The Power of Cool: Chapter 2

Chapter Two:
The Bad Bot Boogie Boys Beat the Boring Baddies
in the Blistering Badlands

_____________________________________


"Ah, yes. Welcome, welcome." The Commodore said, standing at the head of the the war room, "There's some coffee and cookies on the table there. So help yourself, and have a seat for the mission orientation."

The orientation room looked exactly how you'd expect it to look. I mean, it's barely worth describing, but I guess I will anyways for the sake of thoroughness. It was a darkened room with a big screen in the front that was used for projecting images. And there were about three rows of chairs where the pilots would sit (despite the fact that there were only five of them). Tommy could reasonably predict what would happen next: they would all sit around and listen, and the smarmy ones would occasionally ask questions. Come on, you know the drill.

"Hey, buddy!" Quatro said, sitting next to Tommy, "Didja get any coffee, yet?"

"No. No, I did not. Firstly, that looks like some of that instant freeze-dried percolated shit, and I only drink the good stuff. And secondly, aren't you all here to fight aliens? It seems you all are way too casual when it comes to something that involves the fate of the entire earth."

Remington sat on Tommy's other side, resting his machinegun on the floor, "You need to chill out, brotha. No one can save the world if they're all high strung 'n shit."

"Okay, everyone settle down, now." The Commodore said, cleaning his tiny glasses on his vest, "Here's the current situation: We've tracked down a hidden base in rural Oklahoma that we believe belongs to the Greys. And as we all know, the Greys are the most uncool of all the alien races."

A picture was suddenly projected onto the screen of a little grey-colored alien with a big head. It looked very much like the stereotypical aliens we always see in cartoons and stuff. Except this particular alien was slouching, and looked sad, and was wearing a light grey business suit and carrying a briefcase.

The Commodore began pacing back and forth, "Their one desire is to conquer earth and turn it into a massive, dull, grey, collection of office buildings. These aliens are efficient and productive. They enjoy hard work and hate rest."

"Those sick fucks..." Lin said, scowling at the front screen.

"And their weaponry is as devious as their culture. They use weapons known as Grey-Busters..."

"Hey," Tommy leaned towards Quatro and whispered, "You know, we could make a game out of this, if we take a shot of liquor every time he says the word 'grey'."

"These "Grey-Busters" the Greys use are enormous grey-colored robots, that are shaped like middle-management employees. Their main armament is a large, grey, laser shaped like those BlackBerry handheld computers."

"Uh..." Tommy whispered, "On second thought, we should probably call off the drinking game. Someone's gonna get alcohol poisoning."

"Alright, I think that's everything. You can all go suit up and get ready to launch."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Tommy said, holding up his hands, "You haven't said anything. You basically just described these aliens, even though I assume everyone here already knows all about them. You haven't described the terrain, the mission objectives, the formation. I mean, literally anything."

Lin crossed her arms and gave Tommy a peeved look, "And when the fuck did you become an expert on military tactics?"

"Well, all that stuff is just implied." Quatro said, "I mean, we're just gonna do what we always do: run in, destroy the robots, and then blow up the base."

"Yeah, that's just common sense." said Remington, leaning back and lighting a cigar.

"Look," Tommy was beginning to get a little pissed off, "I've never fought before, and if I'm gonna be putting my life on the line, I want to know what precisely we're going to do."

The was a brief pause, followed by uproarious laughter, from everyone in the room. Tommy was looking around with a confused look on his face.

"Did you honestly think..." The Commodore was attempting to stifle his laughter, "That we were going to entrust YOU with a multi-billion dollar piece of machinery? I mean, you haven't had any training at all! And to be perfectly honest, you're not nearly cool enough to power one of these yet. What kind of idiotic government organization would allow something like that to happen?"

"Uh, well... never mind then."

"Well, like I was saying: everyone suit up, and get onto the steam-powered zeppelin."

"...uh, what was that last bit?"

