Disclaimer: I own every cubic inch of the world's molten core, an army of female robot slaves, six interstellar shipping companies, and substantial proportions of the government on the planet Neptune, but nothing in this narrative. Go figure.

A/N: Contains SPOILERS for "The Intruder". Rated for profanity. This fic is a bit long for a one-shot, and I'm not extremely proud of it, but I hope you at least get a laugh. Maybe even two! =D

Epic Fail

"Tom?"

"Yeah?"

"Why are we here?"

Sara's question stirred something deep in TOM's thought process. Despite his sardonic, laid-back attitude, he had been holding a lot in lately. Dying and coming back to life in a new body could easily put a guy in such a state of mind. Now seemed like as good a time as any to open up.

"I've been thinking about that, Sara," he began, earning a confused grunt from the Absolution's onboard AI. "I used to look at the universe as a big video game where the objective was to get points and not die. But then I realized, even if you get all the points you possibly can and then bite the dust, then what? There's no final boss to fight, no concluding cut-scene to watch, no end credits waiting to roll for you. There's no closure like there is at the end of a game's story mode. Well, most games, anyway. And what about the people who leave the mortal plane with a really lousy score? They don't get a second chance, they can't start over and build their skills to take it on again.

"What I'm saying is, when somebody dies, you can't just forget them and move on, you have to remember that person. Remember what they were like, what was important to them, why they were important to you, how cool they were ... Because once you're gone, everything you've done in life is all that's left of you. And that, I think, is why people need human connection more than anything else."

There was silence on the bridge of the Absolution.

"No, Tom ..." Sara finally said, "I meant why are we out here in this quadrant of space you told me to fly to?"

"Oh, that!" TOM exclaimed. "Yeah, I did tell you to fly here, didn't I? I wanted to talk to the guys at Ghost Planet. Moltar, to be specific."

"I thought you were adverse to them all."

"Not fond of anybody here, that's for sure. But Moltar was the original Toonami host. We should let him know about the changes that've taken place around here, like the new engines and the new me. That's big news, and I just thought it warranted a visit. But a quick one!" he added while Sara glanced at her systems and became distracted from what he was saying. "Let's not spend any more time here than we have to. Hey, Sara, you listening?"

"Yes, but ... I'm just now picking up some peculiarities with the power conduits leading to the starboard engine."

"Oh, for the love of ..." TOM groaned. He remembered the last time Sara had detected something odd with the starboard engine as clearly as if it had been last week. Because it had indeed been last week. "Whatever it is, I'm not going down there." He paused, waiting for her to divulge some information. "So what is it?"

"Can't tell yet, but it's most likely not as extreme as before. Probably just a few kinks in our new Talons ST's that haven't been worked out. You should go down and have a look. First examine the generator, then the conduits to the engine."

"Okay, I guess it couldn't hurt," TOM said as he relaxed and scooped up a toolkit. "Though I'm thinking now I should've just opened a communication frequency to Ghost Planet instead of making you going out of our way. As a matter of fact, it isn't too late to turn back ..."

This thought eventually made its way into the back of his mind before he reached the main generator housing. It was still doing its generating thing, and nothing seemed out of place. "You said something was happening on the right side of the ship, right?"

"Correct."

"I'll check it out." But before he'd taken a step, a strange sensation pulsed through the room. Then the generator ceased functioning, and so did TOM. He froze in mid-step with one foot in the air, then toppled over backward.

"Ugh ..." TOM grunted as he awoke a few minutes later. He pushed himself up while a Clyde with a small arm attachment hovered aside and hid something behind its back. Glancing at the Clyde, he couldn't tell if it was getting out of his way or getting out of his reach. What he did know was that the generator was inactive and his vision was a little blurry. "Sara?"

"Come to the screens room, Tom," Sara told him. "It seems we're being hailed. At least, I think we are."

"What do you mean, 'you think we are'?" TOM asked as he walked out onto the circular platform that was surrounded by screens.

"Uh ... here's the visual link." Sara faltered for some reason before displaying the individual who was trying to contact them. The image was fuzzy, wavy, and completely indiscernible. "I'm adjusting my receivers as much as I can, but the problem seems to be at their end ..." She still had the weird, hesitant tone, and her blue avatar kept glancing at him.

