Ways I Would Ruin A Date With Anna Kendrick

If there’s one thing I like to do, it’s to play with my cellphone while I poop. If there’s two there’s two things I like to do, it’s to play with my cellphone while I poop and to imagine scenarios in which I’m on a date (or at least having a conversation) with a celebrity. If there’s a third thing I like to do, it’s to overuse already worn out humor clichés.

Picture Unrelated

But as for that second thing, I like doing it because, well, most of my time I’m imagining scenarios in which I’m fighting celebrities, so it’s fun to mix it up every once and a while and think up situations where they are stuck by my suaveness and charm instead of my mighty, mighty fists. Also, I might have an unhealthy fascination with fame culture in which I demonize it, yet secretly yearn to be a part of it. But that kind of deep psychological self-examination has no place in my blog. No, this blog is a gaping void of classlessness that I’m trying desperately to fill with dick jokes.

See what I did there? I know, I am a genius. But let’s move on.

However, despite all my awesomeness which must be incomprehensible to you hu-mons, I try to honest with myself, so I’m sad to say that a date with Anna Kendrick would probably not end well. I mean, let’s face it- we love celebrities so much because we only see a fraction of what they really are. We see the characters that they play/ hear the music they make/ read the words they write/ etc. but don’t ever see them more that a two (or sometimes one) dimensional prop in the slash fiction plays that we constantly create in our own heads. So while in my head the date would go swimmingly and she would be thoroughly wooed by extensive knowledge from half remembered Cracked articles and delightful array of fart jokes, in reality she is a real, living person with her own separate thoughts, emotions, and reactions that the real life me would not be prepared for. And that’s why I’m going to completely undercut what I just wrote in this paragraph by making sweeping generalizations about Miss Kendrick’s personality despite knowing very little about what she is like in her private life in order to prove my point. Sorry Anna.

“Oh Minigan, I think it’s sexy how you’ve turned me into a paper doll for one of your weird fantasies.” –The Anna Kendrick inside my head.

1. She is so much cooler than me

This probably isn’t the ideal place to explain who Anna Kendrick is for those of you who don’t know, but I didn’t have a good place to put it before now, so here will have to do. Anna is an actress. She was in the cult movie “Pitch Perfect,” which came out last year, but has also been in “The Twilight Saga,” “50/50,” “Paranorman,” “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World,” and according to her IMDb page, the Broadway musical, “High Society.” She also has a hit song out called “Cups,” but I’m going to get to that later.

Frankly, she seems like she would be a pretty cool person to hang out with even before you know much about her. She just seems to have a look about her that makes you think that if you ever met her, she would probably be pretty damn chill. That’s what I thought at least. And then I started following her on Twitter. Holy shit, guys. If you’re not following her on Twitter, you need to get with the goddamn program. Seriously, look at this shit:

I understand that there are a lot of shitty things that happen on Twitter. Believe me, I know. It’s hard not to think that are language be dying when you see some of the stupid shit the masses on Twitter post (My tweets included), but this single tweet has to make up for some of that. It’s just so simple, so perfect, such an incredible use of hashtags- which at times feel like shameless pleas for attention. But not in this tweet. No, the hashtags only add to the beautiful simplicity of it. I don’t remember what I tweeted for my 1,000^th tweet, but I can assure you that it wasn’t nearly as awesome as this one is.

Oh my God, you’re amazing!

And this is why I’d ruin the date. I cannot compete with this. I’d walk into the date all cocky, like I’d be able to handle the violent cyclone of awesome that is Anna Kendrick, so I’d be totally unprepared for it when her awesomeness slaps me in the face. In reality, Anna’s level of coolness would, in all likelihood, tear me the fuck apart. The date would consist of me saying something that I think is good, followed by something amazing she would say, and all I would have to say in reply to her would be, “I have nothing to add. You’ve just conquered the human language, you beautiful monster.”

Of course, that’s if I’m able to talk at all, because…

2. My social awkwardness would probably ruin our date before it would even begin

Here’s how I’d imagine the first exchange of the date would sound like:

Anna- Hello, Minigan, It’s very nice to meet you.

Me- hurr…argle…gooorg…ba-ba-bargle…

This is how every real life conversation I have goes if I’m not already comfortable with you.

That sound I made would be the sound of my tongue, fearing that I was about to say something stupid, retreating down into my throat and inadvertently choking me. But let’s just say that I don’t become a bumbling mess of spoken word when she says “Hi” to me, and instead think of how an actual conversation would go between us.

Unfortunately for me, I am incredibly inconsistent when it comes to meeting people for the first time. Sometimes, I can be open and social and seem like I actually do fit in as a functioning member of society- like when I met the people that would eventually become my fellow writing tutor friends, or when I met the people I would be traveling through Europe with. Then there are time where I just refuse to talk to or even acknowledge a person for the first dozen or so times I meet a person. And then there are times when I start off seeming social, but manage to ruin it with my innate ability to fuck up any nice conversation. I once met a friend’s girlfriend who used to make a webcomic I enjoyed, and when I went to complement her on her work on the comic, I said, “Yeah, I enjoy your work on the internet… well, not that kind of work.” That last part was a porn joke. The woman I said that to was not in a porn, nor will she ever be, and that shit flew out of my mouth before I could stop it. Granted, my phrasing was shitty enough that she probably didn’t understand what I was referencing (see: she was never in a goddamn porno to begin with), so she probably just ignored the last part, chalking it up to me being strange. But I knew what I meant by it, and I seriously considered jumping out a window to flee from the conversation. I was so embarrassed by my stupidity that I barely said another word to her that night. So then I probably seemed like I was actually a dick. Granted, that’s better than creepy, but not by much.

Seriously, this is me.

So, if I’m able to speak at all, then I will probably make some terrible joke that will make everything awkward, and she’ll get up to go to the restroom and never come back. And honestly, I wouldn’t blame her. It would be a smart move on your part, Anna. Trust me.

3. I cannot do the “Cups” clap.

I told you I would be getting back to this. For those of you who don’t know what the “Cups” clap is, then I suggest you watch this video. Or rather, watch this video regardless of whether or not you know what the “Cups” clap is.

That is the video for Anna’s single, “Cups.” The song is short, but it’s so catchy that it’s been classified as a Class 2 addictive substance in 23 states. I had it stuck in my head so bad that no song, not even the Oscar Mayer Bologna song, was able to get it out of my head. I watched the video once and then immediately downloaded a copy of it from iTunes, and I never do that. That’s how powerfully addictive that song is. It’s like ear crack.

Now, here is a video of me trying and failing to do the clap that is featured in the video:

I assume that during our date, I will mention how much I enjoy her song, and she will proceed to test my worthiness of her company by having me attempt the clap. I will, of course, fail, and she will deem me as an unworthy suitor and cast me asunder.

“How can one man be so terrible at such a simple clap? Throw him into the snake pit!”

So, Anna, if you’re reading this, I would be honored to go on a date with you, but I fear it would be a complete waste of your time. Don’t put yourself through all that.

…Unless, of course you want to. In that case, call me.

But until then, Peace.

Awesomesquad! Assemble! 8.2! Revenge of the Fame Monster

If you’ve never read an Awesomesquad! post before, then you should probably check out the roster, But this is part 2 of a section, so you might just want to read Part 1 instead.

For everyone that has read 8.1!, Here’s a refresher: It was Late February 2011, and I had spent the past 6 months looking for a lost teammate, when Damien and Phlegm talk me into joining the team on a mission. The mission was to save a bunch of hostages from Charlie Sheen, but as it turned out, it was a trap that Lady Gaga had set for me. She killed Raul, and then had her army of Monsters subdue me and attack the rest of Team Pugnsastics. We had narrowly escaped into the Awesomebus!, when Gaga jumped onto the roof.

 

OK, now that everyone is on the same page, enjoy this whirlwind of insanity that is Awesomesquad! Assemble!.

—

The Bus lurched forward and threw everyone into their seats. Over the sound of the revving engine, I heard the pounding of Lady Gaga’s horse hoof heels  and the dragging of her tail on the roof of the Awesomebus!. Jessie made a sharp right turn that sent Damien and the Knifemaster spilling into the aisle and made me slam my head into the window. There was a loud banging overhead that sounded like Lady Gaga losing her balance. The sound came towards me, and when I looked out the window, I saw Gaga’s face staring back at me. My scream was accompanied by the screams of the rest of my team.

I and the rest of my team fell to the floor of the Awesomebus!, still screaming,  and I watched as Lady Gaga’s head crashed through the window, showering me with the shards of glass.

“Baby,” Gaga joked as she looked down at me with her head through the broken window, “You and me could write a bad romance.”

“I don’t know about the romance part,” I snapped back at her as I pulled out a throwing knife, “but I absolutely agree that our story would be terrible.”  I threw the my knife at Gaga’s face, but she ducked her head back out the window, causing me to miss her entirely. The knife clanged off the metal ceiling and ricocheted into the seat behind me.

“Hey! That hit me dick stain!” Everett’s voice cried.

“What did you just call me?!” I shouted back, partially impressed that he would say that to me.

Overhead, despite Jessie’s erratic driving which was causing everyone inside the bus to cling to the seats, Gaga’s hoof shoes could be heard stomping across the roof. Her stomps stopped at the center of the bus, and right as Jessie swerved the bus to dodge a pedestrian, Gaga’s dagger like tail plunged through the metal roof. We all screamed. The Knifemaster panicked. In an attempt to run for the door, he tripped over his own feet and fell on his face in the aisle. The tip of Gaga’s tail expanded, creating something resembling the hooks of our grappling hooks, and lodged itself in the metal ceiling.

The Knifemaster screamed a high pitch- eight year old girl scream, and flailed helplessly on the floor.

Standing up from the floor in front of my seat, still bracing myself on the seat in front of me, I yelled, “Knifemaster, stop screaming and get up.” Then, I commanded to the rest of my team, “Jessie, turn on our sirens so that people hear and see us coming.Knifemaster, and Criss, dislodge her tail.” I then looked at Everett and his bleeding arm and added, “What the shit happened to you?”

“YOU HIT ME WITH YOUR THROWING KNIFE,ASSHOLE!”

“Right,” I replied, “Well, my bad. Clean yourself up and then help Criss and the Knifemaster.

“What are you going to be doing,” Criss asked.

I walked towards him, pulled his communicator off of his wrist and put it on my own and said, “The same thing that I did last time: Giving Gaga what she wants.Damien and Series of Japanese Symbols, I need both of you to keep an eye on what’s going on in here and on top of the bus.  ”

“But what if her tail attacks us?” The Knifemaster asked.

I pointed to Criss’s communicator and answered, “Damien or Series will let me know, and I will do something awful to distract her, like tackle her and start making out with her or something.”

Several “ews” escaped my teammates lips, but I held out my fist and said, “For Raul.”

A somber look befell my teammates faces. One at a time, they placed their hands on mine and repeated, “For Raul.” We held our hands there for a quiet second (well, quiet other than the screeching of the Awesomebus!’s tires, the blaring of it’s siren, or Lady Gaga’s feet stomping above our head), and when we let go, everyone did as I commanded. I grabbed some extra ammo from the ammunition trunk in the seat behind Jessie’s, and then exited through the door and swung myself onto the roof.

The wind made it hard for me to stand up straight, but it was better than trying to stand up on the side of the Awesomecopter! like I did the year before, so I managed to do it.

Lady Gaga stood at the other end of the Awesomebus!’s roof, unsurprised by the fact that I had climbed up to fight her, and through her smirk, she called over the sirens, “C’mon, baby. Take a bite of my bad girl meat.”

“You’re really not helping to dispel that rumor about you having a penis when you say things like that, you know,” I quipped back at her.

I was expecting her to say something back, but instead, she pounced. I dove and slid under her. I spun my body around and managed to stop myself before I reached the edge of the roof. I stood back up and squinted as the wind smacked my face. Through my peripheral vision, I saw the streets lined with gawkers and tourists- shooting at Gaga could possibly result in a civilian getting hurt. I wasn’t going to let that happen. We already lost Raul to this crazed alien, not to mention how many followers of hers that were either injured or dead because she told them to attack us, I wasn’t going to be responsible for any more casualties.

But before I could pull out my taser, the only nonlethal weapon that has worked on her in the past, she shrieked and began to whip her tail around. The several screams that I heard come from inside the Awesomebus! assured me that The Knifemaster and Criss had at least tried to remove her tail, and The Knifemaster’s panicked voice over Criss’s wrist communicator confirmed it. Knowing what I unfortunately had to do, I dove at Lady Gaga.

She was so distracted with her tail that she wasn’t able to block me as I dove at her. I’m still not sure how, but I managed to tackle, Gaga’s thin yet impossibly heavy frame. We crashed down right behind the windshield, on top of the Awesomebus!’s siren lights, crushing them and silencing the siren. Sparks flew out from under Gaga, and she howled in pain. With one firm kick, she both knocked the wind out of me (again) and sent me flying towards the back of the bus. I slid, but this time I wasn’t so lucky, and fell off the back. I clung on to the edge of the Awesomebus!’s roof as I scrambled to find a proper foothold and get air back in my lungs. Lady Gaga’s sharp, jet black tail removed itself from the roof and wrapped around my waist. With a forceful tug, I was up in the air and face to face with an amused Lady Gaga.

“I know you’re mad about your friend,” she said as she looked deep into my eyes, “I want your lovin’; I want your revenge.”

I felt a burning just under my skin. My face went hot. I tried to control myself, but her even mentioning Raul made me clench my teeth with rage. My hands were free and clenched into fists. I could have hit her; she was within my reach, but I knew that’s what she wanted me to do. Instead, I spat in her open mouth.

She swallowed it, smiled, and said, “Baby, you’re sick.”

Her tail tightened around my body, squeezing the air out of my lungs. Then, she raised me up into the air and slammed me down into the roof of the Awesomebus!. Gaga slammed me down on the roof five times before I was able to free my Taser. I could taste the blood leaking out of my lower lip, and could feel it trickling from my nose. With one last flick of her tail, lady Gaga tossed me into the air and over her head. I landed on my back at the front of the Awesomebus! roof with my head against the windshield. My head hit the windshield hard, and for a second I my vision blurred to the point where I could only make out Gaga’s form above me.

She dropped down on me, pinning my legs to the roof with hers, lowered her mouth to my ear and whispered seductively, “You know that I want you. You know that I need you. I want it bad, bad, bad.”

Then, she stuck her long, snakelike tongue out of her mouth and ran it up and down my cheek. Jessie started to swerve the bus more  erraticly, so Gaga’s tongue was sliding all over my face. From inside the Awesomebus!, I heard the panicked screams of my crew. I couldn’t see if Gaga’s tail was back inside the bus, but at that moment, I realized that my arms were against the cold metal roof. My cloak was covering the windshield.

“Ugh!,” I cried as I pushed her back and tried to sit up, “You’re right. I know that you want me, and honestly, I can’t blame you: I’m really fucking hot. Hell, you’re lucky that you don’t have to fight other women for me.”

“Oh, no,” she replied as she pushed me back down, “Only one hive is allowed to choose from their chosen planet. My Hive claimed this planet many Earth centuries ago.”

“I meant human women, fist of all,” I added, annoyed, “But that’s not even my point. What I’m trying to say is that I’m not ready for this kind of relationship. We can still be friends, though.”

The expression on her face hardened. Her hands, which were on my shoulders, tightened their grip to the point where her nails were digging into my skin through my cloak and protective vest. Into the rushing wind, and over the revving bus engine and the screams of terrified pedestrians, she roared, “I DON’T WANNA BE FRIENDS!!!”

Gaga slapped me hard across the cheek, and I felt her nails tear into my flesh. My blood warmed my icy cheeks as it poured out of my wounds. Then, she pinned both of my hands down and opened her mouth wide. She stuck out her tongue again. But this time, it was rigid and dagger-like. While keeping her head perfectly still, her tongue lunged at me. I was able to dodge her tongue’s stabs, but just barely.

There was a rush of unmuffled screaming to my right. I assumed that Jessie had opened his window. Or at least I would have if I wasn’t avoiding being stabbed by Lady Gaga’s tongue.

“Minigan, You’re cloak’s covering the windshield! I cannot see!” Jessie’s voice yelled at me.

“I’m kind of preoccupied at the moment Jessie!” I screamed back at Jessie, the panic in my voice being completely unintentional, “Use the windshield wipers or something!”

I heard the hum and squeaking of the windshield above my head as I dodged Gaga’s tongue once again.

“I still can’t see!” Jessie cried, “We need the siren to warn the pedestrians!”

“Well, the siren’s bloody broken, isn’t it?” Damien’s voice retorted, “So just get the fucking cape out of the way.”

“I’ve got an idea!” The Knifemaster’s voice shouted, “We’ll blast music! That will get people’s attention!”

“But you still need to get the cloak out of the way, Jessie! You’re gonna kill someone!” I heard Everett shout.

“I’m trying!” I heard Jessie shout back as he careened down the busy thoroughfare, ramming parked cars and narrowly missing pedestrians, “but the windshield wipers aren’t working!

I jerked my head to the right and Gaga’s tongue missed my face by an inch.

“That’s because you’re not trying to whisk away water, you idiot!” Damien’s voice screamed, “That’s Minigan’s cloak! Try something else!”

“Yeaaaaaah-aaaah aaah-eh-ah! It’s a Party in the USA!”

“TURN OFF THAT FUCKING SONG, KNIFEMASTER!” I roared as I dodged Gaga’s thin scaly tongue a second time.

“Now isn’t really the time to argue music choices, Minigan!” He shouted back with I’m guessing a smirk on his stupid face.”

“JUST DO IT!” I shouted as I freed a hand from Gaga’s Herculean grip and punched her hard in the jaw. It had no effect, except making my knuckles sore.

“Oh baby,” she cooed with her long pointed tongue, “You’ve got me wonderin’ why I like it rough.”

“JESSIE, DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE CLOAK!”

“I CAN’T!”

“Na na na na na na na/ We’re gonna start a fight!”

“Minigan,” Jessie yelled to me, You need to move your cloak! I cannot see where I’m going!”

“Not that song, Knifemaster,” I heard Damien shout, “change it to ‘Fuck You’ at least.”

Criss shouted, “Why is the music the one thing that everyone is focused on, when our leader is fighting a  shape shifting monster on the roof of a bus speeding down the streets of Hollywood?!?!”

“How do you even know that we’re in Hollywood?” Everett yelled as he reached outside the bus and tried to push my cloak out of the way with a broom.

“I see you drivin’  round town with the girl I love and I’m like, Fuck you (ooh, ooh, ooh!)”

“Because I have enough of a brain to look out the side windows to see where we’re going, unlike this sad excuse for a Jessie James descendant,” Criss quipped back.

“Hey!” Jessie shouted.

