In a Galaxy Far, Far AwRy

Book 21: This One Has a Dancing Gibbon

Liam Gibbs

IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWRY book 21: THIS ONE HAS A DANCING GIBBON

Copyright (c) 2021 Liam Gibbs

All rights reserved.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

As awesome as this book is, it’s a work of fiction. I know, I know. We were all hoping, but it just ain’t gonna be. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s freaky imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely bonkers and coincidental. In other words, sadly you can’t get Schizophrenic’s autograph.

ISBN 13: 978-1777638641

First printing: April 2021

{ PLOT DEVICE PUBLISHING }

The Story So Far...

This stupendous, amazing, spectacular, not-at-all-overhyped comedy/science-fiction series can be found in the following parts:

Book 1: Serial Fiction Sideshow, available in the hearts of one and all

Book 2: Home Sweet Home Invasion, available in the hearts of one and all

Book 3: Technophobia, available in the h—you’re starting to see a pattern here, aren’t you?

Book 4: Armageddon Trigger Finger, available in...hey...your heart. And one and all’s too.

Book 5: The Genetic Equation, available blah blah blah.

Book 6: Power Tool, not available. Just kidding. Totally available.

Book 0: The Story So Far, you know the drill.

Available on the Author’s Super-Awesome Site

Book 7: The Lesser of Two Egos

Book 8: Untitled of Attitude Adjustments

Book 9: Those We Left Behind

Book 10: Metaphor for Life

Book 11: Oh, Crock, Here Comes a Meteor!

Book 12: His Kingdom Come

Book 13: A Wolf in Sheep’s Armor

Book 14: Man Versus Machine Part 1 of 1

Book 15: Our New Hiring Policy

Book 16: Life Like Broken Glass

Book 17: The Church of Steeple

Book 18: Blood Bunny

Book 19: Disease of Behavior

Book 20: The Paper Tiger’s Yardstick

Book 21: This One Has a Dancing Gibbon

Book 22: My Brother’s Captor

Book 23: Marching Orders

Book 24: We, Robots, but not yet ’cause it’s being worked on just for you

Please visit www.inagalaxyfarfarawRy.com for more information.

Other Stuff the Author Spewed Out

Maybe check out these other things ’cause they’re superfine too!

Not So Superpowered, available at tiny.cc/nssuperpowered

Three Flash Fictions, available upon request from the author

Random limericks, available in bathroom stalls

Your Favorite Table of Contents

Book 21: This One Has a Dancing Gibbon

Chapter One: Prison Broke

Chapter Two: Not in This One Either

Chapter Three: Yes, It Was Fun Coming Up with All Those Ride Names, Thank You for Asking

Chapter Four: To Think a Theme Park Could Be This Boring

Chapter Five: And by “Brain Trust,” We Mean “Disaster of Rational Thought”

Chapter Six: As if on Cue...

Chapter Seven: And in This Corner, Weighing in at One Lunatic Starship...

Chapter Eight: Strategy Belching

Chapter Nine: Explosive Diarrhea

Chapter Ten: Because You Demanded It for Some Reason!

Chapter Eleven: How ‘Bout That Margin of Error?

Chapter Twelve: Migratory Patterns

Chapter Thirteen: Tough Crowd

Chapter Fourteen: The Social Faux-Pas Family Tree

Chapter Fifteen: The Word of the Day Is Rated R

Chapter Sixteen: Make Yourself at Home

Chapter Seventeen: Worst Zoo Ever

Chapter Eighteen: That Time We Waged War against Power Plant’s Childhood

Chapter Nineteen: Those Insufferable Neighbors

Chapter Twenty: What Fresh Crock Is This?

Chapter Twenty-One: Now You’re Up to Speed

Chapter Twenty-Two: But the View!

Appendices

About That Guy Whose Book You Read Once

Connect with the Series

This Isn’t Even My Final Form!

The following story ain’t professionally edited. I know, I know, why am I inflicting this on you?

For cool reasons.

Professional editing, covers, and the whole shebang takes money. And creating appendix material takes time. The In a Galaxy Far, Far AwRy series has been steadily seeing new releases, but they’re release at the rate of one per year, while they’re written at a rate of one every nine months or so. Do the math. The series will never catch up.

The author, awesome brain that he has, only ever wanted to share these stories with the world.

Money wasn’t ever a goal. I know by offering these books for free—professionally packaged or not—I’ll be losing money. I honestly don’t care. Since releasing the books free of charge yet without the “professional” look, I’ve found the stress of running this whole series has gotten much manageable. This leaves me with more time to do what I set out to do: write the stories and share them.

I still attend trade shows and comic conventions and sell the books there. Each book will, eventually, be given the professional touch. But, while we’re waiting, all I want to do is share these.

If you see something ain’t right, or something you want to comment on, please feel free. Think of yourself as a beta-reader: a pre-reader of something unreleased. Voice your thoughts at liamgibbs@inagalaxyfarfarawry.com. Until the book gets professionally released, I consider it a work in progress.

So what you’re reading here is the book without the professional touches. I’ve edited this book a dozen times or more, and so I believe it’s as polished as I can get it. I feel comfortable letting you see it. It will one day be professionally edited. One day. But until then, know that you’re reading what I believe to be as polished as I myself can get it.

Enjoy!

Or don’t. I really have no control.

Chapter One: Not in this Chapter, Though

May 1, 52,992 B.C. 4:58 p.m. (Galactic Standard Time). That’s right. Way in the past. See that B.C. thing? That means this predates everything in the series so far. And the printing press. And bacon. And The Golden Girls but possibly not the actresses on the show.

Crugg didn’t know any of this. Didn’t know stuff. Except spear in hand. And fire. And fire spear. Heh. Crugg loved fire spear. Crugg loved whacking fire spear over Flink’s head.

Crugg didn’t know anything. Because slope of forehead and shrunken chin. Oh, and being dropped on head as kid. But Crugg knew simpler time. Knew when only way to break open coconuts was chuck them at rocks or, when Crugg didn’t aim well, foot. Ouch. Crugg knew times when he loved snake meat—he loved snake meat, so salty—cooked over flames that Flink didn’t piss into. Flink loved sssszzzzz sizzle of piss. Crugg didn’t like taste of Flink’s sssszzzzz piss on snake meat. Served Flink right that time he fell on fire and got scar all over his arm. He got fire spear clonked over head that day.

Crugg knew times when he needed only spear to kill huge animal. Crugg knew times when that wet kkrrrrrzzzzzkkk slurp didn’t come from cave over there. Dark cave with slurps.

Crugg dropped spear. No animal around to kill anyway. What hid in cave? Sounded violent. Animals screamed. Crugg scratched head. Scratched armpit. Scratched infection deep in armpit. Felt good. Kicked leg. Oooh, felt good.

Flink busy with crackling fire, laughing because of sssszzzzz piss. Crugg whacked him. Flink should stop pissing on snake meat.

Crugg pointed at cave. Dark cave. Flink heard slurp. Ears perked. What slurped? Crugg picked up spear. Crugg stepped closer to cave. Clutched spear. Flink squinted, followed Crugg. Clutched Crugg’s shoulders and hid behind Crugg. Scared little rodent. That meant “spineless wimp” in Crugg speak. Flink had majestic slope in brow, though. Slope enough to break coconut on. Chicks dug coconut brow. Flink boasted skill often. That explained why Flink enjoyed sssszzzzz piss. Also why Flink had dented skull.

Who was Crugg to talk? Crugg wasn’t bright either. Crugg had wandered from clan over there. And he’d brought Flink with him. Idiot Crugg.

Day felt hot and sticky. Cave felt cold and drafty. Insects sang. Scary animal screams still screamed. Scary slurps still slurped. Crugg’s chest thumped harder. Crugg reached cave and squinted into darkness. Chest thumped louder than slurps, but he still heard slurps. Felt shaky. Also felt rock he stepped on.

Then slurps went away. Animal screams went away too. Huh. Weird. Scary. Crugg squinted harder. Flint squinted harder too. Crugg looked at Flink, and Flink looked at Crugg. Both shrugged. Why animals stop slurping? No more thirsty?

Flink stepped closer to slurp cave. Into slurp cave, into slurp cave darkness. Flink should be careful. He had amazing beard. Crugg never seen such amazing beard before. So scruffy. If Flink wasn’t careful, losing beard would cause great shame for clan.

Something was up. No. Flink with beard and coconut brow should stay away from drafty slurp cave with screaming animals who didn’t scream and thirsty-drank all the water. Bad feeling about this. Why didn’t moss grow in cave? Or grass? Why all these bloody bones too?

Flink disappeared inside slurp cave darkness. Away. Crugg grunted to him. Flink’s echo grunted back. Crugg didn’t like this, but Crugg stepped into drafty slurp cave. Into drafty slurp cave darkness. No more hot and sticky day. Whah! Caught spicy whiff of dead animals right up mouth. Choked out whiff. Stepped over bear forepaw. Bear forepaw?

Flink grunted. Flink screamed like animals screamed! Crugg stumbled back, tripped over bear forepaw. Tripped over other bear forepaw. Tripped over other other bear forepaw. Crugg hit head on drafty slurp cave wall. One bear forepaw? Okay, nothing weird. Two bear forepaws? Sucked for bear. Three bear forepaws? Something was messed up.

Crugg tried hard to keep eyes open. Flink tried hard to scream that loudly. Flink was in loud pain. Flink, get out! Then Flink stopped screaming like animals screamed, and thing bounced out of cave darkness. Flink, bounce out like thing! Crugg clutched sp—No, Crugg had dropped spear over by second bear forepaw. Scrambled over third forepaw, grabbed spear—

Wait. Third forepaw wasn’t bear forepaw. Crugg grabbed forepaw to examine it. Also to eat it later. Checked forepaw. Too unfurry for bear forepaw. Too small for bear forepaw.

Bear forepaw was person arm. And thing that bounced out of slurp cave darkness was Flink head with Flink beard and Flink coconut brow!

Crugg grabbed Flink head by scruffy Flink beard and darted to cave mouth, to hot and sticky day. So many steps away. But hurry! Slurpy thing got closer. So did slurp sound. Crugg glanced over shoulder. Couldn’t see anything. No slurp monster. He threw person arm back. Eat this, slurp monster. Tastes like sssszzzzz piss.

Something grabbed Crugg’s waist. Felt like goop. Stank like more rotten dead than drafty slurp cave. What was at Crugg’s waist? Stinky tentacle of shadow was wrapped around him. Crugg grabbed at tentacle. Hand fell into tentacle like tentacle was thick water. Couldn’t get it off. Crugg stopped running and dropped Flink head to use both hands. Couldn’t pull off stinky black tentacle. And Crugg was strong dude!

Crugg tried harder, sweaty hands. What was tentacle, what was tentacle, what was tentacle, what was tentacle, tentacle smelled so rotten, Crugg tried not to breathe, what was tentacle—

Crugg heard one last slurp. And laugh. One laugh. Rumbly one laugh from rumbly one voice. Looked at cave mouth and hot and sticky day outside. So far away.

“You are fitting enough to gather my army,” rumbled rumbly voice. “You will serve nicely as my new blackguard.”

And stinky tentacle wrenched Crugg more deeper into drafty slurp cave darkness.

Chapter Two: Not in This One Either

February 12, 9110. 6:02 p.m. (Galactic Standard Time).

Blackguard materialized. Where had his lord, the almighty Continuum, sent him? He knew the time and date, but wherever this darkened place was, it smelled of chlorine. Chlorine and urine. And? Blackguard sniffed again. Kelp. Chlorine, kelp, and kelp-tinged urine. And urine-tinged kelp. The list of items on the bouquet kept expanding.

Blackguard searched the room illuminated in the weak-willed glow of a single candle. He chuckled. The first inductee into Lord Continuum’s army—an imprisoned former Bad Guy who’d run afoul of Bad Guy leader, Master Asinine—lay poolside across the porcelain-and-ceramic-tiled deck in this swimming arena repurposed as a prison.

The inductee was a bulky mass of wax-textured sinew wrapped around a muscleman who now looked emaciated and drained of life. His skin, usually syrupy and oozing, had now paled and dried in his dehydration and malnourishment. He rolled over, face up, and grabbed at some kelp from a cracked bucket at his side. No, his hand flopped into a urine puddle. Too bad for him. Also too bad for Blackguard, since the urine now splashed out a stronger kelp-tinged odor.

Blackguard began the trek around the pool, careful to avoid the decomposed kelp. Kelp tended to decompose into mush. Oh, but feel free to step into another puddle of urine, you careless simpleton. That would help.

Blackguard kept distance from that single candle. As dimly as its flicker burned, he dared not venture toward it. Even from this fourteen-foot distance—or, as the poolside measured things, approximately thirty-seven piled corpses, rounding up—Blackguard felt the light’s disease creepy-crawling into him. And who measured in piled corpses? Blackguard felt no offense at the measurement system, just that it was horribly inexact. For instance, fat people versus starved wretches. And whose corpses? People or hippos? Also—

No, Lord Continuum had evolved Blackguard from a simpleminded caveman into a creature with the ability to travel through time and space, to chronoport and teleport. Blackguard would waste not his time dissecting the thoughts of the meager intellect who’d designed this pool, especially since that intellect considered bamboo shoots sufficient for a pool drainage system.

Blackguard did not rush. No, Lord Continuum’s plan demanded too much grace for a mad dash. Blackguard also wished not to step in decomposed kelp. Decomposed kelp did not glorify his heel.

But, in due time, reach the inductee Blackguard did. He smiled down at the inductee, the one Lord Continuum had deemed as the first of eight children to obtain. One of Lord Continuum’s apostles. He squatted by the inductee’s side. The inductee, with desiccated skin and cracked lips, roused and peered up at Blackguard as if waking from slumber. He blinked, his skin crumbling like crackers. The reek of urine and chlorine asserted itself pungently here.

Blackguard observed the inductee for a second. And then, “Hello, Plaster.”

Plaster coughed, voice as dry and crumbly as his once-oozing skin. “Ya here to kill me?”

Such a silly suggestion. “I am not here to kill you, Plaster. I have need of you. Rather, the Almighty Lord does.” Thus Continuum’s recruitment began.

Chapter Three: Yes, It Was Fun Coming Up with All Those Ride Names, Thank You for Asking

March 31, 9110. 12:14 p.m. (Galactic Standard Time). Lunch time. Yum, depending on your opinion of candied gnawl.

“Holy crocks!”

On this sun-drenched day, Good Guy field agent Power Plant gasped, gawping up at the four-story, inflatable Cosmonaut Chimp balloon floating above the arched entrance to the theme park. It resembled a scowling monkey intent on thrashing destruction on lowly parkgoers, chimp blasters directed at the crowds as its speaker boomed, “Those of you not having fun must face me, your worst fecal-throwing nightmare, in the challenging Petting Zoo of Destruction. Subscribe to our direct-to-brain feed for the latest news on our straws.” Man, that chimp had guts. Or at least hot air and hoses.

Power Plant’s nerves hissed at the line of park attendees winding around decorative palm trees, beside a gear-hinged statue of a season-twelve character, Hedgehog Hogart, and through the entryway, while other character statues watched over those arriving in the boisterous park. Only six or seven million more lined up before he and Good Guy computer expert Ace Spandex set foot in a land promising majesty. The majestic kind of majesty.

He gripped the wrinkled shirt of the half cybernetic Ace Spandex, who still wore the scars of battle from the mob scene in the prison riot two weeks ago at the Stavehill Penitentiary. But, even now, the nanohealers in his blood stream busily remodeled his skin, erasing more prominent lines of battle and maybe the scar from when he bit his tongue at breakfast. Couldn’t fix that wrinkled collar though. Learn to iron. “Ace, Ace, Ace!”

With teeth tight, Power Plant stabbed a flurry of index fingers at the theme park’s entrance. His fingers were beacons to fun, and this time not the kind of fun that resulted in shrapnel. Maybe. “Ace, Ace, Ace, Ace!” Seven Aces instead of the usual total of one. Whoa. He felt lightheaded after that outburst, but the situation offered no choice. It called for seven Aces. Probably also an extra just in case. “Ace”—there it came—“holy crock, we’s gonna have disastrous much fun in the park, holy crocking crock.” His hands flurried, his fingers now like fire pokers. Crap, all the best ideas when he didn’t bring something to take notes on.

“Jeff, Jeff, pipe down.” Ace Spandex gripped Power Plant’s shoulders to keep him from jumping. Power Plant guessed that eight Aces called for two Jeffs. The math was strange, but he was never good at social arithmetic. Or geometry. Or not poking that bald guy in the back of the head.

Ace swept the crowd with an edgy scan and leaned in. “We’re covert right now. Stop yelling my media name.”

“But ya uses mine.” Power Plant’s fingers still danced.

“Jeff is your real name. No one calls their kid Ace. Unless their kid’s a pet detective.”

But Power Plant couldn’t pipe down. Neither could his fingers. On this bright and warm day, among all these palm trees, he and Ace waited to enter the Good Guys’ wildest mission yet, serving in the Official Cosmonaut Chimp Media Empire Theme Park, the official Cosmonaut Chimp theme park of the Cosmonaut Chimp media empire. Also the official theme park of Power Plant’s childhood. Finally, military service was useful.

He gazed at the stone-arched entryway ahead. His heart jolted him again in anticipation. It couldn’t decide whether to do that overcaffeinated thing or keep battering against the thirteen slushies he’d inhaled through his mouth and the two he’d inhaled through his nose. He tugged at Ace again, as if yanking an arm out of its socket would get them into the park more quickly. And who said it wouldn’t? Because he already had. Crocking cyborgs, right?

Ace’s arm clacked limply against his side. He leaned in to keep his voice at a whisper. “Jeff, please, before you dislocate every bone in my body”—crack—“every other bone in my body, remember why we’re here.” Ace Spandex locked him with that resolute expression, conveying that, while every inclination in Power Plant’s rollicking brain sang out that he should have riotous fun at this theme park, the reason they came was work related. Work sucked when it was work related. So Power Plant downgraded work from “useful” to “useless.” Hey, work had brought this on itself.

Suddenly now, even among all these trees, the day became hot and exhausting. Time for a break from yanking Ace to pieces. He needed to unlock Ace’s resolute expression with his puppy-dog look he messed up since it also didn’t work when he wanted to get a puppy dog. “Why we here then if we can’ts have funs? At least can I ask Cosmonaut Chimp autogaffe my spleen?” Cosmonaut Chimp could, because he was real. No number of broadcasts would convince him Cosmonaut Chimp came out of an animation studio, no matter how undeniable the proof.

“Don’t give me that look.” Ace Spandex rotated his limp arm in a twist-and-clack to resocket it with its wires and gears. He flexed his fingers, as if strumming a guitar, to ensure it had linked into place. “That’s not why you’re here, and that’s also not a sanitary place for an autograph.”

“Crock, no spleenographs now? How many more ways must this missions suck?”

Insects chittered a one-note song from the tall reeds a few meters back, a song Power Plant recognized from times he smacked his head into rock.

Although Ace Spandex couldn’t state their mission aloud, and although Power Plant couldn’t scream it aloud despite the warnings against the last few times, the mission’s paper-thin datasheet computer had declared their objective clearly. Power Plant sighed, tumbling through it in his head. The Cosmonaut Chimp theme park had received several promises the last few days threatening to destroy some of the more famous rides: the Gut Buster, the Zookeeper’s Long Scary Drop into the Mouth of a Lion, the Braided Roller Coaster Made of Literal Duct Tape, the Other Gut Buster, Cosmonaut Chimp’s Bumper Carjacker, and the concession stand. That last one was just standing in line for a drink, although the mustard yogurt smoothie made your stomach drop just the same.

After the threats, park security had called in military superstars the Good Guys. Why the Good Guys and not counterterrorism units? Because the threats sounded uncannily like the leader of the Bad Guys, Master Asinine, right down to the bombs dotting every i. And every s. The terrorist’s grasp of lettering was more of a fingerhold.

So four Good Guys had arrived, on hand for when the terrorist showed, which he or she promised on this sunny day. And the Good Guys would take care of things, such as gorging on all the park’s cotton candy, which Power Plant planned to do in record time and with record rudeness. Good Guy leader Legion hadn’t specified why he’d chosen Power Plant, but he knew it: to finish off the cotton candy. He hadn’t on his previous visit. Stupid stomach barfing up all that perfectly good half-digested sugar. And cardboard cones.

And so why did he and Ace wait in the sweaty, unshaded queue with the regular visitors? One word: covert o—Two words: covert operations. Power Plant had used that term so many times when describing the crap he hid in his roommate and best friend Franchise’s pillows. He just never guessed the term would land him in work-related trouble one day. Or in this case, stuck in line. So they attended the park as regular visitors, using holographic identity concealers to hide and avoid autograph seekers mobbing them or—and this sucked—buying them cotton candy.

Anyway, that short dissertation on why Power Plant should never be admitted into public whittled the babbling line ahead to only a few patrons. Since their arrival, he measured time not in the passage of minutes and hours but in the passage of people through that geared Rebel Rabbit statue half-guarding the entrance and half-doing whatever it did with its other half.

“Zis that park what imports all them seagulls? I’m gonna rides the Puker Bazooker, like, all day. An’ if I don’t dones puker-bazookerin’, then all day again.”

Chapter Four: To Think a Theme Park Could Be This Boring

One hour already. Head tilted down but eyes tilted up, Franchise watched the dense crowd concentrated around the exit of the Dragon Destructor, a hundred-foot, dragon-shaped rollercoaster covered in the scaly and slippery green skin of a real Virillian-species dragon. The crowd had emerged from the green-and-off-brown dragon’s butt—not, in Franchise’s estimation, the best brainstorm—after a toss-and-turn blast through the internal organs of Deranged Dragon. Fun and educational. He’d take the ride himself, but dragon education wasn’t on his checklist today. And judging by how often he’d thought the word dragon these last few seconds, he’d bet the park had trademarked the word.

One hour of sunny-day sweat already and not a single ride ridden.

He and Good Guy field leader Plastique stood near busy washrooms, staring along the intersecting and winding paths and trying not to wonder why the washrooms smelled exactly like the park’s hot dogs. Bushes and trees transported from the planet Ceres adorned the area in a decorative landscape. Not that Franchise would know it was decorative, but any landscape he didn’t absentmindedly trip over was good enough. Although most of this planet’s plant life was transported to planets without natural atmospheres, the minimal amount for sustaining life remained in areas with thick populations. And this park rated.

How had Franchise, a Good Guy pilot, gotten sucked into duty here on a day a tad too hot? Stupid him: he volunteered. Theme park, after all. His and Plastique’s task was to await Power Plant’s arrival. Hopefully he didn’t arrive choking on junk food, because Franchise was all too familiar with what junk food and Power Plant caused. Hint: it was lawfully categorized as substance abuse.

Shortly after Power Plant and Ace Spandex entered, Power Plant would separate from Ace, scampering away in any given direction that would lead here, close to the acrid-smelling washroom stalls whose flushing rhythm somehow outpaced the number of people moving through it. That left Ace Spandex, Power Plant’s surrogate brother, to search the weirdly pink-tinged park grounds for his younger sibling without raising suspicion. Franchise imagined Power Plant gladly agreeing to any plan that left him unattended among this many high-velocity machines without seatbelts. Franchise imagined him gladly agreeing to it anywhere. The problem was convincing him to agree to it without igniting something.

Only four Good Guys guarded the park. Good Guy leader Lieutenant Colonel Matross Legion requested to send more in preparation for Master Asinine’s appearance. But, still reeling from totalitarian ex–Bad Guy Mechanism’s slaughter at the Good Guys’ parent military organization, Intergalactic Protection, all finances and manpower were reserved for bolstering forces to at least a fraction of IP’s former numbers. After all, Mechanism had massacred 82 percent of their soldiers and plundered or destroyed most of their equipment. So IP couldn’t afford to monitor this situation remotely, and the other Good Guys stayed at Station One, the Good Guys’ headquarters, to intercept Asinine in case he showed there instead. Besides, four was all the theme park allowed, what with the lawsuits lobbied against the Good Guys due to Plastique’s response to the park’s protein choices.

Since this mission was covert, the Good Guys’ gabbers, those pea-sized communicators hidden in their ears, remained on incoming transmission only. They couldn’t risk someone spotting the gabbers’ mouthpieces out, even if that seemed normal. A lot of circumstances tied their hands behind their backs. And Franchise’s mouthpiece kept poking him in the eye anyway.

Franchise found it unnerving that reinforcements weren’t coming. Not a single Organism or a solitary Catastrophe. Not even a Station One cookbot. Queasiness percolated in his stomach when he remembered the possibility of combat without reinforcements. It sent him into tiny shivers, so he distracted himself with other thoughts. Such as his girlfriend, Tamiko, Bad Guy ninja Amaranthia. Yeah, a Good Guy dating a Bad Guy. Messed up.

He held a giftwrapped box, sunlight frolicking off the auburn foil and red bow. Something for Tamiko...if she appeared with the Bad Guys today. The box contained small incendiary bulbs, bite-sized flash bangs. Four designer bulbs from the Cerise Samurai collection. Expensive ones that not only blinded you but also detached your retinas. That was how you recognized a quality gift: by its lasting damage.

They were an anniversary gift. Franchise hadn’t seen Tamiko in a week, but hopefully she’d attack today so they could celebrate forty-two days of dating. He couldn’t fathom what forty-two meant to Tamiko, but since their relationship had started, he gleaned it had to do with pigeons and how often she’d shooed them off the Bad Guys’ headquarters, Station Zilcho. Shooed them with throwing stars.

Enjoying a breeze that rustled the trees, he leaned against a four-foot concrete barrier that funneled the washroom traffic. His back rested against a statue of Vindictive Vulture perched atop the barrier, who scowled down with promises of picking apart the flesh of dead parkgoers. Gears and hinges inside the statue’s seams interconnected the limbs so the statue could move and speak and creep people out with those callous eyes. Under its disparaging shadow, Franchise shuddered at Vindictive’s predacious glare, and Plastique must have noticed because she regarded him with sideways concern. “You all good?”

