Chapter 4

It was a nice hike.  The trees, the shrubs, the genetically mutated squirrels... blissful serenity.  Katharine leaned over to smell a flower, but jerked back up again at the sound of a massive explosion.  She whirled around to see CornHusker, once again, holding his rocket launcher.  A thin trail of smoke billowed out of it.

“Something moved!” he shouted.

Kat sighed.  “You don’t need to blow everything up, you know.”

“Yes I do!  Boom!  Make boom!”  He launched another rocket at some random target.

Annoyed by his shenanigans, Kat reached out and pulled the rocket launcher away from him.  “I’ll take this, thank you very much, if you’re going to be so silly.”  She tucked it into her blouse.

“Aww...”

“Stop pouting!”

Corny scratched his nuts and belched.  “All right, all right, let’s keep going.”  He led the way, knocking over trees and tossing aside boulders that were in his way.  They kept on like this for five minutes or so.  Finally, Kat once again lost her patience.

“Look,” she hissed, “we’re trying to sneak in.  Can’t you go quietly?”

CornHusker stared at her, confused.  “Qui-et-ly?”

“Y’know, not making so much noise?”

Corny’s face brightened.  “Oh!  Noise!  I like noise.  Smashy-smashy!”  He grabbed a tree, uprooted it, and threw it into another tree.  The two trees shattered.

Kat growled and grabbed her companion’s ear.  “Follow me.”

“Ow!” Corny yelped, but he followed after her, (relatively) quietly.  They continued on, in near-silence, allowing Kat an opportunity to enjoy woods around her.  However, it wasn’t long before she remembered that she hated the outdoors.  Within minutes, she was slapping at bugs, swearing at plants, and tripping over rocks.  Ultimately frustrated, she pulled Corny’s rocket launcher out of her blouse and fired off a few volleys, sending up a couple large clouds of debris.

“Fuck quiet,” she said.

They rushed forward, throwing caution to the wind.  Well, sorta… they hadn’t time to do more than toss it a tad before they came across a large cement wall.  They stood staring at it for a few minutes, before Kat turned towards Corny.

“What are you waiting for?” she said.  “Smash!”

Corny grinned and rushed forward, swinging his fist towards the vertically-oriented surface.  It shattered inwards, propelling big chunks of cement towards the inner compound.

“Hail Nebraska,” CornHusker muttered.  He trudged forward, anxious to smash more stuff.  Kat followed after him, bringing her MP-5 to bear, and the two of them rushed into the base…

“Who’s big idea was it to climb over Mount Rushmore?” Kia asked, dangling from her safety wire.

“Oh, shut up, and hand me that climbing pick,” SPOOFE said, hanging on for dear life to George Washington’s nose hair.

“This is taking forever!” Kia continued whining.  “Warlord Spears will die from old age before we climb over this thing and get into the base!”

SPOOFE jammed a new hook into a small crack, then pounded it into the rock with a small hammer.  “This is an excellent plan,” he said.  “Because I came up with it.”

“We’re probably gonna fall to our deaths,” Chris grumbled, wedged between Washington’s lips several meters below.

“Nonsense,” SPOOFE answered.  “This is perfectly safe.”

Just then, a guy who looked a lot like Tom Cruise slid down the rock face.  He managed to snag onto a tiny outcropping, and he hung there for a few seconds… then a 747 flew by and sucked him into one of the jet intakes.  A fine mist of blood began floating down to the ground below.  The three squadmates watched the crimson cloud drift away for a few moments.

“All right, so maybe this was a stupid idea,” SPOOFE conceded.  He reached into his pouch and pulled out a missile, then wrapped one end of his safety rope around it.  “Hold on tight… we’re all gonna ride my pocket rocket over the mountain and into the base!”

Kia and Chris both tightened their grips on the rope, and SPOOFE ignited the rocket.  It rumbled for a few moments, then blasted off in a cartoonily-quick WHOOSH!!

“Wee!” Kia screamed.

“Wee!” SPOOFE screamed.

“Eek!” Chris screamed.  “I think I wet my pants!”

They continued traveling up, passing by flocks of birds, clouds, and space shuttles as they went.  Finally, the rocket ran out of fuel, and they began decelerating and arced back down towards the fortress below.

