Spyro the Dragon and all associated material is copyright (C) 2001 to Universal Studios

Hapoppo, the EVIL NACHOS, and all associated material are trademarked (TM) 2001 to Leonard Carwile

"What a Puhhdicament" shamelessly stolen from Ol' Uncle Bo's Gamblin' Shack (http://members.tripod.com/ubgs)

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Spyro ex Hapoppo Chapter 2: The Life and Times of the Clones that Attack Us

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Space had lost its lonesome atmosphere at the sight of the titan space carrier. The ship cast an ominous shadow across the face of the Dragon Worlds' central moon as it passed by. Its destination, the fathering body of the three moons, the Dragon Worlds themselves, would soon meet with a shadow cast by the same ship, but much darker, much more wicked...

It was dark, and CHEESOR couldn't see much. But for what it was worth, it was a small setback. The darkness surrounded the interior of CHEESOR's experimental weapon, the Box of Uncomprehensible Doom. It was such an unrighteous machine, so perfect to his expectations that it tickled his stomach just thinking about the damage it could do, and CHEESOR couldn't help but laugh. His evil laughter grew, and grew, until he couldn't help himself; by now his belly would have jiggled like a twisted, vile bowl of jelly, if he had a stomach.

He laughed so hard that he fell over, and his laughter turned into surprise. He hit the corner of his weapon, his weight pressing against all sides, placing several fractures into it and introducing its first ounce of light. The corners split open, spewing CHEESOR out of the box and landing him on his side.

"AAH, CRAP!" CHEESOR snorted. "#2! #2!!!!!" His summons called forth the attention of his assistant, #2. "SIR, IF YOU HAVE TO GO THAT BAD THE BATHROOM'S..." #2 began, but CHEESOR interrupted. "I FELL ONTO MY SIDE, YOU FOOL! AND LOOK, MY INVENTION IS COMPLETELY TOTALED!"

"OH, RIGHT. MY APOLOGIES, SIR... SHALL I GET ANOTHER REFRIDGERATOR BOX SO YOU CAN BUILD A NEW ONE?"

"NO TIME FOR THAT NOW... I SEE FROM MY WINDOW THAT WE ARE APPROACHING THE DRAGON WORLDS AND... OH MY LORD! IT IS BEING INVADED BY A GIANT FRED FLINTSTONE!!! HOW DARE HE BEAT ME TO THE PUNCH! #2! ELIMINATE HIM WITH OUR ION CANNONS!"

"UHH... RIGHT AWAY, SIR." #2 didn't have the heart to tell CHEESOR that they didn't HAVE any ion cannons, and proceeded to CHEESOR's room exit.

"MUAHAHA... SO, FRED FOOLSTONE! YOU THINK YOU CAN CONQUER THE DRAGON WORLDS BEFORE I CAN? IT IS MINE, FLINT-STUPID! ALL MINE!!!!!" And with that, CHEESOR burst into vile laughter, much like the one that destroyed his near-perfect weapon. He then shook until he fell upright, and stared some more at the large, blue sphere in front of him. CHEESOR let his thoughts wander back to a few weeks back, when the whole journey began.

CHEESOR had just received the latest issue of Unconquered Worlds. Not only was this the #1 source for all that is worldy and unconquered, it also makes great toilet paper. CHEESOR would usually just look at the mags and wish he were out conquering those worlds; after being defeated by an 8-year- old cat, he had a very low self-esteem. But this month's issue seemed to be a bit more interesting - it had a feature for a certain very important little place we like to call the Dragon World. The more CHEESOR read about it, the more interested he became.

See, the Dragon World had three times over attempted to be conquered, each time to fall prey to a hero of its own: Spyro the Dragon. This was just one of many dragons within this world, and CHEESOR had the feeling that with such powerful creatures at his command, he could take any world he wanted! Of course, the reason it hadn't been conquered was the same reason that CHEESOR wanted it so bad: the powerful dragons. It would take more than really big objects being tossed at these guys to take them down, but what separated CHEESOR from the other villains was that he had a much different plan - if you can't beat 'em, join 'em! CHEESOR would give the heroes the ol' "I'm-the-good-guy" routine to brainwash them into fighting against the Earth forces, and thus CHEESOR would become unstoppable! It was the perfect plan. Sure, it may have been blundered by several thousand sitcom villains in the past, but CHEESOR was no ordinairy sitcom villain - he was a corn chip. And how many other sitcom villains can make THAT kinda claim?

CHEESOR watched the blue sphere that would soon be his in great anticipation. This was it - CHEESOR's chance to prove that he's more than a mere "comic relief" villain. CHEESOR again laughed maniacally, failing to notice the little rubber ball fly out of the window from the room below accompanied by a very uninthusiastic "UH... BOOM, SIR."

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"Seriously, you men can be such airheads at times..." Zoe mercilessly lectured both Spyro and Hunter as they sat out in the yard of the Artisan castle. Both had taken a pretty bad beating from their little skateboarding game earlier that day, as they had both taken a wild plummet right off a few ramps. Hunter took a pretty bad beating, but Spyro proved he was much more one with the pavement with what seemed to be a broken leg.

"So Hunter..." Spyro said, sounding a bit dazed, "Who won that last one, anyway?"

"I don't know, err... aah... what was your name again?"

"... I forget." Spyro said. And with that, both Spyro and Hunter fell outcold. Zoe rolled her eyes, and continued applying bandages to the two KOed Tony Hawk wannabes. She had apparently become to preoccupied with the wounded that she failed to notice a visitor poking a hoof out of a nearby portal.