I screamed down into the hole in the roof, “Gaga’s still on top of me you di-“

Lady Gaga wrapped her fingers around my neck and forced my head down against the windshield. The sudden sting on the back of my head made me grunt a little. But the grunted ended up sounding more like a scream, because I could feel Lady Gaga’s fingers melt around my neck. Okay, ‘melt’ isn’t the right word. But I did feel as the bones of her fingers went soft on my throat and her human feeling skin turned cold and sticky. I felt the same feeling on both of my wrists somehow. Her (what I assume were) tentacle-fingers stretched and twisted around my neck and wrists, and slithered around my face. Her grip tightened, and I could feel my larynx pinch shut. Panicking, I did my best to buck Gaga off of me, but due to her impossible weight and boney structure, I merely squirmed like a mouse in the paws of a hungry cat. The world around me started to spin; I wasn’t sure if it was because of Gaga suffocating me or because Jessie’s insane blind driving. I opened my mouth and gasped for oxygen, fighting desperately to suck some of the precious gas down my windpipe. Then I felt Gaga’s sticky, slimy, tentacle-fingers slide in. Instinctively, I bit down. Hard. She let out a wild, angry shriek, and her tentacle-fingers released their literal stranglehold on my throat. Jessie made a sharp left turn, which threw Gaga off of me and almost off of the bus, and I gasped up lungfuls of sweet, sweet air. That was the happiest I had ever been to be breathing L.A. smog.

Unfortunately for me, that smog induced euphoria was short lived, as Lady Gaga was back on top of me in a flash. She grinned a very toothy grin as she said to me, “That’s right, show me your teeth.”

“Minigan, for the love of God, Move your cloak!”

“I CAN’T! I’M PINNED DOWN!”

Just then, Series of Japanese Symbols popped his head out from one of the windows and over the top of the bus. Instead of helping me like he should have been doing, he just yelled nonsense at us.

“What are you saying, goddamit?”

He shouted another bout of unintelligible garbage at me while Lady Gaga turned her head and listened to what he had to say.

After he was finished yelling and pointing ahead of us, Gaga turned to me, whipped her disheveled hair out of her face, and said, “He said that we’re headed right for that wall.”

“And how can you understand him,” I shouted, annoyed, at Lady Gaga.

“How can you not?” she replied in a serious tone.

“Why the fuck can every- wait a second, what wall?”

That question was immediately answered by Jessie driving the Awesomebus! through a wall. Within seconds, Lady Gaga was knocked off of me, and I just managed to raise my arms over my face before pieces of brick crashed down on top of me. I heard the terrified screams of the bystanders who were going about their normal business before we came barreling through the walls.

Jessie slammed on the breaks, and I went tumbling over the hood the Awesomebus! and onto the hard, polished floor. I rolled to a stop, but was back up on my feet almost immediately, even if the fall had disoriented me a little.

I looked around the room and realized that Lady Gaga was suspiciously absent. But my attention was soon focused on what was in the room. As it turns out, Jessie crashed the Awesomebus! into a concert hall and stopped it on the stage. In front of me, filling the seats of the auditorium were hundreds upon hundreds of men in tuxedos and women in dresses. At the front of the stage, a good twenty feet away from me, were a confused looking Anne Hathaway and a terrified and stiff looking James Franco. What the hell are they doing here? I asked myself, Aren’t they supposed to be hosting the- Oh God…

“Uh, guys?” I said into my wrist communicator as I stared into the crowd of well-dressed and attractive people, “I think we just crashed the Academy Awards.”

“Minigan,” Damien warned urgently, “Whatever you do, do not whip your dick out this time.”

“Fuck you, Damien.”

“Holy Tit- Nazis!,” The Knifemaster exclaimed through the wrist communicator, ” We’re at the Oscars?!”

The Knifemaster kicked through the door of the Awesomebus! And stepped out onto the stage. He excitedly looked out into the crowd of famous faces. After about a second or two of this, however, his shoulders dropped and he added disappointedly, “Oh, I’m already bored.”

Ignoring his outburst, I looked out into the crowd of faces and TV cameras. In an instant, that sensation of excitement I felt when I fought Limbaugh and Maher on TV back in 2009 washed over me, filling me with a feeling importance. Confidently, I strode to the microphone, pushed Franco and Hathaway to the side, and announced, “Attention, ladies and gentlemen, I am leader of the group known as Awesomesquad!, and we are currently looking for Lady Gaga. She is actually an alien hell bent on kidnapping me and taking me off to her planet to help her repopulate her hive. I want to capture her before she captures me.” I paused for a moment to take in what I had just said, and then I continued, “OK, now that I’ve said it out loud, it sounds incredibly stupid, but I swear to you that it’s the truth.” The people in the crowd murmured to one another, not sure if I was an act or if I had actually crashed the Oscars, so I yelled, “I’m serious. She is a shape shifting monster and she needs to be stopped!” I looked to Anne Hathaway and asked, “Did you see her?”

She shook her head no. All the color had drained from her face, and I knew that it was because I was ruining her big night. But then I saw the envelope in her hand.

“What’s that one for?” I asked.

“Best Picture,” she replied quietly and without moving her lips much at all.

“Oh Sweet! Can I read it?!” I asked right before I snatched the envelope out of her hand. She looked around the room in confusion and almost in tears. Seeing this, I bowed to her and said, “Thank you for the honor, your Majesty. I’m sure everyone in Genovia is quite proud.”

This made her laugh, as well as some of the audience members, but everyone still seemed confused. But that didn’t really matter at the moment because I was selling this shit. My heart swelled. I understood why celebrities wanted the attention they recieved.

“Hey Min- er- Boss,” Coco Montoya’s voice rang through my wrist speaker and unfortunately, through the auditorium, “Try to get a sample of Hugh Jackman’s blood.” “I have some theories about how to replicate his healing abilities,” he added in such a way that I couldn’t help but be suspicious.

“Hugh Jackman doesn’t really have Wolverine’s regeneration capabilities, Coco. Be realistic.” I said into my wrist communicator and the microphone. I then looked to Mr. Jackman, who was grinning up at me from his seat, and reassured him, “I promise, Mr. Jackman, I will not be trying to steal any of your blood tonight. I don’t even have a vial to collect your totally not-mutant blood. I’m only here to announce the winner of the Best Picture, not take your blood.”

I was getting more laughs, but then the door to the Awesomebus! was kicked open again, and Damien and Everett stepped out and onto the stage.

They came up behind me and Damien asked in a whisper, “Minigan, what the hell are you doing?”

“I’m about to give the award for best picture,” I announce both to him and into the microphone.

“We just crashed a bus through the Kodak Theater, and you want hang around and hand out an Oscar?!” Everett shouted as his voice echoed through the concert hall.

Some more of the audience laughed.

I paused for a moment to look down at the envelope in my hand and then to Everett before I stated, “Yes.” Just about all of the audience laughed this time. They were beginning to think that this was all a part of the show, which was a fact that I could thankfully work in my favor. I raised the envelope and announced into the microphone, “And the winner is…”

But right as I was about to tear it, Franco grabbed onto my  burnt and cut up wrist. I suppressed the overwhelming urge to punch him in the throat. Unflinching of my glare, Franco calmly stated, “That is Stephen Spielberg’s job.”

“That old fossil made an Indiana Jones movie with aliens in it!” The Knifemaster shouted, “That practically almost ruined the franchise! The only things we’ve ruined is a debate and, well, this building. We  absolutely deserve this more!”

“No, I don’t think so.” Franco retorted as he reached for the envelope in my hand.

However, before he could reach it, The Knifemaster let out a furious roar and tackled him to the ground. James Franco and Anne Hathaway cried for help as the Knifemaster wrestled Franco into a submission hold and the audience came to life with laughter. Hathaway stood perfectly still, absolutely terrified that if she tried to escape, she would suffer the same fate as Franco, who was being sat on by a large man in tactical black clothing.

I turned back to the audience and repeated, “And the winner is…”

I opened the envelope. The King’s Speech. Fuck that. Inception was way better.

“Inception!” I cried out to the crowd.

The crowd erupted with applause, and a taken aback Christopher Nolan stood up and headed for the stage.

“Wait! He’s lying,” That damned Anne Hathaway called after looking over my shoulder at the envelope. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Nolan,” that stupid, honest woman apologized, “But the real winner is The King’s Speech.”

I pushed her out of the way of the microphone and lied, “Don’t listen to her. She went crazy after ‘Rachel Getting Married.’ Trust me, the winner is ‘Inception.”

“No!” Hathaway yelled, “It really is the King’s Speech. Why are you guys listening to him? He just crashed through the wall with a shoddily painted schoolbus!”

“None of this has been planned!” Franco painfully yelled from under the Knifemaster, “Anne is telling the truth!”

“Hey!” Brad Pitt yelled as he stood up from his seat in the crowd, “This is a respectable award show that honors the great works of art from the past year. You just can’t decide to choose a different winner!”

“Well, no one asked you, Benjamin Button,” I quipped to Pitt, “So sit back down and continue to grind your molars like you always do.”

“Mate,” Damien whispered harshly into my ear, “He produced Kick Ass. Do you want to destroy my chance at working on Kick Ass 2?

I laughed at the idea of that movie getting a sequel (and told Damien so) and then looked back down at Pitt. To my surprise, he did as he was told, sat back down and angrily ground his molars. However, his outburst emboldened Hathaway, who pushed her way back to the microphone.”

“Security!” She shrieked, her eyes wide with panic and probably crazy, “Stop these me-aaaahhhhh!”

Without warning, The Knifemaster jumped to his feet and shot his Taser at Hathaway. The electric probes shot from his gun and into her stomach, causing the respected actress to crash to the floor in a convulsing mess.

“What the shit, Knifemaster?”I yelled at my obviously crazed second in command.

“What?” he answered, “You wanted to give out the award.”

Angry protests rang out from the crowd. Christopher Nolan and the rest of the cast of Inception slouched down in their seats. I guessed it was because they were on our side.

“This is dastardly!” George Clooney yelled from the aisle, ‘You are monsters!”

“I promise you that Anne Hathaway is fine,” I announced over their protests, “My idiotic cohort here just gets a little over excited is all.”

“Not that!” Clooney shouted back, “How could you attempt to disgrace such an important and historical event as the Academy Awards?!”

“Wait… What?!”

“You heard me!” Clooney snapped back, “You have no right to choose the winner of the Best Picture Award!”

“You know what,” Damien interjected to Clooney, much to my surprise, “You can piss off, Bat-Nipples.” Then, noticing my shock from under my hood, he whispered, “It’s OK, no one outside of Hollywood other than middle aged women like him anyway.”

Then, Criss, Series of Japanese Symbols, and, in an act of total stupidity, Jessie rushed out of the bus to see what was going on. Well, shit. I looked back to the crowd and found Sandra Bullock seething in her seat.

“Well, We’re leaving now.” I shouted over the crowd’s protests, “Have a good-“

“JESSIE JAMES, I’M GONNA KILL YOU” Sandra Bullock roared as she jumped from her seat and into the aisle. She ran (as fast as she could considering her heels) towards the stage, and a mob of angry A- listers followed.

I backed up and joined my team at the center of the stage. Frantically, Everett pulled out several smoke-and-flash bombs, and threw them at each of the stairs that lead up to the stage. Each bomb exploded and sent up a curtain of smoke that concealed the stage from the audience. Then, just as the bombs are supposed to, several bright flashing lights shot up through the smoke and blinded anyone unfortunate enough to be nearby. I heard several screams and thuds, which told me that the smoke-and-flash bombs had blinded some celebrities enough to make them tumble back down the stairs, hopefully taking several other celebrities with them.

“What the bloody hell were you thinking, Jessie and Criss?!” Damien scolded, “You both know you’re recognizeable. And Jessie, you knew damn well that your ex-wife was going to be here. Why would you even think to step out of the bus?!”

“I thought I could help!” Jessie cried back.

“You’re only job is to drive!” Damien snapped, “How exactly were you going to help us by leaving the bus?!”

“Hey” I shouted at Team Pugnastics as I saw the first few celebrities come through the smoke, “Let’s just get out of here alive. Then we can chastise Jessie for being an idiot.”

My team agreed, and rushed to the bus. They all managed to get inside safely, but as soon as I reached the door, a strong hand grabbed me by the shoulder and threw me backwards. I landed hard on my back several yards away from the Awesomebus!. I reached for my grappling gun so that I could shoot it at the bus, but a well-polished shoe kicked it out of my hand.

“I don’t think so.” George Clooney said as he squinted down at me, “I know your tricks, cloaked man. I’ve read the news about you, I watched you fight that monster Limbaugh, but most importantly, I’ve played Batman before.”

“Then you should be expecting this!” A female voice shouted from behind Clooney.

I heard a faint clicking sound, and then a much louder clicking sound. From behind Clooney, I watched as the hook to my grappling hook shot up into the air and snagged itself on the rafters. After about a second, Clooney shot up into the air, ass first, with the gun firmly attached to his belt.

I looked down from where Clooney was screaming and swinging in the rafters, to the face of my rescuer, and saw that it was Ellen Page. She reached out her hand, grabbed mine, and quickly pulled me to my feet.

“Thank you, Miss Page,” I said in partial shock that a celebrity would be good hearted enough to actually save me (Jessie and Criss don’t count as celebrities because they’re a mechanic and a magician, respectively).

“Call me Ellen,” she replied with her crooked smirk, “Besides, you tried to make a movie that I was in win the Best Picture Oscar. That makes you a hero in my book.”

“Well, I really thought it was the best picture,” I said modestly, “But I totally agree with you about me being a hero, because I am.”

She laughed, but her laugh was cut short by a growing roar coming from behind her. Her eyes grew wide with fear, and she dove out of the way. Page’s small frame was replaced by the monstrous Hugh Jackman, who was charging at me with what were obviously dinner knives lodged between his fingers.

Jackman roared, “WOLVERINE!!!” and began to take swipes at me.  I narrowly dodged each swipe by either jumping backwards or rolling under his swinging arms.

“Ellen!” I cried as I ducked under one of Jackman’s swipes and punched him in the stomach. It did nothing. “Help!”

Ellen, still sitting on the ground, but was slowly scooting away. Realizing that she wasn’t moving fast enough got back up and started to run away. “Sorry,” she called back, “But I’ve gotta pick my battles, you know!”

“But you picked this battle! You just hung George Clooney from the rafters!”

“Clooney is an easy fight,” she yelled back, “I bet his next girlfriend will be able to kick his ass. Besides, I might work with Hugh again in the future!” and with that, she disappeared into the backstage area.

Jackman took another swing at me, and this time I did a back flip to dodge it. When I landed we were several feet away from each other. Taking a chance, I charged. Hugh widened his stance and opened his arms so that he could swing at me as soon as I was close enough. To his surprise, however, I dropped to the floor and slid between his legs. Then his legs came crashing in around me and pushed the air out of my lungs. Hugh threw a knife riddled punch down at me. Without any hesitation, I pulled my serrated knife from its ankle sheath and stabbed Hugh right in his hand. He jumped back, dropped the knives and let out a pained scream.

“You stabbed me, you bastard!” he cried as he clutched his bleeding hand.

“You were about to stab me, dick hole!” I shouted back.

And then I saw it, despite how he was feet away from me, and despite how he was clutching his hand, I still watched in horror and amazement as his hand healed. Just like fucking Wolverine.

“You’ve gotta be shitting me.”

I got up, much faster that I thought possible, and with the bloody knife still in my hand, ran back towards the Awesomebus!. It was surrounded. My team was inside shooting celebrities with their remaining tranquilizer darts. Pulling out my own, I shot at the mob of A-list celebrities.  I emptied what was left in the magazine into the crowd, and managed to take out Gwenyth Paltrow, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Meryl Streep, and Mark Wahlberg.

I jumped onto the back of the Awesomebus! and yelled through the smashed window, “Drive!”

Jessie threw the gear into reverse and hit the gas. Instantly, my face was rubbing the cold steel armor plating on the back of the bus. From the speakers inside the bus came “Party Poison” from My Chemical Romance for some reason. Careful not to lose my grip, I spun around and yelled for the stage hands and miscellaneous celebrities to get out of the path. Halle Berry was one such celebrity, who managed to run out of the gaping hole the Awesomebus! had created and dove off to the side, despite wearing high heeled shoes and a very fluffy and delicate looking light pink dress.

“This ain’t a Party!/ Get off the dance floor/ You wanna get down/ Here comes the gang war…”

“I’m sorry about that, Miss Berry!” I called to her as Jessie backed the Awesomebus out of the building, made it turn sharply, and then threw it in drive and floored it again. As we sped off, I called back to her, “By the way, you look phenominal tonight!”

“So keep your cars and your dogs and your famous friends…”

It was not well lit in that alleyway, but I’m pretty sure she smiled at me. Awesome.

The Awesomebus! sped through the alleyway and under a building adjoining the Dolby Theater, and then made a sharp right onto a main road. I turned back around and yelled in to Everett, “Take this knife from me and put it in a sterile bag. Coco wants to experiment on that blood.”

“You actually stabbed Hugh Jackman!?” Everett cried which made everyone turn around and look at me.

“You stabbed him?!” Damien shouted angrily.

“How is it possible for you to stab him and not be murdered?!” Everett asked.

“How is it even possible that you were able to stab him in the first place?”Criss added.

Series of Japanese symbols said something. I think it might have been another question.

“Because,” The Knifemaster answered in awe, “Minigan’s a total badass.”

“Exactly,” I added as I handed the bloody knife through the window, over the cage of bound and squirming Lady Gaga followers, and to Everett.

He put it in an evidence bag that we had left over from the Awesomecopter! crash and stowed it into the trunk. I breathed a sigh of relief; this fight was over. It wasn’t a win for us, what with us losing Raul, but we did manage to capture three of Lady Gaga’s monsters, so now we could at least try and find a way to cure them. Plus, I was able to get some of Hugh Jackman’s magic healing blood, so we might never have to deal with another loss again. So long, thrill of the fight!

Jessie turned off the music and pulled me out of my thoughts by calling, “We’ve got a problem. The LAPD has been notified of our mishap at the Dolby Theater tonight, and are now looking for us.”

And just like that, my feeling of relief was gone. In the distance, I could hear the police sirens growing louder. I climbed over the shards of broken glass still attached to the window frame, and jumped over the cage. Once I had landed in the aisle, I ran to the front of the Awesomebus! and to Jessie’s side.

“GMZ is working on locating the nearest police vehicles,” he said to me without taking his focus off the road. He then pointed to our GPS system and continued, “He’ll upload their locations as soon as he gets them, but for now we’ll need to keep an eye out for police cars as we make our getaway.”

