Location: DESTROYZOID HQ - CHICAGO
Narrator X - No one will ever hear their cries. Yet the world will remember them.
The hangar was silent, except for the bleeps and bloops of The Silent Cookie's 3DS. He ignored the pain in his shoulder; the mean zombie was dead. On the ground nearby, Dale whimpered.
His arms and legs started making little running motions, hind quarters first, then front. Faster and faster he sleep-ran. He growled, still unconscious, though now he was flopping and writhing on the ground. The dream was growing more intense. He was sprinting now and his body was trying to wake him. He stood on all fours and bounded into a wall.
He stumbled back, dazed. The shock brought him out of his dream. He surveyed the room. Warehouse, Destroyzoid, master, Dale's pack is asleep. Sun shone on him through the hole in the roof. He looked up and remembered Nero's masterful speech, the robot concert, scaling the Dzord, the figure clad in red who called herself Sarkeshaska.
Master is gone! Why does the pack sleep? He ran to the still-nude Jim Silver and nuzzled his face. He licked Jim's cheek. No response. He barked, but Jim did not move, so he went over to Hamza and tried the same thing. Hamza mumbled and pushed Dale away. Frustrated, Dale growled and barked louder. He took Hamza's hand in his mouth and shook it.
"Not now CandyPop. Hamzaberg needs to work." Dale was fed up, so he bit down hard. Hamza screamed and pulled back his hand. He looked at Dale.
"What the fuck, Dale? How did you get in my apartment?" Hamza stood up and held his injured hand.
"No," said Dale. "Not in apartment. At Destroyzoid. Master is gone. Kidnapped!"
"Oh, shit," Hamza started remembering. "Oh, fuck shit. The zord's gone! That red spandex nerd stole it. Shit, we gotta wake up the others."
After they had awakened everyone, they had to convince Jim to wear pants. Effective search and rescue missions, they told him, involved protecting the bits and pieces.
As Jim was reluctantly pulling up his pants, they all heard Cookie's bleeps and bloops.
"What the fuck, Constantina?!" Elsa was glaring at Cookie with a mix of anger and incredulity.
Elsa started toward Cookie, high heels clacking on the floor. Fuck these shoes, she thought. Cookie didn't notice her until she was standing above him. She smacked The Silent Cookie.
"Constantina, what the fuck? What the absolute FUCK have you been doing this whole time? Nero's gone and we were all unconscious." She saw the pistol beside him, then noticed Zombie Orwell.
"No!" She grabbed Cookie and stood him up. "Tell me you did not kill Zombie Orwell. TELL ME!!"
The Silent Cookie was silent. "He was supposed to lead us all to the zombie liberation utopia." Cookie looked at the 3DS he had dropped on the floor.
"SAY SOMETHING!"
"Cookie," he mumbled. "Oven."
"What?!"
"Oh, Christ," said Jim. "Cookie's in the oven. This is my fault."
"I'm sorry, Jim," said Elsa, "but this really isn't the time to discuss baking."
"No," said Phil, "it's a Destroyzoid Podcast thing. Constantina says 'cookie's going in the oven' if he gets sick of being harassed. Then he won't talk until Jim asks to be cleansed."
"Nero has just been fucking KIDNAPPED!!" shouted Elsa. She smacked Cookie, who frowned.
"Elsa, let me handle this," said Jim.
"What the fuck is his problem?" She glared at the former Constantina Holmes. "Fine. But hurry up."
Jim took Cookie's hand in his. He knelt and looked Cookie in the eye. "Cookie, suds me up with soap and foam."
Cookie looked back at Jim. "Yes, child," he made swishing sounds with his mouth. "Hmhmhm. Your soul has been cleansed and it has been cleaned, my dear." In that moment Cookie had been transformed back into Constantina Holmes, PhD LMFT MD, Certified Psychiatristologist of Mental Illness, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for Destroyzoid.com, protector of the Animal Kingdom, and all around horrible racist.
"Fuck the Australians," he said. "Oh, hey guys! Gosh, where are we? My shoulder hurts. Anyone wanna talk about videogames and how much the Argentinians can go fuck themselves? VVVVVV is pretty great. I talked to the creator and..." Elsa smacked him again.
"You asshole!" she yelled. "Nero's gone! We got knocked out. Why the fuck didn't you do anything?"
"What? Oh no, that's terrible! Gosh, guys, I'm sorry. The last thing I remember was that everyone got excited about penises and robots. So cookie had to go in the oven for a while."