And what were pigeons doing on Station Zilcho anyway?

“Yeah, I’m okay. Just...jittery.” True, but less about today’s threat than that unsettling crunch in the chocolate mousse from one of the park’s dessert kiosks.

Plastique gazed down a path and then sat on a raised border of adobe bricks that bordered some bushes snuggling the washrooms. She waited for a flush to gurgle away and then said, “Nothing to fear. I don’t expect any combat here. If anything does happen, it’ll be more threats along the lines of destroying unused rides. These terrorists are begging for a clue in nonamateurish radicalism.”

Franchise cracked his knuckles. “You mean the Bad Guys.” Course, he’d heard Asinine smuggled animals onto Station Zilcho for pest control. That was, after all, how they had gotten their anteater problem.

“Not the Bad Guys. I’m talking about whomever leveled the threat about mashing the park under the hand of doomigation. I’ll admit it sounds like Asinine, since no adult-minded individual uses the word doomigation, but it’s not him. Does that word exist? Can I doomigate Catastrophe for swiping my breakfast out of the fridge doojigger?”

Franchise stood from the barrier. His back throbbed relief of the freedom from Vindictive Vulture’s bumps. “The fact that the terrorist used the word doomigation without referencing commercial wrestling is a surefire indication that this is the Bad Guys.” He tilted his head in concession. “Or those kids who keep throwing rocks at me in our parking lot.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m certain this is some other terrorist organization.” Plastique winced at a little girl who tumbled to the pavement and scraped a knee. “Two weeks have passed since I set Asinine straight about his so-called friendship with Lt. Col. Legion. Two weeks, and we haven’t heard a peep out of the Bad Guys since. Not a display of extremism, not a bid for territory against another criminal empire, not a party-store robbery to grab more exploding cigars. You all were taking care of the incident at Stavehill. You didn’t see his dejection. It was positively chiseled on his face. He lost his soul when I slapped him with reality. He’s out of play. I know it.”

“Woman’s intuition?” Franchise flicked his gift’s foil wrap in the hot sunlight. The box was a tad too big for his pockets, so he carried it.

“Nah. My woman’s intuition is on the fritz. It only works when Catastrophe steals my moose-antler smoothies. He thinks they’re raspberry drinks. It’s funny that he can’t tell the difference. No, I’m basing this on firsthand observation.” She spotted a caterpillar crawling along the border on which she sat. She scooped it up and sucked it into her mouth.

Urk. Franchise fought his tugging gag reflex. “You just ate a bug.”

“Quick protein.”

“The park has literally hundreds of restaurants.” Franchise threw out his hands. “There’s one attached to the washrooms.”

“That’s commercial garbage. You didn’t notice a lot of ingredients end in ‘ish’? This”—she grabbed another poor critter from the barrier—“is real sustenance. Out here, with no guaranteed access to true nutrients, take any nourishment you find. You don’t know when your next food source will crawl by. Slug?”

“No. I’m good.” Franchise barely won the next tug-of-war with his stomach.

“Suit yourself.” Plastique popped the slug into her mouth. Was chewing really necessary? “But you’ll need the quick energy when those alarmists show. You don’t want to suffer anemia because you couldn’t tolerate a few bugs. And, new topic: where are your eyebrows?”

A hand shot to Franchise’s forehead to cover his missing brows. Long story. “Maybe you ate them when I wasn’t watching. But don’t go there.”

“Fine.” Plastique stood and examined a sniper’s rifle that she pulled out of nowhere. She clacked open the chamber to check that it held something of some caliber. Elephant tranquilizers? Franchise suspected that was her ammunition and drink of choice.

Franchise wiped sweat off his forehead, and Plastique saw the giftbox. “What the crock is that pretty little thing?”

Franchise shielded the gift in his hands. “Tamiko’s anniversary gift,” he mumbled, almost as if to go unheard.

“Who what gift where?” Plastique squinted at him. “Who’s Tamiko, and why would you bring him foil wrap?”

“Tamiko. Her. Amaranthia? Remember? That girlfriend of mine? I bought her a gift.”

“For what?”

“For a weird anniversary. Also for not disemboweling me that time I thought escargot was French for ravioli.” The look on her face could have melted steel. “Question: what significance is forty-two to a woman?”

“One more than forty-one.” Plastique produced a cloth from a pocket again, whipped it to unfold it, and started wiping the rifle’s sighting lens. “Are those earrings?”

“They’re incendiary bulbs.”

“Incendiary bulbs? For a gift?” Plastique choked on a laugh. “Buy her earrings.”

“She’s a ninja. She’s not into earrings. Well, she is, but she’s more into eviscerations. So I buy her gifts from the swords-and-warfare department. She’ll love these. They’re the latest trend in combat fashion, ever since celebrity ninja and two-time Ninjie award winner Sensei Krink used them. Tamiko called them ‘raging fierce.’ Let’s talk about how you got that rifle past the weapons check instead. Where in screaming insanity were you keeping that thing? How big are your pockets?”

“Nine inches deep, six inches wide.” Plastique dug the cloth into a groove. “Raging fierce or not, you know she’ll end up using those on you if it comes to that.” She huffed on the lens.

“She won’t. I know, because last time she asked if she looked fat in her new assassin’s cowl, I said no.” Franchise stuck his thumb at himself and beamed. Satisfaction felt like a warm hug. “See? I do learn my lesson.”

“That’s your reason?” Plastique stopped wiping, suspicious eyes in a sideways glance.

“Yes. And it’s all I’ve got, so don’t ruin it.”

Plastique shrugged. “If it comes down to a fight, any man is expendable. Ask any woman.”

“I will when one shows up.”

“Hey, I’m not the one giftwrapping ninja paraphernalia.” Plastique added saliva to the cloth and continued. How much clearer could a lens get? “At least you found someone, though. Me? I’ve resorted to online dating. Last week, I broke down and made an account on Kettle of Fish, and, crock, that’s not a dating site, is it?” She peered up at nothing in realization. “That explains all those alerts for homicides in my area.”

“What’s that?” Franchise hadn’t noticed until now that deep rumble, like an elderly man shaking a fist at punk kids. A shadow stretched over the park grounds, crowding away the sun. Gawkers stared up at...huh? The underbelly of a colossal subtitan-class transport growled closer, its hot updraft scattering a candy-bar wrapper into Franchise’s new ladykilling haircut, fresh for his weird anniversary. His hands darted to his scalp and plucked the wrapper off. Caramel tendrils stretched with it. Crap, he’d never get this out.

Franchise threw the wrapper aside. “Power-hungry terrorist finally showed up. Hey, if you were a power-hungry terrorist, would you use pigeons for pest control on your headquarters?”

“Flamingos. Those pests would never see it coming.” Plastique blocked a disturbed soda cup from whapping her in the cheek.

“I’d go with a dragon.” Franchise bonked the heel of his palm on his forehead. “Crock, park, get out of my head!”

Chapter Five: And by “Brain Trust,” We Mean “Disaster of Rational Thought”

Rewind fifteen minutes.

Master Asinine sat alone at the cockpit controls of his discreet private jet, fine-tuning a knob here or a button there or a giant mechanical crane way over there. Specifically by the cheerful midway machine filled with stuffed animals as prizes. His own stuffed animals, but so what?

By “private jet,” Asinine meant this Warbird starship he’d stolen and furnished with all the best stealth equipment money could buy and he could pilfer. And, by “fine-tuning,” he meant obsessively adjusting or, in the case of the steering controls, wildly spinning. And, by “discreet,” he meant rip-roaringly loud and obnoxious. And by “stealth equipment,” he meant this thing was so conspicuous, the blind could see it. He just wished he’d brought a snack for the trip.

Keep track of all that?

Amid the falsetto chirps of the Warbird’s diagnostic gadgets, the falsetto chirps of the Pizzazz Girls complained about why all those boys wouldn’t call them back. Maybe because of the falsetto complaining, girls. And, by “falsetto complaining,” he meant falsetto complaining. No hidden message there.

“Sir, we’re nearing our destination.” Bad Guy second-in-command, Lieutenant IQ 23, shuffled out of the darkness of the cockpit’s rear into the blinking-light party of the foredeck. Oh, and by “alone,” Master Asinine meant “not alone.” Because IQ 23 and Braindead were with him.

Master Asinine caught a greedy whiff of the new-ship smell. He scooped up a handful of chocolate-covered peanuts he kept in a cup on the dashboard, the ones in which he’d replaced all the peanuts with strychnine. Oh, and by “wished he’d brought a snack,” he mea—Nom nom nom, strychnine was delicious.

“Lieutenant, sit your rear down and give me those numbers on our time estimates.” Asinine padded the navigator’s chair next to him.

Lieutenant IQ 23 flinched at the chair. Maybe because of the crack splitting the seat’s surface. “But, sir, you said you feared those abracadabra numbers and their crazy voodoo hijinks. Then you claimed they looked at you funny. And then you called me a witch doctor for using them. And then you tried feeding me chocolate-covered poison.”

“And by ‘chocolate-covered poison,’ you mean ‘fun.’ It’s strychnine, one notch tastier than strycheight.” Chocolate still on his taste buds, Asinine sighed at IQ 23, who’d become such a strychnine naysayer what with his warnings about poison-induced spasms and appeals to replace the strychnine with blueberries. “Can’t wait to graduate to strychten.”

“And there’s a snake hissing at me on the chair.” Lieutenant IQ 23 leered at the navigation chair as if it were chiseled from cold concrete. Because it was. Beside IQ 23, Braindead, Asinine’s silent Virillian bodyguard and tier-one bosom buddy at candle parties, sensed the hesitation in IQ 23’s voice and tightened his stance. He was protective of IQ 23, though when Asinine and IQ 23 disagreed, his allegiance split. “By the way, sir, it’s medically astounding that you’re not foaming at the mouth right now.”

Asinine ignored that last comment, whatever “foaming” meant and whatever “by the way” meant. He licked the rest of the sweet poison off his lips. “If you sit, I’ll have Braindead issue the requisite backrub.” He swept away the snake and padded the navigation concrete.

Lieutenant IQ 23 finally took his place. Now at the navigation console, he, stabbed and plucked a couple icons with fingers dusty from the dried chocolate-covered goodness he’d warded off despite Asinine’s behest. Behest, ever the enemy of awesomeness. And apparently of foaming at the mouth.

“Good lieutenant, Lieutenant. Braindead, backrub: initiate in three...two...” Asinine snapped his fingers, so Braindead assumed backrub mode, took his place, and burrowed those thumbs into all the right places. Asinine’s right places. Lieutenant IQ 23 could take the next timeslot. Ooooh. Virillian finger muscles were evolved specifically for backrubs. Okay, specifically for war, but backrubs were a side perk.

Lieutenant IQ 23 tweaked their flight path from the navigation screen that slobbered numbers out at the rate of a baby drooling pablum. Somehow IQ 23 understood the data, probably through his tendency to read. “Sir, we should prep our combat equipment. The timer says we’ll reach visual distance in thirteen minutes, sixteen seconds.”

Asinine fingered an icon on the big, bad computer next to the big, bad piloting viewscreen. The computer responded with a duck quack. “Combat equipment: prepped.” The equipment corroborated this by percolating his coffee.

“Excellent.” Lieutenant Strychnine Crybaby’s fingers dabbed an icon next to the not-as-big, not-as-bad navigation computer. The computer responded with a duck fart. “And I’ll charge and activate our weapons.” Ducks farted, right?

“Excellent back atcha, Lieutenant.” Master Asinine exhaled and smiled. Charging the weapons was the favorite part of his morning ritual. “Okay, five more minutes, and then we suit up.” He chuckled. “Man, I look good today. I should be in public.”

Braindead progressed into rapid hacking, chopping those scaly hands over Asinine’s pressure points like a karate guru chopping blocks.

Warm sunlight peeked out of the distance, the faux sunlight of their destination. The arrival timer must have reached eleven minutes or whatever, because Asinine spotted the green of lawns and gray of parking lots blurring into shapes, a smattering of crowds resolving into focus, coffee hazelnut wafting into his nostrils.

Yes, their plan neared completion. Their plan: instill panic. Their goal: Asinine made this up as he went, so he’d get back on this when he figured it out.

“Ow. Braindead, ease up on the knuckle-works. I’m not bubble wrap.”

Chapter Six: As if on Cue...

“Janice, acknowledge. Execute macro command Increment.” In his office, Legion sighed after speaking the shortcut phrase he’d programmed into Station One’s haunt control, the vocal software that presided over locations such as buildings or houses, thus called because they interfaced so impeccably they made the locations seem haunted. Specifically he talked to Station One’s all-sass-no-tact haunt-control modifier, Janice, that customized the voice and disposition the haunt control used.

“Holy crock, fine. Command function executed. Happy now?” With peeled-back digital lips, Janice roared so loudly Legion smelled smoke. Literally. It seeped out his office wall. Ace Spandex, Janice’s admin, still hadn’t made progress in extending the expiration of the trial period of the Good Guys’ haunt control. Budget cuts due to Mechanism’s IP slaughter. Yes, it seemed the haunt-control mod had a trial period, and when that lapsed, the mod grew rude and angry until the user paid for the full version. Janice made that apparent with every tooth-baring retort she growled at Legion. At any of the Good Guys. Also at any of the Good Guys’ guests. Janice screamed horrible epithets at anyone in the Gorging Court, the station’s public-access food court. This included the woman in charge of renewing its food license.

But dealing with Janice’s expiration was Ace Spandex’s job. The most he’d advanced was filling out an online survey to buy them one hour of no falsified legal reports.

As commander of the Good Guys, Legion himself had different job—one single job—and he couldn’t accomplish even that. His job entailed defeating Lowensland, his former best friend and the daft Bad Guy leader who persisted in calling himself Master Asinine. How difficult could that be? What with the intelligence that man exercised, Legion often suspected he was actually six lemmings in a badly coordinated—and sometimes backward-facing—suit. How difficult could defeating him be? Legion’s original mission almost two years ago was estimated to last four days. It still continued. On top of that, Legion had lost track of that circus act after he’d shown up at Station One and confronted Plastique two weeks ago.

Legion grimaced and pinched the gap between his noseless nostrils. Dizzy fear wormed through him. Someone had recently levied threats at the Official Rambling Name Theme Park on Gaia, threats eerily sounding like Lowensland by use of skywriting, not with smoke but with glitter glue. So Legion had dispatched four agents to ensure that, if Lowensland reared his helmeted head, the Good Guys responded. That assumed Lowensland would rear his psychopathic helmeted head. But the Good Guys visited only as a precaution. There was no guarantee the threats were Lowensland’s.

If only Legion had hair, he’d pull it out. The downside of being part of the hairless Trioxidillian species, he possessed only antennae up there, and he needed those to hear.

In scratchy dark socks and a forest-green military uniform, Legion paced the plush brown carpet of his office on the top floor of Station One’s three-story lobby building. He weaved around his mottled couch, a storage cabinet, a garbage ionizer that smelled like burned orange peel—it always did—a table separated from his desk by a few feet, and a bookcase holding military memorabilia and a wilted peace lily he still tried to save. His green-skinned hands wrung each other behind his back. Fifteen days had passed since Lowensland’s previous incident, Legion reminded himself when he had commanded Janice to increment the timeline on the datasheet swaying in the drafty overhang above his office door. The number beside DAYS SINCE LAST BAD GUY INCIDENT ticked up one, momentarily obscuring the line below it that said 23 DAYS SINCE LAST STATION ONE COOKING INCIDENT, below that 140 DAYS SINCE LAST RADIOACTIVE ELEMENT DISAPPEARED, 12 HOURS SINCE LAST POWER PLANT CHEMICAL DISASTER, RH DAYS SINCE LAST VIRILLIAN INTERGALACTIC INCIDENT—because those mute Virillians loved weird numbering systems—and 67 DAYS SINCE LAST KAMIKAZE INCIDENT—because Legion still expected institutionalized ex–Good Guy Kamikaze to pop in with a novelty gag that turned out a little less novelty and a little more rocket propelled. Legion kept track of too many incidents.

He reached the far end of his office, his threadbare socks padding off the carpet to the tiled area he’d installed two days ago, and paced away from a bookcase. He wanted to enjoy the feel of the vinyl tiles on his feet before Power Plant spilled caustic substances all over them and Janice refused to clean it up. The Floor Is Lava was a metaphorical game until Power Plant came along.

But, still, Legion had one job: bringing that murderous man-child to justice almost two years ago. And said man-child had fallen silent. Legion was so far from accomplishing his one job that he couldn’t even find the man-child in question!

The gunshot that had ended his and the man-child’s mutual friend, Sopher, that had gored through Sopher’s life in a flare of blood and bone, reverberated through Legion’s thoughts. It plagued Legion whenever he felt the brunt of his failure at stopping the death eight years ago. When Lowensland had cleaved apart his and Legion’s friendship.

Legion stopped pacing, feet on the grooved metal cusp between tile and carpet, and squeezed shut his eyes. His mind imposed upon him Sopher’s snuff film again. Drowning in warning klaxons, Legion had burst into Intergalactic Protection’s primary hangar bay only to watch a brief tussle between Sopher and Lowensland end when Lowensland placed a gun to Sopher’s head and—

His eyes clicked open. Nope. He refused to relive that disgusting mind movie. Forced into observing it on the screen of his closed eyelids was enough. He already found it difficult to live in a universe where purple ketchup existed and was popular enough to warrant two-liter squeeze bottles.

Legion’s feet ached. His socks had worn thin and scratched his callused heels. He hiked to his military uniform’s shoes, leaning against his desk, to slip into them...but paused. His gaze met the datasheet above his door—they always wandered up there these days—and noticed...what the—zero?

“Janice, acknowledge. What’s the deal with resetting the Lowensland count back to zero?” Seriously, if Janice wasn’t directing the Gorging Court’s Space Cow drive-thru so it fed into the septic tank, she was pulling stunts such as this.

“Pfft. It’s zero because watchwords ‘Master Asinine,’ ‘Bad Guys,’ and ‘formal-wear pajamas’ showed up in a news broadcast at the Official Cosmonaut Chimp Media Empire Theme Park, you warheaded dipstick.” Janice spat sizzling venom along with the virtual bubblegum that airheaded mod chewed. And chewed loudly. Legion heard every wet smack she digitally masticated.

Legion’s blood chilled. He almost leaped off the floor and grabbed the datasheet off the wall. Almost. Leaping in these socks would end with him toppling onto the floor with a concussion. Instead, he risked Janice’s wrath by issuing a command. “Janice, acknowledge. Open broadcast viewscreen. Display broadcast feed on”—on what?—“on whatever news is talking about Lowensland.” On that. Precise enough.

A four-by-three-foot viewscreen—for once, Janice used the preset size Legion had established—zapped into form close to his desk. Legion skidded to it and clasped it in both hands, fingertip suction pads smudging prints along its glossy edges.

The viewscreen snapped on with a blink of light and then, inside its frame, a broadcast feed clapped to life from News 2, the only news team that boasted a literal anchor as their anchorperson. “Boasted” was also literal.

“And it seems you’ve got an intruder,” Janice whispered as an afterth—Wait, intruder?

Legion faced his office’s only window, as if the intruder floated outside waving at him. His mouth dried. He’d hoped his armpits would, but, no, magic didn’t exist. If it did, he wouldn’t suffer a bruised pelvis from Power Plant’s rendition of touch football. And, side note, how could any rendition of touch football include swords?

Janice hadn’t identified this intruder as the Bad Guys, but Legion still felt his gut churn, same as when a new promotional food item made its way from Intergalactic Protection through the sponsorship shields he’d asked Ace to install. And now he was addicted to sponge cakes. “Sponge” was another literal term.

Legion grabbed a datasheet, inactive and thus pliable, from his desk and wrung his hands over it, rolled it and unrolled it and rolled it and—“Janice, acknowledge. Is this new intruder the hobo living in our air ducts? Did you finally upgrade his status from ‘creepy presence’?”

“No”—Janice said this as his supposedly inanimate bookcase threw a framed picture at him—“you green-skinned ape”—and then things turned racial, he’d tell the insurance company. “But this new threat just landed on your front lawn.” This all-attitude-no-restraint Janice at least still followed orders. But also still coughed smoke through his wall.

Landed? Legion gagged on a drop of saliva that had collected under his tongue. His so-called front lawn was really the grassy turf below his office window. He’d peek out the window, but that would expose him to a line-of-sight attack. Or a line-of-sight heckling, if this was that recent high-school field trip. When he recovered from his phlegmy gagging and moist blinking, he grunted out, “Janice, acknowledge.” Reaffirmed his hoarse voice. “Switch viewscreen feed to display intruder.”

Janice sighed at him. “Which view—”

“Don’t test me, Janice. You know the one!” Legion cleared the phlegm out again. “So help me, I can make your existence a nightmare. I have access to rare-earth magnets.” That would have sounded threatening without the mucus rasping it. He still tasted IP’s piquant shipment of Bucket of Liquefied Chicken Wings that wasn’t marketed as piquant.

As if blinking with a clap, the viewscreen closed its eye off the feed showing the theme park and reopened it to his front lawn. Lowering on a hassock of air toward a patch of grass immediately outside this building were two Warbird military transports, the Bad Guys’ signature attack or attending-the-theater battle mil-tran. Capable of carrying thirty soldiers each or, since Lowensland ignored safety regulations and didn’t mind a few elbows in the face, eighty clowns, they scattered a flurry of gravel, bits of litter, and a chipmunk. They lowered their landing trestles and perched, squeaking to a standstill. Their lift exhausts didn’t even disengage before a pandemonium of Bad Guy generics, Lowensland’s rank-and-file goons, gushed out of both side doors. But just from one. The other remained quiet. The generics so overfilled the first Warbird that they tripped over themselves in a cascade, dropping down both short ramps. Their entanglement of battle cries overlapped, but Legion picked out what seemed to be the lead generic’s proclamation, “Find Legion! Take no prisoners! Feed the parking meter!”

Legion darted to his desk to grab his Marsek sidearm. “Janice, acknowledge. And this time you need to listen. If those Bad Guys break in, they’ll take this place by storm and spray-paint grammatically incorrect graffiti over our walls and expensive lobby art. And don’t toy with me. I’ve felt messed up ever since I ‘broed down’ with Success Party. I’ve done things I can’t even define.”

Janice roared so loudly wind bent Legion’s antennae back. “What the crock, Legion? If you want me to do something, at least make an order.”

Right. “Janice, acknowledge. Lock access to all buildings.”

“Too late. The generics have entered the lobby building.”

Crap, there went their still-life paintings.

Chapter Seven: And in This Corner, Weighing in at One Lunatic Starship...

“PARKGOERS, PARK WORKERS, AND SEAGULLS SCAVENGING FOR DROPPED FRENCH FRIES, HELLO FROM MR. FANCY PANTS, WHICH IS MY SELF-NICKNAME FOR WHEN I REMEMBER TO PUT ON MORE THAN JUST UNDERWEAR,” rattled the loudspeaker from the subtitan-class starship that had swooped into the cloudless sky. It obstructed the passionate sun, and now the mildly hot day felt temperate. A plus to every minus.

Humming, the starship whipped up eddies of litter and fluttered Franchise’s eardrums against his ears due to that...music? Not quite the right term. It wasn’t noise in the sense that it did divide sounds into an arrangement, but this “Billy dude” the song referred to owed an explanation for the way he “totally scouched” the three or four grating whiners with voices so screechy they called a helium tank home. And what did scouched mean? Not even Tamiko used that word.

Okay, Franchise was concerned about the wrong thing right now.

Like the whorl of garbage that knocked around the washroom area, a crowd panicked in streaks across his vision, one hot mess dangling three life-size plush Cosmonaut Chimps an—

Whap! Someone with no balance and all hysteria blundered into Franchise and barely blinked before scattering off. The smack gashed Franchise’s cheek and blanked his senses for a split second. He regained his steadiness and—gasp, Tamiko’s gift! Safe. Phew. He felt warm relief for reflexively guarding it. The bow had even retained its shine and spring. He glanced at Plastique, who paid no attention to the starship that had strewn everyone about. No, she was back at her rifle, verifying the caliber. Satisfied, she smacked the chamber shut, flipped it over, checked the charge reading, and then snapped it up at the ominous starship, whose loudspeaker hadn’t loud-finished its threat since its arrival a minute ago. It had introduced itself but then went silent. Even the music had disappeared. Master Asinine had recently learned a slew of two-syllable words, so it wasn’t as if he were stuck announcing his intention to slaughter, destroy, or murder. Or retire from his own madness and take up a hobby. Franchise pulled for that last one.

Franchise dodged a scattered mother towing her two children. A chunk of a candy-bar flicked into his scalp, adding sun-melted nougat and chocolate to the caramel already in his hair. Ugh. He picked up a peanut and added that, because, hey, free Oh Henry! for later.

The rifle at her side, Plastique now held an apple—from that same pocket?—and halved it with a bowie knife. Ow. She’d cut herself, which gave Franchise an electric jolt. Not her. She offered the cut no more courtesy than the leaked juices on her hand. Instead she wiped the blood on a tree and chewed into an apple half. Wasn’t she concerned about the warship that had appeared? Or the scattered masses?

She put the apple halves on the washroom’s barrier. “Is that a Crapshoot starship? I thought Asinine was into Warbirds and Kingfishes.” She said this through her bite but finished chewing, swallowed, and wiped a trickle of juice from her chin onto a sleeve. She took her rifle and peered through its sight, pulled it away, and puffed on one of the targeting lenses. “But you win. It’s Asinine. Whatever he planned, he’d better get down here tout suite. I’m ready for round two, and round two is ready for his face.” She continued with the cloth.

