon as I threw the punch, I felt the world around me suck away. The air was pushed from my lungs and everything exploded in violet light. I held onto Jiftofen as long as I could, then I let go, letting him spin through time.

This is so cool.

My body twisted, expanded, smashed down, imploded, spun, slammed against the walls of time itself, and I landed back in my body, a couple hours ago.

The thing with time travel is, if you go back to a time where you already exist, the body you used to travel through time with kills the body you're traveling to. You take your own place in time by killing yourself.

Pretty grisly, I know, but then you can relive past events and fix your mistakes.

I fell into my body just as I was saying, "You might want to issue a new order to your troops."

"And wha-, Wait, what happened to you? You look like... a shark?"

"OPEN FIRE!" I say and I throw my fists (fins) forward. Even now then, I can feel myself changing again. The fin on my back starts to melt. I can see my fingers splitting out of the ends of the fins I used to have. The Nazis in front of me fall back under the wall of air I created and I fall forward, sliding across the floor for the second time on my belly. Again, I flipped over and kicked the shaggy dog in the crotch. Again I swiped his gun.

This time, I took no hostages. I opened fire on the pile of missiles over in the corner.

The explosion was deafening.

The heat robbed the air of all oxygen and I felt my lungs being assaulted, but still I was changing back into my old self again.

I was thrown off of my feet, directly through the wall behind me. The flames licked over my clothes, lighting my shirt, my hair, my jeans, my shoes, everything. I let it carry me down the hallway I was lead through earlier at gunpoint and I landed, just as I knew I would, on the control deck.

I grabbed the door frame and let the fire whip past me into the control room. I could hear the instrument panels shattering and breaking. The glass in the windows exploded outward and I could feel the wind from outside rushing in.

Then, except for the sound of the fire alarms in the ship, everything was quiet.

I stood up and put the fires out on me. God, I looked horrible.

But I was human again.

At that moment, the door to Jiftofen's office swung open. There he stood, clutching his throat and gasping. Time travel is pretty rough on those of us without super powers. He had blood dribbling off of his muzzle and out of his nose. One of his eyes looked like somebody had tried to push it out from behind. His clothes were ripped and stained with his blood. One of his arms looked broken. "Vhat... Did... You... DO!?"

He rushed at me and I was ready to strike, but he dashed past me into another hallway. I chased off after him. Jeez! He was fast!

I found myself in a bay full of old German biplanes. All the soldiers inside looked confused. They were all looking toward an open bay at the far end and I saw Jiftofen getting into one of the planes and starting the engine. "Oh no you don't!" I started to say, but he was too fast. He was already out the bay door.

I have no idea how to fly a biplane, so I think it may have been a stupid idea to jump in one and press the little switch that said "IGNITION" but you know... some of my best ideas come without me even thinking of them.

I raced down the short runway as the guards in the hangar opened fire on me. Bullets dinged off the side of the plane. One hit me in the neck and I shrugged it off like a mosquito bite. I flew out the bay door and cut across the sky, toward Jiftofen. I had no idea what to do once I caught up to him, but he couldn't get away.

You know, flying one of those things for real isn't too different from doing it in a video game. I was just starting to have fun when I lost sight of Jiftofen in a cloud and heard the guns of his plane firing.

There was a headset on the panel in front of me. It was squawking. I put it on and heard Jiftofen in mid-sentence: "--losing altitude!? PULL UP DUMMKOPF! Vhat do you mean zhere is no control left!? VE ARE ZE MASTER RACE! He's NOSSING!"

"Hey, pooch!" I said over the headset, "Looks like your hot air balloon is toast!"

"YOU! You are... Zis is... FOR ZE FOURTH REICH!"

And at that moment Jiftofen burst out of the cloud I lost him in, headed right for me, both of the guns mounted on the front of his plane blasting at me. White hot, they ripped through my propellers, the cockpit of my plane, and one even ripped right through my shoulder. I clenched my teeth and flew through the plane, my engines roaring.

We were headed right for each other. Jiftofen dipped low, trying to avoid me, but I was falling anyway. I pointed the plane down and went into a tail-spin, but I was headed right for him.

"NO! NOOO!" I could hear him screaming, but it was too late. We were locked in the middle of an aerial game of chicken, and I knew that I wasn't going to back down. I didn't open fire. I didn't have to. We collided in air.

Somehow, one of our gas tanks must have lit, because I felt heat throwing me from the cockpit. I was sailing through the air, ripping through the steel pieces of airplane, even then readying my arm for the blow to come. My left hand, the one attached to the arm that had been shot, grabbed Jiftofen in mid-air by the front of his shirt. My right hand came crashing down into his jaw with brutal force. It hurt my knuckles.

"I win, you God damn mutt," I snarled at him.

"Mein Gott..." He gasped, holding his broken jaw in his hand. "Ve're falling."

"Yes."

"You... destroyed mein plane..."

"Yes."

"Und mein zeppelin..."

"Yes."

And then we landed in the Wabash River.