"Great job again, Boss. This time they overshot us by at least a decade," Barf commended his superior in the Eagle 5-A.
"At least," Lone Starr agreed, "Hopefully we've lost them for good, or at least a couple chapters now."
"We just might," Mary Sue stuck her head through the curtain, "I sensed their ship was just destroyed, and my father played a hand in it."
"Huh?" Lone Starr frowned, "How in the world do you know that? Did you read this story before everyone else?"
"No, but I have a feeling..."
"My father, is he all right!?" Vespa rushed forward and stared the purple-haired girl down, "Was he...!?"
"No, he's perfectly safe, and on his way back to Planet Spaceball now. I feel his presence, and no harm was done to him."
"Boy, you really are impressive," Barf beamed at her, "You'll have to..."
"All right, all right," Lone Starr cut in, starting to get frustrated by his new passengers, "Let's just turn this thing around, go to Planet Spaceball, and save the king. Take it out of hyperactive, Barf."
"Taking it out of hyperactive," Barf needlessly repeated, pulling back on the throttle to return them to normal space speed. He and everyone else immediately screamed, seeing that they had come out of light speed in the path of two space trucks driving side by side through the cosmos directly in front of them. Seconds later, they drove right between the trucks, sending sparks and flames flying everywhere. The crash seemed to go on forever-during which Lone Starr thought he saw himself as a skeleton in the rearview mirror, and, when he looked sideways, Barf as a laughing devil dog-but finally, they emerged on the other side. The hero immediately slammed on the Eagle 5-A's brakes, but they failed to catch. "Now what!?" he complained, pumping the brake pedal over and over again, "Barf, didn't you add more brake fluid before we took off!?" he spun to the mawg.
"Brake fluid?" Barf asked. His face then scrunched up in discomfort, "OOOOOOOOOOOh, so it wasn't fruit juice in the bottle I drank before we left Druidia...!"
"Oh great!" his boss threw up his hands in disgust, "Check the map and see if there's a runaway truck pulsar anywhere near here; I don't know if...!"
"You hear that music?" Dot now spoke up from behind him. Lone Starr also heard the familiar music wafting through space ahead of them. He and everyone else looked out the windshield, and once more screamed to see themselves now headed straight for a large silver starship shaped like the letters HBO spinning though space. As they were unable to stop, they slammed hard into the top of the B, sending the whole starship careening backwards, the music now warped and out of sync. "Great, now we just took out everyone's cable reception too!" the droid complained.
"Back for more, huh, Helmet!?" Meteor stumbled into the cockpit, squinting at the retreating HBO starship, "Well I'm not finished yet. Eat this!"
He hefted a grenade launcher that had apparently been lying in the back of the Winnebago for some reason and took aim. "NOOOOOO!" everyone's cries were in vain, as the mole blindly fired a grenade square into the Eagle 5-A's control panel, which exploded in a blinding flash and started burning. The Winnebago took a sickening nose dive downwards. "We're going to crash!" Dot wailed, covering her eyes.
"Wait, what are we worried about? We're in the middle of space; what can we crash into out here?" Vespa seemed calmer at the moment, although she still looked a bit nervous.
"Still, better to set it down somewhere; Barf, check the map; what's the closest planet we can set down on!?" Lone Starr asked his sidekick.
"Just a minute...!" Barf hastily pulled the map out of the glove compartment, stamped out its flames, and opened it up, "Uh...the planet Gesundheit should be right on our right-there it is therrrrrrrrrrrre...!" he got hyper as the Eagle 5-A's nosedive became faster and more pronounced, "Hurry up, Boss; who knows if we can hold together much longer here!?"
"OK, buckle up everyone; we're going in for a hard landing," Lone Starr announced to everyone else, buckling himself in and grabbing the steering wheel hard, "Barf, give me a reading."
"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want; he makes me lie down in green pastures...!" Barf started desperately praying. Lone Starr rolled his eyes. "Don't start that again!" he whacked his sidekick on the shoulder, "Turn on the automatic pilot; maybe he'll help with the descent."
