The Iconic Psychonics

The Iconic Psychonics had never been defeated. 

Hutting up the wet, muddy hill, Captain Gaflarnuckle snorted hard on the military-grade psyche inhaler, and whooped a war cry. He beat his biopolymer breastplate, then screwed up his face in concentration and placed four blue fingers on his temples, elbows flared. The sensor skizzattle. The palm tree in front of them shook violently, inside. If that tree had a brain, it would have been dazzled with a synesthesia parastesia. He was ready.

Zazzabrazz hit the inhaler next, then danced on his twelve toes after Gaflarnuckle, ululating. He crossed his arms to point at the other three psychonics, feet still moving. Before the others appeared their greatest fears: women with their real names, military doctors they couldn’t bribe, and single-use inhalers. The fright sight. If those men had been the enemy, they’d be paralyzed by the fearsome hallucinations. Shivering brainstems.

Bringing up the tail end, Mindmelter and Brainbuzzer grabbed the inhaler last. Mindmelter snorted with gusto while Brainbuzzer popped his nose into Mindmelter’s mouth, siphoning some chem. Then they hummed the same key. Slapping each other’s palms and feet, they chanted alternating words: “Mindmelt, brainbuzz, synapse sucker, motherfucker, guy dealt, pain was, under weather, dead getter.”

The words compounded, echoing, multiplying, until the roar crowded out all else. If they’d been Onk the Beater, they’d be battling a bastard of a blitz to their noggins. The boomerang banger. Sizzling.

“Mindmelt, Brainbuzz, way wrinkle-brained banger, boys. Recon got Onk up this hill, beyond these woods, and I can see the inhaler puffin sweet today,” Gaflarnuckle said as they tromped through the trees.

“You know what would be real wrinkle, though?” Zazzabrazz said. “Our tenth dealt under belt, we wrap up activity on the hard side, upload back to belle-brainies and beers homebase time off. Huah!”

Mindmelter had the real thick opticals: “Each zogre brain been smoother than the last one. How slow can a zo’ get?”

Brainbuzzer was more of a philosoph: “They coulda cogged this job with a couple double-hemis and leave us triples on inhaler testing duty, but I’ll take the hit babam! Here’s the forest.”

The four blue soldiers crouched low, pacing slow. This was the last chance to regroup, top-off the halants, and get into position. Squat bushes atop an overhang made a beaut stop. 

Gaflarnuckle relayed from HQ: “Rain yest might rest now, but best watch out for slides on the chalky ground.”

“Affirmative.”

“Affirmative.”

“Enemy position confirmed; defenses identified,” Mindmelter said.

“Neurons narpin there,” Zazzabrazz whispered.

“Guy armed, movin some mass, solitary, prepping… rations?” Mindmelt continued.

“Let’s dream him up some real dramatic automatic somatic,” Zazzabrazz said, bumping on each beat at the end.

“He’ll got the itis from that chompdown, blood-flow downhill, brain light—whets my appetite,” Brainbuzzer said. “Psyche profile right there, boss?”

Gaflarnuckle slapped his shoulder just quietly enough.

Zazzabrazz and Mindmelter were gripping each other, getting ready for some head slaps, but their captain waved his hand in front of them, snapping them out of the pump game. 

Full-speed brain train ahead instead.

Their clattering equipment and armor silenced as they shifted to active battle posturing. They sure-footed sideways down the steep hill far-side.

“Objective in view,” Gaflarnuckle shoutwhispered, stopping at the base perimeter. A glint of Onk the Beater got eyes.

“Brains, mark it,” Zazzabrazz said.

Each about fifteen feet apart, halants wide, deadset, cog-ready.

Zazzabrazz: Teletalk only. 

Others: Affirmative.

Gaflarnuckle: Brain-rote takedown, boys, just like the others.

Zazzabrazz: You heard him, brains: triangle attack, the Gambari sequence, and at my order, we give him the cerebral seesaw.

