🚀 go-pugleaf

                             FOREWORD

    Over the course of what was intended to be a story focusing
on just one person, a whole bunch of other characters somehow
managed to creep into the plot.  This is just a bit annoying, as
I've already got one superteam storyline going, and I'd meant to
concentrate on just the one person--his struggles, his
tribulations, his inexplicable inability to be in costume and
near a crime in progress at the same time--but these things do
happen.
    Anyway, since it seems to have become a team during the
writing, it seems rather unfair to have the title continue to
focus on this main character to the exclusion of all the others.
However, I have absolutely no idea what to call this impromptu
superteam, so I won't even try to come up with some sort of
creative name like CalForce, Defense Squad, or Team Cynical.
Instead, this series shall be known as CRAPSHOOT no longer, but
shall henceforth be called


          CRAPSHOOT & CO. #9: FOR LACK OF A BETTER TITLE
                        By Robotech_Master

    "That's interesting..." Zen Navigator remarked.
    "What?" Sheri Brown, aka Bubblegum Babe, asked from the
shotgun seat.
    "I seem to be part of an impromptu superteam."
    "Have you been listening to the narrator again?" Sheri asked.
"He hates it when you do that."
    "No he doesn't."  Zen turned to look at me.  "Do you?"
    Um, er...can we get on with the plotline, please???
    "Oh, right.  Let me see, where are we in the script..."
<flip, flip, flip>  "Hey!  A Vectrex!  I haven't seen one of
those in--No, wait a minute, that doesn't sound right..."
    "Zen, keep your hands on the wheel!!!"  Sheri reached over
and grabbed the wheel, yanking it to the right just in time to
get out of the oncoming lane of traffic, narrowly missing
colliding with an 18-wheeler.
    "Ah, here we are...you say, 'Zen, keep your hands on the
wheel!!!' and I say...ah, yes.  AHEM.  That fellow should watch
where he's going."
    In the back of the psychedelic minibus, Chance pulled a
pillow over his ears to shut out the bickering coming from the
front seats, and tried to ignore the occasional swerve of the
bus.  Chance knew that the odds were against a crash as long as
he was around, but it was still a bit unnerving.
    He was currently trying to get some sleep.  It had been
several days since they'd picked up Sasha Borodurov somewhere
north of the Arctic Circle, and they'd been travelling more or
less steadily southward ever since.  To those who knew Zen
Navigator, it would probably seem somewhat odd that they had
driven from Bob City, to Maine, through Canada, and now south in
a series of nearly straight lines.  Chance sometimes speculated
that his uncanny powers of luck might be having some kind of
damping affect on Zen Navigator's Zen abilities, but he mostly
preferred not to think about it.
    Sasha Borodurov was sitting in one of the middle seats,
occupying herself by field-stripping and cleaning her AK-47.
Between weapons maintenance and English lessons from Sheri, she'd
been keeping pretty busy for the duration of the trip.  Chance
thought that she'd improved a little, though not a whole lot.
    Chance's dozing was disturbed by a startled cry from Sasha.
Sheri chimed in.  "Hey, Chance!  We're coming to a city!"
    "Da, is big city, city big is, da!" Sasha added.
    "I palindrome I," Chance muttered.  "A big city?" he said
aloud.  "Probably just some small Canadian town without
comfortable footwear, plagued by alien mages and giant squid."
    "No, it isn't!" Sheri replied.  "I think it's Seattle!"
    "Argh!"

    The Grumman Goose circled and came in low, aiming for a
landing on Lake Union, near Lake Washington which separated
Seattle from Bellevue.  The unshaven, fedora'd figure at the
controls looked around nervously.  "Think we lost 'em?" he asked
the short, Asian figure in the other seat.
    "Hope so, boss!  Could be big trouble if we haven't."
    "Yeah.  I'm gonna bring 'er in fast, to get as big a head
start as possible.  Hang onto your baseball cap, Shorty, this
could be a rough landing."
    The Goose slowed for a touchdown.  It bounced slightly as it
set down, then slowed to a gradual stop.  The pilot made sure his
revolver was snug in its holster and his bullwhip coiled at his
waist, then he and the short Asian kid hurriedly climbed out the
nose hatch and jumped over onto a dock.  "Let's go," the man
said, and they dashed off toward the city.

