Chapter 5: A nightly routine
The two goons stood in their hideout, which was basically a big utility room hidden within the sewers of PaRappa Town, surrounded by a bunch of stuff they had stolen over the last few months they had been there, doing stretches, getting ready for the day.
"One…two…three!" Gaster counted as he stretched his arm over his head while Groober was stretching his legs. After a bit, they switched limbs and started stretching again. After their exercises, they checked their equipment,
"Lockpicks?" Groober tapped a pen against the clipboard he had.
"Check." Gaster nods, putting a small handful of lockpicks in one of his jacket's inner pockets.
"Smoke bombs?"
"Freshly made."
"Escape routes?"
"Easy to get to."
"Style?"
"But of course." The rabbit smirked while striking a pose. "I think we're about ready to go."
"Alright. Let's roll, boss." Groober smirked, chucking the clipboard over his shoulder as the two leave their secret hideout, and climbed up one of the ladders, moving the manhole cover in front of them. It was the dead of night in PaRappa Town so most of the stores and entertainment venues were already closed, practically turning the city into their personal playground to steal, vandalize, maybe get into a fight if they came across someone out this late.
The duo hit their normal spots; A jewelry store with rings, watches, whatever they could stuff their pockets with, stealing coins from parking meters, stopping at a nearby gas station for snacks…and the contents of the register to boot. Then just to really mess with the guy at the station's counter, Groober went to the restroom and kicked the only door open, and crammed the toilet paper into said toilet, rendering the restroom out of order.
The two snuck through the streets, stopping inside one of the office buildings. They weren't able to snag any cash, but they were able to grab donuts from the break room, and several sticky notes with passwords on them.
"Shouldn't leave your password out in the open, Jacob from accounting…" Gaster snickered before picking up a few keyboards from several cubicles. Exiting the office, the two started chucking the keyboards in the trash bin outside the building, after pulling a few of the keyboard keys off of them, and chucked them in random locations, rendering the keyboards useless for the office space.
Their next stop was the driving school. Sneaking into the lot, the two began letting air out of the teacher vehicles, syphon gas out of said cars and poured it all out in the parking lot, then smashed a few reflection windows. With a dumb grin, Groober lit a match and tossed it into the puddle of gasoline, setting it a blaze, but it gave the two enough time to escape before it really spread, and before anyone could notice what was happening and call the fire department.
Next up was the barbershop owned by Takoyama. After breaking the window just by chucking a rock through it, the two hopped right inside. It didn't take too long to mess things up, busting the shark like things on the rotating device on the ceiling by standing on the counter of the rotating chairs and kicking them, and taking all of the shampoos and pomades, whatever else they could grab and smeared it over the chairs. They topped their little visit off by busting the motor for the rotating chairs, keeping them from being able to function. Once again, they left after grabbing whatever cash was in the register, then bailed.
It didn't take them long before they found themselves at the Special Arms Forces training camp. Their visit wouldn't last too long, as there wasn't much they could potentially do. They did manage to destroy the jump rope machines, bust a few wheels off the roller skates, covered the roller track in slick oil, and loosen a bunch of the safer rocks of the rock-climbing wall. They snagged a few parachutes before they ran off into the night.
Hours pass as the duo's chaos continued. They broke into the TV studio and snagged a few of the cameras, snuck into the nursery and dumped the milk all over the floor, got into Paul Chuck's guitar store and broke whatever guitar just happened to be on display and while fire fighters were dealing with the fires at the U-Learn driving school, the two snuck up and began poking large holes into the tires of the fire trucks.
"Hey!" Shouted the gruff voice of Chief Puddle. The two ran off, laughing as the dalmatian tried to give chase, but soon got too exhausted to run. He panted heavily as he put his hands on his knees. "Damn…hooligans…" It was too early in the morning to run, plus, they had a large fire that needed to be taken care of.
Once it was around five in the morning, the two finished the evening by stopping at the Town's junkyard. They were there mostly to just collect any possible electronics that were intact. They were able to grab some car batteries, radios, broken dials, whatever they could grab.
"Hey boss! Check this out!" Groober called as he picked up a strange looking fax machine device.