I turned back to my tired and beaten group of fighters. This was the first time that I was able to get a good look at any of them since we escaped Lady Gaga’s ambush. Everett’s lips was swollen and bloody,  Damien had several long scratches going down his forearms and across his face, The Knifemaster had blood trickling down around his ear from somewhere on the side of his head, and Series of Japanese Symbols had a swollen eye, a bloody nose, and several bruises on his forearms and neck. Each of them wore a worn look upon their faces, probably from the loss of Raul.

I could hear the sirens grow louder and I knew we were running out of time. “Guys,” I said, pulling them out of their thoughts, “We need to keep an eye out for the LAPD because of what happened at the Oscars tonight. Chances are they’re not happy with us crashing the Oscars and then incapacitating many prominent Hollywood actors.”

“They should be thanking us because we actually made the Oscars watchable this year,” Everett said with a slight smirk.

This made the other members of the team chuckle a little, including (surprisingly) Damien, who added while chuckling, “I cannot believe you told Brad Pitt to sit back down and grind his molars.”

“I can’t believe you called George Clooney, ‘Bat-Nipples,’” I replied with a grin. We all laughed out loud at this. Unfortunately, our laughter was cut short by the howling of police sirens and the flash of Red and blue lights.

Jessie nervously called back to us, “Uh, guys, they found us!”

No shit.

“How did they even find us?!” The Knifemaster cried out.

“Because we’re in a major U.S. city and driving around in an armor covered modified school bus with Awesomesquad! painted down the side.” Damien snapped, “How do you bloody think?”

“Ok, calm down,” I said firmly to Damien. To the rest of the group, I announced, “Alright, we’ve always known that this scenario could be a likely outcome of what we do. That’s why we’ve always planned for this. So everyone, get to your stations.”

Everyone did as I told. Everett rushed up to our supplies trunk and pulled out as many of the flash and smoke bombs as he could handle, and carefully walked to the back of the bus with them. Series of Japanese Symbols did the same. The Knifemaster, after Everett and Series had passed, hurried to the front of the bus and got on the phone to talk to Team Prevention. Criss and Damien grabbed paintball guns from the trunk and then joined Everett and Series in the back.

Satisfied with my team’s calm response (especially considering how some of them panicked when Gaga had stuck her tail through the roof), I turned back around to Jessie and asked, “Where are we, and how many of them are on our tail.”

“We’re on the Hollywood Freeway headed north, and so far only two.”

“We’re on the what?!”

“OK we’re not really on the Hollywood Freeway, we’re actually just next to it,” he replied as he pointed out the window, “We actually on Cahuenga Boulevard. Don’t worry- I’ve got a plan.”

“You better.” I stated, “Because barreling down a freeway is stupid when the cops are on your tail.”

“Trust me,” he answered with a confident grin. He then called to the entire team, “Hold on, everybody, we’re about to make some very sharp turns!”

Jessie kept his promise. Almost immediately, he hit the brakes and turned the bus to the right. We were then on a sloped road, and Jessie drove straight through at a stop sign, causing a car to swerve out of our way. He made another sharp right and floored it across the overpass. The Knifemaster was so preoccupied with the argument he was having on the phone that he nearly fell out of his chair. Jessie then ran another damn stop sign (making another driver honk angrily at us) and turned left onto a winding one lane road on the side of the Hollywood hills.”

“You’re taking us on Mulholland Drive, you idiot?!?!” I screamed as I saw the street sign, “I’d rather us be on the Hollywood Freeway! A mountain road that goes on forever isn’t exactly the smartest place to out run the cops when you’re driving a fucking bus Jessie!”

“Trust me.” Jessie answered, “This is going to work.”

“Don’t call me a crazy asshole, Phlegm,” The Knifemaster shouted into the phone, “I told you, Mom and Dad don’t watch the Oscars, so they’ll never know it was me!”

“BUT YOU GUYS CAUSED SUCH A SCENE THAT THERE IS NO WAY YOU WON’T BE ON THE NEWS TOMORROW YOU MORON!” I heard Phlegm shout through the phone, “AND YOU KNOW FULL DAMN WELL THAT THEY WATCH THAT!”

The engine of the Awesomebus whined as we sped up the hillside. I looked out the side mirrors. We had four cops chasing us now. Shit. The four members of Team Pugnastics waited silently in the back, holding until I gave them the go ahead to drop the smoke bombs and fire the paintball guns. But I couldn’t do that until GMZ is able to redirect the cops and give us an escape route.

I grabbed the phone from the Knifemaster and said to Phlegm, “Phlegm, I know you’re pissed right now, but you need to either calm down or leave the Watch Tower because we need to get the LAPD off of our tail.”

Phlegm growled, but obeyed, and the next voice I heard was GMZ’s.

“Okay,” he said with a sigh of relief, “I posted on the forums of 4chan the radio line that the LAPD uses and a request to throw them off of your trail. All you need to do is lose the ones that are following you, and get to Multiview drive. From there, you can get back on the Hollywood freeway and head north back to Base. But you’re still a few miles away, and according to my map, you still have to pass three streets that cops can show up on, so be on the lookout.”

“Thanks GMZ,” I said before I hung up and relayed the information given to me to Jessie. I then turned back to Everett, Series, Criss, and Damien and called, “Let’em rip!”

Damien and Criss began firing their paintball guns at the the front two police car winshields. The screeching of the tires told me that the paintballs were obscuring the drivers’s sight. Looking through the side mirror, I could see that they had fallen behind. I then watched as Everett and Criss threw two smoke bombs each into the road. Almost instantly, a wall of fog formed thick enough to hide the us from the police.

“Jessie, hit it!” I commanded.

As if he had been waiting to do this his entire life, Jessie pressed the little green button on the steering wheel. There came a clanking sound from the back of the bus, which was followed by a couple of seconds of light clinking of tiny pieces of metal hitting pavement, and then followed by the same clanking sound. Back out the side window, I saw a bar of shimmering pavement rush away from us. Now in the distance, the cop cars had made it through the smoke and were now speeding back up to catch us. That was a bad idea. As soon as they ran over that shimmery strip of pavement, their tires exploded and sparks erupted from the front wheel wells. Both leading cars swerved to a stop, and the following cars crashed into their rears.

The bus erupted with cheers. It actually worked! Escaping might be easier than we thought!

And then I heard the familiar whirring of the roto-blades of a helicopter. Shit. The street around the speeding Awesomebus! was illuminated by an overhead spot light.

An echoing voice from the helicopter rang out in the would-be silent night, “You in the armored bus: Stop! You are evading the police and resisting arrest. If you stop now, we will not use excessive force to arrest you.”

I doubted that. Jessie took a sharp left bend fast, and the squeal of the Awesomebus!’s tires echoed into the night. Then, three more police cars appeared, joining the helicopter in the chase. Jessie, Damien, Everett, Series, and Jessie did their thing, and were able to stop those police cruisers as well. I looked at the GPS map and was not relieved. There was another road coming up soon, and another one right after that. I doubted we had enough smoke bombs to make through those two intersections, let alone the rest of the way to Multiview Drive, which was still about one long, winding mile away. Not to mention we still had two intersections left to cross after these two.

Making a quick decision, I commanded to Damien, Criss, Series, and Everett to stand down. We passed the next road. I commanded to Jessie to release more of the tire shredders. He obeyed. Luckily for us, no police cars pulled out behind us that time.

“Jessie,” I announced, “I need you to do that at every intersection. That will keep the cops from following us. Now we just need to get rid of the helicopter.”

“I’ve got an idea for that!” Jessie replied excitedly. At least he was enjoying this. “The cloaking device Everett and I worked on. It won’t work for cars chasing us, because they’ll be too close, but for a helicopter, it might just make them lose us. All we need is to make them lose sight of us…”

We passed the second intersection and Jessie dropped more tire shredders. A cop car pulled out behind us, but was almost instantly stopped because of the Jessie’s trap.

“Smoke bombs!” The Knifemaster interjected, “If we throw the smoke bombs out the front of the bus, we can drive through the smoke, turn on the cloaking device, and then slow down or stop or something, and then the-“

“helicopter will be expecting us to be going the same speed and they will lose us!” I added, “Brilliant! Everett, Series, bring the rest of the smoke bombs up to the front and help the Knifemaster and I throw them out in front of the bus!”

They both looked confused, but they obeyed, and as soon as they made it to the front, I explained the plan. We each took two smoke bombs, and together we threw them out the windows and infront of the bus. The bombs exploded into a plume of smoke, and Jessie slammed on the breaks. The flood light passed over us, just as planned, and Jessie hit a button on the dashboard. I didn’t hear anything that indicated a change, but Jessie started driving again, so I assumed that it worked.

“Knifemaster,” Jessie commanded in a hushed tone, call up Team Prevention and see if anyone on 4chan is helping to redirect the police.”

“And get bitched at again? No thanks.”

“Knifemaster!” I snapped.

He handed the phone to me and smiled.

I scowled at him, put the phone up to my ear and asked, “Did the forum thing work, GMZ?”

“Sort of,” he replied cautiously, “Mostly people are using it to troll the LAPD, but there are some people that are sending cops on wild goose chases. There are still a few police cars in your area, though, so be cautious.”

“OK, just let us know if anything new develops,” I said to him.

“You do the same.”

We were going the speed limit now, about thirty miles an hour, and pulling up to a stop sign. I looked out the window and saw the Helicopter circling nearby, so I knew that we could still be caught. Jessie stopped, drove through the intersection without incident, and then released more tire shredders. Within a minute, we had made it to Multiview Drive. Jessie, in a feat of surprising brilliance, turned the Awesomebus! onto Multiview, then backed up so that we were facing the direction we came, and released more tire shredders to throw any lingering police off our trail. We made it through the neighborhood and onto the freeway without incident, and made our way back to the Awesomebase!.

—

~Villianous Interlude~

[An Hour Earlier]

Halle Berry sat smiling at Minigan as he complemented her as he and his cohorts sped off. Many of her fellow movie stars rushed out of the gaping hole in the wall and tried to chase the bus down, but it was too late: they were gone. Halle’s smile instantly faded.

“I’m going to call the police! Steven Speilberg shouted, “How dare they steal the limelight from me!”

Halle ignored him, got up, and began to walk up the alley way. She made it to the first building and turned sharply around the corner. Instantly, she was met by a towering figure in a black cloak.

“Did you plant the tracking device?” a cold sounding voice from under the cloak asked.

“Yes,” Berry answered as she morphed back into Lady Gaga, “I attached it to the back of Minigan’s cloak when I had my hands around his neck, right before that buffoon of a driver of his drove through the wall.”

“Good. They will lead us right to their base.”

“But remember what we promised,” Gaga warned, “I want Minigan. I don’t care what you do with the others, but the boy is mine.”

“Of course,” the voice replied, “Such a fighter as Minigan belongs with you.”

“That boy is a monster,” Gaga swooned.

Gaga couldn’t tell, but the man under the cloak scowled. “Right,” he said, “Well, I’ll find something to do with the others, but the only one I’m really after is their weapons maker: Everett Bradford.”

—

The End… For Now…

 

Awesomesquad! Assemble! 8.1! Revenge of the Fame Monster

For those of you who’ve never read an Awesomesquad! Assemble! post before, this post should bring you up to speed.

(Note: to understand the first part of this post, you need some information regarding a section that will appear in the book. In said section, The Awesomecopter! crashes, and when everyone wakes up, Lady Caggiano is missing. This post takes place 6 months after that crash.)

“Minigan,” a voice called for me at the entrance of The Watch Tower. I ignored it.

“Minigan, damnit, turn your head away from the bloody monitor and listen to me!” Clearly, it was Damien. I obliged.

“Thank you,” he muttered. He then raised his voice to an urgent tone and stated, “I just wanted to let you know that we’re about to head out. It’s Charlie Sheen. He’s totally lost his shit this time, and he’s apparently taken hostages in a Los Angeles TV Studio. You should come with us. You haven’t even fought with alongside The Knifemaster, and you hired him four months ago. Plus, the group is not the same when it’s missing you- well- and Lady Caggiano.”

“I cannot stop looking for her,” I replied formally as I turned back around and faced the screen, “That is my number one priority. Besides, you guys have been doing an amazing job with Raul fighting. Who knew that he would be so good with guns?”

“Well-“

“Don’t even say that he’s good with guns because he’s a Mexican, you racist,” I interjected.

Irritated, Damien replied, “I wasn’t even thinking that!”

“Oh…”

“What I was about to say that he’s good just as long as women aren’t involved. Who knew that, while really talented with guns, Raul is actually a total ogler and pervert?”

I turned back around, more interested in the conversation. “How so?” I asked.

“Here’s the thing,” Damien began, “We didn’t want to tell you this cause, anymore, you only leave this room to pee and sleep, and you’re so worked up over Lady Caggiano’s disappearance that you yelled at us whenever spoke to you.”

I apologized and said, “It’s been a hard few of months since the crash.”

“We know that,” Damien said earnestly, “That’s why we aren’t offended by it. We all knew how preoccupied you were… And still are.” “Anyway,” he continued, “We received word that Kim Kardassian was plotting to steal the Hope Diamond from The Smithsonian and wear it for the upcoming award season, so we went out to prevent it. But once Raul took one look at her, he immediately tried to flirt with her and help her steal the diamond.”

“Well, of course he did,” I replied, “It’s Kim Kardassian. Her ass is literally hypnotic.”

“She hadn’t even turned around to show us her ass,” Damien argued, “There wasn’t a mirror behind her either. He just walked up to her and started hitting on her, even though I told him that she was the person we were supposed to fight and to not think with his dick. Everett had to tranquilize him to get him to stop fighting us.”

“So that’s why you brought him back zonked out of his mind that one time,” I answered.

“How did you know about that?”

I pointed to the wall of screens and stated, “From the Watchtower, you can see everything.”

“Right,” Damien noted, quickly glancing up at the screens, “But we still need you.”

“Why?” I asked, “Even if Raul is a little perverted-“

“Dangerously perverted,” Damien added.

“You guys are going to fight Charlie Sheen- Raul won’t try to seduce him.”

Grasping at whatever straws he could think of, Damien argued, “But what if he as an army of strippers and hookers? We’d be screwed!”

“Does he actually have an army of hookers and strippers?” I asked with suspicion.

“Well,” he answered hesitantly, “It’s doubtful. But he could!”

“Go, Damien.” I got up and ushered him out of the Watch Tower door.

He fought me, but I managed to get him onto the catwalk and close the door behind him. I had barely made it back to my work at sifting through the images of the wreckage of the Awesomecopter! when the door opened back up and Phlegm stepped in.

“Minigan,” she said hesitantly, walking up to me and resting her hand on my shoulder, “We need to talk about the mission that Team Pugnastics is about to go on.”

“You’re not going with them to fight,” I said to her without turning my head. There was a dark form in the corner of one image of the security footage that seemed pretty suspicious.

“That’s not what I was going to say… And why can’t I go? I’ve been training with guns, knives, and Everett’s weapons!”

“Because you’re our psychologist!”  I shouted back pulling my gaze away from the dark form, “You’re supposed to be here to help us cope with emotional trauma from fighting. You cannot do that and also be in the middle of the fighting. And why are you so desperate to fight anyway?”

“I just, you know,” Phlegm paused before finding the right words to continue, “I want to feel the life slip out of someone’s body as I strangle them.”

“What the Hell?!”

“But that’s not why I’m in here,” she continued, “I’m here to help you cope with the loss of Lady Caggiano. I think you should go with the rest of the team. They need you, and you need to fight with them.”

“No,” I snapped, not removing my gaze from the screen, “Lady Caggiano needs me. Team Pugnastics will be fine without me. They’ve been fine for the past six months.”

“That’s right!” Phlegm cried, “Six months! It’s been six months and you have found nothing that could help us find her, and for those six months, Team Pugnastics hasn’t had their leader! Damien’s great- don’t get me wrong, but you’re the leader and your team needs you.” She sighed and continued, “Maybe you should start thinking that you won’t be able to find her.”

“No!” I cried, “I won’t give up! She wouldn’t do that to us!”

A grim expression formed on Phlegm’s face, “What if Lady Caggiano didn’t want to be found?”

I laughed, for the first time in months probably, “C’mon Phlegm. We’re talking about Lady Caggiano here. If there’s one person that is more faithful to the group than me, it’s her.”

Phlegm looked really uncomfortable. She sat quietly for a second or two, I think she was building up the courage to say something. Finally, she closed her eyes and stated, “What I’m about to tell you, I’m telling you not to hurt you, but to help you move past this. Last year, Lady Caggiano and I started having private sessions, and she had told me during several of these sessions that she was thinking of quitting. I think the crash might have been the final straw for her.”

“I don’t believe you,” I stated as I felt my blood go cold.

“You don’t want to believe me, but you know I would never lie to you like this,” she replied softly, “But I have some audio from her last meeting with me to prove it.”

From her hoodie pocket she pulled out a small voice recorder. She pressed the play button and her voice came through the recorder’s speaker.

“So, Lady Caggiano,” her voice asked, “How are you feeling today.”

“Tired,” Lady Caggiano’s voice replied. She sounded tired.

“Do you mean physically tired or emotionally tired?” Phlegm’s voice asked.

“Both. My body aches from all the training and fighting we do, I cannot sleep because of all the shit I’ve seen and done- the people I’ve seen die… Nut’n Fancy in particular… But mostly, I’m just tired of doing this.”

Phlegm’s voice asked, “This?”

“This! All this! Awesomesquad! I don’t think I want to do this anymore. I don’t think I can take it. I mean, I love Minigan like a brother, and I know that we’re doing saving the world, but I regret ever joining this team.”

After a seconds pause, Phlegm’s voice replied, “Are you sure that’s what you want?”

“Yes…No… I’m not sure. I haven’t even tried asking Minigan about the possibility of quitting. I know he’ll never let me.”

“You’ll never know until you ask,” Phlegm’s voice said brightly.

“You’re right,” Lady Caggiano sighed, “I’ll ask him now.”

Phlegm pressed the pause button on the recorder, and the playback stopped. I sat there staring at the now silent recorder, remembering the day that Lady Caggiano disappeared and how she asked me what I would do if someone quit. I thought to myself, I was joking when I said, “If anyone tries to quit, I’ll kill’em.” I thought she knew that. If she actually wanted to leave, I would’ve let her, and she wouldn’t have to escape from us when the Awesomecopter! crashed.

“Are you OK, Minigan,” Phlegm asked, her voice dragging me out of my thoughts.

“Oh, yeah. I’m totally fine,” I replied, looking at her with a smile, “But I should probably hurry up and get to the armory. Hopefully the rest of Team Pugnastics hasn’t left yet.”

Without looking at Phlegm, I turned off the computer I was on, and rushed out of The Watch Tower. She followed me out onto the catwalk and called to me, “You know what? Maybe it’s better if you didn’t fight today. I mean, I shouldn’t have expected you to take the information I gave you and then be in the right frame of mind to fight.”

