Comparatively a rather long chapter, haina?
I don't like using OCs, but Mark, you leave me with no choice! Are all the other students androids put there to lure Malpense and Co into a false sense of security, because we literally never hear about anyone else at HIVE! There are no inter-stream relations at all!
...but then again, this started out with inter-stream correspondence. Look where it's ended up...
"...it twisted the definition of "sanity" so severely that it bent over and screamed for mercy."
-What I Like About Winter, by baka deshi
Grappler Cavern Nine had become an impromptu base-slash-infirmary-slash-therapist's-office-for- all-those-traumatized-by-a-naked-Franz-slash-cotto n-ball-station-for-the-severe-nosebleeds-caused-by -the-hotness-that-is-a-naked-showering-Wing for the Henchman-SciTech-PolFi alliance (the PolFis had been lobbying to call themselves the PolTechMen, but the suggestion had been vetoed).
Currently, there was steam coming out of the ears of the Henchman reading the Alphas' letter, and he crumpled it up and threw it with the force of a battering ram. One with metal horns. And at least three dozen people swinging it. Quite an achievement, considering it was no more than a wad of paper.
"Which pansies," he roared, "which lily-livered pansies 'turned and ran like rabbits' after Fanchu decapitated Block and Tackle?!"
There was the odd whimper, but no one answered. Finally, a PolFi student looked up and said, "I think it was...well, essentially everyone from the same year as the Fab Fo-Malpense and his crew," she quickly amended.
"Dear God, who was in charge of the selection and streaming that year?" he groaned, massaging his temples, "That entire year is whacked. Was Nero drunk?"
There were a few murmurs of "yeah", "of course" and "had to be". Cassie from SciTech added, "Pike was involved," and there were groans of "that explains it" all around, while she just went back to sprawling on the floor, watching her Wing videos with perverted, voyeuristic glee.
"What else did the note say, Dylan?" the PolFi girl asked the Henchman. Dylan struggled to remember her name-Dorothy? Something to do with a novel-oh, Darcy, yes.
"Well," he said slowly, "Besides some disgusting flirting on Fanchu and Trinity's part, Trinity mentioned something about sleeping with Fanchu-"
Somewhere in the midst of the crowd, there was a hysterical shriek of "WINGELBY FOREVER!".
It was ignored. This happened a lot, after all.
"Malpense...said something about the Beatles? And Laura Brand seems to have gone nutso. Oh," he tacked on as an afterthought, "Trinity's been to Bunker 9 and she's gotten a hold of that invincible robot."
Cassie cackled. "Let her come. We'll crush her! We'll grind that stinking robot to scrap metal and wash it with the Alphas' blood! We'll play marbles with their eyeballs! We'll wave banners of victory made out of their skin and use their bones as flagposts!"
These...frankly speaking, downright disturbing proclamations were ignored as well. After all, the rest of the PolTechMen (oops, sorry, that name had been brutally shot down-yes, actual bullets had been involved) had gotten used to Cassie by now.
Darcy got up, clearing her throat and preparing to rouse the PolFi students into action.
"Friends, villains, students, lend me your ears!
We come to bury the Alphas, not to play with them.
The evil that we will do to them
Will leave behind nothing but their bones;
So let it be with the Alphas!"
Amidst the screams of agreement from the PolFi students, Dylan mused, "That sounded vaguely familiar."
"Of course it did," Cassie said, rolling onto her back and replaying the naked Wing video, "She was paraphrasing Antony's speech from Julius Caesar. No wonder it's gotten the Political/Financial students in such frenzy, it's the greatest political drama ever written. It'll take a while," she added, "Antony keeps at his monologue, for, like, eight pages."
Dylan massaged his temples again. He seemed to be doing that a lot.
He stood up and turned to his own stream. "HENCHMEN!" he bellowed, "We were selected to study at HIVE because we are the best of the best of best! Would any one of us be here if we weren't the best in the art of combat in the entire world?"
"Well, unless you were in Malpense and Co's year," Cassie muttered, "No."
"NO! ARE WE PANSIES?"
"NO!" came the resounding reply.
"Can we be beaten by mere Alphas, who can't even make it across the grappler cavern on their first try?"
There was jeering laughter at that, and a few insults so violent they impressed even Cassie.
