This is the collab between Worstcase and me. We wanted to try writing Captain's voice, because we both found it really challenging. This chapter was planned and written by both of us, and beta-read by eight-Of-hearts - for what we are very grateful. The image for this story was drawn by Worstcase.

Enjoy!

It was such a lovely morning.

The very first rays of the rising sun pierced through the clouds of radioactive dust, painting the sky purple and pink. Captain loved these colors. All the citizens of the magnificent Captania seemed to love them too... well, except for the lazy ones, who were still asleep.

Missing the view of the capital waking up after the nuclear night was an unacceptable waste. Every little being that lived in the Dead City wanted to rise and shine for Zee Captain. Birds were singing, flowers were blooming, zombies were going for their daily walks. All creatures great and small tried to please him by performing their duties at this early hour.

Only his three minions were sleeping, instead of being useful.

And Captain really didn't like useless things.

He decided to take care of this problem immediately. But the question was, which minion should be given the honour of being woken up by their beloved leader first?

Engie? He was the new recruit in this glorious army. The guy could build deadly weapons and many other devices from nothing but scrap metal and rubber bands. Unfortunately he wasn't very talkative, and Captain found him a bit boring because of that. But on the other hand, the engineer's fluffy-hooded coat was rather stylish and a fair commanding officer should always appreciate a good sense for fashion.

Captain looked at the trendy minion, who slept in a sitting position in a tattered armchair. Judging from the wriggling, he must have been having some exciting dreams. Perhaps about his recent discoveries of the secret mutated wildlife? Being the understanding leader he was, Captain allowed him to continue these restless dreams for the moment.

If not Engie, should he choose Pilot? A loyal minion like that would surely be grateful for the honor. Of course, a brilliant leader didn't need any prizes or gratitude. And Captain was exactly that type of leader, with or without Pilot's confirmation.

He went to the next room, to find his dutiful minion curled up on a carpet and covered with a blanket. Captain was about to wake him up, when he reminded himself of the very important rule of being a responsible superior. It said: "Never spoil your trustworthy subordinate with too many privileges," he recalled, "otherwise that subordinate will stop trying his best to impress you."

Being a wise commander is no picnic, Captain thought, as he left Pilot's room, letting his minion rest. Sometimes he almost couldn't believe his own wonderful greatness.

The third of his underlings was lying on a couch, his arm dangling over the edge limply. The snippy sniper usually gave the impression of being a somewhat lazy, and highly stubborn minion, but Captain knew better than that. All the man needed was a little encouragement. And his kind-hearted leader intended to give him exactly that.

The decision was made, but another important question followed. How to wake the sniper today?

Mr Snippy had acquired the bad habit of getting used to loud noises and sleeping through them, no matter what. It was always a challenging and rewarding experience to come up with a new surprise waking call for him – and to learn a few funny words from the sniper in return.

In search of inspiration, Captain looked out of the window. There were some constructions going on near their headquarters.

Perfekt, he thought to himself contentedly, and without further ado he walked out of the base.

"Excuse me, gentlemen," Captain greeted, tipping his hat at two skeletons with a polite smile behind his sexy gas mask. "I have a little favor to ask. Zee Captain needs to borrow zis pretty device."

As expected, the workers had nothing against it. They were happy to take a break. As soon as he took the equipment from their bony hands, they dozed off and fell to the ground. Apparently, the poor things were extremely tired.

When he got back to the living room, Mr Sleepyhead was still in the same position as before, so Captain moved closer to him and watched the sniper for a minute – it didn't look like he was planning to wake up of his own volition any time soon. After confirming this, Captain placed the borrowed device next to the couch and prepared himself for the waking-Snippy-up procedure.

The sweet sound of the pneumatic drill blows filled up the room.

Mr Snippy shouted and jumped to his feet, trying to cover his ears with his palms. Most likely, he was saying something, but Captain couldn't hear him at all over the din.

The other minions showed up shortly after. Engie, with his right hand pressed to his chest, seemed on the verge of a heart attack. Pilot was already standing at attention, apparently willing to fulfill any given order at once.

Seeing his whole army ready for a new adventure, Captain dropped the pneumatic hammer and the loud noise stopped. Using that device had turned out to be another ingenious idea. Thanks to it, all of his minions woke up simultaneously.

