CWCollateral: A Tale of the Resistance

by Manajerkop

What happens when innocent bystanders get fed up with enduring the fallout from Sonichu's zappin' adventures? REVOLUTION, that's what! Experience Sonichu from a whole new perspective, as the PVCC fights to end the tyranny of Christian Weston Chandler.

10. Chapter 7: Infested Developments

CWCollateral: A Tale of the Resistance

by Manajerkop

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Chapter 7: Infested Developments

April 28, 2004, CWCville slums, Slumberland cafeteria

"Guys, tell me the truth," choked Kevin through a mouthful of sticky, gummy food. "Where do they get this oatmeal? Does anyone even know what brand it is?"

"Probably better not to think too hard about it," Jexis answered, and devoured the rest of her toast. "Cold cereal tastes better, anyway. I don't even know why you try to eat that stuff."

Kevin ignored her and added more sugar to his bowl. The food in the Slumberland cafeteria wasn't bad per se, and the Jerkops were certainly allowed a wider variety than the residents of a Soup Hotel, but something about all of it reminded him of a high school cafeteria. Maybe it was the presence of so many canned, processed, and snack-type foods. In any case, breakfast with his squadmates was at least better than being out on patrol like Steve, Serge, Allie, and Sugar were.

"Are Nick and Kuri still using those dummy targets on Sugar?" asked Amanda from further down the table.

Jexis nodded. "Yeah. We're running out of actual live bait though, what with Rift and all. Sugar won't mind – she takes down about four or five chus on a good night, anyway."

"Speaking of which, what did you end up deciding about the ferals?" Matt spoke up. "I mean, you're the genius med student, right? You must've been studying Bio in high school."

Jexis swallowed a forkful of scrambled eggs and wiped her mouth. "Ferals are definitely non-sentient creatures. Homebreds…I'm not so sure about. They definitely have higher learning capacity…not much, though…and can remember certain simple words, similar to human babies. It's more a question of…"

"Are we seriously tryin' to psychoanalyze the chus?" snorted Amanda. "Give it up, Cadet, we're just gonna kill 'em all anyway. No point wastin' your time with dead meat."

"…it's more a question of how mature and intellectually open a larval chu is," continued the teenage Jerkop, ignoring her squadmate's remark, "the levels of which, so far, are pathetically low on average. I've never had the chance to examine a homebred…yet, but it's safe to estimate their thought processes are more based on skills like language and creativity…again, not much…while the ferals are definitely more primordial in nature; hence the greater survival instinct, better sense of self-preservation, oh yeah, and the whole 'eating people' thing…"

"Jesus, Jexis," Matt muttered. A bitter frown replaced his interested smile. It had been more than a month since Jake's death, but the squad still didn't like to talk about it too much.

"Sorry," Jexis quickly apologized. "Well, they still qualify as an invasive species to the Kanto…I mean, Virginia biosphere, but with all the Feeding Day stuff going on, it'll be a while before they either run out of food and starve to death, or start eating each other…or us…out of desperation."

"Wish I had a flamethrower like Allie's got with Trogdor," mused Amanda. "Blowin' em to bits is fun an' all, but that thing just kicks so much ass it's not even funny."

"What exactly is Al doing to it?" Kevin asked. Just two nights earlier, the Legend had appeared and borrowed Trogdor, presumably to give it a few much-needed enhancements for greater range or a wider arc of fire. If the Honey Badgers' squad commander showing up in their barracks was a rarity, him actually asking to tinker with some of their gear was comparable to lottery odds. He was somewhat of a mechanical genius – after all, it had been Al who converted a broken-down school bus into the yellow-painted death wagon known as the Battle Bus.

Amanda shrugged. "Hell if I know. Ask her when Al gives it back." She turned around and waved as she noticed Zoey approaching the table. "Hey, what up, Zo?"

"Everyone, barracks, now." Zoey's face seemed to have turned to stone, and her eyes shone with uncertainty. "Admins just declared a full lockdown. We're going on high alert in a few se-"

An ominous air-raid siren blasted out across the cafeteria through Slumberland's PA system, followed by Vivian Gee's recorded voice.

"Attention. Attention. Please remain calm. This facility is now under high alert. All combat personnel will report immediately to their respective barracks to await further orders. Attention. Attention. Please remain calm. This facility is now un…"

"What happened?" asked Matt anxiously as the cafeteria's occupants rose and headed for the nearest exits. "Zoey, did something happen to Steve and Allie and the others?"

Zoey shook her head. "No, it's not them. Let's go, Al's going to brief you himself."

Kevin stood up and followed the others through the crowded halls of Slumberland, back to the Honey Badger barracks. The Legend, Kuri, and Nick were already waiting for them.

"Is that everyone?" Al asked Zoey once Amanda and Matt had taken their seats on the sofa. "Okay, I'm just going to cut right to the stuff you all need to know. First off: Steve's squad is still out on patrol, and as far as I know, they're okay. I've just called in, and they're going to finish their sweep and regroup back here in about an hour."

Kevin let out a quiet sigh of relief, as did Matt and Jexis.

"Second," continued the Legend, "the reason we're on alert is because the administration just got an emergency call from a Wilderness squad on patrol in the abandoned zone. There's been a massive surge in EHPF activity all across the area, and in parts of the slums as well. That's where all the sirens have been coming from these last few days. We think it's in response to Rift, but what we know for a fact is that the entire abandoned zone's been put under quarantine. The slums are still free, but we're seeing a lot more of Chandler's private army walking the streets now." He stepped over to the card table and shuffled through a few sheets of paper. "We're talking merc shock troops, dozens of Sonichus, Angelica overwatch, armored trucks…"

"Holy shit," muttered Amanda.

"That's right." Al adjusted his welder's mask. "Not to mention construction workers, technicians, heavy equipment, bulldozers and backhoes…in short, something really important is going down across the inner city, and I'd bet a keg of Crown Royal that it's got something to do with all the larvae we've been killing. So unless I'm mistaken, Walsh is sending us in to infiltrate the blockade and find out what's happening. And if we happen to kill a few dozen Sonees or Roseys along the way, well, I'm sure the administration won't mind."

Zoey nodded and pointed to each of her squadmates in turn. "Right, you heard the man. I want everyone here suited up and ready to deploy immediately. Jexis, get your kit together. Matt, warm up the bus and make sure she's got enough spare ammo loaded in the back. Kuri…sharpen everything you've got. Amanda, don't even think about skimping on the C4. Nick, Kevin, you two load up for heavy support. Al, I need to go over those maps with you again…"

"Heavy support?" Kevin spluttered, caught off guard by the Jerkop's order. "Hang on a sec, I…"

"It's not that hard, man," Nick reassured him with a knowing grin. "You ever play with Super Soakers when you were a kid? Just like that, except you got to hold these ones a little tighter. Come on, compadre. Let's go get you a real man's weapon."

"Slumberland. Slumberland, Honey Badger Lead, come back, over."

Al unhooked the walkie-talkie from his belt as the other Jerkops hurriedly crowded around him, all eager to hear what their squad leader had to say. "Steve, it's Al. Go ahead, over."

"Hey Al. Listen, we're still in the slum districts, but something's going on over at one of the Soup Hotels…I think it's the one Kacey staked out a while back. We're holed up in a building across the street, we've got multiple confirmed EHPF units on site, and…you're not gonna believe this…ferals. They're bringing whole truckloads of ferals right into the hotel. Over."

"What? Have you confirmed this? Over."

"Affirmative, Allie scoped it out. Hang on…say that again. Okay, she's got the radio and she says Chandler just issued an announcement that he's moving the ferals into the Soup Hotels across the slum districts. Looks like they've found another way to keep the little bastards out of our hands. It's turning into a riot down here. Relay that to the admins – I think Walsh is gonna want to hear this. Over."

"Don't bother with that, Ledger," Bryan Bash's voice sounded from the walkie-talkie. "Morrison, I just logged your call, and I'm rerouting it right to the administration. Have your squad maintain overwatch for now. I'll patch you through so you can give us updates. Over."

"Copy and confirm. Out."

Twenty-five minutes later, CWCville slums

To all passing cars and pedestrians on the streets and sidewalks of CWCville, the Battle Bus appeared to be nothing more than a relic – a clunky, chunky mess of steel and rubber that had been bolted and welded together into the poorest imitation of a proper vehicle. While it was mainly suited for combat extractions and direct confrontations with chus and loyalist forces, Al had designed it to go incognito as necessary, a process which involved removing and stowing its spiked front bumper and a few of the heavier armor plates.

The bus still looked like a clunker, but at least it wasn't as conspicuous as the 45-foot-long yellow tank that formed its alternate identity. Now Matt was weaving it through the streets of CWCville, carrying his precious cargo of Jerkops all the way to Soup Hotel #4.

Soup Hotel #4. Kevin still couldn't believe he was actually going back so soon, and in broad daylight, no less. In the back of his mind, he hoped all his old friends were still okay. Just the idea of ferals being put in close proximity with so many homeless men and women was simply terrifying. Frank and Carl probably wouldn't last five minutes without trying to kill one, and what would the EHPF guards do when they saw a couple of hobos murdering their spawn?

When Al returned from the commanders' meeting with new orders for the squad, his tidings hadn't exactly been of comfort and joy. After piecing together surveillance reports and going over the past week or so of feral concentration sightings, as well as live updates from Steve's squad, Walsh and her other administrators had determined that this Sonee and Rosey relocation process had been going on for some time now…perhaps even as soon as two weeks after the start of Operation Rift. At first glance, Chandler's goal seemed like a smart one, if a bit incendiary. By moving immense quantities of ferals into the Soup Hotels, he was not only decreasing the number of sewer-dwellers, but also providing them with all the food they could eat, thus weaning them off of their hunter-scavenger nature.

The downside of all this was that Chandler obviously had no clue about just how much the little creatures could actually eat. At the rate that the ferals were being introduced to the Soup Hotels, the tenants would run out of food within a week…and that was the most positive estimate Vivian Gee could come up with.

"You feeling all right?" Jexis asked concernedly. "You're a bit pale. Drink some water."

"Nah, it's just…I didn't think I'd ever be going back there." Kevin toyed with his new AK-47's iron sights. "And I don't think I'll be able to do that much damage with this thing. I mean, I've never even fired one before."

"Hey, don't worry," the medic reassured him. "You'll do fine. Anyway, you said the same thing about pistols, and look how that turned out!"

Kevin had to agree with her there. An additional two weeks of practice had vastly improved his accuracy with handguns and other small arms. The AK, though…that was a whole new ballgame. He was still counting on the more experienced Jerkops like Steve, Zoey, Nick, and Serge to do most of the shooting. Even the Legend himself was coming along for the operation – that in itself was indicative of just how serious the Miscreants were taking this new development.

"Steve said there were mercs inside," he continued. "As in, the people Chandler hired specifically to kill us."

Zoey turned to face him. "Don't worry. Amanda's got you covered. Just walk right in there, scope out the cafeteria, and tell us when to start shooting. How's the wire feeling?"

"Uncomfortable." Kevin toyed with the microphone clipped to his shirt. "What if I get spotted?"

"Don't," said Zoey bluntly.

Well, that's comforting, thought Kevin as the bus eased into a lane behind a large delivery truck with the words CWCuisine CWCatering painted on the sides and back in messy yellow and blue letters. Probably another delivery to one of Chandler's chu-friendly hotels or something along those lines.

Though he didn't know it yet, both of the vehicles were heading to the exact same location, and not a single one of their occupants wanted to be there in the slightest.

CWCville slums, near Soup Hotel #4

We should NOT have brought Sugar, thought Allie to herself as the honey badger snarled and clawed at the floor behind her. Steve had used the "safety on" command, but the stench of thousands of baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon was having some sort of super-addictive effect on Sugarplum Fury's heightened senses. Frothing at the mouth, she dropped flat to the floor and rolled over and over, looking desperately up at her as if to say Please, PLEASE just let me go and start ripping the little bastards apart.

"I'm sorry, honey," Allie said gently, but made no attempt to pet her or do anything that might result in "friendly fire" from the ferocious striped mammal. "You're gonna have to wait, like us. We can't just barge in there, you know."

"Grrrrrowr."

"Exactly." The Jerkop raised her monocular and took another look at the entrance to the Soup Hotel. The armored EHPF trucks were continuing their cycle of feral transport that had apparently been going on for about a week now. Every few minutes, another vehicle would pull up into the rear delivery station and back right up. Workers in riot gear and uniformed Sonichus got out, entered the building, and left ten minutes later once their cargo had been unloaded. The Honey Badgers had only realized that they were delivering live ferals because of one curious Rosey who'd wandered out of the building, cooing and batting her eyelashes at one of the EHPF officers. Well, that and the constant "goo-goo"-ing coming from inside the trucks.

Allie gritted her teeth. She hoped Al was coming, and she really hoped he was bringing Trogdor back. Without her flamethrower and faced with so many little chus that could use a good burninating, she felt utterly naked and vulnerable. At least Steve had his P90, Serge had Baba Yaga - his custom RPD - and they all had Sugar, who was now approaching berserker mode with every passing second. But all she had was a lousy 9mm pistol and her combat knife.

"How did Kevin even kill that Sparky?" she wondered aloud to the honey badger. That hadn't been a situation like Steve constantly got himself into, and he had a full-size kukri to take down chus and loyalists up close. Along came the "new guy," and even he'd managed to turn a zappin' and dangerous EHPF Sonichu into ashes using only his hunting knife. That in itself was pretty impressive for someone who had only been in the PVCC for a good two weeks back then. Now, more than a month since his arrival, Kevin was adapting quickly to the Jerkop way of life. What was more, he'd also stepped right up to fill Jake's spot in their small group of Shopping Center veterans, and Allie didn't mind that at all. Of course, she would have loved it if they were all together again, but…

Allie tore herself away from her thoughts and focused instead on trying to calm Sugar down without getting in range of those sharp claws or teeth. Maybe it hadn't been such a good idea for Steve to leave the two of them alone while he and Serge went to salvage a few items for her infiltration. That was the plan – send a few disguised Honey Badgers into the Soup Hotel to scout it out prior to the subsequent purging of all ferals within. And since she'd lived the homeless life for so many years, Allie sat right at the top of Steve's list in terms of eligibility. Lucky lucky.

A muffled rumbling resounded through the small building, and Allie heard a familiar hiss of exhaust cut sharply through the air. Good. They're here. She leapt up and headed for the stairs down to the ground floor, beckoning to the honey badger as she went. "Sugar, come."

Sugarplum Fury snarled and bared her teeth. She wasn't accustomed to taking orders from anyone but Al, Steve, or maybe Zoey. Allie eventually had to resort to waving a piece of dried Rosey jerky in the air to get Sugar's attention. Step by step, she lured the honey badger downstairs and out the back door where Steve and Serge were just greeting Zoey and her squad. Allie was slightly shocked when Al appeared, but then again, this operation wasn't exactly one they had planned out in meticulous detail. If the Legend was good at one thing, it was devising incredibly creative and on-the-spot plans, and then killing huge loads of Sonees and Roseys.

In other words, exactly what they were going to do today.

Kevin stepped out of the Battle Bus ahead of Matt just as he noticed Allie and Sugar walking over to join the assembled Honey Badgers. It was pretty exciting for him – finally, after all this time, every single member of their squad was coming together to carry out their mission. This was the kind of thing he'd been expecting when he'd joined the PVCC.

"You okay?" asked Zoey as she gave Steve a quick hug and a pat on the back. "No one spotted you on the way back, right?"

