Chapter Fourteen
The Dramatic Conclusion!

We thought for a second, just the tiniest, smallest second, that we had lapsed back into our version of normality. We spent a lot of time lounging in the Shithole, kept going to Lizard Hut and talking to the poor sap at the door, we managed to get some weird blue and yellow wallpaper for the Shithole as well as a rug for that hole in the floor, Robot Horse and Robot Wolf stopped bugging us and all was as crappy as it had been before the all the stupid stuff took place.

Michael’s reign was still in place and running strong, and we got our grey uniform outfits as well. They were strangely formfitting so we didn’t really mind. The full body suits stripped us of the majority of our individuality, but we didn’t care about that because they were really comfortable. And mine made me look pretty slim, so I was pleased enough with that. Despite myself, I was willing to sacrifice most of my individuality so I wouldn’t look chubby.

How very very small-minded, desperate and pathetic of me. I blame Barbie.

“Man, I haven’t seen Michael about lately,” I said over my cup of coffee as I took a sip. Ricky stopped slurping on his milk (he didn’t really like coffee or tea that much, he only drank it if he wanted to put a zip in his step) and put it down on the table.

”That can’t be good,” he said with a grin, stirring his milk with the straw.

“He said he had some research to do,” I informed him, “What that is supposed to mean I’ll never know.”

“Probably will as soon as he gets back.”

“You getting that feeling as well?” I said all of a sudden, glugging down the rest of my coffee quickly. I could tell he did, because he had removed the straw and tipped the entire glass of milk down his throat as if it was about to run away.

”That something’s going to bust down the door and completely ruin our peace?”

”Yep.”

Smash!

“We’re getting pretty good at sensing that,” Ricky commented idly as some Robot Wolf agents marched in, toppling over drinks, tables and chairs as they went for no apparent reason. Damn overdramatic weirdos. It was beyond me why they couldn’t just go annoy somebody else for a change and leave us the hell alone. I let out a very, very heavy sigh of despair.

“Sir Pigeon Captain of the Ninja Pirates and Supreme Ninja Mistress of the Pigeons!” they said, saluting and then groaning because they had all slapped themselves across the head too hard. Me and Ricky look at each other and sighed. I threw my coffee cup away and smashed it, just to save them doing it.

“What do you want?” ‘Sir Pigeon Captain of the Ninja Pirates’ asked without showing any interest whatsoever.

“One of our spies notified us that an enemy force is coming to take you away! They have found out the secret and will use you to control the entire world!” one of the agent roared, spitting a little. I wiped the saliva from my forehead with disgust and looked over to Ricky, who didn’t look impressed. Even he was bored of these lot, he wasn’t even grinning like an absolute moron like he usually was.

“This is going to be Michael, isn’t it?” I asked him listlessly. He nodded and yawned and then we both stood up, kicking our table over before the troops could march forward to do it themselves.

“Alright, let the pointless battle between good and evil commence. Please start yelling like a bunch of absolute idiots and dragging us to various places with little, if any safety that we don’t want to go to,” I said, holding out my arms, which they instantly used to pick me up. An agent whistled and four more came over, clutching two stretchers between them. They laid me on the stretcher and I sat up instantly, whilst Ricky just hopped on it and sat with his legs dangling over the edge and facing me.

“I’m getting reeeally bored of this,” Ricky commented.

”Me too. But let it just go through with itself. Same formula every single time. Blablabla, bang bang, we live, others die, and then we get a good three or four days of normality before the whole bloody thing starts over again and somehow all the troops that died in the battle before are magically there again,” I said, crossing one of my legs across my other knee. Ricky leaned back and yawned.

”Yeah, and then eventually the prophecy will all be fulfilled and these poor guys can go get real jobs,” he said, giving the Robot Wolf agents sympathetic glances.

“Don’t pity them! It’s more like these poor guys can finally fuck off at the end,” I snapped, narrowing my eyes. Ricky shrugged.

