Chapter 4
Mike regarded the handcuffs that chained to an office chair. A used office chair.
“Damn you, Baxter! Couldn’t you even spring for new furniture?” demanded Alice. “My chair
has coffee stains on it!”
“And what’s with the IV drips?” Mike asked eying them nervously.
“That will be the instrument of your doom, you blob-sympathizer! I’m going to inject you all
with my virus: Baxter’s Vengeance!”
“You’ll never get away with this.” Tom seemed impossibly calm in the face of his imminent
demise.
“You seem remarkably calm in the face of your imminent demise,” observed Baxter.
“Just one of the things that makes me the incredible secret agent that I am.”
“We’ll see how confident you are when my virus is crawling through your veins!”
Baxter put some of his lethal cocktail into each of their IV’s. He seemed befuddled when he
came to Rex.
“I’m not even sure this will work on you.”
As Baxter turned away, Rex bit through his handcuffs, knocked Baxter over with a swipe of his
tail and ran for one of the doors out of the conference room.
“Rex, look out!” shouted Tom, but too late. Several thugs drew their guns and shot the Raptor
down.
“Not so tough,” sneered one thug as he put away his gun.
“You’ll pay for that!” Mike yelled.
“I guess that solves that problem.” Baxter said, and left the room.
“Can you believe that?” Tom said.
“Poor Rex!” blurted Alice.
Tom and Mike turned to look at her.
“Actually, I was talking about how they left us unguarded...” Tom said.
“Hey!” put in the thug who was guarding the door.
Tom fired his octagun. The guard dropped.
“And they didn’t even take our weapons!”
“You mean the obvious ones,” Mike said.
“Rex!” Alice squawked.
“We heard you the first time!”
“But he’s gone!”
Tom and Mike looked over to where the Raptor had fallen. His body wasn’t there anymore.
“Now that’s something you don’t see every day...”
“The Raptors were always very resistant to bullets.” Mike commented.
“We still need to get out of here.” Tom’s Puppeteer flowed down onto his hand and into the
handcuff. There was a “click” and the handcuff fell away. The other two looked at him.
“What? I told you I had leet lock picking skills!”
Tom’s Puppeteer repeated the trick with the other handcuff and he was free. Soon he had the
other two free as well. Just as they were all getting up there was a knock on the door. They
looked at each other.
A woman in a business suit barged in. “We have this room at eleven.” Some others came in
after her and sat down at the conference table.
“Can’t you see we’re being held hostage here?!”
“Whoever did that should have booked the room.” The woman sat down at the table and turned
on the projector.
“Shouldn’t we be more worried about that virus that Baxter injected us with?” asked Mike with a
worried look at the IV he had just taken out of his arm.
“What?!” said the woman in the business suit. “There was a trial run and nobody told us?”
“What are you talking about?” Tom demanded.
The woman hit a button and the projector displayed a slide reading “World Plague Dispersal.”
“I don’t believe this!”
“This test run was not approved by the steering committee – it violates the process!” The
woman looked severely at Tom.
“I’m more worried about what it’s going to do to our lives!” said Alice.
“Relax, I zapped the batch that he used on us with my x-ray flashlight.” Tom waved his
flashlight triumphantly. Alice and Mike backed away.
“You sterilized a batch of virus?!” the woman demanded. “I’m going to have a word with your
manager!”
“Can I shoot her?” Alice asked. “I’ve been wanting to try this thing out.” Alice aimed her
octagun towards the enraged executive.
“This is highly unprofessional!” the woman said backing out the door. The others rushed out as
well.
“Let’s go find Baxter,” Mike sighed.
The three of them shuffled out of the conference room and started looking around. Wherever
they looked there were cubes filled with office workers – talking on the phones, typing reports
and looking at Facebook.
Finally Alice blurted “Don’t you people realize you’re working towards the deaths of 100
million people?”
One of them looked up. “Hey, it’s the only job I could find. And you should see the dental
benefits!”
Alice was about to test the ‘heavy stun’ setting of her octagun, when Mike shoved her hand
down.
“Spoilsport.”
“C’mon, we gotta find Baxter.”
“I think he’s this way.” announced Tom.
“How do you know?”
“It shows him on the cube map.”
The three of them huddled around the diagram and saw a double-sized cube labeled “Baxter, R.”
Someone had crossed this out and written “Evil Overlord” in red ink.
They followed the directions and sure enough, he was there, complete with a very bored
Roxanne and the businesswoman from the conference room.
“There they are! The process breakers!” the businesswoman screeched, pointing towards them.
“You employ these clowns?” Mike asked.
“When the checks clear.” answered Baxter.
“Hi, Tom!” Roxanne waved a meaty hand at the man in black.