Franchise jerked away from a terrified Trioxidillian that screamed past. Protect the gift. “Are you done with that lens finally?” He shielded his eyes and checked the starship that still hummed, lifeless and inert in preparation for...for what? The Crapshoot’s silence was so marked, he felt the pressure of its muteness.

Plastique squinted up at the shadows leaking across the underbelly of that Crapshoot that had decided to ruin everyone’s day. “At least Asinine put pants on this time. That’s the assumption I’m making based on his introductory stupidity, anyway.” She blinked. “I’m sick of seeing boxers with hearts on them.”

Something slapped the pavement. Laser ropes. Three cables. They glowed in a distinct yellow and scraped gravel as they swayed in the meager trickle of wind. Oh, no. The Bad Guys were coming down. If life were a datasheet, Franchise would have that UNDO button handy.

Plastique had hidden her rifle away after all that wiping. “Crock. Rifle’s no good in close quarters. And I used the good polishing cream. That stuff’s never on sale.” She cracked one fist in the other hand. Franchise would charge her two moolahs for stealing his shtick. “Looks like we’ll settle this mano a whomever’s coming down. Hopefully not Multipurpose. I’m not up to date on my shots.”

The muteness ended, the loudspeaker clicking on—with bemoaning musical accompaniment—and Franchise’s nerves lit. Asinine—it definitely sounded like his voice—menaced in with more blithering twaddle. “PARK PARTY PEOPLE, WELCOME BACK TO MY SHOW. I HOPE I HAVEN’T DISRUPTED YOUR PLANS TODAY, BUT I’M HERE TO DISRUPT YOUR PLANS TODAY BY SERVING UP A WALLOP OF GREASY HOT DEVASTATION. GREASY BECAUSE MULTIPURPOSE IS INVOLVED.”

“Crock.” Plastique punched the washrooms’ concrete barrier. “Field Agent, never put off your vaccinations.”

“SO PREPARE FOR A HAPPENING HELPING OF DESTRUCTION TO KNOCK YOUR TEETH OUT OF THEIR TOOTH HOLES, MUCH LIKE WHEN I MISTOOK A ROCK FOR A MEATBALL. LITTLE DID I KNOW MEATBALLS AREN’T GRAY AND ROCKS AREN’T CHEWABLE. BUT THIS IS ALL ABOUT ME, SO WHY AM I DOING THIS? BECAUSE THIS PLACE WENT STRAIGHT DOWNHILL AFTER THEY TOOK OUT RILEY RACCOON’S DUMPSTER DIVE. BEST CAROUSEL I’VE EVER THROWN UP ON.”

The threat ended, and so did the music. Weird since Asinine usually left it on as standby torture. This didn’t feel like a normal Asinine attack.

Franchise stuffed Tamiko’s present into his pocket, bow out and unflattened. It wouldn’t fit, poked out, but at least it stayed put. He cracked one fist in the other hand. Crap, he wasn’t even as good at it as Plastique.

The laser ropes had settled, but now they tickled the ground again. Today’s contestants were descending. Franchise stared up but couldn’t see in the overcast of the starship’s underbelly. The piercing contrast between the sunshine around the starship and the darkness underneath it had washed his vision. But, wait, he discerned muscle. And muscle meant the two-headed Bad Guy chief of security, Schizophrenic. And Schizophrenic meant weapons-grade insults.

Franchise grabbed a stone and backed away, knocked into the bumpy barrier. Ohh, boy. His heart kicked into a gallop when that two-headed thug slid down the rope and didn’t land on the pavement but clobbered it and a seagull’s neck. On the next rope, hand over hand, lowered the scaly Bad Aim, who could have descended on that fat hoverdisc grafted around his waist in place of severed legs.

Franchise clasped the stone harder. He felt the fight already, felt it like ants scrabbling around his skin. He hadn’t felt this restless since Intergalactic Protection had mistakenly ordered Station One into the orbital path of a star. Mistakenly. Insert subtle question mark. “You lucked out. Multipurpose isn’t coming after all.”

Plastique tapped his shoulder and pointed up. “Nope. He’s bringing up the rear on that motorized chair.” Indeed, down the last rope came the foul view of a pasty-white eclipse compressed around a chair that, though it could hold half a ton, showed exhaustion in the way it bowed and whirred lazily.

Though Schizophrenic remained, Bad Aim fanned out elsewhere, his hoverdisc keeping him about three feet aloft. Multipurpose...well, Multipurpose grumbled, still riding down on his “crocking, crocking, crock of a motor chair, crock.”

With the payload of the Bad Guys’ starting lineup delivered, two ropes zipped in a motorized groan back up to the starship’s underbelly. Multipurpose’s rope stayed out. He still hadn’t arrived.

“Strange. We’re in a literal theme park, and Master Asinine is staying aboard his sanity-destroying Crapshoot.” Plastique shook her head. “That’s not him. Something’s up.”

Franchise couldn’t agree more. Every ten feet of park featured doodads, gizmos, and doohickeys—Asinine’s top three diversions since he considered widgets as choking hazards—and he wasn’t participating in this assault?

Schizophrenic, warped grins smeared over both faces and a toothpick tweezed in the left mouth, Lefty’s, clomped closer, no trepidation and all fight. And all seagull. It clung to his heel. Schizophrenic’s left hand gripped a pistol, which he crumpled against Righty’s forehead like an overeager frat brother crushing a beer can. Yup, that summed up Schizophrenic’s need for a gun. Still, the left hand snatched the right one’s weapon.

The gash on his cheek stinging, Franchise lifted a hand to his gabber but didn’t tap, ready to send a cry for help to someone, anyone. Forget incoming transmission only. The mission’s covertness was a bust now. The gabber came loose but stayed in. He tried to fit it in, but frenzied hands wouldn’t do the job. He deactivated the holographic ID concealer. Somehow the Bad Guys identified them, so no need to keep looking like a fat guy with a mustache. Plastique shut hers off too. Gasping reactions from the surrounding crowd lasted half a second until Schizophrenic clomped at a few just to startle them. The people scampered off.

He turned his attention—both attentions—back to the Good Guys and continued to approach. Franchise shifted around the washrooms’ barrier and behind it. He spotted a cart offering energy drinks. A quick added jolt for the fight. If he needed anything here, it was Chock Full of Grotesque Grape, the official soda of the Cosmonaut Chimp Theme Park and the official brake fluid of the Fandango Motor Company.

Asinine opened his mouth again, the music returning. “OH, AND PARKGOERS? HEH.” His petite chuckle trickled ice water down Franchise’s backbone. “ONE LAST NASTY SURPRISE.” And a tiny click, as understated as the chuckle, wrung Franchise’s tensions. “I RIGGED THE PARK’S ANIMATRONIC STATUES. ENJOY ESCAPING WITH YOUR FAVORITE ENSEMBLE CAST GUNNING FOR YOU.”

“Wait, what the frackity frack did you say?” Schizophrenic stopped to gawk up at the Crapshoot humming merrily above. “Rigged park stuff gunning for me? That ain’t part of the strategy, you funny-farm activity planner! Piss. We aren’t down here five seconds before his scheme goes crocked up. That’s got to be a record.”

“BUT DON’T WORRY, AS I DECIMATE THIS PARK, I WILL ENTERTAIN YOU WITH THE SOULFUL SOUNDS OF ME.” This would sound more ominous if a quartet of girls weren’t meanwhile lamenting their loss of a Hayden. “I’VE PREPARED A LIST OF HELPFUL TIPS AND TRICKS FOR HOUSEKEEPING, PRERECORDED AND READY. PREPARE TO BE TRICKED INTO KEEPING YOUR HOUSE AND TIPPED INTO HELPING IT.” Some rustling and grunting. “CRAP. TIP ONE, EVERYONE: FIGURE OUT HOW TO USE THE PLAY BUTTON ON YOUR PRERECORDED HELPFUL TIPS AND TRICKS.

“SECONDARY PLAN. MY LIEUTENANT HAS INFORMED ME THAT I’M HUNGRY, AND I’M RUNNING OUT OF POISON UP HERE. NOT MUCH ELSE UP HERE. LUCKY ENOUGH, THIS WARBIRD COMES EQUIPPED WITH THE LATEST AND GREATEST IN TRACTOR BEAM TECHNOLOGY, WHICH I’LL ADMIT I THOUGHT WAS FOR FARMING. NO. TURNS OUT IT’S FOR GARBAGE PICKUP. SO IF A FEW OF YOU WOULD KINDLY DROP YOUR HALF-EATEN HAMBURGERS AND FULLY EATEN CHURROS, I CAN FILL UP ON THE MOST NUTRITIOUS FAST FOOD THIS PARK HAS TO OFFER. CLICKITY CLICK.” With that clickity click, a buzz and an orange beam fell. Though the buzz reached the ground and scratched Franchise’s ears, the tractor beam’s orange cone didn’t. It stopped about twenty feet aboveground and yanked out a few streetlamps and trees. “AW, CRAP. SERIOUSLY? THIS IS THE LATEST AND GREATEST? IT DOESN’T EVEN REACH THE PAVEMENT. OKAY, NEW PLAN, EVERYONE. WHILE I’M KILLING YOU, PLEASE KINDLY TOSS SOME CHOW UP AT WHEREVER THE TRACTOR BEAM STOPPED. MY TUMMY WOULD APPRECIATE IT.”

“Any reason he thinks he’s in a Warbird?” Plastique asked. “Why even send anyone down? In fact, why show up at all? Can’t he take control by remote? Something’s weird here.”

“OH, AND GOOD NEWS, EVERYONE. FIGURED OUT THAT PLAY BUTTON. NOW, IF YOU’LL EXCUSE ME, I NEED TO TAKE A GIANT WHIZ.” The music cut out—thank you, murderous goon—giving way to the static of his prerecorded tips that probably involved lighting things on fire.

Still—still—descending his rope, Multipurpose dropped a cheese dog from his armrest. It bounced off Plastique’s hair and splattered into a bush. Plastique jerked and swept crazy fingers across her head. She scrutinized her hands with the sneering twitch of a nostril. “Crock. Multipurpose grub. On top of all this, now I need to shave my head.”

A click, then music, then, “MULTIPURPOSE, DID YOU STEAL THE LAST CHEESE DOG AGAIN? NOW WHAT AM I GONNA CHOKE ON?”

Chapter Eight: Strategy Belching

A clonk woke him. Huh? His body felt strained, cold, achy. His arms were wrapped backward around something in a constricted sensation, against something splintery and edged. He grogged open his eyes—his gummy, achy, resistant eyes—and instantly met a stab of light. He squinted away. Had he not used his eyes in weeks? His face felt hot, as if it sizzled. “Why—” His lips felt pasty, so that word came out like a zombie grunt. Good Guy field leader Pincushion forced open his mouth and tried again. “Why does my head feel like one of those dummies from a self-defense class?”

Footsteps he hadn’t noticed until now stopped and then clapped a quicker rhythm. “Good. My baseball bat finally woke you up. Crock, we been feeding you for two weeks, and it wasn’t looking pretty because the first week was all vanilla pudding and soup. Picked myself up some tasty hot wings though. That is soup up in your food court, right?”

“It’s called flavored broth for legal reasons.” Pincushion risked opening his eyes wider. The light attacked them, but though they blazed, they didn’t melt. He couldn’t shield himself, his arms tied back with laser rope. Luckily, some brother stepped in front of the light panel and was now outlined like a haloed silhouette. The guy who was talking before, that Detritus creep who’d staggered around this station the last couple months. He and his Bad Guy cohort, Wasted, had shown up here posing as Good Guy applicants. Legion had caught on right away, but he let them maintain the charade to figure out their angle.

Since these two had knocked Pincushion out, Detritus had grown that five-o’clock shadow to a midnight stubble. But he still kept his orange suit and yellow pants that looked like a knockoff HazMat suit, all the rage with teens nowadays. Make that all the rage with nobody nowadays. And was he wearing a sauce-stained baby bib? From somewhere, a burp-riddled rendition of “Ave Maria” served as ambiance in this dormant room hidden in one of Station One’s loneliest halls.

“How long have I been tied to this chair?” Pincushion tried flexing to cut through the laser rope with the bony extensions—spikes—that poked out of his skin. Didn’t work.

Detritus scratched his butt. Dug in deep. “Heh. You haven’t been tied up that long.” Deeper. “You wandered onto our little robot operation here, so we knocked you out quick.” Deeper. Was that itch in his colon? “Since then, we been pumping you with horse tranquilizers to keep you sleepin’ till we figured out what to do with you.” He pulled his hand out and sniffed it.

“Horse tr—For two weeks?” Pincushion jerked forward. The chair’s back legs reared up, and he almost toppled onto the floor.

Detritus waved that off. “Relax. They were low grade, and the pudding seemed to balance with ’em. After the pudding ran out, we fed you beef sandwiches.”

“Red meat for two weeks?” Pincushion scraped his tongue on his teeth.

“One week. At least you’re alive. We coulda killed you on the spot. With my hyperability of blowing myself up, I coulda caught you in a blast that would incinerate you.” Behind him, the opera singer, Wasted, tried to roll out of a wheelbarrow. He failed and slid back in. This didn’t stop him from retrying.

“This the same hyperability you’ve never used, brother?” By now, Pincushion’s lips worked fine, but a film still layered the top. So he’d slept for two weeks. His insomnia could chill for a bit.

“Yeah. That same hyperability.” Swinging his baseball bat, Detritus assaulted the air. He overswung and spiraled to the floor. Picked himself up and tossed the bat away. It clattered into some dark corner. “Anyway, we got sick of feeding you. So we tied you to that chair yesterday, and we been waiting for you to wake up since. Finally bonked you awake with my bat. Took a few tries.”

“You batted me awake?” Pincushion leaned forward, eyes open at full mast.

“Not as if I was gonna slap you. Woulda cut my hand open. Besides, they were love taps.” Detritus shrugged. “Still don’t know what to do with you. Crock, I don’t know what to do with Wasted half the time. He’s been slur-singing in that wheelbarrow since Wednesday.”

More drunken crooning echoed from the rusted wheelbarrow across the room, where Pincushion discerned nothing but a pair of legs hanging off the side. Wasted had switched to an Irish chanty. He messed up all the lyrics.

“He takes a few breaks from that song, but he’s been singing it over and over for days. He’s like a broken record that should get more broken. At one point, he just burped the alphabet all day.” Detritus started pacing, shoes knocking against bare metal.

“I gotta say, brother, we know you’re not Good Guys.” Pincushion couldn’t see Detritus when he paced away, but he tracked the sound.

“We figured that when we knocked you out. I guess the jig is up then.” To Detritus’s credit, he hadn’t broken stride after hearing the news. “So this just jumped from careless accident to hostage situation.”

“Last thing I remember was you beating up those robots. Their ankles, specifically.” To Pincushion’s left towered those hulking giant robotic statues, standing since who knew when. They’d menaced over everything, at least since Power Plant and Franchise had discovered this room a whole...what...two months ago. Maybe longer. They were beeping back then. Now they weren’t. What made the room more ominous is that it wasn’t catalogued in the haunt control. Janice had no idea this room existed.

By now, Detritus had paced back into the paltry light. He glanced over his shoulder at their twenty-foot friends looming motionless by the back wall. “Them. Yeah. Playing batter-up with those things. We have no clue what their deal is, but it looks like a lotta nothing.” He reached Pincushion and leaned closer, making Pincushion privy to whatever drink he’d been guzzling. Which of these two was more wasted? Pincushion swore he was getting second-hand-drunk off these oaken fumes. And Wasted didn’t help as he erupted with a belched...Declaration of Trioxil Independence? Or maybe just an itemization of whatever sloshed him.

Pincushion tried not to inhale through his nose. “So giant robots, two brothers who’ve”—Wasted’s throttling burp interrupted him—“okay, one brother who’s tied me up and another hanging out in a wheelbarrow, a headless guy playing goalie for red”—he jabbed his chin at the foosball table close to the wheelbarrow and the head wedged into one net—“and barely enough light to make out the pimple big enough to stunt-double as a wart. This is eerily similar to the physical ability test I almost failed in my police exam because I nearly bit into the guy who dared get in my face.” He clacked his teeth at Detritus.

Detritus backed off a step. “The head used to play for blue until I knocked it off. I crammed that stupid thing into red’s net after I got sick of tripping on it. And I forgot the rest of everything else you said, so let’s skip to the part where we need your help.”

“You need my help?” Pincushion spoke over Wasted’s next jostle to free himself from that wheelbarrow. He made it out this time, but he was like a whale that had escaped onto the beach and hadn’t thought past that.

“We need that brain of yours hanging out in your prickly little skull.” Detritus flourished his hand and corkscrewed his index finger closer until it tapped Pincushion’s forehead. “That prickly little anger-creased skull. Them robots?” That index finger whipped back to indicate the robots. “They’re more your problem than ours. You see, the king of soul back there and me, we can hightail it outta here whenever we want. And we leave you and your home sweet Station One to the mercy of these robots. Easy peasy.”

“Lemon squeazy,” Wasted said facedown on the floor. Discernable words finally, not just a sermon of burps.

“The squeaziest of lemons.” Detritus rolled back on the balls of his heels. “In fact, that’s our best option, ’cause whatever them robots planned, it ain’t good. We leave, let them thunder-clomp all over your station, raid your pantry, leave a giant mess in your toilet, yack in your sinks. Master Asinine claps us on the backs and hails us as heroes, that is if he has the presence of mind to keep track of anything. We’d win the war, and you’d be gum on the bottom of them size-eighty shoes. But Wasted and me”—Detritus rolled forward and tapped Pincushion’s left breast—“we got heeeaarrtt”—he flapped his prickled finger in the air—“ttttttt. Ow, your skin bit me.” Stuck the finger in his mouth to soothe it.

“Yeah, I can tell you got so much heart by the way you batted me awake.” The reek of rotten sriracha sauce reached him. Would someone take off Detritus’s bib? “How am I supposed to help?”

Detritus still winced. “Ever consider filing them spikes down? Might make you more friends.”

“How—am—I—suppo—”

“Okay, okay. Here’s the problem with that question.” Detritus licked his lips. “We don’t know how! Here’s what we know so far.” He stopped to wait for a thunderously burped rendition of “Shipping up to Boston” to subside. The lyric “wailer stew” really resounded and wasn’t even in the original song. Anyway, after the burp subsided, and then resubsided, and then re-resubsided, Detritus felt safe to continue. “We stumbled”—and then re-re-resubsided—“in here and found ninety percent of this party animal lounging on his chair and the other ten percent in that foosball table over there. We also found Unicron’s cousins standing around with a timer at their feet. This thing.” Detritus hustled to a lifeless console sitting immediately in front of the center robot’s toes. He patted it and then rushed back. “And that timer, beeping enough to eat into your soul, wasted no time flying to zero.” He coughed at the awkward phrasing. “No pun intended.”

“What beeping? I only hear your shower-karaoke friend.”

“I’ll circle back to the beeping after the grand tour of what’s gone down. Anyway, I checked behind the robots, and there’s a viewscreen—a frigging viewscreen—welded to a heel. And it’s scrolling computer commands like nobody’s business. You want to know what the commands say?”

“I’ll bite. What?”

Detritus shrugged so emphatically that his arms flung up and clapped back down to his sides, disturbing his bib. “We don’t crocking know. It’s in Virillian. We can’t read a word of that snaky crap. Them Virillians are building giant robots and then putting them in your house. Whatever they planned with the robots, I can’t read. So, when I say that command line is scrolling like nobody’s business, I mean our business.

He stomped a foot. “Anyway, on top of that, that headless guy? He made a video, and we watched it. Thankfully that dude spoke English, so we understand him. On the video, he warns us that the people who built this place put them robots here. For some reason. And then he dies right on video. We watched it happen.

“Okay, so believe it or not, but my friend here is useful. He gets drunk on oxygen, but the more booze you fill him with, the soberer he gets.”

“The soberest!” Still facedown on the floor, Wasted returned to singing.

“He also puts his underwear on backwards. Anyway, he took Virillian studies when he wasn’t drunk. So we imbibed him up so he could think clear for a change. He still didn’t know what that command line was saying—I don’t think Virillians know what Virillians are saying—but he figured out them numbers on that timer. Them numbers ain’t counting in any straightforward way. They ain’t counting down, and they ain’t counting up. The numbers are random. Or, so my drunk philosopher cousin here said, seemingly random. Yeah, when he ain’t drunk, he cranks out three-syllable words.”

Pincushion tapped syllables out on his tied fingers. “See...ming...l—”

“They’re counting sideways. They’re counting across multiple timelines. Don’t ask me how that’s possible. Who times multiple timelines? But, last month, the timer stopped. Went blank and died. It reached whatever number it was meant to reach. But I checked that console behind them, and that command line ain’t stopping. It’s still commanding them robots.

“And that’s it. That’s all we know, which ain’t much. You came in then. So we need your help. We gotta figure out what these robots are for, what they been doing since their razzmatazz timer finished counting, and how to kill ’em. My baseball bat didn’t do the trick. Wasted farted at ’em, and that usually melts steel, but it did nothing to them.”

Pincushion felt chills. He rubbed the inside of his cheek between his teeth. He tossed Detritus a glance, wished to tap his foot in thought and also slug Detritus—in thought, of course—also wished to use the washroom. He’d have to do that last one in thought.

But they had a point: whatever purpose those robots had, they posed a threat to Station One. He wanted so badly to bring these two to Legion, finally make them prisoners of war or at least harness Wasted’s burping to power their wind turbines, but the sad truth was they knew more than anybody about these robots.

“Fine, brother. Cut this laser rope, grab your friend as much booze as possible, and let’s get to work.”

Detritus sprouted a slimy, thin-lipped smile and clapped his hands. “Hot diggity crock. The Gorging Court cut us off at our usual spots. So where we gonna get our hands on that much drinky drink?” He was already behind Pincushion’s chair, fumbling at that rope to cut it.

“There’s a Burger Wench in the Gorging Court.” As the rope fell away, Pincushion rolled his shoulders and felt a cool ache of relief. Oooh, that felt good. He kicked out the metal knee replacing the real one he’d had blown out back as a cop with the Mission Beach police. “Ask for their kids’ meals. Those have the most bourbon.”

Chapter Nine: Explosive Diarrhea

Power Plant knew he shouldn’t stare up at the sun, and he wasn’t. He stared up at the starship that the sun haloed. Big difference: he’d go blind slowlier this way. Legion always warned him he’d only delay the inevitable, and here he was listening for once. He liked making Legion happy. Not grammar Nazis, though. Slowlier? Even he knew that wasn’t a word. Yet.

Under the hot sun in his overshadowing starship, Master Asinine cleared his throat. Rather, that grainy recording of him did. Sounded as if he were making good on his threat to subject everyone to homemaking tips and tricks and garbage music that went from whining about breakups with quarterbacks to who had the best weekend plans. Power Plant was hanging with Nikki for sure. Paintball? Frigging right.

“HI, AUDIENCE OF YOU. HERE’S YOUR TOP-CHOICE CONQUEROR WITH TIP NUMBER ONE ON MAKING YOUR HOME. MICROFIBER TISSUES ARE EXCELLENT FOR CLEANING BECAUSE OF THEIR SOFT TOUCH. THIS WAY, YOU AVOID THAT NASTY CHAFING ALONG YOUR BUTT CRACK AFTER A GRAND—”

“Jeff.” Ace Spandex placed an insistent hand on Power Plant’s shoulder. “Jeff, pay attention.”

“Name’s Jeffy. And I ams pays attention. Hopings Asinine says a tip about using bleach on a plant. Can we’s make slowlier a words?”

“As long as you stop pushing spewmageddon on me. But Jeff.” Ace whirled Power Plant around and gripped his shoulders with both hands, one covered in cold metal, so he should mind which arm he stuck in the microwave. “Jeff, we need to take shelter.”

Power Plant glanced at the park. People scattered in laser-quick paths, screams leaping from some. They stopped only to reassess their panic trajectories, shoes skidding and scraping, bodies colliding, sometimes colliding comically. Such as them two fat guys who clotheslined each other and splattered their desserts on the uncleaned ground. Free ice cream for anyone that didn’t mind bird crap in their fudge. He called that a double-fudge sundae. “You’s right. This funniers than a stupid old starship and...wait. Why’s thats big statue clompin’s arounds?” He stared at the hinged bronze likeness of Cosmonaut Chimp’s season-eighteen nemesis, Crash-Test Canine, that rumbled the earth when it stepped off its podium. “Also why’s it wears no pants on.” Fun fact: the Good Guys’ resident b-list actor Catastrophe did a guest stint as an owl in that season. Way-more-fun fact: Crash-Test Canine was a wallaby. What kind of crock did those cartoon execs expect to pull?

“It’s an animal. It’s not supposed to wear pants. You are, so no repeats of our charity appearances.” Ace swallowed. Hard. Nervously. “And here’s the kicker: it’s clomping around because it’s no longer a statue. It’s a war machine. Did you not listen when Master Asinine bellowed threats at us?”

Power Plant frowned a do-you-even-need-to-ask grimace.

Ace’s index finger shot up. “Lesson to learn: pay attention to adults.”

The grimace grew grimacier.

“Fine. Asinine’s not an adult.” Ace Spandex waited for a scream to peter out. Wow, what a set of lungs on that kid. “Still, he finally won the scheme lotto: one of his deathtraps worked. He’s rigged the park to go insane. Look around you. We’re sitting in Skynet’s dream vacation getaway. All the automata in the park are hunting. And guess what they’re hunting.”

Power Plant thought hard to process the scene. “A darn fine bowl o’ chili?” An automaton of Heifer of Destruction clattered down the street, hoof clomps like thunder rolls, moos like a rally cry. “Not her, though. She ain’t a cannibals.”

