Zarek had gathered his various minions in the hall that had once contained their jail cells, which were now being used in "Uncle Zarek's 100 Legitimate and Non-Sinister Fleet Petting Zoo". They were all very glad to see him healthy and non-assassinated, and were very attentive as he finished explaining his ninth master plan, which he had cunningly codenamed… Master Plan Nine.
"So in order to do this blackmail thing right, I'm going to have to infiltrate the Galactica to gather hard evidence of everybody's shameful conduct. Or possibly plant some, if it's necessary. Or if it looks like fun. Look, the point is, you might have to get along without me for a few days, and I expect the Astral Queen to be intact and not covered in Jell-O when I return. Do I make myself clear, Ethan?" The convict in question lowered his head in shame.
"Um… Zarek?" Leo, one of the less sycophantic followers, timidly raised his hand. "Won't the people on Galactica be a little suspicious about you going around asking questions?" Leo cringed as soon as the words were out of his mouth; on the Astral Queen, those who questioned the guy responsible for their freedom tended to have night time encounters with bars of soap in socks, also known as 'Pegasus Specials'. But Zarek was grateful for the chance to monologue further. Usually, around Roslin and Adama, he had to keep his schemes to himself, for obvious airlock-related reasons.
"Every single detail has been accounted for through meticulous planning, Leo," Zarek assured him. "It took some time, but I was able to come up with a way for me to conduct my business on the Galactica without anyone suspecting a thing. Watch carefully."
Zarek turned away from the convicts dramatically. "Say goodbye to Tom Zarek, future revolutionary leader of the human race. Say hello to…"
The man at the front of the crowd turned back towards them, now sporting a flamboyantly upturned handlebar moustache. "Mr. Keraz!"
Gasps of shock rippled through the crowd, swiftly replaced by cries of anger.
"Who is this guy?"
"Where'd he come from?"
"What happened to Zarek?"
"Where'd Zarek go?"
"He must have done something to him!"
"He's with the government!"
"GET HIM!"
'Keraz' (inwardly, Zarek was still congratulating himself on the sheer inventiveness of the alias) hastily removed the moustache. "It's me, you twits!" he cried, as the onrushing mob stopped dead in its astounded tracks at the transformation. "It's called a disguise. Dis-guise." He pronounced it carefully for them. "It's what's going to allow me to get or create the goods on the heroes and leaders of the Fleet without detection."
An "aaaah…." of understanding rippled through the crowd. Most of it, at least. Zarek sighed.
"This reminds me. As I said, I might have to be gone for a while, and the Lords of Kobol know you people can't be trusted to take care of yourselves without me."
"You can count on us, Zarek!" Someone in the crowd yelled. "We won't let you down!"
Tom scowled. "If I can count on you so much, then why are there no more flashlights on the entire ship?"
"We threw them out the airlock, sir," Leo said. "They were working with the government."
"Ah," said Tom. "The flashlights were government agents, were they?"
"Exactly!" Someone else in the crowd- Tom thought his name was Nort or Newt or something- cried. "Think about it! Who manufactured flashlights before the attack on the Colonies? Corporations! That's who!"
"Think of how perfect it is," Leo said ominously. "Every ship in this fleet has at least one flashlight, and many of them have hundreds. Hundreds of corporate-programmed flashlights, just lying innocently in their flashlight-container-things, waiting for the time to strike- to pinch!" Many of the convicts held up their pinched fingers as proof of the flashlights' malevolent powers.
"Evil flashlights. Got it." Zarek sighed. "Thank you, Leo for proving my point." Yet in some eternally paranoid corner of his mind, the idea was turned over, examined, and "Flashlights: evil? Check into corporations" was scrawled into the notebook of Zarek's subconscious. "Anyway, while I'm gone, I'm placing someone else in charge. You are to follow his commands as you would my own, without question." Zarek turned around, picked up something behind him, and then placed the Astral Queen's interim leader in front of the crowd. The flat, expressionless eyes of Walter stared out at his new minions.