The squad leader shook his head. "Nope. Even Serge can be pretty stealthy if you say please."

"Is common courtesy," grunted the Russian. "Say magic word, and Serge make magic."

"Okay." Al stepped forward and held out a sketched map of the Soup Hotel's entrance and ground floor to Steve. "Zoey and I drew this up with input from Kevin – he's our candidate for the infiltration."

Kevin could have sworn he saw Allie pump her fist in a yes gesture out of the corner of his eye.

"We've got the White Medallions coming in for backup soon. ETA unknown." The Legend frowned. "That's the way Walsh wants it. Two squads to a Soup Hotel. Picklemen and Cashiers, Tomgirls and Red Devils, Spikes of Blue and ALBinos, etc, etc. The word's been going out all across the network ever since Steve made that call. It's not just operatives from Slumberland either, every Soup Hotel in the city's getting hit today."

"This is big, guys." Zoey's voice had taken on its customary "dead serious" tone. "This is really, really big. I mean 'cripple the city's feral population forever' big. We pull this off, and it'll be the worst thing to happen to Chandler since Walsh took down his Attraction Sign and we sabotaged the Sweetheart operation."

"So let's not waste any time," said Steve. "Matt, I want you and Al to start prepping the bus for a double-squad insertion. That's the 'one-two punch' we were talking about a few days back. You brought what I asked for, right?"

"Yeah, I'm going to need about fifteen minutes to get it all fitted, and that's with Al's help."

Steve nodded at the driver and pointed to Allie and Kevin. "Good. Practice your hobo-speak, you two. You're about to go get some lunch. Try not to kill any ferals, okay?"

Grinning, Serge held out two stinking, patchy coats and frayed hats to the Jerkops. "Is good disguise. Serge took from tiny cowards in alley."

Kevin gulped and accepted the clothes, then handed over his AK and PVCC jacket, shoulder strap, and badge. Homeless CWCitizens didn't usually carry assault rifles, and the last thing he wanted was to be recognized as a Jerkop.

Well, if he was going to be stepping right into the heart of the swarm, at least he wouldn't be doing it alone.

Ten minutes later, Soup Hotel #4 reception desk

"Mr. Shaw. Long time," droned Harriet, the middle-aged, stocky receptionist who handled most of the registration details for Soup Hotel #4. "Next time, let someone know before you decide to disappear again. I'm going to have to re-register you – we gave your room to another tenant when we didn't hear back from you for three days."

"That's okay. I'm not going to stay very long anyway," Kevin replied somewhat truthfully as he and Allie stepped up to the front of the queue. "Just put us down for a double room. One night."

"Mazel tov." Harriet narrowed her eyes at Allie. "And you are…"

"Cassandra," the Jerkop replied tersely as she scratched her hair beneath the dirty wool hat Serge had given her. It was customary for operatives to make up false identities for themselves using a combination of names from their administrators and other important PVCC figures. "Cassandra MAYS. Cassie for short."

"Welcome to Soup Hotel #4," said the receptionist in an incredibly bored voice that held no welcoming tone whatsoever. Thankfully, she hadn't picked up on Allie's subtle emphasis on MAYS. The woman's hearing, as Kevin remembered from his hobo days, had never been good.

"So, how's everything been since I left?" asked Kevin. "And which room did we get?"

Harriet frowned and faked a severe coughing fit, leaning in close so that only Kevin could hear her. "Get out of here, Shaw," she hissed in his ear. "The whole place went to hell while you were gone. You'll see." She straightened up and put on her most uninterested smile for the security cameras. "Unfortunately for you, you'll both have to wait. All the rooms are taken or…occupied." Harriet shuddered." Someone will call you if a room opens up."

"That sounds great! Thanks!" Allie grabbed Kevin's hand and pulled him out of the line before the tall and brutish hobo behind them could "persuade" the disguised Jerkops to hurry up.

"Good job," said Kevin under his breath once they were safely out of the way and heading for the cafeteria. He glanced down at his hand. "You can let go now if you want."

Allie shook her head. "Nope. They think we're here for a one-night stand, so we'll just have to keep up the act until the bullets start flying. Until then, think of it like a date. But keep your eyes open." Her voice dropped to almost a whisper. "Mercs."

Kevin straightened up and drew his hat down over his face, pretending to be adjusting the wide brim. Chandler may have been too inept to make any sort of effective security force out of anything other than his EHPF Sonichus, but these loyalist mercenaries were something completely different. They were much more dangerous than any chu (save the Chaotic Combo, the original Sonichu, and several others), partially due to the fact that they were just regular, normal humans who, for some reason, had decided to fight for Chandler's cause. No one, not even Mary Lee Walsh, knew where they'd come from, or who exactly was commanding them.

And right now, a group of three was marching down the hall right toward Kevin and Allie.

"You draw Feeding Day duty tonight?" one of the masked soldiers growled, his voice distorted by his air filter.

"Yeah. That bastard Winters set me up again. Not looking forward to the next round. Those sewers give me the creeps."

"Stay out of the cafeteria, then," advised the third mercenary in a thick Southern accent. "They ain't paying us enough to be fuckin' babysitters for a bunch of retarded fuzzbags."

"Whatever. Not our problem, right?"

"Goddamn right, good buddy."

Kevin and Allie hastened past until they were well out of range, then continued on, hand-in-hand, toward the cafeteria. A large crowd of homeless men and women was slowly making their way toward the dreaded room, some with wooden boards, makeshift clubs, and other blunt objects grasped tightly in their hands. Kevin noticed that every single one of them looked like he or she would rather be anywhere else in the world at the moment.

"That was close," he muttered to Allie.

"Well, the outfits worked. At least that's worth something."

"Yeah." Kevin was suddenly no longer concerned with the mercs, Allie, or even the mission. A frightening sound was coming from inside the cafeteria – the sound of a feral swarm around the size of the one that had nearly killed him, Zoey, and Jexis that one night. As they reached the wide double doors, he and Allie pushed their way through a loosely packed crowd of hobos and into the cafeteria, unsure of what exactly they had gotten themselves into. Neither one of the Jerkops was particularly eager to find out, yet they carried on weaving through the grumbling crowd until at last they reached…

"Gaa-gaa! YAY!"

"Wosey! Goo-goo!"

"Hee-hee! Sonee! Nee!"

Kevin nearly suffered a heart attack from the shock of what lay before him. This was not the Soup Hotel #4 cafeteria he remembered, with its long line of hungry hobos, an extensive soup counter, and volunteer servers. This…this was madness in its purest form.

Past the edge of the crowd, the large cafeteria now bore host to nearly three hundred chu larvae, all of whom were scampering and waddling around the room with not a care in the world or any sense of direction whatsoever. The unfortunate souls who somehow managed to make their way through the crowd of pink and yellow blobs were now clustered together for protection around a scattering of tables, desperately trying to just eat their meager lunches and ignore the dozens of Sonees and Roseys attempting to climb them, steal their food, or just hug their legs for no reason at all. Every few seconds, a Rosey would climb to the top of a table, clumsily shimmy her way up onto some poor hobo's head, and parachute down to the floor with a cheerfully despicable "YAY!" Kevin wondered why the diners just didn't snap and start kicking the baby hedgehogs away, until he noticed nearly two dozen EHPF officers keeping watch throughout the room.

So this was the life of a CWCville hobo. No more rights, no more peace, not even a shred of pity from their "wonderful and generous mayor." Now the status of master race had been adjusted to place even the ferals above the city's homeless. Chandler could have put them literally anywhere else – a park, a warehouse, anywhere far away from human intervention. But no. To him, they were precious little babies, innocent and adorable and worthy of only the best large-scale housing he could provide for all of them. So he'd dumped them all here and posted a few guards to make sure they received the special treatment he felt they deserved. That was it. No more problems, and of course, his citizens would understand the necessity of this relocation! He was their Mayor, after all, and whatever he said was the way things were. If they didn't like it, well, there were still plenty of ferals crowding the abandoned zone sewers who needed fresh meat.

But while Chandler had most likely already forgotten there even was a problem and was now busying himself witheither his extensive video game collection or his propaganda comic Sonichu, the hobos of CWCville were still starving and going mad by the truckloads…while actual truckloads of ferals continued to clog the Soup Hotels.

The commotion was incredible. Truly, Kevin had never heard such a racket in his life, and he'd faced down a mob of thousands. These chus were definitely much more adapted to the homebred style of life, and even though they couldn't yet talk in the disgusting twee words that Al said homebreds learned to speak, the adapted ferals were doing their best to make lunch an absolute hell for the hobos. Conversations between diners were now either impossible or had to be shouted at the top on one's lungs or spoken in close proximity to get any sort of message across.

And the food…good God, no wonder they all look so miserable¸ thought Kevin as his eyes drifted toward the vast buffet tables. They looked like scenes from a National Geographic special in Africa, where a zebra or buffalo carcass was literally swarming with vultures. The tables and trays themselves were almost invisible – blocked from view by a living blanket of Sonees and Roseys. There was no telling what sort of sinfully excessive gluttony was being enacted upon the food below. The few hobos brave enough to actually attempt retrieving a meal either went away empty-handed or else escaped with inedible, half-chewed, soiled mush.

Half of Kevin wanted to take Allie and flee the building as quickly as possible, but the other half still remembered that staying there was the entire point of their recon mission. Outside, they may have been battle-hardened Jerkops, but in Soup Hotel #4, they were Kevin Shaw and Cassie MAYS, and it was lunchtime.

Kevin swallowed in revulsion and stepped out, pulling an extremely reluctant Allie along by her hand. He'd almost reached the end of the crowd when a large hairy hand grabbed his shoulder.

"Where d'ya think yer goin', boy?" snarled a scruffy, hefty hobo with about three teeth in total. "Ya wanna get yerself an' yer pussy there zapped ta kingdom come?"

"Excuse me?" Allie shot the man a heated glare. She looked like she would like nothing better than to pull out his remaining teeth with her bare hands and stuff a live feral down his throat.

"We just want some lunch," Kevin replied quickly before an argument could break out. "Are you saying they won't even let you get food?"

The man shook his head. "Whaddaya think? They're Sparkies. Oh, we kin try an' get food, but good luck gettin' through the swarm with a full plate. Once those damn babies eat their fill, we kin take what's left. An' they're never full. Ain't you two never been to a Soup 'otel before?"

"Not like this," muttered the Jerkop. "Can't we at least sit down without getting zapped?"

"Bah! Be my guest," growled the big hobo, and gestured to the crowd of ferals. "Tell 'em I said go fuck 'emselves, every las' one of 'em."

"Right. We will." Kevin glanced around to check that none of the EHPF officers were anywhere within earshot. "Two questions. One, does a guy named Frank Douglas still live here?"

"Ol' Frank? Yeah, I seen 'im a coupla times." The man scratched his scraggly beard and picked out some debris. "Keeps to 'is room now. Barricaded 'imself in 'gainst the rats. Ya know 'im?"

"You could say that. Two, how fast and how quietly do you think you can get the news out that we're about to turn this entire building into a war zone?"

"War zone? Kid, what're ya sayin'?"

"Listen," Allie piped up. "We're with the PVCC. They're coming in to wipe out all the ferals and kill every loyalist and chu in this place. We need you to spread the word and tell everyone to get out as fast as they can. Tell them to head for any shelter they can find, anywhere but here. Don't run and don't panic…at least not until the shooting starts. Think you can do that?"

The hobo gaped. Kevin could almost see the little indentations where most of his teeth had once sprouted from his gum line. Finally, he took a deep breath and stared directly at the two Jerkops.

"Word tends ta travel fast inna Soup 'otel, ya know," he whispered. "I oughta call ya crazy, but if it's either yer lil' plan or them," he shot a deathly stare at the nearest Sonichu, "crazy sounds jus' fine ta me. Gimme some time an' I'll see what I kin do."

"Be sure and tell Frank that Kevin Shaw's looking for him," added Kevin as the man trudged off into the crowd. He turned back to Allie. "Think that'll work?"

"If he gets the word out, that should definitely cut down the collateral damage," replied Allie. She spotted a table near the end of the cafeteria, away from the largest concentration of chu larvae. "Come on, let's sit over here. It'll give him some more time to tell everyone."

The two Jerkops sat down at the table side by side, close enough so that talking wasn't exactly a chore and could be delivered at normal volume. Allie ran a quick sweep around the room with her eyes, then relaxed when she was sure the uniformed Sonichus weren't paying any attention.

"So...what do you want to talk about?" she asked quietly.

Kevin was at a loss for words. "I don't know."

"Well, there must be something. Oh! Did you see what Al did to Trogdor?"

"No, I think he loaded it into the cargo hold before we left."

"Damn." Allie's expression was somewhere between frustration and amusement, like a kid fruitlessly begging their parents to reveal what was inside the biggest Christmas presents. "Not even a glimpse?"

"Sorry. Whatever he did, I think you'll find out soon enough." Kevin let out a hesitant laugh. It was all he could muster, given the fact that he could feel a group of ferals stumbling over his boots. "Uh, let me think…tell me about what happened when you left the Burger King."

"Yeah, I don't think I ever told you that bit," said Allie, and twirled a strand of hair around her finger. "Well, I remember being scared…really scared. Without mall cops, there were so many break-ins, every single day. I didn't think they'd rob a Burger King, but I guess it was just the whole atmosphere that turned me off." She sighed. "I kind of remember writing something about that in that note I left when you were in the hospital. You don't still have that old thing, do you?"

"Are you kidding?" Kevin smiled. He'd been waiting for her to ask that for a while now. "I kept that note for a few months before it fell apart. Rain, you know. If it helps, it was probably the best thing anyone did for me while I was recovering."

"Aww, stop it." Allie's voice was playful, but sincere. "Sorry Kevin, but notes do not top cheeseburgers and pickle pranks."

"Mitch…oh man, I forgot about that old bastard! Where do you think he…do you think he still works at the Shopping Center?"

Allie shrugged. "Gotta pay the bills, right? Wish we could get hold of him…he'd be a great spy for Walsh. I mean, she's already got two agents filling the roles of Chandler's 'gal-pals', so why not the guy who cleans up after…oh hell, I don't even want to think about that." She shuddered. "Next topic. I…hey, I just remembered something else. Didn't I say something about going out for dinner to celebrate when you got better?"

"Oh yeah." Kevin's memory was fuzzy at best, but that much he'd remembered. "I was thinking about going to…some Thai place, maybe? I don't know, that was a long ti-"

"Really? You were seriously thinking about a Thai restaurant?" A huge smile spread across Allie's face. "You are un-fucking-believable, you know that? I love Thai!"

Kevin had known that little detail about Allie for a while now. He hadn't completely forgotten Mitch and his not-so-subtle hints, after all. "You think they'll let us…"

"No." The Jerkop shook her head. "Way too risky. We sometimes go out to eat as a whole squad, but not too often, and never just two of us. Once this whole uprising dies down, then let's talk about dinner dates. Sound good?"

"Okay, I can't take this any longer." Kevin looked reluctantly at the buffet tables. "I need to see just how bad this really is."

"Then you're not going alone," insisted Allie.

Kevin nearly wept when he saw what the hobos had to deal with in terms of food access in the post-relocation days. Sonees and Roseys clogged every channel and aisle between the tables, filling up whatever free space they could with their plump fuzzy dirty bodies. A Sonee brushed against his leg as it waddled squealing after a group of other ferals, leaving a thick streak of grime, clam chowder, and other undesirable waste on his pants. Higher up, a Rosey shuffled up to the edge of the table and waved its armstubs at him in irritation, begging for a ride. Kevin merely pushed it away with a grimace and continued on towards the food. It took nearly all of his willpower to keep from "accidentally" stomping on or kicking any of the little chus as they passed, but at long last, they reached the first table.