Among the concert of shoes squeaking on pavement, the frenzy of crowds, the crunching of killer statue steps, the bellows of panic, and the drink stand’s elevator music, Master Asinine’s tinny voice echoed down at them. “TIP FOUR ON HOME MAKEOVERS”— he’d taken a step backwards in those counting classes he claimed to have graduated—“ALWAYS BRING ENOUGH TOILET PAPER FOR EVERYONE. TIP FIVE. KEEP AN ACCURATE COUNT OF WHATEVER AND STUFF.”

Crash-Test Canine, clattering on hind legs, leered down at them. If the eyes were the windows to the soul, these ones were blazing furnaces. Turned out they literally were. And when she hunched, those eyes spilled hot charcoal onto the street, sparks dancing. Crash-Test Canine stomped over the charcoal and dusted black ash around. She roared, crazy flame dancing from her tongue in nostril-stinging fury.

“It’s a mascot revolt out here.” Ace grabbed Power Plant’s arm and yanked him away—“Time to run”—Crash-Test Canine disgorged an incinerating blaze where they’d stood—Ace and Power Plant darted into the safety of a souvenir store—dinging bell at the door—dozens and dozens and dozens of insanity-controlled miniature Chicken-Coop Charlie toys began clucking in an antagonism of warning alarms—next animal to give away their position was getting blasted.

The store overflowed in toy representations of Cosmonaut Chimp characters arranged on brimming brass shelves, so much that the store smelled like a factory of plush stuffing. Flashing keychains by the near wall, hats sporting sarcastic mottos on the opposite wall, T-shirts hanging on spinning racks interspersed in aisles, a raging assortment of postcards at the cash register, and cowering parkgoers pressed against the floor for shelter. Power Plant wondered how much the parkgoers went for. Half off for the guy missing a leg. Damaged goods.

Outside pelted the sounds of themed war, like a thousand lightning storms. Ace threw himself against the wall, ducked for cover under the window, out of line of sight. Power Plant would have too, but, meh, things that smacked your face felt more exciting. And smacky. He pressed against the window, peered out at the anarchic street, hands screening out the glare of the orange day.

Crash-Test Canine looked as if she’d lost track of him and Ace. She traipsed down the cobblestoned street, cracking dents into the ground with every deliberate hop. Hrmph. Weird. Evil robots usually didn’t ignore Power Plant.

Power Plant grabbed a This Is Not Poop but It’s Also Not Not Poop dark-chocolate bar from the rack at the cash. The label called it a candy log. Unwrapped its crinkly foil and chowed down. Tasted like its name. He considered it payment for taking care of these screwball robots. Then again, the property damage he planned might even things out.

“Jeff, prep yourself. In two minutes, we’re back out there.” Ace Spandex was tapping along his left forearm. A panel in his skin shushed open, and a wire cylinder popped out, carrying a canister. He tapped his forearm again, and the cylinder clacked back into place. He pressed the skin above the panel, dragged his fingers up, and revealed a tiny screen. “I’m at seventy percent. Crock. I knew I should have loaded up before we left, but it looked weird sticking my tongue into the washroom charge socket.” He tightened a cheek in regret. “Children were present.”

“My bladder’s at a hunnert percents.” Power Plant reconsidered. “A hunnert at ten percents.” It was willing to put in that extra effort.

A rocky figure of Cosmonaut Chimp pounced out of nowhere and crashed onto a park buggy outside the window, crumpling the front hood inward. The chimp himself. He wore a hostile visage in its maniacal eyes, malicious smirk, and slathering tongue. Eyes pulsing from claret red to crimson, eyebrows like arched hate lines, he curled his lip at Power Plant and let loose a deathly howl like a wraith as if to say, “That’s my excrement log you’re eating!”

“Nuh uh, Cosmonaut Chimp, dudes.” Power Plant crinkled the candy-bar wrapped in his hand. He ignited it with light energy, dissolving it in foil slag and the odor of...you can guess. “You gets your owns log o’ not poop. This one mine.”

Ace Spandex wasn’t finished with his ammo check, but he glanced up. “What went through your head that led to that statement in mixed company?”

Power Plant continued charging his fist into a yellow glow. It crackled now with angry photons. His rabid leer challenged the Cosmonaut Chimp robot, who reared back and began cracking rock fists against stone breasts, pebbles pinging off. That death howl reached a crescendo and then split into chops of sound, Chimp’s signature war cry. Everyone shielded their ears with pressed palms. Ace Spandex scrabbled from the wall to observe the nightmare automaton through the window. Beside the screeching monkey sidled up Crash-Test Canine, who foamed bubbling lubricant from her horrid snout.

Then, in an eyeblink, Cosmonaut Chimp stopped pounding, stopped screeching, echoes tapering away. He lowered its gaze to Power Plant, breaths seething, as if stone-covered robots breathed. Slender fingers twitched. Nostrils swelled. Predatory eyebrows arched more fiercely. And out of his robot posterior dropped an oblong mass of aluminum that clanked onto the buggy’s pulverized windshield.

Without breaking its eye contact, Cosmonaut Chimp reached behind itself, scooped up the aluminum, reared back—

Ace blinked. “Oh, crap.”

Power Plant tightened a fist. “Oh, robot craps.”

—and launched it at the window. The l-window dropped—another result of Asinine’s control?—and the aluminum sailed through the gap, clonked Ace Spandex in the forehead, and thumped onto the floor. The l-window sizzled back to existence with static power. The aluminum turd rested inert on the green carpet, same as any turd except not hiding undigested corn.

“Bird crap. Candies log. Robot turd. Whats kinda theme is this park?” Power Plant asked.

Ace regarded the aluminum. “We should have taken cover closer to the food court. They have four types of tacos and no poop.”

Beep, beep. No, wait. Something tugged at Power Plant’s ear. Beep, beep. The turd. Beep, beep. Not quite inert. A yellow light blinked, muffled against the carpet. Beep, beep. And considering that metallic odor, Cosmonaut Chimp should visit the doctor. Beep, beep.

Ace scrambled for the aluminum and snatched it up. “It’s a bomb!”

“Chimp’s droppin’ bombs.” Power Plant guffawed at his own joke.

Music cut in, twirling and whining at them from above. “HELLO AGAIN, HAPLESS EVERYBODY. TIP NUMBER I-LOST-COUNT-ALREADY, NEVER MIX ORANGE WITH PURPLE. OR ALWAYS. IT MAY OR MAY NOT BE A SOCIAL FAUX PAS. WAIT, WHERE’D I LEAVE MY NOTES?” Ruffling datasheets.

Amid gasps and frightened cries from store customers, Ace reared back and launched the turd at the window—clang—which sprang back—thud—against his forehead—donk—hand to head—dull slap. “Crock, that hurt.” Yeah, turds stung, Ace.

Foomp! The poop package farted, enveloped the store in whiteness even Power Plant couldn’t withstand. He threw an arm against his eyes, reeled back. He tried keeping the charge crackling in his fists, but it dissipated in an impotent tingle along his palms and fingertips. His arm hair, standing on end, drooped as if bowing remorsefully.

Something stomped the carpet. Power Plant blinked, eyes dry and his lids abrading, vision unfocused, chin bludgeoned by something blocky. He smacked onto the floor, carpet coarse on his cheek. He blinked to moisten his dehydrated vision, blinked again, something was resolving. Overhead light panels, exposed wiring, and a stain that looked as if someone were unimpressed with the store’s Apple or Urine, You Decide drinking boxes.

A click from close by. Screaming patrons jostled away, elbowing each other in fervent struggle. Power Plant sprang up, kept blinking away the dryness, found Ace Spandex and Crash-Test Canine locked in a wrestling match, Ace’s metallic hand gripping Crash-Test Canine’s paw, his fleshy hand losing a game of mercy with Canine’s other paw. Cosmonaut Chimp had disappeared, probably off to cause more mayhem and toilet humor elsewhere.

Ace and the growing welt on his forehead were losing. “Bombs, psychopathic animal robots, cheap tween pop. This is why I never leave the house.”

“Be thankfuls we ain’t come during shark week.” Through the haze of a headache that made him wince with the throbbing, Power Plant discharged a blast into Crash-Test’s shoulder. A vomit of gears and pebbles clattered across the cashier’s counter. The arm attached to the shoulder didn’t fall off but slackened, now only half attached. The digits jittered and eased away from Ace’s flesh hand. Ace took the opportunity to regather his strength and crush pressure on the other paw. The paw couldn’t withstand it. It gave way with metal snapping, creasing, and shattering. Crash-Test Canine looked as if she couldn’t care less. Then again, what did Power Plant know? Until last week, he’d thought macaws were fish.

Power Plant charged up another attack but didn’t discharge it. Ace Spandex had shifted in the way, and Power Plant couldn’t track enough space to blast Crash-Test.

Ace Spandex eked out a reedy grunt, one that thickened as he gained leverage—forced Crash-Test to bow backward more, more, more—the paw cracked off—Ace threw it aside—reared back for a slap as if this were a refined clash in Victorian England—flicked his wrist—his robotic fingers sprouted claws—Ace slashed through Crash-Test Canine’s eyes—again—lenses shattered—again—diodes bled out—again—circuit boards cracked...

Crash-Test flopped aside, dead on the carpet, no struggle left. Objects fell out of its pouch: keepsakes meant as handouts for children, a laser pen with a jaunty eraser, a dead rat, uninflated balloons, a live rat, juice boxes and a water bottle, a live rat sewn to a dead rat. Now the place smelled more like a factory of burned metal.

Ace wheezed. Scowled down at the ruined automaton. Claws clenched and unclenched as he stood over it. Everything about him was locked into position. “Now I’m fighting the zoo’s pissed-off cousin. I’m a system administrator, for crock’s sake. When was I changed to a field agent?”

“TIP NUMBER SOMETHING. DO NOT CONFUSE YOUR GUESTS’ NAMES. KNOW WHO YOU’RE YELLING AT.”

Power Plant retrieved the water bottle before it rolled under a rummage bin. He uncapped it and raised it to his lips. Part of him hoped the water wasn’t poisoned while the other three-quarters of him shrugged and said, “Down the hatch anyway.” And then those three-quarters wondered if Ace would sprout a third eye if he drank this maybe-poisoned water. He recapped the bottle and handed it over. “Ya looks as if you need this mores than me.” Entertainment value trumped thirst.

Ace still fumed over Crash-Test Canine’s blinded corpse. “Jeff, how many characters are in this show?” He didn’t realize he’d taken the bottle.

“Firsts of all, names is Jeffy. Thirds of all, you’s asking how many characters in the show from the dude what just skipped nummer two.”

“I just want to know how many of these things I have to destroy.” Ace Spandex took an absentminded swig of the bottle so quickly the water sloshed inside it. He recapped it, still panting like an exhausted marathon runner. No third eye. Power Plant relieved him of the bottle and eased a box of cranberry juice into his hand, which he took without noticing. Maybe, just maybe...

“By my counts, at least one”—something crunched outside, and a scream ripped out like a klaxon—“plus one.”

Ace Spandex squinted through the window at a parade of demented robots stomping footsteps into the pavement. “This is weird. The robots are ignoring us. Well, except the one that just gave me the finger. Always hated armadillos.” His voice assumed a mocking tone. “Behold my amazing armor and sharp claws”—back to Ace—“and okay, I realize I have unique hang-ups.” He stepped back from the window and looked at Power Plant. “Are they passing through? Where are they headed?”

“Stops askings me questions.” Power Plant backhanded one hand into the other palm. “I’s—skipped—nummer—two.”

Ace Spandex marched to the door. “We’re following them.”

Still no third eye.

Chapter Ten: Because You Demanded It for Some Reason!

March 17, 9110. 12:11 a.m. (Galactic Standard Time).

“Brother Plaster, does he not look as if his wings are clipped?” Blackguard beamed, strange description for the quintessence of shadow. He ripped off the door to cell 14-A-1 and discarded it, careful not to strike Gangrene, careful to strike Brother Ripsaw.

The prisoner inside, known as the deranged Kamikaze, former Good Guy pilot, didn’t react. Why would he? He suffered catatonia, sitting and staring into an imagined abyss. He had regressed into his mind.

How fitting that this correctional facility would include an asylum for the mentally unbalanced population of hyperpeople? Equipment for suppressing hyperabilities was not cheap, and so economical reasons had led to the decision to unite the two establishments.

Blackguard entered, the cell feeling colder the farther he sauntered in. He crouched next to Kamikaze, observed as this prisoner didn’t blink, didn’t flinch, didn’t acknowledge. His solitary movement was his despondent lift in posture at the apex of every breath.

Gangrene pawed in. Plaster clobbered in, all attitude and no grace, much like whenever he barged into an occupied washroom. And whenever he shoved aside Blackguard at the “froyo stand” at Lord Continuum’s “all-night rager.” Blackguard had learned many slang terms that night, though he wished to forget “upper decker.” He also wished to forget stumbling upon one.

“I got a score ta settle with this punk.” Plaster pounced—

Blackguard did not even stand to throw aside Plaster with tendrils of his dark essence. “Brother Plaster, the only score I allow you to settle this night is with your dentist. Brother Ripsaw, I have need of you. Sister Marionette, please monitor the hallway.”

Brother Ripsaw entered while Brother Plaster donned a quizzical moue and probed two fingers into his mouth. This left Sister Marionette to add “color commentary”—another slang term Blackguard learned—to the events. “Y’all fight so loud I think ya woke my grandpappy, an’ he died somewhere like twenny years ago. Oh, now this sugahplum’s outfit just ain’t right.” She surmised Kamikaze as if estimating a makeover. Blackguard would allow her to apply no eyeshadow to this man.

“Hey.” Brother Plaster stomped a foot. “My teeth—”

“Hush up, sweetness.” Marionette regarded Plaster with barely a glance as she exited back out into the hallway. “If y’all gon’ run on about your teeth, save it. Ya could eat corn through a picket fence.”

“Whatdayawant, boss? I’m still busy swattin’ away Woody.” Brother Ripsaw stepped around Blackguard. Woody was the pinko hallucination he envisioned when he didn’t use a medical applicator to deaden the visions. “Oh, crock, another pinko.”

Blackguard stood aside to allow Ripsaw room. “Yes, crock, another pinko. And I require your services to carry this pinko. We must remove him from this facility and return him to Lord Continuum before resuming our recruitment campaign with a most interesting new brother.”

“Another Terran pinko?” Brother Ripsaw had crouched to pick up Kamikaze.

“No. A Virillian greeno.” Blackguard was one with slang.

“A greeno? Virillians aren’t ‘greenos.’” Brother Ripsaw rubbed his lips together. “They’re avocado greenos. Anyway, at least I ain’t killing another pinko. Pinkos smell like rotten spices.” Ripsaw braced to stand and—“Oof.” Something cracked. He tried to spring to a standing position but couldn’t. Instead he arched forward, still hunched. A hand slapped his lower back. “Gotta crockin’ be kidding me.”

Brother Plaster held his gut and laughed uproariously. “Did you just put out your back?” He pounded the wall in mirth.

Still frozen in his agonizing posture, he said, “What’d that sound like I did?”

Blackguard rolled his nonexistent eyes. How long must he tolerate these infants? “Brother Ripsaw, did you lift with your legs?”

“No, I lifted with my neck. What do ya think?” Brother Ripsaw tumbled onto his rear. He winced under his maroon mask from another snap of pain when his tailbone smacked the floor’s padding. “Stop laughin’, Plaster. You ain’t ever lifted much of anything except a dinner fork.”

Brother Plaster did not stop laughing. “Hey, at least I eat without putting out my back.”

“You got fish on your cheek.” Brother Ripsaw scowled, the expression evident through his mask.

“Indeed, Brother Plaster, most of Gangrene’s snacks are leftovers you drop. Your manners are akin to a baby scooping up applesauce with its fingers. Also, you still place your elbows on the table.”

“Elbows ain’t even a thing anymore.” Brother Plaster plucked the salmon from his cheek and popped it into his mouth. “Tastes like new.”

“Your manners are so notable that you have featured in news reports.”

“Shouldn’t the news concern itself wit’ environmental disasters or somethin’?”

“Also related to your eating habits.” Brother Ripsaw managed to stand in rigid posture, one leg contorting out. He collapsed back against the wall.

Sister Marionette wedged past Brothers Plaster and Ripsaw. “Outta the way, aces.” She squatted, arranged her arms under Kamikaze, and lifted without trouble or groan. She passed Brother Ripsaw. “Maybe y’all should hit the gym more than ya hit Plaster, sugah. Now let’s trot the heck on outta heah.”

Plaster watched her move past. “Where’d you get all that upper-body strength?”

“My back workouts ain’t just a buncha pickin’ up y’all’s leftovers, but never mind that. You keep doin’ you, honeybee.”

Chapter Eleven: How ’Bout That Margin of Error?

March 31, 9110 again. Get used to it. We’re spending a lot of time here.

A parade of stomping statues had razed what the park considered the downtown core. Franchise had no idea how park planners mapped out these crazy divisions, but why would a theme park have a downtown core? Or a financial district, according to the You Are Here but Maybe Shouldn’t Be maps?

The chaos had left the downtown core a shamble of crumbling restaurants and dilapidated seating arrangements. Now the maelstrom of smashes and booms receded into the distance. Thanks to the eight-foot statues of Mother of Destruction Duck and her five-foot ducklings, this theme-park street resembled theme-park mulch. Not cool, Duck, because you ruined the only place in the park that offered bruschetta and a shady place to breastfeed.

Against Plastique’s better judgment and snappier complaints, she and Franchise had escaped a distracted Schizophrenic and taken cover in a pizzeria while mom and her robot flock—a militia of fourteen—blazed through moments ago, destroying everything in their path and thrashing wings at each other over every morsel of bread they came across. Franchise still heard them anger-quacking. He’d never seen such a ferocious slap fight.

Silently congratulating himself on going this far without making a neutering joke, Franchise now stepped over the decimated front of the Italian-themed restaurant. He gulped down the rest of a saucy slice he’d taken, but he kept an ice-cream scoop to pry out Mother of Destruction Duck’s robotic innards once he caught up.

With the hectic quacking dwindling with distance, random park visitors felt safe enough to appear out of the cover they’d taken behind tables and counters, and a few braved out of the ruined bistro across the street. Plastique also emerged, prodded past Franchise, and sneered at the avenue that now resembled the end of a Jenga game. From the jumble of one polypropylene chair, she grabbed a tubular leg and swung it. She regarded it with displeasure but looked as if it would have to do. She marched off, trailing the screams of fear and quacking, two sounds you wouldn’t hear together in any other context.

Puckering sauce and grease off his fingertips, Franchise hopped into a trot after her. “You don’t plan to take those ducks on with a steel tube, do you?”

Plastique kept her focus ahead on the waddling and fanning tail feathers. Not real feathers, but stone feathers that covered robot mechanics. “They’re threatening lives and killing decorative palm trees. If they reach the parking lot, there goes our ride home.” She scratched her nose. “But I like to look on the bright side: prerecorded Asinine has enlightened me on how to get grape stains out of grapes.”

The day grew hotter despite the Crapshoot’s shadow. Hot wind against Franchise’s skin felt weird with no eyebrows. He rubbed a finger along the buds on his brow. Growing back. “And we’re getting some much-needed sun. My doctor said I suffer from seasonal affective disorder. It’s called SAD, on purpose I think. He says the sun balances my mood out. It’s weird, though, because he said I also suffer from HAPPY, hyperability-affective medical money-making, and now that I say it out loud, I realize he made it up.”

“That’s not even how you spell it.”

Franchise skirted around a jagged shard of pavement. “But listen.” He bounded over fragmented asphalt to position himself in front of Plastique. “Destroying statues all day isn’t an effective battle plan. Or an effective use of company time. What we have here is a good, old-fashioned computer virus just like our prehistoric ancestors fought. And that virus came from somewhere.” He pointed skyward.

Plastique stopped. Did she understand the logic?

Franchise said, “Let’s figure out how to get aboard Asinine’s starship and take care of the source. Otherwise, we’ll be spinning our wheels pulverizing Jeffy’s heroes forever.” He did a double-take. “Unless you want to go up there alone. I know how much you want to punch out Asinine.”

Asinine clicked on again, with that music that drowned out the singing insects from the street-side bushes. “TIP NUMBER NOBODY’S ASKING, SO NOBODY’S CARING. COAT YOUR WARBIRD’S CEILING WITH CLAM JUICE. I DID, BECAUSE WHY NOT? DIPPING SAUCE RIGHT AT YOUR FINGERTIPS.”

“I’m allergic to shellfish. You take this one. Besides, it’s always been my dream to rip off the head of an anthropomorphic animal at a cartoon theme park.”

“That’s a pretty specific—”

“I swear, if I find out any of these things talks in rhyme...” She wrung her hands over her tube and bent it in bottled anger. A steel tube. She’d bent a steel tube.

Franchise put up his hands. “Okay, far be it from me to be the thinker, but let’s come up with something better than battering statues to death. Because it’s hot out. And you don’t want me getting worse.” He sniffed his armpit. “Thinking is a new look for me.”

Plastique continued marching, so Franchise backpedaled to keep the conversation. “Courtney, listen. The real fight is up in Asinine’s musical fortress.” He wasn’t watching where he walked. His heel caught a slab of pavement capsized in this sea of obliteration. Plastique stopped short and caught his impact shirt in a wrathful grip to keep him from tumbling.

Franchise righted himself. Before he could say thanks, Plastique smacked her bent chair leg into her palm and fired a deathly glare that made Franchise gasp.

Plastique steeled her eyes at Franchise again. “Look. I haven’t been on a good hunting trip since nursery school. And, for once, here’s my chance to do it without getting grounded or losing my gun privileges for the week.” She marched onward, following the ducks who quacked nightmarishly away.

“Okay, well, that’s something to take up with your therapist.” Franchise sighed. “Okay, never mind what hot mess your upbringing left you in. Courtney, stop.” He winced at a thunderous boom in the distance, someone’s scream, and a rallying quack. “Plastique.” He hopped over an uprooted tree, positioned himself in front of her, fixed his hands on her shoulder, and planted his heels to keep her still. It didn’t work. She just pushed him along. “How are you this strong? These are new shoes.”

She stopped. Finally. Franchise smelled burned insole. Plastique twisted her grip on the chair leg so tightly, her skin squeaked. “You’re right. Okay then. Here’s our plan. I’ll manage the situation down here. Side benefit: I give these animals the beating of a lifetime. Meanwhile, you find a way on board that Crapshoot that Master Asinine thinks is a Warbird and stop his systems. Give me a good hour, though. I don’t have enough fun in life.” She gripped the chair leg and straightened it. “But still, how the crock do you plan to get up there?”

Franchise threw his arms up. “Half the rides around here have the word slingshot in their names, and half of those have the word buster. I’m sure I’ll find something.” He looked up at the cloudless sky, at the Crapshoot that blocked most of the sunlight due to its underbelly and that banner flapping in the wind that proclaimed, “Today, I promote my lieutenant to lieutenant times two.”

A click activated the loudspeaker. “TIP NUMBER X TIMES Y. FIND A QUALITY BROOM AND LIGHT IT ON FIRE. THOSE ANTS WON’T EXTERMINATE THEMSELVES, YOU KNOW. UNLESS THEY LISTEN TO REASON.” Click to deactivate.

Franchise estimated his stunt and found limited choices. Choice one: use the spin of the best-positioned ride in the park to cannonball at the Crapshoot and hopefully get caught in that orange tractor beam that didn’t reach ground level. Choice two: become the tastiest pasta sauce featured in tonight’s news. Choice three: come to his senses. “Let’s find something that flings people and doesn’t include seatbelts, and I’m good to go. There’s a reason this park rates the rides in miles per hour.” Choice three was looking better and better.

Plastique couldn’t help a smile from emerging. How uncharacteristic. She seemed so energized, she bounced on her heels, crunching apart taco shells from an upturned food stand. “I’ve dreamed of pitching someone at oncoming traffic for so long, you wouldn’t believe.”

“We’re just lucky I’ve got experience as a human projectile. Sometimes being Jeffy’s roommate is a blessing instead of a curse. He throws flaming plasticine at me when I’m in bed. I’ve got the burn marks and missing eyebrows to prove it. Where does he find plasticine on Station One at four a.m.? I don’t know. But hide whenever he says he needs access to your medical records.”

“You guys have an undefinable relationship.”

“Let’s take advantage of his ability to screw with my common sense and find a helmet and the slingshotiest, bustiest ride this park has to offer.”

“I don’t think a helmet will help.”

Franchise was already headed in the direction of the closest gift shop. “It’s not for my head. It’s for my puke. I guarantee I won’t be the only projectile in this stunt.”

* * *

Franchise trembled, strapping on the goggles he’d lifted off the mannequin of King Krab Karate in the gift shop’s front window. He positively brimmed with comments. First thing, animators: why must all character names be alliterative? Second thing: just because an animal included royalty in its name didn’t mean it should wear a crown. Stretching the goggles’ band around all those diamonds was almost impossible. Third thing: never create a character who wore both a crown and a headband. Too many hair accessories. Fourth thing: the previous three things shouldn’t matter considering his new job as a goggle-wearing cannonball.

That was enough things for now.

He tingled with fear, so adrenalized his teeth chattered. Cleansing breath, a five count, in through the nose and out through the mouth. This happened when you forced a pilot to act as a field agent. His heart beat a staccato in his eardrums, so he released another cleansing breath. He fit two fingers under the too-tight goggles to work out a kink in the strap. He wiped the day’s sweat from his cheek. He adjusted the strap again. It never felt right. Goggles never felt right. He was about to propel himself at a spacefaring vehicle. Nothing felt right. Life had come to this. Life might end like this, but it was sadder that it had come to this.

Here was the plan: Plastique and Franchise had combed the jigsaw streets, diving for cover whenever an animatronic animal tromped by—inched by, in the case of Stealth Sloth—Franchise expending way too much energy to stop Plastique from leaping out and throttling each animal. At one point, she’d almost strangled a totem pole.