I turned to face her and scoffed, “Phlegm, do you know who you’re talking to? Of course I can get information like that and still be OK to fight, because that’s who I am- a total badass.” The grim look on her face told me that she didn’t believe me, so I reassured her, “Trust me. I’m great. I’m just ready to get out and fight for once.”

I turned back around, hopped onto the catwalk hand rail at the top of the steps and slid down. I had always wanted to do that. For a few brief seconds, the breeze from me sliding down the metal rail kissed my face and blew back my hair. I reached the bottom, and within seconds, I was already across the Great Room.

From behind and above me, I heard Phlegm’s voice call out, “But we still need to talk about how you’re going to handle this!”

“I’m handling it right now!” I yelled back to her.

I stepped into the blue hallway, or the hallway that leads to the armory. It is also the hallway with every private quarter of member of Team Pugnastics (Team Prevention’s rooms are on the other side of the Great Room, down the Red Hallway.) It’s called the blue hallway because, well, the walls are blue. I admit- it wasn’t my most clever of name choices.

I paused for a second at my door, debating on whether or not I should shower before going to the armory when I remembered that I had actually showered that day. I had barely showered, brushed my teeth, or brushed my hair since Lady Caggiano’s disappearance. And I had stopped working out all together after about three months, when my quest to find her became a full blown obsession. The only reason I had even showered that day was because GMZ wouldn’t let me into the Watch Tower until I, “stopped smelling like I was trapped inside of an ass for the better part of a century.” Clearly it had been a rough six months for me.

I entered the armory and felt renewed by the activity inside. Damien was passing out guns, extra magazines, and knives to Raul, Series of Japanese Symbols, and Criss. Everett was at his work table tinkering with one of his wrist mounted flame throwers. I couldn’t see Knifemaster, so I assumed that he was down one of the aisles of weapons.

When Damien saw me at the doorway, he called out, “Well, well, Look who’s come to see us off this time, boys!”

“Not exactly,” I called back, “I was actually thinking that I could go for some fighting today.”

A look of joyous surprise washed over each of my teammates’ faces.

Damien looked to Everett and smugly  stated, “See, my talk with him did help.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Damien,” I replied, “but it was actually Phlegm who changed my mind.”

Damien glared at me, “You just have to ruin everything for me, Don’t you?”

“That is part of my job description,” I joked.

I strode across the armory to my cloak closet. It’s actually a large, steel box, about the size of a refridgerator, Inside was all of my battle gear. On a black mannequin was my cloak and protective vest. Behind it was a pair of black pants that were of the same material as the vest. I made sure that there was twice as much protective layering at the crotch, for reasons that I think is obvious (It’s where I keep my balls). On the one door of the closet was my Justice Stick, hanging diagonally from corner to corner of the door. At the foot of the cabinet were my pair of black tactical combat boots. On the other door was an inscription of my saying, “We do not fight fame for fame, but for those without it.” Instead of reading it like I normally do when I open my cloak closet, this time I ignored the inscription completely and hurriedly got ready.

I grabbed my usual accessories: flame thrower, wrist communicator, grappling hook gun and two hooks, a serrated edge knife and the wrap for my ankle, two hand guns and hip holsters, a tranquilizer dart gun  a vest trap of extra ammunition, and two sets of throwing knives. I also walked down the couple of aisles and picked up some of the more unconventional weapons, like Everett’s spider canister, and his sticky bombs- small explosives that stick to hard surfaces and are best used to explode holes in walls.

Once I had grabbed the weapons I felt were necessary for this mission, I headed back to the center of the armory, where everyone, except the Knifemaster who was still unaccounted for, had gathered.

“Where’s the Knifemaster?” I asked.

“Dunno,” Criss replied, “He should be down here already.”

Series of Japanese symbols said something in his crazy gibberish language, and I all I could do was stare at him. He and I hadn’t spoken much since the crash of the Awesomecopter!, what with our translator going missing, and because of this, our relationship had become increasingly strained. He yelled some more things things that I couldn’t understand, and I looked to the rest of the team for help.

“We should check his room, he said,” Damien finally interjected.

“Good idea,” I said to Damien, which threw Series of Japanese into a rage. He yelled something else that I couldn’t understand and then flipped me off.

Damien looked from Series of Japanese Symbols to me and said, “He said ,”Fuck you.””

“Yeah,” I retorted, “I figured out that one. Now let’s go find The Knifemaster.

We headed back up the stairs and into the blue hallway, and as we reached The Knifemaster’s room. The sounds of music and The Knifemaster shouting things snuck through the crack under the metal door. I turned the knob, but it didn’t budge- locked. I tried knocking, but since the music and shouting was loud enough to penetrate the door, my knocks were most likely drowned out and went unanswered. I tried pounding on the door, but still got no response. Frustrated, I pulled out the skeleton key from my cloak pocket and went to unlock the door.

“Wait,” Damien interrupted as he smacked my hand away from the lock, “What in God’s bloody name do you think you’re doing?”

The music stopped and then started up again. I couldn’t identify the song, but I think I could hear guitar. I answered Damien, “I’m opening this door. We need him down at the armory now, don’t we?”

“I mean,” Where did you get that key?” He asked aggressively. I could tell this was going to be just another one of his things.

“I had it made once the doors were put in. I figured that it would be useful.”

“Yeah, to breach our privacy!” Everett cried. He seemed more offended by me having the key than Damien, which took even Damien off guard. The Knifemaster started yelling again. I think he might be singing along to whatever song he was listening to.

“Look,” I replied as softly as I could, “I get that you feel that I could use this to get into your rooms. But I only had this key made for emergency situations. Like if someone locks their key in their room or for situations like this: when we cannot get to the person inside. I’ve always assumed that I’d have to do this for more serious reasons, like someone getting hurt or starting a fire or something, but here we are, I guess.”

“I’ve been locked out of my room for three days, and all I had to do was come and ask you to unlock it?!” Jessie cried. I ignored him.

“How do you know that you aren’t snooping through all our stuff?!” Everett cried before Damien could say anything.

“Well,” I asked rhetorically, “Has anything of yours been misplaced or missing? Or have you ever seen me going into or coming out of a room other than my own?” “But if you don’t believe that,” I said as I pointed up to a security camera in the corner of the hallway, “that camera turns on and records anyone who uses this key to get through the door. And besides, all of you have a fireproof safe in your rooms that I told you you should keep your private stuff in, and I don’t have a key for those.”

“Seriously guys,” Jessie interjected, “I left my key on my bed and have no way of getting back in. I’ve been using Criss’s shower for the past couple of days.”

“Prove the part about the camera,” Everett demanded.

Without answering, I strode over to Jessie’s door, practically stabbed the keyhole with the key, and turned it. Instantly, there was a ping from the corner of the hall, and a red light began flashing on the camera. I pushed the door open and let Jessie run in and grab his key. I returned to the group standing at The Knifemaster’s door and asked, “Happy?”

Everett didn’t reply, which I took as, “No, but it will do,” and I went to unlock the Knifemaster’s door. Damien stopped me again.

“Maybe you should knock again, Yeh know, to be polite,” he suggested.

I grumbled to myself, but obliged. By this point, the song had started over again. Making a fist, I pounded on the heavy metal door and yelled, “Knifemaster, are you in there?” No reply. I looked to Damien, who nodded for me to go ahead, and I unlocked the door. The security camera pinged once again, and the door gave way. A wave of sound washed over us as the door opened completely. Immediately, I recognized the song. It was “Party in the USA” by Miley Cyrus. In the center of the room, wearing nothing except black compression shorts, was The Knifemaster, back to the door, singing and dancing along to the song.

“…The butterflies fly away/ Noddin’ my head like ‘yeah,’ movin’ my hips like ‘yeah…’” The knifemaster yelled along with the song as he shook his ass to the beat of the song.

“What the shit?!” I cried at the scene in front of me. The Knifemaster heard my cry and spun around with a gasp. He looked at us in shock, and immediately covered his nipples with his hands, despite the fact that we had clearly seen him shake his ass in compression shorts.

“Can I help you?” he asked in a calm tone- much calmer than I would’ve been if I had been caught dancing half naked to “Party in the USA.”  I could not see the rest of the team, but I assumed that they were as shocked as I was.

“We need you down in the armory. The rest of us are ready to leave to fight Sheen,” I answered after a long second or two.

“OK, I’ll be right down,” he said unabashedly. He then walked over to the door and swung it closed. Right before it did, however, I watched The Knifemaster turn around and start jumping around to the song. “So I put my hands up/ They’re playin’ my song/ the butter flies fly away…” he sang/shouted with Miley.

The door clicked shut. The seven of us stood there, just processing what we just saw, and then without a word to one another, headed back down to the armory.

A few minutes (and possibly one more run through of “Party in the USA”) later, The Knifemaster came down from his room, completely ready, and followed by Team Prevention to see us off. Every member of Team Prevention wore a grim look upon their faces, which I sensed had something to do with what Phlegm had told me. Not wanting to deal with that, I headed down to the Awesomehangar, to see if Jessie and the Awesomebus! were ready. Unfortunately, Phlegm, Danica, GMZ, Derren, and our genetic scientist, Coco Montoya, followed me. I pretended not to notice, and hurriedly rushed down the stairwell and the only route (regrettably due to my poor planning) to the Awesomehangar! The stairwell reminded me of my old highschool: comcrete brick walls painted a light tan color, and wide stair cases, and an overwhelming feeling of emptiness as you walked down them alone. This was the first time I had ever walked down these stairs without Lady Caggiano, which made the stairwell feel even emptier. Each slapping sound of my boots on the linoleum tiles echoed up and down the stairwell alone, and the missing pair of echoes that had always accompanied mine made Lady Caggiano’s absence that much more noticeable.

I shook my head in an attempt to loosen those useless thoughts’ grip on my brain, and returned to thinking about how similar this stairwell was to the ones in my high school. The colors were the same. The size was the same. The lighting was the same. The echoing effect was the same. Hell, even the smell of disinfectant was eerily similar-like cheap toilet bowl cleaner mixed with lemons. Did I subconsciously plan this stairwell to look just like that one? I asked myself, Or was this some kind of weird coincidence that I’m not noticing until now. And why did it take me two damn years to finally notice that the two stairwells were practically identi-

“Minigan, Hold up!” Phlegm’s voice called from above me, effectively pulling me away from my thoughts. I kept walking and moved across the stairs to grab the outer railing. Above me came a storm of footsteps, each accompanied by their echoes, creating an almost white noise that filled my ears. Team Pugnastics must’ve been walking down with her. There was way too many footsteps for only Team Prevention coming down those stairs. Despite the sounds of a dozen pairs of feet coming down the stairs, I heard no one talking, which meant that she had told Team Pugnastics too. What the hell ever happened to Doctor/Patient confidentiality? I asked myself as I skipped the last four stairs and pushed through the doors to the Awesomehangar!.

“Jessie!” I exclaimed in an obviously fake tone, “How’s the Awesomebus! coming along?”

He came around from the otherside of the bus, which was standing in the center of the hangar facing the runway/ exit tunnel, holding the fuel hose. He hung it back up on the pump and said to me, “Minigan! You’re finally out of The Watch Tower?! That’s amazing! The bus is ready to go; I just finished putting gas in it.”

No shit.

“Awesome,” I stated. I then looked passed him to the piles of parts and the white sheet covering a large structure behind him and asked, “So how’s the Awesomeplane! coming along?”

The sound of the doors clicking open behind me distracted Jessie, and he looked passed me to the rest of the group flooding into the room. “Hey you guys!” he said excitedly.

“Jessie,” I commanded as I slapped him lightly on the cheeks, “C’mon, focus. How is the Awesomeplane coming along?”

“Good!” He said finally, “Sorry it’s been taking so long with it, but our benefactor’s demand for the parts I need to come in intermittently has  been drawing out the building process. On the bright side, I’ve been able to incorporate new a new feature into the Awesomebus!! It’s a cloaking device, for lack of a better term. Everett helped me with it.”

“Minigan, we need to talk,” Derren’s voice said behind me.

“So how much work is left on the Awesomeplane!?” I asked, ignoring Derren.

“The fuel system is the last big piece; It’s going to use electrolysis to-“

“Minigan,” Phlegm pleaded, “Listen to us for a second.”

“Excuse me,” I snapped as I turned around to face the rest of my team, “But I’m right in the middle of a very interesting conversation with Jessie. You can wait until we’re done.” I then turned back to face Jessie and ushered him to continue.

“Well-“ he started before he was cut off again. This time it was by Derren.

“He’s lying.” He said, “He never cares what Jessie has to say.

“That’s not true!” I cried as I spun back around to face him, “I always care about whatever stupid thing Jessie is blabbering on about!”

“Hey!” Jessie’s voice shouted behind me. I ignored it.

“Please, Minigan, you need to talk about this if you want to be of any help against Charlie Sheen today,” Phlegm said softly, as if she thought her words could break me somehow.

I laughed it off, “Guys, you’re totally overreacting. I’m fine. Really. All that recording did was wake me up from a six month long stupor and help end a pointless rescue search. I should’ve known better. I swear, I’m totally fine. It’s going to take a lot more than a member quitting to shake this ”

Derren stared at me through his squinted eyes, making me feel uncomfortable in the process. Out of that discomfort, I looked to everyone standing behind him. They were all staring at me as well, making me feel more uncomfortable.

“He’s still lying,” Derren affirmed, “Minigan, you need to talk to us about this. We’re here for you. But you need to talk to us about Lady Cagg-“

“DON’T SAY THAT NAME! DON’T YOU DARE FUCKING SAY THAT NAME!”

I don’t know why I yelled it. Those words spilled out of my mouth before I was able to even process what they meant. And somehow, my hands found their way up to the collar of Derren’s sweater and had lifted him off the ground by it. Coming to my senses, I gently returned him to the ground, apologized, and announced to Team Pugnastics that we were leaving right then. And without another word, I turned on my heel and climbed onto the Awesomebus!.

From my seat on the Awesomebus!, I heard several of my teammates mumble to one another, most notably Derren.

“Why in the bloody hell did you think it would be a good idea to tell him that before a mission?” He asked Phlegm.

“It was the only way to snap him out of it!” She retorted, “Besides, he has never been this battle ready before!”

“He’s going to be reckless!” Damien snapped, “He’s quite likely to do something stupid!”

“I can totally hear you guys,” I barked out the window, even though I meant to say in a joking tone. I cleared my throat and continued, “Team Pugnastics, let’s go.”

They obliged, and silently entered the vehicle. Jessie revved the engine of the old, modified school bus, and pressed his foot on the accelerator. The tires squealed, and their squeals echoed through the large, mostly empty room. Then, the Awesomebus! lurched foreward into the dark tunnel. The Awesomebus! sped up for a minute, the headlights illuminating the way, while those of us who weren’t driving fastened our seatbelts. While still in the tunnel, Jessie swerved the bus to the left. Instead of hitting the wall, like I’m always afraid we will, we veered off into an auxiliary tunnel and up a ramp. With a quick press of a button on the dashboard, Jessie opened the tunnel gate, and the Awesomebus! launched out into the cold February night and landed on the paved private access road at the edge of the Awesomebase!’s property.

Apparently growing bored of the several minutes of tense silence, The Knifemaster stood up from his seat and announced, “I’m going to turn on some tunez with a ‘Z’.”

Damien and I looked to each other, fearing the worst, as The Knifemaster strode up the aisle. As if he had planned this in advance, he only pressed one button on the CD player, and Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA” started blasting through the speakers. He let out a loud, “Woooooo!” and began skipping up and down the aisle, swinging his machete over his head, while the rest of us groaned and either rolled our eyes or put our heads in our hands.

“Knifemaster,” I shouted over the song and his whooping, “We’re only going to listen to this once before I put on something different.”

“NO!” He cried, “Tonight was my night to choose the tunez! I’m calling bullshit on this whole situation!”

“C’mon, Knifemaster, no one wants to listen to this song,” I replied.

“That’s just because you haven’t given it a chance yet! It’ll grow on you, I swear!”

“It’s kind of outdated, though,” Jessie announced over the music.

“Shut up, Jessie.” The Knifemaster spat, “You don’t have any say in this because you still like music from the eighties, or more commonly known as the era that cursed us with Def Lepperd and Milli Vanilli.” The Knifemaster turned his back on Jessie and continued to dance up and down the aisle of the Awesomebus! “All I see are Stilettos/ I guess I never got the memo!”

As I promised, once the song finished, I went to the front of the bus and thumbed through the music on the Awesomebus’s iPod. For some reason, it was mostly filled with Nickleback. Gross. I was tempted to go with a new My Chemical Romance song, but I figured that would be a good way to get me murdered by my team. Eventually, I was able to narrow it down to two songs. I decided on the first one, feeling like it more accurately fit the whole situation today.

“Na na na na na na na/ na na na na na na” The singer sang with the guitar.

The Knifemaster raised his eyebrow at me, “Really, ‘So What’ by P!nk? So you traded a pop song from 2009 for a pop song from 2008?”

“It’s more like a Pop-Punk song, I think,” I replied uncomfortably. I stood in front of them for what felt like the longest first verse of a song ever, and joined in with the singing at the chorus, “So what/ I’m still a rock star/ I’ve got my rock moves/ And I don’t neeeeed youuuuuuu!”

I sat back down in my seat, singing merrily along with P!nk, while everyone else sat uncomfortably in their own seats. The Knifemaster looked particularly sour. We made it to the bridge of the song before he sprinted up to the front of the bus and changed the song back to “Party in the USA.” It was going to be one of those nights, apparently. Once I saw that The Knifemaster (and this time, Everett) were too distracted with singing along with Miley, I ran back up to the iPod player. This time, I changed the song to Cee Lo Green’s “Fuck You” which I figured would be more agreeable with my finicky team.

Right as I walked back to my seat, the song changed back to “Party in the USA.” I looked to the Knifemaster, who was waving the Awesomebus!’s lone remote at me with a triumphant grin. Grumbling to myself, I went back to the front and changed it back to “Fuck You.”

The music battle between The Knifemaster and I lasted the entire way to Las Angeles. And by the time we got there, everyone except for me was singing along with the Miley Cyrus song. Jessie pulled the Awesomebus! down an alleyway, and one by one, we hopped out. The alley smelled like piss and broken dreams, which I assumed smells like a homeless persons, because I was passing one. I flipped the man a quarter, which was the only change I had on me, and stepped out of the dark alley into the brightly lit street.

I looked at the screen on my wrist communicator and brought up the map. We were about a block away from the studio where Sheen had taken hostages. I turned to my group and said, “We’re close. Let’s try to get there without drawing any attention to our-“

“Oh my God, It’s Awesomesquad!” A burgundy hair colored woman that looked to be about my age yelled. She was wearing a black beret with matching yoga pants and a loose fitting turquoise blouse, all of which gave her the appearance of a crazy older woman. She looked to me through her thick rimmed glasses and shouted excitedly, “And you’re the leader! I swear, I’m you’re biggest fan. I’ll follow you until you love me!”