"A fax machine?" Gaster raised a brow as he looked at it. He could see a clock on the front, a bunch of buttons, and a telephone connected to it.
"Yeah! It's called the…SuperSonic Transportation Device."
"Heh…funky name for a fax machine. Let's take it with us, it might be useful for us somewhere down the line!"
"As long as we get it fix, obviously."
"Yeah…looks a little old, but it shouldn't be too hard! We probably got the tools for it too!" The two laughed, finally deciding to retire for the day. But as they got back into town, they could hear a commotion coming from Town Hall. Upon further inspection, they were greeted by the sight of an angry mob.
'Looks like our outings has finally led to some controversy." Groober chuckled.
"Never talk like that again…even if it IS accurate!" Gaster smirked as they got closer to listen.
"People, please!" The mayor, a tall man with a top hat for a head, his mustache twitching as he talked. "I understand we are all frustrated with what's going on but getting riled up isn't going to solve anything for any of us!"
"Mayor, my shop is in ruins!" Takoyama hissed, the tentacles on his head flailed about in an angry manner as his skin shined a bright red color. "I can't cut anyone's hair because of the mess those two hoodlums have created!"
"The children at the nursery are on a rampage!" Cathy Piller called out, looking down the street to see PaRappa and the MilkCan girls chasing a tidal wave of rabbit babies trying to put them to sleep. "All of their milk was dumped all over the floor and we can't get them to calm down!"
"We can't air our shows!" Cheap Cheap angrily waved a frying pan around, her entire face was red, while Chop Chop Master Onion swat it away with a karate chop every now and then, getting annoyed each time it happens.
"You can't air your shows?" Mooshesha looked at them with an agitated huff. "I can't train my rookies because those two destroyed most of the training equipment!"
"We were lucky enough to finish that burning blaze before they popped our tires!" Puddle growled. "They need to be caught, mayor! This crap is just going to keep happening and progressively get worse! You know it, I know it, everyone here knows it!" The group of citizens continued to argue over each other, which just let Gaster and Groober revel in their achievement, Somehow, they were on the verge of turning the citizens of PaRappa Town against each other! An unexpected result, but a beautiful one for them! The two quickly jumped into the closest manhole with their stolen junk and slid in, closing the manhole behind them.
"I want to go to bed right now mama!" One of the rabbits sang.
"But it's time to have some fun!" Katy followed.
"Buy me a toy before that oh please papa!"
"Time, to, get, busy!" As the trio finished playing the music, the tidal wave of rabbit infants finally died down as they rolled onto the streets, fast asleep.
"I'll shut up now! I'm sleepy…." The rabbit yawned as he and the others slumbered. Lammy sighed before scooping him up, grabbing her phone so she could call Cathy and let her know that the babies had fallen asleep, and where they were located.
"…Alright, she'll be here as soon as she can." She informed the others before putting her phone away and scoops up another one of the babies.
"That was a mess and a half…" Katy sighed as she sits down on the sidewalk, keeping an eye on the baby she was holding with her tail.
"No kiddin!" PaRappa sighed, sitting next to her, making sure the ones he held were still asleep.
("Those creeps better hope I don't see them for a while…") Ma-San grumbled, the dynamite sticking out of her head flickering a bit. ("There's going to be some Hell to pay for taking breakfast away from these kids…")
The quartet sighed, making sure the rest of the rabbits wouldn't be in harms away until Cathy finally arrived, who began scooping the children up one at a time with her arms.
"Thank you kids again for putting the children to sleep..." Cathy sighs, shaking her head. "I'm sure those punks are giving you all your own grief, but I do appreciate you helping me."
"It's no trouble, Miss Pillar!" PaRappa smiled, handing her the infants in his hands. "How's it going at town hall?"
"Not much better. I've never seen everyone so up in arms before..."
"I'm sure it'll all work out!" Katy chirped, flicking her tail a bit. "It always does work out for us in the end no matter the situation!"
"Heheh…to have that kind of optimism when I was your age." The caterpillar laughed, giving the group one last thank you before scurrying back to the nursery, leaving the four alone to go about their business.
