dp.2
MEGAZONE 23
"What happened to your last fryboy?"
"Fired. Thirty seconds under the broiler and he was
done to perfection."
--Nutrimancer
MegaZone, ReRob, Q (aka Macquivr), Kevin Tefft, and Rob
Crocker were sitting around in the Wedge when the glass doors
from the Quad opened up and Ben walked in. He had on his
face the biggest, smuggest, most shit-eating grin any of them
had ever seen--and it was Wednesday, too, which made it
awfully hard for them to take.
"What're you smiling at?" ReRob asked.
"I did something impossible this morning," he replied.
<<And now, our special guest star, THE CHORD FROM HELL>>
Just about then, Kei and Yuri walked into the Wedge
behind him.
There were four seconds of dead silence. Crocker,
MegaZone, and Q went deathly pale; Kevin looked up, shrugged,
and went back to reading; ReRob tipped his hat full and
ornate.
Then seven words forced themselves out of MegaZone's
nearly terror-paralyzed throat: "My God, we're all going to
die."
"Baaah?" said Q.
"Um," said Crocker.
"So?" said ReRob.
"Hmmph," said Kevin.
"Uh, Ben...we need to talk." MegaZone looked worried
about something.
"Later, later. Much as I hate to do this--it's DAKA
time..."
He turned and headed for the cafeteria, giving the
assembled Wedge Rats a jaunty wave; then he noticed that Kei
and Yuri were following him.
"Why are you following me?"
"Lack of anything better to do?" Yuri suggested.
"Actually, I'm hungry," said Kei.
"Oh." Ben shrugged and led the way into DAKA. His ID
card was presented, slotted, and pinged; he took it back and
stepped aside.
"ID, please--gah!" said the young Pascal student as he
saw Yuri.
"Oh, by the way, you don't mind if these lovely young
ladies eat with me tonight, do you? No, I didn't think so,"
said Ben rapidly. "Come on," he said, indicating for them to
follow him into the food line.
He noticed immediately that the dining hall had become
almost silent. Everyone but the most oblivious had stopped
eating and was just staring, including the entrees. The
staring continued until the three of them vanished into the
kitchen.
"Oh, hey, it's just like WWWA Academy food," said Kei.
"What're they having tonight?"
"Uh...Unidentifiable Red Stuff DuJour," said Ben,
peering at the vat.
"Great! I really missed this stuff. I'll have some of
that."
The DAKA attendant, totally unfazed, plopped some of the
wriggling mass onto her plate. Ben and Yuri, being of more
sensible casts, chose the Amazing DAKABurger (put it on a
bun, it's hamburger. With mushroom gravy, it's Salisbury
steak. Bleach it and it's chicken--or, with tartar sauce,
fish!).
(No one is quite sure what it is, exactly; most people
refer to it as DAKAbeast. The general consensus is that they
would rather not know what it is.)
Silence descended like a core dump on DAKA once again
as they emerged from the kitchen; they started working their
way toward the windows, where there was an empty table, when
Guyblood jumped to his feet, doing an "I'm cool, I'm
decisive, I'm leaving DAKA," just as Kei was behind him with
her tray.
With a tremendous CRASH Guyblood's back slammed the tray
food-side-up into Kei's chest. Unidentifiable Red Stuff
DuJour cascaded down her invisible pyroplastic lamination,
and some of it splattered on her face and hair.
"Hey!" she shouted, smacking him in the back with the
tray. "Watch it, you moron!" The impact knocked the already
unbalanced Guyblood face-first into Jeremy's tray,
splattering U.R.S.DuJ. all over him as well. Jeremy replied
with an ill-aimed glass of orange stuff that struck the Sig
Ep at the next table. And so on, and so on, and so on.
"I think we'd better get out of here," Ben announced,
and started edging toward the back exit, near the cereal.
Kei and Yuri, being somewhat sensible, tried their best to
follow, but from the direction of the salad bar came a
flying, razor-edged DAKA spoon. It slammed into the wall
inches from Kei's right ear, snipping off a chunk of fiery
red hair, then vibrated softly (wub wub wub).
"HEY!" she bellowed, momentarily halting the action in
the dining hall. Her eyes narrowed; she went for her
laser...
<<Don't Shoot Shotgun, Def Leppard>>
In the Wedge, MegaZone, et al., heard the escalating
chaos, but chose to ignore it. Suddenly, a thought occurred
to MegaZone. He looked up from the printout he was perusing
and said, "Uh...they didn't have their guns with them, did
they?"
Crocker thought for a second, then said, "No, I don't
think so."
ZARK!
A charred body, still venting sparkles of energy, was
catapulted out of the DAKA exit, slammed into the airlock,
and slid down. A man in a chef's hat darted out and dragged
it back in.
"We're safe out here, though, aren't we?" asked Q.
"Yeah," said MegaZone. "'Long as they don't have any
mini-grenades."
Suddenly he realized what he had said; his eyes widened
and the entire Wedge crew, screaming as one, charged in an
amorphous mass out of the Wedge and into the Quad.
