TRAPPED Chapter 3

AUTHOR'S NOTE: HAHA, Did you think I wouldn't update again? YOU THOUGHT WRONG. I genuinely am pretty happy with my somewhat figured out storyline, not to mention I just got back into Phineas and Ferb after having a bit of a break from it, NOT TO MENTION that Winter Break just started for me. So. Here it is!

Originally I had thought to do a chapter with both subplots, but this one was so fun to write and got to be so long, I figured that Earth could wait a chapter. Besides, I still need to figure out a few things. Eesh.

Reviews are adored, thank you very much! And when I say review, I mean critique is favored as well, as long as it's polite and well-thought out. I'd like to know what I'm doing right AND what I'm doing wrong. Or if you just have some encouraging words those help too. I usually get hyped to write new chapters just thanks to someone saying "Wow I'm enjoying this!" or something. ^u^ And if you're planning on reviewing, please look at my authors note at the end of the chapter, AFTER you've read through the whole thing (spoilers!).

So thanks! And enjoy!

If you were looking down on the scene there wouldn't be much to view. The room was cloaked with darkness, save the occasional quiet spark of bright electricity from nowhere in particular. He guessed it was from the walls he assumed existed nearby, though considering that they seemed to hold dangerous energy, the little alien didn't think it wise to start feeling around for a door. Waiting was the way to go.

Meap had only woken minutes before. His innards, particularly those similar to our human lungs, were sore and felt almost bruised as he sat up. His throat hurt as well. Everything ached, really, though he ignored it almost instantly. His few minutes spent in peace were followed by a focus on getting to know his surroundings.

Of course, there's not much to examine when it's all blackness and an occasional bolt of blue or red energy zapping out nearby.

Suddenly a voice shattered the perfect silence that he had barely realized was there. It was loud, mocking, and close.

"BOO."

He flinched. He felt like an idiot for flinching, because it was probably exactly his host would want. By it's cackling reaction, he was right.

"Awwww. Did I scare the little alien baby?" Meap immediately got the feeling that the owner of this voice was out to impress. To make a show of his superiority. Eugh.

"What a wuss." He ignored the insult. Somehow the voice was above him now. "I could barely believe that I had reeled in someone stupid enough to go for the simplest trap in the book."

A light flashed across Meap's line of vision. Sparks erupted from the crevices of darkness that surrounded him. In another moment it was all gone, but the blinding light had burned into his vision. Glowing eyes and a mouth that reminded him of pumpkin carvings by humans. He blinked rapidly and squeezed his eyes shut, determined to escape the gaze of his capturer.

Suddenly the sound of a thousand engines crescendoed into existence in the alien's little eardrums. His eyes flew open as light engulfed the room. Perfect, another kind of blind.

As his eyes adjusted, a tall figure came into his blurred vision. Meap processed every piece of information he could think of. Four black walls. No doors. Small room. Completely empty. Humanoid figure. Main language is English. Obviously from Earth, but not Human?

"Meap?" the squinting form said boldly, attempting to sound unfazed by his capturer's mystery act.

The figure laughed heartily. Loudly. Annoyingly. "HA. Is that really what your language sounds like? And I thought Martians were ridiculous sounding."

Meap could see the full form of what now appeared to be an artificial creation. A hideous one, he added mentally. It's limbs and body parts seemed to be a mesh of twirling, twisting slabs of metal, coils and bolts, formed together in a loose and sloppy form. It's head was NOT a pumpkin, as Meap had playfully imagined moments before. It was made from similar meshes of metal, with open carved crevices that seemed to be stuck in a devilish grinning face. It glowed a dark electric blue from inside. Meap was reminded of human art pieces made of trash. He didn't quite understand humanity at times.

The strangest part was that the figure seemed to be connected to the floor by his feet. Yet, as the machine stepped toward the comparatively itty bitty alien, the floor stepped with him. His feet seemed to pull long, bending metallic pieces out from beneath.

"I hope you don't mind that I switch on the universal translators so that I don't have to listen to your ugly language. And when I say that, I really mean that I do hope you mind, because I'm going to do it anyway and I want you to hate it." The AI stopped a few feet off from him. He stood with a hooked cane, which he leaned on with another hand in his "pocket" nonchalantly. It was obviously for show. "And in answer to your dumb question, it's curiosity. The trap is to just let your victim's curiosity play against them. And I lied, that's not the oldest trick in the book. I just like it."

