Super Prawn!Book 1: Super Prawn Escapes!

Chapter 7

"Hail, oh mighty King Prawn!" said the newly arrived prawn when it reached the throne. "I am here to run your most urgent errand!"

"Ah, hello Richard!" The King Prawn said. "You have been summoned, nay charged by, The Great Hideousness Kath Hoolu The Ever Hungry, to go out and find, nay venture out and seek, a place of wondrous bounty, nay endless munching and scoffing!"

"I was with you all the way up to been," said Richard the prawn.

The prawn in the silly hat said, "Basically, old fatty Hoolu wants to eat another planet. Some place called Earth I think. You have to go and conquer it."

"Why?"

"It was a sea cucumber's idea," said the prawn in the silly hat.

"But they don't exist," said Richard.

"That's what I said," said the prawn in the silly hat. "But apparently there's a star map and apparently if Kath Hoolu has Earth, she'll stop eating us lot. Apparently."

From up on the wall of the hall, a sea cucumber shouted, "Yes we do! Look! I'm here! Coo-ee!"

Richard knew well the legend of Earth, the tale of a blue planet untold light years away, its seas and rivers teeming with slippery life. Eels! Trout! Oysters! Cod! Those little snaily things in shells that look like snails but are littler! Did it really exist? Was such a thing possible?

The King Prawn clambered down some clams clamped together to form steps from his throne to the floor. Which wasn't made of clams.

"This is important, Richard," it said. "Could well save our bacon. And I don't even know what that is, but it sounds like something worth saving, doesn't it? What do you think it's for, this bacon? Decorating? Archaeology? Anyway, who cares? Let's get it saved! Are you with us? Well, with me, at any rate. I mean, I am the King after all. I have the capital letters to prove it."

[insert pic of King Prawn talking to Richard]

Richard scuttled away from the King Prawn with the capital letters and the prawn in the silly hat. He needed to think.

"This is no time for thinking!" the King Prawn said. "Now off you go on your journey, nay tarry forth on your sojourn!"

"Do I have a choice?" Richard asked.

"Yes of course!" the King Prawn answered. "Your choice is this: find Earth, or get gobbled!"

"That's not a choice, that's a threat."

"It's all gymnastics to me," said the King Prawn.

"You mean semantics," said Richard. "But if we can't even use adjacent instead of near, then I'm not going to use that word either."

"It's a good job you didn't then," said the King Prawn, and turned away from Richard, clambered up the steps made from clams clamped together, and sat back on his throne.

Richard the prawn left the great hall of the mighty and powerful King Prawn. A king to whom he had sworn total loyalty. A king for whom he had fought many battles and carried out daring, death-defying missions. A king with whom he'd played Whist and Snap and numerous other card games and always pretended to lose at so as to not get swiped over the head with the seaweed. A king who had given him a mission of utmost importance, the orders straight from the all conquering vast awfulness that is Kath Hoolu, the creature that ruled their star system and kept on eating them.

Standing outside the hall of the King Prawn, Richard knew what he had to do. Kath Hoolu had conquered his kind and numerous others. It ruled them with an iron fist. Well, perhaps not an iron fist, but certainly some frighteningly large tentacles and lots of sickening gobbling sounds. And now it wanted to do the same to another helpless planet. Would its tever error end? Or indeed its terror ever end?

Richard's mission was as clear as the space in a hole when all the mud is removed. As clear as the gap in a window when you throw a brick through it.

"I will save Earth from Kath Hoolu!" said Richard.

And so, our delicious, I mean brave, hero, was born! Hurrah! Begin the cheering!