When the last of the mist cleared, indeed a figure was sitting on the jewel-encrusted chair.
He barely looked human. A long snout face, very beady eyes, pencil-thin mustache, heavily greased goatee. He was pale, with very feminine hands and long fingernails. He was wearing a silver lame robe and womanly sandals.
This was Ping the Pontificator.
He looked down at them with the appropriate disdain, but seemed bored and far away at the same time.
Very weird, Hunter thought. And very familiar…
Ping weakly clapped his hands twice. A new troop of tin soldiers waddled in. Annie was being led behind them. Though she'd only been out of Hunter's sight for a few minutes, she'd undergone yet another wardrobe change. She was now wearing a very low cut, see-through gown, white high heel boots — and nothing else. Hunter got a rush seeing her like this. She was both gorgeous and sexy.
She also appeared to be hypnotized. Eyes wide and unblinking. Blank stare on her face. So stiff, she was having trouble walking. At this rate, the same would be soon true for Hunter.
Annie was led to the bottom step of the throne and left there. A light from behind showed all her natural beauty. Hunter was getting very distracted. At least Zoloff's eyes were elsewhere. He was glowering up at Ping, his archenemy in the endless chapters of this place.
"You have my daughter and her betrothed!" Zoloff thundered up at Ping. But the man on the throne simply waved away his protestations.
"It's your constant meddling that is the cause of all this!" Ping thundered right back at him. "Your noodlings and your science! Once I've eliminated you and your kind, then can I rise to my proper glory!"
Even the tin soldiers seemed to be rolling their eyes at the bad dialogue. Hunter was hardly paying attention though; he still could not drag his attention from Annie. Even in a near-comatose state, she looked very desirable.
Finally he broke out of his own spell and contemplated the situation at hand. He had to rescue not just Annie now but her fiance as well. But how?
"Is Ping not a man of honor?" Hunter suddenly heard himself bellow.
Everything else happening in the throne room came to a crashing halt. Hunter could still hear his words echoing off the high ceiling.
Ping turned his attention away from Zoloff and leveled his gaze on Hunter.
"It is honor which is in such short supply these days," he said to Hunter in a very singsong voice. "What would a friend of Zoloff know of honor?"
"Enough to know that an honorable man would allow another to fight for the woman he loves!" Hunter yelled back at him, surprised at the mossy words he was tossing out.
Ping sneered at him but then pulled on his tiny goatee in an approximation of deep thought.
"This woman is the one you love?" he asked Hunter, pointing down at Annie.
"She is!" was his dramatic reply.
"And a contest of strength for her freedom — this is what you propose?"
"It is…"
Ping thought a few more moments, men lifted his hand and gave a kind of royal wave. "Let it be," he said.
A curtain off to the left opened, and no surprise, there was a small arena located here. A large cage covered it. The bars looked as flimsy as the tin men's armor. Inside was a monstrous figure, at least fifteen feet tall, arms already flailing, roaring loudly, its entire body covered with hair.
Hunter took one look at it and murmured, "What the fuck is this?"
It was too big to be a man, so, he surmised, it must be a robot, one covered in fake hair.
He'd just assumed he'd have to battle it out with some of Ping's tinny guards; he could fight them all day, if they came at him one at a time. This thing, though, might be a bit more difficult.
He was led to the cage by a clutch of soldiers. With little ceremony they opened the gate and threw Hunter in. Zoloff was screaming at him not to do it. He was so animated more tin men had to hold him back. Ping, however, was smiling fang to fang. Annie remained immobile.
Hunter turned to face his opponent. It looked even bigger up close. His first thought, that this might be a mechanical man of sorts, was dashed as soon as he was in the arena. Robots made noise, even in a crazy place like this. Whirring, motor-driven. Robotic. He could detect no sounds like this from the monster. Instead, he heard a lot of heavy breathing, along with a fair amount of grunting and whispering.
Hunter rolled his eyes, walked up to the creature, and just stood there. The creature looked down at him, smoke coming out of its nostrils on cue. He heard a roar — no, two roars, one right after the other — and it was apparent that neither originated from the monster's mouth.
Hunter held up his fists like an ancient boxer, ready to fight. More smoke. Most out-of-sync roars. Hunter believed now he knew what was going on here.
He was deciding exactly where the best place to hit the beast might be, when the beast hit first. Its right arm swung around with such speed and force, it sent Hunter reeling through the air before crashing him to the hard stone floor below.
The crowd in the throne room gasped, then cheered. Zoloff cried out, "Stop this madness! We are men of peace!"
But no one was paying attention to him. Ping meanwhile never lost his detached grin. Annie was still a statue.
Hunter slowly got to his feet. He boldly walked up to the beast again. The snorting and smoke-blowing was drowned out by the sounds of an angry, whispered, unseen argument going on between two people. The monster had hit him with a lucky shot, but Hunter knew at that moment that the creature had blown its load.
He taunted it to hit him again, pointing to his chin and dancing around a bit. Once more there was a wild swing, but this time Hunter was able to limbo himself out of its path with seconds to spare. More smoke, more snorting, and even more heated unseen arguing.
Hunter stuck his chin out even farther, once again daring the thing to hit him. There was yet another swing, another nimble move by Hunter to avoid it, but this time as the arm went by, Hunter grabbed onto it and yanked it back toward him. Two near identical yelps could be heard, followed by some deep groaning.
Those in the throne room just gasped now. They'd feared the monster since… well, since their existence here had begun. No one had ever really hurt it before. Even Ping looked concerned.
The thing swung again, and Hunter repeated his earlier action. He ducked as the punch went by, and then grabbed onto the arm and yanked it back toward him before once again letting go.
This time the pair of screams coming from the beast could be heard by everyone in the throne room. Hunter almost laughed; it was funny. But he was getting tired of this game. The next time the thing took a swing, he grabbed onto its arm, and this time he held on.
The beast began flailing wildly again, trying to get him off, but Hunter hung on tight. He cracked the arm near the elbow, then threw himself at the beast's chest. He heard two successive thuds, and then two short cries of pain.
Time for the revealing act, he thought. He climbed up onto the beast's shoulders even as the thing tried to reach up to grab him, a distinct impossibility. Hunter threw two roundhouse rights into the beast's mug. This stunned the creature long enough for Hunter to reach around the back of its neck, where his hands found just what he knew would be there: a zipper.