FSE

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formerly SoFurry search engine

The kick of a gun, pushing inch by bloody inch through the taught muscles of a man's arm, is supposed to feel bad. Taking a human life is a hard, horrible thing that leaves a man empty inside. This time it didn't. This was a Nazi. No one felt bad about killing a Nazi.

The bastard tumbled into the blood strewn tapestry of leaves and twigs he'd thought to use as cover to watch the shadowed path. The one machete carved orifice of this God damned jungle. Nazi's aren't good at hiding, though. Nazis have too much pride in their evil little souls. Plus, the uniforms aren't good camouflage.

Manstrong Winning slipped his still smoking pistol back into his pocket and listened. He didn't know if any other Nazis were close enough to hear the gunshot but if they were they'd be moving and he'd hear it. His hearing was amazing; you need good hearing to be a spy. You need to hear every whispered word, every ear behind a door, every footstep sneaking up behind you. Manstrong's ears swiveled against the pastiche of jungle sounds and missed nothing. There was nothing to miss.

Manstrong paused a moment to think about his mission. Not really a mission. No one gave him this mission but himself. He should have reported it to the OSS. They would have given him orders, or given them to someone else, but they wouldn't be the orders he wanted. The orders he needed. They would tell him to go kill these God damned Nazis, and he would have obliged, but they weren't the real reason he gave himself this mission. The real reason he made himself the general of himself. He gave himself this mission because of love.

Manstrong pulled a locket from his pocket. A girly locket, the kind a big, strapping feline like Manstrong would never wear. But he had worn it for years. He had worn it every day of the war, the icy touch of locked memories clawing at his heart, hidden beneath his shirt, nestled in his multi-hued tabby chest fur where no one would see the girly silver fingers of the locket stroking his heart. He liked to imagine they were her fingers.

Now the locket was in his pocket. She wasn't safe and he had to stay focused. If she wasn't safe and he felt her touch he would be distracted and he couldn't afford that. He had to put her out of mind to protect her. But now those icy, girly fingers stroked the ebon pad of his palm and his heart ached. He looked at the silver medallion against his rough palm, calm and beautiful against gritty and ugly, and thumbed open the oval prison of his memories.

There she was, a petite greyhound with an even coat, hair long in her youth, longer than it was now. Isabella, framed in too many years to admit, gray and worn photo paper looking aimlessly from the little locket. The photo was faded but the memory was not; he saw that face look out in vibrant color, full of joy and emotion and passion. He closed the locket and sighed. He slipped it back into his pocket. The memory faded but his memory of the memory remained, and the loss filled him with the hot fury he needed now. It was time to move out.

It wasn't Isabella he needed to think about. It was Baron Skull. The old Nazi bastard had haunted Manstrong's life. As a young man in Germany they competed in classes, in sports... they went to the same college and competed there again. When Manstrong met Isabella, Skull competed with him again, for her heart. He never understood what Isabella could see in the awful, bitter little Baron Skull but, in the end, he won out. Before the war, she married him. Manstrong stayed her friend but life became very awkward.

Skull joined the Nazis, their pure-breed-pride beliefs appealing to the gaunt doberman's hateful pride, and with the war he became a scientist for the SS. Isabella was never a Nazi but she was a faithful wife and stayed by Skull's side as he committed his atrocities. When Manstrong became a spy for the Americans he tried to get her to tell him what Skull was doing, but she was faithful... even to evil itself, she would not betray her duty as a wife.

In the present, Manstrong scanned the secret castle of Baron Skull with his binoculars. The parapets and old stone stood out against the bright colors of jungle all around, typical of the man's hubris to build something so ridiculous here. The wasted effort it must have taken to move the bricks and build them up, no doubt built by enslaved locals killed in his grim experiments later. But his pride was foolish; the jungle vines already tore at the stone, climbed the walls, reclaiming the jungle for its own.

There were a few sentries patrolling the perimeter and a great clatter of noise came from inside, the sound of machines grinding to their monstrous work. The walls were too high to tell what was happening. Manstrong would need to get inside and see for himself.

