Chaos unfolded in front of Scat and he was completely lost. It was a mire of tangled bodies, flailing limbs and blood being sprayed everywhere with a myriad of Sporting Goods. The only choice was to be a part of the Sport and not escape it. He let the Frisbee-Rang fly, knocking back a sea-monkey that was jumping towards him with its filthy paws splayed outwards. Meanwhile, Paw was mauling one of them like a chew toy, chomping down on the fragile neck of the verminous creatures.
Drawing three slow breaths, Z-Grip pulled her paper cutter sword from her back, tossing the protective canvas that had covered it over the face of an approaching sea monkey. In a swing that split atoms in twain, the penja cut the sea monkey into two perfectly equal portions.
During the chaos, the Dorf had lost hold of his holy texts and character sheet; Both having ended up sunken into the deep liquid toxins below. This caused great pain to him, but now was not the time to grieve even if his loss was great. This was a large assault; And while there were others to aid in handling the situation, his loss pushed him to aid in the defense of the Detergent post-haste.
'Gods, witness me.' Young Blöthmerche thought to himself, processing through the mess. His objective was made clear; Protect the vessel by exterminating every threat in sight. While they were being approached from afar, a current issue were the horrid little creatures preventing the Dorf from taking any shots at them with his ranged weapon. Damned creatures, he would purge them back into the Spillway below for thinking he was mere bait, when truly he was the predator they ought to have feared.
Frame club in hand, the monkeys weren't a enemy to fear: Just to overcome. A firm swing at one of the approaching beasts caused a horrid gushing sound as it's ugly eye was smashed in through the center, causing it to screech and recoil. Another had tried to bite his foot; But was met with the protective steel of his boot as the small creature was instead the victim of him progressing forward, crushing it's body underneath his boot as he approached the first beast, raising his frame club before jabbing it through the crushed eye; Destroying whatever was behind it; Which Blöthmerche assumed must have been vital as the beast ceased movement.
“ Here! IN HERE!” The same helmsman from earlier who told them to get the package opened a door to the inner storage compartments of the vehicle and waved his right hand urgently as if to usher them inside. “ The package is inside - “ He didn’t have a chance to finish the sentence as he was swarmed by a troop of sea monkeys, one of them wrapping its legs around his neck and attempting to claw his eyes out.
“No, you need to get the safe open,” Bonk chided gently. Blue growled with frustration as she watched the Sea Monkeys congeal on the deck. She had the firepower to do something about them, but...the job was the job. If they lost the package, they wouldn’t get paid, and it didn’t matter how much damage she did, without that money, she was worse than unstocked.
“Rekk it to hell,” she grumbled, before an epiphany struck. She whirled to the FabGlam first, who had been nearby. “You! Use this. Point and shoot when we’re all clear.” She tossed Kriver, the lightning shotgun of her dreams, to the FabGlam. “No recoil. Push the red switch until it turns green. Point, shoot, ya sync it?” No time to wait for a confirmation. “And I want it back!” she said, heading for the below-decks with the other two lifters.
She pulled out Cazette the hand-crossbow and sighted down the rudimentary aiming system with one eye. She squeezed off two shots, sending razor blades thumping into the Sea Monkeys on the helmsman’s back. “C’mon, rekker!” she held out a hand for the man; he needed to show them where the safe was.
“By the Silks...” Havalock muttered under his breath as he watched the Sea Monkeys stand before him. Of all the vile creatures of the Wal, Sea Monkeys were the ones he had the least experience with and was honestly okay with keeping it that way. He had been more than a little startled by the pair that was staring him down, ignoring everything else that was going on around him. With frightening speed, one of them leapt at him, giving him mere seconds to draw his blade and slash the beast with it. Realizing that more would only come if he kept standing around, he pulled out his REV-6 and made his way inside the ship.
Running down the side of the boat, he took potshots at whatever he could. As he ran, the explorer found another crewman pinned by a Sea Monkey who was tearing at his suit. With a valorous roar, sprinted to the pinned sailor, kicking the creature off of him before pistol whipping it to the ground. As it laid dazed on the deck, the last thing it saw was Havalock’s boot, its bottom covered in nails, crushing its head.