"Sonee!" shrieked a fat yellow feral as the Jerkops approached, and immediately tripped into a cauldron of tomato soup. For a moment, Kevin hoped it would drown or burn to death, but then two black-tipped ears emerged from the steaming pot. Millimeter by millimeter, the soup's level began falling as the Sonee sucked in vast mouthfuls from beneath the surface. Allie managed to nab a wrapped cracker before a Rosey could rip it open with its tiny teeth and gulp it down like so many others it had gobbled its way through. Tearing open the packaging, she stuffed one into her mouth and handed the other to Kevin, who accepted and devoured the saltine gratefully.

Further along the line, a scraggly-looking homeless woman and her teenage son watched the kitchen doors like hawks, poised to spring into action at the slightest hint of a new food delivery. Two men desperately battled the horde for slices of hot pizza, but they could only get away with nibbled fingers or filthy pieces of crust. The only thing that went relatively untouched was (naturally) the salad bar, and now even the most desperately hungry of hobos wouldn't go anywhere near that. The ferals had quickly staked it out as soon as it arrived and were now using the trays of lettuce, tomatoes, onions and other healthy salad ingredients for communal toilets. It was unbelievable just how much destruction the chus were causing, especially given their size.

"Wosey! Goo-gaa!"

Allie snarled as a mustard-covered Rosey leapt from the top of a sneeze guard and tried to parachute onto her face. Remembering the EHPF guards, she simply sidestepped and let the chu float to the ground, where it promptly hugged her leg and began rubbing its filthy yellow-smeared face all over the Jerkop's cargo pants.

"I'm beginning to regret following you," Allie said through clenched teeth, and gently shoved the Rosey away. Kevin didn't respond. Most of the possibly-edible food was either devoured or befouled by now, so the best chance they had to get any more food was to wait for the next…"

Creak!

"YAY!" shouted the feral horde, and immediately rushed to blockade the kitchen doors just as a worried-looking female server stepped out, bearing a fresh tray of macaroni and cheese with a topping of breadcrumbs. The middle-aged woman screamed and tried to weave her way through the ferals with her heavy boots, but in seconds was set upon by nearly a dozen Sonees and Roseys who fastened onto her like hideous furry leeches, crying "goo-goo" and batting her legs frenziedly with their armstubs. It was a miracle she managed to even take another step forward.

Kevin wanted to just start punching chus left and right. He was certain that even if he and Allie offered to help the poor worker, the Sonichu guards would find some excuse to punish or detain them…maybe "preventing the babies from receiving their lunch."

No. The hell with that. The hell with EHPF. These little bastards just ruined their last meal, he thought furiously as he imagined the Honey Badgers storming in, him with his brand new AK-47 and Allie with her new and improved Trogdor the Burninator. Kevin could almost picture all of the Sonees and Roseys on fire, riddled with bullets, tortured and maimed, ripped to pieces, eaten by Sugar, stabbed, eviscerated, mutilated, castrated, dismembered…

The woman screamed something unintelligible, interrupting his thoughts and tried to swat a Sonee off of the giant tray. Having no fingers, it couldn't grab hold of the side and therefore fell straight onto a pack of its fellow ferals with a terrified cry of "GOO-GEEEEE!" Kevin savored the half second of blessed relief from the loathsome cooing and squealing, then eased his way slowly and carefully through the sea of fuzzy bodies towards the serving lady. Allie saw what he was doing and followed suit, sweeping entire groups of Sonees and Roseys aside with her feet.

"YAY!"

Before the Jerkops could even get within ten feet of the struggling worker to help carry the tray, a fat little Rosey leapt from atop a refrigerator packed to the brim with squirming, thirsty ferals and chewed bottles of CWC Cola. Her parachute-skirt flapped out beneath her as she floated through the air, taking her straight toward the woman's unprotected head. Unlike Allie, her hands were full, and she was carrying an incredibly heavy load. The airborne chu smacked her full in the face and immediately hugged her, enveloping it in a stinking ball of pink fur and filth.

"Goo-gaa! Wosey!"

"MMMMPPHH!" shrieked the worker through her disgusting new mask, and immediately lost her balance, toppling backward as she dropped her heavy cargo right onto a whole group of Sonees and Roseys. And this was an entire buffet-sized tray of very dense, cheesy macaroni. The babies in harm's way weren't just crippled or badly shaken…they were annihilated.

CRUNCH! SQUISH! POP! CRUNCH! SPLAT!

"Fuck. Do it. Do it!" Kevin hissed to Allie, who immediately began pressing the emergency call button on her hidden microphone as fast as she could. Looking past the swarming mob, he could see the ferals waddling away from the dropped, blood-spattered tray in fear, crying their eyes out and making hideous "WAAAAAAHHHH!" noises, the kind that only a person who had never heard a real human baby before might have thought that babies made all the time. Beneath the tray, a thick red pool was spreading out across the cafeteria floor, punctuated by scraps of fur and slippery internal organs. The upper half of a Sonee had been smashed completely off of its waist, and now its lower body lay twitching in rigor mortis, kicking its sneakered stumpfeet wildly in the air. The fat Rosey, the one who had attacked the server, merely climbed onto the dead Sonee's lower half and plopped herself over the edge of the macaroni tray without even a hint of sympathy for her dead comrade. Squealing in delight, she began shoving whole armstub-loads of pasta into her cavernous, flabby little mouth. The mob noticed this, and with a mass cry of "YAY!" they followed the Rosey with glee. Soon, Sonees and Roseys packed the tray, wolfing down huge quantities of cheesy noodles as if they were living breathing fuzzy vacuum cleaners.

"Get off me! GET OFF ME!"

Kevin saw the server struggling to her feet, trying to shake off a load of babies that were still clinging to her and crying for food. Even after demolishing enough macaroni to feed forty hobos, the swarm still wasn't satisfied. Yet the ferals never attacked her like they'd attacked Jake. Maybe a few weeks of being spoiled so much had ruined their killer instinct. In any case, it would make them a whole lot easier to kill now.

"What the heavy metal rock band? Hey, look at that! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!"

Oh, shit. Kevin would recognize that special kind of nasally laugh anywhere. As if the poor woman hadn't already been through enough, now the Sonichus had taken notice of her struggles. A group of three was walking over to laugh at the feral-covered server, completely oblivious to the seven or eight of their illegitimate children she'd just accidentally crushed. The Sonees and Roseys stepped back instinctively to let them through, like a furry Red Sea parting for Moses.

"Hey, y'all get back to eating. Stay straight," ordered another EHPF officer to Kevin, Allie, and the few other hobos at the buffet tables. He turned back to the woman and gave her a huge shit-eatingly smug grin. "Ma'am, these little babies are hungry. Don't you hear them? Our glorious Creator doesn't pay you to stand around lazily while his helpless little grandchildren starve."

"Three C-Quarters an hour!" yelled the server as she ripped a Sonee off her waist and hurled it at the Sonichus. None of them even made an effort to catch it, and it simply hit a table leg and bounced off with a squeal, saved by its own fat. "No! I'm not doing this anymore! I QUIT!"

"Now, you can't do that, ma'am," sneered the officer. "Under Mayor Chandler's new law, all staff in charge of Sonee and Rosey maintenance cannot resign under penalty of severe fines and community service. Either way, you're still going to feed them. Looks like it's back to work for you!" The Sonichu laughed heartlessly, then stopped as soon as they noticed the blood-covered macaroni tray sitting not two feet away. Reality dawned on the chus with frightening speed.

"Hey. HEY!" yelled an officer, and began building a charge in his cheekspots. "Stop right there, criminal scum! You're under arrest for infanticide, reckless endangerment, attempting to…"

CRASH! The Sonichu died instantly, his skull sparking and shattering like an electrified wineglass as the Battle Bus's front-mounted battering ram attachment smashed right through the side of the cafeteria and dealt him a 35-mile-per-hour blow straight to the side of his spiky head. Kevin and Allie leapt back, narrowly avoiding the massive armored vehicle as it exploded halfway into Soup Hotel #4, then backed up to create an opening for the Honey Badgers and White Medallions. A deafening metallic roar sounded from the cockpit as Serge pushed Baba Yaga's snout through the forward firing slit and began opening up on the two surviving Sonichus from the group, shredding the group to pieces under a withering hail of heavy RPD bullets. Wayward rounds slammed into various Sonees and Roseys and reduced them to bloody corpses, tearing through their soft flesh like knives through papier-mâché.

Al stepped out of the Battle Bus, clad in his welder's mask and a heavy trench coat with a Kevlar vest underneath. Kevin had never seen the Legend in combat before, and Matt often said that Al always preferred to use something strange and unexpected every time he was called into action. Kevin at first wondered if he was even armed at all, until a single Sonee waddled up to him and Al disgustedly fired a four inch long rusty nail straight through its eye, launched from some sort of amplified nail gun he'd strapped to his arm. The chu shrieked once, then toppled over in an epileptic brain-dead fit, its armstubs spasming violently.

"GET TO THE BUS!" the Legend roared to his two stunned operatives. Steve leapt out behind him, P90 in hand, followed by Sugarplum Fury and a black-haired woman with a kawaii haircut. If she hadn't been wearing a white-painted Sonichu medallion over her Kevlar armor and carrying a UMP 45, she might have been as cute as Sailor Mercury.

"Like what you see?" asked the blond Jerkop as he flipped up the weapon's iron sights.

"There's plenty here for both our squads, Morrison," laughed Blanca Weiss. "I say we kill 'em all now and let their GodBear sort 'em out."

"Amen to that, Miss Weiss," replied Steve, and opened fire just as Blanca did.

Kevin smiled as he pulled Allie to her feet and dashed toward the Battle Bus. This long-awaited homecoming of his had just taken a turn for the interesting.

Oddly enough, it didn't take very long before the EHPF officers managed to recover from the shock of having an armored school bus burst through the side of the Soup Hotel and start dispensing murderous Jerkops left and right. In seconds, the air came alive with a storm of Thundershocks, Sparks, and other electric attacks as the Sonichus fought back with everything they could muster. Spurred on more by devotion to their creator than some form of natural parental instinct, they battled not only to save themselves, but also to protect the hundreds of screaming Sonees and Roseys who were currently waddling past them in a frenzied fuzzy tide.

Kevin felt the hairs on his arms prickle from static as he dashed recklessly across the cafeteria for the safety of the Battle Bus with Allie hot on his heels. The huge vehicle's steel-plated surface was literally swarming with arcs of lightning, but as long as the disembarking operatives remembered to stay on the thick rubber floor, the Sonichus' attacks wouldn't affect them at all.

"You two okay?" Al shouted as Kevin and Allie reached the bus and crouched beside him and Jexis. Steve and Blanca had formed a base of fire with some of the White Medallions a few yards up, while Serge, Zoey, Kuri, and a few other Honey Badgers were circling around to the right to try and catch the other chus and their horrid offspring in a crossfire. Out of the corner of his eye, Kevin saw Steve take a Thundershock bolt to the chest, but his rubber boots and Kevlar vest fortunately dispersed it into nothing more than a heavy stunning blast. Beside him, Blanca Weiss took over with her UMP 45 until the Honey Badger squad leader could recover.

"We're fine!" yelled Allie over the deafening zaps and gunfire. "You guys got here just in time!"

"Did you warn them?" Jexis asked as she wrenched open the Battle Bus's right ventral storage locker and rummaged around inside, taking care not to brush anything metal. "Hold on a sec, we've got your weapons here!"

"Yeah! Hope we gave them enough time." Kevin glanced back toward the Legend as the medic passed him his AK-47 and started working on retrieving Trogdor the Burninator for Allie. "Al, we saw some merc squads as we came in!"

"Fuck." Al turned around and nailed a fleeing Rosey through the chest twice. "STEVE, WE GOT MERCS!"

"Copy!" Morrison replied shakily. The Thundershock still hadn't fully worn off.

By the time Kevin loaded and set up his assault rifle, the cafeteria had devolved into absolute chaos. The server who had fallen and squished a half dozen ferals was now running for the kitchen, but not before snatching a Sonee and Rosey to spirit away for a little well-deserved culinary torture. Hobos and ferals ran helter-skelter in every direction, the former trying to escape through the newly-formed hole in the wall and the latter attempting to waddle back to the safety of the hallway and the larger, tougher Sonichus. Ironically, the Sonees and Roseys were actually hindering their parents by accident – the sheer tide of fuzzy, stumbling bodies was throwing off the EHPF officers' aim. One by one, gunfire overpowered electricity, and one by one, the Sonichus hit the floor, dead.

Unfortunately for the Jerkops, the real threat emerged a few seconds after the last officer fell.

"ENEMY CONTACT! LAY DOWN SUPPRESSIVE FIRE, FLANKS AND FORWARD!"

Blanca and Steve and the White Medallions around them dove for cover as a loyalist mercenary squad forcefully shoved their way through the crowd of panicked hobos and quickly knocked over half a dozen tables for improvised cover. In seconds, they'd formed an overwhelming firing line, and immediately began unloading on the Jerkops with an arsenal of heavily-customized MP5, M4, and SCAR-H assault rifles. Zoey and her team somehow managed to find shelter behind a fallen buffet table only seconds before the barrage would have torn them all to pieces.

"You got any ideas?" yelled Steve to Zoey, ducking even lower to avoid another hail of fire from the merc soldiers. "Grenades! Tell me you guys brought grenades!"

"I brought grenades! Have some of this!" Amanda shouted from across the hall, and began emptying her launcher's contents into the enemy line. A table shattered, chairs flew apart into red-hot shrapnel and melted plastic, and Kevin even saw one man fly backwards and hit the wall, shaken but not killed. The salvo had crippled the barricade, but the mercs were still unharmed, and were now firing back at full force. One of the White Medallions was clipped in the arm, and collapsed bleeding as his comrades ripped open his jacket to treat the wound.

"Damn it! Blanca!" Steve turned to Weiss as she unleashed a battle cry and a vengeful burst of UMP 45 fire toward the loyalists. "We need a way through! What else did you bring?"

"I got an idea! EARPLUGS!" the woman ordered, and reached for a Pokéball on her belt. "Get your earplugs in! FIRE IN THE HOLE! GO! AMI!"

Kevin dropped to the ground and scrambled to find his earplugs. He'd just finished inserting them both when Blanca leapt up and hurled the ball at the mercs. With a flash of white light, a tiny Jigglypuff materialized, and immediately screamed in fear when it saw what kind of situation its master had just thrown it into.

"JIGGLY! JIGGLEEEEEEEY!"

"Ami! Use Sing!" shouted Blanca. The terrified Jigglypuff scampered for cover, then drew out a microphone from nowhere and began shakily singing into it.

"Jiiiii-ga-leeeee-puffffff…"

Kevin's eyelids began to feel unusually heavy, like he'd just been dosed with a mild sleeping drug. Shaking his head to clear it, he leaned out with his assault rifle and opened fire wildly, suppressing a pair of mercs who were trying to pull one of their wounded comrades to safety. Around the singing Jigglypuff, the other loyalists seemed to be moving more sluggishly, even slumping over as the hypnotic melody lulled them into a stupor. Some must have been wearing earplugs too, though, because Ami's song didn't seem to be affecting them in the slightest.

"Jiiii-ga-leeeee…EEEEEEEEEEE!" shrieked the Pokémon as a mercenary reached over the barricade and plucked her out of her hiding place with one hand. Raising a camo-patterned Pokéball of his own, he smashed Ami right in the head and was rewarded with a crushed microphone and a gout of blood from the Jigglypuff's face.

