Notice: The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. The correct title is “The Great VSP/WASTE Saga, Part II, Chapter 1.”
The Great VSP Saga:
Part II
The Bad Guys Strike Back
'ROCKWELL WHO?'
ONE WEEK LATER....
Codebreaker was bored. With school finally over, he was enjoying summer break just loafing around. But with little to do in his hometown that he hadn't already done with the rest of the VSP lately, he had been lying around for days, and he was tired of just loafing. He had been reading old messages in the forum to pass the time.
Hmmm...there was that whole string of posts about the Seawolf/Aklan kissing scandal. He'd read those several times, shaking his head at Seawolf's stupidity.
Farther back he saw the formation of WASTE and the TAC Post. In recent days, the VSP and some of the members of WASTE (Dark_T_Zeratul, Seawolf, MilkDuds, Tarun, Mat-Def, Flare, and Ixyon) had formed an uneasy partnership in keeping whiners out of the forum and Auspex's hair.
A bit father back he came across a post about Mason Rockwell. Aaaah...Rockwell. ‘Wonder if he even remembers what we did for him’, he wondered.
Suddenly nostalgic, Codebreaker closed his browser window and fired up Starcraft. Since Rockwell was too busy working on A3, at least he could reunite with the man he'd helped save this way.
Time to replay the A2 prologue mission....
Elsewhere, Seawolf was chatting on ICQ with his fellow staffer, Mason Wheeler.
'Sooo...enough about SpecOps.' Seawolf typed out. 'How about we talk about...Antioch.'
Long pause.
'Uuuuhh sure.' Wheeler typed back. 'How about Rockwell. :P'
'Heh. How much you hate him?'
'No need any more. Mwahahaha!'
"What?" Seawolf asked no one in particular. 'Whaddaya mean?'
'Gotta go. Cya.' Mason replied, then logged off.
‘Hmmmm,’ Seawolf thought. ‘What did THAT mean?’
After playing the A2 prologue several times, Codebreaker had become convinced his copy of the map had become faulty. Rockwell never arrived at New Roanoke.
He was now flipping through A2 maps in StarEdit. NONE of them had Mason Rockwell. He was gone.
"What the...?!" Codebreaker asked aloud.
After discovering that Rockwell had been removed from all A2 maps, the Antioch bios, and emitted from all Antioch pages except the forum, Codebreaker picked up the phone and dialed.
"Hey, Lambda. We've got a problem. Emergency Posse meeting. Uh-huh. Yeah. I'll get everyone else together."
A minute later, CB hung up and pulled out a phone number list.
At the top of the list were the numbers for Auspex Turmalis, Zeus Legion, and Ytse-Jam. He'd call them later only if absolutely necessary...he wanted them to have the chance to finish A3.
Next were Lambda Corps, Odin’s Eye, Mack Kilimaro, Spooky, MysteriousGuy, and Endarire...the Vancouver Street Posse. Codebreaker smiled with pride for his team and looked below on the list.
Under the VSP listings were the names and numbers of the affiliated WASTE team members—Dark_T_Zeratul, Seawolf, MilkDuds, Tarun, and Mat-Def. Flare and Ixyon were listed too, but they were on vacation, he knew, so he mentally scratched their names out.
Under that was Flyspeck's number.
Codebreaker picked the phone back up and dialed. "Hey Odin, it's CB...."
Bakjak was eating a hamburger when he felt a disturbance in the force. "What the..." Bakjak trailed off.
"Dammit!? Is that burger not good?" asked the manager.
"Yes... err I mean no, but I felt a disturbance in the force. As if someone has changed something," said Bakjak.
"Riiiiigghhhttt," replied the manager.
‘I have to right this wrong’, thought Bakjak. (Little did Bakjak know that this change was to kill Rockwell, otherwise he wouldn't have gone on this silly journey.) He reached into his jacket and produced a really really big gun.
"Hey! I thought you force maniacs used those really cool laser looking swords," said the manager.
"Bah... it's too hard to use those things," Bakjak said over his shoulder as he left the hamburger stand.
Life was good in the residence of Mack Kilimaro. He had gone and found a house somewhere, and was sleeping at the time the phone rang. It pissed him off at first because he'd been dreaming (and we all KNOW how we hate hearing phones ringing in dreams.) But by the time it was ringing there was little he could do about it...
"CB? What the hell do you want?" he asked incredulously.
"You played the A2 prologue lately, Mack?" came the response. "Well, you probably haven't, so I'll spare you the details. Anyway, Rockwell's been offed again and we're holding an emergency meeting of the Vancouver Street Posse, like, now. How quick can you get here?"
"Damn narrator had to go and find a girlfriend on us..." Mack mumbled under his breath. Then, out loud to CB, "Ah, blast it. Life was so good, I was even starring in a fanfic written by the Narrator... Heh. So much for that idea. Be there within two hours."
With that, Mack hung up and ran out of the house, sprinting. Five minutes later, he came back, remembering he'd forgotten his jetbike.
Two hours and thirty-six minutes later, the entire gang was gathered at the VSP headquarters (aptly named 'The VSP Headquarters'). Everyone was shouting and asking questions that no one could answer.
"What has happened to Rockwell?" exclaimed Seawolf.
"Who eliminated him?!" screamed Lambda.
