Chapter 2
"For too long, they have infiltrated our homes. For too long, they have retarded the mental development of our sisters, our friends, our girlfriends. For too long, they have been usurpers on the throne of popular music, an oligarchy of puppet kings ruled over by the corporate icon, the cartoonish fetish, the all-consuming behemoth we call Mickey Mouse. Well, technically they're ruled over by Disney, but like… uhh, do we have enough tape to start over?"
The girls watched the tape for the hundredth time, blinking as little as possible so as to catch every detail they could. The original tape had been emailed very recently to a Jonas Brothers fansite, and from there had spread all over the internet. In it one could see, lit by artificial lighting, a dark figure (but not his face, which was offscreen) speaking emphatically and swaying slightly as he stood in front of the camera.
"You cannot hope to stop us. We are an extremely tight-knit and super secret organization modeled after the now-disbanded illuminati. Much as the illuminati did, we believe that no matter how dark an age we live in, the truth is destined to find its way into the minds and hearts of the masses- and the truth, in this case, is that the Jonas Brothers suck. Seriously, they don't even play their own instruments, and everybody knows it. There's this whole other band that plays for them… seriously, look it up."
"I think we should fast forward," mumbled one girl lethargically.
"No!" snapped another. "It's entirely possible that we missed something!"
"…and we're going to kill all four brothers, one at a time, using each of the four elements."
"Stupid boys," mumbled a girl who was half slouching against a sofa and half lying down on the floor. "There's only three Jonas Brothers. They didn't even look stuff up for what they were doing."
"…and the second shall die by water. We won't give away all the details just now, but we will state this disclaimer: it won't actually be water."
"Just like I said," she went on, "they didn't do their homework, stupid bo-"
"Shh!" hissed another girl.
"…doubt Jesus will want him after we're done with him. Y'know, that's another thing we have in common with the illuminati- both organizations are all about fighting Christian douchebags. All be told, we're pretty much heroes. Anyways, the fourth brother will be consumed by flames… not that they'll be necessary."
"-What flames? Why won't they be necessary? Who is this 'fourth brother' they think they're talking about?"
"…no more of their godawful music blaring all over the place, except for about a month as tributes to their gruesome, undignified deaths. Oh, and we're also gonna blow up Disneyland, just for the lulz."
The tape was nearing its end, and the girls had extracted no further clues from it. The important thing was to find the locations where the brothers were going to be killed, but since they suspected each brother would be killed by a different team of boys, the fact that they'd found the first location wasn't much help.
Of course, they weren't the team sent to the location- why would they be wasting time watching this tape over and over again if there was a shortage of manpower- er, girlpower? No, the real action was being handled by qualified girls- girls who took gymnastics; girls who had learned how to handle firearms- some from each other, and some from gun-crazed fathers and uncles; girls who, hopefully, would call in soon to report success…
…As she expertly rotated her handheld mirror to show what lay around the corner, Krystal, despite having been hardened by years of combat training, felt a jolt as she saw the corpse of her BFF, Jill. Jill's body was splayed out on the ground, a trickle of blood streaming from the side of her head as the blonde boy standing over her started to look around with his back to the wall, keeping his gun pointed wherever he looked as he did so. Obviously, he was waiting for someone to come running the sound of the gunshot, as Krystal had. Fury building inside of her as she raised her gun, she efficiently sidestepped out from behind the corner and fired four shots at the blond boy. Each found its mark. As he fell, Krystal rushed to the side of her fallen friend, still in shock, and crouched low next to her. Bracing herself against the rush of grief that was threatening to overwhelm her, she forced her eyes shut, breathing deeply and as steadily as she could. Suddenly, she felt what she instinctively recognized as the barrel of a gun pressed against the back of her neck.
"Darn it, Kevin! I thought you said were gonna go get Nick!"
"Yeah, I was! I went to look for him like half an hour ago, but I couldn't find him anywhere!"
Joe Jonas sighed, stopped pacing, and leaned against a nearby doorframe. Normally, there was tension in the air around this time- they were about to go onstage, the show was about to start, time to get ready was running out and time to get out there was coming up… I should write a song about that, thought Joe in spite of the situation.
The situation, unfortunately, was no longer one that filled the two remaining brothers with anticipation- they'd given up hope that Nick would show up any time soon.
"Y'know, it's super weird," said Kevin, staring straight ahead at the wall in front of him. "I haven't seen Nick once since he stayed behind on the way here to sign autographs for those guys."
"Heh," laughed Joe. "Since when do guys want our autographs? I always thought we appealed more to the ladies."
"Well, maybe that's it," said Kevin, grinning at his brother. "Those guys must've seen us as good role models, since girls are so crazy for us… and, like, they wanted girls to go crazy for them, too."
"Heh… yeah, that must be it," replied Joe. He felt a sudden sense of calm. After all, who really cared if they were on in ten minutes and missing Nick? They were the Jonas Brothers. People would still love them if they had a band member missing. Heck, the fans didn't seem to mind that they had a whole other band to play for them during concerts. Nope, there was no reason to worry about Nick at all. He'd turn up sometime after the concert and explain what had gone wrong, and they'd forgive him right away, since there'd be plenty more concerts later on that he could use to make up for missing this one…
"Hello? Anyone there?"
Officer Reynolds cautiously circled the hotel lobby with the rest of his squad, wondering where the staff was. Multiple people in nearby buildings had called in to report hearing gunfire, and all of them insisted the sound had come from the hotel… so there had to be someone there… right?
