Request story for  KilowattLaser!

Fun fact: Mutants gave me nightmares as a kid.
Fun fact: Fun facts suck.

ENJOY!

Size:1.769 words

Cantos Kitsune ©

Story © me.
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“CLANG-CLANG-PSSSSSH…”
“Awww, flipping crud,” Cantos grumped as he swung open the door of his car. The fuel gauge was straightly pointing at red ‘E’. While he had run out of gas before, this situation might bear potentially dreadful results, as he was quite literally in the middle of nowhere; a desolate road with the cracked-open asphalt and potholes all over the place, along with the barren, mountain-like landscape forming its surroundings. It posed quite an unexpected turn of events, having run out of gas in such a place, especially since nighttime was already precariously looming over the area.
Cantos walked to the back of his vehicle and lifted open the trunk with a slight grunt. He pulled out a large fuel canister, and proceeded to lock his car. Right now, the only decision he could make was to walk all the way to find a gas station or another source of fuel. Improvisation was completely out of the question.

He hadn’t even walked a tenth of a mile, before a faint, repeatedly blinking glimpse of blue light in the distance caught his eye. It shone through the layers of trees that blocked his view to the right. Cantos was deeply intrigued.
“Interesting…” he thought by himself, his hands shaking slightly. He placed the jerry can on the rough asphalt floor he was walking on. Mustering his will, he took a number of steps forward in the direction of the mysterious, but uncanny glimmer. The light appeared not to be natural, as it seemed further away than it was, and alternated its mystical shine from dim to sometimes blindingly bright, like a silent firework going off.
“I’m on a leisurely vacation anyway,” he whispered to himself and the vast nature around him. “Might as well go check that blinker out.”
Aware of the fact that he swept his original plans to the wayside, Cantos took a fleeting stride towards the light. An array of fir tree branches were swayed in his face, taking away his sharp orientation for the brief moment they hurled in. Crickets could be heard chirping, even more so the deeper Cantos ventured into the remote woods. He also knew he had a basic survival kit stored in the trunk of his car that he might as well have taken with him at this point.

Despite it only still being a night just started, darkness obscured every inch of the area around Cantos. He could still see the light as if it were stuck against his retina, because it didn’t seem to come closer. Then, Cantos bumped into a hard rock-like wall.
“Ow,” he blurted out, being profusely startled from the sudden wall appearing in his face. Well, what could be expected in such an area immersed in darkness.
He rubbed an area on his forehead a little bit, checking to see if he had hurt himself. He didn’t feel any oddities, so in the worst case scenario he would most likely get a bump on his hurt spot.
Once he drifted out of his stupor caused by the wall-bash, Cantos noticed something peculiar. The light was no longer anywhere to be seen…
“Aw, how wonderful,” he said in utter agitation. “Everything being for nothing again, isn’t it?”
But as he turned his head around to walk back to where he came from - if he could even manage to find his route back, the light… suddenly revealed itself again, in the corner of his eye. It was now shining even stronger than before. It appeared that the other side of the wall he just ran into had a lot to hide…

Cantos paced around the side of the wall as if he was playing hide-and-seek. He even tiptoed; you may never know what dangers could spring from an accidental stumble or trip over a fallen branch or sometimes a molehill. Then, when he had crossed a couple meters around the mysterious rock that the light came from, he stumbled across something so amazing that left him baffled as he stood there. Inside the wall was a colossal opening that housed an abandoned, sophisticated laboratorial testing facility.
“Holy…” Cantos said in enthrallment as he stared with open eyes at the entrance. “Perhaps this is where that light came from.”
He walked inside, still being very careful. He looked at the white tiles on the ground, the stripped copper wiring that was scattered all over it like spaghetti, and the buttons and control panels that were rigged to the walls. It looked like this hadn’t laid abandoned for a long time, not even for a short time, even.
“Why in the world would this be left behind like this?” Cantos questioned himself.
The inside of the laboratory consisted of a multitude of appliances and apparati, who had been used for who knows what. There were also what looked like cloning tubes standing to the side, with the protective glass casing smashed open. Especially in the center of the lab, which was surrounded by a circular control panel, glass shards, chemicals and scrap shreds were littering the floor.
“Moreover, why would anyone make this lab in such a hidden place?”