After the war Skull had gone underground, fleeing the country to unknown places to continue his fiendish work for his dead patriarch. Isabella he left behind but still she remained faithful. She knew he was still alive, and she was his wife. She waited and she resisted Manstrong's advances, not with anger or judgment but the calm, strong determination of German duty. Such devotion, even to evil, only made her more impressive.

Manstrong protected her from retribution. He told the allies she had been an informant to him and so they ignored her, letting her keep Skulls money and property, not blaming her for her husband's crimes. It was a lie but Manstrong couldn't let her suffer the fate of so many Nazi supporters. He stayed near her, saw her nearly every day, and his heart broke every day, for years, as he saw her loyalty remain. He hoped every day she would finally realize how wrong she was to believe in Skull and accept Manstrong's love.

Evading the sentries was simple work for Manstrong. There weren't enough on patrol and, besides, stealth is as natural to a cat as breathing. Even in his white shirt and pants he was like a shadow, swift and silent under the Nazi's eyes. The castle was badly understaffed, though; was the Baron's operation so badly off, already so close to collapse? He slipped easily through the halls, lurking through shadows and behind tapestries, until he found the door to the courtyard. One guard waited at the door, and Manstrong's knife made quick work of him, blood bubbling from the monster's throat down his nice, starched uniform. It was an improvement to cover such a uniform in steaming death.

The body crumpled lifelessly to the floor while Manstrong peered through the door's window into the courtyard. There was a great deal of activity in the wide opening, a series of experimental jets set up on some sort of launching device, pointing nose up into the air. He'd heard of such experiments, eliminating runways by taking off straight up, being done by the Nazis but the fools never considered how they'd land again. It looked like they still hadn't, either, with no runway in sight. Unless landing wasn't to be done here... the idea took grim hold over Manstrong's mind, churning darkly in his worrisome thoughts. Was this just a staging point to move Nazis to other places?

As he examined the strange jets, silvery contraptions with cigar shaped bodies and swept back wings, rocket engines mounted below their missile-like frames, he recognized a face in one of the cockpits: Isabella! Where were they taking her to?

Manstrong drew his M9 and put his paw on the doorknob but before he could do anything the jet's engine rocketed to life! Nazi's scrambled from the fire and scattering debris as the jet slowly pulled itself aloft from the steely finger of its launching pole, pointing it up, up into the black void of night. Isabella looked over and saw him in the window as her jet dragged against gravity and a tear escaped her eye before the thrust built up power and the jet suddenly rocketed into the sky, smoke and smoldering earth in its wake. The star-like twinkle of that tear hovered in Manstrong's vision long after the night took away its origin.

Manstrong practically screamed his anger. He clapped a hand over his mouth to halt the sound and struggled to calm his mind. Think! Isabella was no pilot... she couldn't possibly fly a jet! The jet must not need piloted. The destination must already be laid out, the pilot only needing to sit in his seat and wait out the ride. So Manstrong only needed to reach one of the jets himself....

Manstrong burst through the door, already lining up shots to the positions he knew the Nazis were standing. There were too many for him to kill them all, the courtyard being far better manned than the outer wall, but the confusion was what Manstrong needed. The Nazis closest to him were dead or dying and the others were diving for cover, readying to assess the attack on their base. When they peaked their heads out they found not an assault team but the cockpit of another jet closing up tightly. In the cockpit Manstrong saw only buttons and he slammed them with his paws desperately until finally he felt the rumble of the engine heating up. Gunfire sounded, bullets bouncing uselessly from the jets steel hull as Manstrong felt the G-forces smooth back his fur. Wherever this mission was leading him, there was no turning back now. The jet broke free of gravity and shoved him back in his seat, lifting endlessly into the night.

Manstrong closed his eyes to rest after the surging adrenaline rush of combat. He thought of the day, so recent but a lifetime away, when he knocked on Isabella's door and there was no answer. Fearing abduction he picked the lock and slipped carefully inside. Nothing was disturbed, even places at the table set but there was no sign of anyone in the stately home. On the front room table he found a letter, signed by Baron Skull, telling Isabella that he had need of her. That after all these years he was finally calling her back to him. It gave instructions on where to go, how to meet his agents for guidance, and to tell no one of her going. The letter was cold, matter of fact and presumptuous. And she went to him. And Manstrong went after her, because Manstrong Winning never gives up.