“Eh, I’m sure they’re great people just…” he began and then trailed off thoughtfully.

”Nuts?” I offered. He nodded in agreement as they inelegantly tossed us onto the orange helicopter. We scrambled to our feet and took a seat, then fell off it as the helicopter took off before we had a chance to get a firm seating.

”Yeah, that’s right. Totally off their head crazy,” he said as he stretched a hand up and pulled himself back onto his seat. I didn’t even bother and just remained lying on my stomach on the floor, “Where are they taking us this time anyway?”

“Probably taking a ridiculously awkward route to the usual base,” I replied with a yawn. I decided to hop onto a seat, since I was getting very uncomfortable on the floor. I looked out the window to see that the helicopter was just flying around in very low circles that were clearly visible to everybody.

“Here, take these!” an agent from the front said, and turned away from steering the helicopter a second to hand us a pair of white laser pistols.

”Building! Building! Building!” we both yelled and the man turned away and screamed like a little girl as he saw he had left the helicopter chugging away towards a very close-by building. He grabbed the controls and veered us away as we grabbed the guns he had thrown to the floor and just set off.

“Man, is it me or is everybody in Robot Wolf getting steadily worse?” I asked as I clicked the safety on my pistol, gesturing for Ricky to do the same. He mirrored me and shrugged.

“Dunno, I thought Robot Horse was worse though,” he said and then grinned, “At least you haven’t made any of the agents on our side cry and stab themselves in the eye!” I snorted and if I could reach, I would have whacked him across the shoulders for that one.

”Hey, you make it sound like I made him want to stab himself in the eye! It was an accident,” I snapped. He rolled his eyes.

”Yeah, because that just makes it so much better,” he said sarcastically, I folded my arms.

”Well it does kinda. Wait a sec…how come we’re the ‘Chosen Ones’ but they’re the one with the armour?” I asked, prodding my finger towards the agents who were still driving the helicopter around in pointless, dizzying circles that I’m sure were getting steadily smaller.

“You don’t need the armour, you can dodge bullets!” one piped up from the front, not looking up from his copy of Playboy.

“That’s Neo from the Matrix. Besides, we’re use lasers,” I growled at him. He shrugged, turning the page with his free hand.

“Eh, you’ll be fine. Oh…oh…yes,” he groaned. Both me and Ricky grimaced at each other and I closed the screen thing separating us and the drivers. We did not need to hear that. Ever. I leaned back on my seat, hands on my knees.

”Okay…I’m starting to get motion sickness now,” I said as the helicopter started to do a tiny tiny circle in the air and my stomach churned warningly. Suddenly, something hit the side of the helicopter and exploded and the entire thing rumbled. Both me and Ricky fell off our seats for what felt like the millionth time and I had to stop myself from just vomiting everywhere.

I scrambled up and opened up the screen.

“Aw, I was getting to fifty turns!” the pilot squealed disappointedly.

“Ow…dude…that just…hurt…so…much…” the other groaned. I growled, yes actually growled, angrily and slammed my hand against the rest of the screen.

”Idiots! Stop goofing off and fly properly! We are being attacked you pair of pinheads!” I roared, bunching my fists and screwing my eyes shut. I was at the absolute end of my rope with all the seemingly endless idiocy. I looked out the window to see Michael sitting on the back of a small dragon which was darting about erratically so that Michael could direct a fleet of assorted monster-things. Some of which didn’t even look like they should bloody fly. I did like that cool floating blue jelly-fish thing. After all this I may well just ask if I could have one.

He probably would have just came home and peacefully told me and Ricky to join him if it weren’t for Robot Wolf’s stupidity and interference. God, I hated my life and this group.

“Okay, please explain to me one thing!” Ricky yelled, holding up his gun as a large Frankenstein’s monster of a cat toy flew past and scraped the side of the helicopter, “If we’re in here and they’re out there, what hell is the use of this gun!?”