They left a burning trail as their speed reached and passed terminal velocity.  The G-forces, which would normally kill living matter, actually began to become a tad uncomfortable as they headed Earthbound.  In fact, SPOOFE was beginning to think that he couldn’t take much more… but just then, they smashed into the ground, creating a massive crater and sending a shockwave out from their position.

“That was fun!” SPOOFE’s faint and muffled voice was heard saying from deep underground.

“Get off of me!” Kia shouted back.  “And get that out of my ass!”

“Oh, sorry,” SPOOFE replied.

“Dammit, I’m tired of having things shoved into my orifices… mmf!”  Kia’s voice sputtered out, as if something were suddenly placed over her mouth.

“Thanks Chris,” SPOOFE said.

“No problem,” Chris replied.  “Uh… would you pardon us for a minute?”

“Sure thing.”

SPOOFE climbed out of the hole with a grunt, his pocket rocket dangling limply from his pants.  He tucked it away, then pulled out his submachine gun and held it at a ready position, scanning the area for targets.  Several dozen feet away, a small gaggle of guards was standing.  One of them happened to turn around, and he noticed the intruder.

“Hey!” he shouted, spewing saliva out of his mouth.  “Are you here to get an autograph, too?”  He picked his nose and wiped the resulting snot flow on his shirt.

“Uh…”  SPOOFE paused, unsure of what to do.  Finally, he shrugged, and pulled the trigger on his MP-5, and sprayed a hail of bullets into the guard group.  Chunks of human flesh and blood and Spam hurled into the air.

“That’s taken care of!” SPOOFE announced.

Just then, however, one of the guards’ severed hands fell back down and landed right on top of a big red button.  The entire surrounding base was immediately filled with blaring alarms, and the shouts of alerted troops began approaching.  From behind a nearby bunker, a full squad of soldiers appeared, bearing their guns threateningly and standing in a holding pattern.  Before they could begin firing, however, the wall behind them shattered inward, and an armored jeep appeared.  It zoomed forward and crashed into the guard formation, toppling them all like bowling pins.  Casey and Eric jumped out, while Flip merely tripped.

“Ow!” Flip said from his place on the ground.  He kind of staggered clumsily to his feet and pulled out his shotgun, waiting to kill stuff.

He didn’t have to wait long.  Just then, another squad of soldiers marched in, walking in step and chanting “One more time!  One more time!  One more time!” over and over.  They turned towards the group, and they all unslung their weapons simultaneously.  SPOOFE and company all ducked for cover and returned fire, but none of their shots were too successful.  Just then, however, a high-pitched whistling sound was heard… and a few seconds later, a volley of missiles smashed into the enemy group.  Body parts hurled throughout the air.

“Wow, good timing!” Flip yelled.

Kat and Corny ran forward from behind a Mr. Goodbar truck.  “Thanks,” Kat said, tucking her rocket launcher back into her blouse.  “I always try to be prompt.”

“Yeah, yeah, shut up, we’ve got work to do,” SPOOFE said.

“Hmph.  You’re just mad because you got your ass saved by me.”

“Of course,” SPOOFE muttered.  “Now, let’s invade the base!”  He began running off.

“Wait, wait!” Casey called after him.  “The base is this way!”

SPOOFE stopped in his track.  “Uh…” he stammered.  “I knew that!  I was… er…. just tryin’ to confuse our opponents!”

He began running back in the real direction, and his team followed after him.  Just then, however, the ground began to rumble.  Car alarms went off, windows shattered… and Flip fell flat on his face.

“Earthqua-a-a-a-ake!” Flip shouted.

“Quake?!?” CornHusker yelled back, his ears perking up.  “Where Quake?  I play Quake!  Me like Quake!”

“No, stupid,” Flip grumbled back, “Earthquake!”

“It can’t be an earthquake,” Eric said, his voice as calm as ever.  “We’re right smack dab in the middle of a tectonic plate.”

“Well, fine, genius, what is it then?” Flip shot back.

Eric glanced at his watch.  “Wait a few moments, and we’ll find out.”

They waited, and waited, and waited, and waited…. The whole time, the ground continued rumbling.  SPOOFE sat down and had tea.  Casey sat down and began reading a book.  Kia sat down and enjoyed the vibration.

