I'm finally back! And I've got a new chapter too, so I hope you're all ready for it!
Anonymous, yes I was influenced by "Win, Lose, or Kaboom." Originally I was going to have everyone enter a contest, but then I thought that a game show would be much funnier.
Nukerjsr, good guess. Hamsterviel's ancestry will come into play later…
…
Hamsterviel led Mertle and Gantu through the corridors of his secret base on the deserted mining planetoid of Railon 3. He had attached the Star of Destiny to a chain and placed it around his neck. Oddly, he looked somewhat more evil with it on.
"Are we there yet?" Mertle whined.
"Almost. Stop asking!" snapped Hamsterviel. He stopped at a large door. "Ah, here we are." He entered a password and the door opened. As the trio entered, a second group followed them, cloaked by invisibility.
"Wow!" said Mertle. The room was a huge storage area, with huge transparent cylinders rising from floor to ceiling. At first glance, they all appeared empty, but a closer look would reveal that they were brimming with extremely tiny particles. Clones were draining the cylinder's contents into smaller containers and loading them on small transports.
Gantu walked up to one of the cylinders, looking horrified. "Is that antimatter?" Hamsterviel nodded. "You fool! You'll kill us all!"
Hamsterviel snorted. "Don't be ridiculous! My storage methods are much more efficient than those of our ancestors! We have nothing to worry about."
"What's antimatter?" asked Mertle, looking confused.
"Antimatter is the contraterrene form of matter," her mentor explained. "Meaning it is the polar opposite of matter. When antimatter collides with any form of terrene matter, even air molecules, it causes a tremendous explosion. A fourth of a gram of antimatter is enough to destroy a building the size of that primitive Earth temple called…what was it? Oh yes, the Vatican."
"Wow!" Mertle was clearly impressed.
Hamsterviel continued his explanation. "Antimatter can only exist in contraterrene galaxies, parallel universes, and when created in particle accelerators. It is an incredible source of power, and for a while it was used to fuel spaceships. This was very dangerous because if there was even the slightest damage to the vacuum capsules containing the antimatter, air could leak in and cause it to explode, wiping out the ship. Antimatter production was scrapped when Uburnium was discovered, but I have found a much more effective and evil way to contain it and use it for my plans."
"How?" asked Gantu, his curiosity piqued despite his fears of being annihilated by the antimatter.
"You see those giant cylinders and little containers holding the antimatter? They are all force fields that suspend the antimatter in an airless vacuum to prevent it from exploding. The base's generators power the big ones, but if for any reason they or the back-ups should fail, the force fields will still be powered by numerous batteries, which will sustain them for several days. The smaller containers are powered by smaller batteries and are less long-lived, but they will last more than long enough to be moved to the cargo ships."
"Cargo ships?"
"Yes, this is an aspect of one of my evil plans. Antimatter is too volatile to be teleported or sent to a warp gate, so it must be moved physically, in this case by cargo ships. I am producing all this antimatter to serve as ammunition for my space fleet in the Crab Nebula. With all the antimatter I'll have at my disposal, I'll be able to blow up thousands of planets and star systems at my whim!" He laughed maniacally.
"So this is your master plan!" Mertle cried triumphantly.
"Actually, this is my backup plan, which will go into effect if the master fails," Hamsterviel explained.
Mertle scowled. "Oh."
"You'd need a huge particle accelerator to make this much antimatter. Where do you keep it?" asked Gantu.
"In a mountain on the other side of the planetoid. I keep it as far away from the antimatter stores as possible for safety reasons. All the antimatter produced there is transported to this base utilizing the old train system the workers used when this place was still a mine. In fact, a train should be departing from there shortly. Once it arrives, this final antimatter shipment will be complete and my fleet will be unstoppable in battle! Bwahahaha!" A light started beeping on his console. "Eh?" He pressed a button, calling up a display. His eyes widened. "WHAT?!"
"What is it?" asked Mertle.
