The Fan Zone

By JadeRabbyt

Group Therapy: Part 2

After giving those dumb villains a filthy look, thus stirring them to laugh harder and bounce popcorn off my face, I peek over the edge of the desk to check up on the general state of the studio.

It's in ruins, of course. The five or six imperial walkers are showing no respect for the set, and my audience is having way WAY too much fun with their lasers. In the front of the set, we've got Zombie-rodeo-frog leaping around the walkers' feet, throwing around some kind of anti-lawyer sporks, and Just Plain Insane is dashing about like a rabid Chihuahua, doing… something very smelly that involves pressurized Cheesy-Whiz and a flamethrower, while Dannys-Ghostly-Girl is riding atop one of the walkers and unloading her Uzi into the metal of its hatch.

Mental note: never provoke the audience.

Somebody pitches a chunk of the first row at one of the walkers, and in the process of regaining its balance, it crushes my wonderful, plush, perfect-for-reading couch, at which point I decide it's time for me to suit up and kick some ass.

I stand up to race backstage and run smack into Jazz.

She glares at me. "Well, what now."

"Umm… How are you with a 9-millimeter?" I ask.

"No!" she says. "Not that. Look, if you ever want to get things back in order then we need some kind of plan, here."

She's right, naturally. "Well, what do you suggest? I'm not exactly going to run out there and fight them with nothing but my dazzling fashion sense, although this suite is pretty nifty…"

She rolls her eyes. "We need somebody who can bargain with the lawyers. I don't know if you've noticed, but by the time your highly aggressive audience takes these guys down, they'll have taken this entire building down with them."

"We don't have anybody with that kind of training. But," I muse. "We might be able to beat them with a massive overload of illogic." I look up in the rafters, smirking. "And we've got plenty of that."

A few minutes and a good deal of nonsense later, Jazz and I are conversing in a secluded backstage area with—that's right! The Box Ghost.

"I am the Box Ghost!"

"Yes, yes you are," I affirm. "And surely there is no one who is a bigger square than yourself."

Jazz laughs. The BG takes it as a compliment, smiling proudly. "What else would you expect from—"

"We have a message!" I shout randomly. "A vital, important, very rectangular, post-stamped message from the, the uh…" I smooth my hair back, thinking. "The Aztec Box Gods." I hear Jazz palm-face behind me, but the BG takes it: hook, line, and sinker.

"Oh! What do they say? Deliver to me their prepackaged WISDOM!"

"They say that these metal demons are infidels, sent to make everything that is cornered and boxy—round! You must stop them using the holy scriptures of, of um… boxy… box-dom."

"Lame," Jazz whispers. I shush her.

The BG's eyes light up and he gets all loud and excited. "I shall obey my Aztec Box-Lords!" He shoots back onstage, Jazz and I close behind.

I whistle, catching the lawyer's attention. "Hey! Here's the counsel for the defense!"

The imperial walkers stop blasting everything in range for a minute, their metal heads turning toward me. One approaches, its huge feet shaking the ground, and pops its hatch, revealing a round-faced sweaty guy in an expensive suit.

"Speak," he says to the BG. My audience stops its insanity for a moment to listen.

"YOU are in violation of the 1465 Supreme General Crate decision by Colonel Carton, Master of Gift-Wrap!" shouts the BG.

The sweaty dude blinks. "I beg your pardon?"

"And the Coffers of Damnation! You shall face the wrath of Boxlbub, Lord of Packing Peanuts!"

Sweaty dude is confused. "Are you asking for a settlement?"

"Beware!"

They actually would have done well to take that last advice. As the BG and Sweaty Guy have been talking, the other lawyers have popped their heads out of their own walkers. Quite confused by the BG's prattle, they don't notice the sneaky audience gearing up its sporks, Uzis, lasers, and various assorted lethal weapons. Everyboy's finger starts to squeeze the trigger when Vlad and Ember jump down from the rafters.

"Look, this is dumb," Ember scoffs. "This whole stupid battle-thing… it's dumb. And you lawyers! Imperial walkers? Our contract doesn't cover that!"

"Yes it does," Sweaty Dude says.

"No, it doesn't," Vlad states. His eye beams fry a couple hairs off Sweaty Dude's head.

Realizing that this could get pretty ugly pretty quickly, I run backstage and grab a portable transporter control, enlisting the help of several garbage men in the process. We run back on-stage. Vlad is angry, Ember is petulant and angry, the Box Ghost and the Fright Knight are chasing each other around the studio and the audience is getting restless again. In a fantastically addle-brained use of dues ex machina, we manage to teleport away the lawyers, Lancer, the Box Ghost, the Fright Knight, Poindexter, and Jazz, before Vlad finally catches us and destroys the modules. He picks me up by the collar of my shirt, lifting my toes a couple inches above the ground, and glares at me.

"You're in big trouble, you know."

I don't like his smile. "Yeah." Thinkfast thinkfast thinkfast… Ah! His vanity. "Hey, would you like to sign some autographs?"

"What?"

Still dangling in midair, I wiggle around to glance at the audience. "You guys want to meet Vlad? And Ember?"

The audience nods slowly, still a little confused by all this.

Hopefully this works. Vlad isn't looking terribly happy right now, and his breath smells BAD. "The polls show you at the top of the villains list, you and Ember both! You've got tons of fans."

Vlad sets me down. "Really."

"Yeah," I say, "Really. We've got a uh, luau all set up on the lawn out back. A real whole cooked pig, and Hawaiian junk and a pool and punch and all kinds of great stuff." A garbage man catches my desperate look, gives me a thumbs-up, and disappears out the side door exit with a few others to set things up.

I put some enthusiasm into my voice. "So how about it, guys? You want to go party with the bad boys—" Ember clears her throat. "—and girls?"

The audience thinks about it, gradually becoming accustomed to the idea. Then somebody shouts, "PAAAARRRRRTEEEEEEEEEE!" and everybody thunders out the back doors, where the crackling of meat on a barbeque can already be heard. They scream and shout delightfully, and within moments I am left alone onstage. A garbage man comes out and asks if I want anything.

"Punch would be nice." He brings me a cup, and I move to go outside, my hand on the chrome push-bar of the door—when I hear a loud explosion, the zipper-sounds of suits being donned, and the screams of lasers and bullets along with the thunder of Ember's guitar. Somebody must have finally taken a pot-shot at one of the baddies. I take my hand off the door and move to sink into the remains of my couch, trusting that the audience will have a good time in its own unique, bright-eyed, weapon-filled, pyro-maniacal way.

A/N: Okay, this was crazy, even for me. Next episode: less insanity, more of the funny, and—by popular demand—more DannySam-ness! And, since I didn't get a chance to ask in the show, do we have any people who DON'T like D/S? Let me know what ya'll want to see!