“Ooooooooh….” Kia muttered.  “I don’t want it to stop….”

Unfortunately, it stopped.  Well, sort of.  The ground shattered, breaking apart as something large pushed its way through.  Chunks of dirt and small rocks were thrown about, revealing a thirty-foot-tall battledroid.  It was humanoid-shaped, but had two large lumps on the upper torso (SPOOFE assumed they were weapon pods of some sort), and each arm carried several laser cannons and concussion tubes.  It stepped out of the crater from whence it came, and glanced around at the battlefield.

SPOOFE didn’t hesitate.  “Attack!”

The others in his squad stood around for a few seconds, glancing around.  “Attack what?” Casey finally asked.

“That,” SPOOFE said, pointing at the battledroid.  “Attack!”

So they attacked.  SPOOFE fired his Gadzooka, Corny fired his rocket launcher, Kat fired her OUCHMAKER, Eric fired his numerous powersuit weapons, Flip fired his shotgun, Chris and Kia began making out again.  The huge blast of energy and projectiles slammed into the armoring of the battledroid, shattering armor and obliterating power cables.  Its power reactor overloaded, emitting a shockwave and huge gout of flame throughout the area.  The burned-out hulk of the battledroid collapsed backward.

“Wow,” SPOOFE said.  “That was anticlimactic.”

Chris pulled himself off of Kia.  “O-o-o-oh, no it wasn’t.”  He zipped up his pants.

There was a loud stomping sound, and everyone turned to see Corny jumping up onto the still-burning husk of the battledroid.  He grabbed onto the front hull plating of the cockpit and tore it off and tossed it aside.  There was some obnoxious shrieking as Corny reached in to pull out the occupant inside.  He stood up, revealing none other than… Gilbert Gottfried.

“Hey, what’s going on here?” Gilbert shouted.  “Put me down, put me down!”

SPOOFE winced at the annoying man’s voice.  “No chance of that happening, ‘Bert.  Why are you working for Warlord Spears?!?”

“She gave me money!” Gilbert yelled back.  “And she’s got breasts!  I’m a man, I can’t help it!”

            Once again wincing, SPOOFE waved him away.  “Stop talking, dammit!  Corny, dispose of him.”

            CornHusker just grinned and gave the annoying-voiced comedian-wannabe a slight punt.  Gilbert sailed away, never to be seen again (and there was much rejoicing).

            “All right, this way!” SPOOFE ordered.

He turned and sprinted towards the large, hangar-like entrance to the main base bunker.  He stopped only long enough to level his Gadzooka and fire, obliterating the massive sliding doors.  Chunks of molten metal rained inwards, creating a small cloud of vapor in the inner hallways.  The whole squad surged inward, taking up flanking positions on either side of the corridor.

SPOOFE waved forward when it became clear that there wasn’t any armed resistance.  The whole troop marched forward, practically silent except for the occasional times when Flip stumbled on his own feet.  Finally, the team came to a large freight elevator.  They all piled in, and SPOOFE pressed the button for the lowest floor of the complex.

“How do you know that’s where Spears is?” Kia asked.

“‘Cuz that’s the only other level in this place,” SPOOFE replied.

“Oh.”

The lift came to a halt with a sharp hiss of hydraulics.  The squad surged forward, one pair taking up a guarding position while another pair advanced.  After a few moments, they all rounded a corner and came to a large chamber.  There were several darkened alcoves lining each wall, so the team spread out to hide behind each indenture in the wall.

SPOOFE and Chris stepped out to the middle of the room, brandishing their weapons and glancing around.

“What do you make of this place?” Chris said.

“Looks like nothing,” SPOOFE replied.

Just then, the doors to the chamber sealed shut with a resounding clang, and the lights dropped.

“What the hell is this?” Flip yelled.  “I’m scared of the dark!”

“Hey, who’s touching me?” Kat growled.

A small beam of light appeared, emitted from Eric’s head-mounted flashlight in his powersuit.  “Let there be light,” he said, chuckling slightly.

“Shut up, everyone!” SPOOFE yelled.  “This was a trap!”