"The particle accelerator facility has been invaded! What's more, the final supply train has been hijacked!" Hamsterviel gritted his teeth angrily.
"It must be 626 and his cousins!" Gantu said furiously.
Mertle rolled her eyes. "Well, DUH."
"We must stop those experiments at once! I want that antimatter!" He stormed out of the room, followed by his lackeys.
A few minutes later, Kixx's voice asked, "Are they gone?"
"Yes," said Houdini's voice.
"Good. Let's get to work!"
…
In a distant tunnel, a fifteen-ton train engine rushed along a rail, pulling maybe a dozen cars loaded with antimatter containers behind it. On the rails on either side of it, smaller cars manned by clones kept pace with the train, peppering the big train with plasma bullets. The bullets only did marginal damage to the cargo train's heavy shielding, but they kept firing anyway. Up ahead, a pair of heavy doors closed over the tunnel exit. A big double cannon turret rose from the top of the engine and fired, blasting the door off its hinges and allowing the train to pass through. As the transport vehicle exited, there was an enormous explosion from deep within the mountain it had just left, causing rubble to fall from above and bury the tunnel entrance, destroying the enemy cars. A few of the train cars got caught in the avalanche, but due to their extreme toughness they were almost completely unharmed as they got buried beneath the rocks, leaving their volatile cargo intact. The rest of the train detached from the cars in the rubble and continued on its way unhindered.
"Good thing this train has a release mechanism that allows us to get rid of any car that's in danger of slowing us down, right guys?" asked Clip in the engine car.
"You said it!" Agreed Finder.
Stitch patted Sparky on the back. "Nice work on that particle accelerator back there, Sparks!"
The electric experiment grinned. "That should set the Doc back a few million credits. So what're we gonna do with all this antimatter?"
Slugger looked up from a computer display. "Well, according to the train's computer, this shipment was supposed to be delivered to Hamsterviel's base. I say we bring it to him a little ahead of schedule."
"At ramming speed, right? I like it!" exclaimed Stitch.
Angel shook her head. "Won't work. The armor on this train's too thick. We could fall off this rail and plummet several thousand feet to the ground below, but it would probably just get dented a little. Crashing into the doc's base won't generate enough force to blow it up."
Stitch frowned. He was still miffed that Angel had beaten him at the Blargarian Battle challenge, and was not totally pleased that he was being forced to keep working with his ex. (Even if they still secretly liked each other.) "Okay then, what do you suggest we do instead?"
Angel tossed him a communicator, which was already on and linked with a certain digital arachnid. "I don't have any ideas…but I think Hacker does!"
Stitch shrugged and held the communicator up to his face. He might have a brain faster than a supercomputer, but he wasn't smarter than one, and that's where Hacker came in. "Okay Hack, what's your idea?"
"Well, I've got Kixx's team sneaking around Hamsterviel's antimatter store room, trying to sabotage the batteries powering the force field containers. That way, when he loads them onto his transports, they'll short out and explode, hopefully close to his star fleet. That way, we can do serious damage to his plans! But, they'll need a diversion. If you guys keep heading towards the base, Hamsterviel will have to focus on stopping you guys and getting the rest of the antimatter. He can't destroy the train because it's too heavily armored and the resulting antimatter explosion would probably annihilate the planetoid, so he'll have to derail you instead. If you guys can keep him distracted long enough, Kixx and his team can finish their sabotage and get out of the base without being spotted. Think you can do that?"
"No problem!" said Stitch.
"Okay. I still haven't found out where Hamsterviel's real hideout is, or what he wants with Lilo or that Star of Destiny, so I'd better get back to my hacking. Seeya later!" Hacker signed off.
Stitch switched off the communicator. Now that Hacker had given him something to work with, he was already formulating a plan. "Okay, Sparky, supercharge the engine to make us go faster and fool Hamsterviel into thinking we're really going to try to crash into his base. Slugger, get on the roof and be our lookout. I'll man the cannons, and Team Angel can take some of the antimatter from the cars and load it in here."
