Coffee Nips Anonymous

****

"This is Team Hammer," came Nicolai "Nick" Nicoleyovich's voice over Martin's commlink. "The cloning lab is secure. How is everyone else doing?"

"Tennessee Tuxedo, here," whispered Martin. "We haven't seen any action yet. Oh, wait... hang on."

Cat leveled his Dukes of Hazzard™ laser pistol and let off a blast of hot light, which destroyed the control mechanism, which when activated, would have dumped a large quantity of Addictatine into the vat of coffee nip mixture. "This plant is closed!" called Cat.

"Okay," said Martin, "we're done. Did you find John Hammondaigs?"

"Yes," answered Nick. "He was chained up in the cloning lab. Barney forced him to do most of it, and he's promised to testify against the Purple Bastard in court."

"Excellent!" said Charlie, over the commlink. "The CNA Center is ours, too. Squasha's taken Topher to the hospital, and Ms. Slalom is being escorted to the DA's office."

"Squasha?" asked Nick. "How is Topher doing?"

"They're still working on him," she said, "but the nurse tells me everything is going well."

"That's good news. Animal, how are things at the studio?" Silence. "Animal?"

****

"What about Big Bird?" asked BJ "Aren't you gonna clone him for food?"

"No. I don't much like canary-meat."

"Then whatcha gonna do?" asked Baby Bop.

"This," he said, and pulled the trigger.

"BANG!" said the gun.

Or, to be precise, "BANG!" said the colorful flag, which sprang out of the gun's barrel when Barney pulled the trigger.

Barney had only a split second to be shocked, before Big Bird sent him flying across the room with a powerful clothesline. The purple dinosaur plowed into BJ, slamming his head forcefully into a camera and freeing my right arm.

Seizing this new opportunity, I grabbed Baby Bop's proboscis horn and squeezed, while Big Bird grabbed Barney by the tail. As Bird swung Barney overhead and slammed him into the floor, my fist-rocket launched, carrying Baby Bop into the far corner, where the explosion took any fight out of her.

Talisman and the penguins rallied, and saw to it that BJ stayed down, while Lucky, who had managed to stop the bleeding in his shoulder came over to make sure I wasn't seriously injured. There was nothing left for us to do, but watch Barney get his purple ass royally kicked.

My thoughts went momentarily back to that evening in late October, when Tony the Tiger tried to recruit Big Bird into the world of Professional Wrestling. "I'm a lover, not a fighter," he'd said to Tony. Well, any giant lady canary who caught Big Bird's eye would be a lucky girl, indeed, because he must have been one Hell of a great lover. Anyway, Barney was well and truly fucked!

As he struggled to his feet, Big Bird grabbed him by the head and smashed him in the nose with a knee. Dinosaur teeth scattered across the floor, and no sooner did Barney fall, than Big Bird was on top of him, pummeling his purple face with rock-hard fists.

But the Bird was in perfect control. As soon as Barney stopped struggling, Bird stopped punching. Oh, Barney made the obligatory final lunge, as Big Bird got off of him, but he fell flat on his face as Big Bird easily sidestepped the attack.

I heard some clicking and fuzz coming over the commlink. Grabbing it from the floor, I put the headset on and then fiddled with some knobs to improved reception.

"... nurse... going well... crackle... fzzz..."

"...good news. Animal... studio... Animal?"

"Yeah, Nick!" I responded. "We had a rough minute or two there, but we're good."

"Совершенство Спасибо!" exclaimed Nick. "We won! We stopped Barney's evil scheme!"

"Not quite yet," said Talisman, speaking into his own commlink. "We still need to get these guys on the air and turn off the mind-control transmitter. But the good guys won."

There were no celebratory cheers from the victors, however. We'd lost one of our own. Montague was a good egg, and his loss weighted heavily on us all.

"Excuse me," said a muffled voice from deep inside Barney's abdomen, "could someone get me out of here? It really stinks."

****

"Dang! 'At's a Helluva story, Animal," said Paul Gipson, "but ya didn't hafta tell me 'bout th' wrasslin' match. Ah wuz there, 'member?"

"Well, I wasn't," said his wife, Tammy.

We were in the PBU pressroom and I had just finished telling them about how we defeated Barney. They had come over so that Paul could turn in his latest Night Stalker report, and he wanted to show his toddler, Paul Jr. (aka the Wurm) how PBU was printed.

"Oh, yeah!" said Paul. "Then you should tell 'er how ah whupped Talisman in th' ring!"