They’d roamed out from underneath the Crapshoot to find a ride to launch Franchise back under it and now felt the sunlight hotter as the day progressed. But they found their ride: a suitable one with which Franchise could heroically hurl himself at Asinine’s Crapshoot. Or heroically break his neck. Probably definitely.

So they’d selected the Sonic Spider’s Cyclone Spinneret, because not only must the character names alliterate, so must the ride names. It sat in a perfect position to hurtle Franchise through the corridor of snack shops and souvenir boutiques up, up, and away three miles aboveground at the metallic herald of tips on how to decorate your home and how to dress like a quilt. Life was funny sometimes. Not ha-ha funny.

They called this a plan, by the way.

Franchise gulped on the nervous saliva collecting under his tongue. He almost choked from it. Now fastened in and ready to go, his quivering, sweaty hands gripped the straps of his seat, wringing them and nearly twisting them together. “R-r-remind me again why I’m concerned about wind resistance and not that we couldn’t find a helmet,” he said to Plastique, who seemed too helpful plotting together this idea of heaving him—headfirst, no less—at a starship that, from the looks of it, wasn’t made of pillows. All this strapped to a chair made of 50 percent cotton. Yes, he’d agreed to hurl himself at steel in something as durable as a hammock. This getup hung from a ride about to spin him at who-knew-how-fast-but-certainly-too-fast miles per hour until untrained ride operator Plastique yanked down a crank that would release this chair and send him screaming and writhing and hoping, for some reason, his eyes didn’t burn from wind shear. After, he was supposed to—wish fulfillment, don’t fail him now—reach that humming tractor beam and drift upward into the starship. Somewhere a safety check had been violated.

Plastique verified his rigging to ensure he wore all the necessary and futile equipment. He did: goggles. “No idea why, but we figured you should wear something, and all we found was this. Well, and a neck brace, but that thing just didn’t look sanitary.”

“Because we found the brace in a deep fryer.”

“Because we found the brace in a deep fryer.” Plastique snapped the band of the harness. Ouch.

Franchise’s hands still twisted the straps, though they seemed tight now. Shaking out another cleansing breath and thankful this place wasn’t Jurassic Park, he didn’t dare budge. He released the straps and he wrung them again and he lifted himself, harness and all, toward the overhang to which they’d hitched the straps probably to curl into a protective ball and he glanced back at the ride. It was your basic high-speed-rotation spinner—no such thing as a basic high-speed-rotation spinner, but so what—fashioned so each of Sonic Spider’s eight legs ended in a hanging, three-person-or-one-Multipurpose hooded bench. Sonic Spider sat dead center and spun, slowly at first but building momentum until she reached about twenty RPMs. Meanwhile, each musty bench spun at equal speed, creating a tango of gyrations. Franchise sat inside a fabric chair attached to one of these benches via a thick industrial elastic stolen off another ride farther down the street. Kamikaze would have envied this plan.

“ANOTHER TIP NUMBER ONE. THAT’S RIGHT, FRIENDS. WE’RE STARTING OVER. ANYWAY, URINATE INTO YOUR WARBIRD’S TRACTOR BEAM. NOT USEFUL. JUST FUNNY.”

Franchise jerked around. “Will I need a shower after this?”

“That might be a moot issue soon.” Plastique jerked tight Franchise’s harness, which ripped a zzzzip that trickled ice water down his backbone. “I think you’re all good. You ready?” She appeared beside him and peered up at the starship. “You don’t have to do this, even though it’s the only way to get aboard that Crapshoot. If you have any objections—any at all—feel free to speak up.” She was sizing Franchise’s skull as if determining how easily it could break.

“Now that you mention it, magic pocket lady, I’m—”

“So we’re all set.” Plastique stopped squeezing his forehead.

Franchise thrashed in place. “Look, if we don’t do this now, I’ll lose the other thirty percent of my nerve.”

“Hey, it’s your nerve.” Plastique shuffled backward to Sonic Spider’s controls, which sat housed in a rusting kiosk at the outer perimeter of the ride’s reach, divided from the crowd by an aluminum railing. She acted way too perky for someone who was likely sending someone else to his death. “Mission is a go in five...four...three...”

“Two,” barked a gruff voice that didn’t sound like Plastique, and Franchise didn’t say it since right now he was biting down on his lower lip. “Move away from the machine.” Couldn’t be Franchise since he’d also forgotten how to count backwards. “What the crock have you two fungal nut sores rigged up here?” What was a number again?

Franchise’s next cleansing breath sputtered out. He ripped off the goggles. With those fingerprinted lenses out of the way, his vision cleared. Boots clomped the pavement as whoever had come stepped around. Schizophrenic. Of course. And Bad Aim next to him.

The crumbling of stone and the murderous screech of metal barraged something in the distance. Righty struggled to have Schizophrenic’s shared body jig in the street. “Ooh, the sweet sounds of children laughing in such a magical wonderland.” He tried clapping, but with Lefty’s resistance, he ended up slapping himself across the chin.

Schizophrenic clutched his favored Autoling nine-millimeter. Bad Aim crossed his arms in a stab at looking thuggish. He gave off that odor of modeling clay from the weird skin oil he applied every day. In one hand, Plastique brandished her polypropylene chair tube above her head, in the other a pistol. In what enchanted pocket did she keep all these weapons? Both she and Schizophrenic aimed at each other in a standoff. Schizophrenic positioned himself against a wall to keep Franchise and Plastique covered. Plastique placed herself beside Franchise, that pistol tracked on Schizophrenic’s left head. Franchise now felt like the little kid at a grownup party.

Franchise tried to scramble out of the chair, arms spinning in some struggle to free himself. No such luck. He struggled so frantically he twisted himself around and now bobbed upside down on the creaking strap. He was fastened in too well. He resigned himself to watching this confrontation, involuntarily seated with elbow to knee and chin propped on one hand, lips pursed. Yes, upside down. Please nobody look at him.

Someone was missing. “Where’s Multipurpose?” Franchise asked.

“Yo yo yo, that foo’ chowed himself down.” Bad Aim pumped an arm. Even his breath smelled like clay. Though he was Virillian, a silent race, he possessed the hyperability to talk. Too bad for everyone.

“We left that mashed potato at a food truck.” Schizophrenic padded closer. Lefty clamped a toothpick in his teeth. “He cleaned it out, plasticware and all, and then fell asleep. Now, I asked you a question. What’s this rigged-up—My crock, where are your eyebrows?”

“We’re not talking about them!” Franchise screened his forehead against a shoulder, all he could muster upside down.

“Oh, we’re talking about them. But first things first, tell me about this fruitcake-competition winner.” Lefty swept his Autoling at the Sonic Spider ride and the rig Franchise and Plastique had improvised. “I didn’t think you guys could get any stupider after we handed Scapegoat over and you actually took him in, but it looks as if keeping scattermouth finally got to you.”

Upside-down Plastique jabbed her chair leg at upside-down Schizophrenic. “Your boss dropped us in it deep this time, so don’t test me. I don’t have the patience. Flinging Franchise at that gigantic Crapshoot that Asinine calls a Warbird is therapeutic. Deactivating his control over this park is just a side benefit. This is our best bet at escaping this situation with our musical tastes intact.”

“This plan so wacked.” Bad Aim launched into uncontrolled laughter. He held his belly and reared back so hard his hoverdisc almost capsized, throwing him as if he rode a rearing horse. The hoverdisc’s hum spiked in complaint.

Schizophrenic spat his own laugh. Also a string of saliva. All over his chin. “Seriously? That constitutes an idea? Sounds as though you guys waived your right to sanity.” Lefty paused for Righty, who had flicked out a cloth napkin, to dab the dribble off Lefty’s chin. And then eat the napkin. “And here I thought Virillians took top spot for nonsense ever since I saw their food pyramid.”

“Hold up,” Bad Aim said. “Virillians be gold, yo.”

Schizophrenic flicked his toothpick at Bad Aim’s face.

“We’re just trying to stop the mayhem your boss created.” Plastique knocked her chair leg on the ground once, the metal clang challenging Schizophrenic to a fight.

“And I’m trying to win a Darwin Award.” Franchise wiped more sweat from his neck. With him upside-down, it dribbled into his mouth. The day felt even hotter and tasted saltier.

Tapping his Autoling on his chin and a new toothpick bobbing around his teeth, Lefty seemed to consider whatever murderous thugs considered. Righty seemed to consider the taste of that napkin. Finally Lefty came to a conclusion. “I’m going too.”

“Yo, I’m down for that.” Bad Aim bumped up against Schizophrenic’s back. “Count me in.”

“You’re going too?” Plastique chuckled. “The likelihood of this plan succeeding is about the same as a wind-up toy passing a math test. And you’re going too? Without safety goggles?”

“They’re mine.” Franchise clasped his goggles.

Schizophrenic pointed at the Crapshoot. “That shenanigan sharpshooter up there is trying to pick up melted ice cream with a tractor beam that can’t reach the ground.” In the distance, the remnants of liquefied vanilla bobbed up and down in the air while the Crapshoot hovered lower to coax it up. “I’m not sticking around while his plan does its best to blow up in everyone’s faces. If there’s a chance to escape this action, I’m taking it.” He slipped his weapon into its holster and grabbed the next bench behind the one supporting Franchise’s chair. As he passed, coldness singed the pit of Franchise’s gut. “But I’ll let your idiot friend here go first.”

Franchise shrugged. “Considering I’m upside down harnessed to a ride built with wood, I’ll let that insult pass.”

“Yay!” Righty swung a fist into the air. “I love rides with idiot friends.”

“Shut up, idiot friend.” Lefty slapped Righty.

“Your funeral.” Plastique stuffed her tube through her belt. She watched what Franchise assumed was Schizophrenic tossing himself into the bench behind him. The jostling stopped, Schizophrenic seated. Bad Aim jerked his own seat around, probably trying to fit his hoverdisc under another bench’s crossbar.

Something zipped past. Franchise felt the tip of his ear burn. He twisted around in this upside-down mess to see what was the matter. Kicked his legs and elbowed his arms back and forth, finally inched around, bit by bit—another zip, a pink line of light—

“Oh, crock.” Franchise kicked and elbowed and jostled and yanked and tugged back around to face his flight path and maybe pinpoint the patch of pavement he’d splatter across. He settled into an idle rotation, unable to stop himself from revolving lazily.

Bad Aim had managed himself into the bench. “What you crockin’ at, playa?”

“That’s Predator Patty. Courtney, we need to move.” Another beam Predator Patty had concentrated into a laser blast cut the air inches from Franchise’s left and punctured the area’s brick-and-mortar—and combustible—electrical station. Not a good thing to shoot. Not a good thing to shoot when it sat twenty feet away.

“Predator Patty?” Lefty forced a single laugh. “Sounds like someone mashed together a coyote and a hamburger.”

Franchise had revolved back around at Schizophrenic. “That’s exactly what they did.” Another pink blast slid past him so closely he felt wind. “Hey, stop trying to burn my eyebrow off more!”

Schizophrenic jerked his head over his shoulder. “Seriously? A hamburger coy—Holy crock, would you look at that. And they armed it.”

Predator Patty clapped her titan jaws shut with a violent crackle.

“Courtney, come on.” Franchise jiggled his harness to prompt Plastique.

“Okeydokey.” Plastique grinned evilly. “Three...two...Sonic Spider’s certification expired last year—”

“Huh?”

“—one.” And she yanked down that crank as if expecting the winning pump on a slot machine.

Nice knowing you, life.

* * *

Franchise was gone, Schizophrenic and Bad Aim seconds later. Behind her, Franchise’s agonized, girly shriek faded as he arced toward the metal buzzard in the sky. Bad Aim was silent. Schizophrenic sang “I Believe I Can Fly.”

Plastique had weighed the options of sending off those two enemies of morality or arresting them, but that weird reek Bad Aim put off made the choice for her. Bah. She’d save beating them up for a holy day.

She slid her chair leg out of her belt, cracked her neck left and then right. Felt that liberating snap. One more for luck. Cracked left again. Stupid mission was bleeding into her macramé time.

She whirled her chair leg in the air at Predator Patty. “I’d spit out a jab about making hamburger meat out of you, but your animators already did the job.”

Predator Patty snapped her bone-crushing jaws at Plastique. She huffed and grunted and skittered forward.

“Let’s dance.” Plastique leaped and mashed her chair leg down on Patty’s snout.

Chapter Twelve: Migratory Patterns

Ace Spandex kept an 18.4-foot distance from the automata parade in front of him. Since his cyborg footsteps generated a decibel level between fifty and fifty-eight, he estimated this distance was out of their “earshot.” Sneaking peaks from behind storefronts and rides’ operator booths, he felt nagged more and more by the question of where they headed. Maintaining his distance while Carnage Kangaroo hopped a 5.0-Richter-scale earthquake was enough, but keeping Power Plant from giving away their position proved Ace Spandex wasn’t paid enough both as a Good Guy and as a babysitter.

Master Asinine and his musical background clicked in with another tip. “WHEN BLOCKING OUT SPACE FOR DINNER PARTIES, ALWAYS PLAN ENOUGH ROOM BOTH TO SLAUGHTER THE COW AND FOR THE BLOOD SPLATTER. THAT WAY, YOUR GUESTS WON’T—”

A wail of static and wild feedback. The real Master Asinine interrupted the recorded one’s conversation. “SORRY, GANG. IGNORE THAT LAST TIP. THAT WAS FROM A TIME WHEN I ATE GLUTEN. NEW TIP: SLAUGHTER VULTURES INSTEAD. IT’S CONSUMED MANY DIFFERENT ANIMALS, SO YOU ABSORB THE ABILITIES OF MULTIPLE CARCASSES.”

Ace Spandex kept his wary 18.4-foot gap behind the army of golemlike robots that tromped through the park’s lamp-guarded thoroughfare. He plodded silently, though Power Plant stamped at full volume. And at full saliva when he spat explosion noises with every footfall.

Slowly, other brave parkgoers emerged from their hiding spots. They also wore wondering expressions. Ace found someone dressed in a park ensemble: brown shirt and tan pants, chimp-styled hat with stiff beak, white-on-brown nametag, black safety shoes, and look of grim acceptance of their lot in life. He seemed about sixty-one life cycles old, dusty-gray hair interrupted by a bald spot but a mustache to make up for it. His footsteps tapped off rhythm, a limp to accent the right like a snare-tap to the percussion of his gait. His right foot hit the pavement with forty newtons more pressure than the left.

Ace dodged the rock slabs capsized in the river of the street and sidled up next to him, close enough to speak conversationally but far enough to avoid the aromatic reminder that he probably worked in the garbage collection crew. Specifically the old cheese crew. Also, the park should ease off the Roquefort.

“Hey”—Ace dipped his head to read the nametag—“you.” Some names shouldn’t be said around Power Plant.

The pruned man extended a hand. His weathered lips smiled. “Heap Crockwad.”

Sigh. Ace would hear that name repeated for the rest of the day. There Power Plant went now, bounding around and sputtering it out like the universe’s most socially inept motor. He tripped on a piece of rubble. That’d shut him up for two or three...sigh...seconds.

Ace strode over a broken tree. “Do you have a middle name, Heap?”

“Yeah. It’s Ton Of. Terran Dutch.”

Some parents should consult more baby-name catalogs. “Do you have another mid—Never mind. Let’s go with Heap. How well do you know the park layout, Heap?” Ace measured his distance from the convoy of animals who seemed summoned—mesmerized—as if, in the distance, a Disney princess sang to them. They eerily paid everybody no attention.

“Fairly well, my friend,” Heap said, his voice stringy and cracked. He tapped his nametag, indicating the animated star in the corner that showed ’91, as in 8991. The year he was hired. Ho, boy, he’d schlepped old cheese for a while. He’d probably married a brick of Camembert.

Ace jerked his chin at the animals. “What’s in this direction? Where are these statues headed?” He breathed in the day’s heated air.

“Crockwad, crockwad, crockwad”—Power Plant zipped past them in flight like a bothersome gnat—“crockwad, crockwad—”

“TIP NUMBER EIGHTEEN TWO. DON’T BOTHER WITH OVEN MITTS WHEN YOUR LIEUTENANT OBEYS EVERY COMMAND YOU ISSUE. LIEUTENANT, TIME TO OPEN THE OVEN AND TURN OVER THE FRUIT SALAD.”

“Well.” Heap scraped out this word that sounded like a window shutter rasping open. He scratched the chin hanging off his face. “The park is divided into different ‘lands,’ and the next land over is Marshland. Most popular rides there are the Mud-Peat Lazy River”—Ace immediately regretted asking the park’s tour guide—“the Pill Bug Scrambler, and Just a Choking Mess of Swamp Grass. After that, over yonder”—with that word, Ace suspected the ’91 on his nametag referred to 1891—“you got Cosmonaut Chimp’s Animals of Zooland, with the rides—”

Ace shook his hands in the air and hopped over a downed streetlamp. “I appreciate your level of detail, Heap—”

“—ton, crockwad, crockwad—”

“—but let’s stick to the landmarks. What’s after Animals of Zooland?”

“Well, after that, it’s the edge of the park. You’ve got the park’s seven power cells and then the highway.”

“—ckton, crockwad, crock—” Smack. Power Plant hit a building and bulldozed through its wall. A ruckus of boxed food tumbled from it.

Ace blinked, caught another breath of hot air in his throat, and had to focus to resume breathing. “The power cells?”

“Yeah, that litter of cells. They feed the whole park.” Heap smiled. “Get it? A litter? Like a litter of—”

Ace pressed a hand over Heap’s mouth and opened a signal to one of the automata. He didn’t have write access to the statues—he couldn’t control them—but he had read access—he could check their command feed. Didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of this until now. He scrolled through a few command lines, the malicious virus overwriting old ones, but then skipped to the newest command. It read, “Computer, acknowledge. Gather at park’s power cells. Destroy park’s power cells.”

Heap removed Ace’s hand. “I’m known as the park’s joker. A litter. Heh.” He sighed out a chuckle that made Ace’s eyes water.

“Heap, stop being pleased with yourself a second.” Ace grabbed Heap’s shirt collar and yanked hard. Face to limburger breath, he fixed Heap with stanch eyes. And then faced away from the rotten stench. Wow, Heap worked with strong cheese. “The animals are collecting at those power cells. They plan to detonate them. All seven!”

Heap’s mouth bobbed with unspoken and numb syllables, contemplating the animals that drew past. Ace shook him to keep him focused. “Heap, I need you to gather your sanitation collective and herd people out of the park. Now. Get it? Herding. Like a sheepdog. Can you do that?”

Heap’s eyes became moons. Flaring them sounded like ancient doors creaking on hinges. He scraped out a cautious and uncertain, “I th-think-think I c-can. I think.”

“You think you think you can. Good enough.” Ace clapped him on the shoulder, which set him limping off. Next, he funneled his voice to roar over the claptrap of Colonel Cockroach or whatever stupid name they’d given that chittering statue ahead. “Jeff!”

Power Plant crawled out of the hole he’d broken through the building, doughnut cartons and cream puffs raining from shelves he’d disturbed, a box under his arm. He’d jammed his face with something that would no doubt give him the sugar high to destroy life as everyone knew it. “Nmfhgghe’s Jfffngy.” Powdered sugar sprinkled out.

Ace Spandex exhaled nervously. “We have to alert the others.” Counting Plastique, Franchise, and them, this park’s survival hung on four Good Guys against a litter/colony/swarm/herd/school/troop/pride of animals intent on exploding everything. “This theme park is now a powder keg!”

“What the crockwad are you”—Power Plant stuffed a pink ball of coconut and cream filling into his mouth—“tmgghffftng mffffbmmmt?”

“Jeff, I’ll guide you by gabber, but you need to bolt to the power cells to do what you do best.” Ace Spandex smacked one palm with the other fist.

Power Plant swallowed noisily. The pink ball worked its way down in a bulge like a monkey worked its way down a snake’s throat whole. “Ya means make species go extinct?”

“Yes, that’s pr—How’d you guess what I was thinking?”

“For crockwad’s sake, it calleds context, man!” Rearing indignation, Power Plant crammed another pink ball in. His cheeks bloated like a chipmunk hoarding for the winter.

“Move! And stop stuffing your face. I’m literally watching you get diabetes.”

Chapter Thirteen: Tough Crowd

Legion had moments ago commanded Janice to bar his office door. She complied after calling him a piping bowl of leathery sssssomething or other. She’d cussed a few unfamiliar choice words. The conversation’s framework lent some clues, though.

Hollering raged downstairs. Sounds brawled, as if the generics were tearing the building down. Legion prayed to Alaphus—prayed enormously hard—that the generics would ignore the people occupying the lobby building. If Topsy and Turvy hadn’t died, more than a few generics would have arrived at this office with a broken sense of color coordination.

Legion’s office was a short two flights up, so the belligerent banging on the door didn’t take long. It came in hungry wallops that would have smashed the door in two if Legion hadn’t reinforced it. The hammer-fisted generic on the other side roared an angry “Let us in” over the pounding. Behind the voice came deep-throated fuming.

Legion’s chest banged a percussive staccato. He wrung his hand around the granulated grip of his Marsek, but his hold was feeble, and the Marsek slipped onto the floor. He stooped to scramble it up but fumbled and kneed it farther down the office. This army-trained lieutenant colonel evidently couldn’t hold a gun.

“PARK PEOPLE, REMEMBER THAT CUCUMBER WATER IS HEALTHIER THAN REGULAR WATER, SO STUFF YOUR SHOWERHEADS WITH THIS HANDY VEGETABLE,” Lowensland said from his loudspeaker through the viewscreen.

“Let—us—in,” roared the gatecrashers.

“Why would I ever do that?” Legion glanced up.

“Why w—” The beating stopped. “Because we’re pounding down the door! Also, Asinine promised us grilled cheese sandwiches if we bring you to him—and I quote—‘dead or alive but probably alive, so, okay, alive.’” This generic’s voice reminded Legion of an old army grunt that some nicknamed—wait for it—Grunt. The connection between personality and nickname wasn’t Grunt’s charm.

“Then ask nicely.” Legion dived across the tiles to grab his Marsek, which had spun underneath the radiator. He couldn’t see it but groped around the shallow underside to feel it out, reaching beyond reach to manage a finger’s touch on the Marsek’s handle under the shadow of the radiator. The outmoded radiator, in this day and age, that Legion still needed since Janice mistook the command “Room at ninety degrees Fahrenheit” to mean “Room at ninety-degree angle.” The day he’d used that command was adventurous.

Through the door, Legion clearly heard New Grunt say, “Hey, everybody, zi—Everybody, zip it. Zip! Steve, I didn’t mean zip your fly. Okay, I didn’t not mean your fly.” A buzz: New Grunt getting everyone to “zip it.” The angry babbling behind New Grunt calmed into individual words, hacks and coughs, whispers, and then silence.

A second or two passed.

New Grunt cleared his throat.

A soft tap-tap-tap puttered through the door that deserved a pay raise. Legion paused his hyperextended swatting for his Marsek/exercise in dislocating his shoulder. Was that knock to the tune of “Shave and a Haircut”?

“Mr. Legion, this is...the Academy Awards...umm...decision-making people. Decision team. We’re the Academy Awards decision team. Or something. We’ve come with good news.”

“I’m not in show business.” Legion swiped at the Marsek that—okay, how far behind this radiator had it skidded? He squinted into the shadow but couldn’t find it. He did, however, find that gobstopper that had slipped out of Power Plant’s mouth when he imitated a goldfish back in January. Legion resolved to keep two Marseks around from now on.

New Grunt sniffled and spoke to the door. “Mr. Legion, if you’d kindly let us in, the Academy would like to present you with your award...for...” And Legion almost heard the buzzing New Grunt’s brain emitted, a committee of two brain cells making a hearty endeavor. Those two brain cells shrugged in surrender and came up with New Grunt saying, “Best Original Animated Makeup Design.” A pause. “Adapted from an Original Score.” Well embellished.

“Tell him we have two awards.” Another voice whispered through the door. Legion would refer to this idiot as Whisper.

“Shut up.” New Grunt’s gifted rejoinder.

Lowensland from the viewscreen again: “HERE’S A GARDEN-RELATED TIP. IF YOUR FLOWERS AREN’T GROWING, START OVER WITH SOME HANDY AND CHEAP BUTANE.”

Legion snatched up the gobstopper. At least he had a projectile. He brushed off the fluff and examined it with a curled sneer. It shined rainbow colors in the light, layers eroded unevenly from Power Plant’s gobstopping. “Fine, I’ll accept your award, but only if you climb up to the roof and dive off first.”

New Grunt finally snapped. The pummeling resumed, the door bulging inward with every thwack. “Open the crock up, or so help me, we’ll give this award to someone else. I’ll storm this door down with nothing but my bare hands and a cannon!”

“Not with that attitude.” Legion noted that, not only would he invest in a second Marsek, he’d also invest in an escape tunnel. He’d put it on the other side of the office where Power Plant rarely looked—

Gah! As he spun to the “other side of the office,” he spotted a jetpacked generic with a threatening leer hovering right outside his window. Reflexively, he reared back and launched the gobstopper at the window. It split in two. Both halves plinked away and hid in the carpet, shrouded until Legion stepped on a piece and cut open his foot.

“Oh, good. Our battering ram is here.” New Grunt had a battering ram? A tap on the door—

Then a crack, piercing and thunderous. Legion’s super-reinforced door gave with shards of wood split down it immediately right of center.

“Janice, acknowledge. Reinforce door again.” Legion dived to his knees, hands combing the carpet for those pieces of gobstopper. Better than nothing, he supposed. Alaphus, help me out of this one and I won’t bother you again for the rest of the month provided the cookbots don’t force anything questionable on me. He’d learned not to promise anything on pork days.

More expletive-overloaded jargon from Janice about her ramming something through some organ Legion couldn’t pronounce. Where did she find the energy? And another hungry rupture at the door, a profound crack that cleaved a larger fissure. On all fours, Legion had stopped combing the carpet to examine the damage. Please, Alaphus, oh please, oh please. For my birthday, please grant me a new door. His birthday was two months away, but he’d reschedule.

