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             CRAPSHOOT & CO. #16: THE LAST CARFIGHTER
                        By Robotech_Master


    In our last episodes, Chance Edward Vennt, Sheri Brown (no,
not the Muse Sheri Brown, the character Sheri Brown (who is
completely unrelated...they don't even look alike)), Sasha
Borodurov, Kissy McCall, Filmation, Claymation, Jimmy Smathers,
and Zen Navigator were aboard the Builtmore Towers starship.
They were about to land back on Earth, when a strange energy bolt
generated by three very odd people zapped the ship and made it
disappear.
    Shortly thereafter, they found themselves 187 light years
from earth, in the III Clef star system, under attack by
starfighters that looked like both boats and cars simultaneously.
    Well, again, I didn't say it had to make sense, did I?


    "The fighters are making another attack run!" Kissy McCall
reported perkily.
    "Turbolasers to be locking on, comrade Captain!" Sasha
Bordurov reported.  "Firing!"  All across the starship, laser
turrets swivelled and fired in what the astute viewer would
recognize as stock footage taken from Battlestar Galactica.  One
or two of the boat/car starfighters exploded, but their lasers
continued to score hits on the Builtmore.  The skyscraper
starship shook from the impacts, and Chance was thrown over the
railing of the command platform.  Fortunately, he caught himself
and was unhurt by the fall.
    "We've got to do something!" Sheri Brown yelled, holding onto
her console to stay at her station.  "We're taking hits left and
right, and if we go through another attack like that, the ship
may not be able to hold together!"
    Chance clenched his teeth.  "We'll come through this okay.
Come on, people, let's get LUCKY!"
    "Chance!" Kissy McCall remarked.  "I'm getting a reading on
something from the starboard hangar deck!"
    "What?  What is it?" Chance asked.
    "I'm reading a...it says a Wiper Fighter launch."
    "Wiper?"
    "Yeah--apparently it's supposed to be a flying window wiper
vehicle or something when this thing is a skyscraper.  And it's
launching!"
    Chance and all others on the bridge came to the same
conclusion simultaneously.  "JIMMY!!!"

    While Filmation had gone back to the bridge a few minutes
before, and Claymation had gone to check any damage to other
parts of the ship caused by the massive lurch they'd experienced,
Jimmy Smathers had, true to form, wandered off to see what
trouble he could get into.  He was still having a hard time
believing that this was a starship that they were on, rather than
some kind of complicated flight simulator.  After all, when
you're a prepubescent video game junkie with an overdeveloped
forearm, Occam's Razor can fly right out the window for all you
care.
    Now, when the Builtmore Towers had been in the process of
being built, James "Builtmore" Towers had recognized the need for
some kind of defense starfighter, and had devoted great sums of
his money to their design and production.  Naturally, like the
skyscraper, it had to have a disguise, seem like something
mundane when it wasn't needed.  And so, these starfighters were
ostensibly flying window-wipers, equipped with hoverjets, soapy
water sprayers, and squeegee drones, for flying up and down the
length of the skyscraper and hosing down the windows.
    Of course, the window-washers' union had objected to this,
and James Towers had been in the end forced to sign an agreement
that these flying window-cleaning vehicles would never be used to
clean the windows.  Towers really hadn't minded, for they served
quite another purpose altogether, stockpiled within the Tower,
hidden in secret rooms that would become hangars when the Tower
underwent its startling transformation.
    And it was into one of these hangars that Jimmy Smathers had
somehow managed to find his way.  The first thing he saw was row
upon row of the automatically-transformed-along-with-the-tower
Wiper starfighters.
    "Ooh, neat!  Flight simulators!" Jimmy gasped, drooling.

    "What in blazes is going on?!" Frederick Walcott ranted,
picking himself up off the floor of his department store along
with the other group of men who had planned to storm the bridge
with him.  "Why is this damn starship shaking so?"
    "I would venture to guess that it is probably under attack by
the boat-of-car starfighters employed by a faction of this star
system's natives," Zen Navigator remarked.
    "You can tell all that just by the impacts?" one of the
Walcott-followers asked.
    "No, actually I read the script," Zen Navigator replied.  "I
believe you wanted to go to the bridge of this vessel, is that
not correct?"
    "Yes!" Walcott said.  "Yes, that's exactly where we want to
go!"
    "Then follow me!  I shall lead you unerringly to your
destination," Zen proclaimed.
    "All right, then, let's go!"  Walcott shouldered his assault
rifle and the group slowly moved out, with Zen Navigator in the
lead.

