Revision #1

Notice: The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. The correct title is “The Great VSP/WASTE Saga, Part I.”

The Great VSP Saga:
Part I

A New Hope For A3

Table of Contents

Prologue

Setting: Room with many boxes stacked on each other. There's a table in the middle with two chairs opposite each other.

"Alright Rockwell, you've done enough damage for one episode," Bakjak grinned evilly.

"You roody poo. You better let Rockwell out before Rockwell has to kick your jabroni ass," spat Rockwell as he gave Bakjak the people's eyebrow."

"What was that? Hey, don't you give me the people's eyebrow," said Bakjak as he socked Rockwell in the eye.

bakjak

Part I

Begin cheesy Ginyu Force parody

The door opened and in came five figures, dressed in all black, with facemasks black as well. They fanned into the room and stood in a single file line, shortest to tallest.

"What the hell is this?" Bakjak demanded.

"Yo, Rockwell don't need any more jabronis in here," Rockwell managed, then took another whack from Bakjak.

"SPOOKY!" shouted the one in front, who promptly removed its mask to reveal a female. Standing watching thoroughly amused was Bakjak as she knelt down and put her arms in a kung fu position.

"ODIN'S EYE!" shouted the one above her, who also removed his mask upon shouting his name. He leaned forward a bit, leaned on one foot sideways and thrust his right arm outward like he was punching something.

"MACK KILIMARO!" the one at the top cried. Tossing his mask off, he shook his hair, causing Bakjak to laugh at the sight. The tallest one stood up as high as he could and put both of his arms out to his sides.

"LAMBDA CORPS!" the one in front of him shouted. He threw his mask of and Bakjak just laughed at his face, more than his hair. He growled as he squatted and put both of his arms above his head.

"CODEBREAKER!" The one in the middle shouted. He opted not to remove his mask. Instead he just put his arms like he was doing disco or something.

TOGETHER WE ARE..." they all shouted, "THE VANCOUVER STREET POSSE!"

End cheesy Ginyu Force parody

What wasn't expected was what came next. Mack Kilimaro executed a devastating mid air spin, while Odin's Eye kicked and spun his legs wildly. Lambda started waving his arms around madly, in a vain attempt to do lots of karate chops. Spooky did all sorts of pointless back flips, as women always do in these shows. And the Codebreaker hid behind some boxes in the corner with a gun, laughing maniacally. Mack Kilimaro landed just in front of Bakjak. "It's over, Bakjak!

Mack Kilimaro


"It's never over! BECAUSE BAKJAK IS TAKEN OVER THE WORLD WRESTLING FEDERATION!" screamed Bakjak.

He jumped into the fray of the VSP, swinging and kicking like nobody's business. Unfortunately, since he was using wrestling moves, he never actually hit anyone. The posse members were good sports, however. They pretended to be incapacitated.

"Now to finish off the Rock-Err, Mason Rockwell!!" yelled Bakjak.

But Mason Rockwell had escaped on the back of Ian Anduin's vulture bike! Bakjak jumped on his own little buggy. He suddenly looked just like the road warrior. Meanwhile, our heroes (that's the VSP) got up.

"Oh no! Bakjak and the Rock- er.. Mason Rockwell have escaped. Eh?" said Codebreaker.

"To the POSSE MOBILE!" yelled Lambda Corps.

" Err... do we HAVE a Posse Mobile?" asked Mack Kilimaro.

"I dunno. Let's just take Rockwell's tank!" said Codebreaker.

Codebreaker


A cool chase started with Rockwell and Bakjak trying to shoot off grenades at the Posse who were trying to chase Rockwell. Unfortunately Bakjak and Rockwell outran the Posse being in a vulture and all.. but just then a tractor beam reached out and grabbed the Vulture. It was sucked up into a Battlecruiser high up in space. Rockwell and Bakjak were looking for a way out when Zeus Legion walked in, holding a bound and gagged TGF.

"Bakjak, Mason, the time has come to fulfill the prophecy of The Corrupted. And the sacrifice will be... THIS POOR SHMUCK!" Zeus Legion laughed cruelly.

"Mmf mmf mmf mmmmmmmmmmfmmmm!" said TGF.

"So you don't want to be sacrificed to the glorious god Auspex? Well perhaps you need some... persuasion."

Zeus snapped his fingers and in walked Dark_T_Zeratul, Warp Blades ignited.

"I will start with your fingertips, then the tips of your toes. After those have been cut off, I will do your eyes and ears. Your tongue will remain. This is so that you can still scream when the slow, painful torture begins," he said sternly. TGF winced.

"Rockwell, do your stuff!" yelled Zeus."

"Buawhahahahahahahaaha," cackled Bakjak as he suddenly clocked Dark_T_Zeratul with the WWF belt that he stole.

Zeus Legion backed away, "You shall pay fooooool!"

Bakjak cut TGF loose. "It's time to take over the world. Muawhahahaha!"

TGF looked at the controls of the BC. "How the hell does this thing work?" he asked.

Before Bakjak could respond, TGF smashed his fists into the control panel.

"Adjutant Online. This Battlecruiser is now headed on a collision course with Rockwell's Tank."

"Noooooooo! Rockwell's Tank!" Rockwell screamed.

MysteriousGuy


The Battlecruiser plunged down towards the earth below as Zeus Legion made his escape on a Dropship. Meanwhile on Earth, the members of the Vancouver Street Posse were trying in vain to operate the legendary tank of The Ro...err, Rockwell...

"How do you get this stupid thing to work?" Codebreaker complained. He'd tried making it go forward but only succeeded in firing the Arclite Shock Cannon.

"Uh, CB..." Lambda began.

"Shut up, Lambda! I've almost got it!"

"Uh, CB..." said Odin's Eye."

"Dang it, Odin! I know what I'm doing."

"Uh, CB..." Mack Kilimaro tried to warn.

"Mack! I can get this thing to work!" exclaimed the leader, who was getting frustrated.

"IT IS IN SIEGE MODE, YOU IDIOT!" the four of them exclaimed at once.

"Oh, right, I knew that." Codebreaker said. Sweat drops appeared on the foreheads of the other members. Suddenly, Spooky looked out the viewport and saw a Dropship.

"ZEUSIE!!!" she exclaimed and promptly leapt out of the tank to chase after the Dropship containing one Zeus Legion. The males remaining simply shrugged and watched Codebreaker attempt to operate the tank again. Meanwhile Mack Kilimaro took this time to observe out the viewport himself, and saw a rather large looking Battlecruiser on a collision course with the tank.

"Uh...does anybody else see that thing out there?" He asked.

Odin and Lambda looked out as well.

"Ah, you mean the big Battlecruiser on a collision course with us?" Lambda asked casually.

Yep, that's the one." replied Mack. Five seconds of silence.

"OH MY GOD WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE! AHHHHH!!!!" screamed Codebreaker.

"Hmm...I wonder what this button does..." Lambda Corps mused.

He pressed it. Suddenly Lambda, Odin, Codebreaker, and Mack found themselves launching backwards at a velocity of 20 meters per second in a separate pod, which still contained the cannon.

"Cool." Odin managed.

Mack Kilimaro


BACK ON THE FALLING BATTLECRUISER...

"TGF, you idiot! We're doomed!!" screamed Bakjak.

"Yeah, Jabroni." Said Rockwell.

"Shut up!" yelled Bakjak, then he slapped Rockwell again.

"BOTH of you shut up, or feel my wrath...let's just figure out how to get out of here..." said Dark_T_Zeratul.

Suddenly, the BC came to a wrenching stop in midair.

"What the...?" asked TGF.

BACK ON EARTH...

"Darn it! I missed!" complained Spooky.

In trying to catch Zeus Legion's Dropship, Spooky had fired a lockdown canister from her rifle, but missed and hit the Battlecruiser instead, stopping its fall!

Spooky ran up ahead and reloaded, hoping to still catch "Zeusie".

IN THE BC...

"What happened?" asked Bakjak.

"Well, Rockwell feels like this...we were locked down and have only seconds before we fall and hit Rockwell's tank, if ya smell what—"

Bakjak smacked Rockwell again, repeatedly.

"I wasn't asking you...be quiet!!

Meanwhile, Zeratul had taken the opportunity to slice open a hole in the Battlecruiser's hull, and had noticed were still WAY to high to jump. But then he spotted something moving, steadily moving towards the BC.

IN "THE GREAT ONE"'S TANK'S POD...

"Nice going, Lambda." Said Codebreaker.

"Hey, at least the BC won't hit us now." Said Lambda Corps.

"No, instead we're flying straight towards it!!" yelled Codebreaker.

"What?!"

Looking outside, the VSP saw that Codebreaker was right... they were heading straight towards the Battlecruiser, which was locked down for some strange reason...

IN THE BC...

Dark_T_Zeratul saw his chance and knocked Bakjak and TGF aside, grabbed Rockwell, and leapt out the hole... onto top of the tank pod speeding by underneath.

"Whoa!" exclaimed Mack Kilimaro.

"Whoa!" exclaimed Codebreaker.

"Whoa!" exclaimed Lambda Corps.

"Um...whoa, I guess..." said Odin's Eye.

"IT'S ROCKWELL, AND ZERATUL, ON THE POD!!”

"Why are you screaming?" asked Odin's Eye.

"Ummmm...I'm just excited, I guess...”

Seawolf


"Hey, thanks for saving me. But Zeus still wants to have that sacrifice to fulfill the prophecy of The Corrupted. He'll come after us soon." said Zeratul. "Rockwell says that Zeratul is a traitor. He was working for Zeus." "Actually, I just wanted to kill TGF. Wait... isn't he still in the Battlecruiser?" "Rockwell agrees with you man. That stupid jabroni has hated the Great One for years. Now let Rockwell get this Siege Cannon working. Alright, jabronis, stand back, it's gonna be a big explosion. FIRE!!!"

Dark T Zeratul


The tank's massive Arclite cannon swiveled towards the Battlecruiser and mortared a deadly blast at the command ship. Unfortunately, Arclite mortars don't hit their targets as suddenly as they do in the game, so there was a one-second delay before impact, during which everyone's ears were damaged severely by a high-pitched whistle.

"OW!" screamed the VSP (minus Spooky, Rockwell, and Zeratul). Of course, no one could hear them say this because of the intense high note. This was before impact (duh). Before the mortar was able to hit the Battlecruiser, Zeus' Dropship flew in to intercept (or so it seemed) and his ship exploded into a blazing fireball. Fortunately, Zeus was a major character and was conveniently able to dodge fiery debris and jump out of the Dropship, with hero music going on in the background. Down below, Spooky ran by.

"ZEUSIE! NOOOOOO!" she screamed.

The VSP looked at each other and shrugged.

"Hey, wait a minute," said Odin.

"Why?" asked Mack.

"Hmmm...good point," replied Odin.

Meanwhile, in the Battlecruiser, the lockdown wore off and TGF and Bakjak continued to plummet towards the planet.

"Come on TGF, gimme the controls!"

"No way am I letting you pilot this thing!"

Bakjak scrambled at the controls and managed to hit something before he was brushed away by TGF.

"Yamato cannon firing..."

MysteriousGuy


The Yamato cannon fired, miraculously missing everything and flying off into the distance, don't ask why. Meanwhile, Fenrir was relaxing on his lawn, enjoying his chilled glass of fruit juice when suddenly, the Yamato cannon hit. In traditional cartoon style, he stood, hair standing on end, glass of chilled juice crumbling in his hand. Demonstrating his incredible skills on clairvoyance he picked up his Bashing Bat(tm) and headed off in the direction of the falling Battlecruiser.

"TGF is gonna die... Bakjak is gonna die... We're all gonna die!!"

Fenrir


Then Fenrir's mom walked out of the house.

"Now just where do you think you're going young man? You still have a 10 page essay on dirt due in Biology today. Get back in here!"

"Aw, mom..."