Another acute crack, and New Grunt’s battering ram burst through, a helmeted generic who’d seen better days. The battering generic’s head fit through the hole, looked up at Legion, and grinned. So many missing teeth.

“ASININE FANS, GET READY FOR A FIREWORKS TIP. REMEMBER THAT BUTANE YOU USED ON YOUR GARDEN? OKAY, HEAR ME OUT ON THIS NEXT ONE.”

New Grunt pulled the battering ram back out, and the door slid aside as all damaged sliding doors did. It stuck on the rupture but remained half-open, much like Legion’s gaping mouth. New Grunt stood there, content, slithery smile glinting with way more teeth than the battering ram, whom he unceremoniously dropped. He hurried into the office, licking his lips.

Out of weapons. Out of defense. But not out of options. “Janice, acknowledge. Cue audio, Lowensland’s favorite playlist. Play on my command.” Janice would comb through all auditory-related threats Lowensland had made in public. This meant war.

Janice cackled but at least complied: “Cuing up Lowensland’s Whiniest Self-Entitled Music Moaners.” She seemed happy to follow this instruction. “Let me know how else I can help your ears bleed.” Skin covered Legion’s ears. This would be internal hemorrhaging. Jolly good.

New Grunt stopped short, boots on the carpet. Those mud stains wouldn’t come out, would they? “No, not an Asinine playlist.”

“Yes, his most beloved lovelorn ballads.” Legion bared his teeth. “At high volume.”

“Everyone, don’t move!” New Grunt eased back a slow cccaarreeeefffuulll step. “Colin, that means stop scratching the cut on your arm. It’ll get infected if you keep doing that.”

Legion held up his fist, in it one half of the gobstopper, as if he brandished a bomb detonator. “Yes, step away. On my command, my haunt control will subject us all to the most high-pitched bellyaching this side of a high-school love triangle. Do you catch my meaning?”

New Grunt patted the air, palms down. “Easy there, Legion. May I call you Matross? Let’s not do anything hasty, Matross.” To his crew, “Nobody move.” Back to Legion, “Okay, I want to show you I’m unarmed.” He placed his hands behind his head and pivoted, one easygoing step and then the other...unrushed...intently...measured. He finished his rotation. “Okay, Matross, what are your demands here?”

“I want”—Legion hadn’t contemplated this, he didn’t know what he wanted, what did he want, come on come on, what?—“a starship. On the roof of this building in less than half an hour. Or so help me, for every five minutes you’re late, I will play one sentimental duet.” He’d ask Alaphus for forgiveness later for this cruel punishment.

New Grunt patted the air again. “Okay, okay. We’ll get you this starship. But half an hour isn’t doable. You’ll have to give us more time.”

“Seriously? There are dozens parked at the foot of this building.”

“Okay, okay, half an hour. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Half an hour, or I unleash musical hell.” Legion revealed the gobstopper between his padded thumb and forest-green forefinger. He felt, positively felt, the worry spots on his forehead spreading their inky blackness. His stomach gurgled. “And I’m hungry. And I want to talk to your leader. Who’s in charge of this assault?”

“We don’t know him. Goes by the name Highground. He’s new, insisted on taking his own Warbird here.” That explained the second starship. “I can get him here, and I’ll tell him to bring a pizza. You like pepperoni? Course you do. How’s a large pepperoni pie sound?” New Grunt nodded as if to further soothe Legion. “Now, my gabber’s on the fritz, so I need to activate it using my hand. I’m going to raise my hand slowly to my ear. No sudden moves. Here I go.” His hand drifted up to his gabber. Tapped it. Earpiece and mouthpiece emerged. “Gabber, acknowledge. Contact entity Highground.”

Legion briefly faltered the gobstopper piece—his arm grew tired—but reminded himself to keep it high and threatening. Up it went, catching a beam of sunlight through his window. “Who’s Highground? Is he the union gardener?”

“No.” A hand shot up somewhere behind the frontline. “I am Highground.”

And then a hush fell. Even Janice stopped cursing the day Legion was born. Clocks stopped ticking, flies stopped buzzing, white noise stopped prowling in the background, Legion’s military trainers stopped rolling in their graves.

A weighty stillness fell.

The swarm of generics parted, both left and right sides waiting patiently for this Highground to pass through. Gentle footsteps tapped...tapped...tapped the terrazzo outside the office, drawing nearer, louder.

Then he appeared. Highground. At six feet—closer to six-and-a-half—he towered over most generics on boots with thick soles to raise him higher. He wore the regular generic getup—red with a black collar—but with add-ons. He looked like generic royalty. An iron mask covered his identity. A cape poured out behind him from one-inch shoulder spikes.

Highground’s high-soled boots seemed heavier than a regular generic’s. Legion felt envious, still in socked feet that ached coldly against his office’s new tiling. To his sides sauntered likewise-dressed generics, two on the left and one on the right, though Legion identified them as lesser royalty than the center-placed Highground. They, after all, weren’t blessed with capes.

Legion snapped his suction-padded fingers. “I remember you. You’re that incredibly clumsy generic that helped Lowensland take over a fire hydrant.”

“No, that was Lowground.”

“Whatever. You generics all look alike.”

“That’s racist.” Highground folded his arms. His escorts remained silent, as engaging as Braindead in an online chatroom. Their lack of fidgeting and balance shifting was noteworthy, like ice sculptures.

“We finally meet, Legion.” Highground’s voice sounded so obscured behind his iron mask that Legion wondered how he breathed. “May we barge in?” He’d already crossed the threshold into the office.

He indicated Legion’s raised hand. “You can put down your playlist trigger. That playlist will have no effect on me. My brain has grown callouses.”

Legion’s arm felt exhausted, but he maintained the threat. “At this point, it’s more of a suicide pill than a weapon.”

“HAVE A PESKY MOUSE INFESTATION IN YOUR HOME? WELL, PTERODACTYLS MAKE GREAT HUNTERS AND PETS.”

“That one’s my favorite.” Highground threw his chin at the viewscreen.

“Janice, mute viewscreen.” Legion winced at her nasty retort—something about...actually, never mind where he should stick his command—but she complied.

Highground flicked a finger wave, an indication of something to his three escorts. The escorts motioned for the generics to clear the office door, to remain outside. The escorts then flanked the door’s sides while Highground strolled deeper into the office like a high school’s principal surveying a brooding detention room. He regarded the viewscreen briefly that displayed the theme park, Lowensland’s starship looming over families, vacationers, innocents, and Power Plant with access to more sugar than he’d known all his life.

“Let’s chat,” Highground said.

This should be good.

Chapter Fourteen: The Social Faux-Pas Family Tree

Hot wind whipped into Franchise’s eyes, errant debris grated his skin, something buzzed up his nose, air invaded his lungs so viciously he couldn’t breathe against it, he’d dropped the goggles he’d forgotten to put back on. All this in the fourteen seconds since Plastique had launched him at the orange-tinged tractor beam coned underneath Asinine’s hovering deathcraft. He hoped not to end up as three-dimensional ground graffiti. Such was life.

He risked opening his mouth, rewarded with a mouthful of air he still couldn’t breathe against. His cheeks and mouth flapped in an unflattering image that a ride camera had probably captured for eternity. He’d likely later find it a tad amusing as he strangled the ride operator.

His eyes stung. Watered, too, washing everything in vague smears. It made it hard to tell what had just smacked him in the face, but the squawk suggested a bird or—allow him to be precise—a macked-off bird.

Then a syrupy slowdown, soundlessly screeching to a near halt. As if he’d dived into molasses, his momentum slashed from eight zillion miles per hour to eight. And his loose gabber dropped out of his ear! Crock! Without wind immobilizing him, he could move his arm. He snatched for the gabber but it was already out of reach, cruising through the beam, and then—crock, it escaped and plummeted to the ground. Crock!

He raised his fingers to his stinging eyes and wiped. In the thicker-aired cone of the tractor beam, now without gabber, he meandered up toward the underbelly and open porthole of the starship above. The orange hue washed everything around him. He tasted fresh air—delicious, delicious air—mixed with dirty seagull feathers—atrocious, atrocious feathers. He smelled his own breath—pizza, pizza breath—as it wafted past him.

A hum drifted into his ears—“PAINT THE POOP ROOM IN BROWN FOR THOSE TIMES WHEN YOU ATE SOMETHING SPOILED, AND IT’S MANIC ABOUT SPRAYING OUT THE OTHER END.” Okay, unable to unhear that, he identified the understated hum of the tractor beam as he hovered closer to the starship’s underbelly. He levitated into the outer hull, first rising past silica tiles and then past an open-concept web of pipes and wiring. The tractor beam lifted him through this and then stopped him in the starship’s lower airlock. Since the starship hovered within an atmosphere, it didn’t need to depressurize anything, just held him bobbing below the ceiling.

He stepped out of the cone onto a round platform mounted on a three-step staircase above the silica floor. Time to skedaddle, because last he checked, Schizophrenic and Bad Aim were hot on his tail. He’d clenched tightly Tamiko’s gift for security this whole time, and now that he wasn’t sailing to his doom, he unwrapped his sweaty fist and examined the box. The bow around the wrapping was flattened, but he fluffed it out, and the presentation looked good as new. And smelled like perspiration, but he’d tell Tamiko that was Jeffy’s fault. Half of Franchise’s phobias were anyway.

Time to flee. But he froze, not a wise start to fleeing. Three doors led from the room. A fourth door led away, but Franchise crossed that off since the sign above it read, “To Meat Thresher.” Not a good idea without a hospital mask.

Which door led to the cockpit and which led to a crocodile-cuddle room, an Asinine staple? The cockpit was his destination so he could shut this operation down. Unless he needed a refresher on terrible ideas. In that case, he’d stop off at the crocodile-cuddle room, but then he’d locate the cockpit. Ugh. Left, right, or dead ahead. Fine. He hurried down the stairs and to the left. As good a choice as any—

A crinkle teased his ear, like cellophane being gripped. Or like a sidearm shifting a light-bullet into its chamber. Franchise froze at the merciless chuckle and snort behind him. And the high-pitched giggle and imitation snort.

Franchise whirled around at Schizophrenic hovering in the tractor beam, aiming his pistol. Lefty wore a mirthless smile. With Schizophrenic already here, Bad Aim wasn’t far behind. Somehow Lefty hadn’t lost his toothpick.

“Heh.” Schizophrenic gestured his pistol forward and snorted. “Sarah-May’s angry today, and she needs to take it out on someone. Unlucky you.”

“You named your pistol?” Franchise steeled himself to go down swinging.

“I name my burps.” Lefty unleashed a guttural belch that thundered down the hall. “That one’s Wendell.” He had so much burp in him, he said that burping.

Righty tried the same but achieved only a hiccup. “That one’s Wendell’s brother, Wendell Again.” He seemed as pleased with himself as when he’d learned to spell his name.

Schizophrenic stepped off the tractor beam onto the platform, a half-foot descent. He kept Franchise in his sights. “Control, acknowledge. Close tractor beam porthole.” He snorted. “Got you all to myself now. I’ll let Bad Aim sweat a little out there.”

* * *

“Two-headed homie gon’ play me like dat?” Bad Aim shook his fist. He sat, riding the tractor beam’s magnetic pull up, closer to the starship and a panel in the underbelly the beam now cascaded out of. “Yo, dis the last time I got yo’ back, ya stone-cold hater!” His head clonked against the closed porthole. “Ow.”

* * *

Schizophrenic stepped down the stairs toward Franchise. “Now, I can either shoot you or bring you to Asinine so that five-and-dime intellect finally tells me where he hid the rest of the Easter eggs. I’m not a huge Easter fan, but I love whipping them eggs at Appetite, and I’ll be crocked if you can find that stuff anywhere on Gaia. It’s also hilarious watching Righty here think the tinfoil is part of the egg.”

“It’s scrumptious.” Another failed belch. “That one’s Wendell Again’s sister, Wendell Again Again.”

“Wendell doesn’t have a sister, nonsense genie. Anyway, here’s how it’ll go down, I’ve decided. You stand at that wall, and I let Sarah-May have her way with you. And hurry up. I got people to laugh at.” Lefty gestured toward a wall against which a strange mop contraption leaned. “If Asinine complains about me killing you, I’ll wash his face with a lawn.”

Franchise gulped. He felt his larynx lodge in his throat. He saw no choice, at least until he found an opening to attack. Rather, until he floundered an attack and then wept for mercy. If only an online quiz hadn’t told him his spirit animal was a llama who’d tripped over a log.

One hand spread over the wall to anchor him while the other still clutched Tamiko’s gift. He scooched aside, knocking over the mop. Apart from the four wrapped bulbs he planned to give Tamiko, he was unarmed.

Schizophrenic sat on the bottom step. “Stand still, Mediocrates. I forgot to charge Sarah-May, so if this takes more than eight hundred shots, I’m gonna be mad.” Meanwhile, Righty still tried to burp more of Wendell’s family tree, issuing empty throat croaks.

Urk. Crock. Fine. The three unwrapped bulbs he planned to give Tamiko. He angled the velvet-lined box behind his back and hooked his thumb in the loop of the bow, tugged to untie it, and let the ribbon flutter off. The auburn shrink wrap fell away, and Franchise gently plucked open the hinged lid with a fingernail. The lid clicked open. He grasped one of the bulbs in his other hand and eased it around to the front. Such a waste. The box was engraved!

“Don’t I get a final request?” Franchise gulped again.

Schizophrenic shrugged. “I’ll give you a final insult, fashion dropout.”

Franchise flung the bulb—it crashed against Lefty’s cheek. Smoke and a sweetly scorched cherry odor coughed out and spread over both heads. Lefty’s toothpick plinked to the floor. Franchise dived aside when wild light-bullets cracked into the wall where he’d stood. He crawled on elbows and knees toward the closest door and then scrambled to his feet.

Behind him, Schizophrenic thrashed, snorted, and yelled, “Crock, combat’s D student got the drop on us” and “That one was Wendell’s uncle, Wendell Again Again Ag—”

Chapter Fifteen: The Word of the Day Is Rated R

Fine. Plastique huffed, slung her newest trophy—Marauder Meerkat’s head with a leather carrying strap secured in its lifeless jaws—over her shoulder. “Gabber, acknowledge. Accept connection already.” She shrugged to jerk Marauder into position among Predator Patty’s head, Foghorn Frog’s esophagus, and Crazy Asa Loon’s wings, all names she’d learned from foot etchings. She planned to wander the park, collecting trophies and saving citizens, until Franchise contacted her with an update and she could modify mission parameters.

“Ace, I’m on the safari of a lifetime. Can this wait?” She waved a fly away from Patty’s hamburger head. That was her trophy.

Power Plant overpowered Ace Spandex’s gabber connection for a moment. “Them crockwads is crockwadding taking a crockwad dumps on the street. Look at that crockwad. Cosmonaut Chimp not the only things poopin’ here.”

“Jeff, that’s not a crockwad. It’s a hippo. And that’s not a dump. A rock rolled off its back.” To Plastique, Ace Spandex said, “Afraid it can’t wait, Courtney. We’ve got an emergency.” A nervous peep carried his words. Whatever he referred to was big business. During her month and a half as a Good Guy, she’d known him as unwavering toward danger at home and acclimating to it on the battlefield or, as he described himself, “a system administrator that Legion catapulted involuntarily into the role of field agent,” and then added, “way too often.”

“What’s the emergency, and will it involve a hyena?” Plastique would show those smarmy good-for-nothings who got the last laugh.

“The automata are migrating. They’re—”

“I’m sorry. The what are migrating?”

Power Plant chirped, “You crockwad sure? It look like a giant crockwad poop.”

“The automata. The automata are migrating. Automata is the pluralization of automaton. They’re—”

Plastique scratched her head. “I didn’t eat a dictionary, so what’s an autonation?”

“Automaton. It’s a fancy way of saying these motorized character robots.”

“Next time open with that for those of us with standard-issue brains.” Plastique punted away a rock. “And they’re migrating?”

“Nah, really, he popped out a poops,” Power Plant said.

Ace Spandex sighed. “Jeff, it was a rock. I’m accepting only one automaton pooping things out today, and Cosmonaut Chimp claimed that slot. And didn’t I tell you to get moving already? Courtney, they’re assembling at the edge of the park where all the power cells are. They plan to destroy the power cells. They’ll detonate the entire park if they do that!”

“Nah, that’s a crockwad poops. It crockwad pooped on the crockwad grou—”

“Fine! Horatio Hippo, a character from a beloved children’s cartoon, just dropped a prize-winning turd. Happy?”

“Just sayin’s.”

“I’m ignoring you for the rest of the century.” Ace Spandex recomposed with a heated sigh. “Courtney, track my gabber signal. We need you and Franchise to meet us at the power cells pronto, or there won’t be any power cells left to meet us at. The park and everyone in it are in danger.”

Plastique’s turn to speak to Ace Spandex. “Field Agent Franchise is on a clandestine side operation aboard the enemy’s barge.” Already examining her rifle and career choices, Plastique doublechecked the rifle’s charge reading: good enough. “But, hey, as long as these automuffin insurgents are there, you got me. I’m ten or fifteen minutes outside our rendezvous point.”

“Hurry.” The connection, Ace Spandex, and Power Plant clicked away with a terse status message. Plastique’s earpiece and mouthpiece retracted.

Plastique slung her rifle over her shoulder where it bobbed between Marauder and Patty. If a fish automelon showed up, she’d have killed a complete set of vertebrate classes. She loved not being an animal-rights activist.

Chapter Sixteen: Make Yourself at Home

Franchise scrambled some distance between himself and Schizophrenic but still heard Lefty curse about how the incendiary’s soot would make his punches feel grimy for the rest of the day. If Schizophrenic’s megaton boots thundered after him, he’d become the fastest land mammal.

He’d scampered away so quickly he’d knocked his hip on an l-door’s frame and fumbled out another of Tamiko’s bulbs. He could kick himself! He’d wasted half of Tamiko’s gift. Those bulbs were celebrity endorsed!

At least his heart no longer assaulted his chest. Before, it galloped as if trying to outpace itself, but now it had calmed to a reasonable trot. He now wandered the maze of halls for a map or at least an airfoil elevator that would zip him up to the top floor. He could zigzag through this labyrinth to the cockpit by orienting to the ship’s bow and weaving forward from there. Not hard. Of course, he’d said the same thing about this mission. What had he said this morning? “This’ll be a walk in the park.” That was what he’d said when he thought he was being clever. Now Franchise wanted to slap three-hours-ago Franchise with a tree.

He slipped the gift, wrapping dropped, box scuffed, back into the pocket it wouldn’t quite fit in and opted for any direction, because any direction led away from Schizophrenic and his hoarse promises of torture. The one he feared most involved locking him in a room of old people incessantly talking about their grandchildren. Coming from Lefty, that one was just odd.

Franchise hustled—tried to keep quiet but quick—in a shambling half-gallop-half-limp that would impress dancing instructors only because he miraculously kept from falling on his face. Two hallways and two rooms later, he allowed his breath to catch up and his stomach to calm from reeling at the thought of elderly conversation. It was here where he hunkered in a corner to concoct a plan. Also to let his feet rest. He realized he’d been on them for most of the day, and they shrieked. He slipped off one boot and massaged a knot out of his arch.

This room seemed fitted as a seating area. Tables sat arrayed around him, but everything looked spotless, not a forgotten object or an errant scrap or, considering this was Master Asinine’s starship, a mustard grenade. Crock, he expected Asinine had filled this room with the latest in water-balloon or pillow-fight technology. The fact that one room—even one single room—didn’t brim with noisy, useless machinery felt...eerie, as if Asinine had hastily chosen this starship to ruin Franchise’s one day at a theme park. This felt—he interrupted his massage and squinted one eye—weird, as Plastique had said. Master Asinine must be on his deathbed. His rationality had been for years.

Okay, enough sitting around. His thumbs now smelled like sock. He slipped his boot on and stood.

Okay, so he was belowdecks, and the cockpit sat topside in 93 percent of transports. Who knew listening to Ace Spandex’s ramblings would come in handy? Time to find an airfoil. And chances were Asinine had placed no security blocks on the haunt control. That meant it would accept his voiceprint. So, much like whenever the power failed with him in the washroom, here went absolutely nothing.

“Control, acknowledge. Guide me to cockpit.” Franchise slanted his mouth. This was a halfhearted attempt at cobbling a command together.

Yup. The haunt control replied, “Location not recognized, and your command structure sounds like something my grandson would blurt out. He’s three and knows a handful of words.” Oh, great. Schizophrenic wasn’t kidding. Even the software joined in on the torture. Franchise felt a headache drift in at this first mention of a grandchild. Second mention would intensify it to a splitting headache, and any mention thereafter would sever his skull in two. “One of his favorite words is pudding. He’s terminally adorable. You should see him in his dungarees—”

Three minutes later, Franchise recovered. Forget the haunt control. Asinine had found the one security feature Franchise wouldn’t test. He’d locate this airfoil himself. Since he was on the bottom deck, it must point upward. And if it pointed downward, he’d enjoy the freefall and the fact that he’d never hear from this haunt control ever again.

Chapter Seventeen: Worst Zoo Ever

At a crockwadding altitude of twenty feet—because he’d learned the nasty way that a giraffe robot stood nineteen feet tall—Power Plant raced toward the power cells to protect them. He did this, first of all, because he didn’t enjoy blowing up, and second of all, because he enjoyed blowing other things up. Ace Spandex had finally convinced him by promising he could stick his tongue on one of the cells’ conduits. Sold.

He’d also learned to keep his mouth closed after a bug or a bug robot—whichever—had splashed against his teeth. By the taste, he guessed it wasn’t a robot, but who knew nowadays?

On his gabber, Ace told him he wasn’t far from the cells. He’d cleared Marshland and now rocketed over Animals of Zooland, twisting around a Ferris wheel, which the animals had toppled. Now it waded half-submerged and fully pathetic in a stream. A gray-backed gnawl had probably knocked it over. Those things didn’t give two crocks about contaminating water.

Power Plant sputtered out more crockwadding light energy, picked up the pace by a couple more clicks. He’d have to get the lead out to save the park and become Cosmonaut Chimp’s best friend. Ugh. Ace better appreciate this, because Power Plant just learned to close both his mouth and his eyes. He picked bug goober out of his right socket.

There the power cells sat below, washed in bug-juice green. Surrounded in the rectangular security of a double-layer ionizing shield screen with a ceiling, it buzzed unaware that the park’s every automaton stalked closer. In fact, Pollyanna Panda already raked the screen with alloy claws, and Thaddeus Thundermammal lowered its head to prepare to charge. In this unkempt clearing, the cells sat on pounded dirt and flattened, yellowed grass, trees on the far side near the water, and on this side, pipes and electrical cables draped around each other like interlocked octopus tentacles.

Power Plant slowed his missile speed by pouring the light energy ahead instead of behind. He “stood” in the hot air to make himself less aerodynamic and drifted above the power cells’ shield cube. Collected a crockwad jolt of energy into his forearms and, okay, even he was crockwadding sick of that word.

“Gabber, acknowledges. Adds entity Plastique to connection.”

“Your pronunciation is a mess, but adding entity Plastique to connection with entity Ace Spandex.”

The light energy crackled in his hands, snapping sparks from his knuckles. His arm hairs like lit fiber optics, his fingernails like tiny light panels, he planned to melt that robot panda in one shot. Heh. Second species he’d make extinct.

He let it rip. A blinding trail of light splattered Pollyanna’s gears, hoses, and fluids into the ground, fused her metal to the shield screen, liquefied her plastic.

“Hey, Ace an’ Plastique. I gots here in time. Don’t no one look forward to shakings hands with a panda.”

“Who looks forward to shaking hands with a panda?” Ace grunted at his comment. “Now I remember the maniac I’m talking to.”

“Me. Jeffy. Not Jeff.” Power Plant issued a smug chuckle as eulogy for Pollyanna, now a sizzling husk from the knees down. Vapors from the knees up dispersed in the wind. “Anyways, that’s one melted pandas.”

Plastique clicked her tongue. “Field Agent, wait for me before you melt another automason.”

Ace again: “The primary concern right now isn’t you teaching us your name for the millionth time. It’s keeping those automata from destroying the power cells.”

Power Plant turned his attention to Thaddeus, who still rasped a hoof along the dirt and patchy grass to prepare his charge. Wasn’t the quickest animal in the Cosmonaut Chimp catalog. Power Plant prepared another blast, his hands tingling as their glow brightened from amber to explosive yellow. This would sting.

Power Plant landed behind Thaddeus, still charged, watching that thundermammal grunt hoofing a deeper gash into the dirt and sunbaked grass. Thaddeus’s buttocks played tug-of-war with his tail but neither wanted it enough. And Power Plant alone could devise an analogy about an animal’s butt crack, so, well, guess it was therapy time when he got home. Crockwad, he hated exploring his upbringing. And, crockwad, that word wasn’t easy to quit.

The trees rustled. Something approached the clearing. Power Plant sidestepped around the electrified cube. Brontosaurus Beatrix emerged with squeaking jaws grinding palm leaves. Power Plant’s eyebrows lifted. Impressive. The park designers had unearthed characters from Cosmonaut Chimp’s trip back in time. Lousy three episodes, but it provided a cool toy line for Space Cow’s Sappy Meals.

Thaddeus still debated whether to charge the power cells or dig through the planet. So time to nuke Beatrix. Power Plant advanced to within a few meters of Beatrix, who, at seventy feet tall, towered over everything else. Crock, must the park planners build everything true to size? Why couldn’t Power Plant have a half-pint dinosaur? And a pee break?