"Why?" asked Angel.
"With all these cars behind us, we'll make a big target. We may need to detach most of those cars to distract the goons trying to get the cargo back. If we move some of the antimatter in here, it'll help with the 'suicide train' image and keep some of the bad guys after us, because the Doctor will want every milligram of antimatter back. If he thinks we're really serious about crashing and blowing him up with the antimatter, he'll have to pay more attention to us then what's going on in his storeroom," Stitch explained.
"No, I mean why do we have to do the grunt work?" Angel complained.
"Because I said so."
Angel growled and led her team out the back of the engine car. "Why you gotta be so mean to her?" asked Slugger.
Stitch grunted. "I'm still angry at her for beating that Snagglebeast faster than me. If her team hadn't been there, we probably would have gotten enough points to win the game. She shouldn't even be here in the first place. I don't see why Jumba had to send her and the others out here, we could have gotten along fine without them!"
"Hey, without her team we never would have found this planetoid anyway, or the particle accelerator, or this train. We couldn't have done any of that without Finder's nose or Hacker's info!" Sparky pointed out as his antenna hooked up to the engine core, boosting its power and causing an increase in speed.
"We could have done it without them," Stitch grumbled.
"Could not," said Slugger.
"Shut up. Okay, I guess we needed Finder, but Clip and Angel didn't have to come."
"Yes they did," Slugger pointed out. "Everyone knows Clip and Finder are a couple so she would never stay behind, and we all know Angel still likes you and would have come anyway even if Jumba hadn't told her to come and help."
Stitch blinked. "Wait, she still likes me?"
They both stared at him. "…You didn't KNOW?!"
"No." If this cartoon series were anime (and it's not) Sparky and Slugger would have facefaulted.
"Yes, she still likes you," said Slugger, exasperated.
Stitch grinned. "Then I just need to apologize for whatever I said in our big break-up argument, and we'll be back together, right?"
Sparky shrugged. "Well, if you were a character in a cheesy story, then theoretically yes."
"Great! I'll just go talk to her now and-"
"Shouldn't you be manning the guns?" asked Slugger.
"Shouldn't you be on the roof?" Stitch retorted.
Slugger grumbled. "Touché." He started climbing up the ladder to the roof, while Stitch headed to the gunner's chair. Sparky chuckled and continued to supercharge the train.
…
"Lousy rotten blitznagging little…why'd he have to send us to do the dirty work?!" Angel complained. Her team had gone all the way to the last car and was grabbing antimatter cylinders from the wall. She and Finder had sprouted extra arms to carry them, but Clip didn't have any spare limbs so she had to stick the tubes into her hairy body.
"I think it's because you beat his time in the Blargarian Battle challenge and got more credits than he did," said Finder.
"That's no reason to get angry at me!" she said, frustrated.
"You were pretty angry at Hamsterviel for singing so well," Clip pointed out.
"…That's because he won, and he's the bad guy. We're not supposed to let him win."
"Looked more like you were jealous," Finder said.
"JEALOUS?!"
"Well yeah, I mean you've always thought you were the best singer in the galaxy, so I can imagine that it must be hard to find that somebody who you really hate is actually better than you and…uh…" He paused, trembling at the look on Angel's face. "…I shouldn't have brought that up, should I?"
Clip shook her head. "Nope."
"DIE!" Finder screamed and started running from Angel, who was now trying to stab him with her dagger. Clip rolled her eyes and started picking up the antimatter containers her idiot teammates had dropped.
Without warning, something hit the car, causing it to shake. "What the-"
The door at the other end of the car opened, revealing a bunch of Felix clones. They had attached another car to the one they were in so they could get on the train. Angel immediately stopped chasing Finder and got into a fighters stance. "Okay, if you rip-offs want this antimatter you're gonna have to-"
Suddenly, the car lurched again. The lights began flashing red as a computerized intercom voice said, "Warning! Disengaging mechanism has been activated. This car will be detached in 5…4…3…"
Team Angel stared at the intercom in horror then ran for the way that they had come in, leaving the confused clones in the dust. They made it out the door and into the next car just as the car detached, causing it to fall away from the train. The look on the clones' faces as they were left behind was hilarious.