Fenrir slowly walked back into the house, depressed. Oh yeah, and the Tank pod containing Rockwell, Zeratul, and the VSP suddenly broke and sparks flew everywhere. "Rockwell wants to know what the hell is going on!" Dark clouds swarmed all over the sky. A huge lightening bolt struck the falling Battlecruiser, seemingly vaporizing it (but really it was just transported to Siberia). Then a large cloud-like hand reached down from the heavens and tore open the pod. A booming voice said, "I AM THE GOD AUSPEX. IT IS MY WILL THAT YOU FIND TGF AND MASON WHEELER AND ELIMINATE THEM, FOR THEY HATE MY MOST BELOVED CREATION, ROCKWELL. YOU WILL DO MY BIDDING, OR TASTE MY WRATH!" The hand and the storm suddenly disappeared. Then Mason Wheeler came driving through on his Vulture that he stole from Ian Anduin. "DIE, ROCKWELL, DIE! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" He fired a Fragmentation Grenade at the Great One. Rockwell raised his eyebrow as the fragmentation grenade flew by his side. "You dare to lock horns with The Great One?", he asked Mason Wheeler. "Yeah, well, this story is just way too small for two Masons!", MW replied. The VSP had not forgotten their holy quest. When Mason Wheeler started to taunt Rockwell they had surrounded MW. As they all moved into position to strike, a giant shadow moved over them. As they looked up to the sky they discovered that a large Proto-cruiser was floating over Mason Wheeler. TGF (who finally understood how to control space-craft, after he had accidentally moved that Battlecruiser into a direct collision-course with Rockwell's tank) had located MW's Proto-cruiser in Siberia and now flew in to rescue Mason Wheeler. By then Mason Wheeler noticed the attacking VSP-members and the next moment he was aboard of his Proto-cruiser. Angrily he said to TGF, "How did you get into my cruiser?"

"Oh well, you left the door unlocked, so I guessed..."

"Oh, well, nevermind. We have more important things to do. Rockwell is still alive, you know..."

"Don't worry. I have already figured out a plan to dispose of him. Listen..."

MysteriousGuy


Meanwhile, in Washington...

"So Mr. Zeus, how did you suddenly become president of the USA?" asked a reporter.

"Oh well, I just decided to nuke the former president and the vice president, so..."

"What's the first thing you're gonna do now that you've become president?"

"Well, first I'm going to scorch this planet with a rain of nuclear fire and after that I'll do it again, but then with more nukes..."

"What? You can't be serious!!!"

"Take that reporter away and nuke him!

Meanwhile Dark_T_Zeratul had joined up with the VSP. Rockwell had gotten himself a brand new tank and so the group continued their mission: To terminate Mason Wheeler and TGF. And in an Arbiter in high orbit over the planet Earth sat High Templar Thrillias. And he knew that the VSP was about to face the greatest challenge they had ever faced...

Thrillias


Barney! Yes, Barney now assaulted our five heroes.

"I love you, you love me, I'll eat your whole fam-i-ly!"

Deafened by The Beast Of Purple, all of our heroes fell to the ground and had epileptic-like violent fits. Codebreaker gave out a cry.

"Nooooo... (gasp) it's too much... (gasp) losing consciousness..."

Rolling in pain, Odin's Eye drew out his mighty spear Hrungnir and threw it at the Purple Menace, popping it and causing it to deflate. With that threat expunged our heroes continued on their grim mission.

Odin’s Eye


Meanwhile, aboard Mason's cruiser...

TGF was finishing up his plan to utterly destroy Rockwell and leave no room for him to come back, period.

"...So then after we overload the phase induction coils we jump into an escape pod and the cruiser goes nova, destroying the whole planet and most of the moon!"

"Exactly."

Their plan finished, they ran off giggling hysterically. But then, Mason Wheeler realized that their plan had a weakness.

"I've realized that our plan has a weakness," proclaimed Mason Wheeler.

"Oh?" said TGF.

"Well, the Proto-cruiser has a main reactor core which explodes when something as small as a feather makes contact with it. It only explodes the cruiser and nothing else, even though it's surrounded by a tight-knit defensive fleet," explained Mason Wheeler.

"Oh," said TGF.

"I have an idea!" said Mason Wheeler.

"Oh?"

"Let's store a plan of our cruiser and all of our evil plans inside this Reaver here, R3-DT, and blast it off towards the VSP!"

"Okay," said TGF."

And so this message was sent.

DEAR GOOD GUYS,

WE ARE PLANNING TO OVERLOAD THE PHASE INDUCTION COILS IN OUR PROTO-CRUISER, JUMP IN AN ESCAPE POD, AND THEN THE CRUISER WILL EXPLODE INTO A SUPERNOVA AND DESTROY THE EARTH AND THE MOON FOR NO OTHER REASON THAN THAT WE'RE EVIL AND WE HAVE TO UPHOLD OUR TITLE. OH YEAH, AND ROCKWELL HAPPENS TO LIVE ON THE EARTH, AND AUSPEX HAS FORCED YOU GUYS TO PROTECT HIM AND KILL US. SO, JUST F.Y.I.

WE ALSO STORED THE PLANS FOR OUR PROTO-CRUISER IN THIS R3 UNIT. FOR DOWNLOAD CONVENIENCE, LOOK FOR THE FILE PROTOCRUISER.BMP. THIS MESSAGE HAS BEEN BROUGHT TO YOU BY MANY DEAD BOTHANS.

-THE BAD GUYS

And so, the Reaver was loaded into the Proto-cruiser's escape pod ('cause it was the only other transport available besides the cruiser itself), and sent to American Express. There, the mailman (Mysterious Guy) took it over to the VSP's Canadian hangout. When the Reaver arrived, the VSP was formulating a plan.

"So Rockwell thinks that they're gonna overload the Proto-Cruiser and cause it to go nova destroying the Earth and part of the moon while they escape in a pod."

"Rockwell, that's the stupidest thing I've ever... SHIT, A REAVER!!!! KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT!!!!!" said Codebreaker.

"Beep beep boop dureep?" said the Reaver.

Then the Arclite Siege Cannon fired, blowing the Reaver into a million pieces. "Damn, that was a close one. I wonder how it got here?" said Mack Kilimaro. Look... Mysterious Guy is the mailman. I'll bet HE'S the guy who tried to kill us with it," said Dark_T_Zeratul. "Eep, said Mysterious Guy as the VSP slowly walked towards him, weapons drawn.

MysteriousGuy


Meanwhile, Zeus Legion had assembled a large arsenal of nuclear weapons for use on the Earth. "Hehehe... die!" he said, and reached for the red button on his briefcase. However, the VSP realized that MysteriousGuy was actually part of the VSP.

"Really?" asked Odin's Eye.

"Well, he passed the trivia and was found worthy, along with Endarire," answered Codebreaker.

"Oh, well, then what are we doing?" asked Mack.

"We're taking up space in this story with useless and meaningless dialogue," answered Spooky, who had recently returned to the VSP.

"Hey, uh, guys?" said Mysterious Guy.

"What?" asked Lambda.

"Shouldn't we search the wreckage?"

"Why?" asked Spooky.

"Because that's what the good guys always do, and they always find stuff," answered Lambda.

So, the VSP (plus Dark_T_Zeratul) searched the wreckage of the Reaver and found a distorted message. Codebreaker read it out loud.

DEAR DEAD BOTHANS,

WE ARE PLANNING TO LIVE ON THE EARTH AND EXPLODE INTO A SUPERNOVA. WE ALSO STORED THE GOOD GUYS IN AN ESCAPE POD AND THE MOON BROUGHT YOU EVIL AUSPEX. FOR NO OTHER REASON THAT WE'RE ROCKWELL, YOU GUYS PROTECT HIM AND OVERLOAD THE PLANS FOR OUR PROTO-CRUISER. THE FILE PROTOCRUISER.BMP HAPPENS TO UPHOLD OUR TITLE. THIS MESSAGE WILL KILL US F.Y.I., SO DOWNLOAD PHASE INDUCTION COILS. JUST JUMP IN OUR PROTO-CRUISER. THE MANY BAD GUYS ARE STORED FOR CONVENIENCE.

-THE EARTH TITLE

"What can it mean?" asked Mack.

"That's not the question," answered Lambda, "The question is: What can we do?"

Codebreaker


Meanwhile, Zeus pressed the red button on his briefcase. The briefcase...OPENED!

And inside was a small device with a computer screen. It beeped a few times, then a voice said, "Nuclear launch detected!"

"Yes," said Zeus.

"Yes, it is all going according to plan. Those missiles will hit Siberia and blow the shit out of it!!! THAT will take care of TGF!! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA—Hey! What the hell is that Proto-Cruiser doing there? It's in the flight path of my nukes! NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!"

And just as TGF and Bakjak exited in the escape pod, the nukes hit the Proto-Cruiser in a blinding flash of light.

Back at the VSP, Mack Kilimaro and MysteriousGuy were engaged in a brutal, cutthroat game of...Go Fish! The action was really fast and furious, until Codebreaker noticed them.

"Guys, what the hell are you doing?" he asked.

"Playing Go Fish!" MG said matter-of-factly.

"No, there's no time for that, it's time for...

"You've got to be kidding me..." Mack said, dread creeping into his voice.

"That's right! I challenge you to a Pokemon battle!" exclaimed Codebreaker.

"Wait a minute! Don't we have to stop that cruiser or something?" asked Spooky.

"Oh, right." CB said dejectedly. "Well, how do we stop it?"

"Hey! I've got an idea! Aren't we in a story?" Lambda Corps yelled suddenly.

Endarire looked up at the sky.

"Aye." he said.

"So why don't we ask the narrator for help?"

Light bulbs appeared above the heads of all of those present. Lambda looked up to the sky.

"Yo, narrator!"

"What the hell do you guys want now?" yelled a scruffy-looking guy by the name of Mark Brown.

"Um, I don't know, write us in a funny plot twist!" exclaimed Mack.

"Dammit, this is what I get for staying up late..." grumbled the teenager sitting in front of his keyboard long after he was supposed to be asleep. Suddenly in orbit, an Arbiter appeared and recalled the occupants of the Proto-cruiser into... the middle of Siberia! And then another Arbiter which was orbiting the remains of the Alderaan system recalled the Proto-cruiser itself there, where it exploded at Alderaan, killing nothing. A third Arbiter at Shakuras then proceeded to recall both of the previous two Arbiters and life continued as it was.

"There you go, you ingrates! That's as good as you're smegging getting without me crossing over all kinds of weird crap!" the narrator continued grumbling.

"Hey, thanks man! Great story, by the way!" everyone said in unison.

Mack Kilimaro


Zeus saw all of this with his own eyes.

"Shit, not only did my nukes NOT hit TGF, but they exploded at an already exploded planet! I guess I'll just have to proceed with plan B. Moloch! Get in here!"

"Yes?"

"I want you to go to Siberia and bring me back a Chinese take-out box filled with TGF's entire body mass. Leave nothing behind! Except some fluids like blood and plasma. Now go! And if Bakjak tries to stop you, bring him to me in ANOTHER Chinese take-out box."

"It shall be done."

Moloch left.

"Yes," said Zeus.

"It all goes according to plan... NOW! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!"

Moloch approached TGF, warp blades ignited. TGF saw the slight distortion of light and quickly dodged Moloch's first blow. He dashed to the nearest turret. Moloch was hesitant to approach.

"Face me coward," TGF cried. "Or are you as big a coward as that fiend Rockwell?"

"How dare you compare me to him!" An enraged Moloch said.

Moloch approached TGF and began his attack. TGF narrowly dodged each blow and occasionally countered with his own canister rifle. Slowly TGF's resolve begins to falter. Moloch cornered TGF and is about to finish him.

"I am Moloch," the dark one said, "I am your death."

"I wouldn't be too sure of that," TGF replied with scorn, "NOW!"

"Suddenly several spider mines popped out of the ground and began to move towards Moloch.

"No!" Moloch cried as the spider mines detonated. Moloch disintegrated into Psionic atoms.

"I'm sorry Moloch but you left me no other choice," TGF said as he walked from the battle zone.

TGF


"Ah, damn. That's against the rules..." grumbled the narrator. "They're not allowed to kill off somebody else's character, or some such.”

"Care to BW?" asked Endarire from nowhere.

"Dammit, don't bug the narrator when he's grumbling, End!" exclaimed Spooky in a high-pitched voice.

"What the hell is he grumbling about now?" Mack wondered aloud.

"For your information, TGF just killed off Moloch, so now I have to think of a non-lame way to resurrect him." whined the monarch of the story.

"Why do you need a non-lame reason? I mean, look at Marvel Comics! They are so lame all the time and do fine!" Lambda Corps observed.

"Hey, good point! Bless you, Lambda!" the narrator exclaimed happily for once.

Suddenly a briefcase containing a million American dollars appeared in the hands of Lambda Corps.

MysteriousGuy


Meanwhile, elsewhere on Earth, Auspex Turmalis began laughing within a basement of a North Carolina dwelling...

"Mwahahaha! My loyal peon Bob is now cloning every single hero in The Antioch Chronicles! So what if a Moloch clone was killed off? We still have the REAL one!"

As an evil smile crossed the face of a disgruntled campaign maker, one crossed that of the narrator as well.