"What, is there something on my face?" TOM asked, beginning a transition from confused to annoyed.

"Well ..."

Just then, a voice came through the static. But it wasn't talking to them: "—ow hold the spatula behind your head. No, behind your head, you moron, and keep your foot up in the air! Be glad I'm not making you wear a tin tutu, too!" The image had stopped jumping about like a swarm of bees, and TOM could vaguely see a broad-shouldered figure at a desk. From his shape, the person appeared to be wearing a cape and a featureless cowl.

"Uh, hey?" he called.

The figure snapped to attention. "Oh, good, it's working! Now keep that pose," he said to somebody off-screen, then turned to the monitor and began speaking to the Absoution. "Attention, people of the Abolition," he started. "I am a very frightening terrorist. We have disabled your ship using an emp blast, and will not hesitate to do so again! You must comply with our demands, or we will disable your inoperable ship with a second emp!"

TOM stood speechless with bewilderment. Sara's blue head hovered in the middle of her screen, not saying a word. "... An imp?" TOM finally asked. "You shut us down with a mythological creature?"

"No, an emp," the "terrorist" explained patiently. "One of those electrified magnetism-y pulsar things."

TOM thought for a second. "Oh, you mean an 'EMP'. An electro-magnetic pulse. It's an acronym, so you pronounce it, 'ee-em-pee', dude."

"Yes, and 'ee-em-pee' spells, 'emp'. Now relinquish control to us or we will use it to disable your ship a second time."

"But you already disabled us, how would ..." He trailed off. "Wait, that was at least a few minutes ago. What have you been doing up until now?"

"Well, we were, um, having some difficulties with our communication equipment, and uhhh ... had to resort to more practical methods," the figure stuttered. "Speaking of which," he said under his breath, then shouted to someone off-screen again, "Keep that foot up! Way up! I want to see nothing but leg! Yes, I'm certain the yo-yo is helping boost the signal, I put those wonky metal things on its sides, didn't I?" He turned back to the screen. "Anyway, if you will so kindly stop looking at me like that—after all, there's no need to show your emotions quite so prominently—would you also kindly remind me where we left off our conversation?"

TOM rubbed the back of his head, thinking earnestly. "Uh, let's see. You were messing up acronyms and talking about surrendering."

"Oh, yes! Ahem. You will surrender control of your ship and your hosting duties of the time slot known as 'Toonami' and give them both to us."

"Why?" TOM asked, even though he hardly expected a reasonable answer from this guy.

"Because it is in serious peril!" said the static-concealed figure, raising his fists overhead and meeting TOM's expectations perfectly. "We just got word that somewhere down the line, the administrators are going to add Scooby-Doo and the Powerpuff Girls to the show lineup! SCOOBY-DOO AND THE POWERPUFF GIRLS! I mean, aren't cartoons what the rest of Cartoon Network is for? If the powers that be in control of our favorite anime-centered, robot-hosted, weekday time slot are making such bad decisions, there's no telling what other disasters may befall it. I don't know about you, but that seems like something to be concerned about. Anyhow, that is our demand," he finished, but then held up a finger. "Oh, and if you have any coffee, we want that, too."

"Wait, wait," TOM gestured to slow down. "Why is this so important that you're willing to go out of your way to use an EMP—"

"Emp."

"... that you're willing to go to such lengths?" TOM finished.

"I shant explain myself!" the enraged figure shouted, slamming his fist down upon his desk and causing a coffee cup to spill all over its surface. The "terrorist" glanced down at the mess, then back up at TOM, who didn't say anything. Without a word, he plucked a cloth from somewhere and began sliding it around his desktop. He did this for the next fifteen seconds while TOM waited patiently. After a while, the figure paused, looked back up at the screen, and watched them, as if making sure his guests weren't leaving and weren't going to start laughing at him either. TOM waited, hands on hips, foot tapping. After more staring, the terrorist went back to cleaning his desk.

TOM broke the silence with a question for Sara. "Have you been able to get the generator back online yet?"

"It's systems should have recovered by now from a mere EMP," she said. "But it seems the power conduits have been manually disconnected and rerouted somewhere."