"Why did someone do this?!" shouted MysteriousGuy.
"Who here can give me some cheese?!" said Mack.
"Why don't we ponder the true nature of life, the universe and everything?!" shouted Endarire, in a true poem-writer, serious guy-style.
"That's easy, 42." said about nine of them, since all had read the Hitchiker's Guide.
And while Flyspeck sat in his corner, eating pretzels, Codebreaker stepped up to a home-made podium (it was a chair) and silenced them all.
"VSPers, WASTErs and all-around good guys. We have quite a problem."
Several "duh!"'s were heard. Codebreaker scowled, and they were quiet.
"Someone, somehow, somewhy-"
"There is no such thing as somewhy!" said MilkDuds.
"I don't care! Let me finish my speech!" screamed Codebreaker, eager to show his ability to speak in public.
"Ok..." said a sad and subdued MilkDuds.
While Mat-Def comforted MilkDuds by telling him to spin around in circle (hey, no-one said he was good at it), Codebreaker continued his speech.
"Rockwell is gone. From everywhere. He exists only in our memories and on the forum. It is time to somehow bring him back. Auspex, Zeus and Ytse require time to work on A3, and who knows when they'll discover that Rockwell is gone. If anyone has any ideas, please speak now, or hold you breath."
Looking at the team, noticing that they were all blue in their faces, he exclaimed:
"Oh, for Auspex's sake, I wasn't being literal!"
The team started breathing, except Spooky, who thought she looked good in blue.
After a minute she remembered that Zeusie didn't like blue faces, so she started breathing too.
An hour later, after some heavy thinking, about nineteen "I know! We could- nah, that won't work..." from Lambda and Odin, Seawolf came up with an idea.
He knocked down Codebreaker from the podium (the chair) and stepped up.
"Friends, Romans, countrymen. Lend me your ears."
He hurriedly told the team he wasn't begin literal, when he saw several reaching for their ears.
"I have an idea of how to figure out what to do."
"What, Seawolf?" asked Lambda Corps.
"Not a what..." said Seawolf.
"Who, Seawolf?" asked Spooky.
"Not really a who..." said Seawolf, beginning to like being mysterious.
"Well, then just tell us," exhaled MysteriousGuy.
"I have thought about it long and hard, and I have come to the absolute conclusion... that we don't know what to do!"
Suddenly he was bombarded with a bunch of rotten tomatoes.
"Wait! Wait! I have an idea!"
"Tell us then," said a very annoyed Tarun.
"I know this guy, well not a guy, but a general person. Well, not a person, but he- wait, maybe he's not a he, I haven't asked him, er I mean her, or he/she/it... errr-"
By now he was very red with tomato juice, rotten eggs and general icky stuff.
"SEAWOLF! If you've got anything important to say... SAY IT NOW!" shouted one very, very annoyed Odin's Eye.
"OK, OK. I think we should go to..."
He looked around, from under the rotten icky stuff.
"...my friend and ultimate problem solver Phoenix. He's a nice guy, at least I think he's a guy. He's a phoenix! That's for sure! Please, don't throw stuff at me!"
Silence.
Some more silence.
"Yeah, no one has any better idea, so let's go see this Phoenix fellow," said Codebreaker, breaking out his "I'm the leader so you better follow my orders or else..." attitude.
With some grumbles, the team departed for Silver Valley, where Phoenix was rumored to take refuge from the world...
So the whole group left from the VSP HQ, which was the evil Mason Wheeler's old fortress from their last epic saga, and flew the official VSP wraith (the 'PossePlane' {the VSP had never been good with names}) towards the far-off Silver Valley to see the supposedly all-knowing Phoenix.
Meanwhile, two other people had felt the same disturbance Bakjak had earlier.
One of them was none other than TGF. He was still bitter about being banned from the Antioch forum and had in recent times even stopped playing the A2 Prologue and blowing up Rockwell's dropship on its approach...a bug which he had pointed out long ago and relished in. But since it was never permanent, TGF had grown tired of it and quit anything Antioch-related all-together, though his bitter hatred of Rockwell continued, as did his loathing of the cursed VSP and their friends who had helped save Rockwell while he was within TGF's grasp.
Anyways, as stated before, TGF felt the same disturbance. Something Antioch-related had changed. Something having to do with...Rockwell. TGF grinned evilly and called up his old buddy Bakjak. Unfortunately, there was no answer (since Bakjak was currently wandering the streets with a big gun), so TGF grabbed his trusty C-10 and psi blades and went out himself, hoping he could pinpoint the disturbance....
The other one who felt the disturbance instantly was Auspex Turmalis. Though unlike everyone else, he knew exactly what had happened. He and Ytse had been right in the middle of preparing an A3 map when Rockwell, a major character in that particular mission, had vanished. At the same time, Ytse lost his ability to speak in a Rockwell-like voice. Auspex searched his computer frantically for Rockwell sound files, or portrait files, or ANYTHING, but there was nothing.
"What the....?!" Auspex and Ytse screamed together. Then they looked at each other, and seconds later Auspex was dialing Zeus' number.
While that was happening, Bakjak and TGF were both homing in on the source of the disturbance. Little did they know that that source was the home of none other than Mason Wheeler.
Edited Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 3:59 AM by typhoon.