Finder wiped away some sweat. "Phew! That was close."
"Why'd they detach the car? Didn't they know we were in it?" Angel asked angrily.
"Probably not, when Stitch told us to get some antimatter he probably expected us to get some from the next car, not from all the way in the back," Clip said.
"…Oh."
Finder suddenly realized that he had dropped all his antimatter containers when they were escaping the car. "Hey, did either of you happen to grab my containers?"
Clip pulled them out of her body. "Here honey."
"Thanks." As he reached out to grab them, something hit the car, causing Clip to drop the containers. They rolled out the open door and fell through the rails, falling to the ground far below and explode violently. "Aw Blitznag."
"Don't worry, there's plenty more antimatter in the rest of the train. But what hit us?" Angel wondered.
"I'll look." Finder poked his head out the door. Just a few dozen yards down the rail was a smaller train car with a huge gun on it. He leaped backwards as the train fired a HUGE cannonball at him, smashing into the door and causing the car to shake.
"It's a VERY good thing these cars are so heavily armored," said Clip, shaken.
The lights started flashing red. "Warning! Disengaging mechanism has been activated. This car will be detached in 5…4…"
"Blitznag, not again!" They dashed through the car and into the next one just as it got detached. The detached car rolled backwards and rammed into the cannon car, causing it to explode. Not surprisingly, the antimatter car was still undamaged. As they were taken further and further away from the car, they saw a group of small aircraft pick up the car with a tractor beam and carry it away. As they did, three cannon cars rolled up, each on a separate rail, one behind the train, and one on either side.
Finder shook his head. "They just don't give up, do they? Let's get to the engine before we get dumped like the last two cars!"
…
Up in the engine room, Stitch was blasting away at a seemingly endless amount of aircraft that seemed determined to drop bombs on the rails. If that happened, they would have nowhere to go and would fall to the planetoid below. "How does he pay for all this stuff?! Clones, aircraft, particle accelerators, a modified train system...how rich can one evil hamster-like scientist get?"
"Well, I hear he inherited his fortune. His great-grandfather was the guy who invented the galactic internet," Sparky said.
Stitch looked at Sparky in surprise. "You're kidding me!"
"No, it's true. And he also still gets royalties from his Super Hygenator invention, which he marketed before he became openly evil. Not to mention he also runs a false banking corporation under the name of Rupert Gerbilwheel which allows him to steal billions of credits a year and replace it with very well-made counterfeit money so his investors and clients don't find out. That and pretending to be a philanthropist allowed him to open a fake fund to cure the dreaded Scrotum Cancer of Nutok 12, which lets him scam even more people."
Stitch blinked. "…How do you know this stuff?"
"Nosy told me one time back at the lab. That guy may be really annoying, but he knows his gossip! Or knew, seeing as how he's probably dead by now…" He stopped, seeing the pained look on Stitch's face. "Sorry. I shouldn't have brought that up."
Stitch shook his head sadly. "No. You shouldn't have."
Slugger poked his head through a hatch. "Hey, we got more cannon cars coming up. And a couple of aircraft are trying to lift one of our cars!"
"Detaching now!" Stitch pressed a button. Five seconds later, the car was detached and being carried away by Hamsterviel's minions.
Slugger frowned. "Well that's one problem taken care of, but what about the cannon cars?"
Stitch rotated his cannons to face behind the train. Then he fired two shots, blasting the cannon cars on the sides of the train to pieces. Then he detached another car, so the last cannon ran into it and was destroyed. "That better?"
"Yeah, thanks." Slugger climbed back onto the roof. Just then, an aircraft flew overhead and dropped something. It landed on top of the engine, causing the train to shake. "Aw Blitznag." He poked his head into the engine room. "Guys, I've got a problem up here."