"JIGGLEEEY! JIGGLEEEEEEEY! LEEEEEEEEE!" As Ami struggled helplessly, the merc's combat-issue Pokéball popped open and sucked her in, sealing her away from Blanca forever.

"AMI!" Blanca made as if to leap up and dash after her stolen Pokémon, but Steve grabbed her arm and pulled her back down behind cover before the loyalists could draw a bead on her.

"Don't worry! We'll get her back!" he shouted, then turned to his Honey Badgers. "Take out the sleepers! Someone cover Nick!"

"I got it!" yelled Zoey, and slid a new magazine into her AK. "Over here, motherfuckers!" She poked the barrel out and began squeezing the trigger randomly, not so much concerned as where the bullets went so long as the mercs noticed them.

"Buenas noches," growled Nick, and fired. BANG! The sniper rifle kicked against his shoulder violently, and across the cafeteria, Kevin saw a man's head jerk backwards as the heavy bullet pierced his skull. The dead merc dropped behind the barricade and out of sight.

"Target do-MIERDA SANTA!" swore the Mexican soldier, and dropped down next to Jexis as a ferocious barrage from the right side of the room nearly decapitated him then and there. A bullet zipped right beneath his armpit, cutting a small, perfectly straight wound into the side of his chest. "OUCH! Son of a bitch, they're flanking us!"

"That's it! Enough!" Steve rolled over and waved toward the Battle Bus's cockpit. "Matt! MATT!"

A terrified Matt leaned out of the side door, cradling his shotgun in shaky hands. "Yeah?"

"We need to break through! Get her inside the building!"

"Wait, what?" Matt raised the shotgun and fired off three blasts, none of which connected with their intended targets. "What? You want me to drive it right in there?"

"AAAAGH! FUCK!" Jexis fell to the ground and grasped at her shoulder, wrenching out a two-inch piece of shrapnel. Wasting no time, she gritted her teeth, grabbed a bottle of disinfectant from her pack, and splashed some on the bleeding wound with a muffled scream of pain.

"Just do it!" Steve looked around, then settled on Kevin, who was crouched closest to the bus. "Get on the left gun and suppress them! SERGE! COVER HIM!"

"HOW YOU LIKE IT, COWARDS?" roared the huge Russian, and propped up Baba Yaga against a pair of chairs he'd stacked together. The RPD roared and spat furiously, sowing bullets left and right among the entrenched loyalists. Kevin heard a man cry out in pain, and took some comfort in knowing that at least one of Serge's frenzied shots had connected.

With a shuddering hiss, the Battle Bus rolled forward as Matt shifted it into gear and began easing it back through the massive hole in the wall. The White Medallions parted to let it through, dragging their injured squadmate out of the way as well. Bullets ricocheted off the vehicle's armor by the dozens, but only left dents where they struck. Noticing this, the mercs instead focused their fire on the front tires or the driver's seat itself, trying to either take out the wheels or put a lucky shot right through the bulletproof glass and into Matt's unprotected head.

Kevin hurled himself at the open side door and grabbed the rubber-coated railing. Matt braked, reached out a hand, and pulled him in to safety.

"You okay?" he yelled. Kevin nodded and ducked as a wayward shot pierced through the bus's old exterior and rebounded off the opposite side a mere two feet from his chest. Matt cursed loudly and pushed his friend toward the side machine gun mount. "I'm gonna take her straight up the right side! Just keep shooting until you run out! Go!"

As Matt turned back to the steering wheel, Kevin crouched low so the mercs couldn't spot him and grabbed the machine gun's handles. Through the rusty view slit, he could still see his squad and Blanca's, but now the angle of fire was much more clear. From what he could tell, the loyalists were far beyond the point where they cared about what happened to the fleeing larvae. The hobos were gone now, and had suffered only a minimal amount of casualties from wayward shots or furious mercs and Sonichus. A few of the loyalists back in the safety of the hall had actually started taking out some of their frustration on the ferals, punting them, stabbing them, or putting a few bullets into the more annoying babies. Without the Sonichus watching, their long-standing hatred of the Sonees and Roseys was manifesting in gruesome detail.

Kevin almost wanted to just wait and let them thin the herds a little, but then a stray bullet dinged off the edge of a nearby window, reminding him that these mercs wanted him and his squad dead as much as the little chus, if not more so.

Bracing himself for massive recoil, he swung the SAW toward a group of loyalists on the right flank and squeezed the trigger. The weapon kicked and bucked like a wild horse, sending his first few thunderous shots flying over his targets' heads and into the opposite wall. Kevin fought to keep it down, but the machine gun was nearly uncontrollable for him, even with the mount's support. Bracing his knee beneath the weapon's stock, he centered its sight on another merc and fired again. This time, the results were a little better. A red mist filled the air as a dozen heavy rounds penetrated the man's torso and shredded his innards into paste. Kevin grinned and swung the gun to the right, forcing the dead mercenary's comrades to dive for cover and fall back.

"Keep it up! I'm taking her in!" Matt shouted, and wrenched the Battle Bus into gear. The huge armored vehicle rumbled again and began rolling forward steadily. Kevin just kept on wrestling with the SAW until his arms felt like they were about to give out, but managed to take out two more mercs who were foolish enough to try shooting him through the view slit. He stole a glance through the closest window to see Al firing a Desert Eagle that he'd apparently just pulled out of thin air. Somehow, this didn't surprise Kevin at all. Beside him, Steve was shepherding the Honey Badgers around behind the moving bus, perhaps as part of some plan to use it as mobile cover. Blanca and her White Medallions quickly picked up the slack, catching a few more mercs in a withering crossfire between them and the Battle Bus's machine gun.

By now, the only larvae left in the cafeteria were either dead or well on their way, and the huge crowd of hobos had fled for any exit they could find. Kevin hoped the EHPF hadn't already set up a blockade around the front – otherwise, the tenants would find themselves trapped between a war zone and a firing line of furious Sonichus. The thought of Frank or George being zapped lent his arms a fresh burst of strength, allowing him to keep up the fire for just a bit longer…just a bit longer…

Off to the left, he saw one of Blanca's Jerkops fall backward, spraying blood, with a single hole punched in his face. The mercs may have been outgunned and doomed to fall back, but they obviously intended to take down as many PVCC operatives as they could in the process. Consumed with rage and sadness for the fallen Jerkop and his friends, Kevin traced the shots back to their origin and fired, filling the air with a deafening storm of bullets.

Suddenly, the tables and chairs of the enemy barricade flew into the air, borne aloft almost all at once as if lifted by invisible strings. As the surprised mercs scrambled to their feet and retreated to the safety of the hall, Kevin realized that the cafeteria had suddenly been filled with an eerie pale light, as if the moon itself was now shining in Soup Hotel #4.

"Luuuuuna."

Kuri's Lunatone drifted forward, wreathed in psychic energy as it pulsed and tossed the barricade's remnants into a pile where the mercs couldn't reach them. Satisfied, Kuri popped open her Pokéball and retrieved it, then stowed the ball on her belt.

"Kevin. Kevin! Hey! Stop firing, they're gone!" Matt grabbed a little hula dancer figurine on his dashboard and hurled it at Kevin, striking him in the shoulder. Surprised, the Jerkop released his grip immediately, his hands still shaking and clenched around an invisible trigger.

"Hey. You did good. Easy. Easy," said Matt in a calming voice. "You okay?"

Kevin nodded. His teeth were chattering so much that it was nearly impossible for him to speak, and judging by the metallic salty taste in his mouth, he'd accidentally bitten part of his cheek. Weighed against the three or four mercenaries he'd just killed, though, that seemed a small price to pay. The rest of the loyalists had indeed fled, perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of tactical advantage, but most likely because they didn't want to risk their necks against a SAW machine gun and two dozen angry, heavily-armed Jerkops who had come to Soup Hotel #4 for the sole purpose of killing anything and everything inside that wasn't a hobo, volunteer, or staff member.

"That was nice teamwork, you two." Zoey climbed into the Battle Bus, her face smeared with dirt and blood from half a dozen cuts. A line of red oozed from a particularly deep gash below her right eye. "Matt, we need you to evacuate two of Blanca's men – one dead and one wounded. Jexis took some deep shrapnel – we're getting her out of here as well. The Medallions have a medic we can use if need be."

Matt chewed his lip apprehensively. "How's everyone else?"

"Ready and…ow…willing to rain down some hell on the rest," growled Zoey as she pressed a finger against the dripping wound on her face. "Ow! Wish you could stay and see what Al did to Trogdor. Right now, though, I want you and Serge to take the wounded back to Slumberland and drop everyone off, then find someplace close to stash the Bus and watch for EHPF. Steve will radio you when we need an extraction."

"Got it."

"Okay, then. Kevin, you're with us." Zoey stepped over and frowned as she offered him a hand. "We need you, Shaw. Pull yourself together. You're the only one who's been through this hellhole."

"This…hellhole…was my home," panted Kevin, and took Zoey's hand. The Jerkop pulled him to his feet and gave him a pat on the shoulder.

"Welcome home," Zoey chuckled dryly. "Now you get to clear out the squatters."

Al and Steve were coordinating the next stage of the plan with Blanca when Kevin and Zoey emerged from the Battle Bus to let Serge enter. Two grim-faced White Medallions carried the limp body of their dead squadmate in as well, and the injured Jerkop and Jexis followed, clutching their respective bandaged wounds.

"Hey, you take care of that," warned Zoey as the medic passed them. "Make sure they give you antibiotics."

"You don't need to tell me twice," grunted Jexis, and climbed onto the bus. "See you guys back at HQ."

"See you," said Kevin, and waved.

"Is Matt okay?" asked Allie, who was fiddling with the many new buttons and valves Al had added to Trogdor. Kevin nodded and stepped forward to examine the upgraded weapon. The flamethrower now resembled something akin to a gun one would normally find in a video game – three tanks instead of one, two triggers, a secondary nozzle, a control panel with several buttons, a large black box with speakers and a volume control…

"Is that a sound gun?" Kuri gaped in something akin to wonder. "We're going to blow their ears out with the Mary Poppins soundtrack, right? Holy shit, that's brilliant!"

"No, but you're halfway there," Allie replied. "Al hasn't told me everything, but apparently it's gonna make hunting the ferals a whole lot easier. He tweaked the balance, too, so I don't wobble around so much when I swing it." She demonstrated, and Kevin had to admit, the Jerkop didn't seem as unstable as she had before Al's modifications. Much more graceful and fluid, yet intimidating nonetheless. True, most of the intimidation factor was due to the fact that she was carrying a flamethrower, but…

"Listen up!" yelled Blanca Weiss as she, Al, and Steve turned to address the gathered Jerkops. "We've only got maybe a few minutes before those mercs call in backup! We're going in level by level – my squad's taking the ground floor, Al's got the next, us next, and so on." Her eyes narrowed. "No chu survivors. Save any tenants you can, and watch for mercs. We do this, and it'll take years for the ferals to recover. Now who's ready for a little afternoon genocide?"

"PVCC!" roared the Honey Badgers and White Medallions together.

"Jerkops, on me. Let's go get Dan some payback." Blanca turned toward the door and flipped her UMP 45 from semi to full auto with an audible click. As the White Medallions filed up behind her, Kevin noticed a flash of familiar auburn hair in their midst.

"Linda?"

"Hey, Kevin!" The formerly homeless woman stopped for a second and waved cheerfully before hurrying after her squad. "Later! We'll talk later!"

"See you guys at the extraction!" yelled Matt from the Battle Bus, and began backing the huge transport right out of the cafeteria and into the streets of CWCville. At last, the remaining Honey Badgers stood alone, surrounded by hobo corpses and dead chu larvae.

"Our turn," growled Steve, and hurriedly swapped the P90 for his trademark revolver and kukri combo. "Al?"

"Shaw's our map." The Legend glanced at Kevin and nodded. "Take us to the stairwell."

"Right." Filled with apprehension, Kevin led his squad across the cafeteria and through the double doors to the hallway. Up ahead, he caught a glimpse of Blanca's squad sweeping the reception area, and smiled as shrill little screams and gunfire began trickling out of the adjacent rooms. The White Medallions were known for their sheer heartlessness when it came to exterminating ferals, and it seemed like they were in nothing short of their prime right now.

"Hey. Focus," Zoey warned him. "We'll get our chance soon enough. Keep going."

"Blanca here. We found a few pockets of ferals in the lobby. No problems here. No sign of Ami or the loyalists yet, either. You guys on the next floor yet? Over."

"Heading upstairs now," replied Steve into his walkie-talkie as Kevin kicked open the emergency door and hurried inside to the stairs. "Let us know if you find any mercs. We'll do the same, over."

"Copy. Out. Come here, you little…"

"WOSEEEEEE-"

The radio cut out with a static hiss, and Kevin heard a muffled gunshot from below. One more down, about a million to go.

And speaking of which…

"WOSEY! WAAAAAHHH!"

"GOO-GEEEE! SONEE! NEEEE!"

Moving with lightning speed, Al fired off two high-velocity nails directly up the stairs and into a pair of ferals who had been struggling to heave their dense, pudgy bodies over the steps. The Sonee screamed and fell backward head over stumpfeet as the rusty spear pierced his heart, while the Rosey took a nail right to the center of her misshapen head and slumped over, gurgling.

"Good shooting." Steve pushed past the squad commander and clicked his revolver's hammer back. "Stay alert. Someone must have let those two in on their way up."

"Chus?" breathed Kuri.

"No. Mercs." Nick bent down and rubbed a bloody boot print with his thumb. "They're up on this floor. Must've barricaded themselves on the other side. We'll never get in without letting them know we're…"

Click! Allie inserted a keycard into the lock and slowly pushed it open for Steve. "Found that on the floor back in the cafeteria. I figured we'd need some way to get in."

"Good thinking," Al muttered as the squad leader poked his revolver through the crack in the door and eased it open to reveal…

"Holy…fucking…balls," gasped Steve in something close to absolute ecstasy. "Al?"

Kevin eased himself past Zoey to get a look, while Al made his way to the front of the line to join Steve. What lay before him was nothing short of glorious. A massive crowd of nearly three hundred unbelievably vulnerable Sonees and Roseys waddled giggling and shrieking up and down the hall, playing with and hugging everything, going in and out of open hotel rooms without a care in the world, munching on various piles of candy and cookies scattered around the place, and bouncing off the walls in what could only be described as an orgy of sickeningly artificial cutesiness. This wasn't how children behaved in hotels. Not normal children, anyway. Slow-in-the-minds and hyperactive sugar addicts, maybe.

And to top it all off, five yards away in the midst of all this chaos stood two EHPF officers and three loyalist mercenaries in full combat armor. Fortunately for the Honey Badgers, the mercs had their backs to them, and the Sonichus were too deeply engrossed in their argument to even bother watching Al and Steve sneaking up on them out in the open.

"…y'all gotta help us get the little babies out! It's Mayor Chandler's orders and…"

"Mayor Chandler can go shove those orders up his pasty ass for all I care," snarled a female soldier through her filter mask. "Just get them out of here so we can secure this floor."

"We're workin' on it," replied the first Sonichu. "The Sonees and Roseys of CWCville are just innocent little children! They don't understand! And watch y'all's mouth about our Creator!"