Now suitably covered in blood and battle, he made his way to the other three, bringing up the rear guard. “Go! I’ll cover!” Havalock shouted as he shouldered his charger and whispered, “A true gentleman never leaves a man behind; he always guarantees the safety of others before him as chivalry and honor dictate.” Taking a knee, he skillfully fired at every damned Sea Monkey and pirate he could spot, having to fend off one with the butt of his charger. As he tried to reload, he saw a pack of the aquatic monsters charge at him.
Deciding now was a good time to fall back, he threw his charger into the compartment and began to pull back the bulkhead door. The Sea Monkeys were gaining on him and tried to grab the door before Havalock could shut and lock it. After aggressively negotiating the door’s release with the help of several rapid blasts from his side arm, the man finally slammed the door shut with a resounding “THUNK”, crushing one of their arms and leaving it on the ground as he locked the door, picking up his rifle and running down.”
The funny looking parakeet man was shouting towards Scats just as he twisted the head off a Sea-Monkey with the edge of his ‘rang like a bottle-cap. He turned back to see that the man from Clothing was waving them all towards an open entrance. He looked around for Paw, lost amidst the chaos before spotting his white behind a few meters away from him. The rabbit was busily tearing apart the torso of a sea-monkey behind him. Coaxing his Pet to let go of his prey in a short-lived tug of war, Scats scooped up Paw and held the flailing rabbit on his shoulder, following Havalock through the frenzied violence.
The helmsman who had shouted towards the trio of Lifters threw off two twitching corpses speared with bolts off him and accepted the proffered hand of the Tron Girl. He rubbed the long nick on his chin as he staggered towards the open door which Havalock held open for a scant moment. Scat bolted in at the last moment as Havalock closed the door, the metallic bang echoing through the innards of the ship. He felt Paw shivering anxiously, in the small enclosed tight corridor of darkness and the nauseous aroma of rusted metal.
A small light then flickered in the dark compartment. It was the helmsman, panting and with a small Zippo held in his hand.
“ T-thanks.” The helmsman breathed out, his face ashen from his near death experience. “ Thought I was gonna get checked out there.” He then waved the Zippo to the left of the corridor. His other hand clenched the other side of his battered uniform, splattered with Sea Monkey blood. “Follow me. The package has gotta be here somewhere….”
The helmsman began treading into the wayward bowels of the Detergent and Scat followed him. The innards of the S.S Detergent were beginning to slowly flood with the scent of spillwater and shopper waste. It was a testament to the craftsmanship of the vessel that it had managed to stay afloat for this long. The water was beginning to come up to his ankles as the helmsman approached a rickety stairwell, his boots echoing off each step.
At the bottom of the stairwell, the helmsman waved the light in his hand to illuminate the innards of the corridor. Scat could see barrels tangled up in cargo nets full of grocery rations, the top half of a Battle-Cart that had been sawn off, a collection of watering cans from Gardening and several other items. The helmsman chuckled at Scat’s wandering gaze, shaking his head in amusement.
“ What? You think your package was the only one we were hauling?” His smile morphed into one of pain as he coughed for a brief moment. “ Only a few crew members know about the location of this package. All of these other ones…..were all meant to distract, to fool in the case of a raid. We never expected to get attacked by a Sam-damned Wal-Pirate in these waters.”
“ Ah, here we go.” The helmsman stopped at a pile of stacked up boxes of Whet-Bix at the end of the storage room. He grabbed a hockey stick that was lodged into the loose mountain of cardboard and wrenched it out, causing the towering conga hill to collapse apart like wet paper, revealing a mammoth size metallic box that just managed to squeeze within the enclosed space. There were several strange arrows and letters on it pointing up with a faded series of barcodes running along the bottom. The sides read “ WAL-INCORPORATED PROPERTY” whilst the front was locked shut by a strange gate. An electronic keypad with numerous buttons and switches ran the left side of its frame. The helmsman pulled out what Scat thought looked like a bent clothes hanger out of his jacket. “ Now, if we try to use the key at the incorrect time….” He jammed the key into a slot on the keypad.
A loud digitized voice issued out of the box’s miniature speakers, rattling Scat’s teeth and sending Paw jumping all over the place.