"Good morning my toasty followers," he said gleefully, clasping his hands together.

"You call that good?" Snippy snapped at him as usual. The guy must really hate mornings.

Captain decided to ignore the sniper's pointless grumbling about the risk of becoming deaf.

"I have missions for all of you," he declared simply. "Mr Snippy, listen carefully. I shall say this only once: Go and collect the items from zis shopping list!"

"Great! What am I supposed to fetch you this time? The legendary sword Excalibur? The Golden Gate bridge? Perhaps an irradiated meteorite while I am at it?"

After making all those wonderful suggestions, the sniper grabbed the list and began studying it.

With that being dealt with, Captain turned to his next minion, who was eagerly awaiting his orders.

"Engie! I want you to drop any project you have been working on until further notice! You will begin a new project for your Captain immediately! While using zis wonderful tool for making holes, I had zee stroke of genius! Make a bigger machine, so we can travel to zee other side of zee Earth with eet."

"Oh, yes! Absolutely brilliant idea! And why the hell would you want to go there, Seven?"

It surprised Captain, that of all his minions it was the engineer who was asking this question. But as a good commander, Captain was willing to help the man filling this apparent gap in his education.

"That is basic knowledge, Engie. When eet ees winter in zis hemisphere, eet ees always summer on zee other side of zee Earth! And we obviously currently have a bad case of zee winters. So once we get there we can all go for zee sunbathing and grab us zem rare vitamin Ds and maybe even some other letters, gotta collect zem all!"

"Yay! Sunbathing! Can we bring Photoshop along, too?" Pilot clapped his hands. He seemed to understand the plan far better than Engie, who was busy now burying his face in his palms in shame, because he hadn't grasped the entire genius reasoning behind the plan earlier.

The engineer left the meeting, still shaking his head about his own most epic fail, probably to begin work at once. Captain, in the meantime, imagined throwing a frisbee for Photoshop to fetch on a beach that for once wasn't frozen. An appealing thought indeed! But of course it wouldn't be that easy. Bringing a crawler worm mutant like her along came at terrible risks for the health. So they would have to take some precautions. Captain nodded, more to himself than to his Pilot.

"Of course we won't leave our beloved pet behind, mein minion! But remember to bring an additional bottle of sun lotion for her! She has very sensitive skin."

"Captain! What's the matter with this list?" the sniper suddenly inquired, still studying it as if it was written in some strange code.

"Ees there a problem with understanding my superior handwriting again, Mr Snippy?"

The sniper shook his head. He held the paper up against the light, turned it around to see whether more was written on the other side, and finally answered his Captain's question.

"No, I can read it quite well: meat, water, carrots, flour... these are completely normal supplies, Captain."

"So?" Captain asked. It was not necessary to get impatient with Mr Snippy. The minion always needed a moment to sort out his thoughts but once he was done with that, he was eager to share them.

"So what's the catch?"

"There ees no catch, mein silly sniper! Zee Captain wants to eat a nice stew for dinner today. So hurry up and get us zee ingredients, and don't forget to watch out for zee killer clowns while you are out there!"

The sniper blinked twice. "Sorry, Captain, could you repeat that last part? I think my ears may have suffered damage from that drill attack earlier after all. I could swear you just used the words 'killer' and 'clowns' in the same sentence!"

"That ees because I did! Zere ees nothing more lethal zan an assassin, who hides behind a false smile and too wide pants!"

Mr Snippy was rubbing the spot between his eyes; was his minion still that tired?

"Captain, there are no clowns left out there! Neither killer nor normal ones! I know you rarely sleep, and this place has a huge book shelf but if you prefer to read at night, please try to avoid the god damn Stephen King novels!"

And with that, the sniper grabbed his gas mask and rifle and departed on his glorious quest, leaving his commanding officer worrying very much about his minion's wellbeing.

"Mr Snippy doesn't believe in zee killer clowns! Zat is bad! Zat is very bad! Zey will catch him completely unprepared!" Captain turned to his last minion, who was still trying to stand at attention, but was already fidgeting with impatience. Of course there was a reason why Captain's most devoted follower got his orders last today.

"Pilot!"

"Captain?" the man asked, making no attempt to hide the eagerness in his voice.

Captain put an arm around Pilot's shoulders and lowered his voice as much as possible:

"I have a very special mission for you!"