    "Where are we headed?" Chance asked.
    "Where we're headed, roll the bones!" Zen replied.  Chance
glared at him.
    "To go to Soviet embassy, da?" Sasha asked.
    "Er, da," Chance said.  "Guess we might as well go there as
anywhere else..."  He began to increase substantially the chances
of Zen choosing the right road, which turned out to be I-90.  It
wasn't long before they went through a long tunnel, then came out
onto a bridge across the river to Bellevue.
    And not long after that, there was a series of sharp reports,
and Sasha Borodurov suddenly looked around intensely, gripping
her Kalashnikov.
    "Huh?  What is it?" Chance asked, reaching under the seat for
his Colt .45.
    "Is..."  Sasha searched for the right word, couldn't find it,
and settled for holding up her AK-47 and going, "Bang bang bang!"
    "Gunshots?" Sheri asked.
    "Da, da, to be gunshots!"
    Chance shook his head.  "Nah...I don't think so.  Probably
just someone's car backfiring--"
    And then the motorcycle raced by, followed not far behind by
a station wagon full of people carrying assault rifles and other
automatic weapons.  This station wagon would have sideswiped the
psychedelic minibus if not for a combination of inspired driving
by Zen Navigator and Chance's luck which inspired the driving.
    "Hey!" Sheri protested.  "They nearly sideswiped us!  Are you
going to let them get away with it?"
    Zen Navigator shrugged.  "Well, actually..."
    "Well, *I'M* not!  Follow that car!  And step on it!"
    "Whatever."  VROOOOOM!!!  The psychedelic minibus accelerated
in a manner akin to a sports car.  Being very polite drivers,
most of the Seattlites on the road pulled over out of the way of
the high-speed chase.  As the bus swerved from left to right,
Chance gripped the side of the seat and fervently prayed that his
luck would hold out.
    The minibus began to close on the station wagon, whose
passengers were now opening fire on the motorcycle with
everything they had.  The motorcycle, which had a sidecar as
well, was barely managing to swerve out of the way of the flying
bullets.
    "Seems to me the odds are a bit unfair," Chance remarked,
cocking his .45 and pushing up on the bus's sunroof.  "Care to
even things up a little?"
    "Da, da!"  Sasha and Chance stood up through the sunroof,
aimed, and opened fire.  Chance aimed for the guns in the
gunmens' hands; Sasha just raked her gunfire across the station
wagon, shattering windshields, destroying taillights, and sending
several of the gunners down in sprays of blood.  Sheri leaned out
the shotgun seat window and fired a large wad of bubble gum that
gummed up one of the car's wheels.
    "All right, we got 'em!" Chance whooped.  Then the one or two
gunners remaining noticed the fire coming from behind them, and
began returning it with their own weapons.  Sasha ducked back
into the minibus, and reappeared a moment later with a device
that looked like a tube with a handle sticking out and a bulbous
projection at the end.  Chance recognized it instantly--a Soviet
RPG rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
    "Um, Sasha, I really don't think that we--"  BA-WHOOSH!!!
kerBLAMMO!!!  "Um, never mind..."
    "To have got him, da?!"
    "Er, right, da."  Chance watched the smouldering chassis
gradually roll to a stop at the side of the road.  "Though it
would have been nice if you could have taken them ALIVE so we
could have found out what they were up to..."
    "Oh.  Oops."  Sasha looked thoughtful, then dropped back down
into the minibus.

    Ramrod pitched the wadded-up KitKat wrapper at the
wastebasket.  It hit the rim, NEARLY went in, but then fell onto
the floor.  Seeing as High-Jinx could undoubtedly have bounced
the wrapper off of all four walls, Ramrod's head, the light
fixture, and the floor, then made it circle twice around the rim
before dropping in, it might be said that Ramrod was mildly
annoyed with this miss.
    However, Ramrod would probably have told whoever said it to
piss off, so it largely doesn't matter in this case.
    Nora stuck her head in through the door.  "Hey, Bill!  Police
band reports someone just blew up a car in Bellevue!  Should we
go check it out?"
    "It's in Bellevue?" Ramrod asked, taking a bite of his KitKat
bar.
    "Yeah."
    "Then forget about it."
    "Right."

    "What happened to those guys behind us?" the fedora-clad,
unshaven motorcyclist asked of his shorter companion who was
turned around backward in the sidecar.
    "You not gonna believe this, boss, but it blew up!"
    "You're kidding."
    "No!  It did, went BOOM!"
    The cyclist shook his head and grinned lopsidedly.  "I
haven't had this much fun since I met Angi Shearstone in
Egypt..."