“Are you two...” Baxter began
“Yes!” Roxanne proclaimed.
“Don’t be premature,” Tom said, moving away from her.
“After all those dinners I treated you to!” Baxter looked accusingly at Roxanne.
“You mean the ones that you insisted I go halfsies with you...and you ordered the Belgian
waffles while I had a salad!”
“I’m glad I injected you with the virus!”
“No you didn’t.” Roxanne informed him.
“Not you, ya dumb broad, him!” Baxter pointed at Tom.
“I’ve been trying to tell you, as I plainly pointed out in my email, they sterilized that batch of
virus!” the businesswoman yelled.
“What?!!” Baxter turned to Tom. “Do you have any idea how much that cost me?! Kill them!”
The assorted office workers looked at each other.
“That’s not in my job description.”
“I’m going to file a complaint with OSHA.”
“Thugs!” Baxter yelled. Various tough guys got up from the fantasy football league they had
been working on and came around the cube walls.
Just then the windows smashed in as a team of commando Raptors broke into the office. They
immediately began firing their ridiculous Gatling lasers at everything in sight. Fortunately for
the office workers, they were not very good shots.
“133t!” one of them yelled.
“Rex!” yelled Alice and she ran towards the wounded Raptor. He turned around to see what she
was yelling about and managed to smack her with his tail.
“dUd3s! i brougHt 7He cavalr3y!”
Alice got to her feet. The other lizard commandos joined them. From a nearby door they could
hear Baxter.
“You’ll pay for all that office equipment you ruined!”
“Where’s he going?” Tom wondered.
“I can tell you that,” said a husky voice. Roxanne trundled from out behind a cube.
Tom looked like a deer caught in the headlights of a speeding truck.
“He’s probably heading for his private jet he keeps at the municipal airport.”
“Um...thanks.”
“You can pay me back later,” Roxanne winked. Tom flinched.
“70 7he L3etm0bile!”
* * *
The four of them headed for the elevator. The commandos said it was not “N0t l33T eN0ugh”
and swung back out the windows.
“Are you OK, Rex?” Alice asked.
Tom and Mike looked at each other. This was the first time that they had heard real concern in
Alice’s voice.
“dUd3! i am so to7aLlY L33t!”
“But how did you survive the gunshots?” Tom asked.
“dud3! d0 you think i w3@r thi$ ou7fit beC@u53 0F tH3 w@Y it l00k5?”
“Bulletproof outfit...” Tom said.
“...pretty l33t.” Finished Mike.
“Now don’t you start with that!”
The four of them took the elevator to the ground floor and then raced to the parking lot. Precious
time was wasted arguing with some guy who was writing a parking ticket but one “grin” from
Rex and they decided to scram.
The four of them piled into the car, Rex managed to grab the front seat again. Tom gunned the
engine and the car launched itself into the air.
“Rex! Get on the phone to municipal airport and tell them not to let Baxter’s plane go!”
“This car has a phone and everything...pretty snazzy eh?” Tom said, looking hopefully at Alice.
Alice remained unimpressed.
“dude! he's alR3aDY taK3n 0ff!” Rex said hanging up the phone.
“They actually understood you?” Alice demanded.
“t0talLy.”
“We’ll have to do this the old fashioned way then.”
Tom flipped a switch and brought up a radar scope.
“7HeR3'5 bax73R!” Rex said, pointing a claw at the scope.
The car made a 3G turn and started tracking a dot in the sky. A second later a Leet ship came
alongside them, it’s reptilian pilot waving at them. After a few minutes the dot resolved itself
into a plane. When they came alongside, the team saw a gizmo on the wings for dispersing the
virus.
“Alright, Baxter, pull over!” Tom yelled into a microphone.
“Screw you!” came the reply.
“Fine! We’ll do this the hard way!”
Tom made a violent turn and rammed into the jet.
“If you damage this thing, you’ll be hearing from my insurance company!” the tycoon warned.
The Leet jet barrel rolled to the other side of Baxter’s aircraft and bumped him from the other
side. Baxter’s jet swerved towards them.
“Rex!” yelled Tom.
“Dud3?”
“Deploy grapples!”
“5wEEt!”
Rex flipped a switch and grappling hooks shot out from the Aston Martin’s tires to Baxter’s jet,
drawing the two craft together.
“Fly the car! I’ll take care of Baxter...” Tom said in his 007 voice.
“What? You’re going to let Rex drive?!” Mike surfaced from catatonia to speak.
“Sup3R Schw33t!”
After a complicated shuffle, Rex was in the driver’s seat and Tom managed to open the car and
plane’s doors together. Tom jumped into the plane’s cabin.
Chapter 3 Chapter 5
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