"I expect you all to do exactly what Walter says while I'm gone," Zarek said.
Leo spoke up again. "But… Zarek… it's a toy. It's probably going to say nothing."
Zarek smiled. "Well then, if that's the case, then that's exactly what you should do: nothing. And I'm sure every appliance on the Astral Queen will breathe a sigh of relief because of it."
Fifteen minutes later, Zarek's shuttle had departed for another civilian ship, from which it would go to the Battlestar Galactica. He left behind some very confused followers.
"What the hell are we supposed to do now?" Leo asked. "He told us to obey a toy! A toy!"
"Without question, too," Ethan mused.
"What's the problem?" Another follower asked. "Tom said that if Walter didn't say anything, we shouldn't do anything."
"But what if it does say something?" Ethan said. "He's Zarek's trusted right-hand daggit! He must be nearly as intelligent and persuasive and talkative as Zarek himself is!"
Frightened murmurs swept through the crowd. "He's probably speaking to us right now," Nort said. "He's probably so intelligent that our puny unworthy minds simply cannot grasp his advanced stuffed-daggit language!"
This was Ethan's cue to start freaking out. "But we're supposed to do whatever he says! How are we going to do that if we can't fathom his mind? For all we know, he could be ordering us right now to regress to a primitive, cult-like society and perform human sacrifices!"
Another voice spoke from the crowd. "Well, we wouldn't want to let Tom down, would we? Maybe, just to be on the safe side, we should get some paint and…"
The conversation went rapidly downhill from there.
Exquisite moustache firmly in place, Mr. Mot Keraz of the Fleet Press Corps stepped aboard the Battlestar Galactica, just one of many civilians paying a visit to the last BattlestarEach of them filed through a checkpoint staffed by two Colonial Marines. In front of Zarek, a teenaged couple held hands as their papers were examined.
"Purpose of your visit?" asked one of the Marines. The boy smiled.
"We're going to spend the afternoon in the observation lounge," he said, squeezing the girl's hand and giving her a ridiculously sappy look.
"Ah, grown tired of the relationship, have you ma'am?" The other Marine asked the girl as he signed a form. "Excellent choice."
"Wait, what?" The boy cast a look of confusion from Marine to girlfriend and back again with remarkable speed.
"Oh, the Billy Keikeya Memorial Observation Lounge is a funny place," the first Marine said, oblivious to the frantic shushing noises being made by the girl. "Ever since Keikeya bit it and the Lounge was renamed after him, it's still one of the most romantic spots in the Fleet, but…"
"Stop scaring the kids," said the second Marine. "You're just repeating tabloid gossip. There's probably a perfectly logical explanation for why, since Keikeya's death, so many of the couples who visit the Lounge for their dates end their relationships shortly afterwards, and for why this is often due to the male of the couple dying a tragic yet frustratingly contrived death."
"I'm telling you, it's the curse!" Protested Marine Number One. "Keikeya's vengeful spirit is making sure that every other guy in the Fleet gets screwed over just as badly as he did!"
Marine Number Two shook his head. By now they were both ignoring the couple, the female of which was now burying her head in her hands and trying to ignore her boyfriend's pleas for information. "Look, even if the President's aide did leave some sort of ghost behind, do you really think he was the sort of guy who would be interested in vengeance?"
"Point," Number One said. "Maybe it has something to do with Dualla, then. Like, some sort of curse caused by what she did."
"Apollo does always seem to find an excuse not to go in there," Number Two agreed.
"Um…" the boy began to say that maybe there were other places he'd like to go today, but the Marines were having none of it.
"Come on, you two, can't change your minds now," Number One said as he bustled them on their way. "Once you've gotten on the ship and signed the forms, the schedule's fixed and altering it involves more paperwork for us."
"But I don't wanna die!" The teenager protested.
"And I don't want to do more paperwork. Next!"