"What kind of problem?" asked Stitch as he blasted away at the bombers.
Slugger looked up at the tremendously evil-looking Battaxetra clone. "A BIG problem."
Stitch rolled his eyes. "How big?"
"About twenty feet, I'd say. It's a really nasty-looking clone! Could you lend me a hand?"
"Uh…" Stitch quickly fired at the center of a cluster of bombers, causing it to explode and scatter shrapnel that struck and destroyed the others. "Sorry, but if I come up we'll be at the mercy of the bombers. When Angel's group comes back, I'll tell them to come up, so hang on until then. Wonder where they are, anyway…"
There was a very loud roar, and a giant axe just barely missed decapitating Slugger. He yelped and pulled his head out of the hatch. Battaxetra grunted and tried to heft his huge axe for another decapitating swing, only to find it had gotten blunted by the engine car's thick armor. He grunted and tossed it off the side of the train and swung at Slugger with his axe claws. Slugger took to the air to avoid them and flew around the monster, trying to confuse it. This ended when Battaxetra's tail swung up, striking him with its flat side and knocking him back to the ground. Battaxetra roared and raised his head, preparing to cleave the pterodactyl in two with his nose axe. Slugger rolled out of the way and the clone's axe struck the roof. The impact with the thick armor stunned the monster, causing it to take a few steps back, almost off the side of the engine. Slugger quickly slammed into the beast's chest, knocking it into the abyss. "Yeah!"
"Did you take care of the clone?" Stitch called from inside.
"Yeah, and I did it all by myself! Ha, no one can send this homerun hitter to the bench!" Several more aircraft flew over the train, dropping their cargo. A dozen Battaxetras landed on top of the trailing antimatter cars. Laughing evilly, they started towards the engine. Slugger paled. "Stitch! Detach the cars!"
"Which ones?"
The monsters were halfway to Slugger. "ALL OF THEM!"
"But Angel and the others aren't back yet!"
The clones were only one car away from the engine. "NOW!"
Stitch hit the release button.
All of the cars behind the engine immediately disengaged. The clones noticed this and started running, hoping they could clear the widening gap between their car and the engine. The lead clone leaped off the edge of the car, and for a moment seemed to fly through the air towards Slugger, bloodlust in its eyes. Then gravity kicked in and it fell, smashing through the rails as it plummeted to its doom.
Slugger sighed in relief and climbed back inside, where he was immediately confronted with a homicidal pink monster.
Angel grabbed the pterodactyl's neck and started throttled him. "YOU BLITZNAGGING IDIOT! If we hadn't jumped out of that last car at just the right time, or if Finder hadn't grabbed us and flown us the rest of the way, we could have been killed!"
"Gack…didn't have a choice…would have been killed by axe murderer clones if I stayed up there…" Slugger choked out as he was strangled.
"Dumbass! You could have come back inside the car, those thing's axes aren't strong enough to cut through the train's armor!" said Finder angrily.
Slugger blinked. "…Why didn't I think of that?"
Clip pulled Angel away from Slugger. "Come on Angel, just let it go. He can't help being stupid, he's a guy."
"Hey!" protested all the males in the car.
"No offense," Clip added quickly.
"Guys? I hate to break up this enlightening conversation, but I think we've got a problem," said Stitch.
They came over to his seat and looked out the window. Almost a hundred bombers were flying towards the rails, preparing to drop their payload on the track. Sparky whistled. "That's a lot of explosives."
Stitch got out of his seat. "I can't deal with all these things from down here. I'm going to fight those bombers on equal ground!" Before anyone could stop him, he climbed outside of the engine and whistled. "Come on, Stitch Machine!" His loyal space cruiser flew out of the skies, running parallel to the train.
Slugger climbed out of the hatch. "Stitch, wait! Don't leave me here with these crazy girls!" Slugger said frantically as Stitch jumped into the cruiser and flew off to engage the bombers. "Aw, blitznag."