_____________________________________

Tommy was cruising at an altitude of 25,000 ft in the cabin of SCEDA's personal steam-powered zeppelin. The cabin hung underneath the large, bronze-colored, pointed, cylindrical balloon. The cabin was covered in portholes and brass tubing and all sorts of other steampunk looking shit. The Commodore was at the large, wooden, nautical steering wheel, with a pipe in his mouth. The five giant robots were latched to the bottom of the balloon section, with the pilots inside.

"Yeah, sure. This is totally reasonable. I mean, it's not like there's a more efficient form of transportation we could use. And, it's not like there are other things the government could be spending it's money on."

"Are you going to be making snide comments during your entire stay here?" The Commodore asked, taking a puff on his pipe.

"Well, I'm certainly going to try. Anyways, I have a question-"

"Gee, how unusual for you..."

"Funny... Now, how is this blimp able to get from the coast all the way to Oklahoma in only thirty minutes?"

"You see, the pilots combine their cool power to propel us at roughly two thousand miles an hour."

"You know, I'm not even gonna bother explaining why that's impossible. I mean, no matter what I say, you're just going to explain it away as 'The Power of Cool.'"

"I sure am."

"Well, can you at least take this moment to tell me why I was picked to join this organization?"

"We're here! Everyone get ready to launch!"

Remington was laying down in his cockpit. It was designed to that whatever motions he made would be duplicated by the robot. The entire cockpit was covered seamlessly in a video screen, so it looked and felt to him like he wasn't in a cockpit at all, but rather surrounded by the environment. For example, right now it looked to him like he was face-down, strapped onto a steam-powered zeppelin, 25,000 feet above the earth's surface.

"It's go time, bitches"

Suddenly they all started falling towards earth. Damn, you should have seen it. It was fucking awesome. Five giant white robots in free fall, with a steam-powered zeppelin in the background. And halfway through Remington was all like:

"Alright, activate the coolness interface system."

Now, I don't know what the fuck that means, but suddenly all the robots started changing in mid-air. They started changing color and growing different parts that were tailored to each wearer.

Remington's mecha turned shades of olive green. It got wider, heavier, and it sprouted thick, black armor on it's joints and torso. And a massive replica of his machinegun appeared in it's hands.

Tungsten's mecha became black and brown, and carried two massive pistols that were nearly as long as as the robot's arms. It's shape changed to a taller, slimmer figure, and it was suddenly wearing Tungsten's long, distinctive duster coat.

Lin's mecha turned a shades of deep red and slimmed down a bit. A long spear appeared in one of her hands, and it became a bit taller.

Sakura's mecha shrunk considerably in size and carried two katanas. It's colors were a mixture of dark and light blues, and those katanas were practically the length of the rest of her body.

Quatro's mecha turned purple and yellow and orange and several other incredibly flamboyant colors. He carried an epic axe and wore a black headband.

"Alright, let's lock and load."

The five mechs landed with a thud the barren wasteland that is the Oklahoma panhandle. Never mind that they had just fallen several miles straight down; The Power of Cool had cushioned their fall. The Commodore's voice boomed over Remington's radio:

"What's the situation, Team Leader?"

"We ain't got no sign of the enemies yet boss."

He scanned the horizon for any signs of the enemy. It was a dry, flat, brownish-red region with some sparse, depressing vegetation. There were a few mesas rising up out of the ground, but even they were pretty small and unimpressive. After a few moments of looking around, the team began walking forward.

"It's quiet..." Lin mumbled to herself.

"Almost... too... GODDAMN FUCKING QUIET!" Quatro yelled at the top of his lungs.

Sakura stopped abruptly and looked off to her right.

"What is it?" Remington asked, "Oh, fuck... she's that creepy little girl who never talks, right?"

"Yeah, let me try," Lin said, walking over to her, "What is it Sakura? Whatcha lookin' at? Is it hikers? Aliens? Armadillos? Just nod if I guess it."

