Well its been another few weeks since I last published a chapter. Sorry about that, I was busy moving into College and I started classes this past Monday. I'm fairly confident that I can get this done before the end of the month, but we shall see of course.
Chapter 17: Into the Danger Zone
In a control room, Cooper, Barnes, and Jerry were looking over some screens, and going through several pages of sightings of Calvin.
"This isn't adding up at all. There's no way that he could have been in Vegas AND on a flight to Greenland at the same time!" Jerry exclaimed.
"Maybe this 'duplicate' excuse isn't so far fetched after all..." Barnes mused.
"I'm sure the person who reported him on the Greenland flight was mistaken." Cooper said, shutting down Barnes' suggestion.
"But what about the person in Chicago who said two of them were fighting each other along with a stuffed tiger?" Barnes inquired.
"This whole thing is making less and less sense the more we delve into it." Jerry grumbled as he threw some papers to the side in frustration.
"This kid is probably one of the greatest criminal masterminds of all time, and he hasn't even hit puberty..." Cooper mused.
Then, a knock was heard at the door.
"We have another witness." Dad said as Rosalyn came into the room.
"You saw the kid as well?" Jerry asked.
"Yeah, I babysit for him when he isn't going on a cross country crime spree." Rosalyn replied.
"And you saw him here in Vegas?" Barnes asked.
"Yeah, he crashed into a tourist shop in that Ferrari he somehow got a hold of. He had his stuffed tiger with him, and he was arguing with the worker about how he shouldn't be wearing Hawaiian shirts when we aren't in Hawaii." Rosalyn explained.
"He does have a point. I never understood why people would wear them elsewhere." Barnes commented.
"You're crazy Barnes!" Jerry remarked.
"You were saying?" Cooper sighed, rolling his eyes.
"And then, all of a sudden, the Ferrari backed itself out, but then I looked closer and saw another Calvin, and he was yelling at the uh... 'actual' Calvin I guess, and then drove off." Rosalyn said, still somewhat unsure if it had actually happened.
"Of course you did..." Cooper grumbled.
"I'm telling you, maybe the duplicate story actually sounds reasonable!" Barnes said insistingly.
"As ridiculous as it sounds, Barnes might be right for once." Jerry remarked.
"I can never have any sort of normal case..." Cooper grumbled under his breath.
"Thank you young lady for your help. Feel free to join the party in the other room." Jerry said to Rosalyn. She nodded and went to join the others.
"It makes no sense!" Cooper protested, "You can't possibly tell me that a SIX... SIX-year-old has mastered cloning and ended up creating several clones of himself that are committing serious crimes across the country!"
"To be fair Cooper, this kid has done a lot of crazy things." Jerry remarked. Barnes nodded in agreement. Cooper just sighed.
Then, they heard a beeping noise coming from one of the screens.
They all turned around, and Jerry gasped.
"What is it?" Cooper asked.
"I mean he gasped, so it must be something serious." Barnes remarked.
"Like I didn't figure that out..." Cooper said sarcastically.
"It can't be! That place was abandoned decades ago!" Jerry exclaimed.
"What place?" Barnes asked.
Cooper looked closer the screen, and was taken aback. He recognized it as well.
"I thought that hideout was condemned. Or am I misremembering?" Cooper inquired.
"Oh, that hideout was condemned ages ago. Obviously someone decided to take it for themselves, or should I say, that blasted kid... As the readings are showing high activity of him being there..." Jerry said as he gritted his teeth.
"Since when could we track the activity and whereabouts of someone that accurately?" Barnes asked confused.
"C'mon Barnes, you work for the FBI..." Jerry responded as if it was obvious.
"Fair point." Barnes conceded.
Then, the two looked at Cooper.
"Don't tell me..." Cooper sighed.
"Well Cooper, if you can do it once, you can do it again, right?" Jerry asked.
Cooper remembered Jerry saying that in the past, and it triggered some not so pleasant memories.
"Uh, you good?" Barnes asked, breaking Cooper out of his daydream.
"Huh? Oh! Uh... Yeah, yeah... I guess, I'll uh, go get him now." Cooper said quickly as he left in a hurry.
"We're counting on you Cooper!" Jerry yelled out before Cooper could leave the building.
Cooper sighed as he hopped in his car.
