We're Through The Looking Glass Here, People
Strong Bad returned home with a head full of suspicions and a stomach rumbling for microwave mini-pizza. Such was the way of the Ace Investigator. He came banging in through the front door of his house and strode past a dozing, sprawled-out-on-the-floor-and-drooling-in-his-sleep The Cheat into the kitchen. As he prepared to open the freezer and grab a HottHottHottington Grande Micro-Pizza w/Canadian Baconized Type Topping he noticed two things. First, he could see out the kitchen window to Strongbadia. Well, he sort of knew that already. What he really noticed was that there were new Homsar posters up on the fence. That and his dumb baby brother Strong Sad was midway through pasting another one up, defiling Strong Bad's proud country!
Strong Sad wiped his brow as he surveyed his work. Good enough, until the next time the Cheat tore the posters down and chewed them up and spat them out and used the resulting mess for who-knows-what. Oh well, at least he was getting paid and -
"Hold up, dorkus! You traitorous dorkon! You turned against your own family, and my glorious state of Strongbadia!"
Strong Sad whipped around to stare at his brother's angry face...or at least his bright green eyes seemed to be set in an angry way.
"HOW MUCH are they paying you? WHO MUCH are paying you to do this?" Strong Bad shouted, furiously flailing his arms about in his brother's general direction.
Strong Sad retorted "Well now let's not get too upset. After all, you tried to sell me to a lab as a test subject for $40! Plus, you stole and sold all of my copies of my favorite manga (Strong Sad pronouncing it mannnnn-gaaaahhhhh in a high-pitched lilt) Doki Doki Darklord Funtime Cathedral Paradise Crazy Madhouse Pirate Plotters at the flea market! All I wanted to do was earn a little extra cash on the side, and what I've done is nothing compared to things you've done to me just to make some pocket change. So I get paid to put up posters, and make sure they're up all the time in our neighborhood just like all of the other poster folks all over town! What the big deal, really?"
Strong Bad surveyed his plump, elephant-footed doofdorkus of a brother with a suspicious eye. "So, people are being paid to put these stupid Homsar posters all over town, eh?"
"Yes!"
"Aaaaaaaand...you would know who hired you and who pays you, dumpus?"
"Yes, of course! Cold hard cash from..." Strong Sad paused "Oh no! This is a good thing I have going here. I know you don't like Homsar and if I tell you you'll probably go down there and mess things up for me! You'll never make me tell you anything about this!"
Strong Bad punched his brother in the gut.
Strong Sad clutched his middle, groaned and then sighed. "Alright, it's a building down the way, with a sign outside that reads Teal, Oshkosh and Kinboote Enterprising Enterprises. I go down, get posters and get cash. These people, they want the Homsar posters up all the time and I really didn't have anything to do since Homsar's been busy with his show and his public appearances and his book contract and..."
"BOOK CONTRACT! Oh, that's too much. I'm going to see what's what down there and find out what's going on. Homsar has no right to such popularity!" Strong Bad angrily stalked off, leaving his brother clutching his gut.
"Um...I think something burst inside me. Hello? 911? Somebody? Oh well." Strong Sad just stood there and groaned.
-
There wasn't much to the ugly red brick building. A narrow, two-story box with grimy windows and grimy front double doors with the paint flaking off. The only new thing was the sign mounted up front announcing in bold, downright sassy green letters that this was the headquarters of Teal, Oshkosh and Kinboote Enterprising Enterprises. Strong Bad mused on how this was the same outfit producing Homsar's stupid sitcom.
He stalked angrily (even more so since he realized he hadn't eaten yet in his excitement) into a dingy little lobby where a couple of sad sack looking types sat on couches and chairs apparently looted from the sidewalks on trash pickup day. At a service window set into the rear wall, a boring little clerical-type person rang a bell and said "Hey you, get your new load!" One of the sad sacks trudged up to the window and was handed a stack of posters. "Canvas the south side in your zone! Those Save the Homeless Squirrels posters are taking up too much space on those walls. Just paper over them." The sad sack nodded and trudged out.
