“It’s looking a little dry, Wanda. I’m gonna go and run the water one more time.” Otis shouted into the farmhouse. Yields had been diminishing more and more over the few years prior.

“Just get back before the sun sets. I don’t want ya out there in the dark at your age. We had enough trouble the last few times.” Wanda requested.

“I’ll be back before you know it.”

 

Otis walked across the farm to the water main and stood as his crops were replenished. While he deemed it was enough and turned the valve, lights shone above him. The sun had gone down, and just as Wanda warned against, the past was repeated.

The farmer turned slowly, took off his hat and gripped his pitchfork tight. He wasn’t out there for nothing.

“Come on ya little freaks.” Otis murmured inaudibly.

Light poured out of the ship and suspended the human in place. Wanda watched from the farmhouse and went to sleep, knowing there was nothing to be done until they returned her husband.

Otis was stuck in place for a time and then released, but in complete darkness. He felt the small ship ascend and dock at the mothership, where he’d endured much experimentation.

Though still dark, Otis heard doors open and creatures move. His hand was still grasping the pitchfork, which one of the creatures touched. Like a spider on her web, Otis used this information to strike. He turned to where the creature was and stabbed confidently, feeling the connection and penetration of the spikes. Its death was unusually silent, all that could be heard were the physical thuds and squishes.

Odd voices whispered around the ship and an alarm provided the only light Otis needed to eliminate his enemies. White light strobed in circles around the massive ship. It reminded the old man of the very first movie he saw. It was as if one picture was shown to him of an alien running, and the next of it dismantled by his farming equipment.

Further from him, Otis noticed a different light source. A strange gun was being shot at him by an alien unlike the others. As he approached it, it backed into one of the smaller shuttles and evacuated the ship, leaving its comrades to their eradication.

Otis breathed the labored breath of an old working man and returned to his massacre. Little gray beings were coming in swarms, and Otis was having some trouble cleaning off his pitchfork. Full bodies and body parts were stuck on the shaft and the spikes.

Without the sharp points available, the farmer casually resulted in bludgeoning the rest of the aliens. He used the pitchfork as it was, taking out the remaining enemies with the already deceased ones. 

Covered in strange blood and guts, Otis entered the control room of the mothership, where a larger alien sat. It raised from the floating chair, turned towards the human and started to run. Otis simply held his pitchfork out and allowed it to impale itself, helping him also clear all the debris from it.

He pulled the tool from the creature and approached the control panel. It appeared that the pilot set a destination. Otis had to escape before heading to another part of space. In the room, he pressed a bright button to illuminate the ship and stop the deafening alarm he’d forgotten about. When he returned to the main room, he tried to count quickly how many aliens he had eliminated. As he entered one of the smaller ships to leave, he was already in the tens of thousands.

Otis laid down his pitchfork and sat in the pilot’s chair of the vessel, which didn’t have much room. Just as he pushed the first lever on the ship, the larger ship vanished. He calmly played around with the controls until he figured out how to move clumsily.

Eventually, Otis brought the ship home. He didn’t know how to get out, so he flew right outside the window and spoke loudly outside.

“Wanda. What do you want me to do with this thing?”

“Otis?” she opened the drapes. Otis noticed a man lying in his bed.

 

“What is he doing here?”

“Do you know how long you’ve been gone…?” Wanda asked, seeming baffled. “It’s been three days, Otis.”

“Oh…. you made it sound like it was longer...welp. Enjoy the farm sir, and enjoy my wife. I’ve got an alien to stab.”

Otis flew away from the farm, wondering if the alien that got away was somewhere on his planet. Stuck in the ship, on a mission to find the only survivor of his wrath, the farmer would from then on be known as U.F.Otis.

Otis’ foe had eluded him for far too long. Even with the advanced capabilities of the craft he was trapped within, finding the alien felt an impossibility. An enticing thought came to him as he hovered above a small town; what if the ship could locate members of the alien species who built it? There were certainly enough buttons and switches for that to be one of the functions.

With a sigh of resignation to this idea, Otis flipped a switch he hadn’t tested before. The ship instantly started to move. “First time’s the charm” he thought. A few hundred feet away, the autopilot stopped in front of a restaurant and Otis looked below. Could he have been that close already?

A beam projected from the center of the ship’s bottom, lifting something up and holding it there. Otis grinned and piloted the ship to a rooftop where he landed and moved the tractor beam so it would hold his victim in place.

“Hey man, my whole family watched that. Everyone saw you and your ship, you should probably just go. They’re very litigious.”

Otis shook his head and flipped what he thought was the same switch. This one sent out a drone that probed the man, who was left stranded on the rooftop as Otis found the correct switch.

Again, testing out the different abilities of the ship, one of the buttons was actually slightly different. There seemed to be an opening beside it with a slot for liquid. Otis rubbed his fingers on the edge of his pitchfork and dropped some of the dried alien blood down into the slot. He pushed the button and autopilot began. A screen showed up, showing a bulbous figure on a radar. He had done it.

Otis zoomed across the planet and toward Big City. It was so obvious the alien would be in the metropolis, more space to blend in, more cover from the tall buildings, and enough freaks where it would fit in.

