“And after the madness that ensued in the Parks Mall yesterday, it seems everything will be okay. The damages remained under twelve million dollars and idol Laney Lin was found relatively unharmed. It is still unclear what her involvement was exactly, but she will not receive charge as she was tied up and clearly a victim of the fiasco…”
Knocking was heard on the door to the room. It had only been a day since The Metal’s competition completely totaled the local mall and it was bound to catch the attention of the media, but for some reason he never seemed to catch the blame for these things. the others knew fully well he wasn’t hurting for cash like he claimed. The Metal might have blown all of the allowance he lets himself spend, but Sentri was sure that he had loaded offshore accounts since he always seems to pull money out of nowhere whenever he needs it. Whether it was the case or not didn’t matter since the three of them showed up anyway as if they really had no choice.
“So, how are we going to -find- a job?”
“Usually I just wait until the job finds me due to the nature of the business, and believe me there is never a shortage, but sometimes I need one immediately and there is always one place I can check to get something.”
“And where is that?”
The Metal took his remote and flipped the channel over from the local news station to a different report channel all the back in the nine hundreds.
“The nine hundreds, isn’t that usually where they keep all the porn?”
“Just wait.”
“Welcome to Blackwatch News and this is your morning report,” the announcer said in a commanding voice.
“Paranoia stations? You can’t find a job from the tabloids!”
The Metal ignored his stout friend and kept his attention on the television.
“Hello my fellow foil hats, I’m Alfred Yankovic, it is breakfast time, and this is your daily food for thought.”
“Wait a minute. So Weird Al hosts the paranoia news?”
“Who else would? Now shut up, I’m trying to hear this.”
“First off, more evidence comes in to strike against the skepticism towards our President’s nationality. It has been clear to us for months the citizenship documents were forged because you couldn’t be born in the United States if you weren’t even born on this planet. a residue discretely recovered from the toilet adjacent to the Oval Office suggests the homeworld is in orbit of Proxima Centauri, the closest system to our own. Orbiting a red dwarf such as PC would have a planet tidally locked with one side in a perpetual day and the other night, explaining the President’s long hours and irregular naps.
Our next bit comes from a fellow foil hat in Dallas, Texas who goes by the username hoodrat04. He sent us a radioactive shard of what he claims to be a compact nuclear weapon. He tells us that he has spent many nights in his university’s lab analyzing the shard and that the original container was likely no larger than a can of pop and had a payload equal to that of Fat Man used back in ole’ World War Two. He says the thing that confuses him the most is that the activity suggests it went off within the last couple months and hasn’t moved much since then, but that would mean it exploded within the Oak Cliff area, but the place is still intact. He’ll keep looking into this matter, but come on, some people will believe anything.
And now back to aliens and government cover-ups. We all know of every extraterrestrial visitor’s favorite airport, Roswell, New Mexico, but many of us aren’t aware of the many other landing sites in the area. Just today black vans and helicopters have been spotted just outside Counselor and then shortly after the city went silent. In through traffic permitted and route 550 and the detours extend as far as from Farmington to Albuquerque. Boy, just thinking of that place sends me back. There was this one time…”
“Pst, Al. There is a caller on the line.”
“Oooooh, a caller. Patch him through! You are on the air fellow foil hat, what peaks your concern today?”
“Hey, Al.”
“Oh… it’s you. What do you want Metal?”
Shocked, everyone turns over and realizes The Metal was on the phone with Weird Al. They didn’t even notice that he was dialing.
“Well, I was hoping to inquire you about the story you were just on.”
“Looking for money again are we, mister pandemonium incarnate? I probably shouldn’t after last time after you accidentally burned down the only sasquatch den we’ve ever found, but the audience loved it, so if you get us some footage of what is going on in Counselor we’ll pay.”
“Excellent. Your foil hats will have a full story by the weekend.”