THIS WAL-TECH PACKAGE IS ONLY READY TO BE OPENED AND ENJOYED IN:
24 HOURS, 52 MINUTES, 30 SECONDS AND COUNTING
“ Now, we don’t have time for that.” The helmsman turned back towards the trio. “ By the time this package is ready to open, we’ll be sitting at the bottom of the Spillway with the Sea Monkeys using our bodies as kibble or the Wal-Pirates hanging our corpses from their boats. Now, Tron Girl, all we need you to do is to slice that open before those pirates come and don’t ask us nicely to give them our packa-”
The ginormous box boomed out again.
“ WARNING: ATTEMPTING TO OPEN A WAL-INCORPORATED PACKAGE WITHOUT PROPER AUTHORIZATION COULD RESULT IN ACUTE LIFE ENDANGERMENT SYNDR-KZZZTTTTTT “
The helmsman flashed a smile. “ Well, I like our chances already. How’s ‘bout you give it a whirl, Tron-Girl?”
Pure, utter carnage. Limbs went flying and the death rattles of both monkey and men were a combined cacophony on the boat. The deck was soon soaked in enough monkey blood to drip through the floorboards and down into the galley. One thing was becoming clearer as the bloodbath continued onwards. The sea monkeys might have had numbers and fanged teeth by their side but the shoppers had one advantage they did not have. Tenacity. Whenever a sea monkey took the life of a helmsman, another one took ten more in return. The numbers of the sea monkeys began to dwindle as the men and women of the S.S Detergent rallied around the band of Lifters fighting back against the odds.
One of the sailors pumping the lifeboats yelled out with the signs of a grim grin on his face. “ We’ve got the first duckie primed and ready! Move the injured to the - “
He suddenly found that he couldn’t speak anymore as his lower jaw was ripped off and pinned to the stern of a ship by a harpoon. Several more came arcing onto the upper deck, ropes attached onto them, as they embedded themselves in a rhythmic staccato. Sailors and monkeys alike were not spared, having been impaled gruesomely by the barbed fronts. The pirate ship was near enough that you could see its prow and the intricacy of the flag whipping in the air-conditioned gales of the Spillway. Sewn from baby blankets, the crude facade of a bald man with one hooped earring was stitched onto the black fabric, grinning in diaper-white teeth.
“ By god” One helmsman muttered to himself, chewing his nails. “ It’s the Misters…”
The sound of laughter and hooting-hooting was heard as shopper hands gripped the side of the boat. Bald men and women, all draped in clean pressed t-shirts, crawled over and began joining the fray of man on monkey violence. The first unsheathed his plunger out and cried out.
“ THERE’S NO CLEAN LIKE THE MISTERS!”
“My name is Blue, waterlogger.” Blue didn’t much care for unrestricted water. Or the people who sailed on it, despite saving the Helmsman’s life. In Electronics, uncontained water was both a terrible sin and a steadfast danger. Countless ‘Tron masterpieces had been laid to waste by a careless spray or a spilt bottle.
But there was no time for grouching. They’d have to deal with Bonk sooner or later, so...she pulled the man out of her pocket. “All right, what do we got here, Bonk?”
“Why are you asking me?” Bonk said. “You’re the expert here. I don’t know anything about Wal-Tech’s O66-SafeKeeper, or its seventy-slot alphanumeric passcode, or its—”
“Or the CD and H pointer flaw in the third generation SafeKeeper that never got patched out,” Blue mumbled. That was it! The SafeKeeper had never made it past the third generation, and for anyone but the most skilled Tronsmiths, they would be dead-in-the-water. Lucky for all of them…
She pulled The Heirloom from her kitbag, found the maintenance port along the top of the safe, and hopped to work. Her fingers were a blur on The Heirloom as she typed, channeling the progress and prowess of all her predecessors. She needed to set up a recursive function that would overwrite the memory of the processor in just the right way.
She’d never done this before, but she knew about the dangers. If she didn’t fry the memory before the countdown ran out, a swift, forceful, and invariably fatal shock would be the end of them all.
Still beat getting rekked by Misters.
With a set of trills, the safe’s lights winked off, then back on at a fainting brightness. There was an audible click, and she snatched the Heirloom free of the safe and leapt back. After a few seconds of not being electro-murdered, she turned to the Helmsman. “Easy rip’n’burn, man.”