"Turning on the automatic pilot," Barf pressed a button that wasn't burning at the moment. With a hiss of air, the automatic pilot inflated between him and his boss. It leaned forward to examine the burning control panel, then looked out the window at Gesundheit spiraling rapidly towards them-then frantically swam towards the door, threw it open, and jumped out. Lone Starr slapped his face in frustration again. "If you want anything done right...!" he muttered turning the steering wheel hard-only to have it break off in his hands. He stared in wide eyed amazement. "I thought you fixed this!?" he demanded to Barf.
"Um..." Barf gulped nervously, "Well, uh, the Intergalactic Dog Show was on TV, and I, uh, wanted to..."
"OOOOOOOOOOOhhh! Here, see what you can do while I try and fix this as best I can!" Lone Starr shoved the steering wheel into the mawg's hands and started fiddling with the wiring. Barf gulped, but bravely tried to make the best of the situation, twisting the wheel around in his hands despite it no longer being attached to anything. Gesundheit, however, loomed closer and closer outside...
"What's going on up here!?" Mary Sue stuck her head in the curtain.
"I said buckle up, we're going in for a crash landing!" Lone Starr shouted, fumbling around with the wiring.
"Let me drive, I think I know how to fix it," she asked him.
"Huh?" he looked up.
"I think I can use the Schwartz to fix everything here."
"Lady, tell me, what do you do for a living?" he asked her crossly.
"Well...I comb the sands of the deserts on Jakkanjill; they pay me five spacebucks a week for it. But I know what I'm doing, trust me!"
"Trust you? Lady, I don't care if you're some second rate Chosen One or something, this is my ship, and if we're crashing, we're crashing with me behind the controls!" Lone Starr shot her down, "And furthermore...!"
"Look, there's no time to argue here!" Mary Sue emphatically pointed her hand at him. Immediately, Lone Starr's seatbelt unbuckled, and he found himself being lifted into the air. "Hey, hey, no, I said I'm in control of this ship! Put me down right now!" he ordered. Mary Sue obliged, accidently dropping him hard to the floor as she jumped into the driver's seat and pointed her hand at the steering wheel in Barf's paws next. It zoomed towards her, lodging itself in the steering column and amazingly healing itself back to normal. The wiring did the same when she pointed at that as well. "Hold on," she grabbed the fixed wheel and pulled out of a steep dive, sending Lone Starr flying hard into the ceiling. His brains sliding down to his feet from the tremendous G-forces, he watched her guide the ship through a series of impossible turns and into the final descent toward Gesundheit. She aimed for the beach by the ocean, landing smoothly on the sand and bringing the Winnebago to a stop against a large conveniently placed sand dune. "There, down," she declared, switching off the Eagle 5-A's engine.
"I had everything under control...!" Lone Starr moaned as he fell to the floor again with a loud thud. He got back to his feet and stumbled out the door after everyone else. "Where are we?" Dot spoke for everyone, glancing around the beach.
"Right now, I'd say right where you all need to be at the moment," came a familiar voice that made them all turn to the right. "Yogurt..." they exclaimed. The Schwartz master, dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, Bermuda shorts, and sunglasses, was lounging in a beach chair nearby. His aides, the Dinks, sat in adjoining chairs around him, still in their usual robes, but also wearing sunglasses. "Hello, everyone," Yogurt greeted them, taking a sip of lemonade, "Nice that we could all meet up again like this."
"Yogurt, what are you doing here?" Vespa asked him.
"Just taking a break from merchandising to enjoy myself on vacation. Why?" Yogurt lowered his sunglasses, "Did you think I'd be skulking around here grumpily moping over some terrible mistake I made years ago even though everyone would say that would be out of character for me?"
"Well, no, but...amazing you'd be right here right now..."
"Yep, it's amazing how these conveniences work, right boys?" Yogurt turned to the Dinks, who nodded in unison, "And this break'll be good to refresh myself, because once this story hits the screen, it's going to be the biggest picture since Splinter in the Mind's Butthole, I can tell you that for sure. But anyway, what was all that about all of you spiraling like crazy out of the sky like that just now?"
"Well, we had some trouble with the Spaceballs again, Yogurt, among a couple of other problems," Barf explained, "But luckily we'd picked up Mary Sue here," he gently nudged her forward, "She was able to use the Schwartz without a ring to fix everything and then guided us down like a pro. You should have seen it..."
