"Guys! Guys, wake up!" I thought I heard Kip say.
Kip? KIP? Kip who'd been revealed to be a robot driven by the foul preschooler Petit? Why would I be hearing his voice, considering we were on an old movie set doing battle with dozens of past foes, next to the burning remains of a cushty Renault Espace?
As Clark, Michael and I dispatched villain after villainess, goon after goonette, henchmen after henchwoman, we all turned as we heard it again.
"C'mon now guys, time for breakfast!"
"How curious", I thought, and I could tell the others did too.
We all looked at each other.
Roundhouse kicking Negative Charge across the room, Michael said, "You know (oof), even though we are (biff) incredibly skilled crimefighters (thwak), well versed in UnbelievaFu (clonk) and other forms of hand-to-hand (boiinngg) combat, including but not limited to capoeira (doof), tae kwon do (bosh) and the little-known Scottish art of Fookujimmi (crakk), doesn't this all seem remarkably easy?"
"Now that you (pow) mention it," replied Clark, "I was beginning to think I had just gotten (whammo) amazingly better at fighting, too."
"Chaps, I think it's time (blaff) we did something completely out of left field," I said, casually pummeling the punchable face of Mac Ramey as I did so. "Let's see what happens (kerbloop) if we stop fighting."
The others were incredulous, but quickly decided that they'd give it a try.
"On three, OK? One...two...two and a half...three!!"
We stood still and let our arms flop to our sides. As I suspected, everyone else stopped fighting too and stood around with puzzled looks on their faces. Suddenly we heard a voice.
"CUT!! CUT! Guys, what the hell are you doing?"
We looked across to a director's chair in which an incensed Henri Petit was sitting, wearing a beret and aviator pants and smoking with a very long cigarette holder.
"You guys weren't supposed to stop! It's not meant to be like this! No fair! My film is ruined! Waaaah!!" he bawled.
~~~GAME OVER~~~
"Wake up, you guys, come on!" yelled Kip. "You've been playing that game for weeks now!"
We felt a pair of hands removing something from our faces, revealing Kip, solid and definitely not a Petit-driven robot, in front of us.
Woozily, Clark was the first to speak. "What game? What are you talking about?"
"This one." Kip handed Clark a copy of our video game, which has now been made into a Virtual Reality version (only $69.99 in stores now, folks! Get'em while they're hot!).
"Lemme see that," snarled Michael, snatching the box away from Clark. "Hmmm. Well, I'll be goddamned. What level were we on?"
"Apparently, a custom level whereupon you can meet all previous foes and a few new ones, called "THE UNBELIEVABLES MEET TIE-PO AND THE TEETA VON DEESE TRIPLETS" Michael said, reading from the box. "Play as Michael, Clark or Jeff as they team up with an old enemy to defeat an army of old adversaries on a Hollywood backlot." Well, that's what happened, I guess. But the whole backstory of sitting around in the backyard, hearing the girls' voices, watching them drive away in a Renault Espace, meeting Tie-Po, being put in gunnysacks, dumped in a parking garage, picked up by that shrimp Petit and made to fight an onslaught of disguised stuntmen while he films it? To what end, might one ask?"
"You think that's bad," replied Kip. "It's lucky you didn't put it in Zombie mode."
We all three looked at each other. "ZOMBIE MODE?!"
We reached for the goggles...
