Big, Slow, Sleepy Danger
In the summer of 2002, Dr. Cube suffered from an acute case of the Plantains. No matter what type of danger Cube threw at the freedom-fighting fruit brothers, they emerged victorious. So after witnessing his Posse lose its eleventh-straight Battel to the produce-aisle pair at Warsaw Wafu Fun, Dr. Cube retreated to his high-security compound for a long weekend of brooding in front of the boob tube. It just so happened that he stumbled upon a two-day Japanese monster-movie marathon, and after watching 48 hours of giant, city-crushing monsters smash models, the always-conniving Cube became convinced that a behemoth beast would be the only thing that could stop the Plantain Twins and squash them into the compost pile of fallen Heroes.
Size and power would be the foundation of Cube's new mega-monster: he gathered DNA samples from a silverback gorilla (for raw power), a huge female white whale (for size and intuition), and an African armadillo (for its armor). Harnessing the scientific power of genetics, eugenics, and cryogenics, Cube sequenced each animal's prime bits of DNA into a bio-engineered genetic cocktail. But before the self-taught surgeon could impregnate an egg with this concoction, a tall task stood before him: based on the projected size of the beast, a test tube of unprecedented size would be needed. So the ever-resourceful Cube combined cutting-edge glassblowing techniques with the collective breath of 1,010 Minions to create the largest test tube in biotech history.
Although the test-tube construction and gene-splicing phase seemed flawless, Cube's plan ran into a tiny, unforeseen twist. Before the glassblowing process, his Minions had fueled up on 20 Boxes-of-Java and a truckload of poppy-seed bagels. And while they huffed and puffed, a poppy seed dislodged from Minion #104154's upper bicuspid and fell into the cavernous test tube. But no one noticed. So with the monumental apparatus complete, Cube forged ahead and implanted a fossilized prehistoric egg with the pre-prepared cocktail. After several weeks of gestation, a giant beast emerged. The results delighted its crazy creator: the new creature was imbued with the strength of a giant gorilla, the mass of a great white whale, and the carapace of an armadillo. Cube laughed like a madman as he fantasized about Kaiju Heroes dying slow, painful deaths under the crushing heftiness of this new creature.
But Dr. Cube's bliss became bewilderment when he began to notice the brand-new brute's effect on its environment. Cube's Posse seemed to be suffering from narcolepsy – both monsters and Minions kept falling asleep around the compound. At first, Cube speculated that his Minions were just playing possum out of fear for the colossal creature. But then, when the autodidactic doctor discovered that even the Super Minions and the inexhaustible Hell Monkey were dosing, he realized that the new monster had a curious gift of spreading somnolence. So Cube carried out an exhaustive battery of tests; to his shock, within the beast's DNA potpourri was the unmistakable chromosomal signature of a poppy plant. Further experiments determined that the monster's neck-mucous contained a powerful opiate-derived tranquilizer – which explained what was knocking the entire Posse into sleepy-time mode.
Being an opportunistic egomaniac, Cube immediately recognized that this "problem” could be used to his advantage. A sleeping enemy is a stationary target, so Cube trained the female fiend to hock her "sleep spit” with deadly precision. Beside himself with joy at this serendipity, Cube dryly dubbed the new monster, Napalean – Napalean, as in "take a nap.” As for what that "alean” stands for, that's anybody's guess. Cube has yet to disclose that inside joke.