"If there's ANYONE over here who will run like a bunny and fight just as uselessly...GO GET DECAPITATED BY FANCHU'S AXE!"
There was more yelling and hollering at that.
"This is war, my friends!" he paused for dramatic effect... "THIS. IS. SPARTA!"
That was it. The Henchmen jumped up, hooting and screaming for blood and decapitated Alpha-heads stuck on pikes.
"Well, that was primitive," Cassie remarked from the floor, "...I couldn't have done it any better."
Dylan graciously acknowledged the praise.
Darcy seemed to have reached the end of her speech:
"Now let it work. Mischief, thou art afoot.
Take thou what course thou wilt!"
And all the PolFi students went mad, cheering and clapping and waving a strange assortment of weapons and screaming death threats in a decidedly un-PolFi way, while the Henchmen made faces at the excessive use of "thou".
Cassie calmly put away the iPad she had been using to watch her video, slowly standing up. She straightened her diminutive form and calmly her gaze around the room, making eye contact with each and every SciTech student.
A strange hush spread across them.
Cassie took a deep breath.
"LET'S RIP THOSE STINKING SONS OF FLEA INFESTED DOGS APART LIMB-BY-LIMB AND FEED THEIR PUS-FILLED ENTRAILS TO OUR GENETICALLY ENGINEERED HOUNDS AND HANG THEIR DECAPITATED CORPSES ON OUR DOORS AS A WARNING TO REST OF THE WORLD!"
"You don't have genetically engineered hounds," Dylan commented mildly.
"No, you don't have genetically engineered hounds," Cassie shot back at him, tapping at her iPad. A moment later, the roof of the cavern shuddered and collapsed as an entire armada of Iron Man suits slammed through it.
"LET THOSE ROTTEN MUTANT SEWER-RATS TASTE THE FURY OF A VENGEFUL SCITECH STREAM!"
The shouts and screams for blood were audible to Dr Nero, even as he hid in his Reinforced Safe Room.
Some might call it a Panic Room.
But they were wrong.
Dr Maximillian freaking Nero, headmaster of HIVE and member of GLOVE, villain extraordinaire and evil personified, did not panic.
Another shudder rocked the facility, and he stifled a-a-a sound of displeasure.
Because of course he didn't whimper, any more than he did panic...
Another bloodthirsty scream and violent death threat made its presence known.
...no, no panic, no whimpering, not even in the face of a war which made the previous World Wars look like fights between pre-school children in a sandbox.
Nerves of steel, he had.
Maniacal laughter filled the air.
Max not-whimpered and-for the first time in decades-found himself wishing desperately for Mr Blankie.
Raven grinned maniacally from within the tank.
Pfft. Tanks. How hard can they be?
The battle between the Henchmen and half of the Alpha stream had been going on in full swing. Fighting with renewed vigour, the Henchman were winning by a landslide and executing flawless combat moves which would have made Colonel Francisco weep with joy if he hadn't shaken his head and announced, "I'm out of here," and then proceeded to do a bunk along with HIVEmind when the battle had begun.
However, it was interrupted in the form of two tank missiles launched right in the middle of the battlefield.
Confused shouts and curses were hurled into the air as the warriors took cover. Well...the Henchmen took cover, but the Alphas kind of just panicked and ran around like headless chickens. One of them screamed and knelt, praying to the God Almighty to Deliver Us From This Batshit Crazy Apocalypse. A Henchman clobbered him over his head and knocked him unconscious, earning many grateful looks from Henchmen and Alphas alike.
This wasn't the Apocalypse.
This was the long awaited war.
Damned if any of them quit now!
However, the madwoman in the tank seemed to think differently, as another weapon was chucked in that direction. The egg-shaped projectile, about the size of a football, rolled to a stop right in the middle of the room.
The Alphas stared at it incomprehensibly.
The Henchmen recognised it from the merciless lessons of Colonel Francisco.
"SCATTER!" one of them bellowed, and they dove to the side. Exactly 1.62 seconds later, the thing exploded and sprayed acid in all directions. There were screams as everyone present got the hell away from that tank as if an entire squadron of Reapers were behind them (Henchmen) or as if Colonel Francisco was chasing them with screamed threats of detention (Alphas).
Inside the tank, Raven refrained from clapping with joy, choosing to hit another random control instead.