I couldn’t help but grin. “Why thank you,” I said brightly, “We, and especially me, are pretty badass, aren’t we? I’m glad to hear that you appreciate what we do.” Damien grunted behind me. I ignored it.

“I totally do!” she exclaimed, nodding her head up and down feverishly. She then asked, “So why are you in L.A.? Oh, please tell me you’re going to go beat up Chris Brown.”

“Been there, done that,” I replied confidently, “He was an easy fight. Nothing more than a d-bag with an anger problem. Today we’re going to fight Charlie Sheen.”

Damien cleared this throat. Again I ignored him. This time, however, he wasn’t going to let me. Placing a hand on my shoulder, he pulled me back so that his mouth was an inch away from my ear and he whispered, “It’s not a brilliant idea to tell people you just met what our mission is, in case you forgot.”

“Right,” I replied. I then looked to the girl and said, “It was very nice meeting you, but we need to go. We do have a mission, after all.”

I turned around and began to walk across the street, the rest of Awesomesquad! following me, when the girl yelled, “Can I at least see your face first?! I’ve never seen it, and it’s driving me crazy!”

“Sorry,” I replied, “But that’s just going to have to remain a mystery.”

The girl swooned a little, and I headed across the street feeling the best I have felt since the crash. We made it to the studio building in no time, and made it inside unseen thanks to Series of Japanese Symbols’s ninja skills.

“OK, guys,” I whispered to my team, “We really need to be on our toes with Sheen. He has called himself a warlock, a rockstar from Mars, and that he has Adonis DNA. We should anticipate that he does actually have those and maybe more secrets that he hasn’t told the media yet. After all, those do sound ridiculous, but just about every villain we have battled against has turned out to be supernatural in some way, so we should take what he has said as truth.”

My team nodded, well, except for The Knifemaster who was singing to himself, “I’m your biggest fan, I’ll chase you down until you love me/ Papa- paparazzi”

Instantly, I felt my heart drop. I knew those words- they had haunted me for the past year. “What did you say?” I gasped at The Knifemaster.

“Oh, sorry,” he replied, embarrassed, “I was listening, it’s just that that girl back there had quoted a Lady Gaga song, and now I have it stuck in my head.” He then sang, “I’m your biggest fan, I’ll follow you until you love me.”

I could feel the blood rushing to my face and ears. “Guys,” I announced in a whisper, “We’re aborting this mission. It’s a trap!” My team looked confused, but there was no time to explain, not until we got out of the building at least. I turned to head out the way we entered, but we were too late. Over the doors and windows giant slabs on concrete slid into place, effectively sealing us inside. “Well, shit,” I muttered to myself.

Before I could warn my team that Lady Gaga was behind this, a door opened up at the other end of the room and she stepped out of it. This time, she stood about six feet tall, largly due to her shoes, which looked an awful lot like horse hooves. She seemed to be wearing a dress made out of ripped black lace and a shiny, black, skin tight material-maybe latex. Her blonde hair was fashioned into several sharp looking spikes.

Raul gasped, “She is beautiful.”

“No she’s not,” I whispered harshly at him, “She’s a terrifying monster that must be stop- Raul, where are you going?!

Raul began to walk towards Gaga, unable to keep his eyes off of her. The rest of us tried to get his attention, but to no avail. She had him.

Over our cries of protest, Lady Gaga walked up to the thunderstruck Raul and said in a French accent, “I know that we are young, and I know that you may love me, but just I can’t be with you like this anymore…”As she said that, her jet black tail formed from her backside and wrapped around Raul, “…Alejandro.”

With that, several sharp looking blades formed on her tail, and with one swift constriction of the appendage, she severed Raul into five pieces. We all screamed in horror. I nearly threw up. Criss managed to. Everett’s knees gave out and he fell onto Damien, who looked like he was having trouble standing up as well. I stared down at the pile of human meat that used to be our maintenance man as his blood flowed freely out of the chunks of flesh and formed an ever growing puddle on the floor. The smell of fresh blood made my stomach churn. I suppressed the queasy feeling in my stomach, and instead focused on the rage that was making my skull feel like it was on fire. If I wasn’t ready to fight someone before, I absolutely was now.

Before I knew what I was doing, I had already pulled out my Justice Stick and was charging at Lady Gaga. With one strong bound, I leapt over Raul’s body and aimed my Justice Stick at Gaga’s heart. But before I was even close enough to stab the bitch, her tail wrapped around me and left me suspended in the air. My team cried in protest as she her tail drew my face closer to hers.

Once our faces were a mere inches apart, she smiled at me and said, “Oh, Minigan, I’ve missed you so much!”

I spat in her face.

Her smile immediately turned into a grimace and she then growled, “Get your ass in my bed.”

With that, she whipped her tail and sent my flying across the room. I landed face down, not on the cold hard floor like I was expecting, but instead on a soft bed. My sense of relief was almost instantly extinguished, however, when several sets of hands clasped down on my arms, legs, and shoulders, only letting me lift my head to get air.

From behind me I heard Lady Gaga announce to the rest of my team, “Greetings Awesomesquad!, I’m glad you finally managed to bring Minigan along with you. I’m sorry if you had your hearts set on fighting Charlie Sheen, but you will just have to settle with fighting me and my monsters instead.”

Gaga snapped her fingers, and a flood of footsteps filled the room. I looked to my right and saw the girl that I had talked to just a few minutes earlier holding down the arm with my flame thrower on it. I shifted my face on the fabric on the bed. Cotton- flammable, but as long as my butane container wasn’t leaking, I wouldn’t get burned too badly. I looked back to the girl, who wasn’t staring at me, but in Lady Gaga’s direction. I really didn’t want to burn this girl; she seemed nice, but I couldn’t let Gaga get the rest of my friends.

“Sorry,” I said as I arched my wrist as much as I could, pulled back my thumb and-

“Aaaaeeeeee!” the girl shrieked as my torrent of fire blasted her in the crotch. The smell of burning fabric and flesh was almost immediate. She held on for a few seconds, an impressive amount of time for someone getting third degree burns on her vagina, but she did let go, and I was able to torch some of the other monsters holding me down. With my right arm and leg free, I turned partially on my side and blasted the monsters holding down my left side. With all of the monsters holding me down currently writhing on the floor and clutching various charred parts of their body, I jumped off the bed (doing a couple of bad ass front flips over the monsters) and sprinted back to my team, who were currently battling against a massive hoard of Gaga’s human followers. I could feel a burning and tingling on the bottom of my hand. Without looking, I knew that my flame thrower had burned through my glove and scorched my skin. I kept my eyes focused on my team, who had formed a circle and were fighting the monsters in 360 degrees. Unfortunately, Lady Gaga intercepted me before I could get to them.

She tackled me and pinned me to the floor. With her long and threateningly sharp looking fingernails, she traced the lines of my vest. “C’mon, Minigan,” she cooed, “I just want to touch you for a minute. I could show you things you’ve never imagined.”

“Yeah, well I’ve probably never imagined it for a reason,” I grunted. For her size, she was surprisingly heavy. I remembered from our last meeting how much it hurt to get kicked in the chest. Shaking the unhappy memory, I wedged my legs between us and, with all my might, forced her off of me. I rolled to my side, right as she threw a fist down right where my chest was. “Don’t be scared; I’ve done this before,” She whispered in a mock soothing tone.”

I jumped to my feet, “Based on how you just tried to crush my chest, I kind of doubt that.”

I tried to back away, but Gaga had wrapped her tail around my feet. In an instant, She had me suspended upside down a couple of feet off the ground. As if I was a goddamn toy, Gaga swung me around and playfully batted at me with her sharpened nails, shredding my vest whenever she managed to catch it. I looked around for my Justice stick (I dropped it when Gaga threw me across the room), but it was nowhere to be seen. I did see, however, my team murdering the monsters.

“Guys!” I yelled to them in between dodging Lady Gaga’s ferocious swipes with her claws, “They’re just humans! Use your tranquilizers! Do not kill them!” “Also,” I continued, “do any of you have my Justice Stick?”

“Why shouldn’t we kill them?” Criss yelled as he levitated my Justice stick over the hoard of monsters and launched it at Lady Gaga’s tail. The Justice Stick hit its target. Gaga let out a deafening roar, and her tail released its grip on my ankles. My head practically spit open when it hit the floor.

As I got up and rubbed what was going to be a huge lump on the top of my skull, I turned to face Lady Gaga, but she had vanished into the crowd of monsters. Keeping an eye out for an oddly dressed blond woman, I yelled back, “Her followers are just humans that she has hypnotized. There is no reason to kill them. In fact, we should probably capture a couple alive so that we can try to figure out how to fix them.”

I punched and kicked my way through Gaga’s hive of followers and joined the rest of my crew, who despite being a little bloodied up, were holding their own impressively well against the monsters. The tranquilizers seemed to be working, and my team had formed a donut shaped pile of unconscious bodies around them. I joined the group between Everett and the Knifemaster and begun to either punch or tranquilize the hoard of Lady Gaga fans. I have never punched so many people so hard, or enjoyed doing so, in my life.

Without looking at him, I asked Everett, “Do you have any of those spider canisters on you?”

“Yeah, three. Why?”

“We need to get out of here, but we also need to take a couple of these monsters with us to figure out how to undo whatever it is that Lady Gaga does to them,” I stated. “If we capture three of them, we can blast a hole through the wall and Criss can levitate them into the Awesomebus!.”

“Right,” he replied. He pulled out the three spider canisters and threw them into the crowd.

I turned to Criss as best I could and called, “Criss, give you tranquilizer gun and extra darts to Damien, I’ve got another job for you.”

He obliged, and we both stepped backwards into the circle. Once we were safely inside, our teammates tightened it. Now facing Criss, I ordered, “When the spider canisters are finished capturing some of the monsters, you need to levitate them out of here and into the cage in the Awesomebus!. Do you think they can handle it?”

“Absolutely.”

“Good.” Before stepping back into the circle and resume the fight, I brought my wrist communicator up t my mouth and said, “Jessie, bring the Awesomebus! around and open the roof over the cage.”

“Oh, so you captured Charlie Sheen then?” he asked brightly.

“No,” I replied, “It was a trap set up by Lady Gaga. We’ve captured some of her followers, and we need to run a few tests on them.”

“Oh jeez,” he laughed, “Gaga is really good at tricking us into fighting with her.”

No shit.

“Just bring the Bus around,” I pleaded.

“OK,” he answered, “Where should I park?”

“Look for the hole in the wall.” I lowered my wrist, and with my burned hand, pulled out two of the sticky bombs I had brought with me and flung them in the direction that I was pretty sure we entered through. The gel disks flew through the air like Frisbees, and stuck to the walls on their sides. They then flopped down so that their flat sides were against the wall. After about a couple long seconds of nothing, the sticky bombs exploded with a loud bang and sent concrete debris flying in every direction. Some of the pieces even managed to hit some of Gaga’s followers and knock them out, which was especially nice. When the smoke cleared there was a long hole at the top of the wall. It was tall enough that the immobile bodies could easily fit through.

A honk came from outside the hole, and I turned to Criss and said, “You’re up.”

Criss nodded, closed his eyes in concentration, and raised his right hand into the air. As if they were attached by invisible strings, three silvery, squirming cocoons silently floated into the air, above the heads of us and their fellow monsters, and out of the hole in the wall. After another few seconds, Criss dropped his hand, and three honks came from outside, indicating that the monsters were successfully caged.

I rejoined the circle and called out the my team, “Alright guys, let’s get the hell out of here!”

I was out of tranquilizer darts, so I took one last swing  at the monster in front of me. He was a skinny looking young man, probably around GMZ’s age, and had such flawless skin, that I assumed he was wearing makeup. His hair was cut in such a way that it looked like he had given himself a comb-over with a full head of hair. He dodged my punch and then grabbed me by the throat.  Within seconds of grabbing onto my neck, the monster’s face began to shift and distort, long spikes of blond hair jutted out of the receding brown. He grew to about six feet tall, thought part of that was due to his newly formed hooves. And his facial features became strikingly more feminine.

“Gaga!” The Knifemaster cried when he saw who had me by the throat.

Before The Knifemaster had a chance to pull out a knife and stab her, Gaga threw me over her head and across the room. I didn’t hit a soft, fluffy bed this time, but instead the cold, unmoving concrete wall. I fell the the floor in a crumpled heap, not sure if or how many of my bones had been broken. If you’re not sure if you’ve broken a bone, I said to myself, then you probably didn’t. Get back up and fight. I obeyed myself, but I was too slow, and Lady Gaga managed to plant one good kick to my stomach. I flew back up into the air, hit the ceiling, and came crashing back down. Despite the raw strength of my abdominal muscles, Gaga still managed to knock the breath out of me, so when I hit the ground, all I could do was attempt to gasp for air until my diaphragm reset itself.

While I was attempting to breathe, gaga shrieked to her monsters, “Work your blonde Jon Benét Ramsey/ We’ll haunt like Liberace/ Find your freedom in the music/ Find your Jesus/ Find your Kubrick!”

Once she finished saying… whatever the hell that was, her league of loyal fans dropped the floor and began to twist and contort their bodies. I watched in horror as the one nearest me rolled its eyes to the back of its head and his jaw dropped to the point where his tonsils were showing. From his throat (and the throats of all the other monsters) came an odd puttering sound. It sounded like someone put an old, dying engine through an autotuner: It was Lady Gaga’s language. Suddenly, the teeth of the young man in front of me started to grow into long spikes. Out from the sides of his twisting body exploded an extra set of arms, with each hand sporting razor sharp nails. His skin turned grey. His hair vanished. And for a second, he was calm. But then, his eyes rolled back down to reveal that there were nothing but two black dots in a sea of red. He and all the other now literal monsters shrieked (I managed to catch my breath and scream along with them) and jumped back onto their feet. They charged at my team.

As fast as I could, I  shouted through my wrist communicator, “Fuck it. Kill them.”

Gaga grabbed my wrist and threw me up against the wall. She pressed her “You know that I love you, boy. And you should also let you know that I’m never gonna let you go.” She squeezed my wrists, and I could feel my wrist communicator and my flamethrower break apart, the small sharp pieces piercing my skin. Luckily for me, my blood made my wrists slippery. I managed to free one of them from her grip and hit her hard in the face with my forearm. My forearm screamed, but it did the trick. Dazed, she let go of my other wrist and stumbled backward.

I hit her with a couple more punches and a roundhouse kick before I growled, “But there’s that.”

She let out a short, cold laugh and warned, “You know I like it rough.”

She then dove at me, which I dodged by dropping to the floor and somersaulting under her, and she slammed her head hard into the wall. The wall cracked all the way to the edges, and I barely made it out of the way before it crumbled and fell on top of her.

Pulling out my Justice stick, I beat, sliced, and stabbed my way to the rest of Team Pugnastics, who were being easily overwhelmed by all the Gaga fans- turned hideous monsters.

“Attention Guys! I have discovered that the best way to kill Lady Gaga’s hive of followers is with kindness,” The Knifemaster said. He then spun around and beheaded the nearest monster with his machete.

“I thought you said ‘Kill them with kindness!'” I cried.

“That’s what I named my Machete-Kindness,” he replied as he affectionately pet his large blade.

I shook my head, suppressing a laugh, and then turned to Damien, taking a moment to throw a throwing knife at a rushing monster, and said, “Are you ready to try out the ‘Boom Escape?’”

He smirked a confident smirk, “Let’s fuckin’ do it.”

I smirked back and yelled to the rest of my group, “Were going with the Boom Escape in 3…2…1… GO!!!”

Criss stopped threw his hands forward, and then out to his sides. All of Gaga’s fans that were between us and the wall were thrown off to the side by an invisible force like rag dolls in a tornado. The Knifemaster, Series of Japanese Symbols, Everett then pulled out their guns and shot at any monster that stepped into that path. Damien started sprinting towards the wall, and I followed close behind. He then started doing front flips while keeping his body perfectly straight. I pulled out one of my sticky bombs and flung it at the wall right when Damien’s body was going horizontal. The disk flew over his body, narrowly missing his head as he flipped forward. Once it had passed him, Damien did a barrel roll as he flipped and continued towards the wall doing back flips. The bomb hit the wall on its side, flopped down flat, and exploded.

“NOW!” I screamed.

From behind me I heard the blasts from my the rest of my team’s guns cease, and I knew that they were now following us. Without the gunshots shooting them down, the monsters closed in on Damien and I. Damien did one final back flip, pulled out his guns, and then jumped backwards though the hole that the bomb had created. As he flew through the hole, he folded himself in half and shot both of this guns at me. Damien’s (thankfully) perfect aim made sure that his bullets did not hit me, but instead the monsters that were close to catching me. I dove through the hole, pulled out three more sticky bombs, and threw them at the wall. By the time I had landed and slid to a halt at Damien’s feet, the bombs had gone off and created a hole large enough for the rest of the team to run through. They did, and Damien threw a few sticky bombs at the building, causing part of it to collapse and trap the monsters on the other side.

“Nice work,” I panted at Damien, as he offered me pulled me off the ground, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

We clambered into the bus, practically all at once, and to Jessie, I commanded, “Drive now.”

“Sure thing, boss.” He said brightly as he strapped himself in, “How did it go in there?”

“JUST FUCKING DRIVE!”

I heard a crash come from outside. I and the rest of my team shoved out heads out the Awesomebus!’s windows to see Lady Gaga claw her way through the wreckage. Seeing us pull away, she let out a roar. Jessie floored it, but with a single bound, Lady Gaga managed to jump a good twenty feet and land on the roof of the Awesomebus!.

To Be Continued…

Awesomesquad! Assemble! 3! (Revisited)! Attack of the “Fashionista”

If you have no idea what Awesomesquad! is, then welcome to my blog! I write about it a lot. Catch up on it here. For the rest of you, this is only the first half of what I was going to write, so hopefully next week that will be up (probably not.) Here we go:

January of 2010 rolled in, about four months after Nut’n Fancy’s death, and no one in the group (including myself) felt like doing any Awesomesquad!ing. The most any of us had done was when Lady Smash and I hired on our new Covert Ops expert, Series of Japanese Symbols. Lady Smash insisted that his name was Steve, but she also insisted that he spoke English, which he clearly didn’t. Luckily, whatever language he spoke, Lady Smash understood and was able to translate for me.

Other than that, GMZ and I had been spending the majority of our time scouring the internet for images of me from the Maher/ Limbaugh battle. There were a lot. Thankfully, the cameras were aimed above my waist, so I didn’t actually flash my junk to the entire world. And despite how much I enjoyed the attention at the time, I understood how dangerous to the team these pictures of me could be. Especially after our mysterious benefactor sent me an angry letter about it. Lady Smash had been keeping her mind off things by baking a church bake sale’s amount of cookies, Rice Crispy treats, and brownies. Everett, who was still upset about me breaking his prototype glasses, was either tinkering with some of his specialized weapons or locked in his room, moping. That is, if he was even in the Awesomebase! at all. He had his normal job, as did Damien, Danica, Phlegm, Jessie, and Criss. So for the most part, the Awesomebase! was empty other than GMZ, Lady Smash, our maintenance man, Raul, and myself.