Brainbuzzer: Hoo hoo hoo, whatever did he do to you or your mother to deserve that?

Zazzabrazz: He’s in the way of my big-brained beauts upside.

Gaflarnuckle: Teletalk, brains, not telebullshit.

Intensely quiet.

Engage.

Their lightweight forms sprung out from—Gaflarnuckle: Helmet, Mindmelt?—the bushes, adrenaline slapping. They squished across the base perimeter, mud mostly dried. 

Triangle sequence engaged, well, rectangle with the fourth. 

Mindmelter: ‘Polgize, Captain, missed it.

Zazzabrazz: That’s not a helmet, he’s wearing—

Brainbuzzer: He’s got our breastplate, o-on his head?

Gaflarnuckle: No matter, seesaw!

Surrounding Onk, the four cerulean soldiers took psychonic postures and blasted the zogre.

The zogre’s beady eyes popped up from the giant, charred turnip he munched with snaggly teeth. He looked around, neckless, almost swiveling from his back.

Nothing happened.

Zazzabrazz: Seen this with helmets before. We got this. 

Brainbuzzer: Was he armed with the turnip? Didn’t you say he was—

Suspicious, Onk stood up, waist at eye-level with the troops. From his far side swung into view a leg-length club: Onk’s leg, that is.

Mindmelter: He’s got that ‘nip slowing him down, smoothbrain won’t stand a chance. I say climbin crab attack.

Gaflarnuckle: Brains, let’s get that helmet. Mindmelt, Brainbuzz, up on it.

Brainbuzzer ran behind the zogre and kicked off the mud hut wall, breaking off a chunk of the home. He clung to Onk’s shoulder like a barnacle. Mindmelter rolled between the zogre’s legs and flipped up the beast’s back. Onk staggered and grunted in surprise. He looked at the missing chunk of his hut.

Zazzabrazz: Neutralize that brain-blocker, neurons narpin here.

He was wide-eyed on the halants, lips cranked. He flared his feet wide in a power position, ready to zonk the zo’ with a bonkin’ brain blow. He slapped his digits to his skull. 

Brainbuzzer stood on his shoulders, yanking on the helmet, as Mindmelter was halfway up the non-neck. Onk yelled louder, reaching up at the climbers. The terrestrial two pelted him with rocks.

The massive aggro gripped Brainbuzzer’s ankle.

Brainbuzzer: Almost cogged this brain-blocker, it’s real—

The top psychonic’s body arced wide from Onk into the dirt. All air and thoughts smacked out of him. He twitched. Probably alive.

“Brainbuzzer,” Mindmelter shouted as he gripped the breastplate. Onk spun in circles, gnashing his chompers and caterwauling. Just as the soldier yanked the armor off the zogre, the zogre fell backwards to crack Mindmelter, but he last-second leaped off the zogre. 

Onk gave the dirt his own cranium hello.

Gaflarnuckle: Teletalk only. Don’t give him an ounce of data. Ok, real triangle attack. Let Brainbuzz lie.

The zogre was back up, rubbing his head.

Zazzabrazz: Brain-blocker busted, let’s go. Seesaw that wetbrain.

They posed, they blasted.

Onk roared as a welt grew from the back of his head. 

Nothing happened.

The club swung around.

Mindmelter was too slow, caught it in the jaw. It lifted him up, up, and away, feet in the air. He smashed through the hut wall. He groaned in the dark. Maybe alive.

Making mindless teeth-talk, Onk pointed at his hut.

Zazzabrazz and Gaflarnuckle tactically retreated slightly.

Gaflarnuckle: Talk to me, Zazz. Brain’s still blocked. What’s going on?

Zazzabrazz: It could be his—

The club was lashed side to side, barely missing Zazzabrazz as he ducked underneath. Frustrated, Onk turned around and in a great crash, brought the club onto Brainbuzzer’s prone body. Def not alive.

They hadn’t seen a friend die before. They screamed.

It was all backs the zogre saw as the remaining two psychonics shredded shoes down past the busted hut.