Hands forward. Palms out. Light sliced air. It split forward at—get this—lightspeed, splashing Beatrix’s neck all over the trees. Gears, wires, coils, pipes, and for some reason, a soda cup barked out of her machinery. The rubber of her fake skin flayed, blackened, crackled. Beatrix wailed mournfully at her death, a soulful dirge that echoed in shockwaves and then finished with “This death is brought to you courtesy of the Blissful Tummy, for all your grocery and pharmaceutical needs. Now selling produce.”

Beatrix’s immense neck lashed and snapped off its trunk. The mass boomed to the ground, first at the head and then at the tattered end of the throat. The impact was so commanding even the trees seemed to regard it with awe. But not Thaddeus. Dude still dug into the ground. That was a thundermammal for you. Slow and stupid. No wonder it ranked low on the food chain.

Movement clapped out from the clearing’s edge ahead of Power Plant. Not in one place, but in three. And behind him, other sources of disturbance. And to the sides. Trees cracked. Bushes rustled. Dried grass shushed. Heavy footsteps rolled out. Power Plant took his chance, unzipped, and whizzed into a shrub. Hey, opportunity had knocked.

He wasn’t even allowed to finish when the disturbances took form and burst through the copses and tree lines. He gasped and sucked it in so quickly his urine drew a line. Holy crockwad, the entire animal kingdom was attacking.

An eagle, a buffalo, an elephant, an alpaca, a mandrill, an ox, a goat, a yellow-bellied gorgur, a lion, a tiger, a bear...oh, my. Somewhere in the mess slithered an electric eel. A frigging electric eel. Sure, build a brontosaurus to scale, but throw accuracy out the window when you put animals in their proper terrains.

The elephant reared, head lowered, and charged the shield screen. Full contact. The shield screen blinked, crackled...and dimmed just a tinge. Was it failing? The freaking screen protecting the cores could fail? “Shield screen at ninety-four percent,” an indifferent report emanated from somewhere inside the huddle of cores. The screen had its own speaker? “This status update has been brought to you by the Official Cosmonaut Chimp Media Empire Theme Park, the official theme park of the Cosmonaut Chimp media empire. Buy your theme park location and receive thirty percent off the food court’s waffle irons.” Tomorrow. Power Plant had stuff to deal with today.

He zipped up. Time to stop acting prissy and get to business. He flared his nostrils, clenched his teeth, squeezed his knuckles so tightly he cut off blood circulation, and gathered up all the photons his hyperability found. Roared! Flew at that frigging eagle whose name he couldn’t remember because it showed up, like, eight seasons back.

“I’ll eats yous for breakfast!” Which was true in some cases.

Chapter Eighteen: That Time We Waged War against Power Plant’s Childhood

Franchise had finally found an airfoil. If he listened to this creaky-voiced haunt-control mod reminisce about its grandson—which sounded more and more like a pager talking about l-tech—one more time, he’d jump out a porthole. The fact that the mission aboard this Crapshoot was itself a crapshoot was oddly funny to him. He hated when irony smacked him in the face.

He cracked the knuckles of his right hand, working his thumb over them, index to pinkie, feeling each one click. In this confined airfoil, each crack sounded off like popcorn bursting in a microwave. When the lift finished, he stepped off. Found himself in a silver hallway with tube-shaped light panels that stretched end to end. And the light panels buzzed overtime: this hall shone so brightly, he distinguished every spit-polished screw and rivet in the blank wall across from him. Each surface was a mirror. His reflection shimmered back. Aside from that, the poker-faced hallway was bereft of identity. And of advertisement. After his day of commercial overload, he felt relieved some billboard didn’t nag him to buy leather sheepskin. Yeah. Leather sheepskin. Let it sink in. What geneticist wedged that insane crossbreeding into consumerism?

Oh, wait. There it was. Ha ha ugh ha. That same leather sheepskin ad Franchise saw branded on Lolita Lamb below. Before he and Plastique literally barbecued her. Here was the ad now, the image resolving like ripples in a calming lake. Franchise couldn’t look away as Lolita stepped into a cow-patterned onesie and zzzzzzipped up, all this with a drizzle of pixie dust that twinkled like glitter glue. The jingle chimed with “The sweet treat for your bleat” to the clang of a cowbell. Cha cha cha.

Franchise facepalmed and sighed. Some advertisers were so drunk they needed a handrail to make it out of the room. Gene splicing was now the fashion in animal apparel. Parents, please stop dropping your future ad execs down stairs.

More important, this was an ad that barraged Franchise on the ground, which meant Asinine hadn’t defined the starship’s advertisement database, nothing programmed into it. It wasn’t even blocking external data, so no one had installed a firewall. Haunt controls hated blank slates, so they filled those slates with the closest paying advertiser sending a signal, in this case from the theme park’s advertisers. Asinine hadn’t done anything with this starship. Franchise felt creepy shivers, like a tickle from a skeleton.

A breeze whistled through the hall, undiluted by the typical people sounds. Franchise roamed the halls of a spacefaring ghost town. This floor felt emptier than the first. Eerily emptier, so much so that Franchise smelled the plastic of the floor’s faux tiling instead of the usual overpowering body odor. No one roamed the hall. Not a generic, not an Appetite, not a Lieutenant IQ 23. He frowned. Not a Tamiko.

With his right hand spent, he began work on the knuckles on his left hand. Crick-crick-crick was the only sound, and when that petered away, loneliness skulked back in. Down to the left was a corner. To the right, a door with a small frosted window. This place was spotless. Had Asinine stolen it just this morning? Almost unfurnished, very uninhabited, and completely un-Asinined. He shivered. Creepier and creepier.

He opted down the left. He had that gut feeling about the left. And his gut was always spot on about dinnertime, so he’d come to trust it. Course, this was the same gut that gave him gastritis.

His boots hammered on the faux plastic like doorknockers. The closer he ventured toward the end, the more clearly the breeze wafted through the web of hallways this super-vast barge boasted. A soundless wall ad extolling the benefits of Regrow on eyebrows—Franchise would file a harassment complaint later—followed his trek.

When he slipped around the corner, another assaulting commercial told him four out of five dentists recommended the whitening power of Toothbaste. Another of the park’s ads. Asinine wasn’t the type to leave a database alone. He usually made a disaster of it, forced his wormy lieutenant to fix it, and then made a second disaster of it. That was the reason most of his starships came touting a “soothing massage of bricks” and then some Virillian gibberish. Nobody gibberished like a Virillian, because Virillian gibberish was nothing but uninterrupted grunting. Yeah, this starship was freshly stolen. Had Asinine set foot in it before today?

Anyway, enough about the advertisements on this starship-shaped brochure. In this direction, he heard electronic chatter, like crickets in mating conversation. It grew more noticeable as he traveled farther down the hall. Unless he headed toward Gaia’s chattiest candy machine, he headed in the right direction. His chest zapped him with a triple flash of adrenaline, as if a coffee fiend’s fortieth espresso finally kicked in. Hooo, okay. Time for a strategy.

...

Crap. He sucked at strategies.

Franchise had no idea how many Bad Guys helmed this starship, and he wasn’t a fan of unknown factors. So far he’d seen nobody, but Asinine always came with a minimum headcount of himself and his two babysitters. Franchise decided he’d freak that headcount out with at least six duplicates: three to combat the Bad Guys and three to take care of whatever haunt control just advertised breakfast soil to him. To crock with any nosebleeds or headaches that creating six duplicates in short succession inflicted.

No knuckles left to crack, he still fiddled with his fingers. Idle fidgeting to calm the beehive in his system. As he drifted farther down the hall, people chatter joined the electronic one. Asinine’s voice. Franchise choked. Couldn’t make out the words, but he recognized the clueless dance of intonation from the first time that galoot had mentioned ginger ale and guacamole in the same funeral cake recipe.

And there was the cockpit, at the end of the hallway. Franchise knew from the plaque that read, “Cockpit.” He hurried to the cockpit’s l-door but remained a few steps away, outside what he estimated was its vanishing range. Okay, okay, Franchise slapped himself to gear up. Like a rehearsal to slap his brainless and boorish duplicates when they inevitably decided the thruster duct made as good a toilet as any.

If Franchise couldn’t devise a strategy, he’d overwhelm Asinine with sheer numbers. He clenched tight his jaw. Clenched shut his eyes. Clenched closed his knuckle-cracked fists. Clenched dead all his hopes of survival. He grunted and popped out a duplicate, then another, and then a third. After this dehydrating day, his head pulsated with a baby-sized ache. If he’d drank more water, he’d have better handled this quick output of duplicates. Breathed deeply, clenched, and then squeezed out another two. His temples thumped dully, his head pulsated as though he felt the barrage of a passionate pillow fight. Blood wormed out his nostril. He wiped it and checked it on his fingers.

And heard a distinct “Ahem” behind him. And felt a shoulder tap. If this was that hoedown, drawl-spouting cowboy doofus, Franchise would pitch a fit. He turned around—

Oh.

Nope.

This wasn’t that doofus. Holy horde of red, no. Instead, about forty red generic doofuses filled the thin hallway. Ready for action. Leveling guns at him and his duplicates. One ground his fist in his palm.

The lead generic tapped Franchise’s forehead with a gun. “You’re in for it n—Okay, where are your eyebrows?”

Franchise threw up his arms. “Can people please move past that?”

The lead generic clicked her tongue. “For now, you mind telling us your plan in that cockpit?”

Six Franchises against this army of generics. Odds were against him. Franchise needed a distraction. He wanted to scream, strategies at none. No. Strategies at one. Rrrrrgggg. Not this one, not this of all things, because at six versus forty, not even his shameless duplicates could win this.

He had to waste another incendiary.

He slowly, discreetly reached into the box and palmed the bulb. So smooth. So sorry to squander it.

“I said—”

Without thinking—“Distraction!”—Franchise threw the bulb—averted his gaze—the bulb collided with the generic—shattered—released a choking plume of smoke that puffed out to engulf the hall—smelled like charred cherry and marshmallows—inhaling it felt like inhaling hot sand—“Duplicates, defecate your worst”—sounds of a brawl—shots blasted wildly—Franchise ducked—felt around—slammed fists against bodies—crammed kicks against them...conflict calmed. Heart hammered.

Okay, okay, calm down. Franchise couldn’t smell the smoke. He first risked open one eye to make sure it had dissipated. It had. He stepped back and took in the scene. The generics, all disorganized on the ground except one who slouched against the wall with the life punched out of him, a duplicate holding him up in a fistful of collar.

Hmm. Impressed. If his duplicates knew anything aside from how to make his kindergarten school photo look tasteless, it was how to pulverize a crowd. He’d give them all a raise if that made any sense whatsoever.

Franchise ignored the creepy-crawly gnaw that he’d squandered another bulb in Tamiko’s gift. Its shards lay splintered on the lead generic’s scalp, dead center in a new scar. But never mind. Time to get to work, because somewhere on the ground, Jeffy and the others were in the fight of their lives. “Okay, gang. Let’s storm that cockpit and stop this charade.” He didn’t bring enough pooper scoopers for this number of duplicates.

No more thinking, no more planning, no more lamenting the loss of another bulb, no more regretting the pooper-scooper situation. He stomped toward the door—it vanished—he roared—he threw himself in—

Chapter Nineteen: Those Insufferable Neighbors

Legion sat in his desk chair, the gobstopper forgotten. He clenched his fists so tightly his fingertip pads folded uncomfortably. He watched Highground approach, pompous and unhurried and struggling to maintain a regal air despite stumbling on his ridiculous felt cape. Legion would shake his head, but that might prompt Highground to hurt himself again when lunging at him. And then Legion would have to file a report on why he needed to shampoo blood out of the carpet.

Highground recovered. At least physically. His distinction still floated in the crapper. His stately flop onto the floor had twisted his iron mask sideways, so he corrected it and shuffled toward the desk, this time risking careful baby steps instead of the long strides that had floored him before. Another chair rested at the desk. Highground swept his cape aside to sit. It wouldn’t sweep. He tried again. It caught itself on the chair and slumped back onto the floor. He tried a third time—

“Allow me,” said one of his three guards in a voice that pricked at Legion’s recognition. Legion had heard that voice somewhere before. It nagged him until—ah—this was the same generic from that fiasco with the Bad Guys at the hat parade. This generic rushed to Highground’s aid and gathered the cape, tossed it over the chair—Nope, it flopped against the chair’s back and then dropped in a tangled mess. Again—

Legion threw a hand at Highground. “There are only forty-seven million more shopping days until the universe collapses, so if we can move this along...” He spun his hand in a let’s-get-going gesture.

“Fine.” Highground sat on his bunched cape. It lumped under his right side, so he slipped off the chair. Bounced back up—“I’m okay”—and sat. This time he succeeded. “Before we continue, I need to divulge one thing.”

“You’re the Bad Guy cape director.”

“No.” Highground reached up, clutched the top of his mask, peeled it off—

* * *

A basement-quality tune belted through the cookie-cutter cockpit: an updated and yet colossally weird cover of “Run the World (Girls),” which Franchise felt, first, ashamed of knowing and, second, ashamed of knowing that girls was parenthetical.

But...huh? Neither Asinine nor his guard detail had reacted when he’d stomped in or when one of the duplicates tore off the grill to a vent and started kicking the paneling inside.

“No matter how tempting, do not light your driveway on fire,” Master Asinine said. Franchise couldn’t pinpoint in which chair he sat—all chairbacks faced the door, and everyone crouched low—but he still driveled those insane tips from one of these chairs. They weren’t prerecorded after all. They were off the cuff.

Franchise didn’t know which chair to seize, whirl around, and yell “Aha” at in triumph. Maybe do some emphatic pointing for performance’s sake. Well, when in doubt, choose the one at the piloting console and also yell at the duplicate that seemed intent on ripping out the computer bank that kept the starship afloat.

Franchise gripped the vinyl-padded chairback, threw it around, and—

* * *

“Lowensland?” Legion almost slipped off his own chair. He glanced at the viewscreen of the chaos at the theme park, back at Lowensland, back at the viewscreen where Lowensland’s muted voice still rained tip after useless tip on the park as if anyone listened. Back at Lowensland.

* * *

“Holy bamboozle.” Franchise gasped as he examined the empty chairs. “Where’s Asinine?”

* * *

“Holy crock!” Craig roared as he checked under the hamburger bun. “Where’s my pickle?”

* * *

Back at the viewscreen. Back at Lowensland. A confused feeling, like licking a bug zapper, rippled through Legion. What th—

“I can tell you’re caught off guard.” Lowensland chuckled and slapped the desk, sending datasheets sliding to the floor. He looked self-congratulatory in his smirking. “I called myself Highground. Get it? Lowensland? Highground? Low? High? Land? Gr—”

“I don’t care about that. It’s obvious and infantile. But this disguise is...” Legion swept a hand up and down at Lowensland’s outfit. Lowensland had outsmarted him. Lowensland. Had. Outsmarted! Him. “This is double confus—You learned how to use scissors from a YouTube video. How could you trick me?”

“I needed the subterfuge at the park to pull this off. I prerecorded a bunch of stuff so everyone would think I was there. I even got that Crapshoot starship menacing everybody. I love it. It was ranked the most three-dee-printed starship in its class.” Lowensland indicated the muted viewscreen. “It’s uninhabited if you don’t count seventy generics and a few named agents. Needed most of my forces here to back me up. Appetite is manning one of the getaway cars outside. He’s devouring the steering mechanism as we speak.

“I came here disguised as the king of the generics. It was a tossup between dressing as this or as a fart, but I didn’t want to do my hair up. By the way, can we crank up the air conditioning? I’m wearing a tortoiseneck sweater under this thing.”

“It’s not a tort...” Don’t. “Yeah, that’s definitely what it’s called.”

One of the guards leaned closer and tipped his mask up partway. Lowensland’s squirrely lieutenant. “Hi, I’m—”

“Yeah, yeah, I guessed after your boss pulled his mask off.” Legion threw an indifferent hand at him. “And he must be that creepy Virillian”—Legion threw the hand at the stonewall-postured guard who, yep, removed his mask to reveal the usual Braindead mask underneath—“but who’s the third guard?”

“That’s my nephew, Jed.”

The third guard jittered forward with enthusiastic jerks. He tore off his mask. “Hi, I’m Jed. I’m Uncle Geor—”

“Your deranged uncle covered that half a second ago.” Legion stomped up, socked feet yelping against the floor. “What preposterous idea have you cooked up this time? Is this another attempt to copy my DNA so you can clone me? Fine. If it’ll stop you from pinning those Help Wanted Specifically From Legion signs all over Station One, let’s do it.” He rolled up his uniform’s shirtsleeve.

“No, this isn’t that.”

Legion dropped back into his chair and unrolled his sleeve. “Good, because I’m scared of leeches you think are medical syringes. So, tell me, what’s with you destroying what Vagrant Vacation Magazine called the most blissfully ignorant place on Gaia? You’re risking three of your own named agents down there, and you call one of them your financial advisor. Spoiler alert: he eats all your datasheets with tartar sauce. And, while we’re on the subject, your spiritual advisor throws bowling balls at your head. But keep that relationship, because it’s funny.”

“That mission is a distraction to lure your Good Guys away from Station Uno—”

“This is Station One.”

“—so that I can slip into Station Uno—”

“One.”

“—without incident. And, since you thought I was there, you also kept Station Uno’s—”

“One’s.”

“—defenses switched off and Station Uno’s—”

“We don’t speak Spanish here.”

“—atmospheric bubble unlocked so that my Warbird can swoop in without putting up with all your pesky Station Uno—”

“Work with me here.”

“—weapons and Station Uno—”

“At this point, you’re doing it on purpose.”

“—shields. Besides, my agents aren’t in serious harm. The park’s virus is coded to avoid them and kill everyone else instead. It’s a victimless crime.”

“Who came up with this plan? This couldn’t possibly be yours. It’s too high level.”

“My science goon, Brainiac, masterminded this one out for me. The main thing is I lured everyone away so I could come talk to you.”

“The last thing I want is to talk to you, Lowensland.” Legion resisted the urge to throw something. “Leave before I strangle the life out of you.”

“Then let’s make this fun for a change. How about twenty questions, okay? I’m thinking of something. Question one.”

“Is it a baseball?”

“No. Question two.”

“Are you here to discuss our friendship?”

“Wha—” Lowensland’s expression beamed at five hundred watts. His throat clucked until he found his words again. “Legion gets it in two! How’d you do it?”

“Really?” Legion banged his head against his desk. More datasheets slipped off. He found the resolve to look up. “Does anyone know you better than I do?”

Lowensland’s servile lieutenant leaned in and lifted his hand as Lowensland yelled, “Not a chance!” And then the hand dropped and the lieutenant pouted.

Legion peeled his lips back and jutted his chin forward. He reminded himself of an attack dog. “I have nothing to say to you.” He sprang up and jabbed a finger into Lowensland’s Adam’s apple cushioned inside that weird garment. He wanted to crawl across this desk and slowly ease his hands—simply ease them—around Lowensland’s neck. Then, with every ticking second, he would grip slightly harder, slightly harder, slightly harder until he wasn’t strangling Lowensland but digging his thumbs into that killer’s esophagus and watching blood trickle out. “The day you killed Sopher forever changed me. I’ve memorized that haunting gunshot. I’ve memorized the smell of burning discharge that came with it. I smell it now. It keeps me awake. It reminds me of what disgusting lichen you are.”

“The good kind of lichen?”

“There is no good kind!” Legion roared so loudly IQ 23 and Jed jerked back. Braindead was a mannequin. Legion’s knees were now on the desk, sweeping aside more datasheets. He edged closer to whisper into Lowensland’s scummy personal space, nose to noseless nostrils. “I lost two friends that day. And you destroyed two lives. Know, once and for all, our friendship no longer exists. Not since that day almost eight years ago.”

“Hm.” Lowensland wasn’t fettered. “Your house sitter said as much when I broke in last time. I left stricken with grief that day.”

“You should have stayed that way.”

“But a truly wise group of songstresses once songstressed some comforting words.” Lowensland grunted the phlegm from that same throat Legion wanted to compress to dust. Don’t sing. Don’t you dare sing. “‘You frontin’ me”—You’re singing—“You talkin’ ’hind my back / But I ain’t no worried, no / ’Cause we always besties / And I got a plan to win you back.’ See? True wisdom rhymes.”

“True wisdom rhymed back with back.”

“Those words renewed my hope.”

“Kill that hope. Beat it senseless. Quietly hold its head under peaceful lake waters in the dawning sun while you hum softly to yourself.”

Lowensland placed his gloved hands on the desk. “I’m determined to win you back, like the wisdom says. I’ll prove I’m the best lichen a friend can find. When we served together with IP, everyone laughed at me, mocked me, spat on me. They humiliated me, Legion.” Lowensland’s stare flittered in recollection, cold anger engraved on him, vinegary resentment in his voice. He gripped a handful of datasheets, crinkling them. “I escaped. I had to. I refused to wallow at the bottom anymore. I wanted to wallow at the top. Now, at the top, I’ve lost my closest friend. If I’d have known that back then...” Lowensland seemed to mull over the thought, the gears in his head no doubt grinding out of mesh. “Well, I still would have done it, but I’d have planned better. Maybe made a sandwich for the escape trip. But anyway, I retook my dignity”—Legion didn’t correct him on that—“and I have everything I want...but I still don’t have you.” He faced Legion and ungripped the datasheets.

“Then you don’t have everything yo—”

Lowensland pushed his chest forward in proclamation. “But I will win you back. I’ll still be at the top, and all those fools at IP will still flounder around the bottom. More importanter, I’ll win back my best friend.” The leader of organized crime just said “importanter.”

He stood. “I miss you, Matross. But I promise. Somehow, I will win you back.” The hint of a tear melted his words together. Despite that hint, Legion had never seen him smile this heartily before.

“Okay, henchmen”—Lowensland whirled around—“let’s hench out.”

Legion knelt on his desk, watching Lowensland march off with newfound resolution. Legion didn’t stop him from leaving or from swinging his arms out with his steps. Or from singing, “‘We ain’t fightin’ long / You wait an’ see / We be sharin’ tears soon / You an’ me, my bestie / You an’ meeee.’” His entourage retreated with him. The broken door slid aside as he approached. The red ocean of generics parted to allow him and his lackies to join them. They closed behind him, ridding Legion of the sight of one of the ugliest costumes ever put to fashion. Then Legion heard galunk and “Stupid capes, am I right, Lieutenant?”

Spellbound by shock, Legion backed off the desk, knees knocking against hard oak. He eased into his chair. Shouldn’t he stop Lowensland from leaving? He should. He really should. With one command, he could order Janice—if the mood struck Janice—to activate Station Uno’s weapons and end Lowensland. After all, that degenerate was wanted in several galaxies for crimes against humanity and that choking stunt he’d pulled imitating Pac-Man in a ball pit.

But Legion couldn’t. So stunned was he that he only sat, blank stare and mouth bobbing, hands folded on his lap. Maybe, maybe deep down...he wanted Lowensland to escape. He’d had the chance to kill Lowensland...and he hadn’t taken it. Back in February, hovering over that rooftop when Franchise had rescued Power Plant from Tolliver, he’d had his chance.

Station One, not Station Uno. Station One! By Alaphus, had Lowensland inflicted permanent brain damage on him?

Chapter Twenty: What Fresh Crock Is This?

The stone animals emerged two by two now, as if Power Plant blew into a conch. He didn’t. But that would be way fierce. Time to visit the conch store.

He’d just nuked a caribou, nature’s coatrack. And below twisted Danger Whip, which was really a snake. Danger Whip thrashed around, its stony, segmented body cracking against the flickering shield screen.

“Shields at forty-four percent. That status update brought to you by the food court, the official food court of the Official Cosmonaut Chimp Media Empire Theme Park, the official Cosmonaut Chimp theme park of the Cosmonaut Chimp media empire.”

Power Plant landed. Pinned a boot on Danger Whip, who had a circumference of two boots. Like standing on a wild hose. He fired light through his foot. His l-boot splashed apart to release the attack that sent Danger Whip’s danger head cracking apart in a thousand different danger directions. His boot reformed. Now that he wasn’t directly under that Crapshoot, now bathed in sunlight, he felt supercharged. Shot left, finally disintegrated that indecisive Thaddeus Thundermammal. Shot right, fragmented Thaddeus Tiger apart. Yeah, the creators had repeated a name but hadn’t thought of Tommy. Shot left again, missed. Felt the gnaw of nervousness in his gut as animal after animal prowled closer. They shuffled and stomped and caromed and trumpeted toward him, surrounding, sealing all escape paths, even above, engulfing him. Crockwad, this wasn’t part of the plan. He broke out in light sweat, bit his lower lip and flung a light blast through Party Parrot. How was that for a cracker, you mouthy crock?

“Shields at thirty-seven percent. That status update brought—” Forget it. Whatever official status update the official shield screen status updater of this official theme park officiated, Power Plant officially paid no more official attention. He blasted Horatio Hippo, right through that self-assured snout. Happy, Horatio Hippo, you haughty half-crocked headache?

An arcing screech. Granny Gibbon swung in from nowhere, cracked Power Plant on the back and slammed him down to the jagged ground. She weighed a freaking ton. Howling, she latched onto his shoulder blades with her feet and pounded, leaped, punched, enjoyed it. If not for his impact suit, she’d have crushed him to paste. Facedown in the weeds and soil, spitting out dirt, he felt a pair of hefty hands—

“Shields at thirty percent.” And then an officialdom tagline.

—hurl him into a huddle-up of other rocky characters. Landed on Soldier Salamander, who wrapped its stone tail around him while Lummox Lynx thrashed at him with paws and surgical teeth. All light energy fizzled away like a sneeze. He wheezed through compressed lungs, couldn’t concentrate—

“Shields at twenty-two percent.”

—couldn’t hold his charge, couldn’t aim anyway. Another beast yanked at him from behind, and the only thing holding him together was his media outfit. He winced, felt fireworks of pain along his nodes, his vision wavy, his ears humming, fat bruises hotter than the day. Something slammed him back onto the ground, and the animals piled on for another dance competition.