"I am such a genius," he said to himself. Then he said it to the characters. "Well, have fun guys."

"Wait!" Codebreaker yelled. "Aren't you going to tell us what you did?"

A snicker answered them.

"That was just plain crappy. Someone sent Moloch against me, so I killed him. End of story. Oh and Marvel Comics almost went bankrupt when they did their own little 'clone story'. Just thought I'd let you know," said TGF.

Suddenly twenty Galactus clones appeared and surrounded TGF. "Uhh... I take it all back! I swear!" screamed TGF. Then the Galactus clones disappeared.

Back in the North Carolina dwelling, Auspex was having some problems with the cloning machine. "Damn! Those clones only last for twelve hours and their time is up! Oh great, now the machine is breaking. Just great. Oh well. Guess I'll just have to find and kill TGF and Bakjak myself."

Auspex laughed evilly out loud, then got into an Arbiter and flew off to rendezvous with Rockwell's legendary Siege Tank. An epic battle was soon to come...

Codebreaker


Auspex's arbiter hovered above TGF and Bakjak. Suddenly, a warp rift appeared. Out of the rift came Rockwell. His tank primed and ready for battle. Auspex came out of his Arbiter and took up a pair of Psi Blades.

"It ends here," TGF said, staring into Rockwell's menacing eyes.

"That's exactly what Rockwell was thinking," Rockwell said with disgusting progressive rock playing in the background.

"So why don't you make like a tree... and know your damn role."

"Shut up, you retard," Bakjak screamed. "Prepare yourself!"

In unison, TGF and Bakjak charged toward Auspex and Rockwell. Auspex ignited his blades and Rockwell took aim with his Arclite cannon. Bakjak pounced on Auspex and met him blade for blade. While TGF narrowly dodged mortar blasts from Rockwell's tank, he suddenly leapt up into the air and landed right on top of Rockwell's tank. He ignited his Psi blades and began to shred the mighty tank into pieces. Rockwell struggled to bring the turret to bear on TGF, but TGF was too quick for him.

"Hold still so Rockwell can shoot ya!" Rockwell ranted.

"I think not," TGF said as he delivered the final blow to the siege tank.

There was a large and deafening explosion. When the ashes cleared an injured Rockwell lay motionless on the floor.

"Please," Rockwell said. "Have mercy on Rockwell."

"Maybe in Rockwell's dreams." TGF said as he dug his Psi blade into Rockwell's heart.

Rockwell took one last breath and went limp. He was gone.

"No!" Auspex cried. "My greatest creation! How could I have let this happen? You will pay dearly for this! Mark my words! YOU WILL PAY!"

A warp rift opened and Auspex entered. It was over. TGF then walked over to Bakjak's body.

"Did you get him?" Bakjak said with a dying voice.

"Yes," TGF replied.

"Good," Bakjak said, and with that he closed his eyes and passed away.

TGF


"Awwww, crap," the narrator exclaimed.

"What is it?" Mack asked from his game of Go Fish.

"Rockwell is dead."

"WHAT?!" the whole VSP screamed at once.

"He's dead...he was killed by TGF."

"Noooo," Codebreaker moaned.

"Auspex killed Bakjak but could not save Rockwell."

"AUSPEX?" Lambda asked.

"Yes," a new voice said sadly.

The VSP turned around just in time to see a warp rift close. And there, at its location, was Ruben Moreno.

"Who's this Moreno guy?" Odin whispered.

"It's Auspex, ya dummy," CB whispered back fiercely.

"Oh."

Auspex walked over to the group slowly, looking very tired. When he finally reached the group, he looked up for the first time, directly at Codebreaker.

"You lead the VSP, correct, Codebreaker?"

CB swallowed and answered, "uuuuhh...wellll...yeah...."

For the first time, CB and the others noticed an angry resolve in Auspex's eyes, burning through the weariness.

"Then," Auspex said, "I need your help to make TGF pay."

"We're there, man."

"Good. Thank you. Now, let's figure out how to do this..."

Meanwhile, back at the White House, the man known as President Zeus suddenly crumpled to the floor as a bullet streaked through the Oval Office window and hit him in the head.

And outside, holding an assassin’s rifle, was...Zeus Legion! Yes, the President was a clone of Auspex's that had gone mad and escaped from his NC home. The REAL Zeus grabbed the fake Zeus's nuke-launching suitcase (figuring it could DEFINATELY come in handy later) and climbed aboard a cloaked wraith and sped towards the location of the VSP and Auspex (for plot convenience, he knows exactly where that location is and what the VSP and Aus are doing...he's good friends with the narrator, who's been keeping him up-to-date.

Seawolf


Everybody from the forum (minus TGF, Bakjak, and Mason Wheeler) showed up for Rockwell's funeral. Even the Rockwell haters. "We didn't hate Rockwell THAT much. We just wanted to see somebody beat the crap out of him or something," said one of them. The VSP, Dark_T_Zeratul, Seawolf, the Antioch Heroes, and Team Antioch made a solemn vow right then and there that no matter what happened, TGF would pay dearly. Rockwell's death would be avenged.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, nobody showed up at Bakjak's funeral except TGF and Mason Wheeler (everybody else was too busy attending Rockwell's).

Dark T Zeratul


After the funeral, Auspex and the VSP returned to the VSP headquarters in, well, Vancouver BC. It wasn't anything more then Lambda's basement, but no one cared. Lambda was in the corner watching television. Codebreaker was sitting at the table, doing that knifey hand thing(Where you hold out your hand flat, and stab the table with the knife through the spaces between your fingers... WTF is that called?) Anyways, Codebreaker was doing that, thinking it made him look tough. Unfortunatley, he wasn't very good at it. He had stabbed himself 3 times. The rest of the VSP just kind of stood around watching. Codebreaker and Lambda suddenly noticed.

"Oh right, the revenge thing." Lambda said. He and Codebreaker got up and joined the group.

"So what do we do?" Auspex asked.

"What CAN we do?" Odin asked.

The whole group just stood there, trying to think. Suddenly, the front door swung dramatically open and a dark figure walked in in an equally dramatic way. Unfortunately, it went unnoticed by the VSP in the basement.

"Is someone up there?" Lambda called.

The figure opened the basement door dramatically, and, bathed in shadows, dramatically walked down the steps. Suddenly he tripped and fell down the stairs, head over heels. When he landed, he was upside down with one of his feet caught in the railing. It was Zeus Legion.

"Hey Zeus." Lambda said.

"A%&*#()%&!!" Zeus said. The VSP, and Auspex, ran over to him. Auspex investigated where his foot was caught. Then he said, slowly, carefully...

"Zeus... we're going to have to cut off the foot."

"WHAT?!?!?!?" Zeus yelled.

"Oh, sorry, did I say foot? I meant we'd have to cut off that railing." Auspex corrected himself.

A few minutes later, Zeus was back on his feet, so to speak. But before he could explain what he was doing there, Lambda's TV suddenly broke in...

"This just in! President Zeus Legion, famous for his campaign "If you don't vote for me, I'll nuke all you sorry bastards. Even if you do, I'll STILL Nuke all you sorry bastards" has just been assassinated! By who, we don't know.”

The VSP and Auspex all looked at Zeus standing in the corner.

"Hey.... you don't look that dead to ME!" Mack exclaimed.

"That's because I killed the president."

"Wait, wait." MysteriousGuy said. "Let me get this straight. Zeus... You are Zeus Legion?"

"Yes."

"And the president was Zeus Legion."

"Yes."

"And you killed Zeus Legion."

"Yes."

"And now Zeus Legion is dead?"

"No. The president is dead."

"Isn't the president Zeus Legion?"

"Yes."

MysteriousGuy stared for a moment. Then he suddenly collapsed on the ground.

"Yo, narrator!" Mack yelled, again.

"What IS it?" The narrator said, obviously pissed off.

"WTF is going on?" Mack asked.

"Double-you-tea-eff? What does that mean?" The narrator asked.

"I can't tell you. I might get banned." Mack said.

"Okay look. Auspex was desperately trying to clone all his heroes for some damn reason. The Moloch clone was sent by the President Zeus Legion, also a clone, to kill TGF, not a clone. (Who'd want to clone him?) TGF managed to kill the Moloch clone, then killed Rockwell. Then the real Zeus Legion came and killed the Zeus clone, who had become president. But we can all rest easy, since Auspex's clones last only 12 hours."

Everyone just kind of stared at each other. Endarire revived MysteriousGuy. Suddenly, Spooky came back from... somewhere where she was before.

"Did I miss anything?" Suddenly she spied Zeus in the corner.

"ZEUSIE!!!" She primed her lockdown, ready to capture him. Quickly, Auspex grabbed the gun away from her. The rest of the VSP restrained her as best they could.

"Lemme go! Lemme go!" She kept saying.

Codebreaker reached out and pinched her neck.

"What are you doing CB?!??" she asked.

"The Vulcan nerve pinch!"

"Well it's not working. You have to pinch a little higher."

"Little help?" Codebreaker asked the narrator.

The narrator obliged. Suddenly, Spooky fell asleep.

"Okay, now for why I came." Zeus said.

"See, I found something out. When the Antioch Chronicles came into the scene, Aus replaced the normal Arbiter sounds with those of Turmalis. So anyways, does anyone else remember the original Arbiter unit responses?"

Everyone shook their head.

"Well one of them was "Do you seek knowledge of time travel? If you kept clicking on him, he started to teach you about it. But we never clicked enough to learn the truth."

"So what are you saying?" Codebreaker asked.

"I'm saying that we might be able to go into the past an re-write this story, our own way. Unfortunately, we can only do that with the help of the original Arbiter. Thanks to Aus, he's gone forever."

"Aww crap! What will we do?" Mack asked.

"Well, we obviously have to break into a campaign that still has the original Arbiter sounds. Now, most campaigns are smart enough to replace the unit responses with the corresponding new ones."

"Except Insurrection!" Codebreaker said.

"Exactly. We have to break into the Insurrection campaign, and click on the arbiter until we know more about time travel. It's our only hope."

So that night, Auspex, Zeus, and the VSP set off for the offices of Aztech New Media. They were about to face the greatest challenge of all. Playing through Insurrection, and all heroes must survive....

MysteriousGuy


While the gang was their way to Hell, aka Aztech New Media, Flyspeck showed up.

"Hey," he said.

"What're you doing here?" asked Auspex.

"I really don't know," Flyspeck replied. "What're you guys doing?"

"We're going to break into Insurrection to get the sound files from the original Arbiter so we can figure out how to time travel in order to go back in time so that we can stop TGF from killing Rockwell. I think," answered Codebreaker.

"Oh. Well, I never really liked Rockwell, but since I showed up at the funeral, I guess I have to avenge his death. Mind if I tag along? Even if it means facing certain death by playing Insurrection?" Flyspeck said.

"Which," the narrator cut in, "Flyspeck has never done."

"I guess so," Mack answered. "As long as you don't eat all of the pretzels."

Flyspeck


The offices of Aztech New Media although located in Ontario, were unfortunately in the middle of some far off desert. No one knows why really...

Zeus had been sent to scout ahead. There wasn't anything to scout. Then desert was so flat that you could see the offices miles away. It was really just a way to keep Spooky and Zeus apart. Auspex and the VSP just walked, and walked, with a little water between them. Why they didn't take a car, no one knows.

Auspex rapped on the front door of Aztech New Media. It opened slightly, and an ugly short bald man peered through.

"What do you want?" The man said in a raspy voice.

"Err... we came to talk to you about Insurrection." said Auspex.

"Agg! You're the one called Auspex! You may not enter, you superior campaign maker!!!" The man slammed the door and bolted it.

"I guess we'll have to find another way in." Said Codebreaker. At this time, Zeus returned to the group.

"Hey guys! I found the office-" Zeus began. Everyone just looked at him pityingly, except Spooky. She looked at him-

But wait, this isn't about Zeus and Spooky, this is about The VSP and TGF.

Mack Kilimaro


Meanwhile, where was TGF?? Well, TGF had escaped in a wraith and was on his way to Auspex's NC home. What he was up to, no one knew.

"Bakjak may be dead, but so's Rockwell. My quest is complete. Now to move into the final phase, and make sure Rockwell can never return."

Codebreaker


Back at the Aztech New Media bases, the VSP had scouted the perimeter. It seemed impossible to breach. Zeus and Auspex agreed.

"Well, is there any way we can blast them with to break a hole in the wall or something?" Mack asked no one in particular.

"To do that, we'd need a Nuke. This place is sealed up tight." MysteriousGuy said. Everyone turned to Zeus. Zeus stared at them for a minute.