*click*
“Well, you heard him. What mysteries lie behind the shade of our own shadow govern…”
Turning off the tube, The Metal hopped to his feet and started digging for his camcorder. While he was scurrying about, his comrades still sat there astonished by the situation as a whole, but partly because The Metal once burnt down a sasquatch den. He was still digging around as they slowly gathered a grasp of what happened when noticed all the gear laid out before them.
“What is all this junk?”
“Camera equipment, press badges, disguises, knives, a couple guns, some law enforcement grade zip ties, smoke pellets, some canisters of tear gas, the equivalent of a few hundred tons of TNT in compact explosives, radio earpieces with sixteen-mile radius, and pizza money.”
“Why!?”
“Because it’ll be a long trip and I’m hungry.”
“Not the pizza money! Why do you even have all that stuff!?”
“While I’m sure he’d tell us, I don’t want to know. Come on, let’s load up. We need to leave now if we want to get there by tonight.”
They took all the gear, very carefully at that considering the payload it contained, and securely housed it in a large spruce blue van The Metal just happened to have on his property. As per the norm, Sentri got behind the wheel and they set out to one of the states that nobody in their right mind ever visits. It wasn’t that long of a trip even though they had to basically cross the entire longitudinal distance of New Mexico just to get into the state from Dallas, but Buck kept bringing up how he was born in the area despite how clear everyone made it that they no longer cared. The pizza was long gone before they crossed state lines and the gang was growing antsy. Tired, restless, and hungry, they rolled up to the blockade just as night fell. The guard stopped them at the gate they set up. He appeared to be of military in uniform, but not the national guard who you would assume would handle these matters. The Metal wheeled down the passenger window and displayed his press pass for the soldier to see. The guard examined it thoroughly before radioing his superior.
“Reverse, now!”
Not giving Sentri time to process what he said, The Metal hopped over into his lap, shifted the van into reverse, and sped away from the checkpoint. They span 180 degrees and around and the sound of bullets bouncing off the back of the vehicle echoed in their ears. He had noticed just barely in time as the other units mounted their rifles for an attack.
“Good thing I had Pitaya bulletproof this thing or else that could have been ugly.”
“What the hell was that!?”
“Oh, yeah. About that. I just realized who is in charge of that camp and he really doesn’t like me.”
“Metal, what did you do this time?”
“It’s not my fault! I was just taking Chrysanthemum out for a test run and his gunships fired at me. I simply took defensive measures.”
“What the fuck is a Chrysanthemum.”
“Well, a Chrysanthemum is a genus of flowers, but in this case…”
“Eh, that is a story for another day. Right now we need to get out of here without lead poisoning.”
“Heheheheheheh, get out of here. You’re funny.”
“Metal, listen to me. You are not getting us involved with that madman Jerome or the U.S. Air Force. We have responsibilities now, we aren’t kids anymore.”
“Sentri, I value your opinion more than anyone’s, but look at it this way. This isn’t a job anymore. If -he- is involved, you can bet someone is in trouble.”
“Ugh… I hate it when you pull that card.”
“You aren’t seriously going to let him risk our lives like this!?”
“Sorry Buck, he’s got the only point that matters.”
Mr. Sable took control of the vehicle again and looked over at his longtime friend with nervous anticipation.
“We doin’ this?”
“Yeah, we doin’ this.”
Sentri flipped the end of the gear stick open revealing a shiny red button. The Kidd, with concern on his face, swiftly hopped off the open floor and into a seat in the back, fastening his safety belt just as quickly. Buck knew not of what was going on but joined him in fastening his own seat. Pressing the button with great zeal, Sentri floored the accelerator setting off the overdrive. He took the van up a naturally formed ramp and flew off a cliff face well over the checkpoint.
“WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”
Sentri’s loud hollering alerted the troops below, who opened fire upon them. The soldiers loaded into their jeeps and continued the pursuit, not relenting for a moment with the gunfire.
“Hahaha, that feature I added myself!”
“Are you guys insane, we have enough explosives in the van to level a small town!?”