"…What are we going to do?" Lammy looked to the others.
"With everyone so riled up, those two are probably going to go into hiding for a while." PaRappa sighed.
("I say we go after them!") Ma-San said, death gripping her drumsticks. ("They're hiding in the sewers, right? We just gotta find them!")
"…I think my folks would bite my head off if I came back smelling of raw sewage." PaRappa said, feeling sick at the thought of wading around in the stuff below them.
"Yeah, no way am I going down there." Katy shook her head, then heard a soft gagging noise coming from Lammy. "…And I take it Lammy doesn't want to, either."
("Bah, wimps the lot of you.") The drummer rolled her eyes. ("Scared to get a little dirty…")
"It's not just that! It's stupidly dangerous!" PaRappa argued. "We could possibly get swept away in a tidal wave of crap, there's probably rabid rats down there…!"
"P-Plus…" Lammy swallowed the lump in her throat. "W-We don't know what Gaster and Groober could do once they're cornered. They probably have some explosives hidden somewhere down there!"
("Is this really coming from the girl who keeps an actively lit bundle of TNT in her damn pockets?! They're only common thieves who break through windows! Why would they have explosives on them?!")
"Y-You never know! I-It's a possibility!"
"Even if they do, they'd be blowing themselves up to Kingdom Come along with us." Katy shook her head. "It'll be best to wait till they're out of the open, then we can get them then and there."
The quartet sighed, sitting on the sidewalk, taking time to think about the predicament and the ever-growing stress the people of their fine hometown were dealing with.
"You really think things will get better for us?" PaRappa asked, looking over at Katy.
"…Honestly, PaRappa, I just said that to cheer Cathy up. If things do get better, it won't happen for quite some time." Hearing this, PaRappa furrowed his brows a bit before standing up.
"True but moping about won't fix anything for us either! We'll figure out what to do, I'm sure of it! We just gotta believe is all!" He smiled at the trio, who in return, smiled at him. "None of us had given up hope on anything before, so why start now?"
("Your optimism is way too infectious, dude.") Ma-San squeaked, shaking her head, getting a chuckle from the pup.
"Now come on, let's go get some lunch at Beard Burgers, get our minds off of this!" He suggests, watching the three getting up on their feet at the idea.
"I could go for a burger right now…chasing an army of destructive rampaging infants while playing music is surprisingly hunger inducing." Lammy comments as they walked down the street.
"Right?" Katy nudged the lamb with her elbow. "Hopefully Beard Burgers wasn't hit again!"
Down in the utility room, Gaster and Groober sat out their stolen things, making sure things were organized. They might be crooks, but they weren't going to leave their makeshift home an absolute mess. Groober huffs as he sits the fax machine down on the table, cleaning some of the dust off of his hands.
"Damn, this thing is stupidly dusty…" He grabbed a wash rag and started cleaning the dust and dirt off of it while Gaster sat the parachutes down under one of the shelves. "I'll be shocked if this thing will even be able to work…it doesn't even look like it plugs into anything…"
"Might be one of those portable things." Gaster suggests as he sits down on one of the makeshift beds they had.
"Hmm…" Deciding to pop the thing open, Groober grabbed a toolbox and began working on it. Inside, he found a lot more dust, and some unplugged wires. He cleaned the dust out, and carefully put the wires back in, then closed the machine up again. "I think this should do it…"
Gaster sat up, watching him look for a switch, then flips it when he finally found it. After a moment, it seemed nothing was happening…then the screen lit up as it hummed to life.
"Alright!" The rabbit grinned wildly. "That was easier than expected!"
"No kiddin'." Groober laughed as he turned it off before standing up, yawning while stretching his arms. "Let's figure out what to do with it tomorrow…I'm beat…"
"Same here." Gaster nods, kicking his shoes off before laying down. Groober followed suit before chucking one of his shoes at the light switch, turning it off. "…Night, Groober."
"Night, boss." The cat yawned again before falling asleep the second his head touched the mattress. Gaster laid there for a bit, listening to his partner in crime snore, thinking back on their accomplishments they had overnight before falling asleep himself, unaware that the SuperSonic Transportation device had powered itself on.