"Come on," Quatro begged, "Would you tell us for a Scooby snack?""

Suddenly the plain Sakura was looking at erupted, and a cloud of dust billowed out hundreds of feet in all directions, engulfing our heros in a disorienting storm of sand and dirt and various other kinds of particulate matter. But even in this chaos, they could clearly see dozens of GreyBusters leaping out of the ground, hundreds of feet into the air.

"I thought these intergalactic honkies would have learned by now..." Remington smirked, "You shouldn't fuck with earth..."

With a loud war cry and the crack of his machine gun Remington unleashed an epic barrage of lead upon the enemies. The sky was soon filled with debris and severed robot limbs which rained down on our heroes like some kind of shower of pure, unfiltered awesome.

But it didn't last long, as hundreds of other enemy GreyBusters were climbing out of the enemy fortress, which basically just looked like a very large hole in the ground to our heroes. They were rushing towards our heroes at lightning speed. Some carried those lazer-BlackBerry things, which they fired wildly (and with stunning poor aim) at the humans. Others carried close combat weapons such as staplers and three-ring hole punches.

"CHAAAAAAAAAARGE!!!" Remington said, rushing towards the enemies, that surely must have numbered over one thousand by now.

Lin was first in line, leaping towards the enemies with an amazonian yell. She landed on a GreyBuster spear-first, and pole vaulted forward into the throng of metal.

Sakura followed shortly after, diving head-first into the mass of enemies. She then spun around while holding her swords out and cut a dozen GreyBusters directly in half at the torso.

"Damn..." Remington said, standing side-by-side with Tungsten and blasting non-stop into the crowd, "We need some more firepower. Quatro! Execute a special attacK!"

Quatro finished bitch-slapping an enemy's head clean off, and answered, "Yessir! Let's see how they like my Dicso Inferno Attack!"

Quatro's guitar disappeared, and suddenly The Beegees started playing in the background. He spun around and placed one hand on his hip, and the other in the air. His pelvis began wildly thrusting, and hand lowered and pointed at the GreyBusters.

"Burn, baby, burn!" Quatro sang as flames shot out of his hand and torched the enemies in a wave of fire and kickass.

"That's the way to do it!" Remington said, sliding across the ground, firing up at the GreyBusters through their legs.

Tungsten casually strolled over to the enemies, who took the opportunity to fire at him. But at the last second he front-flipped through the air and focused his aim directly on them. He unleashed thousands of rounds upon the group of enemies as he twirled through the air. And when he finally landed, there was nothing left but a pile of dust that used to be some jive alien suckas.

_____________________________________

"Hi there," said Tommy, "remember me?"

Tommy was waving towards The Commodore who had been starring intently at the screen at the front of the zeppelin for about thirty minutes. This screen was currently projecting images of the fight that was going on below them.

"How much longer is this gonna take? I drank the last of the root beer, and I finished playing scrabble with myself. I won. Now I'm just bored."

"Ha, pollycock!" The Commodore boomed, "How can you be bored when so much excitement is going on right below you?"

"It's pretty easy. I just glance at that screen there, then I see a bunch of stupid shit going on, then I start thinking that I'd prefer to be back in my algebra class with my Mrs. Studebaker. And she's an angry sixty-year-old bitch who who's probably never known the touch of a man."

"I don't believe you. All honest, god-fearing Americans love stupid action!"

"Aren't you British?"

"Hmm... Good question. I'll need to check that. Oh, look! They're entering the base. It shouldn't take long now..."

_____________________________________

It was a little past one-thirty and the Oklahoma headquarters of Gyuinu Holograms Inc. was on lunch break. They were the fourth largest manufacturer of holograms in the whole Grey Empire. However, their Oklahoma headquarters admittedly had a pretty poor location 500 feet underground in the middle of nowhere. But you couldn't hear Oozlog and Barfzak complaining. Oozlog and Barfzak were two large-headed Grey aliens who had worked at the company for about two years. They had finished their lunch and were just milling about the break room to kill some time. They spoke high-pitched "bleeps" and "blorps" which roughly translated to:

Barfzak: "Oh, I almost forgot to tell you. I finally got that Futurama DVD."