"Well that's just great. We may actually have to negotiate with these clowns."

"Doesn't the on-screen clown seem a tad familiar?" she inquired.

"I don't know .. Maybe I have seen him somewhere before." He grew pensive, studying the image while stroking his chin. Sara stifled a giggle. A giggle? TOM exclaimed in his head. He'd never heard an AI giggle. "What's the joke?"

"Nothing important, just the way you were holding your chin in your hand. It looked so perfect."

The would-be terrorist interrupted before TOM could say more. "So, now that that messy business is cleared up, I think it's time you gave in to our very reasonable requests."

"Wait a sec, I'm getting tired of being confused here, so why don't you explain yourself first?" TOM demanded more than asked. "What do you seriously hope to accomplish by taking over as a host?"

An unseen newcomer broke into the conversation. "It was just monologued to you, you ass-can!" he said in a dry and scratchy voice. "We're gonna control Toonami! Freakin' shows need fixed. You show all these Japanese cartoons with nekkid girls and people who say 'shit' and shoot each other up a whole bunch. But we sit down to watch it, and what do we see? Profanity, dubbed. Violence, edited. Nudity, covered up by digital freaking bikinis! We wanna watch adult programming, not kids' shows. Like that other jerk said, that's what the rest of the network is for."

The indiscernible terrorist continued, "We intend to make sure things like this don't happen by being way more awesome hosts. And if you don't comply, we have missiles aimed at your ship, ready to blow you all to Narnia."

"Dude," TOM said as calmly as possible, "Let me explain something. Hosts don't totally control what comes down the tube here, alright? I have major influence, but if administration wants to make other decisions, nothing can be done about it. That's how it is. Understand?"

Silence followed. Neither terrorist said a word while TOM waited for their reaction.

"Ohhh ..." said the seated figure. "Well, then we'll take everything hostage instead! Toonami isn't Toonami without the Abomination—"

"Absolution," TOM corrected.

"—Absolution! Otherwise, we'll blow you outta the ether!"

"The armaments are fake," Sara supplemented.

"..." said the first terrorist. Finding his voice again, his razor-sharp mind quickly conjured up a winning argument. "... No they're not. You're definitely in grave danger. Really."

"These two are plywood cutouts," Sara persisted, bringing up images of two-dimensional planks of wood that were painted to vaguely resemble artillery, each one strapped to an asteroid. "And this one is made of trash cans and duct tape," she added condescendingly. The third video feed showed a scrap-metal sculpture, also stuck to an asteroid. It was indeed made of trash cans and duct tape.

"Ahh ..."

The first terrorist shouted into a wrist communicator, "Dammit, Zorak, you were supposed to put Acme's company emblem on the weapons to give them authenticity!"

"Ahh ..."

"Wait, Zorak?" TOM asked.

"CHOO!"

Suddenly, a sneeze was heard through the communication channel, and the terrorist's image jumped into focus, revealing a white jumpsuit, a black cowl that covered the top half of his face, and a distinctive emblem on his chest.

"Hey, the image is in focus! That sneeze put you right into position, Moltar. Now don't move a muscle! That means not falling off the unicycle."

"Space Ghost!" TOM shouted.

Space Ghost looked at him. "Why do you look so confused? All things considered, this reveal shouldn't be that surprising. By the way, where's Tom?"

"What!" TOM bellowed.

"Tom, short guy, big head, looks like a tinker-toy."

TOM lowered his face into his hand, amazed that it'd taken this long for a dull ache to come into existence in the back of his head. "That's one of the things I came here, under the influence of whatever kind of judgement, to explain. Some stuff happened, and I'm Tom."

Space Ghost studied him. "That's ridiculous! Tom's a dorky little guy with big hands, big feet and a big funny potbelly. Come on, you don't even sound like him! You sound like Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop or that Batman-slash-James Bond mech pilot from Big O. And stop looking at me like you don't know who I'm talking about."

TOM's frustration was reaching a boiling point. With a reactor powering him, he wouldn't be surprised if he went nuclear soon. "I can't look at you like anything, seeing as I don't have a face," he growled. "Sara? Isn't that true?"