"That's not an excuse, Constantina! How old are you? 33? 34? You can't just do that whenever you feel like it! Grow up!"
"I'm sorry, Elsa. Gosh, now I feel bad. Fuck the Chinese."
"Did you say your shoulder hurts?" asked Jim.
"He also killed Zombie Orwell," said Elsa.
"Oh, shit. Constantina, you've been bitten."
"What?" Constantina looked at his shoulder. "Oh, no! Guys, I don't wanna become a zombie. Zombies make me frown."
"We need to kill him right now," said Phil the Commenter. "I love you, Constantina, but we all know how this shit goes."
"No! I don't wanna die! Pikmin 4 hasn't even been released yet. And who's gonna take care of my dog when my wife goes on vacation?"
"No, we are absolutely not killing him," said Jim. "His wife and I will not be left widowed.
"Where's Randy?" asked Strider.
"He must have chased after the Dzord," said Hamza. "He can fly. Maybe He didn't get knocked out like us. Holy shit, what if he saved Nero? There's a strong probability that they're both coming back here right now."
"Strong Probability is the name of my statistics core punk band," said Occam.
"Statistics Corps is the name of my army of math nerds," said Dale.
"Army of Math Turds is the name of my coprophagia porn flick," said Strider.
"CONSTANTINA HOLMES! They're talking about penises!" screamed Jim.
Constantina sighed. "But seriously, guys," he said, "you're not gonna kill me yet. We have to find Randy and Nero."
"Fine," said Phil. "Fuckin' fine. But I'm putting a bullet in your head the second you go zombie on us."
"What if I'm like Zombie Orwell? You didn't kill him."
"First off," said Phil, "don't you ever compare yourself to him. You'll never be even half the zombie he was. Second, we didn't kill him because he was the world's most Orwellian writer. You don't just kill somebody with that kind of capacity for conveying important information... Unless he's trying to eat you. You killed him in self-defense, so I'll kill you in preemptive self-defense."
"Boys," said Elsa, "this conversation can wait. We'll deal with Constantina later. Right now we need to find Nero. And Randy. Our best course of action would be to find out who this 'Sarkeshaska' bitch is."
"How?" asked Phil. "We know nothing about her except for her shitty name."
"Really, guys?" Hamza looked annoyed. "Fucking really? FGE, dipshits."
"Yeah," said Occam. "Google that shit, morons."
Hamza pulled out his phone and started typing. When he hit Enter, he noticed everyone else was doing the same.
"Bing is so fucking slow," said Occam. They all looked at him, incredulous.
"What?!" said Phil. "You use Bing? That shit only works for videos."
"So what? I prefer Bing. It has a nicer interface. Although you do pay for it with the shitty speed."
"Oh, fuck me." Phil was shaking his head. Then he saw that the results had popped up. There were a couple links to Destroyzoid, a bunch of spam, and a suggested search term. Did you mean: shark shasta?
"Dare I click on page 2?" asked Elsa.
"Don't bother," said Hamza. "If it's not on the first page, it doesn't exist."
"Too late," she said. "The first result is a link to Sarkeshaska's bio at a site called FemsploderGaming.edu."
"Click it," said Phil. "We've come too far to give up now. We've done the impossible: We found a relevant result on page 2."
"Oooh," said Elsa. "I like the layout. Clean, smooth... the font is simple and big. Anyway, it says 'Sarkeshaska, AKA Shotgun Octopus, joined the FemsploderGaming family in 20XX after 10,000 years of dedicated service to several videogame websites and developers, and taking offense at inoffensive things. Sarkeshaska is Femsploder's Sexism In Games Reviewer, poet laureate, head chef, and master masseuse. She is also a certified mech pilot and sith lord, as well as the inventor of Minecraft and yoga.'"
"What? Really?" asked Hamza. "How much of that is true?"
"It's the internet," said Jim. "It's all true."
"Holy shit!" said Hamza. "Holy holy holy holy shit. You guys. What the fuck am I looking at?"
"It's a phone, asshole," said Strider.
"Phone Asshole is the name of..." said Occam before Hamza interrupted him.
"No, shut up. I'm serious. Look at this." Everyone gathered around Hamza's phone. He was on femsplodergaming.edu/countdown.
"Holy... what the fuck?" Strider grabbed Hamza's phone. "Twenty eight minutes? Nero, what the fuck? What the fuck the fuck fuck?"
"I can't see it," said Constantina. "Give me the phone. What's goin' on?" Strider gave him the phone. Constantina looked at the screen.
27:52
Countdown to Nero