“That’s why you two must take the Arwings and take down the fleet one-by-on!” roared the pilot as he veered out the way of a tongue of flame, very badly.

“What!?” I screamed, “There are no Arwings back here!”

“Somebody sabotaged the Arwings! Oh the humanity!” yelled the guy who was still staring intently at his Playboy.

“Are you all completely stupid!?” Ricky said, whilst he banged on the window of the helicopter and yelled at Michael to just cease fire and come rescue us from the clutches of a pair of complete dumbarses. “There’s no such thing as an Arwing! An Arwing is a video game fighter spaceship thing you dense idiots!”

The pilot grabbed hold of the steering sticks and sent the helicopter into wild flight patterns that probably shouldn’t have even been physically possible. I jumped forward and started whacking him across the head and screaming at him to stop being a moron. Michael’s armada had ceased fire and were now just watched bemusedly, I could see them from here. But still the stupid idiot continued to panic and scream and frantically twist the sticks about so that the helicopter was going absolutely everywhere.

”Stop…it! I’m going to be frigging sick!” I yowled, trying desperately to keep myself in place but failing badly. Ricky was urgently gripping a seat with his hands and knees so that he wouldn’t break every single bone in his body.

“Yellow alert! The Metroids have breached the perimeter! Oh god, there’s one in my braaain!” he screeched and then threw the door of the helicopter open and tossed himself out thoughtlessly.

”Oh god! I ripped my Playboy!” howled the other and also threw himself out the helicopter with a horrified scream.

”Are you frickin’ kidding me!?” I yelled and then I slammed the screen door shut and scrambled to the back of the helicopter so I wouldn’t get sucked out the door or something. I knew for a fact it was completely idiotic to attempt to fly the stupid thing so at least this way I wouldn’t die a horrible, stupid death. I couldn’t just respawn like the Robot Wolf goons seemed to do quite easily. Ricky was still banging on the window and making pleas. Apparently something sunk in because one of the jellyfish came flying up and caught the helicopter in its amorphous body.

“Oh thank god!” I said and then crawled forwards and stood up, laughing from the sheer relief of it all. Finally, we were among people (monsters, whatever) with a brain. Ricky and I hugged and then hi-fived and rushed to the doors as the jellyfish drifted down to the ground and put us down with a low thump.

We were about to get out when a streak of green plasma laser streaked past and hit the jellyfish behind us, sending it wheeling back.

”Oh for the love of all that is good in the world!” I screamed irritably as some ships flew in the world’s most cliché way over the horizon. I peered though and, as if just to crush me with the sheer might of cheesiness, saw they were all Robot Horse ships. The largest ship swooped over and took a shot at the small dragon Michael was flying but he darted easily away from it. I bashed my head lightly against the wall of the ship in sheer frustration.

”Don’t worry Chosen Ones! We’ll protect you, we can’t let these bastards get control!” a voice from inside one of the ships yelled, using some kinda loudspeaker systems.

“This…is intensely annoying,” I grumbled.

”Oh come on, lets just get out there and…”

“Are you nuts!? We’ll get blasted to pieces,” I said quickly, dragging Ricky back to his seat by the back of his collar.

“But we’ve got like three thousand words to gooo… Are we supposed to just sit and wait? That’s boring!” he whined.

”Seriously, what the hell are you talking about when you say stuff like that?” I asked rhetorically, ducking as black crystals sprouted from the ground to force the ships to smash right into them. Screw it, I thought and threw the door open and grabbed my gun. I waved over to Michael and Ricky grinned and snatched up his gun as well. Michael pointed at a few things and a great fissure formed dramatically in the ground. I could almost vomit at all the clichés being chucked in there, but I managed to control myself. I had done very well with keeping the contents of my stomach so far and I wasn’t planning on losing out now.

With one last swish of Michael’s hands, a huge black creature leapt out of the fissure and yowled, and I swore I could hear a deep voice screaming ‘BOSS BATTLE’ somewhere. The beast was something like a dragon and panther mix, with a catlike body but huge claws and teeth, as well as spines running from between its pointy ears to the tip of its rounded tail.

