Lots of Denizens guessed right:
- I have sat hungover in lectures
- I have sat in bewilderment as Prof lapsed back into German (and once he switched back to English, the pentose phosphate shunt didn't make much more sense)
- I have been willing to trade my soul to get my thesis passed
- I have railed against the ship of fools (or, as the designated driver, the car of idiots – Far Side FTW!)
- I have lectured long, loud and pedantically about the proper setting up of appropriate experimental controls, and this has prompted people to want to turn me into a pile of red goo
- I have wanted to strangle the younger brother to shut him up
So, everybody wins some chocolate-covered internets! Don't eat them all at once.
Chapter Ten
The marvellous thing about two strokes, as anybody who owns and loves them will tell you, is their mechanical simplicity. They don't have all that fuel inlet crap at the top of the engine, with valves and cams and camshafts and tappets or buckets and shims and camchains and tensioners, all of which just add up to more potential for mechanical mayhem if something goes wrong. Plus, you get better power-to-weight ratios, because the engine is lighter and you get more bang for your buck, what with a power stroke on every turn of the crank.
Anybody who does not love them will tell you that they are noisy, fuel-guzzling, and above all stinking things that move around in a perpetual cloud of acrid exhaust, much like Pigpen from the Peanuts cartoons. They will tell you that the reason that two-strokes go so fast is to get away from their own smell.
The people who own them and love them tout this Essence of Exxon fragrance as part of the attraction, and will proudly proclaim 'Foetedo ergo sum' – I stink, therefore I am.
The people who do not love them will make dramatic gestures of hand-flapping and nose-holding and demand that the owner stops fuelling the damned thing with toxic waste, rotting cabbages and baked beans.
It's like Lancaster and York, Catholics and Lutherans, Hatfields and McCoys, Al Capone and Bugs Moran, Hetfield and Mustaine, Donald Trump and Rosie O'Donnell. Two strokes and four strokes, and never the twain shall meet. Which is something of a pity, since they have much more in common than they do dividing them. For example, all bikes have throttle cables and brake lines. It's impossible to get away from those moving parts. And where there are moving parts, there will be wear and tear and degradation. Especially if the machinery is old. And has been sitting around exposed to the elements.
Throw in the Winchester luck, and what do you think is going to happen?
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
With a noise like a giant angry mosquito, the bike shot forward in a skirl of blue smoke, the dogs racing to keep up.
"Slow down!" shouted Frankie, clinging to her cousin, "Slow down! We have to stop in there!"
"I can't!" RJ yelled back, wiggling his right hand back and forth, "I think the cable's stuck!"
He grabbed for the front brake and felt a spongy bloof as the aged hydraulics finally let go, prolapsing somewhere along the line, and the lever came back to the handlebar.
"SLOW DOWN!" howled Frankie.
"I CAN'T!" howled RJ, searching for neutral with the suddenly stubborn gear selector.
Screeching towards redline, the bike hurtled into the shed.
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
"What the hell is that?" wondered one of the demons, knife poised above Dean, as the air was filled with a noise that sounded like somebody was torturing a whipper snipper. Then the shed was flooded with malevolent red light.
The demons froze in place in bewilderment as four dogs with glowing eyes raced into the shed, flanking a travelling cloud of smoke that emitted horrifying howlings of mechanical and biological origin.
The would-be vaccinator was just wondering if it was some sort of demon they'd never encountered before when an aged trail bike burst out of the dense swirl, headed straight for the mixer-blender.
It suddenly occurred to her that she was standing right in its path.
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
The Winchesters had been Hunters for a long time, and were accustomed to being suddenly confronted with bewildering situations and having to react accordingly.
For example, there was the time they'd thought they'd been tracking a zombie, and it turned out to be a deceased hairdresser that was causing all the trouble – by the simple expedient of letting him perform one last colour and blow wave, the spirit was dispatched (even if Dean did spend the next two days platinum blonde). Or the time they'd thought it was vampires nesting in an old abandoned theatre, and it was in fact the restless ghosts of the chorus girls who'd been killed when it burned down – they just wanted a final audience for the can-can performance they'd been rehearsing, which Dean provided, while Sam filled in for the one girl who hadn't lingered (he insisted on burning the garters afterwards, even though the spirits had departed). It was about not freezing up in shock, no matter what came at you.
Parenthood was also good training in not to freezing in bewilderment, but assessing an unexpected situation instantly. The time that RJ found a litter of baby skunks and brought them into the house to show Daddy, or Frankie's early attempt to work a small charm so that one of her dolls could have a babies were just two of many such training exercises.
The practical upshot was, the Winchesters were good at doing 'unexpected' in a way that the demons were not.
So when the howling bike came zooming into the shed, ridden by their howling children, they didn't waste time gawping in frozen disbelief; they started howling too.
"Aaaaaaaaargh!" howled RJ.
"Aaaaaaaaargh!" howled Frankie.
"Slow down!" howled Sam.
"Brakes! Brakes!" howled Dean.
Nyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! howled the bike.
With a solid thwacking sound, the bike smacked into the she-demon, lifting her off her feet, and ran headlong into the mixer-mincer.
The cushioning impact of squishing the demon against the machinery softened the impact a little, but there was still a jarring lurch as the bike suddenly went from "Aaaaaaargh!" to zero in less than a second. RJ and Frankie were half-thrown, and half rolled, clear, as the other demons stood, eyes bugging in bewilderment, at the scene before them. Its front wheel jammed into the mixer-mincer, and pinning the demon there, the bike kept running, and began to perform a truly impressive burn-out.