Meap noted that this was the first thing the AI had ever stated liking.

He opened his mouth to speak, but it interrupted him quickly with an exasperated long-winded groan. "Let me guess. 'Where am I?' 'Who are you?' 'What happened?'" He said these with a very high pitched voice. "Dull. Horribly stupidly dull questions. I wouldn't bother answering if it wasn't for the fact that I had planned to answer them anyway. I'll put it simply for your little pea brain to grasp." Each word was said with contempt. Pure contempt. Meap made a quick mental list of every bad guy he had ever busted and which ones had connections which might want to murder him. He couldn't think of anyone in particular. This was new.

Suddenly their faces were incredibly close. If robots could spit, Meap was sure he would be flinching. It glared at him with glowing eyes that slowly turned from it's cool blue to a dark heated purple.

"You...are on a list."

Meap told himself not to dramatically gulp.

"A list of people whose fun little game will doom them. Because I am the stadium." With this, the floor beneath him moved upwards, creating a tall pillar on which 'The Stadium' stood on top. As if conducting an orchestra, he raised his arms and flicked his wrists. In response, the walls around Meap pushed inwards.

"Before we play the game, of course, we need all the players. And I mean all of them. Particularly..." The pillar reformed itself into slabs of machinery, spiraling into a staircase. Banister's strutted up from the sides, and the artificial man slid down them quickly, stopping short of flying off the bottom, perfectly positioning himself into a sitting position on the end which Meap stood at the base of. From the first beam of the twisting banister, wires coiled up like vines, and a screen appeared with a picture that made Meap's heart skip a beat.

"Flynn and Fletcher. I've got a bone to pick with the brats. Quite a few bones, really. Hopefully theirs. Don't bother acting like you don't know them, either. I got the screen grab from your ship. The one I totaled. I hope you loved that ship with everything in you, because you're never going to see it again." Meap stared at the picture with dread. It was the two boys and their sister posing with him in the ship the first time they had met.

"Fortunately you don't need to do much more than exist and look miserably adorable for me to get a hold of them. I happen to know that they hold quite a bit of 'moral fiber' in their freakish heads, so it's not like they won't enjoy playing hero." The artificial wad of infuriating jerkiness waved a hand over the screen and it disappeared. "Oh, and you have to survive. I am fond of games, and lucky for you, I do play relatively fair. There's always a way out, as long as you're clever enough to figure out how. Too bad for you of course. If you fell into my first trap so easily, I highly doubt you'll last long. I've gotten quite good." The pillar shot into the ground and the AI stuck out a wiry tongue at him as the lights flickered off. Meap got into a fighting stance, preparing for anything that may come at him. He heard machinery shake and rattle and move all around him, and suddenly when the lights flashed back on, spikes were coming from the two walls opposite him, drawing near, with the metal man nowhere to be seen.

A voice boomed from all around as Meap looked up, seeing the outline of a doorway above him. "As for the last couple boringly cliche questions, you can call me Tower. And you are in my traps. Have fun. By which I mean don't." Tower cackled as Meap lept from one spike to the other, jumping for the handle above. As he climbed into the darkness, the spikes tore apart their parallel walls beneath him. "So welcome to the game," Tower whispered, "You stupid albino toad."

The speakers clicked off.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Apparently a lot of people were sincerely worried that I had killed Meap off! Haha, no worries, he is alive and sorta well. You know. For now. *Cackles* He doesn't get any real talking bits in here, but he will! I promise!

I wondered if people would catch on to who our villain was. I know that he sort of seems like an OC at first, because I sort of played with his appearance to have more fun with the story. He's BEING the tower, but at the same time he can freely move about it, which I thought was a fun neat concept that I could work with. It's also a bit difficult to write for him, because we only got one episode and his main characteristic that we saw of him was just that he's really rude. So. I tried to do something with that. XD

But c'mon, there's no way he was just gonna sit up there on the edges of the galaxy forever! He'd catch on to the fact that our two favorite inventors had outsmarted him eventually, I'd think. So. Yes. Tell me what you think of my writing of him! I'm interested! And please please please PLEASE review because I love them. Thank you!