The boy levitated off the ground and floated up and sat on the beast’s head as it leapt towards a bunch of jets and slashed them to the ground. On foot, Robot Wolf members and Robot Horse members alike were shooting at Michael’s army. I pointed my pistol and shot at a random enemy jet’s wing angrily. For god’s sake, will you idiots just leave me alone!?

I glanced about and saw practically everything in the town was either destroyed or on fire. Bah, that only to be expected really.

“Chosen Ones!” Bear yelled, running up to us. We both turned out pistols on him and he threw up his hands in alarm, “What are you doing?”

”We are both so sick of this, it’s ridiculous! You’re all so…so…dumb!” I screamed. Ricky nodded. Bear started to cry, but in that silent (and even more cliché) way that was silent and only included tears and choked voice.

“Sloane…Ricky…” he choked and we wondered vaguely when we had told him our names.

”And stop with the clichés as well! It’s driving me nuts!” Ricky shouted.

”You noticed that too?” I asked.

“How could you not?” he replied in an exasperated voice. I shot at him, missed and too off his arm and he fell to the floor with a scream.

”You were the Chosen Ones! You were supposed to bring balance to the…stuff…not leave it darkness!” he screamed desperately, turning onto his stomach and stretching one of his hands out towards us.

“Oh you did not just say that,” I said, walking over towards Bear with my pistol out, “You did not just quote Star Wars. No frickin’ way.” Bear whimpered pathetically as he stared up at the glowing pistol.

“You’re like children to me,” he sobbed.

”Dude, you’ve spent about half an hour with us in our entire lives!” I screamed, utterly frustrated beyond belief by then. He only sobbed.

”I remember when you were orphaned…I took you in…” he whimpered, writing about on the floor and crying hysterically. Me and Ricky both looked at each other and shook our heads disapprovingly. He was just talking absolute crap, it was clear for anybody to see. Did he seriously think this would guilt trip us in the slightest considering none of it had actually happened?

“This is just…okay, screw it,” I said and then shot him in the head. I shot him again, just to make sure he was very dead and wouldn’t start whining again all of a sudden.

”That was anti-climatic,” Ricky commented, raising an eyebrow. I laughed and rolled my eyes, shooting an agent lumbering towards us conspicuously. If it weren’t for the general incompetence of the agents, I’m sure we’d have been deader than Bear right about then. And that’s pretty dead.

”Yeah, and we both know how much you hate that,” I said and ducked away from a laser blast, “Gee I hope the Shithole’s alright. If our recliner’s are dead I might just cry.”

“Priorities!” he snorted and then started taking blasts at some Robot Horse agent that seemed to think they knew Bear in some way, shape or form.

”Sloane! So you’ve decided to reap vengeance on me by destroying the town!?” a voice yelled from behind. For the love of God!

“Oh you have just got to be fucking around with me now,” I groaned and turned to see Ashley standing with a sci-fi-style plasma cannon over her shoulder, with a pipe coming out of it that was hooked to her back. I blinked as Ricky defended my back against a bunch of agents after my blood for blowing Bear’s brains out.

”When the hell did you get that?” I asked blankly, pointing the weapon.

“Shut up Sloane! This will be our final battle, you little freak!” I yelled. Okay, this was the secret boss battle that nobody mentioned so you didn’t heal beforehand and you’ve got no potions left. That’s when the GAME OVER screen made you scream and smash your TV with your controller.

Wait, what?

“Fine then…bring it, or whatever,” I said with a resigned sigh and struck a dramatic pose, deciding that I just might as well. She blasted at me and I side-stepped it since she wasn’t a very good shot. A few agents went flying into the air, as well as a few of Michael’s monsters.

I pointed my gun forward and took a shot, but she defended with the ridiculously oversized cannon that by the laws of physics she probably shouldn’t have ever been able to carry in the first place.