Zoe failed to notice the visitor's presence until her sudden voice brought Zoe to alarm. "Let me guess, they were competing at skateboarding." Zoe looked up to see her longtime friend, Elora the Faun, leaning over Zoe and her patients.

"They never learn, really... every time they do this I have to haul their butts out of some crazy puhhdicament." Zoe said, but stopped the subject at that. Elora had decided to come visit, and Zoe didn't want to seem unwelcoming. "So how have you been? And what're you here for?"

"Just thought I'd pay a visit to Spyro, since he hasn't stopped by Avalar in quite a bit... but I see he's not quite available at the moment."

"Wah... you're here to see him, but not your own long-time best friend? That's not fair." Zoe said as she put her hands on her hips and made a stubborn guesture. She was half-kidding, and Elora could sense it and decided to play along. "Aww, now why wouldn't I be here for my own best friend?" Elora said while picking Zoe up by the wings and shaking her a bit. Zoe was not amused in the least, and struggled to get free. Elora let her go, and blushed a bit. "Heh heh... sorry." she apologized, while keeping a cheerful smile across her face. Zoe hated it when she did that - Elora's cheerful little smiles always rubbed off on Zoe, which was always used as a way to get out of being yelled at by her friend when she tended to go overboard.

Zoe proceeded with bandaging, attending to Hunter's thick skull. "Luckily it's hard to get any pain through this thing, much less anything else..." she remarked. Elora let out a little giggle. "You might wanna wrap up his stomach, though... that's where everything goes." Elora attempted to chime in with the humor, but she never was very good at jokes. She grabbed a few bandages and tried to help Zoe out by attending to Spyro's wounds, but she was even worse with first aid than she was at jokes and just ended up wrapping Spyro up as though she was performing a sloppy mummification job. Zoe finished up Hunter's wraps and then corrected Elora on her poor attempt.

"They should recover soon, so they'll be fine out in the yard. Meanwhile, what say we go get a burger at Burger Dragooon?" Zoe said, and looked up at Elora, who had a goofy smirk across her face. "I've got a better idea." Elora said, "Let's bandage 'em up like I did so they'll think they got it worse than they actually did... THAT'LL teach 'em." Zoe couldn't help but giggle at the thought, but decided against the idea. "Naah... it might freak everybody out. 'Sides, Spyro's not gonna be doing any more skating for quite a while on that leg of his anyway."

"Wha... t's that?" said a groggy voice from the ground. Elora and Zoe both looked down below them to see Spyro, his eyes half-open, looking up at the sky. Elora and Zoe quickly turned their heads towards the sky to see what he was looking at, and jumped.

"What is it, Elora?" Zoe said in a frightened voice.

"I dunno... I just hope it's not trouble." Elora said, trying not to shudder.

The object in the sky was blurred by the blue atmosphere, but ever slowly it drew nearer, and became more clear. A humming noise grew ever louder as the object drew nearer, its image becoming perfectly visible. It was a gigantic nacho tray hovering right above their heads... Elora, Zoe, and Spyro could only watch, and wait to see what would happen next.

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"Supreme pizza with anchovies, pepperoni, and a shadowy figyah. Here ya go." the surly waitress said in a low-pitched, semi-groggy voice.

"Uhh... 'scuze me." Hapoppo told the waitress, "I didn't order any shadowy figure."

"Yeah, well dat's whatcher gettin'." the waitress responded. Hapoppo rolled his eyes, and figured he'd just pick the shadowy figure off; as for the waitress, no tip for her.

As the pizza box top tilted open, Hapoppo heard a voice from the shadows of Here's darkest seating area. "Are you by any chance the Hapoppo that defeated CHEESOR and his gang of EVIL NACHOS?"

"Err... that would be me, why?"

"I've got a bit of info that may interest you. The EVIL NACHOS are still alive, and I think they're up to something. We last saw their ship headed towards La-La Land to the west of the Fiddlestick quadrant."

"Wait... why do you care, anyhow? And who's 'we'?"

"The EVIL NACHO Research Association (ENRA). The ENRA is dedicated to tracking the EVIL NACHOS to make sure they pose no further threat to the Earth; we have the most expansive data on the EVIL NACHOS, such as what episode of Star Trek is their favorite, how many Star Trek action figures they have, and even which Star Trek books they have and haven't read! But unfortunately, we don't yet know where they're going at this time, and we don't trust them. Hapoppo, please, you're our only hope!"

"Well... I have a friend out of town that has a starship... his name is Captain Jerk. I guess I could see if I could borrow his ship and follow these guys."

"Hapoppo, I thank you, the ENRA thanks you, and if Captain Picard were a real person I bet he'd thank you, too. You're a true hero!"

"Don't mention it. Say, I never got your name... who are you?"

No response. The shadowy figure must have left the building, and Hapoppo decided it was time to do the same. He dropped his share of the Pizza money onto the table and headed for the doors, but of course, he couldn't approach the exit without having his friends follow behind him.

"If you're going, we're all going, Hapoppo." Tina said supportively.

"Yeah, don't even think about having fun in space without us! We're coming along." Catten followed.

"We can't just leave you to go out all by yourself, Hapoppo... I don't know what we'd do without you." Kiro, as always, showed the greatest concern. Jarni and Mitaru didn't even need to follow them up, since Hapoppo didn't display any signs of resistance whatsoever.

"Sweetness! Well, guess I'd better go request a few days off at work then. I won't be needing a huge paycheck... IN SPACE!" Hapoppo said, and with that the six little kittens headed off to the newest adventure to challenge their skills.