A/N: OW SHIT my toe hurts really bad... I just thought I should share because AUGH IT'S KILLING ME

Anyway, FFFFUUUU at the reviews I got last time! 10 in one chapter? Doesn't sound like a lot, but it's the most so far! If only it was like that at the beginning, but oh well. XD At the beginning, I had done calculations (and I suck at math so I don't even...) to see how many reviews I'd have when it was finished, at the rate I had by chapter 3, and it came to about 78. Now I'm at 73 and we're on chapter 12. XD You guys rock. Seriously, I do love every single one of you and all the support I get - especially with the fanart I've gotten this week. I got one from SouthParkPhilosopher and one from mittens10. The links are on my profile - go look at them, because they are both super cute and everything. :'D

Anyway, yeah here's another super fast update because I CAN'T WAIT TO GET THIS WHOLE THING UP.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU EVERYONE 8D your reviews make me so happy. I swear I woke up this morning and the first thing I did was check my e-mail on my phone and I was half-asleep and reading reviews so I swear I dreamt about your reviews. XD That's not crazy. THAT'S NOT CRAZ--


XII. A.S.S. Invader

On the way back to Kevin's room, I was reminded of what I walked into the last time I left. He'd been dancing around like a maniac and he practically molested me. So, before I open the door again, I listened closely to what might have been going on in the room - the music had been stopped, and when I peeked inside, there was certainly no dancing. I just saw Kevin standing over his bed. It seemed safe to come in.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Setting up your bed, so you can sleep here," Kevin said, as he rolled the zebra-print sheets off his bed. He set them on the floor on the space in front of his bed, folding it all neat and one-person sized.

"But aren't those your sheets?" I said.

"It's okay, I can sleep without them."

Aw, man, first of all, I didn't really want to strip Kevin of his awesome bedsheets just so I could sleep on the floor. I dunno if he even had an extra sheets, and I didn't ask. But, the second thing was that I didn't really want to sleep on the floor, even if it was on top of a blanket. I couldn't tell which one of these I should have told Kevin first. The considerate one, or the picky one.

"But I don't want to sleep on the floor," I ended up saying. I think I unintentionally sounded like a dick.

"Would you rather sleep in a cardboard box?" he asked. And I knew he meant that in a way that was sort of like, "you have no choice," but if he did have a cardboard box, with some padding, maybe, and it was big enough for me, sure. Sure, I'd like to sleep in a cardboard box. This is what I tell him.

"Are you serious?" Kevin was like. He dropped a pillow. "Because, seriously, I can go get that refrigerator box and set it up nice and cozy for you, if you're that serious about not wanting to sleep on the floor. I can't promise a cardboard box will be any better."

"Maybe I just want to sleep in a cardboard box for the story," I said. And I was sort of thinking aloud there. "I could tell people I slept in a cardboard box at your house because you didn't even think I was good enough to sleep on a pullout sofa."

Kevin frowned. "Don't tell people that," he said. "I'll be right back."

When he left the room, I heard some rustling going on. There were sounds of papers crinkling and squeaky door noises and a thud against a wall and some loud, angry Chinese words. From these sounds, I really can't conclude what Kevin is going through to retrieve a box. It was like one of those cartoon sound effects where you hear a loud bang and a cat screech, but instead, it's in Chinese.

Giggling at my own thoughts, Kevin came back into the room, calm and in one piece. He was hauling in the box, which was folded a bit so it could actually, like, fit through the door. He kicked the sheets on the floor aside and unfolded the box, and, woah, that thing was huge - it was better than any old television box you could ever have as a kid to play in. Seriously, it was like, the size of an actual bed. Well, really, the size of a refrigerator (and slightly bigger! You need space for the actual fridge with bubble wrap padding and stuff). I think I was going to have a fine night's sleep in that box.

"You wanted a cardboard box?" Kevin said, brushing his hands together. "There's your cardboard box."

He took the sheets off the floor, kind of balled up in his arms, and he dropped it into the box. And I thought he was going to just leave it like that, and let me sleep on a balled up bunch of blankets in a cardboard box. I was about to step into the box and set it up myself, but then Kevin stepped inside of it first (and it was actually pretty high - he had to lift his legs up a lot). He began to smooth out the blanket, corner to corner. He reached over the edge and grabbed the single pillow he dropped, and set it right up against a wall. In the box. It's like a little house.

He stood up with his hands on those hips again. He looked at me.

"Wow. Uh," was all I could say. "Thanks."

"You're welcome," he said.

"But..." I said. "It's missing something."

"Missing something?" Kevin repeated. He spread his arms in that "what the hell are you even talking about" fashion. "It's a cardboard box with a bed in it. What could it possibly be missing? What do you want me to do, make it into a spaceship?"

I scratched my chin like I was thinking really hard about something. I really wasn't. All I said was, "That's not a bad idea."

Kevin scratched his chin too. Either, he really did that when he was thinking about something (and I was pretty sure he didn't) or he was mocking me. "It is a pretty good idea," he agreed. And with that, he hopped right out of the box quickly and flung his desk drawers open. He rummaged through them until he found a roll of duct tape and threw it over his shoulder, and it landed straight in the box. He also found a box of markers.

The first thing he did was work on the inside of the box. He brought his markers in with him, and whipped out a bunch of them, and just began to draw. On the front (I guess it was the front, that's where he put the pillow) he drew a steering wheel in black - a perfect steering wheel. He didn't even start in pencil or anything. It seriously looked like a legit steering wheel. Around it, with colored markers, like red and blue and green and stuff, he was drawing what looked like a control panel. with an emergency eject button, a warp drive button, a turbo button, an emergency sandwich button (my favorite), and other unlabeled buttons. He also drew round windows on the sides with stars and planets on the outside of them.

Then, he worked on the outside, where he drew the same round windows, and a long red stripe along the sides of the whole box.

I thought he was done. I was gonna tell him how awesome it was. But then he grabbed the duct tape that I forgot even existed, and began to cover the flaps on the sides. The ship's wings, I guessed. He was able to cover both wings really fast, with duct tape to spare.

He stood back from it, against his door. He scratched his chin. Maybe he really did do that when he thought about something. He swung his head around the room, looking for something, I guess. He went to the window on the opposite side of the room and grabbed the orange traffic cone from its spot. With the duct tape ring he had around his wrist, he stuck the cone to the front of the ship.

And it was complete.

At least, I thought it was. Kevin thought it was, too. At least I thought he thought it was.

"That's... a sexy spaceship," I said, kind of just standing in front of it all wide-eyed like an idiot.

"It is. What do you think we should call it?" Kevin asked.

"A sexy spaceship?" It was all I could come up with. Because it really was just a sexy spaceship.

"We shall invade," Kevin said dramatically, clenching a marker in one of his hands tightly. "We will become invaders."

"Invaders?" I said.

"Yes," Kevin replied. He clicked open his black marker and wrote on the side of the ship, right on top of the red stripe, 'A.S.S. INVADER.' "A sexy spaceship invader," he whispered, running his fingers along what he just wrote. "Our goal... is to reign upon the likes of other races and ships, declare them as our own, and fight. Fight for what we believe is right." He stood up from his crouching position, dropped the marker, and held his hand out towards me. "Are you with me... Captain Clyde?"

I grabbed his hand. Our fingers interlocked tightly as I looked him seriously in the eyes. "We shall reign together... Captain Kevin," I said.

He turned to his record player. He pushed play, and another song began as we hopped aboard the A.S.S. Invader.