    The classic car driven by the man with the odd hair closed on
the foremost of the five remaining boat-of-car starfighters
currently strafing the Builtmore Towers.  Crosshairs projected on
the windshield tracked and locked.  "You might think I'm
crazy...but all I want is you," the man crooned, pulling a
trigger on his steering wheel.  Twin pulsed laser blasts emanated
from behind the car's headlights, tracking onto and taking out
the boat-of-car.
    Nearby, in the cockpit of the lone Wiper fighter that had
launched from the Builtmore, Jimmy Smathers watched the action
through the windshields of the fighter.  He'd had kind of a hard
time seeing out, but fortunately the seat had been adjustable
enough that he could get a fairly good perspective.  "He must be
one of the good guys," Jimmy decided.  "These others would be the
baddies.  Wonder how many points they're worth?"
    Jimmy played with the stick, the pedals, the throttle,
getting the feel of his craft.  "Okay.  'You have been recruited
to defend against Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada,'" he muttered.
"Here we go!!!"
    The Wiper fighter swooped in, crosshairs locking, analog
gauges turning around.  Jimmy pulled the trigger, and laser
blasts tracked onto one of the enemy and blew him to shreds.
"One thousand points, yeah!!!"

    "Are you certain we're heading in the right direction?" one
of the Walcottites asked Zen Navigator.  "It seems to me as
though we're heading toward the rear of the ship, rather than
forward."
    "Nonsense," Zen Navigator said.  "Do you doubt my Zen
Navigational abilities?"
    "Er...well, no, but--"
    "And well you shouldn't.  Do not worry, my good man, we shall
be on the bridge before you know it!"
    "Well...if you say so..."

    "Wiper and starfighter unknown to have destroyed four of the
five vessel enemies," Sasha Borodurov reported, pressing buttons
and flipping switches.  "Last fighter is making approach run but
to not be firing lasers!"
    "What are they planning..." Chance wondered.  "Concentrate
laser fire, all batteries!"
    The turbolaser turrets swept in and oriented on the incoming
ship, beams intersecting in a deadly crossfire, but somehow the
boat-of-car starfighter made it through, slipping under the
turrets' arc of fire to approach the Builtmore Towers starship
more closely.  It slowed, matching velocities, and extended
docking clamps, lowering itself to land on the neck of the
Builtmore, positioned above an external docking hatch.
    Everyone on the bridge (including Filmation, who'd just
arrived) heard/felt the THUMP-CLANK of the fighter attaching
itself.  "What the hell(tm)--?!" Chance asked.  "Sasha, Sheri,
you stay here and guard the bridge."  He went to a cabinet
hanging on the wall and pulled out a couple of laser pistols.
"Kissy, Filmation, come with me."  He tossed them the guns, took
one for himself.  "If we don't come back, Sheri, command is
yours."
    "Gee...thanks, I think."

    Jimmy tracked onto the last boat-of-car fighter as it locked
into place on the Builtmore.  His finger tightened on the
trigger, then relaxed.  "No...I can't do that.  I might damage
the mothership, and in some games doing that kinda thing kills
you or costs a lot of points."
    "Calling starfighter, calling starfighter, this is Jac
Ocasek.  I'm in the car right behind you.  There's nothing we can
do now...I advise returning to your ship."
    "All right," Jimmy answered.  "Oh, well...bet I set a new
high score, at least."