When Manstrong opened his eyes again it was for the touch of cold on his skin. The sight chilled him more than the cold ever could. Stretched beyond the cockpit was the inky black depths of space, a chilled silence of aeons unknown stretching into eternity. The jet had rocketed straight out of the atmosphere and was carrying him into the nothingness beyond. Manstrong panicked. This jet must not have had any settings! It must have needed the destination input still! He simply flew up and up without ever turning! He had failed his mission and would die, unknown, in the eternal nothingness while Isabella went off to that monster and whatever evil fate he had in mind for her.

But then another dark thought blossomed in his mind like an ebon flower bloomed from shadow; what if the plane was set right? After all, he breathed in this jet, and cold as it was it was hardly icy death. The jet seemed meant to travel in space. Had Baron Skull spread his skeletal hand into the reaches of the cosmos? Had his clawed talons carved a swastika into the soil of a distant earth? With this new fearful hope Manstrong steeled himself and waited.

He knew not how long he waited, watching the distant stars twinkle by, tiny lights engulfed by greater darkness, but yet they twinkled on and on, defying the darkness against all odds. Finally the jet approached the growing ball of a planet, red and dull as it grew, and Manstrong recognized the visage of mars, named for a god of war, a fitting citadel for Nazi pride. The red planet grew and grew in the cockpit window and the jet took its programmed course as it approached, passing the atmosphere in a burning halo. A massive palace, the size of a whole city, built of silvery domes and towers, windowless and sealed from the poison of mars' air came into view. One long section opened, the roof pealing away to grant the jet entrance, the contraption angling vertical to the ground and landing, bounding upon a furnished airstrip. Darkness encased him again as the roof slid closed overhead, a massive maw swallowing him into this bizarre and unknown world of dread mystery; then lights glared on all around in the massive hall.

After the uncanny palace Manstrong saw from the outside the interior was disappointingly mundane. The hall was made up like a hangar, catwalks and girders along all the walls and ceiling like a massive playhouse built for conflict. The other jet was only a few yards away, uniformed Nazis rushing from a door in the far wall toward the silvery plane, canines of various pedigree, all pure-breed to Nazi specifications, rushed to help Isabella from her cockpit. They looked over to his plane curiously, the second jet clearly not on the itinerary. They didn't know what it was there for, though. Clearly, no radio signal could reach mars before the jet had and so no warning had come. Whatever brought this second gleaming ship to mars they had no reason to suspect a spy. Manstrong had the element of surprise.

Isabella climbed down the inlaid ladder steps on the side of the jet on unsteady legs, Nazi paws holding her steady, placing a blanket around her chilled shoulders. She looked back at Manstrong's jet and he held his breath; would she tell them? She must know. Would she betray him? But as they led her away only two Nazis remained, no weapons drawn, to approach his jet. Manstrong let his breath out and pulled his gun. She had not betrayed him. She was conflicted.

As the distant door closed behind Isabella and her entourage of black suited villains Manstrong opened the canopy and two shots rang out, the two Nazis below never even having a chance to realize their misplaced trust. He dropped from the cockpit and took off at a run for the door; he still had the element of surprise! If he hurried he could save Isabella and take her home before anyone knew he was there!

And then Manstrong's world was pain.

Manstrong could not even move, fire etching its way through his muscles, white arcs of lightning branching between his whiskers, fur standing up on end as a vice-like grip took his shoulder, slowly turning his enflamed body around. Before him stood Baron Skull, hand clamped firmly around his shoulder.

The hand lifted and Manstrong fell to his knees, muscles screaming at the electrocution. Baron Skull kneeled down in front of him, long black cloak partially obscuring the black, trim uniform beneath. Skull lifted his paw to push up a black bowler hat, smiling evilly beneath his thick sun glasses, "How fortunate I am so much cleverer than you ever were, Herr Winning, Ja? I thought this might happen, the way you've always... pawed at my fraulein. How very improper you are. So I thought I might wait and see, and prepare to show you one of my newer inventions." He wiggled his fingers, metal rings on each finger over top of his black gloves, thin wires connection them and winding up his sleeve, "I tested it on those awful locals, in the jungle, to get it just right... to hurt, to incapacitate, but not to kill. Getting it just short of killing... it was hard work, you know!"