Oozlog: "Cool, it's about time."

Barfzak: "Yeah, I know. It's such a hassle 'cause I had to have Amazon send it to the middle of the badlands. So that was pretty... yeah... inconvenient."

Oozlog: "Right... It'd be a lot easier if we could just go to the store. But..."

Barfzak: "Yeah."

Oozlog: "We're aliens."

Barfzak: "Right."

Oozlog: "I'm really glad they brought it back. You know? Even if it's just for the movies."

Barfzak: "Yeah. And they've been really good so far."

Oozlog: "Word..."

Barfzak: "You wanna watch it tonight?"

Oozlog: "Yeah sure. I'll pick up Werjop after work and get some beers."

Barfzak: "I hope it's good. The last Futurama movie sure was."

Oozlog: "Yeah I- Oh fuck... Here comes Hewfurg the Hairpeice"

Hewfurg was their supervisor and had gotten a reputation for being a hardass, and had gotten his nickname from the poorly done hairpiece (which was really unnecessary because the Greys didn't have any hair).

Hewfurg: "Hey there Barf. Ooz. I just saw you in here and I thought I'd come remind you that lunch is gonna be over pretty soon."

Oozlog: "Yep, we know."

Hewfurg: "'Cause it's sort of been a problem in the past..."

Oozlog: "Yeah, we know, Mr. Hewfurg."

Hewfurg: Well... Just stopping by to remind you.

Oozlog and Barfzak waited silently until he had left, and finally spoke in hushed tones.

Oozlog: What the fuck is his problem? Every time we're having a good time he swoops in and fucks everything up.

Barfzak: I think it's in his job description. I think he literally is required to come in and... what the fuck is that?

Barfzak was looking out the window at some giant robots destroying the nearby buildings.

Oozlog: Oh fuck! It's the humans!

Barfzak: Dammit! Those bastards have destroyed every building I've ever worked at!

Oozlog: Run away!

_____________________________________

"Hahaha! This is fun!" Lin said kicking an office building over, "Look, they're running all over the place!"

Remington looked over his shoulder at her, "Now, I know it's fun, but we gotta get to that reactor."

The team was now fending off the Elite GreyBusters who defended the labyrinth of underground office buildings. These robots were taller, skinnier, and a wore slightly darker suits. And for weapons they wielded briefcases covered in spikes, which could act as shields, or could be swung around wildly.

"Damn..." Tungsten grunted as he pistol whipped three GreyBusters, "They're already launching the escape pods."

"We've got no choice," Remington squinted in determination, "We've gotta unleash Sakura's true power..."

"Sweety," Lin said, kneeling down next to Sakura, "Now we need you to go into your crazy Berserker Mode. Can you do that for us?"

There were a brief pause as the air was filled with gunshots and explosions. But after a few moments Sakura quietly nodded her head.

"All right, we're good to go! Tungsten, you to cover her. The rest of us will hang back and stop the enemy from coming on your flanks."

"Haha..." laughed Quatro, "you said 'coming on your flanks'..."

"Haha, yeah I did... LOCK AND LOAD BITCHES!"

Tungsten and Sakura began running deeper into the cave, in the direction of the reactor. It had become less cavernous and more constricted. They could see a few Elite GreyBusters up ahead and silent, since neither Sakura nor Tungsten were really big talkers. In fact, I notice that they've been greatly neglected in the story up until this point, which is a shame because they are both real badasses.