She took another shot and I barely evaded that one so I skipped around, trying to shoot at the pipe-thing sticking out of her back. It seemed like the right thing to do.

She shot at me a few times and managed to evade, only getting away with singeing my arms once or twice. I jumped away, clutching my aching arm in pain and dropped to my stomach, rolling away from yet another shot and pushing her from behind. She got up too quick for me to take a shot at the pipe and I had to evade another series of badly aimed lasers.

Finally, I managed to make my way to the back of her and in a split second I shot at the pipe and sure enough she roared (this was getting weirder and weirder by the minute, I swear) and dropped the plasma cannon. To the ground. She looked down, panting and I held the gun to her forehead.

”Any last words you ridiculous whore?” I asked. She looked up and then roared again and jumped at me, knocking my pistol out my hand. She pushed me down to the ground and I kicked her back and rolled away, standing up as quickly as possible. She took another slash to my face and I grabbed her wrist, twisting it back hard and kneeing her to the ground. Ashley twisted around and grabbed a fallen pipe off the ground and went to hit me with it. I dodged and she managed to scramble to her feet.

I punched her in the stomach and she only winced slightly and hit me across the shoulders with the pipe, sending me flying to the ground. I scrambled around in the grass and looked about frantically as Ashley tried to smash the pipe against my back against and again and a few times she managed to make contact. I leapt to my feet and tripped her up, taking a few minutes to scan desperately as she got to her feet and screeched, leaping in for another assault.

”Conveniently placed weapon…conveniently placed weapon…work off the clichés Sloane…” I whispered to myself, dodging Ashley’s pipe attacks whilst trying to get a weapon of my own to start beating her to death with. I looked over to Ricky, but he was too preoccupied shooting down agents that seemed to just jump out of absolutely nowhere at him.

This battle was ridiculously huge, how was I supposed to find my pistol or something to hit her with in something that made the Lord of the Rings movie battle look like a sissy slap-fight? We didn’t even have that many inhabitants in Malice beforehand! Where the hell are these people coming from? Surely there could only be so many monsters that Michael could create.

She slammed against my chest with the pipe and I fell to my knees, winded. She stood over me and prepared to slam the pipe against my head when I saw my pistol lying close by. I grabbed it up and shot at her face. She screamed and dropped the pipe, covering her face with her hands.

She looked up and I saw I had uncovered a metal skull beneath the skin.

“Oh this is just plain bloody stupid…but you know, I suspected this all along,” I thought aloud to myself as I prepared to take another shot, this time to the chest. When she leapt at me and pushed me to the ground, landing on my back, snatching my pistol from my hand and holding it to the back of my head.

“So Sloane…how do you like being on the hot end of your own weapon?” she hissed. I attempted to stand up but she pressed my head down to the ground with the barrel of my laser gun.

I stretched out and attempted to grab the pipe, moaning weakly.

“I like savouring this…seeing you helpless. It’s so very amusing to me, your pain,” she said. I was never more thankful for the overdone villain speech in my life, it gave me significant time to save my own arse in the overdone hero way.

Suddenly, a blast hit Ashley on the chest and she screamed and fell back, I looked to see, unsurprisingly, Ricky standing with his weapon smouldering (even though lasers don’t create any smoke from the barrel) and gripped in his outstretched hands.

“Thanks Ricky, you saved me from some serious crap there!” I said happily, grabbing my pistol from Ashley’s unmoving hand and then serving her a few more shots to the chest and head. No matter how many clichés, I would never fall to the old ‘Monster not really dead!’ thing. I wasn’t that stupid.

“What are friends for, eh?” he replied with a grin.

“Oh man…that was lame,” I said, slapping my forehead and shaking my head. He nodded and then we turned, deciding we have to blast our way through to Michael to get to safety. An agent jumped at us and moved to punch me in the face but I ducked and served him an uppercut to the chest. How I had suddenly gotten good at fighting was utterly beyond me but I wasn’t about to question that when I was in the middle of some shit this stupid.