Manstrong spied his gun on the ground, not even having been aware he dropped it in his pain, and even as his muscles fought against him, he made them move and dived for the gun. But lightning leapt from Baron Skulls' fingers and the gun exploded in a shower of sparks, bullets bursting in their metal chambers and the gun ripping apart before his eyes! The Baron's boot found his ribs and he fell back, groaning.

"You are strong... stronger than those jungle animals you would call men. But you are not stronger than my science, Manstrong. You have lost! But I am not done with you... I want you to suffer. All the years we've fought each other and now I will make my victory absolute! First I will torture your mind and your soul, then I will torture your body, and then I will kill you. Take him away!" Two German shepherds', wearing Nazi uniforms of low rank, came to take Manstrong's arms and life him up, dragging him off to his cell.

"This isn't over, Skull! I will never give in to you!" Manstrong screamed after the demon. Skull turned his head, sunken eyes and bony cheeks drawing back, looking for all the world like a black skull stripped of all its flesh, white teeth gleaming in the lights with wicked hate, "You lost the day I took Isabella from you. You've just been stubborn." And the door slammed in Manstrong's muzzle.

Manstrong sat in his cell for a long time, longer than he could count, staring at the steel bars of the little stone room, like an old medieval dungeon. Every so often a Nazi guard would walk by the door, but never close enough Manstrong could try anything. He was thinking... the guard will expect some trick from Manstrong, some attempt to escape. There must be someway to draw him without being suspicious.

While still deep in such thoughts he heard a distant door open and heavy footsteps approach, heavier than anyone he'd ever known could make. A whole unit in locked step, coming to see him? Guards for torture? A firing squad? Had he waited too long? Had the Baron decided to skip the torture and just have him shot?

Nothing could have prepared Manstrong for what came to his door. There was but one figure, a hulking beast several feet taller than any man Manstrong had ever met, a massive body wrapped with muscle over muscle, the sort a monster from ones' nightmares would possess, all clad in snowy white fur, devoid of clothing but shaggy enough to hide the creature's modesty. As Manstrong's disbelieving eyes traced the creatures body he came to its head and was shocked all over again; the creature possessed two head, each identical, flat faced and heavy jowled glaring down at him. The creature was strange but vaguely familiar. Manstrong thought hard on the visage, some distant jungle creature, "...a gorilla?"

The creature broke in two massive grins, sharp teeth glinting with unnerving sharpness in the smile, "The Nazis, they did not know what to call me. You have seen something like me on your world? It is good! Once, long ago, we knew your world. It is good to know our cousins yet remain!"

Manstrong nodded slowly, puzzling at the curious manner of speech the hulking brute held and its odd words, "They are smaller... and have one head. They are not a great civilization. They live in the jungle."

The creature let out a heavy snort and shook its head sadly, "It is unfortunate... but still better than here." He spread his arms to indicate the great cathedral, massive beyond massive, that the tiny cell rested in, "This is what we once were capable of! Now... now only I remain. The last king of the gorilla men of mars... and the last gorilla man of mars." He shook his head again sadly.

Manstrong felt like he was in a dream. He did not understand any of what was happening, and this creature's respect toward him least of all. "I'm sorry... I'm Manstrong Winning. What is going on here?"

The gorilla's four eyes stared at him intently and then it spoke, each head trading off sentence by sentence, "Our people, they are gone. We are the last. Then that man from your world, the Baron Skull, he landed here in his space jet. He wanted to use our palace, our world, for his own purposes. We wanted to pass in peace and we told him so. We told him to go. But then... we saw a picture he had with him. We saw his wife, Isabella. She is beautiful. Our own women were never so beautiful. If we are to die, we want to die with such beauty by our sides. So we bartered. For his wife, we would let him have our palace and use it as he wished."