As GMZ and I hacked into the next website to remove a picture of me (I think it was called The Berry), there was a pounding on the Watch Tower door. Begrudgingly, I left GMZ to continue our work, and opened the door. Lady Smash pushed her way through me, and into the Watch Tower. She rushed inside looking like she rolled around in a bag of flour, and had her cellphone up to her ear. She crossed the room in only five steps, practically thew GMZ out of his seat, sat down in it, and plugged her phone into the speaker.

“Why are you covered in flour?” GMZ asked.

“You’re on,” She said to the phone, ignoring GMZ’s question.

“Can you all hear me ok?” a seductive sounding female voice asked.

Lady Smash replied, “Yes, we can hear you fine. Please tell my teammates what you just told me.”

“Um, is the man who stripped on National Television in the room?”

GMZ put his hand over his mouth to muffle his snickering, and Lady Smash rolled her eyes. Suppressing a smirk, I answered, “Yes, I’m here.”

“Oh my gosh!” The woman’s voice said, sounding exasperated, “This might sound strange, but I’m your biggest fan! I think you’re hot!”

I couldn’t contain my grin at this point, “Well, thanks. Now what is it that you need from us?”

“Wha? Oh, right.” The woman sounded embarrassed and The flour covered Lady Smash glared at me. “My name is Sefani Germanotta, but you may have heard of my stage name: Lady Gaga.”

I looked to Lady Smash in shock. She nodded her head feverishly, creating a cloud of flour around her that she had to fan away.

“Over the past couple of weeks,” Lady Gaga continued, “I have been receiving a series of increasingly violent threats against my life from Katy Perry.”

“Classic Katy Perry,” I replied, “Have you gone to the police and filed a complaint against her?”

“Of course I’ve gone to the police!” Lady Gaga cried, “But Katy Perry is famous. She’s not as famous as me, but she’s still famous. And as you know, famous people-”

“Get away with everything.” Lady Caggiano, GMZ, and I answered in unison.

“So, are you going to help?”

“Well,” I replied hesitantly, “We still need more information from you before we make the final decision.” Lady Smash cast an evil glare in my direction. I ignored her and continued, “For instance, how did you get this number?”

For a few seconds, the other line was silent, but then Lady Gaga answered, “I have my ways. And if you need to hear the threats for yourself I have those too.”

There was a rustling noise coming through The Watch Tower speakers, but after a few seconds, it was replaced with a recording of Katy Perry’s voice making a series of increasingly violent sounding treats towards Lady Gaga and Gaga’s family. There also was a side rant where Perry accused Lady Gaga of ripping off Madonna and doesn’t deserve to be more famous than Perry, which required me to suppress a chuckle and required Lady Smash to fight back the urge to stab me. In the final audio clip, Perry announced that she will be waiting at Gaga’s loft in New York City so that she could personally, “Beat the shit out of that oddly dressed ass” of Gaga’s.

“Please tell me that you’re going to help me. I’m afraid for my safety,” Lady Gaga pleaded.

I was hesitant. The fact that Gaga had Lady Smash’s private number and knew that she was a part of this team didn’t sit right with me. “I’ll tell you what, Miss Germanotta,” I said, “Give us five minutes to discuss it.

“I can give you anything that you desire, if that’s the issue,” she added flirtatiously.

“That’s very nice of you,” I replied as businesslike as possible, “But we need to discuss how we would go about handling the situation as well as if it is worth the risk.”

“OK, I understand. I’ll call back in five minutes,” She replied, sounding disappointed.

Once she had hung up, Lady Smash screamed, “WHY THE HELL ARE WE DISCUSSING WHETHER OR NOT WE’RE GOING TO DO THIS, YOU DICK?!”

“Excuse me, you flour coated, Gaga obsessed crazy woman,” I snapped back, “but I’m a little curious as to how she found a way to come in contact with us.”

“Seriously, Smash, why are you covered in flour?” GMZ asked again.

“Don’t be thick, Minigan.” Smash retorted, “It’s obvious that she thinks you’re hot. She was flattering you like crazy, and judging by how much you were blushing, you noticed too.”

“Hopefully you’re wrong about Gaga hitting on Minigan, because Gaga’s definitely a dude,” GMZ interjected.

“What?!” Lady Smash and I blurted out in unison.

“That’s hilarious!” I cried.

“That’s not true!” Lady Smash added.

“It’s totally true!” GMZ replied, “And I know of the video to prove it!”

Almost as if he had prepared for this moment, GMZ instantly had the video playing on the wall of monitors. The video was grainy at that size, but no amount of grainy video could cover what GMZ wanted us to see. It’s of Lady Gaga on stage at a concert, and she is sitting on a motorcycle for some reason. After she gets off of it, she adjusts her skirt, and for a quick second, a flesh colored- something- is poking out from in between her legs.

This made Lady Smash even more furious, “That could be anything!”

I retorted, “Yeah, like a penis.”

“Go to Hell, Minigan,” Lady Smash snapped, “Besides, this doesn’t change the fact that she needs our help.”

“I totally agree,” I replied, “But I’m still uneasy at how she found us.”

Lady Smash calmed herself down and explained, “I understand that. I really do. But I’m in figurative love with Lady Gaga, and I cannot imagine her making this up. Please, Minigan, If you trust me at all, you will trust my instincts on this one.”

She had to bring up my trust in her. Of course I trusted her. She’s my second in command, she’s one of my closest friends, and she’s one of the few people who was able to keep my ego in check, how could not trust her? But no matter how much I trusted Lady Smash, I still didn’t trust Lady Gaga. She was famous singer after all.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you, Lady Sma-“

“OK, listen.” She interrupted as she pulled out a can of knockout gas from her hoodie pocket, “You can either agree to do this, or I can force you to go along, but either way we’re helping Lady Gaga.”

I could feel the blood drain from my face. I looked to GMZ, who looked like he was contemplating sprinting to the door.

“Fine,” I sighed, defeated, “But you call the rest of the group in and convince them to do this. And I promise you that that won’t be easy.”

—

“I cannot believe that all of you bastards decided to go along with this that easily,” I grumbled to the rest of Team Pugnastics as we climbed aboard the Awesomecopter!.

Damien laughed, “Well, it’s nice to have some solid evidence to go on for once, yeh know?”

“You’re a dick, Damien,” I stated as I suppressed a smirk.

“Yet, you still keep me around, so I must do a spot on job when it comes to fighting your American celebrities for you.”

“Yeah, well you Brits unleashed David and Victoria Beckham on us, so I’d say we’re even.” Everett interjected. When Damien glared at him, he quickly added, “But I agree with Damien about the whole evidence thing. The recording was a nice reassurance of what we’re getting into this time.”

Danica, who with the rest of Team Prevention came down to the Helipad to see us off, replied, “I dunno about that. That tape sounded a little too straightforward for it to be legitimate.” “I don’t know how you missed that, Lady Smash- Queen of bitchy rhetoric,” she added sarcastically.

From her seat, Lady Smash retorted, “You know what, McKellar, how about you invent a mathematical algorithm that proves that you’re a twat.”

“Enough!” I cried. I slammed the door shut before Danica could get in another snappy comeback.

The trip to New York City was uneventful and mostly filled with Series Of Japanese Symbols’s weird gibberish language and Lady Smash translating for me. At about 9:00, Jessie landed the Awesomecopter! on a rooftop a couple of blocks away from Gaga’s building, and we zip lined across. When we reached the roof of the skyscraper Gaga’s loft was in, Series of Japanese Symbols was able to get us all inside unnoticed.

It was nearly pitch black inside the hallway leading to Gaga’s loft. I pulled out my night vision goggles and strapped them to my head. I missed Everett’s glasses. And so did he, which he made sure I knew by stepping on my heels several times. I bit my lower lip and pretended to ignore it. We moved silently through the dark, and in no time we were at her door. Unlocked. One by one, we entered the apartment, which was only lit by the buildings outside the windows. In the center of the massive yet empty living room sat a chair in which the blond pop star was tied to. Lady Smash, along with the rest of us, ran to her aid.

“So, Minigan,” Lady Smash asked smartly, “do you think she’s faking this too?”

“Shut up,” I replied, “Let’s just get her untied.”

When we got close enough, it had become obvious that Lady Gaga was knocked out. Her wrists and ankles were tied to the wooden chair she sat in, and she had been gagged with what looked like a dish towel. Even though she was still, the dress she was wearing glittered ominously. When I looked closer her entire dress seemed to be made out of sharp metal scales. I shrugged this off as being what Lady Gaga wears to bed, and I began to undo the gag in Lady Gaga’s mouth. That’s exactly when she awoke with a slight shriek that made everyone in Awesomsquad! reach for their weapons.

“Oh, Thank God!” She exclaimed as she looked up to me, “You came to save me!”

“I said that you could count on us,” Lady Smash reassured her.

“Right,” Lady Gaga said in a dismissive tone. She then looked at the rest of Awesomesquad and said, “She and her goons went in there.” She nodded to a nook on the other side of the room where a door stood ajar. “They heard you coming and tried to escape. If you hurry you can catch them!”

Everyone in Awesomesquad! other than Lady Smash and myself ran to the nook and through the door. Lady Gaga then said to Lady Smash, “You should go with them- her goons had some serious weapons with them, and the rest of your team could use your help. Mr. Cloak here should be able to protect me.”

Through the nightvision goggles, I could see Lady Gaga gazing up at me and biting her lower lip seductively and Lady Smash holding back the urge to punch me in the face. After a second or two of glaring at me, Lady Smash obliged Gaga and followed the rest of the group through the door.

“Don’t worry, Miss Gaga,” I reassured her, “We have the situation under control- Wait, what do you mean they heard us coming? We are experts in stealth and we landed our Awesomecopter several blocks away. No one ever hears us coming. And how did you know where they went if you were knocked out?”

Instead of answering, Lady Gaga smiled at me and said, “Don’t call me Gaga.” She then stomped her right foot on the floor. The tile she stomped on sank into the floor, and that was the last thing I saw before my retinas were obliterated by light flooding my night vision goggles. I screamed in agony and fell to the ground. From behind me, I could hear my teammates rushing back through the door, but there was whooshing noise, and their footsteps and calls for me were silenced. Despite my natural instincts, I forced my eyes open and looked for Gaga through the blur of light and tears. My eyes were adjusting, but not fast enough. A strong kick was delivered to my right ribs that sent me crashing through the chair that Gaga was sitting in and back onto the floor. Stabbing pain rocketed across my chest, and all the air escaped my lungs. As quickly as my body would allow, I climbed to my hands and knees. Everything was still a blur, but I could make out the glittering Lady Gaga walking towards me. I raised up my hand and blasted her with a column of fire. She stepped through it, and ripped the flamethrowers off my wrists and pushed me onto my back.

“Cherry cherry boom boom.” She seethed.

Finally I could see clearly. She towered over me, just standing there, waiting for me to make the first move, or to decide what to do with me… Actually, I had no clue what she was planning on doing to me. She stared down at me and began to speak in a language that I never thought a human mouth could make. It sounded as if someone put the puttering of a dying motor through an auto-tuner. After a few seconds of this, my wrist communicator crackled to life.

“Minigan! Are you OK?!” Lady Smash’s voice shouted through, “What’s she doing?”

I looked passed Gaga. On the other side of the room, in the nook was the rest of my team, separated from me by a sheet of glass. Lady Smash was staring at me, the anger replaced with concern, Damien and Series of Japanese Symbols were hammering on the window with legs of furniture they must have found in the other room, Criss was pounding on the glass with his bare hands in an attempt to draw Gaga’s attention to them instead, and Everett, had pulled out a camera and a tablet, I assumed to video tape my murder.

Gaga turned to see what I was looking at, saw my team, and commanded me in English, “Tell your friends that if they break through that window, I will kill every last one of them in the most horrible way imaginable.”

I pressed the button on my wrist communicator, “Don’t break through that window. If you do, Lady Gaga is going to make each of you listen to her music until you drown yourselves in her toilet. So, again, DO NOT break through that glass. Especially you, Criss.” He stopped hitting the glass and gave me a confused look. I raised one eyebrow and stated again, “Yes, Criss. Do not break though that glass.” Criss nodded, catching what I meant, and I looked back at Gaga, who was speaking to herself in that strange language again. I left my communicator speaker on.

“What do you want, Gaga?” I asked as I tried to inch backwards. A shot of pain blasted through my chest, and I realized that at least one of my ribs were fractured from that kick. I grunted and propped myself up on my elbows.

“What I want?” She replied, “I wanna take a ride on your disco-stick.”

“What?!”

“You heard me,” she cooed as she got down on her hands and knees and moved her face so that hers was only an inch away from mine, “Let’s play a love game.”

Her breath smelled like a mixture of meat, flowers, and pond water, which in any other scenario, I would point out to the person. But at that moment, I asked instead, “Why in God’s name would you go through all this trouble if you just wanted to have sex with me?”

“Because she’s an alien!” Everett interjected through the communicator, “Minigan, I was able to send a recording of that language to GMZ, and he crossed referenced it with the Government’s audio files from Area 51. She is from a species of shape-shifters. And since she’s chosen -uh- you as a mate, she’s probably the queen of her hive. She’s going to try and take you back to her planet to mate! Stop her by-“

Lady Gaga ripped the communicator off my wrist and crushed it in her hands. “Hey there summer boy,” she whispered into my ear, “Let’s go for a ride!”

Gaga stood up, grabbed me by my arms, and with incredible force started to drag me away. I groaned in agony from my ribs, and I looked around the room for something I could wrap my legs around to stop her.

But At that moment, Criss passed through the glass, and shouted, “Stop right there, Gaga!”

Instantly, Gaga had dropped my arms and raised them to her breasts, which had turned into machine guns. She fired at Criss, who sprinted across the room and dove over the counter and into the kitchen. My team trapped in the nook dropped to the ground to avoid the bullets, and the glass separating them and us shattered. I tried rolling to the wall, but Gaga was still too quick for me. She lifted me up by my armpits and pinned me against the wall.I let out a cry of agony, as I could have sworn I was being stabbed in the chest.

“I’m sorry, babe,” she said to me, “but I’m gonna have to kill all your friends.”

“NO!” I yelled, “All they’re doing is trying to protect me! Why do you need to kill them?!”

She caressed my cheek with the back of her hand and said, “I’m on a mission, and it involves some heavy touching.” She then slapped me hard and continued, “And no one is allowed to stop me from completing that mission.”

With that, dozens of the metal scales from her dress then popped off her body, jumped onto me, and wrapped around my wrists and ankles. When I looked down at them, they had fused together to form shackles that allowed no movement by me at all. Gaga let go and looked me in the eyes. She then opened her mouth and let her long, thin, scaly green tongue slide up and down my face. I would’ve vomited on her if I hadn’t been afraid of the pain in my chest knocking me out.

“You taste just like glitter mixed with rock and roll,” she cooed.

“That doesn’t make any sense!” I yelled at her, “Who knows what glitter and rock and roll taste like?! You are the worst human impersonator ever!”

“I’m good enough to fool your moronic species,” she snapped back. She turned to face the rest of Awesomesquad!, whom had her surrounded, and continued, “All of you humans were so busy focusing on my alleged penis from that concert clip to wonder why that clip ended so suddenly. It was edited so that no one outside of that concert would know my true form. Everyone who sees my true form in person becomes one of my legion of loyal monsters. They do my bidding, and they will bring to me whatever, or whomever, I want.”

“Holy Shit!” I exclaimed, remembering who insisted that we accept this mission, “Lady Smash, did you plan this!?”

“No!” she cried, “I swear. I knew nothing about this. I didn’t even know she was an alien until GMZ told us!”

I didn’t believe her, and apparently, neither did Damien nor Criss, who shifted their guns from Gaga to Lady Smash. She put both her hands in the air and stepped backward. No one spoke, not even Gaga. We all just stared from Lady Smash to Lady Gaga, expecting Gaga to make a demand that Smash would immediately follow. I saw a wicked looking smirk grow on Gaga’s face, and I knew just she was thinking the same thing as I.

“I’ve never even been to one of her concerts!” Lady Smash yelled right as Gaga opened her mouth, “And I can prove it!”

She stomped towards Gaga, pulled out a hunting knife, and slashed at her chest. Several of the scales that the blade had sliced fell the floor, showing a deep cut in Gaga’s flesh. She shrieked and pounced on Lady Smash. Criss, Damien, and Series of Japanese Symbols joined in on the fight. The five of them fought in a pile on the floor, rolling around, with Lady Gaga biting them as often as she could. Everett, who avoided the wrestling match occurring in front of us, ran up to me and began trying to cut off the scales that had me shackled to the wall.

“Be careful,” I said, “I think a few of my ribs are fractured.”

“Luckily, I have just the thing for that,” Everett stated. He reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a modified EPI pen. He stabbed it into my side, making my whole body tense up, and then squeezed the top. Within seconds, the pain was washed away by a tingling sensation in my chest and buzzing sensation in my brain.

“It’s a mixture of adrenaline and Novocain. It should keep you numb for a while while also helping you to ignore the pain until we get out of this situation,” he explained with a grin. I’m guessing that the relief of my pain was noticeable. After Gaga roared behind him, his expression became serious once again and said, “Let’s get you off the wall.”

The scales were tough, but Everett had a strong pair of wire clippers that managed to cut through the scales and free me. Together, he and I rushed back into the fight, which was still a wrestling/ biting match on the floor. With one hard kick, I managed to repay Gaga for the kick she had given to me, and separated her from my team. She landed on her feet in front of the counter. She let out another roar, which was followed by a long tail forming from her backside. It quickly grabbed a hold of my five team mates, one by one, and threw them across the room. Each hit the wall with a loud thud, and slumped to the ground. Each of their groans assured me that they were all still alive.

“Join me, Mr. Blackwood.” Lady Gaga cooed, “We would make beautiful larva together.”

“I don’t know what part of that sentence you think is arousing,” I retorted, stealthfully freeing my taser from its holster, “but I promise you that every man on this planet would immediately suffer from erectile dysfunction   if you said that to him.”

She crossed the room to where I was standing, wrapped one of her legs around me and pulled me close. She then whispered in my ear, “Not a man from Holland.”

“Well,” I snapped at her, “I guess you should go try to get one of those guys then.”