“Shields at fourteen percent.” Dropping fast. Must be a rhino with a chainsaw out there.

More and more animals shrieked battle cries. Or mating calls, but he hoped those were battle cries. He wasn’t here to shoot a documentary.

“Shields at six percent.”

Muffled sound came at him as if he were underwater. As that gibbon or salamander or whatever crocking animal stomped on his last nerve—if his last nerve were on his spine—he heard, he felt, he saw, he tasted from behind a veil of failing senses. Everything was foggy. Red became apricot, green became olive, blue became aqua, yellow became...crock, yellow was already pale. Even the oxygen he tasted was muted into murky mist as that animal pounced, pounced again, pounced again, the roaring of stone on his gashed impact suit bubbling into his subdued hearing.

Then everything disappeared. The animals, the wreckage, the cube of power cores and their shield screen. All the commotion. All.

It left only him and the clearing.

Weird that he felt nothing now. No pain. His nerves had become apathetic to damage. He knew he imagined this—those stone animals still crushed him with worse dance moves than his own—but he’d enjoy lying on the cool ground in this altered realism. Wasn’t many people could claim they died an excruciatingly peaceful death.

“It’s not time.”

Who’d said that? Power Plant raised his head out of the ground. Dirt trickled off his hair. A few paces away stood...Mark? Power Plant felt weak as crock, as if he hadn’t eaten in days, but he lifted his head for a clearer view. Yeah. There was Mark. Didn’t make sense, but there he was, looking good as always.

He approached.

“Hey, big brotha.” Power Plant’s head dropped back down into dirt, too weak to keep it up. He wanted to race across this field and wrap Mark in a bear hug, but he was empty of energy. “I’m-a join you in a couples minutes, after I dies.”

“Not yet.”

“Whu?”

“You’re not dying yet.” Mark reached Power Plant and crouched, arms on knees. Held out his hand. Smiled. “I still have your back.”

“So’s all them rock animals prancings on my spine.” Power Plant couldn’t take Mark’s hand. No energy at all, weird considering this morning he’d eaten all that sour candy so fast he’d almost snorted it up his nose.

Mark stroked a gentle hand on Power Plant’s head. His smile grew into a laugh. His eye trickled a tear. His hair was illuminated in the sun that no longer felt hot, not lukewarm, not anything. Just a prop in the sky. “Yeah, those statues are pests. But you can handle them. You always rise above.” He winked. He wrapped Power Plant’s hand in his own, lifted him to his feet. He let go and, with that same hand, roared out an inferno so blazing it engulfed three statue animals that were invisible until they exploded in snarling but tepid flame. The animals disappeared again as soon as they died. “I have to go now. But I’m not far. I’m never far.”

“No.” Power Plant wobbled a half-step toward him. Stumbled. Almost tipped over. “I’m come wit’ you.”

“You can’t. Not yet. You’ve still got a lot of living left.”

“But, Mark.” Power Plant’s lip shook. “Please.”

“I’m never far.” Mark winked. “Love you, baby brother.”

And everything dissolved soundlessly, resolving back into the reality where animal statues pounded the snot out of Power Plant, except now he stood.

Alone.

His body shouted again with a thousand grating voices, even into his toes. He dropped to his knees on ridged ground. He blinked down at his hands, those same still-glowing hands that had just discharged a blade of light that sliced apart those three animals he’d imagined Mark had engulfed. He dropped again, his chin hit rock, the remains of that boogying gibbon, his nose hit her back, his tooth hit a bump and split out of his mouth. Crock, he’d just gotten his teeth fixed after the fight at Stavehill. He merely leaned there against her deformed remains, cheek cut open. He tried to stand, couldn’t. The sun had rekindled its heat.

Foooommmpppp. A dull thunder like a shockwave rippled across the clearing, and then a weird, gagged noise. Jfff. What the? What was that sound? Jfff. A muffled hush came from somewhere, along with quiet vibrations in his ears. The shushing of feet on dry grass. Jfff? Again with the sound. Jfff? Jfff? Jeff? “Jeff. Hey, Jeff!” Something grabbed him, lifted him off Granny Gibbon, his cheek sticky with blood. Ugh. The brunt of his injuries throbbed over all his faceries. Brows slashed, cheeks swollen and oozing, lip split and hot. He should visit a modeling agency looking like this one day.

“Jeff, are you okay?” Ace held him up, examined him. Plastique stood behind Ace, supervising their surroundings, a slew of rock heads slung over her back knocking against each other like a Newton’s cradle. Carnie games gave out weirder and weirder prizes every year. “Jeff, talk to me. Are you okay?”

Nah, no problems here. Wait, he hadn’t said that. “Nhmph, no prbfffs h—” Grass and dirt stuffed his mouth, so he spat them out. You know what? It hurt to talk. Still, “Name’s Jeffy.” Needed to say it.

“Jeff, are—you—okay?” Ace held him at arm’s length, examined him from trounced head to pulverized toe. “Yeah, scans say you have bruised bones, a concussion, a cracked rib, some internal injuries, a horrible sense of color, and an indestructible ego, but you’ll live.”

Through the swollen cheek crowding his eye, he checked the shield screen: it had failed. But so had all the animals, all one thousand and infinity of them. Power Plant shook off Ace Spandex’s arms and sat on Danger Whip’s inert body. “’Bout time you’s all showed up.” He poked his tongue through the gap in his teeth. The exposed root screeched at him.

“Those animals were flocking here. I set off an EMP and shut them down, but it killed what was left of the shield screen, and I had to reboot my intestines.” Ace sat next to a reactionless Power Plant and watched him stare at the ground. “Jeff? Really, are you okay?”

Power Plant woke up. Blinked himself to alertness. Sipped in a mouthful of air. Hurt to breathe. Hurt to be. “Yup, yup. Everything perfects.” Still alive, after all. For what it was worth. “An’ name’s Jeffy.”

“I still don’t care.” Ace toed the obliterated remains of one of the automata. Granny or Thaddeus or the other Thaddeus. Power Plant couldn’t care less.

“Oh, yeah. Them rocks?” Power Plant jerked his chin at some debris over there. Crock, that hurt. “Them rocks is hippo poops. Watched it happen. Toldja.” Wait. Power Plant’s nose blazed brightly when he inhaled sharply. Maybe it was broken. “Where Jakey?”

Plastique still scrutinized the area for threats, but she glanced a response over her shoulder. “He’s aboard that Crapshoot, trying to fix things from the source.”

Power Plant sighed relief mixed with excruciating pain. “And where Cosmonaut Chimp himselfs? Dude throw a bombs and then leaves. Good thing, though.” He picked up a pebble and inattentively flicked it at a shallow puddle. Even that smarted. The statues around piddled out tiny flames. “I’d hates to haveta nuke the man hisself.” Flames. Weird.

“Hey, Not-Paying-Attention Ace and Beaten-to-Crock Power Plant.” Plastique still clutched the chains and straps of trophies, her other hand shielding her eyes against the carroty sun. She faced the forestry that surrounded the clearing. “I don’t think the autometros are finished with us.”

Trees and reed grass rustled. Ugh, no. Ace Spandex’s EMP range hadn’t reached all the animals. Power Plant watched for a moment, curious at which of these insane robots was rude enough to interrupt his throbbing in agony. A shadow leaked into the clearing, and something olive green darkened the gaps between the trees. He stood and filled his fists with energy, but the energy was weak and dim considering how hot and tender his lacerations—

An ear-splitting howl! It conquered the sky, so loud that it frightened real birds out of trees. Power Plant’s light flashed and popped away when he shielded his ears with his hands, squeezed his eyes shut. Only one nasty in the entire Cosmonaut Chimp inventory could besiege the land with such violent song, could declare itself with such brutal broadcast. Power Plant couldn’t hear his own curse overtop the nightmarish torrent.

The shriek subsided, but neighboring nations probably still took shelter from resulting avalanches. Power Plant risked his hands away from his ears and opened his eyes.

A buzz leaked into his head. His ears still labored to hear. The buzz became a trill...a whisper...finally words. “Field Agent? Field Agent, what was that? Field Agent?” Plastique rushed toward him. Those stone heads over her shoulder looked as if they weighed several tons, but she carried them as easily as she would an empty gym bag.

“Jeff—what—was—that—beast?” Ace stood beside him.

“Hilary just gots here.” Power Plant gulped. “An’ name’s—”

“For the last time, we don’t care!”

Plastique dropped her carrying straps, leather bands that slapped down on dead statues. “Field Agent, what the crock is Hilary, and is she passing a kidney stone? I have black belts in fourteen combative arts, but I don’t think that’s enough for an automantra that loud.”

“And I’m only a black belt in gossip.” Ace dug his feet into the ground, steeled his fists, looked straight ahead. Power Plant cupped his chin and lifted his head up. Up more. And up more. And up more.

“Hilary Hydra’s is heres.”

And up more.

“Hydras?” Plastique spun at Power Plant. “There’s more than one?”

“For crockwad’s sake, gets used ta my grammars. Hi. La. Ry. Hy. Dra. Is. Is. Here. Zzzzz.”

The earth shivered, trees split and then split apart. Several countries probably felt earthquakes when an eight-story, five-headed behemoth crunched through that forest and reared at them with all nine snake heads. The largest, most terrorizing animal in the Cosmonaut Chimp universe had arrived.

“Oh, luckies us.” Power Plant rubbed his aching elbow. “She ain’ts to scale.”

From all five mouths, Hilary bellowed true terror again, as if to cleave the very ground with sound. Indeed, her passionate roar split open a fissure that her four colonnade legs straddled.

* * *

Franchise examined the babbling cockpit controls. Whatever had issued that sense-destroying shriek below, he knew he had only seconds to master this console. Maybe one of the monitors could tell him what—Nope, they all showed the same message: “Seat warmers activated.” They weren’t.

Wait. One didn’t show that. Instead it revealed the shrieking beast. Franchise wasn’t the expert on Cosmonaut Chimp, but he identified the absurdly sized monster: Hilary Hydra. And it pinned Plastique and Ace Spandex back in horrible fear while Jeffy—oh, Jeffy should learn fear someday. Casual observation.

Elbows out, both crazed palms slapped his scalp, one hand flat, the other clutching Tamiko’s gift. Crock, crock, crock, down there, Jeffy and the others needed his expertise in screwing up computer systems. Okay, time to do what he did best: mad panic.

* * *

Power Plant opened fire—a rapid succession of blasts—and it would help if he’d still had the sense to fight properly. Lucky him and his concussion. Instead, he killed a few trees. And a pigeon. Franchise would be happy.

Ace Spandex braced his jaw, fortified his heels by digging them against ridges, stifled his mewing. Plastique shook her head. “Soldier, I know you’re not a field agent, but it’s time to man up.” She slapped her rifle into his chest. He grabbed it without realizing. “Here’s your chance.”

As she barreled at the hydra, throat wailing a cry of combat, fists declaring destruction, she ignored his question about how she’d smuggled a twenty-six-inch rifle in a nine-inch pocket into the park.

Men and their pocket envy.

* * *

Franchise stabbed buttons like a mad typist. Red ones, blue ones, silver ones, the ones with stickers of anime characters who were 80 percent mouth, and one even connected to an old See ’n Say toy that declared that “The cow says moo.” Got a recital of angry haunt-control messages and activated the wipers. But he’d done nothing except smear a bug splotch in a colorful arc. Glanced over at the viewscreen. Hilary Hydra stomped toward Plastique, vibrations thundering up to this Crapshoot.

* * *

Ace Spandex called to Power Plant, who aimed deliriously, the same way he aimed whenever he ingested too much caffeine. Power Plant was engaged in a cockfight. Literally. Forget it. Ace would have separated him from Randy Rooster, but right now wasn’t the time to establish the pecking order.

Plastique launched herself at Hilary’s foot, hands aglow with her hyperability. She cracked an explosive punch, another explosive punch, and another explosive punch at her big toe. She dented a toenail. If Hilary was anything like the Hilary that Ace knew from high school, that dented toenail would put this hydra out until the nail salon opened.

Nope. Hilary ducked down. Whipping wind, she swept a neck across the ground and belted Plastique aside. Ace clicked the rifle up and squinted through the targeting lens. Couldn’t...get...a...good—

Crock this, he’d see better with his own hardware. Commanded his internal computer to generate a targeting lens over his vision and threw that rifle up again, downloaded a user manual on rifle use, mourned civilization for writing one in the first place, mourned it again for putting the manual online, positioned the rifle on his shoulder and against his cheek, and gouged out one of Hilary’s right eyes with a seven-millimeter payload. The rifle’s report was barely audible over Hilary’s wails.

Hilary seemed miffed. The barely-injured head reared at Ace. He couldn’t chamber a bullet quickly enough. Threw the rifle. Darted toward a downed tree that spanned over a shallow trench. Skidded into a baseball slide. Slipped under the tree and into the trench.

Hilary’s head pounced, clamped open and shut over the tree, shaving through it to devour him.

* * *

“Jakey?” came a voice of flowers and jasmine.

Franchise whirled around—threw the last bulb—accident—it rolled out, he swore—crock, no—it shattered against a seat—expunged its cough of cherry smog—he choked on his own tripping heartbeat—

Tamiko.

She filled the doorway, gorgeous in a crimson dress that swooped down to her carmine open-toe shoes but with a slit that revealed her left leg from the knee down. A deep-red velvet sash synched it at the waist. She wore red fingernails and toenails. Not a combat outfit, Tamiko’s ninja skills nevertheless always made up for her ensemble in a fight.

He didn’t take in his next breath before he raced across the wide cockpit and swarmed her in a tight hug that she returned. She smelled sublime. He was no longer Franchise. Right now he was Jakey. “Holy panic, am I so glad to see you.” He unglued himself and swung a finger around at the cockpit controls. “I need help.”

She drew her chin back in weird confusion. “Is it your eyebr—”

Jakey chopped the air. “Would just one person leave that alone?”

* * *

Plastique recovered, found herself in the bushes, back propped against a tree trunk and aches cackling. Her impact suit had saved her from a snapped spine. She found Power Plant, who had finally found a target with Hilary. Hilary broadcast her disdain for his attack.

Power Plant fired again at Hilary...Nope, wait. Another tree. He obliterated another tree. Fight of their lives, and Power Plant was destroying the flora. Maybe he should aim for that rooster pecking him to death.

Plastique curled a lip, roared—“Round two, witch”—and sprinted at Hilary’s ankle. Hit it. Bounced off. The ankle assault was a failure. Plastique remarked this when one of Hilary’s heads shoveled her into its mammoth, forty-million-pounds-per-square-inch jaws. The world forgotten, now she heaved upward, arms resisting Hilary’s crushing bite with bones that struggled to keep from snapping.

Cat fights didn’t work like this.

* * *

“Tamiko, I’ll grow my eyebrows back at the next opportunity.” Jakey stroked Tamiko’s beautiful arms, hard with how he shook. “But right now, help me stop this starship from controlling the animals down in the park.”

* * *

“Peck off, rooster.” Sick of knee-high Randy Rooster, Power Plant booted him as if this were the semifinals of college football. “Cock-a-doodle-wake-someone-up over theres.”

Frickin’ rooster wasting all Power Plant’s good kicks. His leg in agony, he focused his aim at—

Jabbed in the side! Hilary’s third head or fourth or whatever came after fourth battered him in the hip. His eyes flashed, and his vision took a ten count before settling back into—

He lay flat on his back, staring up at a Hilary’s poop shooter with a tail that whipped air and slammed down across his chest like a sledgehammer. Everything escaped his lungs, and he couldn’t refill them. He coughed, tasted metallic blood in his cheek, found the creases in Hilary’s tail, struggled to heave it off, couldn’t, bones creaked, get off, tail, get off get off...

Maybe he shouldn’t resist. Would it be that bad? He loosened his grip. Just a little.

* * *

“Jakey, I can’t stop Asinine’s plan.” Tamiko snorted a laugh. “I’m, like, on that gitch’s side? And why are you wearing a ride harness?”

Jakey reminded himself of the raising questionlike intonation Tamiko infused into her conversation. Also reminded himself that her and Asinine’s musical tastes overlapped more often than they should.

“Also, what’s this in your hair?” Tamiko reached out and grabbed melted nougat.

* * *

The fallen tree that blocked Hilary’s chomps from shredding him to pieces was whittling down to toothpicks. Hilary was accelerating at four point eight attacks per ten seconds, jaws snapping four thousand twenty-eight pounds per square inch.

* * *

“Please.” Jakey spilled onto his knees, folded his hands together, pleaded. “My friends, they’re dying down there.” He shuffled aside to show Tamiko the viewscreen of that gigantic beast. Plastique battled the titanium jaws of one head. Ace Spandex ducked into a ditch so low he curled into a ball to avoid a ferocious onslaught of ravenous biting from another head. And Jeffy was in the midst of a delirium that—Okay, Jeffy was normal.

* * *

Hilary’s jaws clenched down harder. Bones cracked. Not enough grubs in the universe to fuel her for this fight. And Hilary gave too much tongue.

* * *

Tears crawled out. Jakey felt his knees chastise him for such a stupid spill onto hard flooring. “Tamiko, my best friend is battling for his life, and I can’t shut this off without you. You must know how. I need you. Jeffy needs you.” He clutched her dress, her silken dress. “Please. Don’t make me fight it out of you.” Behind him, his duplicates lined up, one cracking its knuckles, another sticking its finger down its throat in preparation to unleash vomit. Weird, but okeydokey.

* * *

His lungs burned for air. Hilary’s tail crushed harder. His hands slid off. Giving up felt easier.

No. He was a Good Guy. He helped people. Jakey was on that starship, and Jakey would need a rescue.

It wasn’t his time. He gripped the tail, but blood slicked his hands.

* * *

Tamiko knelt with Jakey. Her eyes didn’t track the carnage on the viewscreen. They peered straight into his. “For you, Jakey. Control, acknowledge. Stop, like, tramplin’ all up the park’s business?”

All noise died: the thunderclaps, the screams, the drumbeat of foot clomps. Jakey gasped electricity. “That’s it? Just an outlandish command?”

“Yeah. The head gitch was so proud of it he couldn’t stop yakkin’ it off, like, all through his salsa soda?”

Jakey tumbled into her, both arms around her. “Thank you thank you thank—”

Tamiko giggled, put a hand to his chin, and rubbed his cheek with a thumb. Though scabbing over, his cheek gash burned. “You’re such a dork. An eyebrowless dork.”

“I love you too” Jakey put up a finger. “Gimme one second.” He shot to his feet, almost staggering into the piloting chair. “Gabber, acknowledge. Contact entity Power Plant.” His gabber sprang its earpiece and mouthpiece. Two quick seconds passed before the gabber connected with a sizzle of noise. Relief took substance when birds chirped over the gabber, but he had to ask, “Jeffy, I think I shut off the attack. Are you okay?”

Sounds of exertion. “Yeah, that greats, ’cept I’m pinneds under a crockin’ three-mile tail! Can ya shuts it back on for, like, two seconds?”

Jakey tapped his gabber bud to shut off the connection. The earpiece and mouthpiece zipped back in. “Jeffy confused his priorities again, so he’s fine.” Beaming, he leaned into Tamiko.

Oh, crock. Another shock. He bonked his forehead with his wrist. “I...uh”—bashful hip twist away—“heh, bought you something.” He extended the crumpled box to her. “Happy forty-two-day anniversary. Yay.”

Confused purse to her lower lip, Tamiko took the box and examined it. “It’s beautiful...ish?” She opened it to reveal four velvet-cushioned concave dips that had held the bulbs.

Jakey toed the floor. “They were incendiary bulbs from the Cerise Samurai.” He indicated the box’s embossed lettering. “But I used them on your two-headed nightmare coworker and a gang of generics. And you.”

Tamiko giggled again, an effervescent sound that commandeered Jakey’s soul. “I woulda, like, loved ’em?” She leaned in for a hug and a kiss. One hand holding his, she tapped a fingertip on Jakey’s nose and tugged him toward the door. “Now scooch. Before this Crapshoot heads home, you gotta zip downstairs?”

“Come with me.” Jakey resisted the tug, still clutching her hand. “I’ll put in a good word for you. If we kept Scapegoat, we’d certainly keep you. After all, you’re socially functional.” He already saw denial in her pout. “I want to stay being Jakey.”

“Can’t this time?” Tamiko let go and rushed to the exit. Paused. Considered something. Spun around. “Just get off the starship? It’s on a five-minute timer once it gets that virus command. You probably got about, like, four-and-a-half minutes left? When that’s up, this starship is gone like my chem teacher last time he gave me a C? I don’t want to explain to the boss how his action died while you’re standing around. Also, don’t ask about the chem teacher.” She placed a hand on the doorframe and bobbed slightly at her knees. “But if you buy a second-try gift, I could use plastic sheets for my kill room?”

“Come. Legion’s not like Asinine. He’ll accept you. And also Station One has a trampoline park.” Jakey reached out to her, hoping she’d rush back. “There’s good in you. I know it.”

With a playful grin, Tamiko blew a kiss—“I’ll gabber you tonight?”—and darted off.

The door materialized. By Franchise’s count, he had four minutes to escape. His eyes ticked up to the door that Tamiko had disappeared through. Three minutes and fifty seconds now. He stood there.

Three forty-five.

Chapter Twenty-One: Now You’re Up to Speed

March 17, 9110. 3:48 a.m. (Galactic Standard Time).

Outside the Stavehill Hyperability Penitentiary, Blackguard scrutinized his growing army. Though he would rather leave them behind, they were key in Lord Continuum’s mission, especially those who’d served with the Good Guys and Bad Guys. Yes, even the belligerent Brother Plaster, the same one currently spinning in circles to scratch his own back.

The day still unbegun, the lawn still damp and spongy, Brother Plaster still grouched about what he identified as sheepdog poop upon arrival. Blackguard nodded it off. Brother Plaster’s bickering always confused him. Brother Plaster’s walk always confused him more.

The army had immediately exited the compound with their newest—and most vital—member. Since the incident with Harrier had ended, they had free rein to do with the inmates and guards as they wished. They had not crossed paths with many that Canary Yellow had not dealt with, but Ripsaw at least sounded pleased with his workout today. Marionette, however, seemed chagrined she could not use her hyperability inside and that her hands were full carrying Brother Kamikaze. And that she’d caught a nail on a wall fixture.

Such bickering behind Blackguard. He barely tolerated those with which fate saddled him, even in his distant Crugg days. With each new recruit, his army’s squabbling volume increased tenfold. Blackguard wished to press Mute on them. Alas, tearing out vocal cords was irreversible.

They would now travel to Lord Continuum’s kingdom, drop off the comatose Brother Kamikaze for resuscitation and realignment, and then gather the next charge, Fragment, in the year 8909. Blackguard might also leave Ripsaw behind if that loudmouth complained once more about pinkos.

All this in the name of the esteemed Lord Continuum. All hail Lord Cont—

“Brother Ripsaw, say ‘pinko’ one more time.” Blackguard reared back a bladed arm. “I defy you.”

Chapter Twenty-Two: But the View!

Crock, this ain’t dope, yo. Hovering inside the Crapshoot’s tractor beam and repeatedly butting into the underbelly, Bad Aim thought this single notion as the gigantic barge departed for home. At least the tractor beam had trapped enough atmosphere for him to survive the trip. And at least they’d left Multipurpose behind.

He hoped the landing gear worked.

THE END

NEXT BOOK:

Lefty and Righty agree on something.

About That Guy Whose Book You Read Once

Liam Gibbs knew he was destined to write at age four, when he authored a breathtaking account of a cow who ate grass. The bovine saga failed to catch the public’s eye but earned the budding author parental acclaim. Since those early times, he’s gone on to write the novella Not So Superpowered and humorous articles for various magazines.

A twenty-year veteran of the brutal world of hand-to-hand comic book fandom, Gibbs cut his teenage teeth on titles such as Spider-Man, X-Men, New Warriors, and other Marvel comics.

Gibbs graduated college with a degree in professional writing, which included classes on fiction writing and story structure. He lives on the balmy shores of Ottawa, Canada, where he relaxes by watching staggeringly awful horror and science fiction movies. A health and fitness nut, he shoots lasers from his eyes, uses the word exclusive incorrectly, and once wrestled an exclusive brontosaurus. True story.

That one time I was deep in thought and—Hey, is that ketchup on the ceiling?

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Communicate via homing pigeon at chirp-twiddle-twoo or whatever pigeons say.

Table of Contents

The Story So Far...

Available on the Author’s Super-Awesome Site

Other Stuff the Author Spewed Out

Your Favorite Table of Contents

Book 21: This One Has a Dancing Gibbon

Appendices

Chapter One: Not in this Chapter, Though

Chapter Two: Not in This One Either

Chapter Three: Yes, It Was Fun Coming Up with All Those Ride Names, Thank You for Asking

Chapter Four: To Think a Theme Park Could Be This Boring

Chapter Five: And by “Brain Trust,” We Mean “Disaster of Rational Thought”

Chapter Six: As if on Cue...

Chapter Seven: And in This Corner, Weighing in at One Lunatic Starship...

Chapter Eight: Strategy Belching

Chapter Nine: Explosive Diarrhea

Chapter Ten: Because You Demanded It for Some Reason!

Chapter Eleven: How ’Bout That Margin of Error?

Chapter Twelve: Migratory Patterns

Chapter Thirteen: Tough Crowd

Chapter Fourteen: The Social Faux-Pas Family Tree

Chapter Fifteen: The Word of the Day Is Rated R

Chapter Sixteen: Make Yourself at Home

Chapter Seventeen: Worst Zoo Ever

Chapter Eighteen: That Time We Waged War against Power Plant’s Childhood

Chapter Nineteen: Those Insufferable Neighbors

Chapter Twenty: What Fresh Crock Is This?

Chapter Twenty-One: Now You’re Up to Speed

Chapter Twenty-Two: But the View!

About That Guy Whose Book You Read Once