Throwing the sea monkey blood from her paper cutter sword with a carefully measured slash in the air, Z-Grip turned her attention to the hairless pirates that surged across the deck of the crippled vessel. Pirates. Dishonorable water rats corrupted by greed. Most cursed, bakagaijin. They would all have to die. The honor of her ancestors demanded it. Her own honor required it. She would cleanse her spirit with the blood of the impure.
Nodding solemnly, Z returned the war cry of the plunger wielding pirate. The vicious smile that she flashed beneath her mask was lost to the black fabric that shielded her features. “May your pencil chip and shatter!”
Closing the distance between her and her chosen foe, Z grabbed hold of a smooth-scalped pirate that stumbled into her path. Lashing out with a free hand, she inserted three gloved fingers into the eyes and nose of the pirate. The gurgling scream that followed filled her with satisfaction. Her father had always said that blind pirate was a good pirate. Jumping atop the shoulders of the screaming pirate, Z spun his head around like a bowling ball sized top. The momentum of the dying cue-ball man provided the penja with enough momentum to launch herself in a swirling vortex of death towards the marauding earring hipsters.
Cutting through another soapy pirate, Z found her wicked blade parried by the plunger wielding pirate. She ducked beneath a heavy swing that would have smashed bathroom tiling, listening to the ringing of metal that shuddered through the handle of the plunger. Pirates were devious devils. It seemed the pirate that she dueled was no novice. He was no fool. He had replaced the wooden handle of his plunger with pure stainless steel. Japanese steel met stainless steel in a shower of sparks as the two warriors locked weapons.
“ Captain All Purpose, we’ve successfully managed to secure the S.S Detergent.”
“ Then, why has it not been wiped dry yet?”
“ This ship is proving more rust-resistant than we initially expected, sir.”
“ …...Prepare the enzyme action maneuver. The cargo that we’re after should survive exposure and our spy will be able to take care of any inconveniences. It’s time we put an end to this stain once and for all.”
“ Aye aye, captain. I’ll relay your orders to the men. ”
“ Leave me. “
“ So be it. MISTERS, FIRE THE - “
“ Quite a bold strategy, spill-sailer, though, even I have my doubts that an artifact of the Great Sam could survive such a - “
“ Save your sales pitches, Smiler scum. We’re washing your hands for you . This ‘artifact’ of yours better be worth it.”
“ Ah, a worthy challenge,” the Mister who was duelling Z-Grip snarled out. “ I’ve always wanted to kill me a Stationari. Let’s see if you’re made of stainless steel, indeed.” A three way deadlock was ensuing on the decks of the S.S Detergent. Wal-Pirate on sailor, sailor on Wal-Pirate and sea monkey on shopper. The misters fought frantically and with a conviction, absorbing debilitating hits like a Kleenex, their white clothes unnaturally staying immaculate, even after their death. However, the rabid monkeys were getting caught in a shopper sandwich, as they were skewered by the pipe cleaner spears of the Misters and tossed overboard by sailors. For the crew of the Detergent, it almost seemed as if their situation was beginning to improve and that the Great Sam was smiling on them from above.
Then, three puffs of smoke erupted from the portside cannons of the Mister doubloon, depositing not bleach balls, but heavy barrels into the nearby waters. Upon hitting the water, they cracked open to deposit a powdery chalk-like ash into the surrounding Spillway around the Detergent. The water turned a milky white, hissing out gas as tendrils of white began to approach the hull of the beached vessel.
Nothing happened at first.
The venerable hull of the Detergent then began to groan, buckling as everyone from man, monkey and pirate felt something shuddering underneath. The sea to the portside of the vessel was boiling, churning with caustic bubbles that whetted and gnawed away at the crumbling wreckage of the vessels like dire-roaches on empty Cereai boxes. Something broke underneath and the lower cabins began to flood uncontrollably. The S.S Detergent, the uncontested prime raft of the Cleaning Supplies department, was falling apart.
The deck, which had been shaking for the last half hour or so, was now quaking apart. The sea monkeys, whilst feral, even had their limits. The sensory bombardment was overwhelming to their primitive minds. The smell of bleach, the moving ground, the sight of all these different shoppers, the pain. When one startied fleeing, the rest followed suit, dragging shopper corpses of sailor and Wal-Pirate alike as take-away.