Manstrong saw the reason and the sadness in the creature, twisted and selfish as it was, and felt pity. He thought that this was a creature he could make understand. He could turn it on the Nazis! "You know I am the enemy of these men?" The Martian Gorilla King nodded. "These men, they are evil! They kill entire species!"

The Martian Gorilla King raised his hand, padless and hairless and massive like a man's whole torso, "Stop. I know a little and care less. The problems of your world, of your people, or your morals... they are not mine. I will not take a side. I will only barter for what I wish. And what I wish is to have this Isabella. I respect you and I will speak with you, but I will not help you Manstrong Winning. You are on your own."

Manstrong's disappointment was profound, but even more so when he heard the distant door squeak open again and the familiar sound of Baron Skull's gait clicking its way toward his cell. The hateful, skull-like face of the Baron came into view beside the King, grinning wickedly like the death's head on his collar. "You have met the King, then? A wonderful ally, ja? And to think, all he cost me was my wife! I wasn't even using her!" Manstrong saw a look of contempt cross the King's faces to hear Isabella spoken of so and saw twin mirrors of his own heart.

"What is this deal you've made? What need do you have of this dead world, Baron?" Manstrong spit at the skeletal Nazi and locked gazes with him hatefully. The Baron stared back long before nodding, "I suppose, why not? To know what you've failed to prevent, it will make your failure hurt all the more, I think." He raised his hand, the electric rings still on his fingers, "this is not the only invention I have made. You never discovered what I was doing for Hitler all those years ago, did you? Cloning!"

Manstrong's jaw dropped and his fingers gripped the bars tight as he could, "Cloning? You've done it? You can clone Nazi soldiers?" The Baron nodded solemnly, "Then... you're using this world to clone and house an army?"

"Quite astute! I will make myself an army here, I will build my space jets, I may even invent some more super weapons! When I have an army large enough to conquer the entire earth, then my jets will carry us away home and all over the world my perfect pure-breed Nazis will descend and crush the inferior peoples of the world! And from here, your America and its spies will never be able to stop me!"

Manstrong gripped the bars tighter yet, his teeth barred in a deep growl, "And for this you've thrown aside your devoted wife?"

Baron Skull laughed mirthlessly, clapping his hands, "Oh, she was a fine specimen of canine... a rare breed, very precious and very well breed. I couldn't let her be tainted by your blood! Why Hitler never sent you cats to the gas chambers I'll never know, but I'm sure he would have gotten to it, ja? But in the end, all she ever was, was a fine specimen. I don't care about her."

Manstrong looked at the King, rage barely restrained in his features, "But you'll let her blood be tainted by a Martian Gorilla? What's your logic?"

The Baron shrugged his shoulders theatrically, "The logic, my friend, is compromise. It's worth letting one fine specimen go in order to conquer the entire world. Besides, she never really believed in the cause... I can find a better woman." The Baron turned to leave but the King cried out, "STOP!"

The Baron turned around, concern finally showing on his face. The King stared at Manstrong with one head, the Baron with the other, "This man... this Manstrong Winning... he loves Isabella, doesn't he?" The Baron only gaped, the question itself so confusing to him that he was speechless. Manstrong confirmed it. "You followed Isabella to my dying planet, not this villain. You are here... for her hand as well."

"Now, my good king, I know you must be territorial about your new woman, but I have plans for this man's death!" The Baron pleaded, but again the massive hand was raised, demanding silence and getting it.

"You gave me this woman because you did not want her... but you did not tell me I was not the only one who wanted her. This man and I... we both have claims to her. We must settle our claims. We must decide who will have her." The Baron looked perplexed. "It is the way of our people. We have honor, even when there is only one of us. We must enter battle, to the death, for this woman." The Baron looked between the two, unable to understand, trying to reason where he had lost control of the situation. Before he could make another argument Manstrong thrust his arm through the bars of the cage.

"I accept the challenge! I do not want to kill you, King... but if I must, I will, for Isabella." The King's hand closed around the tiny paw, and much of the arm, and shook it. As the King departed he called back over his shoulder the time and the place for the battle and the Baron glared at Manstrong. When the door closed behind the King he screamed and Manstrong smiled to see the Baron so put out.

