AVALANCHE left us at Costa Del Sol -- still in our soggy clothes -- and flew off without another word. Our first order to was to find some dry clothes. "I guess we'd better be getting to Rocket Town," Palmer said afterwards. "Hey, maybe the others did a little better."
"With AVALANCHE around, don't count on it," I said bitterly.
Our luck took a slightly better turn what a phantom Chocobo carriage showed up and offered to take us to Rocket Town. I got right in, but Palmer wasn't so sure. "We shouldn't accept rides from strangers," he said.
"Look, do you want to walk the whole way?" I asked.
"Okay, okay, let's go," Palmer said.
The Chocobo carriage dropped us off the next day in Rocket Town. We were immediately greeted by Fred. "Yo Tortellini!" he said. "'Bout time you got here!"
"You have no idea what we just went through," I said.
We headed to the Shanghai Inn, where we found that the guy who was in the bathroom when we were in Rocket Town the last time was still there! Mukki and Johnny were also there.
Our reunited party exchanged stories. Fred had got the Huge Materia from the North Corel Reactor and loaded it on the train as he'd planned, but then (of course) AVALANCHE showed up. They'd hijacked Fred's train and drove him off with their fancy eye candy call spells. They then furthermore attempted to crash the train into North Corel (why, I have no idea, except that AVALANCHE is generally obnoxious). Luckily, Fred stopped the train by shooting out its Johnson Rod and saved the town. AVALANCHE took all the credit as usual and were rewarded with an Ultima Materia and a Limit Break manual by the "grateful" townspeople.
Mukki didn't fare much better. He'd led the Condor troops to victory over the invading Shinra. Just about then, AVALANCHE arrived. Red XIII claimed the condors were "injured" and offered to tend to them. Most of them died later that day, in what I'm sure was merely a tragic accident. Uh-huh. Anyway, since the condors were dead, AVALANCHE "offered" to take the Huge Materia off the Fort, and they even got a Phoenix Materia too.
Johnny, however, was our success story. He taken the Huge Materia from the Nibel Mountains reactor with little resistance (the black-robed tobacco cultists tried to stop him, but most died of coughing fits they suffered during the chase) and had brought it to Rocket Town. It was now sitting in the rocket, locked in with a special security code.
"Is one Huge Materia going to be enough?" I asked Palmer.
"I think so," Palmer said. "Hey-hey, I would have liked to have more, but it should work. It'll at least break up Meteor enough that it won't cause very much damage."
The next few days were spent frantically preparing the rocket for its launch. One of these days we were all in the command center when Shinra came. They came all at once, sweeping down on the town and storming every building. The bulk of their force -- led by Rude and Reno of the Turks -- surrounded the rocket command center. We hadn't even noticed them arriving, and the next moment they had completely encircled the command center.
We stared out the window in a kind of numb horror as Reno delivered a message to us through a megaphone (I think it was the HP Shout). "The Shinra-26 rocket is property of Shinra, Inc., and is not intended for private or home use. You are hereby under arrest. I will now read you your rights. You have the right to an unfair trial. You have the right to be searched and seized. You have the right to be executed. You have the right to be tortured, then executed."
"Where's Mr. Clean?" I shouted out the window. It was dumb, but we had to something in response.
"'Mr. Clean' is retrieving the Huge Materia, which is also property of Shinra, Inc., from the rocket," Reno said. He then continued with his speech. "You have been charged with trespassing on the Nibel Reactor, trespassing on the Shinra-26, operating Shinra property for private or home use, and grand theft Materia."
"That would make a cool game," Fred said. "Grand Theft Materia."
"Shut up, Fred," Mukki said.
The phone rang. "I'LL GET IT!" Palmer and I both yelled. We both ran to the table where the phone sat. Palmer was in the lead, but I tripped him and he fell. As I was reaching for the phone, Palmer grabbed my leg and pulled me over backwards. Palmer got to his feet to get the phone, but I put him in a headlock. I reached for the phone with my left hand and did not see Palmer drawing his Mako Gun until it was too late. Palmer rapped me on the head with me, leaving me rather dazed, and grabbed the phone.
We listened to Palmer carrying on a heated argument over the phone. It went on for a quite awhile, then Palmer hung up. "Hey-hey, that was Cid," Palmer said. "He wanted to know, quote, 'Who the @$#%*$&% is jackin' my rocket?'" Palmer lowered his voice to a whipser for no real reason. "I tricked him," he said. "I told him it was Shinra, then I convinced him to pilot the rocket so he could finally get out into outer space."