"You got lucky, Boyo!" said Talisman, as he entered the room. "If I didn't have a mouthful of butterscotch pudding, I'd have creamed you."

"Any tahm ya wanna rematch, Bubba!" grinned Paul. "Any tahm!"

"Hi, guys," I greeted the four armadillos in trenchcoats and wide-brimmed hats, who'd entered the room with Talisman.

"Hey," said the armadillo with the eye patch, "we really appreciate you letting us stay here until things blow over."

"No problem," I said. "Talisman, I've set up some bunks for them in the spare room next to yours. Would you show them up?"

"Sure thing," he answered. Talisman and Bo had moved in just a few days before. The tree house was nice but it proved to be just too cramped for a man and a cat. Simon and Simoné had told me about a family of chipmunks who had been at Lego House for quite some time, and we were able to convince Billy to transfer Talisman's lease to them.

"Who were those armadillos?" asked Tammy.

"I really can't say anything about that just now," I said, "but suffice to say, there's going to be a big story in the June issue of Polar Bears Unlimited." Though I couldn't reveal it at the time, these four incognito armadillos were none other than the Armored Avengers. They'd had a nasty run-in with Captain Colortyme, after the bogus superhero slaughtered a bunch of innocent helpless armadillos in a vengeful rampage. It was all very ugly, and we feared that Mack, John, Corey and 'Morbid' Dennis would not get a fair shake with the Metro Police (a given, actually) or with the courts, unless their side of the story saw some press.

"BARRRRP!"

"Paul Herman!" scolded Tammy, when Paul blasted out an Olympic-level belch.

"Paul Herman Monster!" was my near-involuntary response whenever Tammy admonished him in this way. It always earned me a fist to the shoulder from my good friend, and this was no exception. "Ow!" I said, laughing.

"Hey!" said Paul. "Whut happened after Big Bird whupped Barney's ass?"

"We went to the giant robot wars at Frisky University for the finals the next day. Man, I've seen giant robots fight on television, but it doesn't compare to OW!" That was the first time I'd ever earned a punch in the arm from Tammy! "Haha! Okay, okay! I pulled a big zipper out of my hat, and slapped it onto Barney's chest, so we could get Montague out. He had some acid burns, from being in Barney's stomach, but he was okay otherwise. Barney had swallowed him whole."

"Thank goodness for that," said Tammy.

"Truly. Anyway, we did our broadcast as planned and the effect was pretty immediate. Already, most of the kids' shows are back on the air and have pre-Barney level audiences again. Particularly those that don't treat their viewers like mentally challenged two-year-olds. Just before we went on-air, we stuffed Barney and his cohorts into my hat, and afterwards presented our evidence to the DA. Oh, first we went to see Topher in the hospital."

"How is he?"

"Oh, he's in great shape now. They'd just finished patching him up when we arrived. It was close, and if not for Squasha's talents, we might have lost him. And she was sure in need of some medicinal hugs. Once we were sure Topher was okay, we took Barney and all of our evidence to the DA's office. His trial was quick and he was convicted of Illegally Eating People Against Their Will, Unlawful Imprisonment of John Hammondaigs, hundreds of counts of Fraud, Attempted World Domination and several million counts of Felony Mind-Control. He's going to do some hard time, despite Ms. Slalom's best efforts."

"Hold on!" exclaimed Tammy angrily. "You mean that she wasn't charged as an accessory?! Or for shooting Topher?!"

"No, unfortunately," I answered. "She managed to convince the DA that the shooting was self-defense. Said she thought the building was under attack. As for the other stuff... she claimed attorney-client privilege, and the info on her computer was ruled inadmissible as evidence."

"'At seems a might fishy," said Paul.

"Yeah. I get the feeling that the DA is well acquainted with Juice's strap-on. But that's only speculation. The truth is, it was hard to determine who was working for Barney freely, and who was mind-controlled, once the transmitter was turned off. The really irksome part is that Barney gets to keep his show."

"What!?" asked Tammy and Paul.

"He keeps his show. Slalom convinced the judge that Barney has given up on his world-conquering designs and wants to continue entertaining kids."

"But how is he going to do his show from prison?" asked Tammy. "Oh, he's not getting work-release is he!?"

"No. Slalom made a shot for that, but the judge wouldn't hear of it. He's going to use digital imaging and blue screens to create the illusion that he's with the kids. And yes, despite everything, he's still got his cast of annoying children for the show. The parents don't seem to understand just how dangerous Barney is."

"Dammit! This sucks! I don't believe this! He can still try to take over the world from prison!"