"I found out what's wrong with the starboard engine," she said, ignoring TOM. The Clydecam spied a hunched figure in a vacuum-sealed suit with his green head enclosed in an elongated bubble.

Zorak looked up from what he was doing with the ship's innards and stared at the Clyde with two big, buggy eyes like a dear caught in the headlights. Uttering a curse at being spotted, he held up the pair of cables clutched in his pincers and waved them at the Clyde threateningly. "Give in to our demands or I'll never restore power to your precious ship, the Isolation! Get rid of the digital bikinis on the Tenchi girls! Stop editing out the cussing and blood-spray!"

TOM turned back to Sara's profile. "Sara. My face."

"Oh, very well," she said. Another Clyde drifted in and focused on TOM, who looked at Sara's screens for its video feed. He saw himself with a pair of white ovals drawn on his optic visor and a pair of quirky lines scribbled on his forehead. The eyes and eyebrows effectively gave him a very puzzled, quizzical expression. It was the expression he'd been conversing with for the last five or ten minutes.

"Clyde," he growled. "If you don't wipe this look off my face, I'm gonna find some very creative and unpleasant uses for you, and the first one's gonna be a football."

"One of them's real, by the way," Zorak interrupted.

Everyone reacted. Clyde spun to face the screen, Sara's blue head turned toward the adjacent monitor, and TOM, without having much of a choice, looked at it quizzically.

"One of what's real?" Space Ghost said into his communicator.

"One of the missiles," Zorak said casually. "It looks like crud, but that's 'cause I couldn't afford the gajillion-dollar tube it launches from. Trash cans and duct tape were way cheaper."

"Ha!" said Space Ghost, glaring triumphantly at the Absolution crew. "So there you have it, Allocation. Ruin-proof our not-yet-ruined afternoons or get blown to Middle Earth by a missile Zorak says we have."

"I'm gonna shoot it anyway," said Zorak, holding up a control box.

"What? Why?" TOM cried.

"I didn't spend all that cash on a missile to just not use it," Zorak replied. "I wanna blow something up."

"You could just hit them with another emp, that would do the trick," Space Ghost suggested reasonably. "We're trying to save Toonami, not put it out of its misery. At least not yet."

"They're already disabled, thanks to me, Space Farce," Zorak crackled, waving the rerouted cables over his head. "What good would a second emp do?"

"Guys, just chill and let's talk about your plan," TOM said soothingly, attempting to bring some calm to the situation, and to himself as well. "I've already let you know that you can't control Toonami by hosting it. But here's another idea: maybe if you become involved with the fanbase, you could influence it by talking about the standards you expect from the show and—"

"Zorak, fire the emp!" Space Ghost ordered.

TOM immediately lost it. "For God's sake, it's an acronym that is pronounced 'EE-EM-PEE'! It's not a freaking emp!"

"Y'know, if you really are Tom ..." Space Ghost pondered, "then isn't your name an acronym, too?"

"I—?" TOM froze. The anger drained out of him and he found himself at a loss for words. "That's not the same thing!"

"Oh, I think it is, mister Toonami Operations Module. Why am I not calling you 'Tee-Oh-Em', huh? And that's if you are who you say you are, and not some impostor, like I suspect." He turned away from the monitor again. "Hey, Moltar, Tom's a goofy-looking midget, right? Never mind, you look busy."

"I was destroyed by an intruder and got uploaded to a new body," TOM explained curtly.

Space Ghost waved his hands sarcastically. "Oh, so you died and came back to life looking cool, did you? Yeah, right. That's the kind of storyline reserved for impressive, handsome, courageous superheroes, like me."

"I think he's an intruder himself!" Zorak announced. "He probably killed Tom and stole the ship after the AI lady succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome."

Pounding his desk so hard it made his empty coffee cup roll off and smash all over the floor, Space Ghost brazenly stated, "Then it's up to us to save the Abortion! Zorak, fire the missile and blow that ship up!"

"Oh, shit ..." TOM moaned as he watched the hodgepodge launcher burst into pieces from the blazing backwash of a rocket. On the other screen, he saw Space Ghost peer over his desk at the new mess he'd made. While the missile streaked toward its final destination, the Coast to Coast host got up and walked off-screen to get a broom. Zorak remained on the engine housing, clutching the two halves of the cable that could restore power to the entire ship.