"Gaaaah! Graaak!" the demons coughed and choked on the pungent mixture of two-stroke exhaust and burning rubber filling the air around them.
"Don't just stand there!" shrieked the she-demon, trying to dislodge herself from the machinery, "Get them! Get those little a-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!" She broke off and let out a horrified wail as a stream of holy water hit her in the face.
"Eat sanctity, bitch!" yelled RJ, wielding his supersoaker as three dogs ran past him to grab at the demons.
Flanked by Athena, Frankie dodged a demon, gave it a squirt from her own water gun, and scuttled to the adult Winchesters. "Dad! Uncle Dean!" She sawed at the ropes with one of the demon-killer blades. "Are you okay?"
"What do you think you're doing young lady?" yapped Sam, The Dad Within surfacing as the ropes holding him fell away.
"Saving you!" Frankie shot back, turning to give another demon a shot of holy water.
"You can ground her later, Francis," growled Dean, brushing away strands of rope and heading for the thickening roil of smoke, where his son was holding demons at bay while the dogs wrangled one each.
"Aaaaaargh! Aaaaaaaargh!" protested one, "Aaaaaaargh! Dogs! My allergies! Oooh, I feel all itchy again!"
"What the fuck?" wheezed another, "What the fuck just happened? What the…" the demon's coughing enquiry was stopped by Dean's blade plunging into the throat of its meatsuit.
The female demon renewed her struggles to pull free. "You can't do that!" she screamed, "You can't kill us! The meatsuits are already dead!"
"Guess again, bitch," Sam snapped, squinting against the smoke as he put his blade into the demon that Zeus was holding.
"You little shit!" shrieked the ex-vegan, while the reluctant vampire impersonator wailed as RJ sprayed them from his supersoaker, "I'm gonna tear your head off! I'm gonna – coff coff – I'm gonna tear your – coff coff gaaaaaah – I'm gonna…"
"Die, asshole!" yelled RJ in triumph as his father's knife sank home.
"Oh, crap," gasped the other demon, seeing the grinning Hunter, and deciding that fleeing was probably the best option at that point. But before it could smoke out of its meatsuit, Xena was at her Alpha's side, and grabbing onto it, eyes glowing redly, holding it at bay until Dean could stab it.
Given the thickening smoke, the torturous noise, and the general confusion, the demons were rapidly dispatched until the only one remaining was the one stuck between the bike and the goo-renderer.
"This isn't right!" she shrieked, "This isn't right! You can't DO this!"
"What's the matter?" Dean managed to grin, even though he could hardly breathe, "We get too many experimental samples for ya? You're next…"
With a loud popping bang, the back tyre finally gave out, and burst. However, the engine, jammed in gear with the throttle stuck open, kept spinning the wheel, and a rooster-tail of sparks and splinters of aluminium began to spray to shed. Fires broke out where hot shards and tiny specks of fire landed on the detritus lying around.
"Out!" Sam wheezed, grabbing RJ with one hand and Frankie in the other and shoving the coughing children towards the door, "Get down, and get out, right now!"
"Dad," Frankie called, dropping to the floor as ordered nonetheless.
"Now!" Sam repeated. Reluctantly the kids began to leopard crawl towards the door, staying below the smoke.
"Fucking Hunters!" screamed the she-demon in outrage, still attempting to extract her mangled meatsuit from the tangle of heating metal, "I'll…"
The careful tank repair that Frankie had done, perhaps compromised by the temperature differential as the bike overheated, cracked, and fuel began to leak out over the hot engine. With a very theatrical whoomph, the demon was surrounded by blue flames.
"Dean!" Sam grabbed at his brother as the older Winchester sought an opening to dispatch the would-be experimentalist, pulling him away from the fire before he could get hurt.
"We gotta kill her!" Dean's voice came out in a smoke-choked rasp.
"Not if it means you setting yourself on fire!" Sam dragged his brother backwards.
"I'll be back!" shrieked the demon, preparing to smoke out as her meatsuit began to smoke, "I'll be back, and when I've got my Hunter-proof demons, you bastards are the first we'll come for, and then you'rAAAAAAAARGH!"
As her meatsuit went up in flames, Xena grabbed one of her arms, and Zeus grabbed the other. Her eyes bugged in horror.
"You aint goin' anywhere with a couple o' part-Hellhounds hangin' onto ya, bitch!" coughed Dean.
"Dean!" Sam choked out, starting to feel dizzy, "Come on, we gotta get outta here!" He peered around, disoriented in the thickening smoke. "If we can figure out which way is 'outta here'…"
Four bright red beams suddenly lit up, piercing the smoke Iike a laser show through the haze of a darkened dance club.
"That way!" wheezed Dean, stumbling towards the lights.
Clutching each other, trying not to trip over fallen meatsuits or breathe in any more smoke, the Winchesters haltingly made their way across the building that was by then merrily on fire, eyes and lungs burning, as the screams of the trapped demon rose over the crackle of flames.
There we go, Winchesters suffering from smoke inhalation and smouldering - I'm sure you'd all be standing by with the buckets of spark-smothering custard, you depraved beldames.
Immy-Bub can see the finish line - goooooo little plot bunny! Send reviews, because Reviews Are The Batteries That Power The Energiser Plot Bunnies Through The Fanfic Of Life!