"You can do this. You've gone through enough craziness as is, so you should be unfazed by now... Just get it done with so you can get out of this god-forsaken position..." Cooper said to himself as he revved up his car, and sped off, on the hunt for, what he thought was, Calvin.
The cardboard box flew through the air, while the wind was hollowing in their direction, Calvin continued to man the box.
"Any closer Hobbes?" Calvin asked.
"Looks like a little bit, but we're still a ways away." Hobbes replied as he looked at the GPS.
"Good thing Dupe Six forgot to take that GPS with him, otherwise we'd never be able to find all of those chumps!" Calvin remarked.
"We've gotten lucky a lot of times on this escapade." Hobbes pointed out.
"I mean, wouldn't you consider that to be a good thing?" Calvin asked.
"Well yeah, but it just makes you think that if just one thing didn't work out in our favor, we'd be goners right now." Hobbes explained.
"Fair point, but could you quit being so morbid? You've acted like we're gonna die at any given moment." Calvin said annoyed.
"You're forgetting the part where we have almost died at any given moment." Hobbes retorted.
"Shut up fuzzbrain, why don't you just appreciate this adventure we've gone on? It's not often that we get to go on vast quests such as something like this!" Calvin shot back.
"We don't go on these often because we've never had to stop your clones and your school bully from taking over the world." Hobbes replied back.
"My point exactly!" Calvin exclaimed, not fully getting at what Hobbes was saying. Hobbes just rolled his eyes.
He then looked down at the GPS, now they were really close.
"Looks like we're just about there." Hobbes remarked.
"Good! Now we just gotta figure out where to land this..." Calvin mused as they came up cross the base.
It was actually a pretty tall tower, that morphed within a mountainside, and had a fence that wrapped around the entire base.
"That's pretty big..." Hobbes remarked.
"I'll say! Maybe after we finish off those clowns we can make this our new G.R.O.S.S. HQ!" Calvin said in agreement.
But then, the box got shot at.
And of course, this sent the duo on a downward spiral towards the ground, and they were screaming for their lives.
They crashed hard onto the ground, but neither of them were hurt, but the box was beaten up quite a bit.
"Well, we figured out where to land." Hobbes remarked as the two hopped out.
"Yeah, yeah... Lets just go in and finish these chumps off." Calvin grumbled as he turned the box back into the small ring box and the two went to the entrance.
The doors were rather big, and then of course, there was a small doorbell next to the doors.
"Should we just ring?" Hobbes inquired.
"Are you crazy Hobbes?! They'll know we're here! We gotta be as secretive as possible!" Calvin exclaimed, as he kicked open the doors, and marched inside.
"So much for secrecy..." Hobbes said rolling his eyes as he followed Calvin in.
The base was even bigger on the inside. It had a myriad of halls and pathways.
"Dang, this might be harder than I thought..." Calvin remarked.
"Yeah, this could take a while..." Hobbes said in agreement.
"Well, I guess that all we can do is just start going down different ways, and just hope that we stumble across the right one..." Calvin said.
"All we can do I guess" Hobbes said shrugging as the two went down a hall that read, "The Dr. Murdoch Z. Scientist Hall of Fame".
The hall basically had a bunch of pictures and newspaper clippings about Dr. Scientist from over the years, which Calvin and Hobbes would briefly glance at before moving on.
"Geez, no wonder Moe is the way he is! He's a stuck-up weirdo who thinks he's great at everything and thinks that everything should be handed to him!" Calvin remarked.
"How ironic..." Hobbes mumbled under his breath.
"What's that supposed to mean?!" Calvin said accusingly.
"Well, if my memory serves correct, which it usually does, unlike yours..."
But before Hobbes could say anything more, the lights went out.
"This guy thinks he's an evil genius yet he can't have his own hideout have decent electricity?!" Calvin exclaimed bemused.
But then, a trap door opened, which of course, Calvin and Hobbes were standing on, which sent them all the way down into a sewer-like area.
The sewage water was rushing through a stream at the opposite side of the duo.
"Blech! Couldn't we have fallen into something more decent than the bottom of a sewer? It smells terrible down here!" Hobbes remarked as he plugged his nose.
"I didn't think they smelled THIS bad..." Calvin said in agreement as he plugged his nose as well.
"You two will be the one's smelling bad when I'm through with you!" A familiar voice said from far out.
"Don't tell me..." Hobbes grimaced.
And out from the shadows, the deranged Dr. Scientist emerged from the shadows, in his very own mini-tank.