Standing at the tip of the walkway in one of the farthest-forward sections of the Deep Space Explorer, TOM stared out into the emptiness and watched with a strange mixture of dread and frustration as the projectile rocketed toward the spot where he stood. But at the last second, it banked and began spiraling around the ship. "Wait, whoa, what!" TOM nearly snapped his own neck trying to track its unexpected new course. In seconds, it had passed beyond the screens room and was corkscrewing down the length of the Absolution. "Where the heck is it going?"

"It's a rather low-tech instrument," Sara provided. "I have our shields running on auxiliary, so they're protecting us from the weapon's sub-standard target-seeking program." Her avatar glanced away, then looked back at TOM. "Instead, it seems to have just now targeted the only protruding object that isn't attached to the ship." All outboard cameras zeroed in on an exposed Zorak, who was still crouched on the engine housing.

The mantis looked up and glanced around, suddenly aware that he was missing something. "What? What's goin' on?"

"No, no, NO!" TOM cried. "Zorak, get off the ship! I don't want my starboard engine blowing up again, please!"

Zorak stared after the retreating Clyde. "What are you talking about, I don't care about yer engine. I'm blowing up the entire—shit!" He jammed the cables back together and blasted off with the factory-standard thrusters that were built into his suit. The missile swerved and went after him as he led it in a wild goose chase around the Absolution, dangerously close to its hull. His scratchy, guttural voice screamed in panic over the comm channel. "Guys, help! I don't wanna get blown to pieces! Do something, shoot the missile, intercept it, tell it I apologize, lay down your lives for me! Ahhh!"

"Power has returned," Sara calmly announced.

On the Ghost Planet communication screen, Space Ghost was standing in front of his desk, a look of confusion on his face while he examined the cleaning tool he'd selected. "Why did I bring a mop?" he wondered aloud right before the image dissolved into static.

TOM, at the edge of his nerves, watched the winding course of the projectile, waiting for it to ram into his ship and blow them all to kingdom come. To his moderate relief, Zorak finally decided to peel away and make a beeline for Ghost Planet. The missile remained doggedly on his tail.

The mantis's goal seemed to be the Ghost Planet Industries building on the planet's rocky surface. But in front of that building, a familiar figure had appeared. Sara zoomed into the scene and TOM recognized the lone sentry: Moltar. In his hands, the previous Toonami host held a Kiefer A-1 assault rifle with a new attachment added on. He would have looked heroic were it not for being covered head-to-toe in tin foil and having a TV antennae duct-taped to the back of his head.

Moltar brought the weapon to bear and announced over the comm channel, "Turn around and fly the other way, Zorak."

"You asshole!" Zorak shrieked. "I can't believe yer gonna let me blow up, ya jerk!"

"Although ideal, that's not what I have in mind," Moltar grumbled. "I want you to turn around so I can get a clear shot at the missile without an ugly, annoying bug in my way."

As Zorak made a sharp U-turn and the missile spun around to track him, Moltar fired off a couple photon grenades in under a second. TOM was impressed until he realized Zorak was coming back in his direction.

"Oh, no ..." TOM waved his arms over his head in hopes of dissuading the panicked bug, who was trailing a rocket-propelled warhead, which was now followed by a string of powerful energy bombs. Quickly recalling the fact that all the Absolution's glass was polarized, he shouted, "Sara, evasive maneuvers!"

"With a ship this size?" she asked. "Please tell me you're joking."

Not ten meters away from the ship, the photon grenades Moltar had fired caught up with the missile and there followed a bright, blinding detonation. Zorak came rocketing out of the particle cloud to splat against the screens room's front canopy with his eyes popping out and his limbs splayed in unusual directions. TOM just stared at him, having never expected in all his years of space travel to actually see a bug on his windshield. He also never expected the last, unexploded, photon grenade to emerge from behind Zorak, blow a hole through the reinforced canopy, and send the mantis flying into screens room.

Unable to see beyond the array of screens, TOM lifted his gaze, expecting Zorak to come hurtling over the top. Instead, one of them lurched forward from the mantis's impact and was shoved forward, crashing down on TOM. Sara watched it all happen right in front of her face. After a moment of stunned silence, Zorak crawled off the back of the monitor he'd smashed into and dropped onto the deck, blackened and smoking.