"Oh, FUCK you, you spiky piss-stains," groaned another merc. "Creator this, innocent that - he's just a spoiled man-baby who shits himself and they're the Care Bears' even more retarded midget cousins. You're just lucky he pays us enough to keep us from killing all your bastard kids here and now. Oh yeah, don't think we wouldn't if we had the…"

"You know what? I think we ought to help them after all," said the woman in a much-too-friendly voice. She stepped forward and offered her hand to the foremost, flustered Sonichu. "Come on. Partners? We'll help you save the…babies."

The EHPF officer drew back suspiciously, then smiled and reached out to accept in a sudden mood swing. "Well, that's great! Glad y'all decided to be…"

BANG! BANG! Before the Sonichu could finish, the two other mercs had raised their M4s and fired off a single shot each. The Electric Hedgehog Pokémon collapsed, writhing and gasping in shock as blood spurted from the holes in their spiky heads. Around them, the feral Sonees and Roseys hadn't even noticed that their evolved counterparts were dead, and were all shooting the loyalists extremely annoyed, stressed looks. They didn't like the loud scary noise one bit…it was interrupting the endless KCWC pop music blasting out of the radios in each and every room.

"Naïve motherfuckers." The female merc put a pistol round into the nearest Sonichu's crotch and spat on the wound in disgust. "Go secure the other exit. We'll say the rebels got these two."

"These five."

Steve lashed out with his kukri, embedding it a full three-quarters of the way through her neck. If he'd had more room to swing, he just might have fully decapitated the woman with a single swipe. Beside him, Al raised both of his weapons and opened fire simultaneously, perforating one merc with five nails to the base of his skull and ripping the other's throat out with a deafening point-blank shot from his Desert Eagle. The Legend watched the second man bleed out on the floor for a couple of seconds, then blasted a quarter-sized hole through the first one's head and helmet.

"Clear," he announced, and sent the dying merc sprawling to the floor with a powerful kick.

"Clear," replied Steve as he pulled his kukri out of the woman's vertebrae. She was still alive and choking on her own blood, but the Jerkop didn't seem to mind at all. "Ferals now? Please?"

"Yeah. Allie, now would probably be a good time for you to hit the yellow button. When they get close enough, hit the red one and start spraying."

Allie blinked. "You mean the one with the BAIT label and this other one with a musical note on fire?"

"That's right. Everyone else, stand back." The Legend hurried back to the squad and ushered Allie toward the mob of ferals just as Steve managed to kick off an inquisitive Rosey. Allie looked confusedly over her shoulder at the rest of the Honey Badgers, all of whom were now being shepherded away by Al, Steve, and Zoey.

"Al…you did test this, right?"

"It's not the buttons you've got to worry about. Go ahead and push it."

Allie complied. Click! Kevin instinctively covered his ears, expecting some new kind of horrible fiery explosion to come bursting out of Trogdor's toothy V-shaped mouth. But astonishingly, instead of the familiar howling roar of the inferno, a very different sound emerged to fill the air. A very…musical sound.

Chim chiminey, chim chiminey, chim chim cher-ee!

A sweep is as lucky as lucky can be!

Chim chiminey, chim chiminey, chim chim cher-oo!

Good luck will rub off when I shakes 'ands with you,

Or blow me a kiss…and that's lucky too.

Now as the ladder of life 'as been strung,

You may think a sweep's on the bottommost rung…

Half amazed and half perplexed, Kevin glanced around at his squadmates as Dick Van Dyke's voice filled the Soup Hotel corridor. Everyone but Zoey, Al, and Steve was either wearing a shocked expression or a huge ear-to-ear grin. The three squad leaders simply looked on with knowing smiles.

"Goo-goo! Goo-gaa! Gaa-goo! YAY!"

Allie backed away in fear as the ferals surged down the hall at her. The Sonees and Roseys appeared to be filled with a form of berserk happiness, and all of them were now waddling towards the source of the Mary Poppins music as fast as they could. Kevin didn't know what they were going to do when they reached her, but he could bet it was either going to be violently insipid or insipidly violent. Maybe both. In any case, he simply had to see what was going to happen.

"And, three…two…one…" Al paused, as if holding for a dramatic silence before conducting an orchestra. His calm air diffused, and suddenly, there was murder in his eyes. "Burninate."

Clang! Click! FWOOOSHHHH! Allie flipped her own welder's mask over her face, pushed the red button, and wrenched Trogdor's primary trigger down to EXTRA CRISPY, unloading a twenty-foot spray of flaming petroleum all over the stampeding Sonees and Roseys. Kevin only managed to shield his eyes just in time, before a wall of dry heat struck him full in the face. In a few moments, Allie had quickly transformed the hallway from a feral fun-land into a raging inferno, and then from that into a brand new circle of hell. The foremost few babies were the lucky ones – they ignited and shriveled like moths on a campfire in just under ten seconds at most. The ones further back were caught by flames of lesser intensity, which, unbelievably, was even worse for them than being directly incinerated. Blazing fuel soaked their fur and clothing, covering each joyful feral in a nice warm blanket of fiery death.

And now there was a very different sort of music - linked directly to the tiny subwoofers on Allie's flamethrower - blasting through the Soup Hotel like some glorious hymn of destruction.

TROGDOOOOORRRRRRRR!

TROGDOOOOORRRRRRRR!

TROGDOR WAS A MAN!

I MEAN, HE WAS A DRAGON MAN!

OR…MAYBE HE WAS JUST A DRAGON!

BUT HE WAS STILL TROGDOOOOORRRRRRRR!

TROGDOOOOORRRRRRRR!

"WOSEEEEEEEEEEEY!" howled a Rosey as her skirt caught and began bathing her in red-hot flames. She tried to beat them out with her armstubs, but a fresh blast from Trogdor enveloped her little body in a new coat of fire before she could even think about stop, drop, and roll. Further down the hall, a Sonee shrieked as the very tip of the flame arc ignited his plastic shoes. Lurching up and down on his burning oversized feet like an obese rabbit, he could only dance wildly and flail around in panic as the hungry flames ate their way through the sneakers and began working their way up the fur of his lower body. By the time Allie's next burst finally claimed him for good, he was already ablaze from the waist down.

As soon as their selfish little brains managed to register the fact that music equaled fire and fire equaled death and death equaled no more music for them, the vast majority of Sonees and Roseys turned and fled for the "safety" of their rooms. Allie was laughing like a madwoman now, unleashing blast after blast down the hallway among the huge crowd of pink and yellow fuzzballs. And all the while, Strong Bad's brutally awesome voice continued to haunt the ferals as they screamed and burned and died by the dozens.

BURNINATING THE COUNTRYSIDE!

BURNINATING THE PEASANTS!

BURNINATING ALL THE PEOPLES!

AND THEIR THATCHED ROOF COTTAGES!

THATCHED ROOF COTTAGES!

"Clear out those rooms, one by one! No survivors!" shouted Steve, and gratefully accepted a pair of frag grenades from Amanda. "Thanks. FIRE IN THE HOLE!" Wrenching the pin out, he booted a flaming Sonee through the nearest open door, tossed the explosives inside, then pulled the door shut, crushing a Rosey who was struggling to get in. The little chu was viciously squished in half with a gurgling squeal, but even if she'd been able to outrun the closing door, she was, quite assuredly, damned both ways.

BANG! BANG! The grenades exploded simultaneously, buckling the hotel door nearly right off its hinges as the double storm of shrapnel and explosives shredded the room's occupants into little more than a geyser of viscera that quickly painted the walls, floor and ceiling with a thick salsa-like sludge. Steve peeked inside and fired off a couple of revolver shots, presumably ending the few survivors for good. Thankfully, most of the furniture in said rooms had been removed to make way for more toys, pillows, and big-screen TVs tuned to the All-Mary Poppins Channel, so the Sonees and Roseys inside had almost no cover whatsoever.

And that was exactly how the Honey Badgers liked it.

Kevin dashed forward to claim a room of his own before one of the other Jerkops could steal it. Stomping a dying Rosey's head into mush, he raised his AK-47 and began a form of impromptu target practice with the screaming, trapped chus. The big Russian assault rifle kicked against his shoulder again and again as he opened fire, filling the crowd of Sonees and Roseys with a storm of hot, piercing lead. He saw a Rosey's head burst open, spilling her brains and eyeballs onto the Sonee next to her. Another Rosey had both her armstubs blasted off and could only waddle in circles, wailing and screeching in pain until Kevin stepped inside and flattened her against the floor with the stock of his AK. Every blow and every bullet meant another kill, and every kill meant another step toward avenging the torture and inhumanity his hobo friends had been enduring for so long now.

It might have been four or five minutes later when Kevin finally killed the last Sonee in the room by sawing its head off with George's hunting knife, but by then, he'd fallen far behind. Kuri already had three full rooms cleared, thanks in no small part to her tekko-kagi and dual paring knives. Nick was hurling plastic water bottles of gasoline through the doorways and flicking lit matches in after them, Steve and Amanda had teamed up for their breach-and-clear method of room destruction, Zoey was bayonetting chus and shooting them at the same time, Allie continued to rack up the highest kill count of them all, and as for the Legend himself…

Kevin gulped as he heard a long and choking "SONNNNNNNEEEEEEEEEEEE!" echoing from a room toward the end of the hall. He suddenly didn't even want to know what new form of torture Al had discovered to unleash upon the chus. There was one room left to clear, and after that, only four more floors to go: four, six, eight, and ten. If there were as many chus on those levels as there were on this one, he had a feeling that the day's fun hadn't even started yet.

Somehow, the ferals had managed to close the door to this last hotel room, and even that had probably been an accident. Indeed, two Roseys and a Sonee had been trapped outside, and were now shrieking in fear and pounding their armstubs against the unyielding wood. A smarter creature might have given up after about half a minute with no results, but Kevin had heard the door slam nearly three minutes ago. Rolling his eyes, he spun the knife around in his fingers and lunged for the would-be escapees.

SQUISH! CRUNCH! SLASH! SLICE!

Inside the brightly-lit, garishly colored room, the last surviving ferals huddled together, moaning as the thumping from outside ceased and a thick red pool began spreading toward them. Kevin wiped the dripping blade on his sleeve and raised the snout of his AK-47 against the electronic panel. BANG! The heavy bullet ripped through metal, wood, and circuitry, rendering the security system completely useless. With a solid kick, Kevin smashed the remainder of the lock to pieces and sent the door flying open, so fast and so forcefully that a foolish Sonee was actually caught in the arc and crushed to bloody slop against the doorjamb.

Kevin didn't even need to say anything. He merely grinned and flung something wet, flat, and furry toward the closest Rosey. Splat! The little creature shrieked as she pulled off the sticky projectile and found herself starting right into the empty eye sockets of a Sonee's face skin.

The ferals immediately broke out in a choir of "WAAAAHHHHH!"s and tried to waddle as far away from the Jerkop as they could. Unfortunately, there weren't too many places they could go.

"Oof!" A Sonee tripped and fell flat on its face, its feet treading air as it continued fruitlessly trying to crawl away to safety. Shouldering his AK, Kevin knelt beside the struggling chu and pinned it to the ground with one hand, then positioned his assault rifle's muzzle just a bit below where its yellow stub of a tail connected with its chubby hindquarters. The actualtechnique may have been intended for cats, but what the hell. He had to see just how well it worked with one of these abominations. With a grin, he removed the Kalashnikov's front iron sight and gave its barrel a single, mighty push, sending the steel tube tearing right up through the Sonee's butthole.

Somehow, he made it fit.

Schlurp!

"GOOOO-GEEEEEEE!"

Laughing with sick glee, Kevin hefted the AK-47 and its impaled, horribly violated new "silencer" into the air and squeezed the trigger. The Sonee's head erupted in a shower of gore as the barrage tore its skull to pieces and liquefied its brain. All the while, it continued on spraying deadly assault rifle rounds from its mutilated esophagus and windpipe. The panicked crowd of ferals could only scream and cry helplessly as the shower of bullets ripped huge swathes through their ranks, coating the opposite wall in a fresh coat of blood splashes and chunks of meat. Kevin emptied his magazine, swapped in a fresh one, and resumed firing. The Sonee-silencer still hadn't stopped kicking in rigor mortis.

Remembering that they still had four more floors left to purge, Kevin stopped as soon as he'd expended that second load of ammunition. What few ferals had survived his salvos were now crawling around pathetically, crying in the corners, or had simply given up from all the stress.

"Wo…sey…" a mutilated Rosey gasped, inches away from his foot. Half of her body had been shredded by bullets, yet she amazingly still found enough strength in her puny body to crawl all the way to his leg and start attempting to hug it, as if the action would somehow convince him to spare her from the genocide he and his friends were currently carrying out on her playmates and inbred family members.

Oh, how wrong she was, Kevin thought with a cruel smile as he raised the heel of his boot and brought it down, crushing the Rosey's frail skull into a mess of bone shards and sticky brain matter. Stowing the AK on his back with its fleshy "silencer" still kicking feebly, he drew his pistol and fired off five shots in rapid succession, which instantly lowered the survivor count to a solid zero.

"AND THE TROGDOR COMES IN THE NIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!" screamed Allie and Strong Bad with one voice as Kevin emerged from the room to see her fire one last burst of superheated fuel into a wailing pack of ferals. The flamethrower cut out and died instantly as she released the trigger, timing it so that it coincided with the song's ending. She'd gone through its entire length a good three times already, and while it was certainly appropriate music for the situation, Kevin knew that even "Trogdor" would get annoying pretty quickly unless Al had also installed a headphone jack for her. Thankfully, he had.

"Regroup!" yelled Zoey, and quickly punted the Sonee she'd been torturing straight up into the ceiling. The feral burst into chunks as it impacted on the solid surface and adhered itself with its own sticky entrails. It hung there, dripping and flat, like the world's most disturbing chandelier.

Al emerged from his "house of horrors" with the hem of his trench coat soaked in blood, dragging a chain of twenty still-living ferals behind him. Kevin nearly collapsed with disgust and astonishment when he realized the Legend had somehow stitched every single Sonee and Rosey together, mouth to anus, using a roll of copper wire and some pliers. In five minutes. And with 100% medical accuracy.

"Good. Fucking. GOD." Amanda stole a single glance into the room and slammed the door shut without a moment's hesitation, locking it for good so no one else could see the rest of Al's gruesome handiwork. "How'd you even…you nailgunned 'em to the walls with their own ribs?"

"They'll die. Eventually." Al smiled and nodded to Steve. "That felt good. Just like old times, right?"

"Damn right, Al," replied Steve, and flicked a scrap of meat off his sweatshirt. The white cotton now bore many bloody stains, and Kevin had a feeling that Steve would soon be sporting a whole new wardrobe of dark red clothing. That is, if Kuri didn't beat him to it first. She was literally drenched in blood, and in the pale light of her Lunatone, she now resembled some vengeful demonic girl straight out of a Japanese horror movie. Much like Al, Kevin knew it would probably be better if he didn't ask about what Kuri and her psychic Pokémon had been doing to the hoglets in the rooms she'd picked out. He was willing to bet it had something to do with the dozens of squishy pops he'd been hearing for the past few minutes.

"White Medallion lead, Honey Badger lead," Steve spoke into his shoulder radio. "Blanca, come back, over."

"Blanca here. Go ahead, Steve, over."

"We just cleared out a whole army of ferals and a merc squad up here. How are you doing? Over."

"We ran into a few loyalists, but we're all still alive," replied Weiss shakily. She sounded close to tears. "I haven't found Ami yet. Were any of your mercs carrying Pokéballs? Over."

Steve looked at Zoey, who shook her head. "Negative. Sorry, Blanca. We're heading up to the fourth floor, where are you? Over."