Before she could say anything else that would make me want to vomit, I plunged my taser into her stomach and pressed the button. Her dress came alive with angry clicks. The metals scales spun and flapped around madly, the ones closest to me cutting into my hands. But the taser still did as I hoped. The metal scales conducted the electricity and directed it all over her body. Lady Gaga convulsed for a few seconds before she fell to the ground completely. It didn’t knock her out, only weakened her, but that was enough for me to get away. The rest of my team was back on their feet, and Everett was rushing towards me with a silver disk. He tossed it passed me, and it slid right up to Gaga.

“Get away from that, Minigan” Everett warned, “You don’t want to be close when the spiders come out.”

“Spiders?!” I cried, getting the hell away from that disk.

I turned around once I was a safe distance away, and saw what he meant. The disk split into five different round spider-looking robots. Lady Gaga was back on her feet, still in a mild daze, when the spider-robots climbed onto her feet. With amazing speed, the five robots wove a silvery cocoon around Lady Gaga which left her completely unable to move. She fell back down to the floor.

“Let’s get right the fuck out of this place,” I shouted to my team as we all sprinted for the door.

I was about to run out of the Gaga’s loft when she yelled, “But I’ve taken you as my mate! You have to come to my planet with me!”

“Why couldn’t you just take any other male on this planet?” I shouted back, feeling sorry for the potentially doomed soul.

“Pfsh,” she replied, writhing in the metal cocoon the spiders had trapped her in, “I don’t want no paper gangsta, I want the real thing.”

“Well… Tough shit.”

We were all sprinting down the hallway and back up the stairs to the roof when I yelled to my team, “Someone get Jessie on the line. He needs to pick us up at this roof. That cocoon will not hold Gaga.”

“But that’s a titanium nano-fiber,” Everett explained, “It will take her a lot longer than just a few minutes to break out of-“

There was a crash and a roar from below us indicating that Lady Gaga was in fact free from the cocoon.

“Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up!” I commanded to my group.

Damien got the word to Jessie, who then said that he was on his way, and we started sprinting up the stairs even faster once we heard Gaga break into the stairwell. I was running next to Lady Smash, who seemed to be absolutely furious about the whole situation.

She casted a sideways glance towards me and in between breaths, she warned, “Don’t even say what you’re thinking, Minigan.”

I replied, “But all I want to say is-“

“Don’t,” she interjected.

We turned the corner and sprinted up the next floor, before we heard another shriek from Gaga. I then said to Lady Smash in a  conversational tone, “I just want to say that, for the record, I think she just might have been faking that whole ‘being tied up’ thing, but hey, what the hell do I know, right?”

“Shut the fuck up, Minigan, or I’m going to throw you to her.”

“Won’t both of you shut the bloody hell up and run!” Damien cried. He kicked open the door to the roof and sprinted out into the cold January night.

Everett, Criss, Series of Japanese Symbols, Lady Smash, and I followed, and as soon as I was through the door, Everett, Criss, and Damien threw whatever they could find in front of the door to barricade it. The wind picked up and the Awesomecopter! flew into view. The rhythmic “wop-wop” sound and the chilly downwash from the spinning blades reassured me that this was almost over. Without landing, the door opened and Team Pugnastics climbed in.

Being the last one in, I shut the door behind me and yelled to Jessie, “Let’s get the fuck out of here!”

“Ok,” Jessie replied brightly, “but not until everyone is wearing their seatbelts.”

“GO!” the six of us screamed.

Jessie obliged, and the Awesomecopter! dove over the edge of the building. I sat down in my seat, and let out a sigh of relief. The ordeal was over. At least, that’s what I was thinking before a large amount of weight tilted the Awesomecopter! backwards and sent us flying in reverse.

“Oh hey!” Jessie exclaimed, “Lady Gaga is literally on our tail! I wonder what she needs now?”

“God damn it,” I shouted, “She just won’t give up!” I unbuckled my seatbelt, poked my head into the cockpit, and ordered Jessie, “Do whatever you can to shake her off.”

“Sure thing, Boss!” Jessie replied with a grin as he pulled up on the collective and made the Awesomecopter! shoot upward. He zig-zagged dangerously over the streets and buildings of New York City, probably terrifying the citizens below. Despite Jessie’s acrobatics, Gaga was still clutching to the tail boom (I swear I didn’t make up that name) of the Awesomecopter! with no intent on letting go.

I muttered a string of expletives to myself and then turned to my team and said, “I’m gonna need to go out there and fight her. Someone give me their grappling hook. I’m going to have to fight her while suspended from it.”

“No!” Lady Smash cried, “Let one of us go! You fighting her will be giving her what she wants!”

“Yes,” I replied, but she will kill each of you without hesitation to get to me. I don’t want that on my conscience. Not after Nut’n Fancy.

Everett added, “But what will we do if she manages to capture you and Jessie doesn’t see it?”

I paused for a second, realizing that that situation is a terrifyingly real possibility. I looked to Damien and asked, “Are you up for some more fighting?”

“Always,” he replied with a grin, already unbuckling his seat belt. The Awesomecopter! banked hard to the left, which almost sent Damien toppling out of his chair.

“Good.” I stated steadying myself on my empty seat. Looking to the others, I asked, “Who wants to give us their grappling guns?”

Lady Caggiano, Criss, and Series of Japanese Symbols offered us their grappling guns, and Everett pulled a large box out from under his chair.

“These are magnetic boots,” he said as he pulled to heavy looking red boots out of the box, “They work exactly as you think: they have strong magnets inside that it possible to walk on metal ceilings or walls, or in this case, keep you standing on the metal fuselage of a helicopter that’s in mid-flight.” He handed them to me and added, “Now, I haven’t had a chance to field test them yet, but I’m confident that they’ll work.”

“How many goddamn prototypes do you have that you haven’t ‘field tested’ yet, Everett?!” I shouted.

Sarcastically, he shouted back, “Well, do you want me to list them to you, or do you want to go fight the sex crazed alien that wants to kidnap and rape you?”

I pondered that question for a second, and then asked, “Can I go with the first one?”

“No!” Lady Caggiano, Everett, and (I assume) Series of Japanese Symbols shouted at me.

“But there’s only one pair of boots,” I noted to Everett, “What will the other person do?”

“Don’t sweat it, mate,” Damien replied, “I’ll hang from the copter using the grappling hooks and keep her from taking you. It’s like you said, she’ll kill me if I’m in her way to getting you. She won’t kill you cause she doesn’t want you dead- only maimed.” “Plus,” he added, patting his gun, “I’m a damn good shot if it comes to that.”

I quickly pulled off my regular boots and shoved the magnetic ones on in their place, and then Damien opened the door. The roar of wind and the Awesomecopter’s! engine poured in, making the seated members of my team cover their ears and turn their heads. Damien stepped out onto the skids, and shot his grappling gun at the tail boom. Despite the wind and the murderous alien waiting for us, he managed to get the grappling hook around the tail boom and hooked onto its wire on the first try. He jumped off the skids, doing a triple front flip (show off) and swung down to about twenty feet below the Awesomecopter!.

I sat down at the edge of the cabin door, and pressed my feet against the outside of the fuselage. Everett instructed me to press the button on the inside of the tongue to activate the magnets. I did so, and instantly felt the strong pull of magnets to metal. I then pulled myself into the standing position. Well, almost standing position. Due to the wind, and the fact that my center of gravity was turned on its side, I could only crouch and scoot my feet towards Gaga. My cloak, being caught in the wind currents created by the helicopter flying up and down city streets, wrapped itself awkwardly around me. Just about all of my hair was in my mouth. If I could’ve lifted my legs, I would have tripped over it. This was going to be the last thing my team saw me do. I was going to either die or be kidnapped in the worst fighting stance possible: crouched into a ball and fighting off my own clothes.

Gaga, on all fours on the tail boom and her claws digging into the metal, smiled at me and yelled, “I won’t ever stop, Minigan. I’ll chase you down until you love me.” She then reached down to the wire of Damien’s grappling gun, and with one fierce swipe, cut it.

“Damien! NO!” I cried, unable to do anything other than watch his wire go slack and him fall out of sight. I heard a weird clank and then the muffled screams of my teammates inside, my guess was they witnessed Damien’s landing.

I stood straight up. Despite the wind, despite the fact that I was fighting gravity, and despite the sharp pain returning to my chest with each breath, I stood straight up and took several slow, deliberate steps towards the menacing pop queen. She crawled towards me, licking her lips. I took a deep breath, feeling the stabbing pain in my ribs, and once she was within reach, I took a swing.

I caught her in her jaw with a left jab, and she stumbled backwards, almost falling off the tail boom. My knuckles screamed with pain, but the rage at her killing Damien made me ignore it.

I screamed, “I’ve got more where that came from, you interplanetary bitch.”

She righted herself and called back with a grin, “Baby, when it’s love, if it’s not rough it isn’t fun.”

I took another swing and hit her hard with a right hook, but this time she only brushed it off and pounced at me. I slid my left foot backwards, and arched my back to avoid her. She narrowly missed me, but did manage to grab onto my cloak. As she fell she spun me around so that I was facing the ground. The upper part of my body lurched forward, and suddenly, I was facing the fuselage and being choked by my cloak. Gaga shrieked in horror as she thrashed around below me. I looked up (or down, I guess) and watched as Justice Stick slide out of its special pocket. I quickly reached for it, but when I did, my right foot slid out of my magnetic boot. With the weight of Lady Gaga hanging from my cloak, the remaining boot slid to the undercarriage of the fuselage.

“Hey’ Gaga!” I yelled down to her, “How about you take a ride on Justice Stick?”

I took one swipe with my pole arm and the blade managed to cut both of her hands. She let go of my cloak and fell onto the roof of a passing skyscraper. She looked up and me and roared a furious roar. I was about to let out a triumphant laugh, when my other foot slipped out of the other magnetic boot and I fell back to the cold earth. I braced myself for impact  but out of nowhere, a pair of arms swung in and wrapped around my chest. I screamed in agony as my body came to a halt and the arms squeezed around me tighter.

“You okay, mate?” a British voice asked.

“Damien?!”

“In the flesh.”

I was amazed, “I thought you died!”

“Ah, no such luck for you,” He joked, “I used a second grappling gun to catch onto the skids. Which is what you could have done, yeh bloody fool.”

I would have let out a laugh or a sigh of relief, but the pain in my chest was preventing me from breathing at all. Damien reeled in the grappling wire, which pulled us back up to the skids. He then opened the cabin door, threw me inside, and then entered as well.

I took a couple of deep pained breaths and then weakly yelled, “Get me the Hell out of New York City.”

That Time I Spent the Day With a Jonas Brother

[Interior, dressing room. Nick Jonas, a member of the uncreatively named boy band, The Jonas brothers, sits in front of his oversized mirror, strumming his acoustic guitar and mumbling lyrics to himself.]

Jonas brother- Everyone’s allergic to poison ivy/ Everyone’s allergic to poison ivy…

[There was a light knock on the door.]

Jonas brother- Come in.

[A large, surley looking man wearing an ear piece and a Kay Jewelers worth of gold chains stepped in]

Big dude- Nick, the winner of Chewy Granola Bars’ Superstar search is here. He says his name is Minigan Blackwood. Would you like me to let him in?

Jonas Brother- I thought the winner was a girl. [shrugs] I must’ve misheard. Sure, let him in.

[The big dude turned out of the doorway, and a second later returned with a muscular and long haired guy, not too much older than Nick, who sauntered into the room. He wore a black T-shirt featuring a picture of Jesus on the cross and the words, “Men who wear sandals get what they deserve.” The big dude left the room, closing the door behind him.]

Jonas Brother- Hello, Minigan. Congratulations on winning the-

Minigan- Wow, Jonah Hill, you lost a lot of weight!

Jonas Brother- Um, I’m not Jonah Hill. I don’t even look like Jonah Hill. I’m Nick Jonas.

Minigan- Oh, sorry about that Norah Jones. I didn’t mean to insult you or your vagina.

She looks like she isn't above stabbing a man and looking cute while she does it.

Jonas Brother- [pauses] No. I’m Nick Jonas… From the Jonas Brothers. C’mon, you won the contest to meet me.

Minigan- Oh yeah. [looks around the room] Shit, is all this stuff yours? [he walked over to one of the Camp Rock posters on the wall.] Damn, who’s that fine bitch?

Jonas Brother- Oh, ha ha, that’s Selena Gomez. Yeah, she’s pretty cute.

Minigan- You hit that?

Jonas Brother- Me? Uh, no. [He raised his hand and pointed to the ring on his finger] I am keeping my promise to God that I won’t have sex before marriage.

Minigan- A purity ring, huh? That’s gotta be a great way to avoid vagina.

Jonas Brother- Yes, it is- Oh. I see what you did there.

[Minigan wasn’t paying attention. He had pulled out a box cutter and begun to cut away at one of the posters. With long and crazy swipes, he somehow managed to cut a perfect square around Selena Gomez’s face. He folded up the picture and put it in his front pocket.]

Minigan- I’m gonna need that for later.

Jonas brother- You ruined my poster!

Minigan- huh? Oh yeah. Sorry about that. But, you know, shit happens.

Jonas Brother- What do you mean, “That word happens?” You did that!

[Minigan looked back at the shredded remains of the poster. He had slashed at it in such a way that, with the red wall the poster was attached to, it looked like each of the Jonas Brothers had a deep gash in their necks.]

Three more down.

Minigan- You’re a Jonas Brother, you say?

Jonas Brother- [irritably] Yes. How do you not know that? You signed up for a contest with my name on it.

Minigan- Eh, I sign up for a lot of contests. Actually, all contests. Any time I see one, I sign up for it.  Half the time, I’m tripping on something fierce when I sign up, and the only way I know I entered is when I win something. Which reminds me, what are we going to do today? We’re in L.A. so I have to assume it involves lots of drugs and prostitutes.

Jonas Brother- [raises his hand with the purity ring] Um, hello? Purity ring? Remember?

Minigan- Oh, that’s right. You prefer male escorts. Boom! Second gay joke I made in 5 minutes! I’m on a roll today!

Jonas Brother- OK, I’ve had it with you. Turk! Can you please come in here and escort Minigan out!

Minigan- Who’s Turk? That big guy? He can’t hear you right now. You see, right before he let me in, I injected him with some rhino sedatives. That shit’s powerful. I mean, I’d be surprised if he wasn’t in a coma right now.

Jonas Brother- I’m calling the cops.

[Nick pulls out his phone and begins to dial 911, when Minigan swipes it out of his hand and hurls it at the far wall. It shatters into several large, yet still very broken pieces.]

Minigan- I’m not going to let you do that. Not when I have this much drugs on me.

Jonas Brother- [now terrified] You brought drugs here?! Why?!

Minigan- Well, I was told you’re a big music star. I assumed you partied.

[Minigan pulled out two baggies from the same pocket he stuffed the Selena Gomez picture in. The first one was filled about half full with a powder that has hot pink. The other had barely anything in it, but what was in it was dark grey and flaky.]

Jonas Brother- Are those even drugs? One looks like candy powder and the other looks like ash.

Minigan- Oh ho ho these are drugs! I have no clue what the pink powder is called, but I like to call it, “Olivia Wilde,” because the last time I was on it I made out with Olivia Wilde. My friends tried to tell me that it wasn’t Olivia, but actually my other friend, Brennen, but I am pretty sure they were just mad at me because I took all the drugs.

Why haven't you called?

This dark grey dust is pure Charlie Sheen. That man, let me tell you, is crazy. If you think I’m deranged, you should meet Sheen. He makes me look like the President. When I went to get this, I thought I was going to have to sneak into his mansion and cut off one of his fingers with my pruning shearers, but he let me in, took me into the kitchen and let me choose which finger I wanted. Then the bastard cut it off! Himself! He even offered me the entire hand at a really good price, but I was pretty sure that amount of drugs could bring about the end of days. Also, he apparently regenerates lost limbs. I’m tellin’ you; the man is nuts. And, by the way, he takes forever to burn down into a powder. [He shook the bag] this was the best I could do.

Jonas Brother- Really, Charlie Sheen? C’mon that joke is so last year.

Bam! I'm on a roll today!

Minigan- [He glared at Nick Jonas] Well, I’m talking to a Jonas Brother right now, so I’m clearly not going to focus on anything that’s relevant.

Jonas Brother- That hurt.

[Minigan buried his face in the bag filled with the Olivia Wilde powder. From the looks of it, Minigan was not snorting, but eating the powder. When he pulled his face away, bag was licked clean, and eyes were dilated spinning in opposite directions. Without skipping a beat, Minigan tore open the bag of Charlie Sheen, wrapped the bag around his nose and mouth, and inhaled it all. Within a second or two his eyes stopped rolling and looked right at Nick.]

Jonas Brother- I think we should talk about Jesus.

Minigan- And I think we should talk about how you religious types try to force all your beliefs down everyone’s throat. Jesus honey glazed Christ, doesn’t it say in the bible “Judge not, lest ye be judged?” And Besides, it’s not like Jesus didn’t die for my sins. As a Christian, I’m in the clear with the man upstairs. Now, give me your keys. I feel like a drive.

Jonas Brother- You just did more drugs than I think is humanly possible. I am not giving you the keys to my car.

Minigan- We’ll just see about that.

***

[Exterior, parking lot. Minigan and Nick Jonas just got into Nick’s brand new SUV. Minigan was in the driver’s seat, revving the engine, and Nick was sitting in the passanger’s seat, tightening his seatbelt and saying a silent prayer]

Jonas Brother- Wait a minute, how’d we get down here? And how’d you get my keys?!

Minigan- Duh, I’m writing this. [Minigan then put the SUV into drive, and pressed the gas pedal to the floor. The SUV sped foreword and over some bushes before swerving onto the street.] And since I’m writing this, all I have to do is add a cut scene if I want you to do something.

Jonas Brother- Oh jeez. Like what?

Minigan- Well, anything really. I can make you highway surf while I take a nap while driving the car, I could make you talk some shit on some Hell’s Angels, or I could make you suck my dick.

[Nick’s face had a look of pure horror on it.]

Minigan- I’m kidding! Well, not really. I could make you suck my dick, but I really don’t want you too. Tough break for you, I’m afraid.

Jonas Brother- [after shaking the thought of oral sex from his head] OK, that doesn’t make any sense at all.

Minigan- It is a cheap trick I learned from watching reality TV. But here is something that is really well thought out.

[Minigan removed both hands from the steering wheel (Nick grabbed ahold of the steering wheel) Minigan pulled the Selena Gomez picture out of his pocket, cut out the eyes with his box cutter, and then taped it over his face.]

Minigan- I’m doing this so that when I run red lights, the cops won’t know it’s me. Ha ha ha- the perfect crime.

Jonas Brother- Please grab the wheel. Please.

[Minigan eventually grabbed the wheel. And Nick leaned back in his seat. He was exhausted from meeting Minigan, but he was too afraid to go to sleep. Especially since Minigan kept his promise and ran every single red light. Nick stared out the window and did his best not to look at Minigan. Minigan tried to ease the tension.]