“Nah, it’s probably just a power outage,” Kia answered back.  “Of course it’s a trap, you numbskull!”

Before anyone could respond, a low, obnoxious giggling began reverberating through the chamber.  It sounded like the sound of frozen vomit being scraped across a blackboard made from excrement.  It continued for several seconds, after which a series of extremely powerful halogen lights flashed into existence, blinding the group stuck in the chamber.

SPOOFE held his hand in front of his face, trying to shield his eyes from the blinding light.  After a few moments, his vision cleared enough to make out a large scaffold descending slowly from a previously-hidden opening in the ceiling.  A single, female figure stood on the platform.

“Warlord Spears,” SPOOFE mumbled.

The figure threw her arms wide.  “Yes!  ‘Tis I, the greatest singer in the history of singdom!” she declared.  “Tremble before my wrath!  Tremble before my might!  Tremble before… the Amazingly Amazing Britney Spears!”

“Vocabulary must not be your strong suit,” Chris muttered.

“Silence!” Spears yelled, her voice redefining the meaning of the term “high-pitched”.  “You’ve all been a thorn in my side for too long!  It is now time for you to be made not-living!”

A high-pitched whine was quickly made audible, and before any of the Imperium squadmates could react, purplish tractor beams shot out from the walls, lifting everyone into the air and immobilizing them.  They struggled, and struggled, and struggled, and struggled, but to no avail!  Cool desperation music began playing.  It was quite dramatic, really.

“You fools thought you could best me!” Spears continued gloating.  “Well, you can’t best me, ‘cuz I’m the best of the best, and you can’t best the best if the best is the best of the bestest best!”

“Shut up and kill us already!” SPOOFE shouted.  “Death would be much better than hearing you ramble on and on!”

“Speak for yourself!” Flip yelled back.

“Kill you, huh?” Spears mumbled.  “Well, at first I was just gonna have my spiffy gravity-manipulation beams – which I bought from Russia, incidentally – to rip you guys into shreds… but now I guess I’ll kill you, too!”

She pressed another button, and the purple beams began to brighten.  There was a communal grunt of pain as the gravity-manipulation field began expanding.  SPOOFE grunted as he felt his arms and legs try to pull themselves out of their sockets, and he could only assume that his teammates were getting the same treatment.

“You’ll… never… get… away… with… this!” SPOOFE said through grit teeth.

“Of course I will!” Spears cackled.  “I’m Britney Spears!  I can do whatever I want!”

Back in the small bunker on the other side of the mountain range…

Ronnie continued floating in her anti-gravity field, still wearing the DNA suit.  Every so often, her legs and arms would twitch, or occasionally even jerk violently.  She was viewing a virtual world of codes and scripts through her Heads-Up Display (HUD), trying to hack into the innermost computer systems of Warlord Spears’ base.

“Hmm, what’s this?” she though.  She tried to access a file labeled “Miscellaneous”.  It brought up another sub-directory with even more folders, labeled things like “Matthew” and “Brad” and “Mel” and “Flip”.  A cursory glance showed it to be Spears’ archive of porn.  With a shudder (Flip?  Porn?  Perish the thought!) she backtracked.

Her eye fell onto a small, obscure file titled “Insignificant, Irrelevant Stuff That Wouldn’t Interest A Hacker.”  With a grin, Ronnie brought the file open… but she was stopped as an alarm fed through her neural helmet and cause sirens to blare in her consciousness.  She needed a password.  She began twitching her body even more desperately, trying to gain access.  She flailed her arms; that didn’t work.  She kicked her legs; that didn’t work.  She did the hanky-panky and turned herself around; that didn’t work.  She even tried the Macarena; but, alas, that didn’t work.

She wracked her brain, trying to figure out a way in.  Somehow, she was able to sense that the rest of her teammates were in trouble… there was a huge section written about their plight just up above, you know.  Ronnie kept trying, using every single possible bodily movement that she could think of to create the coding necessary to break the security encryption.

After several minutes, horribly exhausted, she just floated in the anti-grav field.  As she hovered there, a thought entered her mind.  She brightened, and then she looped her arms under her knees, pulled her legs back so that her feet were over her shoulders, inserted one finger into her nostril, grasped her ear with the other, stuck out her tongue, and crossed her eyes.  Finally, she wriggled her toes and tapped her heels together.