"So I'm a girl now?" asked Finder sarcastically as the sullen pterodactyl climbed back inside.
"Just let it go," Clip advised once more.
That's when the engine shook. Something had hit them…again. "What is it this time?" asked Sparky wearily.
They looked out the car's back door and saw there was a large flying machine coming after them. It was comprised of three parts, a large blimp envelope with a propeller on either end, a basket hanging from it that held four clone gunners, a large cannon, and a pair of wings with engines and energy ring guns, and an H-Hawk attached to the top of the envelope. This was Hamsterviel's H-Albatross, a somewhat ridiculous-looking contraption that was more powerful than it appeared.
"That thing looks ridiculous. I mean really, a blimp?" said Slugger.
"Be careful, it's probably more powerful than it looks," Sparky cautioned. (Didn't I just say that?)
The Albatross's cannon fired a huge cannonball at the train, rocking it. "Why are they still chasing us? They have all the antimatter, don't they?" asked Angel.
"They must think we still have some. Clip, did you manage to keep any of the ones we were collecting earlier?" asked Finder.
Clip pulled out six containers. "Yeah, this is all I got left." She almost dropped them when the Albatross fired its cannon again.
Angel hopped into the gunner's seat and tried to shoot the Albatross down. The guns aimed at the airship, clicked, and did nothing. "We're out of ammo."
Sparky got a brainstorm. "I think we can remedy that. If somebody can load those antimatter containers into the cannons, we can probably fire them like bullets at the airship and knock it out of the sky!"
Slugger shook his head. "To do that, somebody'd have to crawl out there while being fired on by that monster. I pity the poor sucker who has to do that!" Everyone looked at him. "What? Why are you all looking at me?"
…
"Why do I have to do this again?" Slugger asked as Clip finished tying the antimatter to his waist.
"Well, while all of us are bulletproof and super tough, we don't relish the idea of getting hit by a giant cannonball. You're the best experiment for the job, because you can deflect those shots with one swing of your tail!" explained Angel.
"…This is because I panicked and almost got you guys killed, isn't it?"
"Yes. Now go out there and do your duty!" She shoved him up the ladder and onto the roof.
"But-" She pulled the hatch closed and locked it. "Blitznag. Some family."
The H-Albatross noticed the small pterodactyl on the engine and locked its weapons on him. A huge cannonball was launched from the cannon, followed by a pair of energy rings and a spray of plasma fire. Slugger stood perfectly still as the cannonball hurtled towards him, then swung his tail, knocking it back towards the airship. The ball blocked the plasma bullets and struck the cannon it had been launched from, destroying it. Slugger shifted to the side as the rings came towards him and jumped through its open center as it passed by, coming through unscathed. "Ha!" The Albatross responded by firing more bullets and rings.
He backflipped to dodge the projectiles and landed on top of the gun turret. He stuffed an antimatter tube into each of the gun barrels. Putting his wings over his ears, he yelled "FIRE!"
The cannons rose up to point at the basket beneath the blimp and fired. Two antimatter bullets shot from the cannon and struck the basket, annihilating it in a blinding flash of light. Slugger shut his eyes to avoid getting blinded, and even with his eyes closed he still saw spots. When he looked at the Albatross again, the basket had been destroyed, but the blimp was still intact. It began to move around to the side of the train. It was then that Slugger saw that the blimp had three cannons mounted to either side. "Aw, Blitznag." The cannons fired simultaneously, hitting the car with three cannonballs at once. The train rocked and nearly tipped over from the force of the hit. Slugger almost lost his grip on the gun turret, but regained his footing and ran to the side of the engine as the blimp cannons fired again. He jumped up and swung his tail at the middle cannonball at an angle, causing it to strike the left cannonball and force it to hit the rail behind them instead of the train and ricochet off to strike the blimp cannons, damaging them. This way, only one cannonball hit the train, which was far less dangerous. The blimp flew over the engine to the other side to fire with the rest of its cannons. Slugger quickly hopped onto the turret and loaded two more antimatter tubes. "FIRE!"