Three hours later Manstrong stood in a large coliseum type arena, unarmed, staring across the gulf at the Martian Gorilla King. In those three hours he had not come up with a single idea on how to actually win this fight. The stars twinkled above through a glass roof and Manstrong wished on one like a child for a way out of this mess. But even if he won, if the King was dead, the Nazis would just shoot him. There really was no way out of this one.

The King began walking toward the center of the ring and Manstrong walked forward to join him, thinking hard to stop the agitated wagging of his tail. He didn't want to give away how nervous he was. In the center of the arena he met the King.

"The battle will be to the death. No weapons. It is not our custom. As I am so much bigger than you are, though... I shall go easy on you. You will still die, but I will give you a fighting chance to look impressive."

Manstrong shook his head and smiled, "If I have to die, then at least don't insult me with false hope. I would like to think I'm worthy of your full force." The King grinned two huge grins and nodded. At least Manstrong could call the beast about to kill him a friend.

Immediately Manstrong was dodging a massive fist pounding into the earth where he had just stood, his superior speed and reflexes keeping him safe, but he knew he had no where near enough power to stand up to the King, no matter how long he drew the fight out. Another fist came down and Manstrong dodged it like it was nothing, but how long would his stamina keep up? He couldn't give up, though. His strength was exploiting the King's handicaps. If the King was already slow, what else could he be?

Manstrong took up a handful of dirt and threw it into the King's lunging faces, one turning away but the other blinded by the stinging cloud of dust, "Good move, little Manstrong Winning!" The King rubbed at his eyes, but it would be a long time before they were ok. The other head was fine, though, and the trick wouldn't work again. Manstrong took a deep breath, waiting for the next blow. When it came, he leaped, landing on the arm and charging up the battering ram of fur and muscle. His claws lashed out and dug deep into the King's other head, ripping the eyes right from his skull!

Manstrong leapt away and dodged, the King's pain and fury driving a blind onslaught of such power the ground itself was rent. The massive, flat feet pounded down the dusty earth as twin heads screamed. Manstrong ran again, running up the King's back and taking the other head from behind, claws digging into the other eyes, gouging the soft orbs out, full paws sinking into the massive eye sockets. This time the King was ready, though, and a massive hand closed around Manstrong, pulling him off and smashing him into the ground. The air was knocked from him and his ribs creaked. He rolled over, sucking breath, trying to work up the strength to dodge again but massive hands slammed down on his arms, pinning him down.

"You fought well! To think, I am blinded, forever in darkness, due to a man so tiny I thought to go easy on him! But you are still no King. No Martian Gorilla King!" The King reared up his head, preparing to bite down with both and finish Manstrong, but he had an idea suddenly, and kicked both feet up, directly under the King's heavy stomach. As the body descended to do its bloody work its own force shoved Manstrong's legs into it and the King gasped out, winded and surprised. The arms loosened and Manstrong sprung into action, claws and teeth sinking into one neck! The King swung about, trying to shake Manstrong off, but he held on tight, cutting deeper and deeper, until finally blood loss and breathlessness brought the King to his knees, panting and stumbling. Manstrong let go, limping away from the dying King as he bleed out.

"Impossible... you have defeated me... and now... my kind is extinct. You are... magnificent, Manstrong Winning."

Before Manstrong could feel any pride or regret he was surrounded by running footsteps, a ring of Nazis surrounding him with machine guns leveled. The King heard the noise and bellowed, "What is the meaning of this? This man has won! Give him the woman and let him go!"

The Nazis laughed their barking, canine laughs. "I think not, Untermensch! You are dead! I think you give no more orders. Now only Baron Skull gives orders!"

The King moved like a blizzard, arms sweeping through Nazis like tree trunks, breaking their screaming bodies. The others opened fire on him but one by one he leapt on them and smashed them into pulp and gore, white fur splattered red. He turned to Manstrong and growled, "They betray their word! They will not have my world! Go get your woman, this perfect Isabella, and hurry! Hurry or die with these Nazis!" The King looked up into the sky and bellowed out "Self destruct system, activate!"