"Err... why are you all staring at me?" Zeus asked. Then it occurred to him. "Of course! The briefcase!"

Zeus hefted the briefcase, arched his arm, and prepared to toss it at the building.

"NO!" Lambda said. "We need it for the NUKE!"

"Ohhh...." Zeus said. He opened it, and prepared the Nuke. A tiny red dot appeared on the Aztech building.

"Now if I know Starcraft, we can just jump into the nearest bunker, and only the bunker will get destroyed." Odin said. They looked around. There were 3 bunkers. Odin, Endarire, Codebreaker, and MysteriousGuy jumped in one. Lambda Corps, Spooky, Dark_T_Zeratul, and Mack Kilimaro jumped in the next, although Spooky wanted to go with Zeus. But Zeus and Auspex jumped into a special one for TAC Staff only. Then the nuke hit, blasting a hole in the side of the building. The VSP and the TAC Staff jumped out of their bunkers, respectively.

"Now to enter Insurrection." Codebreaker said. The VSP looked from one to the other. Suddenly Lambda yelled "Reboot!" And pressed a button on his chest. Suddenly, everyone had become a Starcraft unit. Codebreaker was in a ghost uniform. Lambda was in a tank, MysteriousGuy was in a wraith, and Odin was a high templar. Mack was wearing firebat armour, and Endarire was in a corsair. Zeratul became...well, Zeratul, Spooky turned into a medic, Zeus turned into Moloch, and Auspex turned into Trent Aster. Next thing they knew, they were in the gameworld. The place, New Dresdin (One of the abysmal Insurrection locations)

Jack Frost was running up to them.

"Are you the reinforcements?" he asked, his voice flat and raspy. Auspex (As trench) raised his gun. "I EAT no name chumps like Jack Frost for breakfast." Suddenly Mack and Codebreaker jumped in front of him.

"Aus, no! All hero's must survive, remember?" Codebreaker pointed to the sky, where the words were written.

"Damn." Aus said.

"Let's not forget why we're here!" Said Lambda.

"We need to find an Arbiter." Said Odin.

Suddenly, a pack of hungry ultralisks came running. MysteriousGuy, being the only guy in an air to ground unit, opened fire. Odin launched a psi storm and hallucinations. Aus and Codebreaker, their Lockdown useless, just cloaked and opened fire. Zeus and Zeratul, already cloaked, attacked with Psi-Blades swinging. Mack got in close with his flame throwers, while Spooky constantly healed him. Endarire just flew around, hoping some air units would come by.

Just as the VSP began to push the ultralisks back, a pack of guardians came flying in. Endarire flew in heroically, and nevermind that they couldn't shoot him. He opened fire, but there were too many. The last thing Auspex saw was a big glob coming at his head. Well, the last thing they saw before they were recalled. Next thing they knew, they were all inside an Arbiter.

"Do you seek knowledge of time travel?" asked the arbiter. Everyone crowded around.

"It worked!" Said Codebreaker. They came out in Auspex's NC home. Auspex was having some problems with the cloning machine. "Damn! Those clones only last for twelve hours and their time is up! Oh great, now the machine is breaking. Just great. Oh well. Guess I'll just have to find and kill TGF and Bakjak myself." Auspex turned to leave, but came face to face with the other Auspex.

"We have to talk." Zeus said.

Auspex's arbiter, loaded with the VSP, Zeus, and the future Auspex, hovered above TGF and Bakjak. Suddenly, a warp rift appeared. Out of the rift came Rockwell. His tank primed and ready for battle. Auspex came out of his Arbiter and took up a pair of Psi Blades.

It ends here." TGF said, staring into Rockwell's menacing eyes.

"That's exactly what Rockwell was thinking," Rockwell said with disgusting progressive rock playing in the background.

"So why don’t you make like a tree... and know your damn role."

"Shut up you retard," Bakjak screamed. "Prepare yourself!"

In unison, TGF and Bakjak charged toward Auspex and Rockwell. Auspex ignited his blades and Rockwell took aim with his Arclite cannon. Bakjak pounced on Auspex and met him blade for blade. TGF narrowly dodged mortar blasts from Rockwell's tank. TGF suddenly leapt up into the air and landed right on top of Rockwell's tank. He ignited his Psi blades and began to shred the mighty tank into pieces. Rockwell struggled to bring the turret to bear on TGF, but TGF was too quick for him.

"Hold still so Rockwell can shoot ya!" Rockwell ranted.

"I think not," TGF said as he delivered the final blow to the siege tank.

There was a large and deafening explosion. When the ashes cleared an injured Rockwell lay motionless on the floor.

"Please," Rockwell said. "Have mercy on Rockwell."

"Maybe in Rockwell's dreams." TGF said as he dug his Psi blade into Rockwell's heart.

Rockwell disappeared in a puff of smoke.

"What the hell??" TGF said, staring down at where Rockwell had disintegrated.

Zeus and the VSP poured out of the Arbiter, with another Auspex. Rockwell was with them. TGF just stared in mute shock. Bakjak got up and scratched his head.

Mack looked around, sighed, and yelled "NARRATOR!!!"

The narrator grumbled and obliged.

"When the VSP went back in time, the cloned Rockwell a few times at North Carolina. They grabbed the real Rockwell. Then Auspex took the cloned Rockwell (who didn't know he was a clone) and left to face TGF. Auspex allowed TGF to kill the Rockwell clone. But since it was one of the clones, it disappeared after 12 hours. TGF happened to have his battle just as the clone was disappearing. So, TGF actually killed the clone, and the VSP took the real Rockwell back to the future, where he's hiding. This allowed Rockwell to survive without creating a irreparable paradox of the space time continuum." The narrator stopped, took a deep breath, and shrugged. MysteriousGuy collapsed again.

"Damn you all!" TGF screamed. He jumped onto a vulture and escaped. Bakjak just sort of disappeared.

"VICTORY!" exclaimed Codebreaker. The VSP picked up MysteriousGuy, got in the arbiter, and went back to the future.

"So Rockwell was dead, then you went to the past, cloned Rockwell, got that jabroni to kill Rockwell’s clone, then brought Rockwell back to the future?" Rockwell asked.

Auspex nodded.

"Rockwell has a headache." Rockwell said.

"I'll get him back to A3," said Zeus. He and Rockwell disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Auspex turned to the VSP.

"Now to find TGF. We have unfinished business."

MysteriousGuy


But before the VSP could check under Auspex's rug, a wraith crashed into the roof of Auspex Studios and effectively ended the search. For among the rubble surrounding the crashed wraith came TGF.

"Hah hah hah!" laughed TGF, "MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Although Auspex's apartment held little space, TGF's Evil Cackle(TM) echoed for effect.

And even though it was 10 (7 VSP, Seawolf, Zeratul and Auspex) to 1, the VSP, Auspex, Dark_T_Zeratul and Seawolf all trembled in dramatic fear. Except for MysteriousGuy, who was still unconscious in the arbiter, listening to the arbiter pilot tell him all of the secrets of time travel in the Mysterious One's sleep.

"Huh?" said Lambda, "What was the purpose of crashing the wraith into Auspex's apartment?"

"Uh, er..." TGF was lost for words.

"You punk!" accused Auspex, "You killed the real Rockwell in an alternate timeline, then killed a fake hallucination/clone of him!"

Auspex then proceeded to throw .wavs at TGF.

"I say we frag this commander!" -Marine

"Orders, sir!" -Siege Tank

"*bleep*" -Reaver

"What would your friends Khorun and Nurohk think?" -Zethys

"Look, behind you! It's my man-eating jigglewhacker!" -Trench

"Ha! That's useless!" defied TGF.

Auspex then threw more .wavs at TGF, assisted by the VSP who threw in their own little .wavs that sounds like crap.

"My name is a killing word!"

"*static*En*static*Tar*static*du*weird microphone noises*" submitted Lambda.

"Rockwell's layin' the smackdown!"

"NO! NOT ROCKWELL!!! NO!!"

TGF began to shrivel up into an orange. No, not a pure orange.

"Alright! It's working!" proclaimed Odin.

"Rockwell here."

"Get your candy @$$ out of the way!"

TGF then turned into an orange.

However, they all forgot about Mason Wheeler, who had been off somewhere for some odd reason and won't even know he was there until later, when he'll proceed to time travel so that he can be there, etc...MysteriousGuy fell unconscious again, even though he was already unconscious.

Anyway, Mason Wheeler burst into the apartment and saw...nothing. The arbiter was cloaking everything. All he saw was the arbiter patrolling around the room, so he locked it down with his canister rifle. MysteriousGuy fell out of the arbiter (because when a moving vehicle stops, the stuff in it keeps moving forward and MysteriousGuy happened to like being unconscious right next to the open hatch) and landed on Mason Wheeler.

MysteriousGuy awoke to see the rest of the VSP and Auspex playing .wav files off of Auspex's computers and an orange lying on the floor. He also noticed that he was on top of Mason Wheeler. MysteriousGuy groped in his pocket to find a game of Mat-Tok, or whatever the name of that one game from Mind Over Matter is called.

"Hey guys," he announced, "I found a game of _____ in my pocket. I must've picked it up when I was in the arbiter."

"Hey," said Mason, "Can I play?"

So MysteriousGuy and Mason Wheeler proceeded to play a vicious and meaningless game of ______. It was very tiring, so they took a lunch break and decided to eat oranges. Everybody sat down and ate an orange from a spare box of oranges that Auspex kept in his apartment.

"Hey," asked Auspex, "Where'd TGF go?"

They looked around, but they couldn't find any more oranges other than the ones they were eating and the ones in Auspex's secret stash. Mack blushed, and said:

"I'm very organized, and I saw him on the floor, and well, you know, it just sitting there and all, and I had noticed Auspex's box of oranges, so while MysteriousGuy and Mack played _______ I kinda, well, dropped him into the box..."

Everybody then looked at their oranges like the way a guy looks at the scum stuck to the bottom of his shoe and proceeded to spit pieces of oranges out of their mouths.

Then Mysterious Guy gripped his stomach and started screaming.

"It's coming... out... of... me... AAAARRRRGGGH!!!"

A giant orange alien that looked remarkably like TGF jumped out of Mysterious Guy's stomach. Mysterious Guy proceeded to faint.

"HEEEEEEEEY... WHY DIIIIIIIIIIDN'T MYYYYYYYYSTERIOOOOOOUS GUUUUUUUUY DIIIIIIIIIIIIIE?" hissed the TGF-alien.

"Because I didn't want to kill off any undeserving forumites," said a teenager named Christopher Colton.

"But you ARE deserving. Bye bye now."

The TGF-alien suddenly suffered a fatal heart attack. Then the narrator decided that it wasn't an exciting enough way to end the story, so he tried to think of a super-lame way to resurrect him. But he couldn't think of one.

Will the narrator ever think of a super-lame way to resurrect the TGF-alien?

Codebreaker


Then he thought of one. Since the TGF-alien was really only an Infested TGF, the Overmind reincarnated him.

"YOU HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAVE WOOOOOOOON THIIIIIIIIIIS TIIIIIIIME, HEEEEEEEEEATHENS! BUT I'LL BEEEEEE BAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!" hissed Infested TGF. Then he disappeared. A Medic then arrived.

"Ready for your sponge bath?" she said. Mysterious Guy woke up and left with her. When he came back, he had a huge scar on his stomach and kiss marks all over his face.

"Those Medics... Afhiahsgiahgaeguhgal..." said Mysterious Guy.

The VSP, Dark_T_Zeratul, Auspex, Zeus (who had returned for no apparent reason), and Seawolf merely shrugged.

"Hey guys!" yelled the narrator. "We need to think of a name for your group! I hate typing out a long string of names! From now own you're the TGF-Hunters. There, I said it. Now go off and hunt TGF. As a plot twist the Overmind warped Mason Wheeler to his location and infested him as well. So go kick some ass!"

MysteriousGuy


Unbeknownst to the big pack of people who had been hunting after TGF and Mason Wheeler, and all Rockwell haters, TGF had gone to sleep on a train and when he woke up he was back in real life.

"Ah, dude, that sucks." The narrator whined.

"What!?!?!" came the unison exclamation.

"Well, TGF, he's gone back into the real world. There's absolutely no way to get him out of there, even as the narrator, so we'll just have to pretend like we killed him and then go find Mason Wheeler." The narrator reasoned.

"Okay narrator, I am thy god Auspex, take us to where Mason is and give us lots of mean weapons so we can kill him." Auspex said, mostly jokingly.

"No can do, my good man. I'm going to sleep. Have fun, fellas." The narrator's voice began to fade.

"No! You can't do that! We need you, narrator! We need you!!!!" exclaimed Seawolf.

A laugh was heard, then suddenly Seawolf had a moustache drawn on his face and found himself wearing a pink tutu.

***

How will they find Mason Wheeler?

What will Seawolf do about his clothing?

Stay tuned!

Mack Kilimaro


"AAAAAH!!" I can't do ANYTHING like THIS!" Seawolf moaned about his new attire. "Although the mustache kinda makes me look like Jay Brockman...."

"Who?" Codebreaker asked.

"Just a major character in my campaign...wait a second. That's it!"

"What?" everyone asked.

"Mason Wheeler is a staffer for my campaign, SpecOps! Maybe I can reason with him...."

"Uhhh...we still have to FIND him, Seawolf," Zeratul pointed out.

"Oh. Right." Seawolf shrugged.

So Auspex had KurenaiJiku make Seawolf some new snazzy-looking clothes and the team set off to look for clues about where to find the supposedly-infested Mason Wheeler, who the narrator had said had been stolen and infested by the Overmind.

There weren't many clues to be found. All that Mason had left behind after playing his game with MG and being whisked away was a high-tech keypad and some orange skins.

Auspex picked up the keypad while everyone else searched for more clues. He couldn't even get past a little startup screen.

"%$#@^$%&!! It won't work!"

Codebreaker, attempting to live up to his name, took the keypad and starting typing away at it. Within five minutes, he had found records of Mason's past dealings with Bakjak and TGF, several hate e-letters about Rockwell, the secret plot for Common Foe (which he copied to a disk and shoved in his pocket), the location of Mason's secret hideout, some more anti-Rockwell lett...

Wait! The location of Wheeler's hideout?! "Hey guys! Over here!"

The team crowded around and grinned when they saw it. They all climbed aboard Auspex's arbiter and took off for the secret hideout at....

Meanwhile, in the "real world", TGF dozed off again, with several hours of his train ride left....

Seawolf


MilkDuds... runs through the door to the narration office and slugs the narrator into unconsciousness before taking his mic.

MilkDuds... "So the crew headed for Mason's.."

Seawolf "MilkDuds..., what the?! YOU'RE THE NARRATOR?!"

MilkDuds... "No he, err, ah, mistakenly fell into a sleep-like state, and, seeing the position needed to be filled, I stepped in."

Seawolf "Oh, carry on then."

MilkDuds... "Right. Now, while the Arbiter was zipping towards Mason's secret hideout at it's maximum velocity of 1.3 Miles per hour, TGF suddenly snapped to attention after dreaming about a military role call he was late for. When he awoke, eye witness who were immediately shot described him as 'mumbling something about yessir, I'm sorry I was late and nosir I didn't mean to come naked *bang*' and the witnesses somehow didn't feel like giving us more reports, as they had bullet holes in their heads."

Auspex "I don't mean to intrude, but could you get back to us? I'm getting kind of anxious waiting for this, it's been.. let's see now... almost six months..."

Spooky "No, I think you're talking about.."

Zeus "SHHH!!! He keeps falling into states where he thinks Antioch 3 is real life and visa versa"

Spooky "oh.. I see.."

Odin "Wow."

Seawolf "Get back to the story!"

MilkDuds... "Right. So suddenly MilkDuds... (the ghost not the narrator) and his trusty medic side-kick named Elissa locked down the Arbiter, hopped aboard and then restored it."

Seawolf "MilkDuds...! My god!! You FINALLY got into a VSP story!!"

MilkDuds...G "Very astute of you to observe such."

Elissa "What's the VSP?"

MilkDuds...G "Elissa, you can go back to real life now."

Elissa "oh ok" [Exits State Right]

MilkDuds...G "I've come to aid you in getting revenge on TGF. I must warn you, I am not a Rockwell fan, though I think he makes an interesting addition to the plot and therefore will aid you in saving him. Also, I want to say to Zeus: Excellent job putting up with all of our.."

MilkDuds...N "Get on with it!"

Narrator [waking up] "what the..?"

MilkDuds...N "Shit gotta go.. c'ya next episode!"MilkDuds... who was in the narrator's office ran off stage to the right where sounds of two people making out and a medic's uniform being cast aside could be heard...

MilkDuds... "Alright, now I can stop putting that G after MY name!"

Seawolf "Gawdamnit!! It's been a whole episode and we STILL haven't gotten any closer to Mason's hideout!"

Auspex "No, not again!! It's being delayed AGAIN!!"

Zeus [Whisper] "He's upset about Diablo 2 and therefore mimics the release of HIS products after his idol company, Blizzard"

Spooky, Odin *nod* "We see" [Spooky and Odin give each other a funny look and shrug off the eeriness of their togetherness for the moment]

Narrator "Right, so approximately 309 hours later, after several fights between various VSP and TAC crew members and much whining from Auspex about release dates, they arrive at Mason's secret hide out, only to find.."

MilkDuds... "I dunno, I just wanted to finally get into an episode, someone else can decide what happens next.."

MilkDuds


A huge fortress with dark clouds in the background. The usual evil thing. Of course since VSP had no detector, they didn't know that the field ahead held 500 spider mines.

***

Bakjak had stowed away on the Arbiter biding his chance. "Haha, I will keel dem all when they advance towards Mason Wheeler's Fortress," laughed Bakjak quietly.

"Rockwell hates Arbiters..." said Rockwell as he walked past Bakjak's hiding place.

"Oh great! He's still alive? I think I've just had a change of plan," Bakjak said in disgust. Bakjak leapt out in front of Rockwell and hit him with a blackjack really hard making him to fall and hit his head on a metal box causing brain damage.. err wait nevermind. He already has enough brain damage, he's Rockwell after all. Bakjak picked up Rockwell's unconscious body and jumped out of the Arbiter and jumped in a speedy motor boat and took off...

 "Aww crap!" The narrator exclaimed."

”What the... you're back?!?" Endarire asked.

"Yeah. Guess what? Bakjak, the one we forgot about, has returned!"

"So?" Seawolf asked.

"SO... he kidnapped Rockwell." the narrator finished.

"Goddamn. I thought he was dead!!" MysteriousGuy exclaimed.

"No, no, that was in the alternate timeline where Rockwell got killed by TGF before we went back in time and cloned Rockwell and-" Codebreaker said.

MysteriousGuy collapsed again.

"Let's forget about Mason. We need to save Rockwell... AGAIN!" Odin said.

The VSP jumped into the nearest Wraith and were off!

bakjak


While the VSP (now composed of the original five, Endarire, and the still-unconscious Mysterious Guy) went after Bakjak and Rockwell, the rest of the team (Auspex, Zeus, Seawolf, Dark_T_Zeratul, and MilkDuds) jumped out of the arbiter and starting walking towards Wheeler's fortress.

"Wait," Zeus warned.

"What?"

"I'm detecting a minefield up ahead."

"How can you tell?" Milk Duds asked.

"Mason's keypad...it has a little short-range detector. Only good up to five feet...you almost stepped on a mine, MD. I've gotten pretty good at using this thing, actually...." Zeus held up the little keypad for effect.

"That's almost TOO convenient," Auspex said. "Wait, I've heard that same phrase before...related to a minefield, I think...." He shrugged. "Oh well, can't remember where."

"So how can we get past?" Zeratul asked.

After nearly five whole minutes of head-scratching and "How about...oh nevermind, that won't work"s, Seawolf suggested using a nuke.

"Hmmm...yeah that outta work," Zeus said. He retrieved the briefcase from the arbiter and targeted the center of the minefield....

***

Meanwhile, the VSP swerved through the maze-like cliffs around the winding river moat surrounding Wheeler's fortress in their wraith.

"Gimme the controls, Lambda! You're gonna get us all ki...AAAAAHHHH!!"

Codebreaker ducked instinctively as Lambda swerved under a rocky overhang at the last second.

"$#!%, Lamb, watch it! Give me the controls!" CB demanded.

"Forget it, I'm doing fine. Back off, man!"

Lambda piloted the wraith through the canyon around the river, trying desperately to keep up with Bakjak's boat....

***

"What's that noise?"

"What noise, Zeratul?" MD asked.

"Sounds like...uh-oh."

The wraith/boat chase had now circled the entire perimeter of Mason Wheeler's base, and as the cliffs opened up where they had originally entered, both the boat and the wraith came into view...

...right next to the now-descending nuke.

"Cancel it, Zeus! Or they're gonna die!!" Auspex shouted.

"I can't!!" Zeus screamed back. "It's already on free-fall mode!"

"Move it, Posse! Move!!" Seawolf yelled at the wraith, knowing it was a futile gesture....

***

What happens next?

Will the VSP get fried by the friendly nuke?

Will Auspex, Zeus, Seawolf, Zeratul, and MilkDuds be able to break into Mason's fortress?

Will the VSP, if it escapes the nuke, be able to save Rockwell?

Will Codebreaker gain control of the wraith?

Find out next time on...The Great VSP Saga!

***

Seawolf


However, as futile a gesture as it was, Lambda saw Seawolf talking and, miraculously, read his lips. Lambda slugged Codebreaker, whom he was fighting over the controls with, and pulled up out of range of the nuke blast. Bakjak's boat, however, hit the edge of the moat, flew over the large sandbar, a cop car, and two fat cops with doughnuts and expressions that read "Holy virgin Mary!" only to land safely in a river on the other side whilst the James Bond Theme played blaringly out of Bakjak's tape deck.

"That was close," Seawolf muttered.

"Good thing you said that," Zeus added.

MilkDuds was too busy rolling in the dirt laughing his ass off and getting his ghost uniform all messed up to comment.

The wraith arched down towards the river splashing water behind it as it quickly gained on Bakjak's boat. Now that Lambda had full control and could reach the 'after burner' without having to fight everyone for it. Just as the wraith was about to catch Bakjak, wings extended from the boat as it leapt from the water. The Wraith, which Lambda has lost control of whilst staring at Bakjak’s quick escape, slammed into the water and quickly disappeared beneath the surface.

"My God!" Seawolf proclaimed.

"Screw ups" MilkDuds spat in the dirt. "I'll get the boat. You guys get Mason."

"Will do," Zeus nodded without thinking of why he was answering to the would-be ghost. The crew who had been in charge of Mason's hideout, minus MilkDuds, ran across the now-clear mineless field to the front gate, which was locked, bolted, barricaded, electrified, shielded, protected, cropped, sized, mashed, barred, deterred, and packed so that no entry would be possible. Auspex, Zeus, Seawolf, and Zeratul stopped dead and began to ponder how to get through....

"Damn fool of 'em to let Lambda drive," MilkDuds thought as he watched the flying boat pass through the scope of his rifle. he quickly squeezed off a heat-seeking lockdown round that bounced off the deflector shield around Bakjak's boat. "Hmm this'll be harder 'n I thought..." MilkDuds trailed off in thought.

Just ask MilkDuds was about to just shoot the boat out of the sky (heh) the wraith came flying out of the water containing a now unconscious CB and LC and piloted by Odin. The wraith uncontrollably gained speed now that it was out of the water and slammed into the boat, causing the deflector shields to go down, however it also sent both into a harsh dive towards the rocky ground. MilkDuds didn't take time to get a good sight, he locked both the wraith and the boat down, a mere fifteen feet above the ground - saving everyone.

"So you're saying if we just... but that wouldn't work!" Zeus proclaimed.

"Sure it would!" Zeratul argued.

"No, he's right, it wouldn't. Pissing on it won’t do ANY good at all." Auspex agreed with Zeus.

"Wait..." Seawolf promptly zipped his pants back up just in the nick of time. "It's electrified?"

"Now you ruined it!" Zeratul groaned.

"Come on guys, think!" Zeus said.

"Back," MilkDuds proclaimed as he walked up with the VSP.

"What happened to Bakjak?" Zeus asked.

"He's lockdowned good." MilkDuds said.

"You know that wears off right?" Auspex asked.

"Wears... off... ? DAMNIT! I knew I forgot something!" MilkDuds swore as Bakjak's boat flew off towards the horizon and the VSP Wraith crashed into the ground and exploded in a deafening roar.

MilkDuds


"I think we're all forgetting something else very important here," Zeratul stated.

"What's that, Zeratul?" a still wet and sore Codebreaker asked.

"Rockwell."

"Awwww, crap! That's why we were after Bakjak in the first place!" Odin moaned.

"And I saved the VSP, but forgot to get Rockwell...$@#%^&$!" MilkDuds yelled.

"All right, cool it guys. We can still follow him in my Arbiter," Auspex said as cheerfully as possible.

Everyone else just stared at him.

"What?" he asked after almost a whole minute.

"That thing's slower than an ensnared Battlecruiser, man. We'd NEVER catch up to Bakjak," Zeus reminded him.

"Ohhhh...right."

Zeratul, Seawolf, and Mack all smacked their foreheads simultaneously and groaned.

"Okay, rub it in!" Auspex chided them. "Let's just figure out how to get in Mason Wheeler's place, then. Rockwell will unfortunately just have to wait."

So the team put their heads together, but that didn't do anything except leave them all with sore bumps on their noggins, so they started to think about how to get in.

The plan they came up with was so simple it HAD to work. Using Dark_T_Zeratul's warp blades, they cut down a nearby tree. Then they all lifted it and set it up against the wall...

...where it was instantly vaporized.

"Great. Juuuuust great," Lambda whined.

"Hey, where's Auspex?" Seawolf asked.

The team looked around but didn't see him. Just as they all turned to each other to shrug, they suddenly saw a blinding light and the next thing they knew, they were inside the wall, with its electronically-charged exterior humming behind them. And there was something else humming as well....

They all looked up and saw the source of the other humming...Auspex's Arbiter!

"Hey, guys!" Auspex leaned out the exit hatch and shouted down at them. "That recall works nicely, huh? I figured it might do the trick, so while you all were sitting there thinking, I ran back and fly it here and...."

He was interrupted as the ship suddenly lurched violently to the side and he was thrown to the Arbiter's floor.

And then a pack of devourers flew in and readied to fire another blast.

"Land, Auspex, land!!!" the team shouted up at him.

Auspex did just that, and the Arbiter practically free-fell to the ground and crashed into the earth next to the team.

The devourers, seeing their prey had escaped, roared and flew off towards Wheeler's looming castle.

"Ouch," Auspex said as he climbed out. "That blast fried the shields instantly and did a good number on the hull. I'm not sure if we can fly it again without repairs."

"So it looks like we're walking the rest of the way, then," Mack said.

"Thank you, Captain Obvious. Where did those devourers come from anyway? Why are there Zerg hanging around HERE?" Codebreaker wondered.

"Weeell, Mason was infested, and that mean he's kinda like a Zerg now, right? So doesn't it kinda make sense that he have Zerg guards?" Spooky said.

Everyone looked at her, shocked.

"I didn't know you knew that much about Starcraft, Spooky. I didn't know you knew ANYTHING about Starcraft," Zeus exclaimed.

"I know all kinds of stuff, Zeusie...." She winked.

He winked back, and opened his mouth to reply....

But again, this isn't about Zeus and Spooky. Besides, at that very moment, Spooky's theory was proven as a large pack of Zerg leapt out of the bushes and surrounded our heroes!

"HOLY $#!&!!" Odin yelled.

Zeratul ignited his warp blades. "I've been looking forward to this, actually. There haven't been enough Zerg in this little 'saga' of ours, and I want some to feel my wrath...."

The rest of the team drew their weapons and prepared for battle....

***

What'll happen next?!

Will our heroes be victorious, or become Zerg dinner?

Will they be able to break into the castle itself?

Will they ever be able to find Bakjak and Rockwell again?

What is TGF dreaming about? Being back in the story, or large women?

Will the story EVER be about Zeus and Spooky?!

Find out next time in...The Great VSP Saga!

***

Seawolf


Zerglings and hydralisks unburrowed out of the ground, surrounding the VSP, Dark Zeratul, Seawolf, MilkDuds, Zeus, and Auspex. Mack pulled out his flamethrowers. Spooky locked and loaded her C-10 as did MilkDuds and Auspex. Codebreaker, Lambda, MysteriousGuy, and Seawolf loaded their Gauss rifles. Dark Zeratul ignited his blades, Zeus ignited HIS blades, and Odin and Endarire ignited THEIR blades, too.

Some zerglings ran forward at our heroes in a mad rush, but were quickly toasted by Mack's flamethrowers. More zerglings ran in and were killed by the C-10s, Gauss rifles, blades, and the flamethrowers until they were piled up in a dead heap surrounding the Hunters. However, more Zerg just kept running in.

"I can't keep this up for long!" yelled Mack through the comlink.

Spooky, Auspex, CB, LC, MD, MG, and Seawolf fired powerful rounds at anything that came close, but the Hunters were soon overwhelmed by mad Zerg. Zerglings just kept on coming in, climbing over their dead and pounding themselves into the VSP and everyone else. Just as they thought that they were finished, the onrushing Zerg onslaught ended.

For a while.

"Hey," commented Odin, in between deep breaths, "That wasn't so hard."

"What happened to those hydralisks?" asked MysteriousGuy.

"Hydralisks?" asked Zeus.

"Yeah, I remember seeing a bunch of hydralisks unburrowing along with the Zerglings....oh crap."

The Hunters climbed over the dead zerg and saw a whole lot of zerg eggs everywhere.

"Guys," said Lambda, "I think we better GET OUTTA HERE!"

Just as the VSP and the rest of 'em turned to run, the skin on some of the eggs began to stretch until they burst open to reveal several lurkers. Their hideous, sadistic grins brought terror into the hearts of the Hunters, which froze them solid.

"If I had known what StarCraft was like in real life," said Auspex, fear breaking his voice, "I would have never made the Antioch Chronicles."

More eggs started popping open, and the VSP and the rest of 'em started running to higher ground, away from the lurkers. The hellish creatures began pursuit until they reached the bottom of the hill, where they burrowed into the grass. The VSP ran uphill from the deathly spines which pursued them, until they reached the top of the hill to see six ultralisks flanked by hydras blocking their path. They had to choose one way or the other.

"Oh crap," stated MysteriousGuy.

***

Which way will the VSP choose to fight their fight?

Will they survive?

Does a firebat's flamethrower ever run out of propane?

Is Dark Zeratul a Dark Templar or a Zealot?

Find out next time!

MysteriousGuy


Bakjak had left Rockwell in Mason Wheeler's jail. He coughed hard and doubled over. Before he could lift his head up, the earth shook around him. Apparently a nuke had been delivered topside.

***

"Sweet nuke Zeus," said Codebreaker.

"Everyone enter that tunnel over there while I wait for Auspex to come back," said Zeus.

***

Auspex stared down at the Lurkers and decided it was time to return to VSP and Zeus. As Auspex walked back towards Zeus he asked "Where's the VSP?"

"I just sent them ahead," came Zeus' reply.

Auspex smacked his head, "You fool! They're already really hurt or dead."

***

cue: The Matrix - Spybreak music

VSP blew open the steel door and saw Bakjak with his back towards them. "Tell us where Rockwell..." trailed off Spooky.

They all fired their guns at Bakjak who seemed to be right there except he didn't get hit...

***

What's up next?

Will Bakjak do some really cool Matrix moves on the VSP?

What cell is Rockwell in? There's millions of them in the caverns... what else lurks down there?

Anything can happen. Tune in next time.

bakjak


"Cease fire, cease fire!" Codebreaker shouted.

It took a few seconds, but eventually the firing died down.

"What, CB?!" an annoyed Lambda asked.

Codebreaker walked up to "Bakjak" and pushed the statue over.

"A fake? Then where....?" Zeratul started.

"Right here, fools," a voice said from above.

The team looked up just in time to see a glob of Ensnare fluid drop on them.

As the team struggled to free themselves from the sticky fluid, Bakjak dropped from his hiding spot in the ceiling and landed in the middle of the group.

"MWAHAHAHAHA!!" he laughed. "Look at you...you're pathetic! Come on, shoot me!"

They couldn't. The Ensnaring made it impossible to aim their weapons properly, and Zeratul, Odin, and Endarire couldn't swing their blades.

Then a door opened, and an infested Terran walked in, which looked a lot like...

"Mason Wheeler!" Odin exclaimed.

Everyone gasped at his horrid appearance. In typical infestation fashion, he was still recognizable, but his skin had been turned a sickly shade of green and his hair was hard and needle-like. He had four squirming tentacles sticking out of his back and curving around to the front of his body. In his hand, he held a C-10 Rifle.

"Welcome to my little fortress," his raspy, evilish voice said. "I trust you will find your stay...short-lived. Bakjak, good work. Take them to the dungeon, and put them all in different cells. I don't want them to have the chance to think of an escape plan."

"Of cour..." Bakjak was shaken with another cough. "Ahem...of course."

"What is the matter with you?!" Wheeler demanded.

"Not sure...probably just a cold," Bakjak shrugged.

Wheeler looked at him a moment more, and nodded. "Fine, just take them to their cells. ESCORTED, of course."

"Right." Bakjak signaled a group of hydralisks in the corner, which for some unexplained reason followed his order and surrounded our heroes.

As Wheeler turned to leave, Seawolf spoke up. "Mason, wait! It's me, Seawolf. Remember? SpecOps, Common Foe?"

Wheeler turned and looked at him. His face went funny for a second, a combination of anger and confusion and...something else. Then he scowled and walked out the door he had entered through and closed it behind him.

Seawolf stared for a moment more, wondering what had just occurred, and then began trying to fight his way out of the Ensnare fluid again.

"Gentlemen...and woman," Bakjak looked at Spooky, "if you would please..." *cough, cough* "...follow me this way," he indicated.

The team had little choice. Bakjak took their weapons and put them in a small locker behind him, and then led them off.

"Remember where that locker is," Codebreaker hissed silently to Mack, the nearest to him.

"Why?"

"Because we're going to need to get our weapons back once Auspex and Zeus bust us out."

***

Speaking of whom, Auspex Turmalis and Zeus Legion had reached the blown-open doorway just as the rest of the team had been Ensnared. The pair had quickly ducked back into the shadows and watched the rest of the events from outside.

"So what just happened here?" Zeus asked once the room right inside the doorway was clear.

"Looks like the team's going to jail," Auspex said sadly.

"What was it Seawolf said to Mason Wheeler? He kinda softened up for a second there before he left...."

"Yeah, I saw it," Auspex replied. "I'm not sure...I couldn't hear much from out here. But Seawolf said before that he and Mason were kinda friends from working on their respective campaigns together."

"Hmmm...think he could change Mason's mind about things?" Zeus wondered aloud.

"Maybe, but we need to break them all out first," Auspex hoisted his rifle...

...and jumped as a hand came down on his shoulder.

"Hey, guys," Flyspeck said. "Didya forget I was in the story?"

"Uhhhh...well...um...yes. You joined right before we entered Insurrection, right?" Zeus asked.

"Yeah."

"Then where have you been since then!?!" Auspex nearly shouted.

"I went home and ate some pretzels, since Mack said I couldn't have any of his. Now that I'm done, I figured I would help you guys out. So what did I miss?"

Auspex and Zeus looked at each other, and then took turns filling in Flyspeck.

"Wow...so now we're gonna free everyone?" Flyspeck asked, pulling out a C-10.

"If we can," Zeus replied. "Glad you're back, man...we're gonna need the extra help...."

***

So now what happens?

Will Auspex, Zeus, and Flyspeck be able to find and rescue the rest of the team AND Rockwell?

Will Flyspeck leave halfway through again to get more pretzels?

Is Zeus just in it to rescue Spooky?

Find out next time in...The Great VSP Saga!

***

Seawolf


Suddenly a voice began whispering in Bakjak's ear, whispering things didn't need to hear at the time.

"Psst...Bakjak...haven't you ever wanted to just stop fighting good guys...and score?" It whispered. Bakjak blinked, looking around. To his right he saw a doorway suddenly appear, leading into a room looking like a large island, with lots of naked women. Suddenly he couldn't even speak, his jaw dropped. The voice continued. "It's all yours, Bakjak. You must simply walk in..."

As Spooky can probably attest to, there is little standing between men and naked women. Bakjak was hypnotized instantly and drawn into the room. As the doorway began to disappear, sounds of pleasure were heard and Bakjak was never seen, ever again.

Codebreaker


A laugh broke out, audible to those in the Ensnare fluid.

"What the heck? Narrator, that you?" asked Mack Kilimaro.

"Of course it's me! How many other people are sick enough to do something like that?" The narrator replied back.

"Right. So you think you can get us out?" Seawolf wondered. Without another word the Ensnare was gone. "Thanks."

"Don't thank me, thank the designers of StarCraft. Remember, Ensnare wears off? I just wanted to have some fun with Bakjak before you got freed," the mischievous narrator said, then went back off to his narrator world.

"Yo, CB." Mack broke in.

"Yeah, what is it?" Codebreaker asked.

"Our weapons are in that locker, seventy-six paces back." Mack said matter-of-factly.

Spooky thought she heard Zeus' voice and ran off towards the locker first, the others followed at a more leisurely pace.

"Hey, what happened to those hydras?" asked MysteriousGuy, always quick to notice missing hydralisks.

"Maybe they burrowed into the ground or something?" offered Odin.

"Maybe...or maybe not," said Lambda.

The VSP (minus Spooky, who ran down the narrow halls to find Zeus) debated this for a while, not realizing that it didn't really matter and that they could just leave.

"No, the hydralisks can't have been recalled, there's no Protoss in here!" argued Mack.

"Yeah, well, I don't see any arbiters around here cloaking them!" replied Codebreaker.

They suddenly hear an ominous drooling noise coming from the room next to them. The door was open to the small room, but nobody was in there. The VSP entered the room suspiciously. Then, the door closed behind them. Seawolf tried to open it, but to no avail.

"Oh, great," complained Mack, "Now we're stuck in here because Lambda heard himself drooling."

The drooling noise kept going, however. They all turned to Lambda, but he wasn't drooling.

Suddenly, four hydralisks unburrowed and surrounded the weaponless VSP.

***

-How will the VSP defeat the deadly hydralisks?

-Will Spooky ever find Zeus in the maze-like corridors?

-Will she remember to fetch the VSP their weapons?

-What are Auspex, Zeus, and Flyspeck planning to do?

-Why did Mason have to throw up after Seawolf told him they used to be buds?

-Wait for Auspex, Zeus, and Flyspeck to get into position.

-All heroes must survive.

MysteriousGuy


Meanwhile....

Spooky was lost. She had found herself running in circles through the winding hallways and now had no idea where she was. She had given up on trying to find Zeus (which was REALLY something) and was now just trying to get her bearings.

A sound around the corner broke the dead silence. Not loud, but definitely audible...a footstep.

“Zeusie?” she wondered aloud.

No response.

Raising her hands in a defensive posture, she rounded the corner...

...and saw a person she had never met.

The stranger seemed quite surprised to see her. He jumped back a little and then seemed to regain his composure.

“Who are you?” Spooky demanded, slipping into a fighting stance.

“Bob is Bob,” he replied.

“What?”

She heard another footstep behind her, but before she could turn, she felt a sharp prick in the back of her neck. She completed her turn but fell, seeing only the feet of her attacker before the darkness took her.

Back in the “drool room”....

“Guys, this is NOT good,” Codebreaker observed.

The VSP – Codebreaker, Lambda Corps, Mack Kilimaro, Odin’s Eye, Mysterious Guy, and Endarire – were now all standing back-to-back, forming a tight group with the four hydralisks circling them, hissing menacingly.

“Any ideas?” Odin asked.

“Narrator?” Mack asked out of desperation.

There was no answer.

“Great,” Mack grumbled.

Endarire had been taking the time to glance about the room for anything helpful, and after several seconds of searching, he saw it...a stack of VERY conveniently-placed steel pipes and steel plates piled in the corner.

“Guys,” he whispered. “In the corner...over there....”

The rest of the VSP saw them, too. “They’re not great weapons, but they’re a lot better than nothing,” Codebreaker said. “Count of three, we run for them.”

The rest of the team nodded in agreement.

“One...”

Outside, Seawolf, Dark_T_Zeratul, and MilkDuds had given up on the door after even Zeratul’s blades had had no effect on it. They were now wandering the same hallways Spooky had been just recently, hoping to find Auspex and Zeus....

“Two...” Codebreaker continued....

Auspex, Zeus, and Flyspeck were lost, too. They had gathered up the VSP’s weapons and gone down the hallway that they had last seen their friends escorted down, only to find it branched into a mind-boggling maze. They started calling out, hoping someone on THEIR side would hear them....

“THREE!!”

The VSP yelled and ran full speed towards the pipes. The hydralisks were momentarily caught off guard, and the VSP made it past them and halfway to the pipes before the hydras attacked.

But our heroes were not stupid. They were running in a zig-zag pattern, making it very difficult for the hydralisks’ needle spines to hit them. Nevertheless, Odin took a spine in the arm, but kept running. MysteriousGuy was also hit in the lower back, just to the left of his spine. He fell just in front of the pipes as the VSP reached them and brandished their new weapons.

Codebreaker, Lambda, and Mack lifted pipes and began swinging them randomly at the attacking hydras, while Odin and Endarire leapt in front of them with steel plates raised as makeshift shields. Endarire placed himself directly in front of the wounded MG.

Despite the odds against them, the team fared amazingly well. The pipes were devastating when they found their mark, and soon all four hydralisks lay dead or unconscious on the ground. In addition to the earlier injures received by Odin and MG, Mack’s leg got slashed by a hydra that got too close, but it had not gone very deep. With a little bandaging, everyone was good to go again, though MysteriousGuy was in more than a little pain still.

“Now,” MG announced through gritted teeth, “we just need to find a way out of here.”

In the winding hallways of the fortress, Seawolf, Zeratul, and MilkDuds finally heard Auspex’s shouting and met up with him, Zeus, and Flyspeck.

“Hey, guys,” Seawolf said in greeting, taking his Gauss Rifle from Auspex. “Hey, Flyspeck...where’d you come from?”

“I was around earlier, before you were, but I needed some pretzels....”

MilkDuds stared. “Pretzels?!”

“Nevermind. Where’s everyone else, guys?” Zeus asked. “Where’s the VSP? And SPOOKY?”

“Well, the VSP...they’re in a room which has a door we couldn’t get open. I don’t know what’s in there, but they all got trapped inside,” Zeratul responded, testing his warp blades and flipping them on and off.

“And I don’t know what happened to Spooky...you haven’t seen her?” Seawolf added.

“No we haven’t. She’s not with the rest of the Posse?” Auspex asked.

“No, she came looking for you, ‘Zeusie’,” MilkDuds said to Zeus. “She ran up ahead of us and we lost sight of her....”

“Quiet,” Zeratul commanded.

“Why? Wha....” Seawolf started.

“Shhhhh.”

And then they all heard it. Screaming.

It sounded like Spooky.

Zeus ignited his blades and ran down the hall, towards the sound. Everyone else followed.

“Crap! It’s not working, CB!”

“I know, Mack. $#!%.”

The VSP had tried using everything they could think of to get the door open. Their latest plan, knocking out the frame rather than the door, had also yielded no results.

Just as everyone starting scratching their heads again, Lambda spoke up from the other side of the room. “You guys done with that door yet?”

“Very funny, Lamb.”

“No no, I’m serious, CB. ‘Cause I found another way out, so unless you really are determined to go out THAT way....”

Everyone else turned to see Lambda Corps holding his pipe, and standing next the grate in the wall he had just bashed open with it.

“Shall we?” he asked, waving dramatically to the opening.

The VSP shook their heads and headed over.

Elsewhere, Auspex, Zeus, Zeratul, Seawolf, MilkDuds, and Flyspeck had come to a large set of steel double doors. On the other side, they could hear machinery sounds and muffled voices, but the screaming had recently stopped.

“Gotta be in there,” Zeus said. “Spooky, and probably Rockwell, too.”

“Why do you say that?” Flyspeck asked.

“Because this is the final showdown coming up, so unless we’re gonna defeat the bad guys and THEN go find Rockwell, this is where it ends. It just makes sense,” Zeus replied.

“Ahhhh....” everyone else said.

“So how do we get in?” Seawolf asked.

“Allow me,” Zeratul stated, igniting his blades. “Zeus?”

“I read ya.” Zeus lit up his blades, and the two of them shoved them in the door and started twisting, slowly carving a large circular hole.

After a few minutes, there was a hole large enough to crawl through. “You can thank Star Wars: Episode I for SOMETHING,” Zeratul grinned.

“Huh?” Auspex asked.

“Got that idea from there. Ya know, near the beginning, when Qui-Gon is cutting through that one door on the ship with his lightsaber?”

“Ahhhh....” everyone else replied.

“Anyways....” Auspex said, as he went through the hole first.

When he reached the other side, he gasped at the sight.

The room was immense, clearly a command center of some sort, with computer screens and blinking lights everywhere. It was also infested, as the slime and throbbing flesh-like coating around the walls attested. The floor was covered with stinking, purple creep over its original metal. The center of the room was a large pit, although from here Auspex couldn’t tell how deep.

On the other side of the pit, there was a raised platform with four figures on it, but from this distance Auspex couldn’t make out their features except that one was likely an infested Terran and the other three were human, meaning Mason Wheeler and...who else? Bakjak was gone, presumably for good. TGF was also. So who....?

“Spooky!” Zeus shouted.

“No, I doubt any of those other three is Spoo....” Auspex started.

“No, up there! It’s Spooky!!” Zeus pointed.

Auspex looked up and saw two glass tanks hanging above the pit that he hadn’t noticed before. In one of them was indeed Spooky, looking to be unconscious. In the other was a very conscious and angry Mason Rockwell. Though Auspex couldn’t hear what he was saying through the glass, he guessed it probably contained “Jabronis” and “Rockwell” a few times at least....

“Ah, welcome!” A voice echoed from across the room. An all-too familiar voice....

“Stuart!?!” Seawolf, the last though the hole, shouted out.

“Hahahaha...very good. As I said, welcome...to your funeral,” Stuart, the fake Auspex from the forum, replied.

“But how....? What....? WHY are YOU here?!” Auspex demanded.

“Ha! How could I resist the chance to kill the great Auspex?! I could finally become your TRUE replacement! I sought out Mason, and he brought me here to be a part of this lovely little ‘saga’ of yours. A saga that has now come to an end.”

“It surely has,” Dark_T_Zeratul raised his blades and went into a battle stance.

“Ah...and there is the man himself,” one of the other figures cut in.

“Me? And who are you?” Zeratul asked.

“You should know that, Zeratul. Does the name Pyro ring a bell?”

“YOU. I should have finished you in the forum.”

“But you didn’t. Now, you shall pay. The final showdown between you and me,” Pyro replied.

“Hahahaha,” Mason Wheeler cut in. “Pitiful little ‘heroes’. We are not ready to fight...yet. First, we want you to be tortured a bit, by choosing which of your friends will die.”

Wheeler gestured to the glass tanks. “When I flip a little switch here, those two tanks will drop into the lurker-filled pit below. There is only time to save one.”

“And then dead is dead,” the mysterious fourth figure said.

“Wait, that grammar...Bob?!” MilkDuds asked.

“You are not Bob. Bob is Bob. Bob is death. You are death. Death is death,” Bob replied.

“Riiiight....” Flyspeck said.

“I saw this whole tank idea in a movie once, one of those ‘sequels that sucked’,” Seawolf chimed in. “Problem is, there was only ONE person to save his friends in the movie, while here, there’s...” he counted those around him “...six of us.”

“Hmmm...very true, Seawolf,” Wheeler replied.

“Wait, you DO know me!”

“Yes, I remember you. You were too demanding in your requests for my help for your little ‘SpecOps’ campaign. I grew tired of helping you, responding to your every command. So I tried to get you to help out with Common Foe, but your voice samples were awful. Basically, you were a bother. Which will make watching you suffer all the more worthwhile....”

“You would really kill me? After all the work we did together? After all that, you would still kill me?”

Wheeler hesitated only for a moment. “In a heartbeat.”

Seawolf let this sink in, suddenly feeling very tired. Knowing that soon, he would either kill or be killed by a former friend.

Wheeler reached for the switch.

“Aus, you get Rockwell, I’ll go for Spooky!” Zeus shouted, and ran towards the pit.

“Figures you’d go after her,” Auspex said under his breath and ran after him.

The switch was flipped, and the tanks fell, with Zeus and Auspex jumping in right behind them.

Just as Seawolf and company ran over to watch, a wave of zerglings and hydralisks ran out from under the raised platform.

“Zerg!” Zeratul shouted and clashed his blades together.

Seawolf, MilkDuds, and Flyspeck stopped dead in their tracks and opened fire, while Zeratul stood slightly in front of them and dispatched any that got too close.

The first wave was eliminated, but the Zerg just kept on coming....

In the crawlspaces of Mason Wheeler’s fortress, the VSP was getting tired of watching Lambda’s butt leading the way in front of them.

“Anything yet, LC?” Odin asked.

“I think maybe, yeah. I see light up ahead, but no opening yet....”

Suddenly, the walls shook with the sound of gunfire up ahead, and the snarling of Zerg in battle.

In the pit, the tanks containing Rockwell and Spooky had hit the ground, and as promised, lurkers from under the ground opened up with their spikes on the glass intruders.

Auspex made a surprisingly smooth landing on top of Rockwell’s tank and Zeus did the same on Spooky’s.

“NOW what?” Zeus wondered aloud. “It’s only gonna take a minute for those spikes to crack through the glass.”

“Don’t ask me, this was YOUR idea!” Auspex replied.

“Oh...yeah.”

They studied the tanks up close and discovered something very good...they had lids, but they were locked. If they could just break the locks and get the tanks open before the lurkers tore them apart....

Topside, things were not going well. Zeratul found himself fighting more and more as the Zerg began to get through Seawolf, MilkDuds, and Flyspeck’s cover fire more frequently. So far they had not been seriously injured, but they knew that couldn’t last....

And suddenly, a whole barrage of firing erupted from behind them and added to their own, chewing through the Zerg ranks.

Zeratul took a second to turn, and there was the VSP, who had recovered their weapons from where Auspex and Zeus had left them before leaping into the pit and were now aiding in the battle.

Slowly, the VSP advanced to the position of the battle-weary Seawolf, Zeratul, MilkDuds, and Flyspeck. Odin, Mack, and Endarire assisted Zeratul in dispatching any Zerg that got in close, but with the VSP’s firepower now added to the mere three ranged weapons before, most Zerg never got close enough to even threaten them.

In the pit, Auspex and Zeus were making progress, but time was running out. The underside of the tanks had already begun to crack under the assault of the lurkers. Rockwell was pounding on the lid in vain, while the still-unconscious Spooky rolled each time her tank was hit.

“$^@#*&!! I can’t get it!” Auspex shouted. “Zeus?”

“Alll...mooost...” Zeus replied. He was hacking away at the lock like mad with his blades, and the lock was broken, but still wouldn’t give completely...until the next hack, when it broke.

“Got it!” Zeus dragged Spooky out and set her on top of the tank. The movements awoke her, and she looked up at Zeus and smiled. “Hey, Zeusie. Looks like YOU caught ME, huh?”

Zeus laughed. “Yeah, looks like it.” He swallowed, and leaned in to kiss her....

“Guys, I hate to interrupt, but what about Rockwell?!” Auspex cut in.

“Right.” Zeus reluctantly pulled away from Spooky and set to work on Rockwell’s lid, which Auspex had already succeeded in damaging.

Finally, the lurkers broke through the glass, and a large spike finally found its way through the spot where Spooky had been only moments before, making a good-sized hole in the underside of the tank.

“Hurry, Zeus! Before they get through Rockwell’s!!” Auspex yelled.

As he spoke, a spike penetrated Rockwell’s tank, but thankfully it was between his legs, close but not a hit.

After several more seconds, the second lock was defeated, and Rockwell kicked the lid open and dove out onto the top of the tank.

“Rockwell thanks you, Jabronis. Now how is Rockwell gonna get outta this hole?”

And get out they had to, for the tanks were quickly succumbing to the lurkers and breaking apart. In a few more seconds, they would give way and the four of them would be open to direct attack from the burrowed creatures.

They were so wrapped up in thought that they hadn’t noticed the firing above them had stopped, or that a human chain had been lowered down to them.

“Hey, guys,” Codebreaker, at the bottom of the chain, said. “You said you wanted out?”

At the top of the hole, the last members of the human chain climbed over the edge of the pit, and then the whole team stood shoulder to shoulder and faced the raised platform.

Where Stuart, Mason Wheeler, Bob, and Pyro all stood shoulder to shoulder facing them.

Auspex spoke first. “It ends here. Your Zerg are defeated, your plans foiled, your allies TGF and Bakjak gone. Will you come along peacefully, or shall I have a whole FLEET escort you out of here?”

None of the four enemies replied. Instead, they all leapt down and attacked.

Bob whipped out an enhanced Gauss Rifle and went after the VSP, which ducked behind some machinery to return fire even though they greatly outnumbered him.

Pyro, not surprisingly, went after Zeratul, igniting a pair of psi blades and charging, screaming like a madman.

Mason Wheeler went after Seawolf, who backed away with Zeus, MilkDuds, and Flyspeck and returned fire.

Stuart, C-10 in one hand and a psi blade in the other, went straight for Auspex.

It took several minutes for the VSP to realize the distinct numbers advantage they had before they split up, making Bob chase them all over the room. It wasn’t long before he lost track of everyone, and Codebreaker was able to slip behind him and fire off several direct hits. The VSP all fired at the wounded Bob, each getting in multiple fatal shots (or slashes, in Odin and Endarire’s cases and burning in Mack’s case). Bob went down, firing to the last.

“Bob is....” he said on his dying breath.

“...dead. Yeah, we know,” Codebreaker said matter-of-factly.

Pyro and Zeratul were deadlocked in battle, striking and counter-striking with their blades. After several minutes, Pyro got in a good jab and stabbed a blade into his opponent’s arm.

“AAAAH!” Zeratul screamed as he went down.

“NO!” Seawolf shouted from nearby. He leapt away from his personal battle with Wheeler and fired several rounds in Pyro’s direction before Wheeler was upon him again.

None of the bullets hit, but they made Pyro instinctively duck for cover.

Only to find himself impaled on Zeratul’s blade from his good arm.

“Here’s your ‘final showdown’, Pyro,” he said. “Happy now? Oh sorry, you can’t hear me. You’re deceased.”

Zeratul twisted his blade in Pyro’s gut and dropped him to the floor.

Wheeler was currently engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Zeus, who had jumped in front of Seawolf to protect him from his former friend and campaign co-worker. The up-close battle was fast and furious, and Zeus found it very difficult to dodge attacks from all four tentacles AND Mason’s claws.

Fortunately, the others had not deserted him. Zeratul left Pyro’s body and snuck up behind the infested Wheeler, sinking his remaining blade into his back, severing off a tentacle.

“AAAAAARGH!!” Wheeler shouted. He turned to face Zeratul...

...and then Zeus slashed at him.

Wheeler started thrashing around frantically, attempting the difficult task of fighting Zeus and Zeratul at once, and was knocked off his feet as a hail of gunfire knocked him to the ground.

Seawolf, MilkDuds, Flyspeck, and the Posse all lowered their smoking weapons and walked up to the fallen Wheeler.

Amazingly, he was still alive, and attempting to speak. They all leaned in close to hear.

“There...is...another....”

Seawolf stood back up. “Heard that one in a movie, too.” He raised his weapon, but hesitated.

He couldn’t do this. It was Mason Wheeler. His friend.

No...his friend HAD been Mason Wheeler. This was not Wheeler. This was a hate-filled creature that would kill Seawolf “in a heartbeat” if he had the chance.

Seawolf fired the killing shot into Wheeler’s head. “Guess I’ll have to find a replacement for SpecOps’ tech guy....”

There was still one more battle being fought. Auspex Turmalis and Stuart continued to fight on, with both running around the room trying to shoot each other. It was when Stuart saw movement to the side and took his eyes off Auspex that the founder of The Antioch Chronicles got the opening he needed. He let loose with a wall of lead, which almost missed Stuart as he dove to the side. But the last few rounds hit the fake Auspex’s leg, and he suddenly found himself unable to stand.

Rockwell, who had been jumping around next to Stuart hoping to divert his attention (in which he had succeeded) quickly dove and rolled across the floor past Stuart, snatching away his C-10 as he went.

Auspex joined him and they walked up to Stuart cautiously. After all, he still had that psi blade.

“Nooo...you will not escape me, Auspex. Stand still so that Stuart can stab you!” He crawled towards Auspex.

“No way, Jabroni,” Rockwell replied.

He and Auspex fired together, and it was all over.

“There’s no way out of here!” MysteriousGuy lamented.

The team was wandering through the halls again, trying in vain to find their way back outside.

“Sure there is,” Codebreaker replied. “We just gotta find...ah, there it is.”

Codebreaker spotted the familiar weapons locker and headed for it. Everyone else followed, and soon they were back outside, where the sunrise of a new day greeted them.

It took several moments after walking outside and sucking in the fresh air before they realized that they had succeeded. All their enemies were dead, Rockwell was safe, and they had all come out of the ordeal relatively intact.

Once this realization DID hit them, they all leapt into the air and shouted joyfully. Auspex shook hands with everyone from the VSP. Seawolf and MilkDuds gave each other a high-five and laughed. Zeratul went around congratulating everyone. Flyspeck munched on a rationed pretzel in celebration. Rockwell ran around yelling about being The Great One. And yes, Zeus and Spooky finally kissed...a several-minutes-long kiss.

“Well done, everyone. Knew you could do it,” a voice called down.

“Yo, narrator. Nice to hear from you again,” Mack shouted upwards.

“Hahaha...yeah, I had a good time watching. You all had me worried a few times, but I knew you’d beat them.”

“So now what?” Auspex asked.

“Now,” the narrator’s voice said from behind them, “we go back to your place and celebrate.”

The whole team turned, and the narrator stepped out from the shadows.

“Mark!?!” they all shouted.

“Hehehe...yep,” Mark Brown replied. “I got a little tired of just watching, and I figured you all might want to meet me in person. By the way, I brought a friend....”

Another person stepped into the light, and everyone was taken aback, especially Seawolf. “Ma...Mason?” he managed.

“Heya, Seawolf,” an un-infested Mason Wheeler replied.

“But...but....”

“I’m dead? Haha...yeah, I know. Or, rather, my clone is dead....”

“Your CLONE?!” Odin asked.

“Yeah...don’t you remember, Auspex?” Wheeler replied.

Everyone turned to Auspex Turmalis, who was suddenly looking very sheepish.

“Auspex? I believe ye have some explaining to do,” Endarire told him.

“Heh...well, it’s actually quite simple,” Auspex started. “You see, I got a little clone-crazy for a while there, as I’m sure you noticed. Since they were only living for 12 hours, I decided it couldn’t hurt to clone people like Zeus and Bakjak and Mason, just to see what they would be like when there were two of them together. For fun, you know?”

Everyone just kept staring, and he continued. “Well...as you know, Zeus’ clone escaped and became a nuke-crazy president, until the real Zeus...” he gestured to Zeus at his side “...got sick of being given such a bad name and killed him.”

“The Bakjak clone is the one that kidnapped Rockwell out of the Arbiter and brought him here to the castle. The REAL Bakjak vanished in a puff of smoke after we went back in time and saved Rockwell. I think the narrator took care of that, actually....”

Everyone then turned to Mark Brown, the narrator. “Heh...well, I decided that leaving him alive could have some very devastating effects on the space-time continuum...” Mark paused as MysteriousGuy fainted again, shrugged, and continued. “...seeing as how Bakjak had been killed in the previous timeline. So I decided it would be in everyone’s best interests, including his, that he just be blotted out of the picture.”

“But,” Auspex said, causing all eyes to fall on him again, “Mark didn’t know about the Bakjak clone, so he was allowed to run free and cause us the headache of freeing Rockwell from here.”

“Anyways, the Wheeler CLONE was the one taken by the Overmind and infested. Somehow, after being infested, he was able to live far longer than 12 hours. He still knew who Seawolf was and what the real Mason had done up until then, but he, like the other two clones I mentioned, was evil,” Auspex finished.

“And so THIS,” Lambda said, gesturing to Mason Wheeler, “is the REAL Mason.”

“You bet,” Mason replied.

Seawolf finally got himself back together, and went in for a handshake with Mason. “VERY glad to see you, man....”

Mason knocked Seawolf’s hand away and gave him a big bear hug.

“Victory!” Codebreaker shouted out.

Seawolf


Much later, our heroes were celebrating their victory over the anti-Rockwell forces at a barbecue in Antioch Studios in North Carolina somewhere. Flyspeck and Mack Kilimaro were fighting over pretzels, which the narrator kept amusingly supplying. Zeus and Spooky were flicking barbecue sauce at one another. In the midst of it all, Codebreaker was badly trying to cook things, burning a lot of it. The others were in the pool, playing water polo, or some other pool game that ends in polo. The narrator watched, happy that 'his' story was coming out as a happy ending.

A voice sounded next to him. A female voice. "Hey, Mark!"

"Uh...er...me?" Mark asked, in disbelief. He turned to look at who was talking to him, and fell out of his chair. The girl giggled. "You look awfully cute when you're narrating a huge story, you know..." she said flirtatiously.

Well, you can probably figure out where it went from there. Suffice to say, Mark Brown didn't narrate any more tales after that.

And for you sappy folk, yes, they sure did live happily ever after.

Mack Kilimaro