After sending all the minions out on their duties, Captain wondered what to do with the rest of the day, which had barely even started.

He decided to check up on Engie, who had holed himself up in his room and was busy working on a piece of boring looking machinery. It looked boring because it was not the Super-drill Captain had ordered him to build. Captain's trained eye could see that at first glance.

"How is zee work going, mein minion!" he inquired, going along with it for the moment.

You'd better have a very good excuse, wasting precious mission time like this.

It was very satisfying seeing his minion flinch in guilt at the words of his commander.

"Seven! Don't sneak up on me like that! I'll get onto it later! Building a huge drill like that needs lots of... careful planning. Very careful planning! It may take months until even my concept is finished!"

"Hardly surprising if you keep up zis sloppy pace, minion! Your Captain ees not impressed! Eet ees easy! Your machine just needs to drill straight down until we reach zee core of zee planet and zen straight up for zee other half of zee way!"

"Seven, You realize that zee... the, I mean "the"! You realise that the Earth's core is really hot?"

"Worry not about such unimportant details, Engie! Zee Captain is hot stuff too!"

Thus, after motivating the squad's science and construction team, the Captain decided it was time for some adventuring. This part of Captania still had a few secret and hidden spots that its righteous ruler had not blessed with his presence yet. It was high time to change that. But of course not all places were equally worthy of Captain's attention.

Usually, it was obvious where to go next, since Captain always knew the ideal path. But sometimes (like now, for example), the path was branching and all possible directions seemed equally alluring.

Where shall I go? he wondered while wandering around downtown.

Finally, a neon sign caught Captain's attention. It was still beautiful, even though it was broken. What was more important, the squiggled lettering showed a word Captain had already heard earlier today: "Excalibur". This had to be a sign! Well, it was a sign, literally.

Time for some exploring!

The place looked rather fancy. It was some sort of castle. At the entrance, Captain met two knights in full suits of armor. Guards were standing there without the slightest movement. They didn't bother him with any pointless questions, which meant that the owner of this place had probably awaited the King of Captania for some time. The host had to be one of the local overlords. Captain didn't remember all of them; his mind was occupied with more important things than names and faces. And yet this time he felt the urge to recall, who it might be. If he or she showed up, Captain would certainly tell them that the rather tattered red carpet was not enough for such a noble guest as himself! The welcoming should be more splendid! Overlords these days! They knew nothing about the proper protocol for greeting authorities!

But soon enough, Captain changed his mind. As a great poet had once said: "A woman is fickle." Beside, there was a party going on in the main chamber of the Overlord's castle. Apparently, the host hadn't forgotten to invite some other notable guests for the celebration of the governor's arrival.

The Great Hall was full of skeletons playing games of chance, or sitting at the bar and sipping their drinks. It was hard to decide which game to join in – the card games, the dice, or that silly one with the little wheel and the ball. He strolled from one table to another, trying to locate the most amusing attraction. As he passed through the rows of slot machines, the wheels inside them started to move, before every single one of them stopped at three red hearts. Plastic coins started to come out like a flood, but Captain didn't even pay attention to that. He was too busy looking for a place for himself. Those poor gamblers had no idea that the best of the best players was among them. And the epic win was his for the taking.

As always, luck was on his side. After winning every game that was possibly left to win, Captain decided to take a break. He took a walk around the castle with the intention of finding some souvenir. After all, he deserved a prize for being so excellent!

Suddenly, something extraordinary caught his eye. There it was – the legendary item of this castle! Captain spotted it behind a piece of broken glass. It seemed to be waiting for someone to take it. And who would be a better new owner than the glorious Captain? He was the only one here familiar with magic, and without a doubt this scepter was magical. He hadn't even touched it yet, and he already felt its power. Not only was the wand mighty, it was also fashionable. Captain just couldn't help but reach for it.

"Hello, my pretty," he murmured tenderly to his newest trophy. "You happen to be one of the few things that are worthy of Captain's attention. Be proud of yourself."

With that, he headed back to the base. He couldn't wait to show his find to his minions. Mr Snippy would be amazed! Thinking about it made Captain feel as captainly as ever. Now that he possessed this formidable item, remarkable things would be achieved! He knew exactly how he would use the scepter. And his new idea was absolutely awesome!