Manstrong was running the moment he heard the words. He didn't know how long it would take but he knew where Isabella was, cuffed and chained to a pole in a room outside of the arena. He put out his shoulder and barged straight through the door. Isabella gasped as he burst into the room, beginning to ask questions but he hushed her, a bloody finger to his lips, "There's no time! This place will explode! We must leave here right away!" She nodded and he took up a rock, smashing the mooring for her cuff chain. He'd have to get the cuffs off later so he lifted her up and ran, pounding down hallways, trying to remember the complicated path he had taken to get here. He could hear panicked Nazis down the hallways but he had no time to worry about them. He had to reach the hanger as fast as he possibly could!

He looked down at Isabella in his arms, fearful and unsure, and thought how long he had waited to hold her like this. The distraction was a fatal mistake. Once again the lightning arched through his body and he dropped Isabella, tumbling after her in searing pain. As he leapt to his feet to face Baron Skull he got in front of Isabella, seeing the gun in the Baron's other hand. He looked around and saw they were only feet from the entrance to the hangar. So close....

"Isabella, come here." Manstrong almost laughed at the impudence, but he stopped as Isabella calmly stepped around him and went over to stand next to the hated Baron Skull.

"But... Isabella, why? He doesn't love you! He traded you away! He only asked for you so he could use you!" Isabella shrugged and went to answer but the Baron held up his hand.

"She doesn't really know, you know.... She was my first secret experiment. Brain washing. Her loyalty, her obedience, her marrying me... all because I made it so she couldn't defy me. But she makes her little gestures, not really disobeying me but defying me. The letter I sent, she left it out for you to find, ja? And she never told us you had come. She is not truly obedient to me..." and the Baron turned his gun from Manstrong and shot Isabella in the chest.

Manstrong screamed and made to dive toward them but the Baron was already turning his gun. Instead Manstrong dove through the door to the hangar, diving behind equipment displays and machines to dodge bullets as Baron Skull followed him in, taking wild shots after the running feline. Without his gun Manstrong was all but helpless.

As Manstrong ducked behind a work table a shot struck the materials above it and knocked them down, and a large box with a button fell at his feet. The box was labeled "remote jet activation" and Manstrong smiled grimly, formulating a plan. He peaked over the table to check the Baron's position, took up the box, and dove for the next piece of cover, a spot the Baron could no longer aim at him. The Baron moved to line up a new shot.

"It is only a matter of time, Manstrong! Just come out and we will end this," the Baron called out, and Manstrong's ears swiveled. He had good hearing. He missed nothing. He knew exactly where the Baron was standing. Manstrong hit the button, stood up, and turned with arms spread. "I didn't really think you'd just give up, Herr Winning." The Baron said as he leveled his gun, "Say auf wiedersehen!" And just as the Baron lined up his shot the engine of the jet above him, readied for take off on a metallic pool, burst to life, fire roaring out from beneath the silvery eagle and incinerating the screaming Baron Skull!

Manstrong burst into a sprint for the door, slamming it closed just as the roof began opening, poison air and void entering the hangar as the jet rocketed out into the beyond. He found Isabella, weak breath slowly ebbing, curled up in a pool of her own blood. Manstrong walked over to her slowly and turned her over to look into her face, gray fur framed by medium length, blond hair. She smiled weakly up at him and he petted her cheek, "He's dead now. You're free of him." She took his paw in hers, both trembling with weakness, and he leaned down to kiss her, "I've waited so many years to do that, Isabella."

"I'm... so sorry our lives turned out like this, Manstrong. I always wanted to be with you... and I never knew why I could not make myself do what I wanted. Thank you for making me free... before I died." Glistening tears dotted her cheeks, wet fur trailing beneath her big, dark eyes. "I can't see you anymore... but don't leave me. Don't... leave me here, alone. I always loved you...." Her eyes closed, her body slumped and her breathing stopped.

Manstrong screamed. Manstrong cried. Manstrong lifted her body, kissing her dead eyelids, and carried her into the now sealed hangar, into the final silver, gleaming jet. He sealed the cockpit, he hit the button, and he flew her back to earth while the Martian Gorilla King's castle exploded beneath him.

Manstrong Winning spent the trip back to earth telling Isabella all the things he never could.