The target neared and the ship’s tractor beam was about to make contact with something below, when Otis heard a voice.

“Otis. Otis is that you?”

He would recognize that voice if it was ten miles underwater. It was his wife, Wanda. He stopped the beam and moved the ship to hover beside her. She wasn’t the same, however. The alien experiments on his crops had changed her into something.. Alien. Some kids walking by pointed and shouted to their parents, “Hey look, it’s Wumpus!!” They took a selfie with the purple monster and carried on.

“Honey, come home. I’m sorry.” Wumpus pleaded. “We can’t throw away a lifetime together over one mistake.”

“Wand- Wumpus, I can’t. For so many reasons, I can’t.” Otis let out a long breath and lowered his head. He was mainly referencing being stuck inside the small ship with a jammed door, unable to exit, even if he wanted. Wumpus believed there was more to it.

The purple monster rooted into the ground, her feelings deeply hurt by Otis’ swift rejection. She grew a few sizes and then rose from the pavement. “Let’s go home, Otis.” Wumpus had a surprisingly commanding voice, for an alien eggplant beast.

“Sorry, honey.” Otis piloted the ship away, engaging the hyper thrusters to make a quick escape. A moment before release, he saw something odd on the sidewalk. A noodly alien in a jumpsuit with a laser blaster in one hand and an ice cream cone in the other sauntered by. He checked his radar, nothing. The one that got away was not of the same species, that was clear to him now by its appearance. He disengaged the ship and attempted to get closer.

“HOME!”

Wumpus screeched like a space whale, wrapping the ship in her stalk arms. She lost herself in her love for Otis. The target below noticed the commotion and panicked, running away immediately. Frustrated, Otis reengaged his thrusters, burning the dry arms of Wumpus, though they grew back instantly.

Through the city the craft weaved, chasing down the alien, not letting it out of sight for more than a moment.

Wumpus screamed, rampaging behind, rolling through the street with no concern for civilians below. 

“OTIS! I LOVE YOU OTIS!”

The ruckus and damage drew the attention of nearby heroes. Out of a bakery BakeSale blasted towards Wumpus, propelled by delicious buttercream.

“Take a sec, sis!” she yelled to the monster, though she didn’t slow a bit.

From an alleyway leapt Butters, standing in front of the giant purple bulb, holding strong with kitty force. He grabbed from his shorts a ball of yarn, unraveling it to wrap Wumpus in place. With Bakesale’s braids of dough as well, the monster was held still. From above, Duperman descended, smiling as if he helped.

“Great job, team.” BakeSale and Butters heaved for air, looking at Duperman with puzzled expressions. “I feel like I missed something.”

“You missed everything.” BakeSale responded. Butters licked his paws and returned to the alley beside the bakery.

“I hope she didn’t kill anyone, yikes. I know from experience, that is bad for your image.” Duperman stated.

“Hey, why don’t you go check on those other guys?” BakeSale suggested, ready to return to civilian life.

“Sure.” Duperman looked around for a bit to find who she was talking about. She pointed down one street to give him direction. 

Otis finally reached his foe. The noodly alien was caught in the tractor beam and the farmer could finally finish what he started.

“You’re not like the others, what are you a mutant or som’n?” Otis asked.

“I am not. I had infiltrated their ship.” the alien replied.

“Is that right? Well, to me, an alien’s an alien unless it’s human.” Otis moved to press a button and eliminate the alien.

“Wait, wait. I have to return to my family. I shouldn’t be here.”

“What’s your name, son?”

“I am Limbis Kwungo.”

“Well Limbo, I know something about family. Those are the only ones who can really hurt ya.”

Otis again moved towards the button, this time interrupted by more than words. The tractor beam retracted and Limbis ran away quickly. The ship slammed into the side of a building, and Otis looked to see what happened.

Outside the window, Duperman floated with a smirk, he fixed his cape and looked Otis in the eye, smiling wider. They’d encountered each other on numerous occasions and had become acquainted.

“It’s so funny I was just talking about killing people, and I know, I KNOW you were going to kill that guy. I saw it in your eye. You were gonna press that button there and kill that guy.”

“Sure as heck was.”

“Otis, look.” Duperman’s face became elated. He flew to the side of the ship where the door was. “I broke it open. You’re not stuck anymore. You can leave the ship!”

Otis pulled the door shut as hard as he could and the ship started to ascend slowly.

Duperman drifted alongside slowly. “But, Otis, it’s open.”

“No. No it ain’t.” Otis replied with a cold stare, jetting off into the sky. As he flew, he grabbed from his pocket a picture of himself with Wanda many years before and wiped tears from his eyes.

Otis pressed his hand into a panel of the craft to hit the brakes high above Big City, where he preferred to sleep. The city lights below were better to look at during the night than the burnt farmhouse he used to return to, as if there was any reason to. Something was keeping him awake, however. He felt as if something was watching him. That alone wasn’t unusual; people would notice him and brush it off as a U.F.O. sighting regularly. This felt like a motivated observer.