Flashes of laser fire could be seen through the dining
hall windows; they were increasing in intensity, and
occasionally people, charred or just bruised, would be
catapulted out of the window near the salad bar. Amazingly,
none of the other windows were broken.
"Ok, head count," Crocker announced, his ROTC training
coming to the fore. "Zoner, me, Q, Kevin, ReRob...where's
ReRob?"
"OH NO!" The Wedge Rats turned and started hollering at
the Wedge. "REROB! GET OUT! GET OUTTA THERE! REEROOOBB!"
ReRob looked up, wondering what all the noise was.
There was a blinding flash behind the dining hall
windows; then, with an incredibly picturesque KERBLAMMO!, the
entire dining hall exploded.
The Wedge Rats dropped face-down to the Quad as chunks
of brick, tables, and frat brothers flew over them in the
lazily tumbling anime style. There were four or five
secondary explosions, and then the entire gutted structure
collapsed into itself. Along with it went that entire end of
Morgan Hall, tumbling down into the wreckage, except for the
end of the fourth floor hallway, which, by some incredible
piece of luck, remained hanging over the rubble zone.
<<The Perfect Crime, Faith No More>>
(wub wub wub)
The Wedge Rats stood up; MegaZone removed his Rho Alpha
Tau cap and placed it over his heart. No way had Ben
survived that. ReRob maybe, there was still hope, but Ben
was undoubtedly flat. Such, he thought, was the price of his
folly, bringing the Dirty Pair into the world.
A chunk of rubble, not far from one of the small and
lazily burning aftermath fires, shifted and crashed aside.
The sky rumbled and split and it started raining heavily.
Then a silver-gloved fist smashed some of the rubble aside
and, coughing and choking, Kei stood up, then hauled Yuri to
her feet. Ben scrambled out from under the wreckage as well.
"Oh, wonderful shooting," said Ben sarcastically,
brushing off his overcoat. (wub wub wub)
"It's not my fault," Kei replied defensively. "He threw
a spoon at me!" (wub wub wub)
"Yeah," Yuri said, "but everything was under control
until you put the laser bolt into the Jell-O."
"I must agree," said Ben, "putting excited photons into
DAKA Jell-O is a big mistake. Experimental evidence would
seem to bear that out." (wub wub wub)
The door to the Wedge on the Daniels side creaked,
clattered, then fell out and shattered on the steps, the
metal frame tumbling into the street. ReRob looked down at
the mess in a bemused fashion, then shrugged and stepped
down, heading across toward the other Wedge Rats. He was
unscathed. (wub wub wub)
"ReRob! You're ok!" said Crocker.
"Spiking the p-field again," MegaZone muttered.
Ben, Kei, and Yuri were still arguing about whose fault
it was; Kei had brought up Yuri's firing at the salad bar as
a possible cause, although Ben claimed the Italian dressing
wasn't as volatile as the Jell-O, especially the lime, which
had been the Jell-O DuJour. It may have even been the
explosive decompression of the ice cream machine.
A brick cracked loose from the hanging chunk of Morgan
Hall and narrowly missed killing Ben. He glanced up, his
train of thought derailed, to see the overhanging piece of
building start to break free. (wub wub wub)
"SHIT!" he screamed, and started running for the Quad.
Kei and Yuri easily outran him, especially since he tripped
on an indestructible DAKA tray and fell flat on his face in
the rubble, stunned. Kei heard him hit the ground and
skidded to a halt, turned, and bodily hauled his entire 100-
kilo mass out into the street. (wub wub wub)
He regained enough sense to stumble to his feet and get
halfway across the Quad before the final CRACK echoed across
campus. (wub wub wub)
He turned to see the chunk of Morgan Hall hanging in the
air; then it broke free completely and slowly fell from its
perch. It started to rotate, but before it could, it smashed
into the rubble of the caf and the bottom two layers of dorm.
"My room!" Ben screamed as it hit. (wub wub wub)
Amazingly, the piece of dorm didn't shatter into a
thousand and one pieces the instant it slammed into the rest
of the rubble; instead, it bounced once and settled, more or
less even and more or less intact. (wub wub wub)
Ben charged across the rubble, heedless of the bad
footing, found the opening to the hallway, and entered; the
building had broken off just before his room and the wall of
the room beside it was still there, posters and all. He
fumbled for his keys, dropped them, recovered them, and
opened his door. (wub wub wub)
The room was a little more tumbled than usual, but
everything was intact; even the fish tank was undamaged. The
power was even still on, although how that could be he wasn't
quite sure. (wub wub wub)
Satisfied, he closed the door and left. He'd clean up
later. (wub wub wub)
"Well, you're closer to the Wedge now," said ReRob.
(As it turned out, that was not to be; although the crater
that had been DAKA was sealed under a titanium sheath to
prevent toxic contamination, Ben's room was reattached and
the entire north end of Morgan Hall repaired that afternoon
by overeager Civil students from Kaven Hall.)