Before Cantos could ponder his further thoughts that his discovery had brought down upon him, his attention was drawn to a very peculiar object. At the back of the ruined facility, a large metal door was barred by some sort of refrigerator lying on its side. Whatever the door was locking away, it had to be dangerous enough to warrant a quarantine like that.
Out of the slits of the door’s heavy hinges, a bright aquamarine fluid was seeping forth.
“Hmmm, so this must have been it, huh?” Cantos said as he squatted to study the gooey stuff attentively. The goo glowed so much up close, almost as if it was radioactive.
“Perhaps they forced this off to prevent a nuclear fallout?” he thought. “My curiosity is killing me, especially in an occasion like this. Or maybe I can find fuel for my vehicle here?”
The latter of his thoughts was what was most important at the time; he came to refuel his car which had just run out of gas in the middle of nowhere. He was extremely lucky that such a gigantic abandoned facility laid in the area around which his car kicked the bucket, if anything.

“I just have to do it,” Cantos thought by himself. “If there’s a radioactive hazard afoot, I’ll have enough time to get my butt outta here.”
With that mindset, he pushed the appliance that was blocking the steel door out of the way with all his strength.
“Meh, that was easy,” Cantos shrugged. All the force that he applied in pushing the fridge-thingy away was a gullible stretch. The object seemed to be much, much lighter than the eye would make it out to be.
Then, Cantos slowly pulled the steel door to him, clasping his fist firmly around the surprisingly untouched handle. He still felt minor unsure feelings pass through him, but pulled open the door anyway.
“This is even more interesting,” he said, now feeling more confident as he walked through the door “See, no danger at all!”
Or was it…?

“Oh my good god…”
The first thing he saw when he entered the supposed forbidden room, was a gigantic preservation tube holding a mutant dragon of some sort. It was green with a yellow-tinged underbelly, and it had tiny wings protruding from its shoulders. The rest of the room consisted of controlling devices to supply the tube with power and to regulate it. Tiny bubbles arose from the bottom, while the lizard inside was unconsciously held in place, undisturbed. Cantos was impulsed to see the thing up close. He had to.
“That’s amazing!” Cantos thought as he paced forward in the direction of the enormous tube and the creature inside. “And this is locked away? It’s already in a tube, silly scientists!”, he shouted.
But then, when he took his ninth step forward, he tripped over a thick wire on the floor… and fell with his head on a control panel before the giant tube.
“Oh, bonkers,” he said as he quickly tried to get up, but failed due to his sudden case of despair that had just awakened. That, and something else. The glass case, which turned out to be tempered glass, shattered into a million tiny pieces. The being inside promptly awakened from being forcibly shaken out of his place.
“RWAAAUUUR!!”
With a thunderous roar, the mutant dragon sprang out of his case. He was free to roam after who knows for how long he had been in there. And it showed, because the first thing it went for was the helpless Cantos lying on the pure white floor, out of his senses from what he had just inadvertently caused. Gravelly bits of broken glass were violently shaken off of the back of the creature.
“I revile my paining curiosity!!” he screamed.

“RWAAAUR!”
With another mighty roar, the dragon mutant pressed his paw on Cantos, pinning him underneath it and preventing his escape. Cantos was sweating bullets.
“I might have potentially unleashed hell upon this earth!”, he panicked, struggling underneath the dragon’s paw as a last resort. But to no avail.
“RYAAAURRH!”
Letting out yet another fierce roar, the mighty beast started with phase two.
“W-What is this?!” Cantos said as he felt the surface below him turn into a slithery bed of slime. When he tried to turn his head around, he barely caught fact of how the reptilian hybrid wrapped his tongue around him. It’s surprisingly non-corrosive saliva drenched every bit of Cantos’s body as he was lifted up by the impending fleshy tentacle. Cantos didn’t dare to look down behind him; it was like a reverse lifthill of a rollercoaster. As the dragon had lifted him into the air with his tongue, he was now dangling above his fearsome maw.
“Aaaaaaaah!”
And then, the money shot happened. Cantos was dropped right into the beast’s maw. He squirmed against the back of its tongue, but all was in vain. The predator produced a chain of sounds that served to be his satisfaction in sending Cantos down to his stomach.
The bulge in his throat that appeared right after was the ultimate mark of this. Cantos had no idea how this would turn out for him.

The mutant reptile then stormed out of the laboratory, trampling test tubes and metal bits as he ran for the exit that Cantos had conveniently left open for him, ready to start his rampage in the real world…