Another missile flew in the now sparsely populated area.
Tanks. Raven grinned. Ha. Go-karts have given me greater trouble.
Somewhere else at HIVE...
The other half of the Alphas charging down one corridor.
Darcy leading the PolFi students down the opposite corridor.
Scream, battles cries and (in the case of the PolFi students) quotes from Julius Caesar hurtling through the air.
Dramatic music (courtesy of a couple of SciTechs who had taken over the PA System to use as a music system) playing in the background-because Cassie wasn't the only crazy SciTech student.
For Hephaestus's sake, Pike was the head of the SciTech department. Of course they were all batty.
But did they really have to play the Mission Impossible tune?
Dun dun dada Dun dun dada Dun dun dada Dun dun dada Dun dun dada...
That was taking crazy to whole new levels.
"Kill the wannabes!" The Alphas howled.
"Go fetch fire! Pluck down benches! Pluck down forms, windows, anything!" the PolFis were screaming right back.
Dun dun dada doo de doo doo de doo doo de doo doo do...
But the battle was rudely interrupted by the Henchman stream and the Alphas (well, what was left of them, anyway), who came crashing right in the middle of the potential battlefield as if-as if-
Well, as if a maniacal, trigger-happy Raven with a demented grin in a fully loaded panzer tank was chasing them.
Really, it doesn't get much scarier than that. Darcy saw her life flash before her eyes.
But that was when the SciTech students entered.
In Iron Man suits.
Followed by genetically engineered hounds the size of horses.
"YOU PUNY ALPHAS," Cassie screamed via the PA system, "MAY HAVE OTTO MALPENSE AND LAURA BRAND. BUT OUR ENTIRE STREAM IS FILLED WITH TECHINICAL GENII AS GOOD AS-IF NOT BETTER-THAN THOSE TWO! MWAHAHAHAHA!"
Well. At least the Mission Impossible tune had been stopped.
"BOW BEFORE US, ALPHAS, BEFORE WE BLAST YOU INTO OBLIVION WITH OUR REPULSOR RAYS!"
Although, in hindsight, that might have been marginally better...
"HOUNDS OF DEATH! FIND THAT MALPENSE BRAT AND RIP HIM TO SHREDS AND THROW THOSE STINKING REMAINS IN THE VOLCANO AND DO IT BEFORE HE GETS IN RANGE OF OUR SUITS!"
The snarling hounds obliged, racing down the corridors in search of their target.
"TONIGHT, WE SHALL TASTE BLOOD AND VICTORY! ALPHAS, PREPARE TO HAVE YOUR LIMBS FORCED THROUGH SHREDDERS WHILE WE PLUCK OUT YOUR EYEBALLS AND CONVERT THEM TO JELLY AND SPREAD IT ON BREAD AND STUFF THAT BREAD IN YOUR SCREAMING MOUTHS!"
Yes...Mission Impossible was better than this.
Nero took a deep breath and picked up his mobile phone.
Because of course he had a mobile phone. It was a very nice BlackBerry Torch with 3G and Brick Breaker.
And speed dial. Which he used to call Raven.
Somewhere inside the tank, Bad Romance began playing.
For a moment, Raven looked puzzled but then realised that it was her phone. Cursing Malpense to the high heavens-he had pulled a stunt like this earlier, her phone had begun playing the Pink Panther tune when she was trying to sneak up on a target-she answered it quickly.
"Raven? I think we need to do something..."
"I'm breaking up the fight," Raven offered.
"No, from what I gathered, you're annihilating everything you can using a panzer tank."
"And everyone," she clarified, the maniacal grin back on her face. "No fight if there's no one left to fight..."
"Be as it may, I really don't want my entire student population-what's left of them, anyway-to be annihilated...I have another proposition."
"What is it, Max?" Raven asked.
"Why don't you make you way to my Panic Ro-ah, I mean, my Safe Room, and I'll tell you..."
A tank missile was launched in Raven's direction. However, it missed Raven. 'Cause, you know, she's Raven, who'll fake-die fifty different times, but never actually die. It's her superpower. Or something.
"On my way," Raven said, calmly deciding that maybe this wasn't the safest place to be (yes, you may raise your eyebrows at that fantastic revelation).
Cassie let out another violent scream over the PA System.
Nero shivered..."Please do hurry."