"So, these people have recruited an army of losers to make sure there is no escape from Homsar's stupefying face-type visiage. Strong Sad fit right in and also...it's almost as if...as if someone wants there to be too much Homsar out there." Strong Bad stroked his chin. After putting on a pair of Groucho glasses, he strode up to the counter. The shrimpy clerical type looked up at him and asked sharply, "What do you want?"
Affecting a ridiculous attempt at what sounded like a vaguely Europe-y accent Strong Bad piped up, "I am Stong...Vlad. Stong Vlad. That is Stong Vlad. I would like to put up posters for a job, yes?"
Indicating a door off to the side with it's thumb, the clerical type said in a bored tone, "New hires go in back, jerk-o."
Strong Bad, sorry, Stong Vlad did as he was told.
--
As he headed down a corridor, Stong Vlad considered his ill-thought out plan. Should he meet with whoever did the hiring for this outfit, or snoop around? Snoop it was.
He snuck up a stairway to the top floor. It was quiet. Very quiet. There wasn't much up here asides from a central room that seemed to be an almost-copy of the lobby below sans furniture and counter. Just cracked blue-white checkered linoleum flooring and a couple of doors in the walls. One of which had a sign tacked on it which read in a scrawl of marker "NOBODY PEEKS IN HERE AT ALL OK?"
"My ace investigation skills lead me to conclude there may be something there to investigate."
Ready to snap into his hasty Stong Vlad guise if caught (and do the whole "I got lost on the way, sorry" routine) Strong Bad opened the door. What he saw...shocked him. An office full of charts and graphs, indicating there were enough resources to keep up the poster campaign for a long time, to paper over Free Country USA and it's environs with Homsar posters almost entirely. That wasn't all. Plans for even more billboards were in the works. There wouldn't be a place in the area where a Homsar billboard wasn't visible from a distance. Plus, these billboards would be bordered with blinking lights and such. No escape, no escape from this Homsar media blitz, paperwise.
"How horrible. Who would do such a thing, and why? Maybe there's a clue over here." Strong Bad began rummaging around a cheap desk in the center of the office, picking up a stack of memo pads. Suddenly he heard voices.
"That guy should have been to see you by now. I hope he's not snoopin' around!" It was the nasal voice of that clerical dorko from downstairs. A thicker, slower voice replied "Well he didn't. Boss said to make sure no one was snoopin' so that's what we do. Right boss?"
Silence. Footsteps getting closer. Out of options. Sentence fragments. Strong Bad turned about, desparately searching for some way out. A window in the rear wall, overlooking a grassy, weedy lot. Strong Bad quickly managed to jiggle the window up and open and began climbing out.
"HEY!" he heard behind him. Strong Bad turned to see three figures in the open doorway of the office. The skinny clerk, a rotund guy he assumed was the New Hires guy and a third figure...Strong Bad realized who that third figure was in a flash of recognition that stayed with him even as he tumbled from the sill and down onto a mound of soft dirt below. Strong Bad struggled and scrambled down the mound, across the lot and down a sidewalk, leaving behind only a lot of shouting and his Groucho glasses, lost as he fell.
Exhilirated and a little sore, Strong Bad realized who the who had to be but the why, the why still eluded him in a most elusive way. The logo on the memo pages he'd seen on the desk, as well as the on-site bossman he'd glimpsed...
Teal, Oshkosh and Kinboote. TOK, Enterprising Enterprises. The company behind the Homsar blitz, he suspected. Turn the TOK backwards and what did you have? KOT.
Plus the guy giving the orders, Strong Bad had seen him before during visits to a certan residence. A creepy little quiet guy who he'd last seen working in the kitchen at the castle of...the King of Town.
What was that stupid dork doing, trying to put that even stupider dork's face everywhere? Why? What warped plan did that butter-scarfing, babbling stupidface have? Plus, as his stomach rumbled, why didn't Strong Bad just grab something on the way out of his house that afternoon.
OK, first grab some nachos or possibly Nach-Os or something to eat. THEN confront the dumb King of Town. "Priorities, Strong Bad. Priorities."
Next time: Homsar Rising - The Exciting End of the Story. Though it'll probably be less than exciting.