TOM remained standing, straight and tall, in the center of the disc-shaped platform. His head was buried smack in the middle of the screen.

"Tom?" Sara asked tentatively. No response. She decided she couldn't leave him in there, and began jerking the broken monitor up and down a little, making his unconscious limbs flail about until his head finally popped out of the broken window. He clattered into a heap and lay there as motionlessly as Zorak, but without smoldering or groaning in agony.

"I am ... in so much ... pain right now ..." the flash-fried insect choked out. "I need coffee ... with cream and ... morphine."

For the second time in a day, TOM woke up on the floor of his ship. The biggest differences on this occasion were that he had a headache the size of Jupiter and a giant blue face was looming over him.

"Tom, are you alright?"

TOM gripped the edge of Sara's monitor and allowed it to assist him in rising to his feet, deciding at the same time that her question didn't deserve an answer.

"Did we blow up?" he asked. "Or do I not want to know?" Sara indicated a video feed, which showed the inside of Ghost Planet Industries. Space Ghost was in front of his desk sweeping up his broken coffee mug while Moltar was in the background with his hands full of tin foil as he struggled to remove it all from his suit. The doors parted, and Zorak hunkered in, smoke rising from his body. The other two spared him a glance, then went back to their own tasks as he crossed the room and plopped down at his own station without a word.

Space Ghost finally noticed TOM was watching them. "Oh, hey! I sure hope there are no hard feelings between us, buddy. After all, we tried to blow you up with the best of intentions."

"Yeah," TOM replied. "Nice try."

"See you again, space cowboy," Space Ghost intoned. "Someday, somewh—"

"I don't think so." TOM stepped up and mashed the button that cut the communication channel." Turning to his AI companion, he said, "So we know where they all are. And the ship's structural integrity?"

"Other than the screen your head got stuck in, nothing other than the front canopy is broken," Sara replied. TOM noticed that the hole Zorak had made was patched up with a trash can lid and massive amounts of duct tape.

"Let's get out of here," he urged. "I did what I came for, even if they think I'm an impostor or that my name is 'Tee-Oh-Em'." Complying, Sara made a one-eighty turn and fired up the engines. Their whooshing output seemed to mimic the relief that swept through TOM. "Next time I suggest visiting Ghost Planet Industries," he said, "go ahead and jettison me into space."

"Mm-hmm," Sara murmured distractedly while staring at him. "At least everyone is still in good humor."

"What do you mean by ..." Realization hit him, and his hands balled into fists. "Show me," he said threateningly.

"Alright, alright. I was rather hoping it would take you longer to pick up on it this time." The AI brought up a visual of TOM's face. This time, he was met with the sight of a pair of big, round eyeballs quivering above his head on springs, while his optic visor was filled in with pointy teeth.

Letting out a sigh, he decided he was too emotionally exhausted to explode. Instead, he merely shook his head, making the eyeballs bounce around. "Damnit, Clyde ..."

Sara was nothing if not amused. "Clyde and I were just starting to brainstorm some April Fool's Day pranks. We may even get a device like the emp those three used."

"Don't count on it, either of—wait, the what?"

The End

Oh, wait, hang on ...

The day continued as usual in Ghost Planet Industries. After stuffing the rest of his tin foil into the trash, Moltar stored his unicycle and returned the spatula to the kitchen. Then he got busy grappling with the antennae that was strapped to the back of his helmet by a headband of duct tape. What a ludicrous day, he thought, removing the gigantic thing and dropping it into the tiny wastebasket.

Wondering what was up with TOM's face lately, he strolled over to the couch where Space Ghost was watching a Scooby-Doo marathon. Zorak eventually joined them. Together, they quietly enjoyed the antics of the talking, mystery-solving canine and his friends for a while.

Somewhere in between episodes, Zorak spoke up. "Hey, Moltar?"

"What," Moltar grunted without enthusiasm.

"You ever wonder why we're here?"

"Actually," Space Ghost chimed in when Moltar didn't offer a word of reply, "I've been thinking about that an awful lot lately ..."