And, as if to prove this, Sakura leapt into their air and delivered a roundhouse kick to the first GreyBuster's face. It's head popped off like a cork and flew with such force that it blasted a hole through the chests of three other guards. She followed this up by throwing one of her swords directly through the neck of a distant guard. This guard began spinning around confusedly and inadvertently beheaded two nearby GreyBusters.

At this point Sakura's mech was emitting an eerie yellow glow from the mysterious "Berserker Mode" I mentioned earlier. Tungsten, meanwhile, had just blown the kneecaps off a nearby robot and delivered a dropkick to finish the job. He looked up, and in the distance he could see the green glow of the reactor.

The GreyBusters were swarming all over them by now. It was all they could do to fend them off and prevent them from piling on top of them. Tungsten had been backed into a corner of the cave, and had destroyed so many enemy robots that their corpses were beginning to naturally stack up almost to the top of the cave. Naturally, he decided to use these bodies as cover to fire from."Sakura!" Tungsten shouted, "Use it now!" Sakura heard him and immediately dropped her weapon. Her mech's body went limp and fell to the floor. The GreyBusters immediately jumped on top of her and prepared to crush her.

Suddenly a blinding light filled the cave, and the GreyBusters around Sakura were vaporized. Out of her mech's chest had sprouted a glowing yellow dragon of the typical Asian variety. It had a bushy mane, a long snake-like body, and fierce red eyes. The beast spread it's claws and swooped towards the nearest enemies. Nearly ten GreyBusters were caught in it's vice-like claws and countless more were slashed to bits by it's powerful claws.

Tungsten peeked out from behind his cover and saw that he had a clear shot to the reactor. He took careful aim with one of his pistols. The GreyBusters noticed this and rushed towards him. He had no time to spare, so without a moment's pause, he took the shot.And with that, a calm voice come over the cave's loudspeakers. It said, in a reassuring tone, "Hello. This is the emergency explosion alarm. If you are hearing this, then you have exactly thirty seconds to evacuate the cave before experiencing a gruesome death. Thank you."

_____________________________________

"King me," The Commodore said, moving his checkers piece all the way over to Tommy's side, "I wonder how much longer they shall be."

"I was just wondering that. I mean, honestly! How long can it take them to destroy an enemy base? When I play X-COM I can definitely beat the aliens by this time."

"Well then you'll undoubtedly be an excellent addition to our team."

"Fuck that noise. I'm not dressing up like some flaming butt pirate and dying for my planet. What the fuck has my planet done for me lately? And I'm not entirely convinced that these Greys wouldn't be nice leaders. Maybe they'll cure cancer and give us the secret to the common cold. Of course, that would require you to stop killing them all."

"Tommy, these aliens are evil. They want to destroy everything we humans have ever achieved!"

"And what, precisely, are yoiu basing this on?"

"Hmm... Well, they're grey."

"Uh huh."

"They're aliens."

"Yep."

"And... they enjoy work."

"I see."

"Well, I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty damn evil to me!

"Ugh..." Tommy sighed, resting his face in his palm.

"Oh my..." The Commodore mumbled as he glanced out the window. The ground was shaking and crumbling all around the desert. Fire was shooting out of the ground hundreds of feet into the air. Some of the GreyBusters feebly tried to climb out of the entrance, only to be engulfed in the ever expanding flames. Nearly a mile of land was burning, when suddenly the flames turned a sickly green, and the air itself began to pulsate.

The ground below erupted in a massive green mushroom cloud that reached up towards the Zeppelin. Just as all hope appeared to be lost, five shadowy figures burst out of the flames, a mile up. They were lead by Quatro, who played an epic power ballad on his mighty axe. They rode atop Sakura's yellow dragon, clinging on by it's massive mane. Remington still had his machine gun pointed towards the flames and was unloading on it, screaming:

"GET SOME! YEAH, GET SOME YOU PUNK ALIEN BITCHES!"

"Haha," The Commodore chuckled, "That's good work, team. You're cleared to dock with us. Let's head home."




TO BE CONTINUED...
_____________________________________