“Hmm, explosives…”
“No Metal, we are here to help people, not kill.”
“These goons were specially picked by Gallagher himself. All of them have done heinous acts to innocent people,” he explained while grabbing light blue canister and opening the side door. “Besides, since when have I ever killed anyone?”
"Oh, I must be confusing you with a Spectre."
The Metal flipped up on top of the automobile and waved at the opposition with the bomb in his hand. They continued firing, which he found extremely rude, so he took the canister, pulled the tab, and bowled it back to the ground forces. As the container began ticking, he hopped back in the van and slammed the door shut.
“I’d turn that overdrive back on if I were you.”
“Wait, what color bomb did you throw?”
“Cyan.”
“Shit!”
Just as the caravan approached it, the canister went off. The detonation itself was subtle, but almost instantly a liquid flash freeze covered the ground in highly pressurized ice. The rubber of the tires froze and popped immediately upon contact with the ice, with each jeep spinning wildly out of control on just their rims. Once they reached the edge of the frozen ground, friction suddenly kicked back in and all the soldiers launched from their toppling machines. There was no way they could follow them now, but the boys needed to get out of sight before the reinforcements arrived. The Kidd spotted a cave in the distance, so they pulled in to hide for a while.
“I swear to God, between Pitaya’s crazy inventions and your homemade explosives, I’m surprised you two lunatics haven’t destroyed Dallas County yet... or at the very least taken it over.”
“No intention, but he did seize an island.”
Everyone jerked their sights to him as if that information actually caught them off guard after all this.
“What, he was fed up that I refused to call him Lord Pitaya because he didn’t own any land to be a lord. I still won’t call him that; it just sounds dumb.”
Before anyone could interject on the matter, a clankering was heard in the far reaches of the cavern. Not even giving it thought, The Metal geared up and ran after the noise with his companions regretfully trailing behind. It wound inward like helix coming to a large dome in the middle. Bright lights and sparking metalloids were found within as before their eyes sat a ship built to traverse the heavens and its pilots working on repairs. They were stout, furry critters, hominid in form yet animalistic in features. Standing at around three feet high they were clearly of mammalian descent, just not any kind that was familiar to Earth. Three of them were running around in jumpsuits frantically trying to fix their evidently wrecked spacecraft. From what they could tell, two of them were masculine in gender and the other feminine. The Metal approached them without hesitating and the shorter male flipped out.
“運行地球人!” he said fleeing into the ship.
“放鬆Belry,也許他們可以幫助我們。” the woman responded sincerely.
The taller man walked up to the fellows and began speaking to the boys, but they couldn’t quite understand what he was saying.
“您好地球人,我可能有你的時間了一下?” he said but no one replied. “做任何你說普通話嗎?”
“Buddie, you are in America, gonna have to speak English.”
“Now Kidd that’s just rude.”
“Ah, English. Though everyone in your system should learn the common tongue, I do remember English from foreign studies.”
“Does everyone in the galaxy speak Chinese?”
“I don’t know what Chinese is, but it is called Pǔtōnghuà and it is spoken amongst all planets in the Universe who wish to participate in the major trading guilds. Anyway, you guys look like some decently tough fellas; would you mind giving us a hand?”
“Sorry, we don’t have any experience working on interstellar ships.”
“Speak for yourself Sentri.”
“No, that’s okay since we are almost done with repairs anyway. The actual matter is that my father is missing. We brought him along on our road trip and when we took a pit stop here on Dìqiú he wandered off for snacks. You know how old people can be. When we went looking for him we found that he was shanghaied by local pirates and we just don’t have the means to rescue him.”
“Um… those aren’t pirates.”
“Yeah, that’s actually our territory’s military.”
“What kind of tactless planet are you guys running here!?”
“Beats me. Listen, as an ambassador of this land, I will personally return your father to you.”
“Thank you. At least there are some nice people on this rock.”
“But we might need your help. Just take this radio and get your ship ready for lift-off.”
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