Minigan- So, you’re a Jonas Brother you say?

Jonas Brother- [sigh] yes.

Minigan- So which one are you?

Jonas Brother- I’ve already told you, I’m Nick.

Minigan- I meant you’re not the one with straight hair, and you’re not the puffy one, so what does that make you? The whiney one? You’ve been doing a lot of bitching today. Maybe that’s what you add to the group.

[Nick didn’t reply]

Minigan- C’mon, I’m joking! I’m just trying to get you to loosen up! If you don’t you’re really going to kill my buzz when I burn down the halfway house we’re headed to.

[Nick still didn’t answer. After about a minute, though, he saw a young kid walking on the sidewalk, talking on his phone. Nick pointed to the kid.]

Jonas Brother- Hey! That’s Justin Bieber! You’d love him, Minigan! He just loves drugs, sex with prostitutes, and arson!

Minigan- Who is this Justin Beaver? Is he another one of the Jonas Brothers?

Jonas Brother-Wha- No. He’s another famous Pop star. He’s actually more famous than me and my brothers now.

Minigan- So he pushed you guys out of the spotlight?

Jonas Brother- Well, I wouldn’t put it that way. He’s just the ne—AAARRRRGGGGHHH!!

[Minigan swerved to the right, cutting off the cars behind him and got half of the SUV onto the sidewalk.]

Minigan- [screams] Open your door and hit him with it when we pass!

Jonas Brother- No! I will absolutely not do that!

Minigan- Fine then.

[Minigan steered the SUV so that all four wheels were on the side walk. Several people on the sidewalk jumped out of the way. One person, a skinny white teenage boy, didn’t jump fast enough, and got crushed by the SUV’s tires. Minigan swerved the car back onto the road and raced through his 45^th red light.]

Dead? Check. Dead, caught looking like a flashy lesbian? Double check.

Minigan- Was that him? Was that the Bee-burr you were talking about? Cause if it was? I think we got him!

Jonas Brother- Oh my gosh! I want to cry so bad right now!

Minigan- Tears of joy right? I totally killed off your competition in the music industry! Young adolescent girls will be hot for you all over again!

Jonas Brother- I never said I wanted that!

Minigan- You might not have used those words, but you did suggest that I go hang out with him because, [Minigan did his best to mimic Nick’s girl voice] “You’d love him, Minigan! He just loves drugs, sex with prostitutes, and arson!” Don’t try to pretend like you’re innocent in all of this. You were selfish enough to think that it would be OK to pawn me off on someone else. Bee-bur’s  blood is on your hands, Jonas. Just be thankful that we didn’t try to run over Zac Efron. That dude got crazy ripped. He’s probably total your car. How do you think he got that ripped, anyway? Steroids? I bet he got really weird with the steroid useage.

I'm positive you dope, you sexy, sexy bastard. Also, 7 down.

[Nick didn’t answer but wept silently for a minute or two, and Minigan held up a tape recorder in order to, “record the sounds of someone’s sanity falling apart.” Then, sirens and red and blue flashing lights came from behind them.]

Minigan- Good, the cops. Now the real fun begins!

Jonas Brother- [To God] Please Lord, rescue me from the situation.

Minigan- [Mimicking a ghost’s voice] IIIIIIIIIII heeeeeeeellllllllllp thoooooooooose whooooooooooo heeeeeeeeellllllllp theeeeeeeeeeeem seeeeeeeeeellllllllllllllllllllllves!

Jonas Brother- Can’t you just pull over. Or at the very least slow down enough so that I can jump out?

Minigan- No can do, Jonas brother. They could possibly run you over, or worse, have you testify against me! I cannot have that. But I’ll meet you half way. Call up Miley Cyrus, and tell her the situation, then give the phone to me, and I’ll confirm it.

Jonas Brother- How the hell do you expect me to do that? You ruined my phone, you prick!

***

[Chino Valley Freeway, late afternoon.  Minigan and Nick Jonas sped down the freeway with a long line of cop cars, about twenty or so, on their tail. Minigan was giggling about the word, “Chino,” and Nick was calling Miley Cyrus on his phone.”

Jonas Brother- [To Minigan] how do you keep doing that? [to Miley Cirus] Hey Miley, How’s it going? A friend of mine wants to talk to you.

Miley Cyrus- Nick? Are you OK? Taylor Swift and I have been watching the news. You’re all over it. They say that you and Selena Gomez hit Justin Bieber with your car and have been leading the cops on a several hour long chase. We’re so shocked you would do something like this, Taylor especially. Well, she’s always shocked about something.

It kind of looks like she's eating that check mark. At the very least, she's deep throating it.

Jonas Brother- Miley, you need to listen to me. It’s not my fault. And Selena Gomez isn’t here with me; it’s some crazy person wearing a picture of her as a mask. You’ve got to believe me! I’m a hostage here!

Minigan- [takes the phone and speaks into it with a convincing Selena Gomez impersonation] Miley! What up, you slut! Don’t listen to Nick. He’s such a little lair. I’ll tell you the truth. We both decided that we were tired of Bieber and his stranglehold on the tween pop market, so we decided to take matters into our own hands.

Jonas Brother- [yells so that Miley can her him] Miley he’s lying. His name is Minigan Blackwood. Minigan Blackwood! I promise you I’m telling the truth!

Miley Cyrus-Selena, Nick sounds like he’s afraid. I’m going to hang up tell the cops what he said.

Minigan- Don’t you dare you bitch or I’ll make sure that there are no more parties in your U.S.A!!!

[Minigan then rolled down the window and tossed the phone out of it.]

Aaannnd I've attacked my quota of celebrities for the week in this one post!

Minigan- Oh good, we’re here!

Jonas Brother- Where?

Minigan- Here. Where I built a ramp specifically to be used for us to jump this car off of so that we could get away from the cops.

[Minigan pointed to a large concrete shape in the distance. A little further from that was an overpass.]

Jonas Brother- Oh, God. You’re not going to try to land on that, are you?

Minigan- Not at this pansy speed, I’m not.

[Minigan pressed his foot all the way down on the accelerator, and the car sped foreward, topping out at 120 mph. Nick and Minigan yelled as they hit the ramp which sent them flying through the air. The SUV turned to the left, and cleared the first side of the overpass. Then it cleared the second side of the overpass. The SUV hit the freeway with its passenger side tires, and rolled several times before it finally came to a stop. Nick Jonas stumbled out of the twisted hunk of metal that was his SUV with his hands raised. Police cars surrounded him and the car.]

Jonas Brother- [He cried to the cops] I swear I didn’t do anything! It’s that man in the driver’s seat. He held me hostage!

[A cop walks up to the driver’s side of the SUV, gun drawn. After a second or two the cop walks back to Nick]

Cop- There’s no one else in that car.

Jonas Brother- No. It can’t be!  [limps to the window to get a look for himself. The seat was empty. He turns to the cop.] I swear he was holding me hostage. His name was-

***

[Interior, Court room. Nick Jonas is sentenced to two years in prison for drug charges. Evidence proves that he did not drive the car, but there is also no evidence that Selena Gomez was driving the car either, mostly because she was out of the country when the incident took place. Eventually, no one was charged for the death of Bieber, despite Nick Jonas’s best efforts to pin it on the Ohio Native, Minigan Blackwood who was proven to be in Ohio during the incident.]

Jonas Brother- [Looks up to the ceiling as the bailiff cuffs him and screams] Damn you, Minigan Blackwood!!

***

[Exterior, prison parking lot, two years later. Nick Jonas is walking out, parolled and free. Minigan Blackwood is standing there waiting for him]

Minigan- Joan of Arc! How’ve you been, buddy? How was prison?

Jonas Brother- [Lurches at Minigan, hands outstreached and aiming for Minigan’s throat] You son of a Bitch! It’s your fault I was in there. I’ll kill you!

Minigan- [dodges Nick’s attack] Nick, How was I supposed to know you’d get pinned with drug charges?

Jonas Brother- Then why didn’t you stay and take the blame! The least you could’ve done is taken me with you so that neither of us would’ve been caught!

Minigan- I would have loved to. Just think about how the News would’ve felt about that! The cops chase you throughout most of Southern California, only to realize that you’ve been in Ohio the entire time. God, that would have hilarious.

Jonas brother- How’d you even disappear anyway? The cops said that there wasn’t even a trace of you in the car.

Minigan- Well, I was tripping so much balls on Olivia Wilde and Charlie Sheen that I actually ceaced to exist in this level of being. Hell, I’m still tripping on that shit.

Jonas Brother- How? It’s been two and a half years?

Minigan- For you. For me, it was like 20 minutes. I was able to travel to the moment you got sentenced and this moment right here. It’s actually pretty awesome.

Jonas Brother- Does that mean you can go back in time and get me not arrested.

Minigan- [Beginning to fade into nothingness] I’m sorry, I cannot help you. I must go back to the paaaaaaasssssssssstttttttttttt.

[Minigan disappeared]

Jonas Brother- Goddamn it.

Metallica: WTF Magnetic

Don’t you just love fall? All of the leaves start changing colors, The TV starts playing shows that actually don’t suck, Christmas season officially starts (just kidding, it started in August), And most importantly, the dead rise from their graves to feast on the flesh of the living. I am not sure why it always happens this time of year exactly, but there are always documentaries with terrible dialogue on TV this time of year; especially during October. I have decided that this probably due to the amount of candy that is in the stores these days. Seriously, there is a fuck ton of candy around right now.

1 fuck ton of candy

So, as usual with my bliggity-blogs, it is time to tell you what interesting things have happened in my life since my last bliggity-blog. The most important thing is that I dead lifted 320 pounds two Mondays ago. For  the fraction of my readers who do not deadlift on a regular basis, dead lifting is when you keep the arc in your back and lift a weighted bar off the ground. That is probably a dangerously bad definition, so I’ll post a video.

Yea, I did that, with twice my bodyweight. I was so psyched about that accomplishment that the next day I decided to try to bench press 225 lbs. That attempt was not so successful.  I would call myself a woman, but that would be an insult to women, especially because the owners showed me a video of a woman who bench pressed 550. This is the conversation:

Me- Hey, can you spot me, I’m gonna try to bench 225.

Owner- Hell yea! You are finally gonna get on the board? Sure I’ll spot you right after this video is over. (while we are watching it) She is about to bench 550.

Me- Damn

Owner-yea, you are about to do half of what she is doing.

I am pretty sure the owner did not intend to figuratively kick me in the balls, but he did. Especially when I could not get 225 up. I was pissed mainly because my chest is strong enough, but my triceps (the back of you upper arm- you know, the part of the arm that if older women don’t work out, it sags and flops around) aren’t strong enough yet. Hopefully next week.

Now for something completely unrelated, here is my blog.

Oh Metallica, how your music entertains me. Whether it’s the fast paced music that helped jumpstart the thrash metal genre, the slow songs like Fade to Black which you can both hold a lighter up for, and head bang to, or even the songs from Load and ReLoad which were not the best, but who can deny that The Memory Remains is a great song. C’mon, they based it off of the movie “Sunset Blvd.” Even if you hate Metallica, you should at least admit that their music isn’t entirely thoughtless like other bands out there. I’m talking about you Papa Roach.

What's Aragon doing in a Modern Rock band?

As some of you may know, I went to the Metallica concert this past Thursday, and I decided that I should share the experience with you. The concert, and the trip to and from Cleveland seemed to have a one word theme: clusterfuck. Thursday was a clusterfuck of events.

The day started out with me at the gym. Nothing too interesting other than me almost severely injuring my back doing squats. I won’t go into details, but I tried to squat 285, and failed. There is no joke here, I’m just a dumbass who decided that he did not need anyone to spot him. I could have seriously hurt myself.

After working out, I went home, showered, and visited my new favorite website (cracked.com) until my brother arrived at 4:00. We headed to Cleveland, while listening to Metallica’s latest album. It was the first time in- I don’t know how long- that he and I spent brotherly bonding time together that didn’t involve alcohol. I was actually kind of nice, come to think about it. We talked about girls, our family, and Grampa’s Cheese Barn. Somewhere on I-71, there was a billboard that said’ “Visit Grampa’s Cheese Barn.”

My brother took one look at the sign and said, “Ya, know what? Fuck Metallica, I want to go to Grampa’s Cheese Barn.”

To which I replied, “I don’t know, we already have the tickets. And I have a feeling that if we go to Grampa’s Cheese barn it won’t be what we are expecting and it may emotionally scar us for life.

My brother laughed at this, and we proceeded to have a conversation of a building shaped like an old man, bent over with his pants down and his butt cheeks spread apart, and the entrance is the anus. Try to get that mental picture out of your head.

We got to Cleveland, and headed to where the concert was. Neither of us knew where that was exactly (at all), so we decided to follow a guy wearing a Slayer T-shirt, because what bad has ever come of following a stranger that likes death Metal?

The guy is the slayer shirt got too far ahead of us, so we couldn’t follow him anymore, but by then we saw so many people with Metallica shirts on that we knew we were headed the right direction. Once we got inside the arena, I thought it was going to be smooth sailing from there on out; I was wrong. This one security guard, with a hair lip that looked good in comparison to the rest of her face, took one look at me and said “You can’t have that chain in here. You gonna need to take it off. At this point, my brother had his ticket scanned, and was on the other side of the metal detectors. Annoyed, I turned and left the building, and power walked back to my car. While I was on my way, I remembered that it was my dad’s birthday, and I promised that I would call him before the concert. Nothing very interesting came from our conversation, other than me finding out that my little sister ruined the surprise of what we got him(tickets to an OSU football game). She could not have done it in a more unsmooth way. She asked him, “Are you coming out for the game?”

And he replied, “What game?”

My sister then blurted out, “oh, never mind, just kidding.” Sigh, a great surprise ruined by my sister’s big mouth.

Anyway, I was walking back to my car as I talked to my dad and worried whether or not I was going to be let in if I was too late. As I walked passed an abandoned building with signs for the fire department or some shit and I decided that that place was a perfect hiding spot for my chain. I hastily and unceremoniously tossed my chain behind one of the signs and quickly turned back towards the arena. Other than me feeling like I was both littering and could be apprehended for suspected terrorism( I was dressed as a Muslim, it is typical garb for Metallica concerts) that plan went smoothly. At least until I realized that I still had my pocket knife on my keychain. Not wanting to waste more time or potentially get my knife stolen and used in a murder, which I would then get framed for, I decided to thow it out. Saying a solumn good bye to it, I dropped it into a nearby garbage can and headed towards the Arena.

I got in with no further problems, and my brother and I found our seats. Oh, and great seats they were. Directly in the middle, in the balcony. My brother said that he could throw a rock (aka his chapstick- ha what a girl) and hit Lars Ulrich in the balding head. I laughed, not so much at my brother, but at the thought of hitting Lars in the head with something. Don’t get me wrong, I love Metallica, but Lars is a bit of a wiener. If you don’t believe me, fuck a pinecone.

The show was already in progress when we found our seats, some French band named Gorrrorrorrorrurrrrrrrrr (the dude fucking growled it. That is probably pretty damn close to the actual name) was the opening act. I couldn’t understand a word the lead singer was saying, but since he is French, I’m assuming all the songs were about baguettes, hairy legged women, and surrendering to the Germans.

The Next band to play was Lamb of God, which when my brother realized that they were about to play, he had an orgasm. Don’t ask how I know. I could actually understand this band, and they were  pretty good, so hooray for them for being intelligible. Right after Lamb of God finished their set, these two hardcore metal heads sat down to my left. In what I assume must be 80’s heavy metal fashon, they both pulled out their cell phones, and started texting. Who can blame them, really? Texting is very hardcore. “Woo! Leather n metal lol!!! These guys were too hardcore for the new Metallica, and they left in the middle of Metallica’s set. What cock bags.

While we are on the subject of people I was sitting near, it was a good thing that I did not have my chain with me, otherwise I would have chocked the two fat bitches that were sitting behind us. They were louder than the music at times. They were like two fat white howler monkeys.

Finally, the main event, Metallica. The Arena goes black. What little light that is shining shows smoke drifting lazily over the stage. A recording of their song “Ecstasy In Gold” starts playing. The crowd starts cheering, and I feel goosebumps start climbing up my forarms. These goosebumbs sprint up the back of my neck and down my spine once the drums start. The song, like a war march, is strong, orchestral, and has a voice even without lyrics.

As that song finishes, another sound comes through the speakers: a heartbeat.  People begin to cheer, and I know that the band is approaching the stage. Suddenly, lasers kick on, and the band begins to play. The lasers danced like dozens of neon anorexic strippers on speed, dazzling me, blinding me, making me want to throw up a little. I wanted to sing along, but the song is so fast paced and I haven’t memorized the lyrics to the point where I can confidently sing along.  It would have been perfect if the douchebag next to me wouldn’t have been texting.

I won’t bore you with the details of the entire concert, but there were still more interesting things to come. During one of Metallica’s greatest hits(I mean this song is a “they play this at every concert,” hit This song is their “freebird”) more commonly known as One, the sound system blew out. At first I yelled, “What the fuck” which if you think about it, is a perfectly reasonable response. For a minute I seriously thought I went partially deaf. The worst part is, I thought that, and then just shrugged it off, because this concert was that important for me. The sound quality once the speaker blew out wasn’t terrible, but my side of the arena was getting the echo from the working speakers.  This caused every one of Kirk Hammet’s solos to be a clusterfuck of random sounds.

I really feel bad for Metallica in all of this. It wasn’t their fault the sound system went down, in fact, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that Lex Luthor had something to do with this. He hates Metallica almost as much as that dude from Megadeth that no one gives a shit about (look that joke up). Think about it. You haven’t been in Cleveland for five years, and the next time you go there, you’re being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Wouldn’t you want to put on an amazing concert for that city, even if it is home of the Browns? Fuck yes you would. But then, the new Roadie fuck up the sound system and you may have lost your fan base in an entire city. They did eventually get it fixed, but towards the end of the concert it went out again, and that sucked.

After the concert was over, my brother and I headed back to my car. I retrieved my chain from behind the sign, and said a silent prayer for my pocket knife. I really liked that knife; it had my name engraved on it, how could I not like it. It combines my two favorite things: Me and cutting things.

Anyway, it was about midnight when we left Cleveland, and headed back to my house. The trip was relatively uneventful, other than when I got pulled over for going 76 in a 65. That was the first time I have ever gotten pulled over, and luckily for me, the cop only gave me a warning.  We got to my house around 2:30 Friday morning, and I immediately went to bed, because I’m stupid and felt morally obligated to go to class the next day.

So that is my story of the Metallica Concert. If there is one thing that I learned from the whole experience, it is take all potential weapons off your person before leaving the car. Oh, and there are only 5 hot girls in Cleveland, and they were all at the Metallica concert.

good night and good…ummm… fuck?