The guns fired at the blimp, obliterating it in another flash of light. Slugger was prepared this time and turned his head away to protect his eyes. When he looked back, he saw that the H-Hawk that had been on top of the blimp had survived and was now ready for action. The Hawk (Which was being piloted by a Nosy clone, just so you know) swooped over the engine, nearly hitting Slugger, and flew back towards the car from down the rails. Slugger quickly loaded the last two antimatter containers into the cannon. "FIRE!"
The cannon fired at the exact same time as the Hawk fired its plasma machineguns. The plasma bullets struck the containers in midair, destroying their force fields and releasing the antimatter into the air. Slugger screamed as his eyes burned from the agonizing flash of light released by the antimatter, leaving him blinded for several seconds. The H-Hawk veered around the train to keep from crashing into it and flew at it from behind, firing homing missiles. Slugger finally cleared his eyes, realizing with horror that they were all out of ammunition now. The only way he could stop the Hawk would be by deflecting enough bullets or missiles at it to destroy it, and that could take forever. Still, he had no other option. Or did he…
As the homing missiles struck the car, Slugger pounded on the hatch. "Guys, get on up here! I can't beat this thing without you!"
The hatch opened and Team Angel came out. "Sparky needs to stay down in the engine to keep us up to speed. How do we stop this thing?" asked Clip.
Slugger had already come up with a plan. "If you guys go into ball form, I can hit you over there with my tail. Once you're on top of the Hawk, you can damage it enough to put it out of commission!"
They all frowned at him. "And how are we supposed to get off that thing after we put it out commission? It'll take us down with it!" Angel pointed out.
"…I haven't gotten that far yet, but I'm sure you'll figure something out!" The train rocked as another volley of homing missiles hit it. "So, who's first?"
Finder sighed. "I'll go. I can fly anyway, maybe I can get everyone else off once we damage that thing sufficiently."
"That's the spirit! Now get into ball form." Finder obliged. "Angel, toss him into the air please." Angel threw Finder up. As he came back down, Slugger hit him with his tail, launching him onto the back of the H-Hawk, just behind the cockpit. He gave the other's a thumbs-up. "Great! Now who's next?"
In this fashion, all three members of Team Angel landed on the back of the H-Hawk. The pilot noticed this and barked orders to his gunners. The two Felix clones saluted and immediately jumped out of their seats, falling to their dooms. The clone smacked his forehead, grumbling under his breath about the stupidity of 010 clones. In the meantime, Finder lead the team to a panel above the Hawk's engines. "This panel should allow us to get inside the Hawk and do some serious damage. Angel, can you open it?"
Angel dug her dagger into the crack at the edge of the panel and levered it up, revealing a tiny crawlspace littered with circuitry and wires. "I can't fit in there. Clip, you're the smallest one of us. Do you think you can do it?"
"Sure." Clip hopped into the small space. "What do I do?"
Finder sniffed the air for a second. "Crawl to a spot marked 'Engine Control' and cut the white wire. That should disable the H-Hawk's engines."
"Got it!" She vanished into the depths of the airship. Seconds later, the engines sputtered and stopped working. The Nosy clone noticed that they had slowed down drastically and frantically hit the accelerator, but the ship continued to move at a much slower rate, drifting closer to the rails.
"Good job, Clip!" said Finder as Clip climbed out of the space. "Now the rotors are the only thing keeping this bird afloat. If we destroy those, this thing'll crash for sure!"
However, the pilot had no intention of letting this happen. With a flip of a switch, he managed to turn the whole Hawk upside down, almost throwing the experiments off. Fortunately, they all had the wall-climbing gene and stuck to the hull of the Hawk safely. "I think it would be a good idea if we climbed to the underside of this thing, I don't want to be beneath this bird when it crashes!" said Angel.