"Third floor. Holy hell, they're everywhere! Thank goodness we brought Charmeleons, over."

"Right, you get back to burning 'em out. We'll check in on you on the way up. Out." Steve let out a disappointed sigh as he turned back to Al. "Why didn't we think of that? Pokémon never run out of fuel."

"We're wasting time," Zoey interjected. It was at times like these that she truly shone as Steve's counterpart and voice of reason. "I'm pretty sure the mercs took off back to base as soon as they realized we were here for the babies. You saw what those three did – they don't care about the chus. If anything, we're probably going to have to fight our way back downstairs through a whole mob of angry Sparkies."

"Leave that to Blanca and I," replied Al with a reassuring smile as he dropped the sewn-together conga line of Sonees and Roseys to the floor. They weren't going anywhere until they learned to work and move together as a single organism…in other words, the little chus were already dead. "Now then, Kevin? To the next floor, if you please."

Soup Hotel #4, 3rd floor, air ducts

Surrounded by impenetrable steel walls on all sides, Sugarplum Fury stalked through the air duct, her nostrils flaring as the all-too-familiar odors of smoke and chu blood wafted up from the corridors below. There were humans here too, and Pokémon…normal Pokémon, from the sound of it. The blue girl she hated so much had brought her floating stone moon, and she'd also glimpsed a few of the orange fire-lizards roasting the bad humans and larvae on the ground floor, just after she set off on her own to find more prey.

Sugar licked her bloody muzzle and let out a satisfied growl. The hunting was excellent today, and she'd been given a head start as well. When her masters started fighting the bad humans and Steve had given her the "safety off" order, she'd obediently pursued the fleeing Sonees and Roseys right into the nearest air duct – a place she knew no human could enter. The going was slippery, rough, and very strenuous on the upward climbs, but if there was one thing the honey badger was built for, it was hunting prey through the most complex of passages.

And fortunately for her, said prey was much plumper than the scraggly ferals that Steve or Al or Zoey usually fed her on their hunts. The larvae may have known the layout of the duct system more intimately than her, but for one thing, she was much more highly adapted than they were for traversing tight corridors. The fatter chus were easy prey – Sugar didn't even bother eating those ones, but merely tore out their throats or ripped their bellies open with her claws to spill their intestines. So far, she'd slain about twenty-four in all…a record even for her. Then again, an opportunity like this had never before presented itself, and for the first time in her life, the honey badger truly felt as if she was finally reaching her full killer potential.

The ferals could smell her too…that much was certain. She'd been driving most, if not all of the duct-dwellers up floor by floor, killing and mauling as she went and leaving a long bloody trail of Sonee and Rosey corpses in her wake. Sugar could hear them too – dozens of them, maybe even hundreds – all scurrying and scampering up and away from this new and frightening scent. The scary heat and lights and sounds from outside would keep them trapped inside the ventilation system, and eventually they'd be forced up to the top, where she could kill to her heart's content.

Until then, Sugarplum Fury intended to keep on doing what she did best.

Padding softly around a bend, the black-and-white-striped killing machine paused and warily sniffed the air. Those same humans, the good ones, were definitely close. Sugar shuffled over to the nearest opening – a mesh-covered vent in the bottom of the duct – and peeked out.

"CHAAAAARRRR!"

"GOO-GEEEEEE!"

"WAAAAAAHHHH!"

Below lay an rippling, screaming pink and yellow river, hemmed in by flames on all sides and two of those big fire-lizards who were currently engaged in alternately torching and ripping apart the little blobs by the dozens. Blood spattered the walls as the Charmeleons feasted jubilantly, eager to enjoy their opportunity to the fullest now that they realized they could devour these pathetic baby Pokémon without apprehension or restraint. Their natural savagery, suppressed after so many years of training and restrictive battles, was manifesting in full force.

Sugar snarled with jealousy as the lizards seized a squealing Sonee between them and pulled it messily in half, spilling its innards all over the place. She almost wanted to go down there and join the slaughter, but her job was to purge the air ducts. Al's instructions had been very clear, and she trusted the Legend above all others…even her current master Steve.

A door burst open somewhere below, and voices reached her ears. Sugar could only understand a few specific words that were in her command vocabulary, but she lingered nonetheless. After all, her prey wasn't going anywhere fast.

"What'd Morrison say?"

"No dice. Blanca's going berserk over Ami. Not to mention Dan."

"Jesus, I'd hate to be a merc right now. I think we'd…hang on, you got a little…there."

"Oh, God! Fuck,I hate these things! It's like stomping on water balloons! Eeewww!"

Sugar listened for a few more seconds, then took off again. The air duct was long and straight, and led right to an upward slope at the end of the third floor corridor. Unfortunately, there weren't any ferals that she could see, but a few might still be hiding somewhere. They certainly weren't fast movers by any definition, but feral Sonees and Roseys were very good at concealing themselves in dark, cramped places. If she'd been down in the sewer, they probably would have been chasing her instead. These chus, fortunately, were well on the way to turning fully homebred. They were fat, lazy, stupid, and clumsy…the absolute easiest prey she'd ever hunted.

Clawing her way up the slippery metal duct one paw at a time, the honey badger growled gently to herself in anticipation. The smell of fear was stronger now…definitely much more so than in the lower tunnels. She slowed down and began creeping silently forward. Her prey was close…very close. At the top of the ramp, Sugar found herself facing a sharp left curve, and no other paths. Sleek and silent as a shark, she turned the corner and…

"SONEEEEE!"

"GOO-GOOOO!"

"GRRRROWWRRRR!" Sugar pounced like a mountain lion, snarling and baring her teeth as the first feral tripped over its own feet and fell forward straight onto its face. Carried by momentum, she hit the other one in the back and felt her claws sink deep into its flesh. She was firmly locked in, and now there was no way her victim was getting out alive. As the Rosey struggled feebly, squealing at the top of its lungs, the furious honey badger fastened her jaws around its semblance of a neck and crunched down hard, unhindered by her prey's soft, undeveloped headspikes. The feral's tiny spine shattered under the massive amount of biting force, paralyzing it instantly. Sugar withdrew her claws from the Rosey and nudged the limp chu over onto its back, then sank her teeth into its pink, flabby throat. A warm gush of salty blood rapidly saturated her tongue.

Swallowing the mouthful of tender Pokémon flesh, Sugar left the Rosey to bleed out and turned to her next victim. The Sonee was still trying to push itself up with its puny armstubs, kicking wildly as she closed in on it like a lioness approaching a dying zebra. She hadn't even needed to wound the pathetic little creature.

ZZZZAP!

Sugar yelped and leapt back as the jolt of bioelectricity coursed through her tough, furry body. It hurt, but she'd had worse…much worse. Back in the hot grassy world she'd been born into, she'd regularly received snakebites, bee stings, and other poisonous wounds without so much as a wince. A pathetic little Spark wasn't about to stop her.

"GRRRROWWR!" she roared, and crunched down on one of the Sonee's sneakers with her powerful jaws. The little chu screeched in pain as it felt its foot bone shatter to pieces inside its blue plastic shell. With its other one, it tried unsuccessfully to kick Sugar in the face, but the honey badger merely pinned down her floundering victim with her front paws and pulled, tearing a ragged mess of flesh and some pieces of shoe right off the bony stump.

"WAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! WAAAAAHHHHHH!" wailed the Sonee. Sugar ignored it and immediately gnawed off its tiny tail. Unlike its relative Punchy Sonichu, though, this chu was no fighter, and definitely not yet ready for evolution. All it could do was writhe and cry and scream some more until Sugar decided enough was enough. Flipping it over like she'd done with the Rosey, she pierced its belly with a single claw and unzipped the shrieking Sonee, then buried her maw in its slippery innards. She didn't eat any of it, but merely chewed and spat and tore away shreds of intestines and organs until the chu finally lay as limp and lifeless as the Rosey.

Sugar raised her dripping head and shook it again, dislodging little scraps of meat and a shower of blood. The rancid smell was masking the scents of other, more alive prey, and she had to move on now if she hoped to keep up her already excellent pace.

Twenty-six kills…and she still had seven floors to go. Truly, this was the best day of her life.

Soup Hotel #4, 4th floor

"Two, three, GO!" shouted Allie.

Kevin slid his keycard into the reader, waited for the click, and kicked the door open so his squadmate could hose the infested hotel room with Trogdor the Burninator. The larval chus hiding inside had only half a second to let out terrified screams before they were enveloped by hungry flames and incinerated into a delicious-smelling crispy fatty mess. Allie sprayed the Sonees and Roseys for about ten seconds, then shut off the flamethrower to give them some time to cook. Once the heat had died out, the Jerkops stepped in to take care of the meager survivors.

"You ever thought of going into the extermination business?" Kevin asked, his voice muffled by the dust mask he'd acquired back in the cafeteria. "I mean, what do you think…hang on."

"SONEEEEEEEE!" a Sonee wailed as the Jerkop plucked it out from under the bed it had been attempting to scurry under. The larva struggled and kicked and even tried to bite him, but Kevin had long ago learned the proper way to hold a feral so it couldn't nip his fingers with its mouth. Chuckling to himself, he carried his new prisoner back to Allie and plunged its face directly into the hottest part of Trogdor's pilot light.

"As I was saying," he continued, ignoring the piercing shrieks and hissing of flesh in his hands, "what do you want to do once all this is over? Career-wise, I mean?"

Allie shrugged and tilted her flamethrower so that both of the feral's eyes were immediately reduced to bubbling black goo. "I don't know. With the time rift and everything, I'm still in my early twenties…guess I'll go to college. I always wanted to be…well, you'll think it's silly."

"No I won't," Kevin assured her. By now, the Sonee's face had almost been burnt clear off the bone. Fat and skin were running down its head like candle wax, revealing a blackening skull beneath. All the while, it was still alive and screaming. "Come on, I promise I won't laugh."

"…a firefighter," Allie finished, and her cheeks turned red with embarrassment behind her steel mask. "Stupid, right? I mean, look at what I've been doing here." She lowered Trogdor as the feral finally shuddered and died in her squadmate's hands. Kevin turned and flung it against the wall, shattering its skull with a splintering crack. "But yeah, I've wanted to be one ever since I was little. Now…after this," she unconsciously rubbed the discolored burnt skin on her face, "well, I guess I want to keep this stuff from happening to other people. Save them, you know."

"I don't think you ever told me what happened," replied Kevin. "I mean, I know what happened, but I've never heard it from you."

"There'll be another time. We're on a tight schedule." Allie gave the room a final sweep with her eyes, then pulled open the closet door and sprayed the dozen or so ferals hiding inside. Kevin listened to them burning and dying for a few moments, then followed his squadmate out the door. It had been over a month since their reunion, and he was still having trouble accepting the horrific burn that marred Allie's otherwise pretty face. The heartless chus had disfigured her without a second thought, and thanks to their cruelty, she'd carry the mark for the rest of her life.

Kevin had no idea how he could possibly survive in a world without so many Sonees and Roseys available for him to take his anger out on. No wonder Al, Steve, Zoey, and Kuri derived so much pleasure from dispatching the larvae as messily and painfully as they could. For them, the kills weren't just catharsis…they were statements. Every Sonee was a tiny part of Chandler himself, and every Rosey was exactly what Chandler wanted girls to be like. He'd designed both species to be the perfect representations of his saccharine, disgustingly idealized childhood, but in the process, he'd also given life to the abominations who now infested CWCville like plague rats.

CRUNCH!

The Jerkop stepped out of the blazing room just before an airborne Sonee pancaked on the wall three feet away. Momentum squashed the chu's dense little body up against its head like a fleshy accordion, crushing its skull and squirting its insides out through a dozen gaping rips in its fuzzy skin. Kevin followed its trajectory back to Zoey, who was now playing Kick-a-Chu with every Sonee and Rosey in reach. It made sense – back in her school days, she'd been one of the fiercest offensive players on the CWCville High girls' soccer team.

Across the hall, Amanda had abandoned Steve's partnership in lieu of her own idea of "fun." That "fun" involved making living Molotov cocktails out of ferals by force-feeding them multiple pints of gasoline and old hobo liquor and cramming fuel-soaked socks down their throats or up their buttholes. Either way worked just as well once the cloth ignited.

"FIRE IN THE HOLE!" she yelled as she flicked her lighter and lobbed a gasping, choking Rosey through the adjacent doorway. BOOM! FWOOOOOSHHHH! A blistering fireball exploded out of the hotel room, nearly scorching Amanda's eyebrows clean off as she leapt back, swearing like a sailor. Undaunted, she snatched up another full bottle of moonshine and selected a panicked Sonee for her next cocktail. Good thing their little bodies could hold so much liquid.

Nearby, Nick knocked a fleeing Sonee right onto its face and sliced off both of its stumpfeet with a single cut from his machete. The feral bawled and screamed and tried to crawl away, but in vain. Bit by bit, the Mexican soldier carved it apart until it was little more than a head and a mess of flesh and ragged skin. It still hadn't died, so Nick simply abandoned it and began hacking and slashing a bloody swathe through a thick crowd of squealing baby chus.

Steve, oddly enough, didn't seem to be as involved in the slaughter as the other Honey Badgers. Kevin thought he was simply taking a breather until the Jerkop knelt down and offered a Rosey a few wrapped candies. Forgetting all about Steve's murderous history and the plight of her fellow ferals, the little chu gleefully grabbed the sweets, tore them open with her baby teeth, and gulped them down in a flash with a happy "YAY!"

Almost instantly after she'd devoured the "candy," the Rosey screeched and doubled over in pain, heaving and coughing up blood as a thousand incredibly toxic Vileplume spores began dissolving her from the inside out. Steve chuckled as the feral's liquefied innards spilled out of her little harelip mouth and began soaking into the carpet. He grabbed a Sonee from the crowd and pitched it over to a blood-soaked Kuri, who immediately intercepted the flying chu with the blades of her tekko-kagi. She pulled it off, threw it away, then motioned to her Lunatone and skipped through an open doorway with an excited giggle. The hovering psychic Pokémon followed obediently, and moments later, the horrible squishing and popping noises had resumed.

Having learned a few lessons from the second floor's purge, Kevin quickly located a non-cleared room and inserted his keycard. The lock clicked, but for some reason, he couldn't pull open the door. Frustrated, he began smashing his way through it with the stock of his AK-47. The hard wood splintered and cracked, but failed to give way. Kevin delivered a few good kicks to the weakened door, and finally managed to break it down after about a minute's struggle.

How the hell did the little fuckers lock the door? he thought to himself as the wooden door fell apart with a crash, revealing a room packed with…

"Jesus Christ! It's the goddamned cavalry!" shouted a familiar voice from inside a crowd of shivering, miserable hobos. "We thought you was dead, kid!"

"FRANK!" yelled Kevin, grinning from ear to ear as the belligerent homeless man shuffled forward and tearfully embraced him. "Why didn't you get out of here, you old son of a bitch?"

"I stayed, kid. We all stayed 'ere to ride out the storm," growled Frank, and peered over Kevin's shoulder with hateful eyes at the garishly-colored sea of ferals outside. "An' it looks like ya jus' brought a bigger storm with ya."

"We'll get you out. We'll get everyone to safety," Kevin replied determinedly, and released his old friend. Looking around, he could see that the room held about twenty hobos – men, women, a few scrawny kids, and a filthy, weeping baby girl. Carl, George, and Missy June weren't among them. "Did the others make it?"