"Oh, no! I forgot to tell you! His mind-control system is gone for good. The whole thing worked through his network of communications satellites. Ken Mustache came by Barney's studio with John Hammondaigs, and they linked my fist-rockets to the satellite guidance system somehow, and I flew up as high as I could and blasted those satellites into so much space-junk."

"Sweet!" said Paul.

"Not as sweet as this: it seems that Mr. Barney didn't read the fine print in his buyout contract for the Pearson's Candy Company. There was a very convenient morals clause which stated that, 'A stockholder shall relinquish all shares to the Pearson's family, without remuneration, if said stockholder in any way causes the reputation of the Pearson's Candy Company, or the Pearson's Family, to suffer, especially if he is a big purple dinosaur, trying to fund an evil World Empire or otherwise attempting to take over the world by making coffee nips highly addictive, you Purple Fucking Bastard!' Or something like that. And they've done a voluntary recall of all addictive coffee nips. They're putting the white-clad nano-ninjabots in the coffee nips for the next year, to end everyone's addiction."

"Wow! Ain't they kickin' themselves in th' ass?"

"Maybe. But as the new CEO said at a press conference, they are confident that people will buy coffee nips for the taste." Most people would, I guess. I still eat them on occasion and they are quite tasty, but it's not the same anymore. Squasha, on the other hand, knowing that the nano-ninjabots wouldn't help her anyway, unless she didn't teleport for several weeks, went cold turkey. I think part of that was pride, but I don't blame the girl. Angela helped her through the worst of it, having done it herself.

"Did the cops ever ketch up wit' th' geese?" asked Paul.

"No. They cleared out early, to fly back home for the summer. The Metro cops will have forgotten the whole thing by next winter."

"What about Hammondaigs?" asked Tammy. "Are you sure Barney forced him?"

"Oh yeah! He cloned the dinosaurs on his own... the first few anyway, but Barney made him do the rest. In fact, it was Hammondaigs who started Coffee Nips Anonymous. He went behind Barney's back, to try to counteract the world-domination scheme. Barney discovered it, of course, and chained Hammondaigs up at the lab. He threatened Hammondaigs and his family to insure cooperation and then incorporated the nano-ninjabots into his evil plan. That's why the nano-v-chips had that 'I tried, I'm sorry' message on them. Anyway, he's now in negotiation with Michael Crichton to write a book and Steven Spielberg to make a movie about his experiences. It could be good, if they don't make a bunch of crappy sequels."

"So," said Paul, "how close did Barney come to takin' over th' world?"

"It wasn't exactly a nick-of-time situation. It could have been years, or even decades, before he became Tyrant King Supreme. As world-conquering despots go, Barney was very patient."

"Yeah, but it mighta taken more ta stop 'im later. It's a good thang ya got 'im when ya did."

"I suppose so. Aside from a few injuries, which we've all recovered from, everything worked out okay."

Anita Maudlin stuck her head in and asked where Talisman was. I told her to go on upstairs, and she did. For a second, I wondered if she was pursuing a relationship with my friend. But again, I decided that my speculations would be best kept to myself. If there was anything to it, Talisman would tell me.

"And speaking of things working out," said Tammy, "how are Cat and Terri doing? I haven't seen him in awhile."

I told her what I knew, which wasn't much. Sadly, Cat's relationship with Terri Power ended soon after it began. He never did say why, exactly. The only thing my shy friend would tell me was that, "Terri had something in common with Juice E. Slalom." I could only guess what he meant by that, but I do recall, a few days after all this mess happened, Cat came running through the Canary yelling, "Hide me! Hide me!" He ducked behind a drawing table, and soon after, Miss Power came looking for him. She was dressed in filmy sexy undies and wearing an eight-inch-long strap-on dildo.

"What's going on, Cat?" I had asked, after telling Terri that he'd gone upstairs.

"None of your business," he'd said, making his escape before Terri came back down.

That might have been it, but Cat neither confirms nor denies anything. Terri then started dating a couple of men in the wrestling biz, by the names of Bert Sawbones and Stan Dollie.

"Oh, that's too bad," said Tammy. "What about you and Renée?"

I grinned like a goddam fool. "I'm thinking about asking her to marry me."

"That's wonderful!" said Tammy, with a congratulatory hug.

"She's the best thing that's ever happened to me," I said. And I think I believed it. I was wrong, of course, but even if I'd suspected this at the time, I would have had no idea just how wrong I was. It would take several cans of sardines to wake me up.

End of Book Two

The End