On her HUD, she saw the words:  “Access Granted”.

She hurried through the contents of the encrypted folder.  She saw “Death Ray”, she saw “Evil Plans for World Domination”, she saw “Must-See TV”… she saw “Anti-Gravity Ray, Purple Variety”.

Then Ronnie’s eyes fell on the virtual Off button.  She reached her hand out and gave it a flick…

Just as SPOOFE felt that he was going to be torn apart, he felt the beam holding him aloft weaken.  Slowly, the whole team was lowered to the ground, and the beams finally disengaged altogether.

“No!  This can’t be!” Spears wailed, pounding on her control panel.  “I paid my power bill!  I don’t live in California!!!”

SPOOFE checked back on his comrades.  Seeing that they were all relatively unharmed, he waved them back.  “Get out of here!” he commanded.  “I’m going to bring the whole base down on top of us!”

The Imperium squadmates all glanced at each other and shrugged.  They trudged out of the room, obviously accustomed to such grandiose posturing on the side of their leader.

SPOOFE glanced upward at his arch-enemy, and felt a rush of power inside of him.  His body shifted, a billowing black cape spilling out from his shoulders, a hood appearing over his head, his eyes began burning a brilliant crimson.  He hovered upwards until he was just level with Spears, and he stared menacingly at her.

“You’ve annoyed your last victim today,” he muttered, his voice low and unpleasant.

Spears grit her teeth.  “This isn’t possible!  I performed at the Grammy’s!  I won dozens of awards!  I slept with Eminem!  I’ve trudged through all manner of hell, and I can’t fail now!”

SPOOFE’s hands began to glow as he built up an energy blast.  “Oh, shut up for once!” he exclaimed as he released the burst of power.

Chris led the group out the main doors of the base bunker.  He turned around just in time to see a massive explosion tear the roof off the complex, and a shockwave that knocked over walls and trees.  Bits and pieces of debris rained down on the surrounding area.  Among the chunks of debris were two little, lumpy bags of fluid that plopped onto the ground.

Flip grabbed the two rubbery sacks.  “Wow… a couple of mementos of this mission!”  He stuck them in his pocket.

Chris and Kia ran back to the crater and glanced back down.

“SPOO-OO-OO-OOFE!” they called.

“Wha-a-a-a-a-at?!?” a voice answered back.  A figure crawled into view, wearing a tattered black cape and two dusty, dented gauntlets.

“You’re alive!” Kia exclaimed.

“Dammit,” Chris muttered, “I wanted to cash in on the life insurance.”

“I heard that!” SPOOFE yelled back.  “Now get me out of here!”

Chris grabbed a bit of rope that happened to be conveniently lying around, and the tossed it down the gaping maw of the crater.  SPOOFE grabbed onto the ersatz lifeline, and Chris and Kia began hauling his carcass out of the pit.

“Ow, watch it!” SPOOFE yelled as he bumped into a particularly jagged outcropping of rock.  “Are you trying to kill me?!?”

Kia grunted.  “Oh, shut up,” she muttered.  She jerked on the line, and SPOOFE swung over and slammed into another uncomfortable-looking outcropping.

“Ow!”

Kia and Chris hauled SPOOFE over the lip of the crater.  Their esteemed commander climbed to his feet, then turned around to look at the devastation.

“Well, troops,” he said.  He glanced behind himself to see if anyone was listening.  They weren’t.  “Hey!  Listen!” SPOOFE yelled.  “I’ve got my big, dramatic moment coming up!”

Everyone turned around and sat down, cross-legged, in front of their fearless leader.  “All right, we’re listening,” Casey said.

“What’s this big, dramatic moment?” Flip asked.

SPOOFE scratched his head and sputtered for a few seconds.  “Umm… you made me forget…”

“Right, it’s all our fault,” Eric offered apologetically.  “Please, forgive us.”

Chris stood up.  “Hey, look, the important thing isn’t whether or not SPOOFE’s memory is for shit… the important thing is Britney Spears is dead!”

There was a loud “Hurrah!” from the squad.

“That’s what I was gonna say,” SPOOFE mumbled.

THE END