"Dunno. Hope ta all that's holy they did." Frank scratched his scraggly hair and suppressed a cough. "Lissen, ya got a plan? They're all kinda scared an' it's gonna be 'ard enough tryin' ta get 'em all out past those fuckin' rats. Goddamn things tried ta force their way in 'ere. Lucky fer us they jus' up an' quit after 'bout thirty seconds."

Kevin chuckled mirthlessly. "Sounds about right. Believe me, we're working on it. I don't know what the plan is, but I can take you to someone who does. Is anyone injured?"

Frank shook his head. "Nah. Jus' a few of us too old an' too young fer movin' fast."

"We'll cover you." The Jerkop turned to the crowd. "Who here is able to fight?"

A few men halfheartedly raised their hands. Kevin sighed and shouldered his AK. "Okay. Let's try this again." He straightened up and shot the hobos his absolute toughest gaze. "Who here wants to help me kill every last rat bastard baby chu in this entire fucking building?"

Every single hand in the room shot up, including the little girl's.

Outside, in the hallway

By now, the fourth floor was in pretty much the same state as the second – fires everywhere, blood soaking through the carpet, bits and pieces of burnt and mutilated chu larvae splattered across every surface…in other words, the Honey Badgers' usual calling cards.

For some reason, the sprinklers weren't firing – just one more retarded "safety measure" that Chandler had implemented to keep the ferals from accidentally zapping themselves. Water conducted electricity after all, and he couldn't have the "helpless widdle bay-bees" exposed to that sort of danger, even if it meant sacrificing the Soup Hotels' fire prevention measures.

Well, he's going to seriously regret ever doing that after he sees how we burned up all his precious Sonees and Roseys, thought Steve as he stepped forward and booted a Rosey into a pile of blazing carcasses. Her skirt and bow and fur caught immediately, aided by a heavy load of melted fat dripping from the makeshift pyre. The chu screamed in agony and attempted to beat out the fire with her armstubs, but the greasy flames soon reduced her to nothing more than a little writhing black and red blob.

Steve felt an armstub pawing at his leg and reached back to retrieve a Sonee with most of its stumpfeet burned clean off. The plastic of its little sneakers had melted and was now dripping down in blue rivulets over the hideous rounded legless appendages that were supposed to be its feet, leaving blisters and brown burn marks in their wake.

"How can they even walk on those things?" Steve muttered to himself as he knelt down, grabbed the Sonee's bulbous head with one hand, and twisted it right off. Tossing the still-blinking head and its writhing, squirting body to the same fiery fate as the Rosey, the Jerkop rose to his feet and sighed. He wished he hadn't used up all of his Vileplume candy so quickly. Oh well.

The sound of a good two dozen pairs of feet behind him immediately jarred Steve from his thoughts. Expecting mercs or EHPF, he whirled around with his revolver drawn, but instead received quite a shock to discover that Kevin had returned from one of the rooms with a group of about twenty homeless men, women, and children. All were armed with nail-covered chair legs, pieces of broken glass, shattered beer bottles, and other trash they'd managed to repurpose into weapons. And most importantly, every single one of them looked like they were more than ready to rain down some unholy terror upon the little abominations that had ruined their lives.

"I found a few volunteers," Kevin reported matter-of-factly, grinning as he gestured to his new army of would-be exterminators.

"So you did." Steve smiled back. "I don't recall ordering reinforcements, but right now, I just want as many larvae dead as possible, really, really fast." He patted Kevin's shoulder. "Congratulations. You just got a temporary promotion. Take them and clear out the sixth floor, then head to ten. We'll finish up, clear eight, and meet you topside. Think you can handle it?"

"Honestly?" Kevin chuckled. "Just try and keep up with us."

"You're on." The Jerkop popped open his revolver's cylinder and began swapping the spent bullets for new ones. "Now get to it. See you on the roof."

Soup Hotel #4, rear stairwell

Kevin pushed the maintenance door open so fast he nearly knocked Linda and another White Medallion over the side of the safety rail. In his haste to beat Steve to the top, he'd forgotten that Blanca Weiss's Jerkops were on their way up as well.

"Hey! What the hell did you…Kevin!" exclaimed the auburn-haired Jerkop as soon as she realized what had just happened. "What's going on?"

"Come on Linda, keep going," urged the man behind her.

"You go ahead. Tell Blanca I'll catch up," replied Linda, and stepped aside to let her squadmate pass. She looked back at Kevin and smiled. "Long time, huh?"

Kevin chuckled. "Definitely. How's your sister?"

"Tammy's fine. We joined up a few days ago – that's probably why you didn't know we were here. They've got her working in maintenance, but she wants to join a squad soon. I hate to say it, but I think she might be up for Dan's position after today."

"Was he the guy who got killed down in the cafeteria?"

Linda nodded. "I didn't know him too well, but he seemed like a nice man. Anyway, I see you found yourself some new friends." She stared at the motley crew of hobos waiting impatiently in the doorway and the hall. "Listen, let's talk more once we get back to Slumberland. Tammy needs some friends too, and you look like you're about her age…"

"I'll see what I can do." Kevin smiled and gave Linda a quick hug. "Go kill some more chus."

"Gladly. You too." The Jerkop turned and dashed up the stairs, eager to return to her absolute favorite hobby in the world. Kevin followed her a few steps, then stopped to let his new squad file through the doors. So far, Frank (his appointed lieutenant) was doing a pretty good job of keeping the extremely angry gang of hobos in line.

They made their way up past the next floor, savoring the oh-so-satisfying sounds of unspeakable brutality and carnage that the other Jerkops were laying down on the Sonee and Rosey infestations. From what Kevin could tell, some of Blanca's squadmates were using their own trained Charmeleons on the ferals. He would have loved to peek in and see what kind of pandemonium they were causing, but then again, he had his own kind of chaos that he wanted to unleash upon the chus.

Kevin grinned to himself as he looked over his shoulder and saw the hobos climbing the stairs with murder in their eyes. It was pretty exciting to be leading an actual squad of his own. Was this how Steve and Zoey felt all the time? Of course, they were leading experienced Jerkops and not a ragtag band of homeless people, but it was pretty much the same deal right now – send a mob of furious men and women to kill off a bunch of deformed little fuzzbag mutants…just like the ones waiting right through the next door.

Click! WHAM! Kevin unlocked the sixth floor corridor and kicked open the utility doors, then stepped forward into another hallway full of giggling, frolicking Sonees and Roseys. This time, however, the recolored demons didn't quite have the floor all to themselves.

Now Kevin realized what had happened to most of the Soup Hotel's cleaning staff. Right in the middle of the corridor lay a hastily-assembled barricade of laundry carts and various furniture items, encircling a group of what looked like five or six maids and maintenance workers, along with a few hobos lucky enough to escape the plague of babies. Surrounded by a seething horde of recolored hedgehog larvae, the poor survivors were frantically struggling to keep the swarm from breaking through. However, because of Chandler's new laws to protect said larvae, the staff members and residents appeared to be fighting back restrainedly, taking care not to seriously hurt or kill any of the dirty, fuzzy baby chus. Fear, and only fear, kept them from unleashing their rage upon their tormentors.

"Seeeee! Seeeeee!" whined a Rosey as it plopped down from the side of the barricade and immediately hugged a janitor's leg. The maid beside him hurriedly peeled it off her coworker and lobbed the bawling chu away into the air, but the Rosey's skirtachute deployed almost instantly, allowing it to glide straight back behind the wall of furniture. It landed safely and waddled right up to another maid, making hideous "WAAAHHH!" sounds as it begged for food, toys, comfort, Mary Poppins, or whatever else its oversimplified mind craved at the moment.

On the other side, a trio of Sonees and a Rosey managed to make their way over the wall unnoticed, dropping to the floor with squeals of unnatural happiness. They quickly started playing tag with each other, waddling around between and over the panicked humans and simultaneously drawing attention away from their comrades outside. More larvae spilled through the leaks in the barricade, squeezing their pudgy bodies through every nook and cranny like huge furry maggots. In seconds, the survivors were fighting off about three dozen chus at once, and given the babies' track record, it probably wouldn't be too long before they got all stressed and hungry and reverted to their feral behavior of trying to eat people.

"So this is what you guys had to deal with while I was away?" muttered Kevin as he placed his assault rifle back in its cradle with its "silencer" still intact and drew his knife and pistol.

Frank nodded and drew a switchblade from his coat pocket. "Ne'er thought I'd see a day where we could kill 'em all an' not hafta worry 'bout the Sparkies. Kid, yer a miracle worker."

"Just doing my job." Kevin grinned and turned to address his hobos. He pointed to the ongoing struggle at the barricade. "Keep them alive. Kill everything else. Any questions?"

The furious stares and vengeful expressions from the crowd were a good enough answer for him.

"Right." The Jerkop whirled around and chopped a hand toward the sea of ferals. "So let's go take back our Soup Hotel. NO SURVIVORS! GET 'EM!"

"YAAAAAAAHHHHH!" roared the hobos as they surged past Kevin and into the sea of chus. Before the Sonees and Roseys knew what was happening, the army of homeless men and women crashed into them like a tidal wave of murderous rage, kicking and striking and chopping and stabbing and unleashing more than two weeks' worth of pent-up hatred at the sheer injustice of everything Chandler had done to them when he'd relocated the ferals into their home.

"NEEE!" screamed a Sonee as it turned to waddle away, but a furious woman quickly snatched it up by the ears and began carving open its belly with a broken beer bottle. Beside her, her two preteen children, a boy and a girl, had caught a pair of Roseys and were now smashing their malformed heads up and down against the floor as if they were trying to crack eggs. A bearded hobo lashed out again and again with a nail-covered table leg, spearing and impaling baby chus with every blow. Frank himself had become a dirty, patchy whirlwind of destruction, alternately slashing open Sonees and Roseys with his switchblade and wrenching off as many heads, armstubs and stumpfeet as he could. In seconds, the old hobo had plunged deep into the heart of the swarm and was now determinedly cutting and ripping his way toward the besieged staff.

Working quickly, the murderous hobos began shepherding the stressed and terrified chu larvae away from the barricade and into individual hotel rooms, where they could easily dispatch entire groups of the abominations of their own accord. Remembering that he too was supposed to be helping them thin the tide, the Jerkop drew his knife and began mopping up any chus that his new army had missed.

"WOSEEEEEEEY!"

Kevin grabbed up the screeching Rosey, slit her throat, and hurled the larva away to let it bleed out. Tossing the hunting knife from one hand to the other, he swung it down and stabbed another Rosey through the belly, then rammed the whole knife and its shrieking cargo into the wall. Impaled and dying, the little creature could only writhe and scream as her mangled intestines slithered out around the steel blade. Abandoning the weapon, Kevin stepped past a few hobos and kicked over the nearest laundry cart. A single Sonee popped out, covered from head to stumpfeet in unwashed socks and underwear. It giggled and snuggled down inside its filthy cotton bed, utterly oblivious to the massacre going on around it. Typical.

Looking up, Kevin noticed a split in the hallway with a sign that read Laundry Room, and suddenly a wicked idea formed in his mind. They might have been pressed for time, but he was going to make sure this Sonee and a few of his friends learned a few lessons about proper hygiene before the day was done. Grabbing the entire cart, he tipped the rest of the clothes out, unearthed the Sonee, and tossed it in.

"Goo-goo!" it squeaked in surprise as it smacked the bottom of the basket and began confusedly waddling around inside. Kevin pushed the cart down the carnage-stricken hall toward the laundry room, grabbing Sonees and Roseys at random and adding each one to his makeshift prisoner transport. By the time he finally reached the door and pushed the cart inside, he'd taken about ten or twelve captives. The little chus began whining and squealing at him, no doubt trying to let the Jerkop know that they didn't like being packed together like sardines and that it was causing them too much stress. Kevin couldn't have cared less about what they thought. Anyway, it wouldn't matter in a few minutes.

The laundry room wasn't particularly big, but it had washers, dryers, and plenty of toxic cleaning chemicals that Jexis probably would have had a field day with if she hadn't been injured and evacuated. Kevin wheeled the cart over to the nearest washing machine and popped open the lid, then began snatching the chus from the basket and dropping them inside, one after the other. The baby hedgehogs squealed and struggled, but before long, the inside of the washing machine had been packed to the brim with squirming pink and yellow bodies. A light blinked on underneath an instruction label, notifying him to add some detergent to the automatic dispenser.

What he had in mind wouldn't be the cleanest alternative, but it would be a lot more entertaining than just a simple wash.

Kevin opened up a cabinet full of cleaning supplies to find a single Rosey fast asleep on the top shelf, giggling to herself and making soft snoring noises. She'd probably wandered inside a few hours ago, perhaps hoping to find some candy in the laundry room, or maybe a pretty new skirt.

"Wake up, sweetie," he said gently, and plucked the sleepy chu off the shelf.

"Mmmwosey," the Rosey cooed happily, and hugged his wrist with her little armstubs. Nuzzling the Jerkop's hand, she began licking up the blood that had stained his fingers. Maybe she thought she was eating ice cream, or a big lollipop. Kevin managed to overcome his natural urge to vomit, set her down on an adjacent counter, and instead concentrated on locating some detergent. Bingo. Right behind where the feral had been napping sat the exact thing he was looking for.

As an apparent "friend" of Mayor Chandler, the sheer influence of BILLY MAYS and his charismatic advertising skills could be seen in the wide variety of infomercial-marketed products that the citizens of CWCville used every day. MAYS may have been a spy and administrator for the PVCC all along, but he was also a businessman, and content to sell Chandler vast quantities of Mighty Putty, Grater Platers, Big City Slider Stations, and most importantly…OxiClean.

Kevin grabbed the huge jug of detergent, unscrewed the cap, and positioned it right over the Rosey's face. The little chu opened her eyes, blinked, and giggled at the big bearded man smiling down at her from the jug. She'd heard BILLY MAYS vociferously describing the benefits of his products on TV many times, and furthermore, she somehow knew that her grandpa really liked him and that he sold things for mommies to use in the kitchen to keep their sweetbolts happy.

Then the big bearded man tipped sideways, and before the Rosey could tilt her misshapen head, Kevin forced the end of the OxiClean bottle into her mouth. The Jerkop wasn't too fond of ripping off quotes, least of all the ones his squadmates had made up, but since Al was currently two floors down, he couldn't resist borrowing one of the Legend's most famous send-off lines.

"Eat it, fucker," he snarled, and squeezed the detergent right down the Rosey's throat.

"WOGLUGLUGLUGLUGLGUBUGHUGH!"

The little pink creature expanded like a water balloon as Kevin squirted immense quantities of OxiClean into her stomach. Gripping her head to make sure she didn't spit out the bottle, he kept force-feeding her more and more and more, filling her entire digestive system with the "miracle" chemical cleaner. By the time he'd emptied the entire jug into her, the six-inch-tall Rosey had swelled up to the size of a basketball, and could only roll back and forth on the counter while detergent seeped from her every orifice. Her cheeks were now so packed with liquid that they resembled a chipmunk's, and she could only lie there flailing and making little gurgling noises.

"BATH TIME, RETARDS!" roared Kevin, and slam dunked the detergent-filled Rosey right into the washing machine full of unsuspecting larvae.

POP! SPLASH! The swollen chu exploded as soon as she hit the central spinner, drenching the washing machine's occupants with a bubbly mixture of blood, OxiClean, and fatty pink meat scraps. The other Sonees and Roseys shrieked as slippery detergent splashed across their huge reptilian eyeballs, and quickly began weeping and scrubbing helplessly at their stinging eyes.