"Are you sure about that?" Hart asked. "What's going to stop him from just taking off with the rocket?"
Palmer chuckled and pointed to a switch on the rocket launch controls. "See that? That locks the autopilot on."
I grinned a sinister grin as Palmer's plan dawned on me. "Not only does Meteor get blown up, but AVALANCHE goes with it."
"This should be fun," Mukki said.
Loud pounding sounds outside alerted us to the fact that Shinra was trying to break the door down. We quickly started pushing furniture over to block the doorway. "The windows!" Butch said as several MPs appeared at the window with a crowbar.
Johnny opened the window, pointed his Mako gun out, and blasted one MP. Another MP opened fire and Johnny quickly closed the window before he was shot. Bullets blasted holes in the glass. "Can we board them up?" Mukki asked.
"No time," Fred said.
Mukki was gathering up cans of Spam that had been sitting under the sofa for untold eons. "We can use this," he said. Mukki opened one of the cans, grabbed a big blob of Spam, and glopped it on the window, forming a rubbery, bulletproof, shield. Spam is completely impenetrable. He then coated the other window.
"Spam... not even the Donner Party would eat it!" Fred said.
Outside the building, the MPs smashed through the windows, but their crowbars become wedged in the Spam and lost. The troops tried firing through the Spam, but the bullets just bounced off the gooey Spam, inflicting injury among the Shinra troops.
"Oh yeah?" Reno shouted through his megaphone. "Well, I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down!"
Some SOLDIERs started setting up dynamite around the house. "We could be in trouble," Fred observed clinically.
One of the SOLDIERs suddenly fell to the ground as he was shot in the back. We traced the path of the shot with our eyes and saw... Vincent. Vincent was accompanied by Barret, who was happily gunning down MPs randomly.
"Hey-hey, let them take care of Shinra," Palmer said. "We've got to launch the rocket." He waddled over to the controls, inspected them, and pressed the LAUNCH button. Palmer picked up the radio to the rocket and spoke into it. "Hey-hey!"
"Palmer!" Cid shouted back. "What the hell did'ya do?"
"We finished repairing the Auto-Pilot. So, I laun---ched it!" Over the radio, we heard curses and thuds as Cid tried to free the rocket's controls.
"Hey-hey-hey!" Palmer said. "Almost lift off!"
"What the!?" Cid yelled. "No countdown? It just don't seem the same without it!"
"Hey!!!! Hey-hey!!! Blast-----off!"
We stared out the window as the Shinra-26 finally took off. Huge clouds of smoke billowed out from underneath it, then it soared solemnly off into the sky. "Yes!" I said. "We did it!"
Outside the house, Barret and Vincent were forcing the Shinra troops to play Simon Says and shooting the ones who got "out". Reno, however, had escaped.
"This is one small step for the Planet, one giant leap into deep doo-doo for AVALANCHE," Hart said.
"Hey! I didn't say 'simon says', foo'! You're out!" Barret shot the head off an MP.
We gathered around the control system's monitors to watch as the Shinra-26 soared out of the planet's atmosphere and towards Meteor. "Hey-hey, this could be kind of loud," Palmer warned us.
We were about to cover our ears when a small message flashed on the controls. "Cargo lock opened," it read.
"Hey!" Palmer said. "What's going on?"
"Does that mean the Huge Materia lock?" Johnny asked.
"You bet it does," Hart said. "This is not good."
"Simon says bite your ear," Vincent said. The Shinra troops tried in vain to bite their ear, but none of them succeeded and Barret gunned them all down.
We stared up at the rocket, which was getting smaller and smaller as it approached Meteor. Now the question was whether the Huge Materia plan would still work.
"Escape pod launched," another message flashed.
"What?" Palmer said. "Escape pod launched? Hey-hey! Er...."
There was silence. AVALANCHE had escaped the rocket, and they undoubtedly had the Huge Materia with them, too. "Those fools," Butch said. "That was the only way we could have stopped Meteor."
I kicked the rocket controls in disgust. "Damn you, AVALANCHE! Every time we get anywhere, you always get in our way!"
| Next chapter: In Which Rufus Gets What He Deserves |