"Do tell," Yogurt removed his sunglasses altogether, "Tell me, Miss, have you been using the power of the Schwartz often?" he asked her.
"Well, no, but when I do, I've found I've done really well with it," Mary Sue confessed, "I'm just a desert comber on Jackanjill, but I'm looking for my father, Dr. Waylon Shipps..."
"Well, tell you what, Miss..."
"Cometrider."
"Cometrider. Very interesting indeed," Yogurt mused. "Well, Miss Cometrider, let me put you to a preliminary test here to see what you got. Stay close, boys," he instructed the Dinks, "This could get a bit rough if I do this wrong."
He pointed his own Schwartz ring at the nearest bathhouse. It immediately caught fire, becoming an inferno rapidly. "OK, show me what you can do with the Schwartz with this," Yogurt told Mary Sue. She thought quickly, then turned to the ocean and pointed both fingers at it. A giant wave started rapidly building and rushing towards shore. "Oh great...!" Lone Starr broke into a sprint away from it, as did everyone else, but was still swept off his feet by the wave, which rolled ashore in a flash. When it receded, however, they saw that it had not only put out the fire, but improbably restored the bathhouse to its original undamaged condition. There came a loud cheer from the Dinks, who surrounded Mary Sue and embraced her while shouting, "Dink dink dink dink dink dink! Dink dink dink dink dink dink!" "What are they saying?" she asked Yogurt.
"What they're saying, my dear, is that you just might be the one person we in charge of the Up Side of the Schwartz have been looking for for a long time now," Yogurt was grinning as well, "Come with me, and I'll show you..."
"Right in here," he gestured her and everyone else into a cave at the edge of the beach five minutes later, "It's written down here in our sacred Journal of the Won'ts, as compiled by my old pal Mace Spraycan," he pointed to a dusty old book lying on a rocky stone in the middle of the cave, gloriously lit by a strong beam sunlight streaming through the ceiling, "Let me read it to you."
He opened the dusty book and leafed through it, "Should be right...here: 'The noble duke shall ride into the sleepy glade and awaken the beautiful princess with a quick squeeze of her'...oops, sorry, wrong legend," he apologized, leafing further through the book, "That's a good one, though; you should read it when you get the chance. Ah, here we are for real," he stopped at another page and started reading: "There shall come one with hair of amethyst and eyes of different hues, who shall fall from the sky in a blaze of glory and rise to defeat the forces of evil with nary a sweat. She shall come by the name Cometrider and shall be able to use the power of the Schwartz regularly without a ring. And she shall in time become the greatest of heroes, the Knickknack Paddywhack."
"The Knickknack Paddywhack?" Lone Starr frowned, still not convinced of the whole scenario.
"That's right, so give your dog a bone," Yogurt produced one and handed it to Barf, who eagerly started chewing away on it. "According to this legend further, Miss Cometrider," he turned to her, "I as the current keeper of Schwartz Up Side powers am entitled to put you through vigorous training immediately, for the Knickknack Paddywhack's services shall be required immediately upon her revelation. So, if you'll give me about five minutes to change, we can get started."
"Well, I...thank you," Mary Sue was ecstatic, "Who could thinkit, a simple desert comber like me, the most powerful force for good in the universe?"
"Who'd have guessed it, Vespa was amazed as well, "But of course, we ladies should be stronger figures for everyone to look up to. In fact, I..."
Everyone started filing back out of the cave. Miffed, Lone Starr grabbed the Journal of the Won'ts off the pedestal and started leafing through it rapidly. "This can't be right! It can't be that convenient!" he muttered under his breath, "She shows up just out of the blue, and she's immediately supposed to be the most powerful being in the whole universe! It can't...well, OK, maybe it can," he muttered in defeat, seeing the book saying just that in clear text, "If I ever find that Mace Spraycan, I'll kill him! What makes...?" he groaned loudly as he accidentally slammed the Journal shut on his finger. Gritting his teeth, he put it back on the pedestal before continuing, "What really makes her so special when I have the Ring of the Schwartz!?"
He held up his ring and stared at it, then shook his head in disgust. "This vacation's gone to hell already, and we've barely started the story. That's it, just go to the next chapter; I've had enough for now...!"