Aboard the ship was a scanning module, which Otis had played with in the past, but had no real idea how to use effectively. To soothe his concern of being watched, he used it anyway. The scan spanned the entire city, showing him every heat signature. If there were any threats, it would detect them. He was able to sleep without issue, trusting the ship was accurate.

When morning came, Otis awoke to the sound of a loud whirring sound, like his own ship made when moving, but he was stationary. A shadow fell over him and a large section of Big City. The darkness kept on growing and the noise got louder each second. Whatever it was, it was coming from above. Otis was not used to being below the danger.

A gigantic, stake-shaped object accelerated towards the ground right past where Otis hovered, forcing him to reposition quickly. As it passed him on its way down, he saw on top a glossy black dome on a platform. It was a rather strange object, not like anything he’d seen on Earth or on the ship that once abducted him. He used the scanner aboard his craft to gather any info he could on the object as it penetrated the ground below. It didn’t detect any heat in the object at all. The entire structure, which was roughly the height of a ten story building, appeared to be lifeless.

People scrambled running from the spike as it pushed its way further into the stone below. Luckily for the citizens, it landed perfectly on a vacant lot where a pizza shop was once dissolved. Otis remembered the restaurant as some of the worst garbage he’d ever eaten. He considered this otherworldly object a great improvement. Still, it was foreign and potentially dangerous, so he kept his distance to see what it would do.

The first on the scene was not the police, but a street level hero named CluckTower. Otis rolled his eyes as an army of chickens entered the formation of a clocktower. It was the hero’s only real ability other than telling the time. Their time zone was always wrong, though. Once they assembled to the height of the dome, Otis watched closely as CluckTower extended a wing out to touch the surface of the black dome.

CluckTower poked the dome with a feather and it undulated like a gelatinous blob before returning to a rigid form. A portion of the chickens near the top freaked out when it moved and floated to the bottom of the tower. In its second attempt, CT shot three chickens at the blob. All three were deflected gently, again causing the dome to wobble. The chickens comprising the arms of the clock struck noon. A chicken was shot out the front to ‘cuckoo’, signaling midday. Such a loud alarm sent the others into a panic - a fatal flaw in CluckTower’s ability. The chickens all dispersed and Otis was left to investigate on his own.

Waves of police and black-suited agents took turns checking out the strange phenomenon. The farmer hovered above, cloaked to avoid any conflict with the authorities. All manner of tests were run on the solid black stake that was driven into the ground. Equipment arrived for everyone to do what CluckTower had done - unsuccessfully study the dome. It did seem that the base was simply structural, the black dome was the significant part of the object. If there was anything within, it would be on the top, inside the stiff goo.

Once everyone finished their own assessments, the object was left alone. It was night by then, so Otis took the opportunity to see it for himself. He remained cloaked and took his ship beside the dome. He groaned as he reached back to grab his pitchfork. With the three prongs, he tapped the film covering the dome. Unlike anyone he watched before, the substance hardened to his prodding. The pitchfork was stuck in the skin of the dome. Otis refused to let the object take his only weapon besides the craft. He held on tight as the dome pulled at the pitchfork. The spaceship was pulled towards the dome and suddenly, Otis found himself inside of it.

Within the dome, Otis was able to see the outside world clearly. It was empty, however. There were no beings inside. There was no technology as far as he could see. The ship’s scanner was right; it was devoid of heat signatures. Without much to look at, Otis piloted the ship back towards the wall. It denied his exit. It undulated as it did when CluckTower tried to enter, bouncing him back into the center of the circular space. Not only was it not allowing him to leave - it also began to shrink around him.

The black dome wrapped itself around Otis’ craft until it was fully covered. The ground began to shake as the object began to rise back into the sky, taking the farmer with it. Otis was running low on air, though kept his cool. He pressed every possible button and pulled every lever to see if the ship could provide any defense against the netting. From the control panel came a blaster like what the aliens had. Otis took it and started blasting the black film that was thin over the window opening. No damage was done, and the farmer ran out of air. He exited Earth’s atmosphere, losing consciousness as he reached around for more controls.

“U.F.Otis?” someone called out, waking up the hero.

Otis awoke on the floor of a fancy home, looking up at none other than Charles Masters. He looked to his right and saw his ship being tinkered with by a little worker.

“Don’t touch that.” he said to the little guy, who ignored him. He looked at Charles to repeat the request.

“Leave it.” Charles commanded his worker. He looked back at Otis. “We’ve been tracking that object for a long time. How did you penetrate the dome?”

“What’s it matter?” Otis replied, crotchety.

“It matters.” Charles assured the farmer, showing little care for his well-being.

A large, shadowy figure stood across the room, Otis thought he recognized it, but was a little hazy from being unconscious. It walked forward and revealed itself.

“Dark Duperman?” Otis asked.

“Call me what you will. You needed rescuing… and who was there. Not your friend. We were.” DD replied.

“I assumed you two would be acquainted by now.” Charles chimed in. “We can discuss later. Get some rest, you’re clearly still disoriented.”

Otis agreed. His head was spinning and he needed to relax for a bit. Before he fell asleep, he heard the others talking in the other room. The only words he could make out were, “He’ll come, you’ll see.”