Retrieval Saga
A Can Full of Clones
Chapter 1: Introduction
When you're part of the CPS, life gets pretty exciting. Take the crew of the North Star for example. They've faced all kinds of bad guys and foiled all kinds of evil plots. But every once in a while, they get a short intermission between missions. Matt, Chris, and the others were used to this intermediate schedule, but the experiments weren't quite as comfortable with it.
At this moment, Draco, Chip, Stitch, Reuben, and Morph were in the mess hall. It was breakfast time and they slowly mulling over their breakfasts. "It's been one day since our last mission and I'm still aching from it," said Draco. "I'll say," added Chip, "all this work is wearing my hands down to stubs." He held up his hands to show that his fingers were rather worn away. "Fortunately, I have spares at hand," he said as he took off his worn hand and put fresh replacements on. "I don't see how Matt can be used to this stuff," said Stitch. "What we need is a vacation," said Reuben. "You always say that," said Chip. "Well, I think with all the chaos we deal with, we deserve one. We even had to deal with it on our last vacation, remember?" "Don't remind me," said Morph. "I've already asked Matt for that," said Stitch. "But he said this was standard routine. I think that if we don't take a break from this, it's gonna have some affect on us."
"Well," said Draco getting up, "I'm going to get some more-" He was interrupted when he suddenly seized up and twitched. His mouth sputtered gibberish as he fell onto the floor. "No thanks," said Morph, "I'm good." As Draco got back up, he said, "That's odd. I wonder what-" He was interrupted again as he started twitching uncontrollably and his eyes flashing green. "Are you okay?" asked Chip. "Wait a minute," said Reuben, "I think Draco's having a glitch attack." "Don't be silly," said Stitch, "if that were true, his eyes would be glowing green and then he'll revert to his basic programming." Draco stuttered and twitched as random appendages extended and retracted from his body. He shook all over the place until he somewhat came to rest. His eyes were glowing green now and he was snarling with all four mouths. "Oh boy," said Stitch.
Matt yawned as he walked towards the mess hall. "Why'd I let myself get talked into that drinking contest?" he muttered. "I need coffee, pure black coffee." He pushed open the door and walked inside. The mess hall was living up to its name as Draco as throwing around everything and sending blasts in random direction. The other experiments were busy dodging the various missiles. Matt walked past all that, not taking notice. And for some odd reason, not one projectile hit him. He walked over to the coffee machine and pressed the button. As soon as the cup was filled, he walked away. Just as well as several laser shots hit where he'd been standing a few seconds later. He calmly walked outside the room, not noticing the chaos happening behind him. He took a sip of his coffee and felt much better.
Suddenly he snapped up right and said, "What the?" He turned back into the mess hall as Draco was going through the final stages of his glitch attack. Matt watched as Draco twitched, sputtered, and threw objects and blasts in various directions. Eventually his body calmed down and his eyes returned to normal. "Uh, what the heck was that?" asked Matt. "That was a glitch attack," said Chip as he chiseled his way out of the icy blast Draco hit him with. "A what?" asked Matt. "It happens when an experiment gets low on molecular energy," said Reuben as he wiped off the thrown jelly from his face, "we revert to our basic programming for small periods as our energy runs low. Eventually it gets to a point where we have no energy left and we shut down. For good." "Why didn't you tell me about this?" asked Matt. Morph was busy pulling utensils out of his body as he said, "How were we supposed to know we were getting low on molecular energy? Well, maybe not me since I generate it, but the others must have been exhausting their reserves." "Er, I better tell Leyton about this before one of you other guys glitch out," said Matt. Suddenly Stitch twitched and jerked his head. "Oh no, not him," said Chip. Then Stitch stopped and said, "Got ya."
Matt quickly called Leyton and alerted him of the situation. Leyton didn't quite believe it until Stitch really did have a glitch attack and scribbled with marker all over the communication screen, particularly around and on Leyton's head. Then Leyton was more lenient to giving the crew a vacation. With a bit more haggling, and a few more glitches, Leyton gave the crew one month of paid vacation, on the condition that they spend it on Earth. Everyone agreed to that, particularly Lilo as her birthday was coming up. "I can't wait to go back to Kauai," she said, "space is cool and all, but I think I'd rather spend a quiet birthday at home. Not to mention there won't be any bad guys to bother us there." "Yeah," said Draco, "nothing spoils a social occasion more than a villain attacking right during the middle of it. Seriously, would it kill them to stay away from those things?"
Soon afterwards, the crew was taking the North Star to Earth. Matt had a bit of trouble deciding where to land as there was a virtual ring of satellites around the planet. "You know," said Techo, "I know this is ironic coming from me, but I think technology right now's a bit overbearing." "I know what you mean," said Matt, "this is like trying to make a left turn onto a highway without a stoplight." "Maybe that's because you have your left turn signal on," said Chip.