Relishing the cries of suffering ferals, Kevin began gathering up anything sharp and pointy he could find in the room…sewing needles, knives and scissors, straight razors, tacks, metal scraps, even shards of glass from a mirror he smashed on the wall. Dumping the entire jagged mess into the washing machine, he slammed the lid shut, cranked up the water temperature to the absolute hottest setting, set it to run for an hour and a half, and punched the Start Cycle button.

The Jerkop hurriedly searched the room for any lingering chus, then turned and headed for the door as the trapped Sonees and Roseys began their merry-go-round ride to hell. The lucky ones would bleed to death in a few minutes. The rest…well, he'd leave that for to the EHPF officers to discover when Chandler finally got around to sending police to investigate the carnage. Surely the retreating mercenaries and Sonichus must have informed him about what was going on by now…but then again, he didn't handle stressful situations that well, either.

Kevin didn't care. What he and his comrades were doing here was nothing short of glorious, and he didn't plan on stopping anytime soon. Stepping back into the hallway, he could see that the hobos had done a bang-up job of butchering every single Sonee and Rosey they could find. The cream-colored carpet was now stained a uniform dark red, and faint odors of greasy McDonald's food and CWC Cola mingled in the air with the heavy stench of blood and excrement. Kevin wasn't surprised at all, especially considering the little fuckers' egregiously unhealthy diets. No wonder they were all so fat and lethargic now. They'd been vicious killing machines down in the sewers, but several weeks of living like Chandler had softened them up into the perfect victims.

After the last of the larvae had been ripped apart and stomped to pieces by the rampaging hobos, Kevin retrieved his knife and helped Frank gather them, the rescued staff, and the other humans all together, and then led them up to the tenth floor, where Steve had instructed him to go. Beyond that lay the roof, and…well, Kevin didn't know what Al had in mind for an exit strategy.

It was strange, knowing that he'd soon be seeing his old room again. As Kevin climbed the stairs with Frank close behind him, waves of nostalgia struck him again and again, filling him with a mix of sadness and acceptance. His old life among CWCville's homeless had come to an end over a month ago, and now it was time to bury the past once and for all. It wasn't so bad. He still had Frank, and God willing, Carl and George and Missy June might still be alive as well.

"If the ol' fools 'ad a lick 'o sense, they'd already be runnin' fer their lives," grunted Frank, as if he'd read Kevin's thoughts. "If not, they're gonna owe us big time."

"Let's just hope they're all still alive," said Kevin, and opened the utility door to the tenth floor hallway. "If something happened to them, I swear I'm gonna…HOLY SHIT!"

ZZZZAAAAAAPPPPPPP!

Kevin was hurled backward right onto Frank as the heavy Thundershock blasted him off his feet. The old hobo cursed and dragged his Jerkop friend out of the way, then kicked the door shut before the Sonichu could electrocute anyone else.

"Goddamn Sparky!" Frank growled, and snatched Kevin's AK-47 from the strap on his back. "Come on, kid, shake it off!"

Every hair on Kevin's head, arms, and legs was standing on end. When he opened his mouth to cough, a puff of black smoke spilled out from his throat and nose. He couldn't move. Each and every one of his muscles seemed to be vibrating faster than humanly possible. Pain shot through him again and again, a deep, penetrating pain that seemed to fill every inch of his body with hot melted lead. He might as well have been fused to the floor. And his heart…where was his heartbeat?

"Oh, motherfu-" Kevin gasped as he realized his heart had stopped, and promptly fainted dead away. The last thing he heard before his vision went dark was Frank's panicked voice.

"Kid? Hey, kid! Kevin! KEVIN!"

It was quiet now, quieter than anything Kevin could have imagined. Borne aloft by some mysterious invisible energy, the Jerkop drifted along aimlessly, wandering here and there with no real direction whatsoever. Blue wisps of gaseous light floated past and dissipated at random, shedding a chaotic glow on the dying man and his surroundings.

Kevin really couldn't remember what had just happened, only the silence in his chest and the pain of the shock. There was no life flashing before his eyes and no light at the end of a tunnel, but simply a much darker place somewhere off in the void. Somehow, he knew it would take him to another place…perhaps another world entirely. The word "death" was strangely absent from his thoughts. If anything, he was curious as to what lay at the other side of the black.

There'll be another time, a girl's voice resounded through his head. It took him a few seconds to recognize it as Allie's.

And suddenly, the silence broke.

"That's it. That's it. Do it, ya shiteater. I'll kill ya an' all yer fuckin' little babies before ya…"

ZZZZZZZZAAAAAAAPPPPPPPP!

"GAAAAAHHHHHHH!" Kevin inhaled violently as a second jolt of energy coursed through him, restarting his heartbeat and tearing him right out of the cold black silence. The near-death experience was immediately forgotten, replaced instead by a world that smelled of electrical discharge and burnt flesh. Something was pressing down hard on his chest…something that had rerouted the second Thundershock straight into his heart.

Through a haze of pain, Kevin saw the Sonichu and two more EHPF officers moving forward through a sea of their retarded offspring to finish him off. He'd somehow been transplanted right into the middle of the tenth floor hallway. Moving as if in a trance, he reached for his belt, snatched his pistol out of its holster, and immediately lined up a shot directly toward the nearest chu. But there was no time, and their cheekspots were already fully charged…

"GOO-GEEEEEEE!" "SONEEEEEE!" "WOSEEEEEY!" "WAAAAAHHHH!"

CLANG! A metal vent fell free of the ceiling, smacking one of the officers in his head on its way down. Suddenly there were Sonees and Roseys everywhere - dozens upon dozens of Sonees and Roseys - all hastily spilling out of the air ducts in a furry waterfall of fear and panic. Some of them smacked into the Sonichus and immediately fastened onto them as tightly as possible, crying and wailing for their illegitimate fathers to protect them from…

"GRRROWR!" Sugarplum Fury roared as she leaped through the open vent and sank her teeth into the foremost Sonichu's fused eyeball, ripping the entire left half of it out of its socket. The EHPF officer howled in blind agony and unleashed a retaliatory Thundershock, but the honey badger had already let him go and was now tearing huge chunks of flesh off of another chu's leg.

Gritting his teeth, Kevin took the shot. BANG! The third Electric Hedgehog Pokémon suddenly found himself unable to breathe or even scream, due in part to the grievous hole that the Jerkop's bullet had torn through his lower jaw. Kevin put two more rounds into his spiked head just to be sure, then switched targets and emptied the rest of his clip into the eyeless Sonichu's torso.

"AAAAAGGHHHHH! NOOOOOO! GET OFF ME! GET…AAAAAIIIIEEEE!" squealed the last EHPF officer, firing off frantic Sparks as Sugar, who by now had climbed up his leg, gnawed open his crotch flap, and seized his retracted pickle in her teeth. Wrenching her head sideways, the honey badger ripped the entire organ off at the base and hurled it away with what seemed like a snarl of disgust, then scurried up the Sonichu's chest and tore out his throat with her sharp little claws. The uniformed Pokémon gurgled and choked, clutching his neck as a red stain began soaking into his white gloves. Satisfied, Sugar released her grip and dropped to the floor, then instantly whirled around and busied herself with chewing a Rosey's face off.

Stunned and smoking, Kevin dragged himself up off the floor as his hobo army surged past on either side. Now that the Sonichus were all dead or dying, there was nothing standing between them and their hated prey. They were only too happy to aid the berserk honey badger in her passionate quest for utter chaos and destruction.

"Frank?" he gasped.

The old hobo lay beside him, limp and silent and peaceful, with one hand resting on Kevin's chest. His eyes were closed, and in that moment, the young Jerkop knew that Frank's life had reached its end at last. With one last act of selfless generosity, he'd given Kevin a second chance.

Kevin knelt beside Frank's body for a long, long time, cradling the old man's head in his arms and crying silently as the last of the ferals screamed and died around him. He wanted to believe that Frank would suddenly wake up and that everything would be okay again, but this new, battle-hardened Kevin Shaw knew that it was useless to hope for impossible miracles.

No doubt Frank Douglas's death would be written off as collateral damage by the EHPF when they discovered his corpse there in the hall. He had no living family, and knowing the mayor's policies, the old man would most likely end up lying among so many others in a Feeding Day pile below the streets of the abandoned zone…a final insult to the man who'd suffered so much under Chandler and his soulless creations.

"Rrowr?" Sugarplum Fury trotted up to him with a tiny Sonee clutched in her jaws. The little chu was kicking and bawling and beating at her face with its armstubs, but to no avail. It was obvious she intended to dispatch it later. The honey badger curled up at his feet and stared at him expectantly, as if she was asking You're really going to send him off like that?

No, thought Kevin with a new steely determination, and rose to his feet. Hauling Frank's body upright, he retrieved his AK-47, slung one of the old man's arms over his shoulder, and limped off toward the stairs as Sugar and the hobos silently followed their leader up the last flight of stairs to the roof. Beneath them lay a ten-story-tall mass grave of Sonees and Roseys – the single largest chu cull in human history.

That was, until an hour later, when the Tomgirls and Red Devils blew up Soup Hotel #9.

Soup Hotel #4, roof

"Is that everyone?" yelled Al over the howling wind as Kevin and his army of Sonee and Rosey slayers filed out of the door and assembled by Steve. "Weiss! Did everyone make it out alive?"

"I'm pretty sure," replied Blanca, and stowed her UMP45. "Good God, Ledger, how many…"

"Thousands." The Legend's face may have been covered by his welder's mask, but any listeners could have easily detected the immense pride in his voice. "And that was just one hotel."

"Fucking hell." Blanca sat cross-legged by the edge of the roof and stared out across the city, soaking in the sheer magnitude of what she'd helped the PVCC to accomplish. "So now what?"

"Now?" Al patted her on the shoulder with a bloodstained, gloved hand. "Hold on to something."

On the adjacent apartment roof

"Is it just me, or does this totally sound like the ending of Fight Club?" asked Kacey Devoria as she drew a remote detonator from her backpack and began flipping switches to arm the explosives it was linked to. "You know, a guy and a girl standing together in an apartment, blowing up buildings to make a difference?"

"I never thought of that," replied Liquid Chris, and took her hand. "You sure the charges are still good? I mean, we're only going to get one shot at this, and you set them back in February…"

"Trust me." Kacey smiled at her boyfriend and began singing softly as she pressed the big red button on the detonator. "With your feet in the air…and your head on the ground…"

Click!

Ten hours later, Slumberland, Honey Badger barracks

"…the support structure was subsequently damaged by a series of precise explosions on the base columns, which sent the entire Soup Hotel crashing into a nearby apartment. The terrorists and their prisoners were then able to safely cross from rooftop to rooftop, and subsequently escaped through the building before authorities could apprehend them," the FQX news anchor Greta Squall's voice sounded from the TV. "The hotel itself remains intact and accessible as of now, but the EHPF have cordoned off the area for investigation. What you are looking at is Ground Zero - just one of many similar and incredibly vicious mass slaughters of rehabilitated feral Sonees and Roseys, perpetrated by the renowned terrorist group PVCC, or the…"

"PRIVATE VILLA OF CORRUPTED CITIZENS!" the Honey Badgers cheered together, filling their glasses with vodka as Al passed around a bottle from his treasured reserve.

"To every chu we killed!" yelled Kuri, and raised her glass. She'd garnished it with a sautéed Rosey eyeball instead of an olive.

"To every merc we killed!" added Nick. His machete now had a smaller twin – a large combat knife he'd stolen off the dead body of one of the loyalists in the Soup Hotel #4 cafeteria.

"For dead soldier comrades," Serge grunted as he took a long swig, then filled his own glass and passed the bottle to Kevin.

"To our fallen friends," said the young operative, and poured out the remaining vodka for himself and Allie. They clinked their glasses together and downed the fiery liquid instantly.

"To those who couldn't be there due to someone sending us home," growled Matt, and shot a cold glance at Al and Steve, both of whom were now embroiled in a heated drunken argument over the slow progression of the Legend's field guide. "I'm seriously thinking about quitting this whole driving job. You guys could've at least saved a few for me and Jexis."

"Tell that to Smurfette," muttered Amanda darkly, and glared at Kuri. "I'll be hearin' that popping sound for days. I swear, that girl's got some serious issues…"

Of his own volition, Kevin draped an arm over Allie's shoulders and leaned back to watch the rest of the news. Now Greta Squall was talking about an announcement by the mayor or something, and soon Chandler's flabby, absolutely furious face appeared on the screen. It was one of his homemade videos, and judging by what had gone down today, everyone in the PVCC would most likely soon find themselves on the receiving end of another pitiful threat-heavy rant.

"Captain's Log, Stardate...WHY THA FUCK DID Y'ALL DO DIS TA ME?" screamed Chandler in a high-pitched, strangled shriek, curling his hand into a claw in a pathetic gesture of rage. "Dose were just…dey were all INNOCENT WIDDLE BAY-BEES! WHAT THA FUCK? The Sonees and Roseys are all my TRUE and ORIGINAL creations, you PEDOFORKS! I gave dem nice big homes to play in, an' lots of food an' toys, an' y'all went an'…y'all MURDERED dem ta DEATH! Dey weren't hurtin' anyone! I DEMAND dat every JERK who ever even thought…uh…I want all tha JERKS an' TROLLS in tha PVCC ta know dat dis SLANDER will NOT be tolerated by me, Christian Weston Chandler, your own ELECTED MAYOR!"

He sighed and promptly switched the topic of the announcement back to himself, rather than even saying a single word to commemorate the nearly thirty-five thousand Sonees and Roseys who had died that day at the hands of the Jerkops. Even the deaths of his most precious creations took second tier to his own self-centered complaints. "My heart level has been SHATTERED because of you, an' y'all should be ashamed of yours…y'all need ta give tha other Sonees and Roseys more Fuzzy-Wuzzies, not Prickly-Wicklies! Dey're just…uh, learnin' ta be good widdle bay-bees, an'…an' you're makin' it HARD for dem! You're givin' em too much STRESS!"

Chris let out another massive sigh and removed his glasses. It was more than obvious that he himself was undergoing a massive load of stress as well, and was now attempting to garner pity from the very same people he'd sworn to destroy multiple times. It wasn't working, but as always, he'd keep going regardless of his announcement's ever-increasing ridiculousness.

"So…uh…STOP TRYIN' TA KILL THA CUTE WIDDLE BAY-BEES AN' RUIN DERE CHILDHOODS! Roseys are s'posed ta always get tha awe of dere enemies with dere cuteness, an' Sonees are s'posed ta have a lot of spunk an' speed an' pack a lot of action!" he yelled, as if repeating the same things over and over would somehow dissuade the Jerkops from their duty and turn his hideous abominations into adorable, cuddly, playful little creatures. "So STOP IT an' leave 'em ALONE! Everyone else, have a good day, an' stay STRAIGHT. Peace."

Kevin felt Allie snuggle up beside him as he began drifting off to sleep right there on the sofa. Peaceful thoughts filled his head, interspersed with memories of Frank and glorious images of the massacre he'd helped cause that day. It didn't matter that the old man was gone. Frank had died on his own terms, giving his life to save Kevin's in one final "fuck you" to Chandler.

Outside, a cool night breeze stirred Sugarplum Fury from her slumber. Happy, full, and content, the honey badger licked her chops and rolled over to find a better sleeping position. The remains of her supper lay scattered everywhere, marking the place where she'd torn her captured Sonee apart and devoured it bit by bit, all while the little chu was still alive. Behind her, just under the window to the Honey Badger barracks, stood a solitary gravestone with a small plaque that Kevin had carved himself in Al's workshop.

Frank Douglas

1933-2004

A friend to the end.