“Michael!” I yelled, trying to draw attention to us. Michael was still atop his big shadowy beast whatever, which was swallowing up agents by the dozens. Michael cast his arm down and a great crystal shot through the ground and went straight through the middle of the biggest Robot Horse ship.

We fought our way through, blasting people out the way and two lions latched onto us to help, roaring and scratching anybody that we didn’t manage to get. The battlefield was full of the cries of war and it was absolute madness, everybody was killing and shooting and bloodied, dramatic corpses littered the grounds. I glanced around to see that we had somehow ended up in a huge opening in the middle of Malice that hadn’t previously been there and all the other buildings that hadn’t been demolished were on fire.

Suddenly, many agents turned to look at us as a cry of ‘Traitors’ went out! I froze and then both me and Ricky stood poised with our weapons, ready to fight.

“Kill them! The prophecy lied!” somebody else screamed and then the horde of agents charged towards us with cries of hatred and war. Michael turned and he and his beast came charging up, slashing down and devouring agents. He rose his hands a tongue of flame lashed up from the ground and singed many enemies all at once.

It was a great and bloody battle, and it seemed that there was no end to all the enemies, while Michael looked strained with rising beast after beast from the underworld to fight for our side. I had kinda forgotten what our side was planning on doing, but it had better be good and I’m sure it was if I had started fighting for it.

I paused suddenly, in the middle of fighting with an agent.

”Uh…do you guys hear that?” I asked, hearing distant-sounding, cheery and upbeat music. Everybody abruptly leapt to their feet and I stumbled back in confusion as they all filed into neat lines and Michael’s beast started playing some giant drums that came out of absolutely nowhere.

”Uh, what’s going on?” I whimpered, really really freaked out since all the corpses had jumped to their feet and stood in line with all the living and started to dance.

“Ricky?” I questioned meekly, to see that Ricky was dancing as well. The biggest jellyfish was suddenly in possession of a guitar and playing it really well, whilst the huge, most ferocious dragon was playing a massive keyboard.

Everybody then began to sing, dancing in union and with perfect choreography. Apart from me, because I had no idea what the hell was happening and what prompted everybody to stop fighting and start dancing for the love of god.

Everybody began to sing;

“Well, it's been a good month and we've had fun

Only 26 days since we begun!

It's been a giggle a minute,

Through the fast and the slow!

Today we give our final salute

We've reached the end of NANOWRIMO!”

“What on earth are you all doing!?”

“We'll miss all the characters, good or bad!

We've been happy, we've been sad

It's a crap conclusion

But it's 50, 000 words, woah!

Hope you haven't died of confusion!

We've reached the end of NANOWRIMO!”

“You were all killing each other two seconds ago! What the hell is this song?”

“We expect a letter from God, anytime now!

Lets keep on smiling, and give a bow!

50 000 words of absolute shite

It's been hard, oh yes, oh!

And it all ends here tonight!

We've reached the end of NANOWRIMO!”

“Oh screw it!” I yelled finally and joined in the dancing and singing.

“Malice is finally over, we can all give a cheer!

Nano is over, until next year.

Say goodbye to Ricky, and to Sloane

The characters we met so long ago!

From then, how much have the grown?

We've reached the end of NANOWRIMO!

We've come to absolute no real ending

No we haven't, there's no pretending

That this has had a real point

But what the hell did you expect? Oh!

So sorry, don't mean to disappoint!

We've reached the end of NANOWRIMO!”

Author’s Notes: hahaha, don’t say I didn’t warn you! Yes, the ending was silly xP My exact words when I posted this up at my nanoblog was this:

(collapses)

Which is understandable considering I’d wrote like half of the entire word count in one long, frantic and incredibly fun day. Hard to believe I wrote this a year ago, and I quite thoroughly enjoyed doing it