“ ALL CREW MEMBERS! BAIL SHIP! I REPEAT BAIL SHIP!” The remaining crew members began tossing the life-floaties out overboard in a wanton manner and jumping overboard into the merciless tides of the Spillway. Some landed inside the safety of the life-floaties while others were unfortunate enough to take a dive into the chilling Spillway, having to swim their way towards the floaties. Meanwhile, the Misters were still slaughtering and pillaging the remnants of the boat, taking advantage of the momentary confusion to slit the throats of the sailors. A senior helmsman shouted at the remaining Lifters onboard, his left eye having been pulverised by a toothbrush “ If you don’t wanna get left behind, Lifters, I suggest you come with us!”
“ ERROR...ERROR...ERROR...HOSTILE INCURSION DETECTED….ACTIVATING SHOPLIFTER COUNTERMEASURES..”
Scat warily backs up away from the box. Parts of it begin stripping away like the layers of an onion, glass eyes and metal fingers aimed towards the group. He does not trust the strange arcane arts of the ‘Trons or their strange devotion to technology. Dozens of shoppers have been slain due to overestimating one of these very technologies. The panel that the Tron accessed with her device rumbled, fidgeting before turning silent. There was the click of clockwork before a soft voice like birdsong chirped out of the speaker.
“ REBOOTING….CUSTOMER PACKAGE IS NOW READY FOR ENJOYMENT.”
The box began unfolding itself like an onion, doors sliding apart and layers upon layers of metallic gates unlocking. Scat realises it looks similarly suspicious to a Dog shedding its coat of fur. Eventually, the end product is a miniscule bone-white cylinder with a small slot on top. He walks up to it and lifts his finger to the slot. The box whirrs in place before the slot deposited a rectangular plastic card that exactly fitted Scat’s palm.
The PetMaster began to examine it, lifting it up towards the other Lifters for them to see. He first noticed that It was deceptively heavier than its flimsy appearance indicated at first, so razor thin at the edge that Scat thought even the smallest breeze could break it in half. The blue surface of the card shimmered and rippled like an oasis, a maze of silver threads being woven through it. In the right corner of the card was a circle with eight spokes around which glowed a lustrous neon, seemingly suffusing the room with dawn. Scat took a sniff. The scent of it was clean. Not in the unvarnished manner of the Kleaners but clean. Free of any familiar smells of the Wal. It was not of anything he'd encountered before.
There was something inscribed on the back that he saw. He tried pronouncing the words labelled. “ Words on back. Says S-say-ham’s Ka-la-” He was stopped mid-sentence as pain blossomed on his back. A q-tip arrow had speared him through his belly. An instant later, he felt a meaty arm grip him by his neck as the helmsman held him hostage. He pressed the front of the crossbow into Scat’s cheek, the bolt digging into his skin.
“ W...why?” Scat grunts out.
“ Why?” A wig slid off the helmsman's head to reveal a shiny dome that had been grazed to its roots. “ I am an aspirant of the Clean One and by the Seven Spills, I will deliver this prize to our Captain.” Scat gasped for air, dark dots dancing in the Pet-Master’s eyes. With mad twitching eyes, he stared at Havalock, Blue and Bonk with a toothy grin. “ Here’s what’s gonna happen. You’ll let me go with this package and I’ll let you go with your - “
Scat heard the sound of wood splintering and water gushing, the floor rumbling as if they were trapped in the belly of a Dire-Lizard. Cracks were beginning to form alongside the walls and the ceiling, eventually caving in with a thunderous crash. The natural light blinded Scat for a moment, his eyes trying to acclimate again. A massive hole had emerged in the side of the Detergent, the integrity of the ship finally falling apart as its innards were revealed to the world like a gutted Pet in the savannahs of the Petting section.
" What in the Great Sam are you all still doing down there! Get out there before you go down with the boat!"
A sailor in a life floatie had spotted the four of them through the massive gyre rent in the ship’s hull, unaware of his fellow helmsman betrayal. He shouted and waved at the Lifters for their attention, before signalling to the rest of the sailors on the floatie to begin rowing towards the wreck of the Detergent. The shaking continued as the pirate vessel continued to unload its chemical payload. The helmsman was stumbling on his feet, his mind focusing on not tripping on the various bits of cargo, whilst still hanging onto Scat’s neck.
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