The policemen quickly fanned out in search of the sound's source. Unfortunately, none of them thought to guard the entrance to the hotel, and, as it turned out, there was someone there; a young couple- a blonde girl of about fifteen and a dark-haired boy of about sixteen- walked out into the lobby from another part of the hotel without encountering any police officers along the way. The girl sported a wide, cheesy grin that looked almost forced- possibly because her boyfriend, whose hands were in the pockets of his jacket, was putting on a minor but nonetheless unnecessarily public display of affection by following literally about an inch behind her as the two of them exited the hotel.
Jackie was running madly through the hallways of the third floor, searching for the source of the gunshot she had heard. There was no time to waste- as she darted around one corner after another, she held her gun level at a height that she decided would be most likely to line up with the head of an adolescent human male at the distance she expected to spot him from, given the length of the hallways and-
-and then she saw them: a pair of dead bodies, right next to each other, male and female. The female was Jill, she realized right away, and the male- well, it didn't matter who he was; to her, he was simply one of them.
In any event, there was no time to start tallying losses just yet. The gunshot had no doubt met the ears of other combatants, and Jackie intended to be ready for them. She crouched low against what seemed to be the least exposed wall in the area, in a hallway leading to a stairwell. As several combatants from both sides converged upon the two corpses, Jackie prepared to fire a bullet into the first boy she saw. As her eyes, hands, and gun synchronized to acquire the target, she felt a sudden jolt. The force of the bullet entering the back of her head thrust her forward, onto the floor…
Doug unclenched his teeth as he pulled out of Nick Jonas. Dizzy and tired as he was from this final orgasm, he collapsed backwards onto the ground, rolling over onto his side as he did so. After fighting against sleep for a minute or two, he turned to look at Nick. The pop star was dead- beyond dead, even; he was mutilated beyond the point where one could accurately describe him as a dead human body. As satisfaction, relief, and triumph welled up inside Doug's heaving chest, a single nagging question in his mind held these feelings in check: "Does this make me gay?" It was quite a puzzling question. After some thought, however, Doug decided that if he was gay, then he must also be a necrophiliac, and he knew for sure that he wasn't- hence, he must not be gay. Satisfied by this logic, he slowly lifted himself up off the ground, and prepared for the next step...
The intersection of hallways near the stairwell on the third floor was now a bloody mess. Less than a minute after the first encounter had taken place, seven people lay dead in that same intersection. Four of the bodies were female, and three male. The only one left standing was Cassandra, who panted heavily, her weapon at her side and her psyche totally numbed by the bloodshed around her. She was in so much shock that she did not even bat an eye when she heard a voice from another hallway shout, "Police! Is anyone there??" Cassandra's breathing slowed to a steady pace as she straightened up and filled with a sense of calm. Slowly but steadily, more or less in one fluid motion, she raised her gun, placed the barrel against her temple, and pulled the trigger.
"This just in- sixteen year old Doug Sullivan has been charged with the rape and murder of Nick Jonas of the Jonas Brothers band. In a bizarre twist to this incredibly, incredibly bizarre story, when Nick's body was found, the mouth was stuffed with dirt, as was the anus. The body was also buried in a coffin full of dirt, which eyewitnesses say was dropped from the top story of a hotel in Los Angeles. Around the same time, police discovered nine bodies, all of them teenagers, on or near the third floor of the hotel. The only survivor of this gruesome and horrifying incident, Doug Sullivan, was found and arrested soon after the bodies were discovered, and immediately confessed to- in his own words- 'the rape, murder, and subsequent rape of Nick Jonas.' Surely, there is shock and outrage across the nation that such a horrifying fate could befall such a beloved pop icon."
"Interrogate him!" seethed Becky at the screen. "He didn't act alone! What the hell did you think all those corpses were all about?! Interrogate him!!"
Becky and a few other Underground Jonas Fan Club members were watching the news report with dismay in a dimly lit basement. Of course, they weren't nearly as surprised by the events described as one might think- indeed, this was one of five likely outcomes they had been expecting.
"If only we had intercepted their reservation at the hotel a little sooner… or if we hadn't gone to confirm that it was really them…"
"It might not have been them! For all we know, they might have been bluffing by sending us the video on a day when the Jonas Brothers were passing through a blind spot unescorted…"
"Well, when else were they going to strike?!"
The girls' bickering continued for some time, and then settled into a silence that rang of defeat. For whatever reason, they had failed… they had failed their sexy, sexy hero, and his sexy, sexy brothers were next. Which one, though, was the very next? Were the pop whore hunters going from youngest to oldest? Was the order random? Every girl in the room had seen the soon-to-be-infamous video tape, copies of which had now been sent to the mainstream media, the LA police, and the FBI. According to the tape, the next brother was going to die by water… only, it wouldn't really be water. What could this possibly mean?
Meanwhile, group of boys assigned to noncombat stations were also watching the news report. The mission had been successful, they decided; Nick Jonas was raped, dead, and raped some more; this was what mattered most. The casualties had been great, yes, and Doug Sullivan was in the hands of the authorities, but he had no reason to implicate anyone from his organization, except possibly the dead. The loss of manpower was also not an issue, as each brother had a separate team assigned to him, as well as two auxiliary teams in the event that the first failed. The success of the mission superseded the lives of the agents; if their entire organization was eventually found out, and each and every one of their members somehow sentenced to death, then they were still successful, so long as each and every one of the Jonas Brothers was dead before the disbandment was finished. This thought floated through the air, taking different shapes and assuming different wordings in the minds of the boys as they savored their triumph in dignified silence.