    Chance, Filmation, and Kissy McCall crept through the
corridors to the rear of the bridge.  After a few dozen yards,
the corridor opened out into a wider chamber--embarkation and
debarkation for docking vessels, Chance surmised.  It was
dark--someone had turned the fluorescent lights out--and two rows
of structural support pylons lined the room.
    "We split up..." Chance decided.  "Filmation on the left,
Kissy on the right, and I'll go right down the middle."
    "Right," Kissy remarked perkily, gripping her laser pistol
with both hands.
    Filmation nodded, sticking her laser pistol in her belt (with
her toonish powers, she didn't really need it, but it was always
best to carry a backup).
    "Then let's go."
    The three of them moved down the darkened room, moving from
pillar to pillar, spinning around corners with their guns or
glowing hands held in front of them.  Chance looked around
constantly--he had the feeling that there was someone or
someTHING in there with them.
    Kissy McCall was the first to get taken.  She heard a noise
behind her, spun around bringing up her laser pistol, and got one
shot off, but then something hit her over the head and she
slumped to the ground.
    "Kissy!" Chance yelled, bringing up his own gun and running
toward the source of the shot.  But by the time he got there, she
was gone, and so was her attacker.  The only trace that anything
had been there was a scorch mark on the wall.
    Filmation was next to fall.  Her toonish sixth-sense warned
her that something was behind her, and she spun, bringing up a
toonish energy-shield in front of her.  She got a momentary
impression of the silhouette of a tall man with some sort of
shaggy hair, then he fired an energy blast from his arm that cut
right through her sheld, and she saw no more.
    "Filmation?!" Chance gasped, running back out into the center
of the room.  "Where are you?"
    Then something happened that grabbed his attention.  In the
center of the room, ten or twenty yards away, the docking hatch
in the ceiling irised open, white light shining down through it,
and three blue glowing metal rings dropped down to land in a
column, each about two feet apart.  Then something fell down
through the hatch, landing inside the rings with a loud, "OOF!"
    The figure got to its feet, and the rings levitated back up
through the hatch.  The figure moved forward, looking menacing in
the backlighting.  As it got closer, Chance could see every
detail clearly.  It was a humanoid, with a great shaggy mass of
purple hair, and a face that looked carved, chiselled out of
wood, with glowing red eyes and the emblem of a rook (the chess
piece, not the bird) emblazoned on its forehead.  It was clad in
some kind of a glittering golden spandex costume, with armor
padding in the appropriate places.
    It looked at Chance, eyes glowing darkly, and slowly raised
its right arm to point at him.  Then a blast of golden light
issued from its gauntlet to hit Chance's chest, throwing him back
across the room and slamming him into the wall.  "Oof!" Chance
muttered weakly.  Luckily he'd rolled with the impact and only
been bruised rather than seriously injured.
    The strange apparition advanced toward him, bringing up its
hand for another blast, this one to finish him.  Chance looked
for his gun, but it had been thrown across the floor and was out
of reach.  Chance concentrated on his power, trying to get lucky,
increase the odds of the strange figure tripping, ANYTHING.
    The uncanny figure stood right in front of Chance, stopped,
pointed its hand at his face.  Chance could see the golden energy
crackling around it.  He swallowed, closed his eyes, and waited
for the end.
    It never came.
    Instead, another figure standing at the far end of the room
fired three shots in quick succession, hitting the figure in the
back.  It didn't kill the strange wooden-faced man, but staggered
him.  He turned, fired a couple of blasts from his gauntlet, then
staggered back to the docking hatch.  The hatch opened overhead
and the three rings slid down around him.  He looked up
expectantly...but nothing happened.  Finally an arm reached down
through the hatch, grabbed the man's arm, and pulled him up
through it.  The rings levitated back up after him and the hatch
irised shut.
    The figure who'd come to Chance's rescue strode forward.  He
was dressed in black, with shaggy black hair and black
sunglasses, and looked quite weird.  "Damn chess-piece faces," he
said.  "I hate 'em."
    Chance got slowly to his feet and groaned.  "Who--who are
you?  You look like Ric Ocasek..."
    "I'm Jac Ocasek.  Come on, let's get you back to the bridge
of this ship."
    "Kissy--Filmation--" Chance gasped.  "What about them?"
    "They're gone," Jac said.  "The chess-piece faces took 'em."
As he spoke, Chance heard and felt the clanks of the
starfighter's docking clamps disengaging.
    "What's going on?" Chance asked.  "Who are they?"
    "I'll explain later.  Come on, right now we have to get you
to the bridge."


      WHO IS JAC OCASEK?  IS HE ANY RELATION TO RIC OCASEK?

      WHO ARE THE CHESS-PIECE FACES?  WHY ARE THEY AFTER THE
                     BUILTMORESTAR GALACTICA?

  WHAT'S GOING ON WITH JIMMY SMATHERS?  WILL HE GO THROUGH LIFE
 THINKING EVERYTHING IS A NINTENDO GAME?  WHAT KIND OF EDUCATION
          IS AMERICA'S YOUTH GETTING THESE DAYS, ANYWAY?

         WILL CHANCE AND COMPANY EVER GET BACK TO EARTH?

         WILL SASHA BORDUROV EVER LEARN TO SPEAK ENGLISH?

 WILL FREDERICK WALCOTT AND ZEN NAVIGATOR EVER FIND THEIR WAY TO
                           THE BRIDGE?


          FIND OUT SOON, ON ANOTHER EXCITING ANAGRAM OF

                            PUSEY RUG

--
Chris Meadows/Robotech_Master // chm173s@nic.smsu.edu // GEEK CODE V2.1:
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