Matt grumbled in annoyance as he flipped the signal off. Eventually, there was a gap between the satellites big enough to allow them through. "Finally," muttered Matt. Suddenly a larger satellite stopped right in front of them. "Oh come on!" he yelled, "that does it, I'm taking it down." "Won't people notice?" asked Chris. "This kind of thing happens all the time," said Matt as he activated the North Star's main blasters.
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Meanwhile, aboard the 'satellite', Silvia, NegaMorph and a squad of Dante's men had been spending the last week or so clearing out the satellite. The old transport in question had been designed to deploy a load of virus pods onto Earth in preparation for an attack but the emperor had changed his mind when NegaMorph had been created. He seemed rather insistent nowadays that NegaMorph absorb as many clones as he could.
Silvia placed the batch of viral pods they had already collected into a bag. There were quite a lot of them inside the satellite. Apparently, Emperor Hamsterviel had intended to have a large scale invasion of Viral Clones before NegaMorph came along. It seemed easy at first, but then they discovered that there was a leak one of the water pipes and a few clones have been activated. So right now, they were concentrating on capturing the activated ones. They were scoring a rather good average, thanks to NegaMorph's ability to assimilate clones. Silvia never watched the actual process, she had already seen enough nauseating stuff already.
"You ever wonder if this is worth it?" asked Silvia. She had to speak loudly over Viral Nosy's insistent gossiping. "Are you kidding?" asked NegaMorph as he wrangled in Viral Woody who was looking anywhere for some wood to chew on, or human thighs, "I need to assimilate every Viral Clone there is. Only then will I be complete." "Do you really think that?" asked Silvia as forcing gags on each of Viral Forehead's mouths. "Yes, besides it gives me more powers," said NegaMorph as he used the recently assimilated Viral Elastico's power to stretch out and grab some pods that have been chucked into crannies by some of the more mischievous clones. Suddenly there was a scream and Silvia said, "Sounds like another rookie's found another clone, the hard way."
As Silvia and NegaMorph scrabbled after another clone, one of the troopers wiped some grime from the porthole and stared in horror. The rebel ship, North Star, was aiming right at them and judging from the green glow, was charging its pulse blaster.
"Er…sirs?" he said in a whimper. Silvia and NegaMorph paid no attention as they tried to get an uncooperative clone out a vent and the poor private watched as the North Star began to lock on. "SIIIIIIIIIIRS!" he screamed. Silvia and NegaMorph rounded on him, Silvia saying "This had better be goo…oh crap," as the North Star fired…
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As Matt pulled the trigger, Stitch noticed a particular sign on the satellite. It was way too late to do anything but Stitch did know what it was. The pulse blasters fired several rounds into the satellite. It didn't get blown into several pieces, but it did get damaged beyond repair. Suddenly, to Matt's confusion, a ship disconnected from the opposite side of the satellite and flew away. Then the satellite decompressed and fell to pieces. As it did so, several tiny black things came out and fell towards Earth. "What was that about?" asked Matt. "I think it had something to do with that satellite having the Hamsterviel Empire's mark on it and it saying 'Viral Clone Dispenser' right next to it." "So that means," said Techo slowly. "That we just unleashed a whole batch of Viral Clones onto Earth," said Chip, "And if I'm not mistaken, they're raining down right down onto Kauai, right where we were going to spend our paid vacation."
For poor Matt, who by now had been attacked by the who's who of mythical evil (AKA the Doom Weapons and Red Moon), megalomaniac dragons, cybernetic symbiotes (twice) and even an ancient Lich, being responsible for his latest situation was the final straw for his poor tortured sanity. His right eye twitched slightly and he started giggling before breaking out into an evil laugh that Jumba would have been proud of. He then began hitting his head on the controls till he fell sideways onto the floor, semi-concussed and still laughing.
Techo rolled his eyes and walked off to get the med kit while Chris took over for the landing. Draco poked Matt a bit, getting a snigger and jumped a foot in the air as Matt randomly yelled 'PIGMY SHREWS!!!' before passing out again. "You think he was born like this?" he said. Techo, who had just walked back in as Draco commented, said "He was fine till one night we dared him to drink a whole pint of Splitter Dac'knia…you know…the purple stuff I used yesterday to scour the fuel pipes."
There's the first chapter of a new story. Don't worry about Matt, he'll be fine by the time the next chapter is up, though we might need to keep in a straitjacket for a while. Anyways, this story's chapters will be focused on different Viral Clones of genetic experiments and the gang's attempt to capture them before Silvia and NegaMorph do. Me and largefish8 have already thought up a few chapters, but if anyone has any suggestions, I'm willing to listen. Keep around for the following chapters. Please review.