Zazzabrazz: Orders, Captain?!

Gaflarnuckle: Backload tactics, right now: high-speed evasives, split through the trees here–

Their cries were stolen into the slumping land. Behind them, a rift in the ground pushed them forward, sliding and folding over them. Limbs and limbs tangled in the thundering avalanche.

Down they toppled through a bludgeoning mix of light and dark, tree and stone, roars and moans. The burly whirl climaxed into the ground below. 

Whoooofff.

Was he knocked out? Concussion tests later: get up now.  

Amid a cloud of dust and debris, Captain Gaflarnuckle shoved off an apron of muck and shook worms from his head. His equipment was scattered; he felt naked. He tried to see where he was, where they came from.

Panicked gasping behind him—Zazzabrazz digging in the roiled soil. 

“Zazz, you got a brainboy down there?”

Zazzabrazz yanked out an inhaler from the goop and sat up on his knees, looking real dealt with. 

“Cap’ Glaflar…nuckle…” he moaned. He tried to raise an arm up to salute him.

“How? How did this happen?”

“I think we’ve seen a new form of zogre.” A strange tone in his voice bone, one Gaflarnuckle hadn’t heard before. Respect?

“Hit me in the nerves straight. Say it.”

“He’s too slow,” he said, like divine revelation. He fell over backwards, screaming. Hit the inhaler hard as spacevoid.

Gaflarnuckle snapped around at the ruined hill. Fear zilched, Onk ran down, agile as a goat. Inhaler exhaust again. Zazzabrazz was crying. The inhaler scratched dry.

Gaflarnuckle shook his head again and rose to run. All eyesight cocked sideways and he hit the ground again. His surviving troop made noise behind him. 

“His skull is too–”

Gaflarnuckle overcame nausea enough to look up and see Onk swing wildly at the flailing psychonic. The edge of the club nipped his ribs and spun him over toward his captain.

Zazzabrazz forgot everything he knew. He flopped like a prawn on a prod to Gaflarnuckle, his hoarse voice wheezing. The halants were overdosing; his eyes bled red and bulged from his head. Gaflarnuckle’s ears buzzed from Zazzabrazz’s futile psychonics exploding full throttle into empty air.

Onk wound up again toward the closer of the two, the captain. He saw a vision of himself as a baby, and he twisted. Zazzabrazz fell the other way on top of him, and his body split with the crunch. Mindspace empty again.

He kicked the corpse off him: time to reminisce later. He looked up at the terrible zogre. He wasn’t sure if he clambered backwards or just lay there to soak in the shock of it all.

“I cogged it. Brain so smooth, it’s no brain at all. Like that tree.”

The club rose high like a talisman, floated like a rotoscope against the cloudy sky. It bobbled a step nearer, then another. 

It spun flying away instead.

Onk went airborne, a slip in the mud.

Head slapped down.

Club to crown.

Dead.

A wind blew.

Captain Gaflarnuckle needed a moment. He took it.

Then he creaked to his feet.

He dusted himself off and sighed. He gave a futile glance around for any of his kit. 

This was going to be quite a soldier’s spit back homebase. 

Casualties hurt, but that was not what they’d remember later. 

He stared at his blue hands with a look in his eyes like when he first inhaled, and took another quaking breath. 

“I… tripped him. I moved the mud just enough, and he slipped in it. Huh.”

He drew closer and gawked at the body of Onk. 

“Nobody’s ever done real telekinesis. I cracked it.”

He headed back toward the rendezvous, wary, whacked, but neurons still narping.

“It can be done. I won. I brainbuzzed, er, killed Onk the Beater.” 

He started laughing into the nightening. 

“Dust off your dendrites, brains. Rewire your receptors, cerebes. This is gonna whirlwind some gray matter snapspeed.”

He staggered home, whooping and hollering into the empty sky.

“Raise me back upside, Gang Ganglia. Captain Gaflarnuckle got a right wrinkle-brained story for ya!”

Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash