Brin squeezed until his fingers met at the back of the nebbishy, little nerd’s neck.
His erection jumped reflexively just a little bit. Not in a gay way, he decided, but a good to be alive strangling your enemy way.
Still, something was bothering him.
“Dude, are you… are you smiling?” It was tough to tell. He could just be making a really weird choking-to-death face, but it certainly seemed more parts smile than rictus.
The drab man’s empurpled lips moved and his tongue lolled, but no sound came out.
Brin frowned. This was totally harshing his priapic mellow.
He knew it was a total badguy mistake to let up so the geek could tell him what was so funny. On the other hand, it was going to gnaw at his gut forever if he didn’t find out. Plus he was a god now, not some dime-store villain. The poor schlub already gave it his best shot and failed… what could the harm be?
Brin kept his grip but stopped pushing his thumbs toward the back of his throat. Ole’ elbow patches sputtered and sucked air like… well, a dying man, appropriately.
“Alright, come on, man. I gotta know.” Brin sighed even as he walked the well-trod path of cliché, “What’s so funny?”
His soon to be victim held up his hand. In it was another of those little rats he liked so bad. This one had a big, red button on its head.
“One… last… lemming,” the erstwhile hero drooled a little bit and grinned awkwardly around his smooshed together cheeks.
“Dude, dude, dude.” Brin shook his head. “This is just sad. You tried that alr—”
“Suck my god-juice, hippie!” he spit and pressed the button.
•••
Sparky came to a stop.
His shoulders heaved with each panted breath.
Blood stuck to his fur and muzzle.
An empty Googol-Man helmet was caught by the chinstrap on one of his robotic legs.
Bakuku Ajudua, Prince of the 419 scam nodded.
Kitty Kitty Guy smiled and brought his hands together sharply. His clap was the snowball that started an avalanche as one by one the Revolutionaries added their applause (except the Tyrannosaurus who couldn’t quite get his little claws together).
Sparky eyed the crowd wildly but managed to identify them as friendly—enough not to warrant bloody dismemberment. His whiskers twitched.
Kitty Kitty Guy and the faux Prince came down the gang-plank to the bright, barren expanse of the Badlands.
The leader approached Sparky as other Revolutionaries went to poke around for loot. “That was fucking awesome. Totally wicked.” He pumped his chubby arms in the sky rhythmically.
The Nigerian Prince stood mutely to the side but seemed approving.
“I-I-I-I have to k-k-kill something else,” Sparky ground his teeth together and wished for a nap as meth and Ambien battled within his system. Also he had a weasely erection that he was hoping everyone was too polite to point out. The girl in the purple cat-suit was totally staring at it, he believed (paranoia being a side-effect of several of the drugs in his system).
The pudgy general adjusted his glasses and his smile broadened. “Good! Then you’re ready. We’re ready! We’re totally going to rock those Googol-holes a new one.”
“Yeah. Good. Great!” Sparky took to biting his nails, a nasty habit he picked up just now.
“High-five,” Kitty Kitty Guy offered his hand.
Sparky thought about taking it off at the wrist but gamely held up the claw he wasn’t chewing on for patting.
An anonymous member of Kitty Kitty Bang Bang approached but wisely gave Sparky a wide berth. “K.K., Prince. You should probably see this.” The gawky lad had a bundled cloth in hand and wiped his runny nose on the back of his sleeve.
“Dude, what? You’re totally interrupting our fanfare.” Kitty Kitty Guy pumped his arms in the air a few more times to illustrate.
“Well, we found these crates nearby. I guess these Googol guys were setting up some sort of a stage? I don’t know. We found lots of folding chairs and banners.” The boy scratched his head and motioned in the direction of a nearby truck brimming with wooden crates. “Also snacks.”
“Snacks? Bam. Mother lode, am I right?” Kitty Kitty Guy nudged the false prince in the ribs. The Prince leaned down and whispered something in the pudgy man’s ear. “What kind of banners?” he translated.
The kid struggled to unravel and hold up an example he’d brought over.
Sparky felt weird. Well, I mean, he felt like his heart was going to explode, while falling asleep, while holding down that purple-suited cat-girl and making a she-weasel of her. Beyond all that, something was more wrong.
“Con…gratulations….” Kitty Kitty Guy tilted his head to read the crumpled banner aloud. “Goo…golSoft… Man…fest—Manifest—Des…tiny.” He nodded complete.
Sparky looked down. Were his legs glowing?
“There’s also noisemakers,” the banner-bearer let out a loud squeal on said device.
Bakuku whispered in Kitty Kitty Guy’s ear.
The doughy man-boy’s eyes shot wide. “Oh crap. You think?”
A long shadow cast over the Revolutionaries.
A GoogolSoft Dreadnaught—a flagship—approached.
“Radio for backup! Call everybody!” Kitty Kitty Guy shooed the boy back toward their transport. “Quick, like a bunny! Gogogogogo!”
Sparky’s legs were indeed glowing. Also humming.
He wondered which pill had this side-effect.
•••
Lord Chuckles and Grebok danced like macabre marionettes in a puppet show of big violence.
The hallway of Godwin’s flagship was mostly clear of the rank and file Googol-Men. An unlucky few remained, locked in when the Shields Squadron sealed off the brig.
“This is so unnatural!” the Avatar protested vainly as he scythed down a recruit barely old enough to shave with his arm blade.
Grebok intended to nod but his head jerked around so that his laser eye could mow down the few survivors banging at the sealed doorway. “And yet so familiar,” he managed to add.
“Agreed,” Chuckles panted.
With the coast clear, Denthead stuck his head out.
His arm hung limply at his side, but after a few quick chops at his ephemeral keyboard it straightened back into shape with a soft ding. The robot flexed his refurbished arm, clearly pleased with his work. “No need to thank me or anything, guys,” the robot protested sarcastically.
The Avatar spoke first. “For what exactly? Hijacking our bodies and forcing us into some murder rampage?”
“Well… yeah. I saved you, didn’t I?”
“Perhaps, robot. Perhaps. But at what cost? Are we any safer now than before you violated us body and soul?” Grebok asked.
“Almost certainly not,” Chuckles answered.
Denthead scratched his wedge-shaped head. “I really wasn’t ready for what phenomenal pussies you guys are. That’s unexpected.” He called his keyboard under his fingers. “Maybe I can turn that off.”
“Chuckles, your arm!” Grebok shouted. “Leave him alone you officious automaton!”
“What are you talking about, I haven’t started—” Denthead looked up to see that the Keykeeping one was on to something. The teutonic knight’s metal arm was glowing. Also humming. Grebok’s eye was doing the same thing.
He needed those parts. That’s how he was hacking them. Maybe they were overheating. Denthead’s fingers danced across the keys trying to find some combination of code to stop this most recent phenomenon.
The heroic duo were wracked with seizure and screamed.
The light grew blinding; the sound, deafening.
It all reached a crescendo before ending in a faint pop.
Chuckles and Grebok fell to the floor.
The Avatar’s arm had returned to its fleshy pinkness.
The Miradorian’s eye was again squishy, albeit bloodshot.
Denthead no longer had control of them.
•••
Deep in the scarred, empty heart of Stuffopedia.
Near a set of steps leading to a Doric pedestal, was a body. A particularly foul-smelling body absent of breath or heartbeat.
The troll’s cadaver no longer looked like Gunther, having since reverted to its nascent foulness. It did, however, still possess a metal jaw.
A mechanism that briefly came to life.
It glowed faintly, hummed for a second, and then made a noise like a fork stuck in a garbage disposal. It then sparked and popped violently until it unceremoniously caught fire.
•••
Back in the Guiding Hands’ boardroom, the insurance man’s eyes grew wide. His backup plan was a bust.
“Yeah, see? That trick sucks,” Brin judged and bore back down on the man’s breathing tubes with his thumbs.
The former Lord of the Lemmings began to thrash and fight.
Brin’s erection had honestly begun to wilt a little bit with all the smiling and button pushing, but now with the struggle back on, it enjoyed a turgid renaissance.
What remained of a vid-screen on the wall sparked and crackled to life.
Godwin’s face showed up on it, looking humorless as always.
“This is an immediate call to action to all points GoogolSoft. Repeat, this is an immediate call to action. Your tawdry celebration will have to wait, I am beset by heroes and revolutionaries as well as a particularly grotesque sea mammal. Repeat….”