The couple disappeared down the hall, arguing vociferously about the girl's method of expressing her disappointment with the relationship, as Keraz stepped forward. "Mot Keraz, Fleet Press Corps. I'm going to be doing a story on the Galactica's leadership and-" Keraz stopped talking rather abruptly as a rifle was shoved into his face. What? Have they recognized me? He thought. Impossible! The moustache is perfect! The moustache cannot fail!
"Just hand me your papers very carefully and slowly," Number Two said. "The last reporter who wanted to do a story on us was a Cylon."
"Boy, were our faces red after that one," Number One said. "We spent practically a year talking about how nice that lady was, and then the Cylons pop into New Caprica and guess who we see at the head of the Centurions?"
"And she captured my good side, too," Number Two pouted. "Usually I photograph terribly, but she made me look totally badass."
"And before her, guess who else handled public relations for Galactica? Doral." One said.
"Although any idiot could have seen that anyone who wears suits like those is evil," Two interjected.
"So you see, there's something of a pattern going on here," One said as he examined Keraz's papers. "Fortunately, you don't look like any known Cylon model, and your papers check out, so I guess you're an exception to the 'journalists-on-Galactica-are-up-to-no-good-rule."
"Yes. Yes I certainly am." Must… restrain… maniacal… laughter…"And may I take this opportunity to commend you Marines on your vigilance."
"Oh, thanks!" Two said. "Yeah, we're totally all over the security thing. I mean, we weren't able to keep the ex-schoolteacher President prisoner, and whenever we actually do fight Cylons we usually get turned into hamburger, but aside from that we're totally dedicated to your safety and- hey, is my gun even loaded?" Two raised the rifle to his face and squinted down the barrel as One took over for him.
"Yeah, we do our best, although there was that one time our Master-at-Arms tried to mutiny against Adama. Hooo boy, that didn't work out well for her. But we're really good at overthrowing civilians, and sometimes we even get to-"
By now, Keraz had fully braced himself for a full and painful recounting of the less-than stellar record of the Colonial Marines, but was spared when the speakers in the hallway crackled to life.
"Attention all hands. This is the Admiral. Drop your pants." Adama paused. "That is all." The speakers fell silent again amidst the sounds of flies unzipping.
"What the hell?" Keraz had to raise his voice to be heard above the collective whumph of over a thousand pairs of pants falling to the floor all over the Battlestar. It's probably just as well that Colonel Tigh wasn't around or Tom might have had a lawsuit on his hands.
"Oh, the Admiral does stuff like that these days," One said as he kicked his pants off, revealing what Keraz could only assume were standard Marine undergarments. "At first he refused all the favours and stuff people were offering him for getting us off of New Caprica, then he started accepting a few, then he started calling them in himself, and now… Hey, why are your pants still on?"
Zarek was about to explain to the Marine in no uncertain terms exactly why his pants weren't going anywhere. But then he realized that if not for Adama, he probably would still be on New Caprica. And the thing with the atmospheric FTL jump was so badass…
Tom watched with horror, unable to resist, as his hands began creeping towards his zipper of their own accord. Of all the days to wear the underpants with the little red Vipers, he though miserably.
Mot Keraz had well and truly arrived aboard the Battlestar Galactica.
A/N: I'm sorry this chapter has taken so long to write, but not as sorry as I am that this story is now going on hiatus. Quite simply, Battlestar Galactica is a near-impossible show to parody. For one thing, it's so damn awesome that finding weaknesses is occasionally difficult; for another thing, it takes itself so seriously that one has to invent most of the humour instead of building on previous comedy. But the main problem is that the entire show changes EVERY SINGLE EPISODE. There is no status quo, no stable environment for satire to be constructed within. The post-Exodus environment this story is set in is already completely obsolete. I mean, half the people I'm writing about could be dead or revealed to be Cylons by the time the next chapter is ready!
This show is simply too much of a moving target for me to parody it well while it's running. So I'll probably pick this story up again after the Season Finale, when I'm sure that things aboard the Rag-Tag Fleet aren't going to turn themselves upside-down while I'm writing about them. Thanks to all who have read and reviewed so far, and I look forward to resuming this work in the future.