Finder shook his head. "No, the pilot'll just flip us over again if we climb to the other side. Let's disable the rotors, then jump away from the ship when it starts to fall. I'll grab you guys and fly you down to the rail."
"All right." They crawled alongside the wing to the first rotor. Angel jammed her dagger into the spinning blades, causing them to malfunction and explode. The Hawk shook and slowed down even more. "Okay, now for the other one."
However, the pilot was not very happy with this turn of events and tried once more to shake off the saboteurs. The ship turned over at a 90-degree angle, turning the horizontal climb alongside the Hawk's body into a vertical one. Despite this, the heroes were unperturbed and clung firmly to the vessel's hull. "You'll have to do better than that if you want to get rid of us!" Clip taunted the pilot.
"Clip, don't make it any angrier than it already is," Finder warned her. "Let's finish this thing off!"
They climbed up the Hawk's body to the final rotor and drove the dagger into it. It exploded, and the airship began to fall. The trio pushed off from the bird as it crashed through the rails and plummeted to the ground far below. Clip grabbed Finder's legs, and Angel grabbed Clip's legs, and they all hung on as Finder's ears started spinning, keeping them in the air. "Well, chalk up another victory for Team Angel! Finder, fly us back to the train so we can meet up with the guys!"
"Uh, I don't think I can," said Finder, sweating and gritting his teeth. They weren't moving as much as either of the girls would have liked.
"Why not?"
"Well, let me put it this way: Clip is light because she's just a bundle of hair, but Angel…well, you've been eating too much Pineapple Pie."
"HEY!"
"He's right Angel, you have been eating too much," Clip pointed out.
Angel's face flushed. "I do NOT eat too much! I'm just big-boned."
"Regardless, I can't carry us all the way to the train. And even if I did, it's moving way too fast to catch up to. I think…I'm…going to…" His ears stopped spinning. They fell, screaming.
A dark purple blur shot down from the sky and caught the trio as they fell. Angel blinked and saw to her surprise that they were on the hood of Gantu's old excursion vehicle. "Hey guys, need a lift?" asked Kixx from inside. He opened the cockpit, letting the three in. "It's a good thing we finished up with the antimatter so quickly, or we'd never have gotten here in time!"
The Stitch Machine appeared alongside the ship. Stitch, Slugger, and Sparky were inside. The cruiser's communicator had been repaired while it was docked in Paradise Vega, allowing ship-to-ship exchange once again. "I've picked up the rest of my team," said Stitch. "I take it you guys finished messing with the antimatter?"
"Our mission was a success. The blind fools never caught sight of us," said Dracula.
"Good. Now let's get out of here, Hamsterviel's ships are already busy taking the train cars back to his base, and a few more are heading this way. We should vamoose before they catch up to us!"
"Roger." Kixx turned the communicator off, and both ships flew away.
…
An hour or so later, despite the delay caused by Stitch and friends, the last of the antimatter was loaded onto the cargo ships. They lifted off from the base and went into hyperspace. Hamsterviel watched them proudly from the bridge of his ship as they left, completely unaware that they would explode as soon as they reached the Crab Nebula, destroying a quarter of his fleet. "Now that that's settled, on to our next destination!"
"And where's that?" asked Mertle from the miniature throne that had been set up next to the doctor's.
"The Shorca system!"
Gantu, sitting on the floor, was startled. "The Shorca system?"
Hamsterviel smirked. "Yes, the Shorca system. I told you we would be passing through there, didn't I? And as I recall, per the terms of our agreement, you can leave us once we get there."
Gantu gave a deep sigh of relief. "Finally…I'm going home."
Hamsterviel seemed mildly amused by this, but said nothing. "Computer! Set a course for the Shorca system!"
"Yes, Doctor Hamsterwheel."
The doctor opened his mouth to correct the machine, then gave up. He groaned. "Why do I even bother?"
The ship went to hyperdrive, followed closely by two much smaller ships, both of which were concealed by the power of invisibility.
…
And so another chapter ends. Tune in next time!