    "Where'd that motorcyclist go?" Chance wondered.  "For some
reason, I thought he looked familiar."
    "I'm not sure...I lost him in the sun," Sheri replied.
    "Oh, well.  Hey, I think we're here!"  They pulled up in
front of a large skyscraper entitled, in large letters, the
Builtmore Tower.  "What do you think, Zen?"
    Zen Navigator shrugged.  "Seemed like the right place to me."
    "Great!  Hey, look, there's a parking garage built in!  Let's
go!"
    A few minutes later, they had parked the psychedelic microbus
and walked over to the elevator to the upper levels.  By some odd
quirk of fate, none of them noticed the motorcycle and sidecar
that was parked just three spaces down.
    Chance consulted the plaque in the elevator, and noted that
the Russian Embassy was on the 25th floor.  He punched the
button.  "Next stop: Soviet Embassy!"
    "Yay!" cheered Sasha.
    "What are we going to do while she's in there?" Zen Navigator
wondered.
    "I'm going in with her," Sheri Brown said.  "I'll help in
translation, and things like that."
    Chance looked at the elevator chart.  "Saaaay...Look here!
The Seattle Area Superguy Unemployment Center, on floor 33."
    "I thought we wanted to stay away from those," Zen Navigator
remarked.
    "No, no, we just don't want to apply for aid or anything.  It
wouldn't do any harm to see if there's anyone there."
    "Okay.  I'll see you guys later!" Sheri Brown (not THAT Sheri
Brown, the OTHER Sheri Brown) said, as the elevator stopped on
their floor and she and Sasha left.  Zen waved byebye, then the
door closed behind them and the elevator continued on upward to
the 33rd floor.

    Zen and Chance entered quietly, and the little sound they
made almost disappeared in the large waiting room.  It was mostly
empty--only four figures occupied it.  None of them was really
sure why they were waiting--there were no other unemployed
superheroes, villains, or related individuals in the Seattle
area, if not the entire state of Washington.  But they were
sitting there, waiting.
    The largest of the four, a bright orange man with oddly
molded-looking features, got up and stomped over to the
secretary's window.  "Excuse me, but we'd like to see someone
now."
    "I'm sorry.  The first open appointment is at eleven a.m.  If
you would like to wait..."
    "But that's two HOURS from now!" the man grumbled.  "And
there's not even anyone else HERE!"
    "I'm sorry, but I don't make the rules.  I just work here..."
    "Argh!"  The orange man stomped angrily back to his seat.  "I
can NOT believe this!" he muttered to his companion, a pretty if
somehow indistinct-looking girl with red hair and a white
jumpsuit.  "We've been coming here every day for...what, twenty
months?  Twenty months now--"
    "More like twenty-one, I think," the girl corrected him.
    "Thanks," the man said, continuing, "And we STILL haven't
gotten to see anybody about getting into another storyline."
    "Hey, at least YOU guys will get picked up eventually!" the
smallest of the four unemployed hero-related people, a
fifteen-year-old kid with a somewhat pale complexion and a
slightly overdeveloped forearm said.  "But look at me!  Who'd
want to hire a Timmy 'putrid slime' O'Larsen clone?  At best, I'd
be cannon fodder!"  He went back to playing his Nintendo GameBoy.
    "No, Cannon Fodder is a Legion of Net.Heroes character," the
red-haired girl corrected him.
    The fourth member, who'd been silent up to now, sighed.  She
was a normally-perky Nintendo of America ex-intern, but now she
looked somewhat defeated.  "I guess we might as well go back to
our apartment..."
    "Excuse me," Chance ventured, "but who are you?"


  WHO ARE THEY? (FOR A CLUE, LOOK AT MATERIAL POSTED ON OCT. 20,
                              1992)

   WILL THEY MAKE IT INTO A PLOTLINE EVENTUALLY?  OR MAYBE EVEN
                            RIGHT NOW?

     WHO IS THE MAN IN THE FEDORA, AND WHO IS HIS SHORT ASIAN
                            COMPANION?

     ARE THEY THE SAME ONES WHO WERE LAST SEEN OVER BOB CITY?

 WHEN WILL WE GET TO THE COPIOUS BATTLESTAR GALACTICA REFERENCES
               PROMISED IN THE TEASERS FOR PART 8?

   TUNE IN, FAITHFUL READERS, FOR IT'S COMING SOON, ONLY ON...

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