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Part Eight: And the Winner Is...
“Behold the pelvic gyrations of my victory boogie!” - Space Ghost, Space Ghost Coast to Coast
As a gesture of good sportsmanship, Bob threw a party at his apartment that evening to celebrate Mouse’s decisive victory. Naturally, the main topic of conversation was who had been going after whom, and how they had succeeded. AndrAIa didn’t waste any time confronting Ray: “You were the one outside our apartment building that night, weren’t you?”
Ray raised his hands. “Guilty as charged. Which reminds me -- how did you get out of the building the next morning? I never saw you leave, and I was there for quite some time.”
AndrAIa laughed. “Simple. We went out the back door.”
“There’s a back door?”
“Yeah, it leads to the alley.”
“There’s an alley?”
Enzo chimed into the discussion from his place on the floor. “Who was the first one out?”
“I think it was me,” Matrix admitted gruffly.
“Nope.” Bob entered from the kitchen carrying a Diet Coke. “It was me.”
The room fell silent as everybody stared at him. “No way!” Enzo cried in disbelief.
“So the night stalker got the better of you, huh?” Dot remarked. “Who was it?”
Mouse triumphantly raised her hand, prompting a laugh from Ray. “Figures,” he said with a smile.
Dot rolled her eyes. “How’d you finally get him?”
Mouse grinned. “Remember your little date to the Bond movie?”
“Yeah...”
Bob, a bit embarrassed, finished off the story. “Remember when I came back from the bathroom a little damp?”
Dot stared at him in shock before starting to laugh. “You shot him in the bathroom?!” she said, poking Mouse with her foot. Mouse shrugged in response.
“Well, then you were the second one out,” AndrAIa said to Matrix. “It was that same night.”
Dot gave him a confused look. “But you were at my house all night.”
“It was right before you got home.” Matrix laughed ruefully. “That’s the last time I babysit him,” he added pointing to his young assailant.
“Enzo?!” All eyes turned to the small Sprite, who was grinning proudly from ear to ear.
More stories were shared: AndrAIa’s double-cross, Dot’s repeated attempts to get Phong out of the Principle Office, and a mass retelling of the four-way parking lot war. Then Dot asked, “Wait -- who had me?”
“Did they ever come after you?” Matrix inquired.
“No. I didn’t see a trace of my assassin for the entire game. Who was it?”
Mouse shot Bob a meaningful glance. After the added prompt of a poke in the ribs, he very quietly said, “Me.”
Dot sat silently, digesting this information. At last she spoke: “Bob, no offense, but that should have been so easy.”
Bob looked a little too shocked by this accusation. “How do you figure? You’re always in either the diner or the Principle Office.”
“What about the night we went to the movie? You had the gun with you the whole time. What were you waiting for?”
“I was out already!”
“Not when we were on the way there. Or when we were waiting in the lobby, or for the first thirty microseconds of the movie...” Dot would have gone on pointing out his many opportunities, but AndrAIa cut in. “Permission to speak freely, Bob,” she began.
“Go ahead.”
“I think you wussed out.”
“I did not!” Bob asserted over the resulting laughter.
“Sure you didn’t.” Enzo had predictably taken AndrAIa’s side.
“You wussed out, honey, and I can prove it,” Mouse said.
“How?”
“Ah heard that little pep talk you were giving yourself in the bathroom that night. You said yourself you had wussed out for long enough.”
This new evidence left Bob speechless. He tried his best to think up an excuse, but had no luck. Matrix shook his head. “You just couldn’t go through with it, could you?”
Bob hung his head in shame. “No.”
Dot decided it was time to come to his defense. “Well, I think that was very sweet of you,” she said, putting an arm around him. “Pathetic, but sweet.”
“Thank you,” Bob said dryly. He excused himself to refresh his soda.
“Matrix, who’d you have?” Ray asked.
“Mike the TV.”
This produced a snort of jealousy from Mouse. “Oh, Ah would have enjoyed that.”
Matrix sighed regretfully. “I would have, too.”
“You didn’t get him?”
“No. Enzo got me out before I had the chance.”
“Didn’t you get him during Sudden Death, Mouse?” Dot asked. Mouse shook her head. “Didn’t you?”
“You got me out in less than a millisecond, Mouse; I didn’t have time.” Both women turned to Ray, who looked just as confused as they did. “Don’t look at me, ladies.”
“Well, if we didn’t get him,” Mouse said, trying to make sense of the situation, “who did?”
A voice from the hallway made them all jump. “BZZZZ!!! Time’s up. The correct response was: NOBODY!! But for being such a great contestant, we’d like to leave you with a lovely parting gift. Johnny, tell her what she’s won!” With these words, Mike the TV leaped into the living room brandishing a Super Soaker. Mouse clambered up from her seat on the floor to escape, but her flight was cut short as Mike shot her dead in the back. “Well, Mouse, your prize is a one-way ticket out of the game! Brought to you courtesy of Super Soaker brand water pistols: when you’ve got to drench everyone in the room, accept no substitutes. Which that means that our big winner is. . . MIKE THE TV!!!!” Mike began a victory lap through the apartment, taking additional shots at Mouse every time he passed her; that is, until she threatened to stuff him down the garbage disposal.
“But Ah don’t get it,” she said as she dried herself off. “Cecil said there were only three people left.”
“No, he said three people had their assassins taken out; Sudden Death was designed to give the fourth person a fair shot at winning,” Bob explained, having reentered from the kitchen.
Something about this didn’t sit right with Mouse. “Bob,” she began calmly, “if you knew there were four people left, why did ya have this little party for me when you knew Ah hadn’t won?”
“Uh -- momentary lapse of concentration?”
Mouse advanced toward him threateningly. “You set me up,” she accused.
“Maybe.”
The woman stopped and stared him down silently. The whole room became hushed as the others waited to see what she would do. Bob grinned confidently at her. “Who’s all wet now -- sugah?” he teased, taking a gulp of his soda.
Mouse, not about to stand for that kind of abuse, grabbed a pillow off the couch and smacked him in the head with it, causing him to spit out a mouthful of soda. He lunged for the sofa and was soon matching her blow for blow with another pillow. It would have been a fairly short tussle had Mouse’s pillow not flown out of her hands, knocking Enzo’s hat off. He grabbed another pillow and joined the fray; before too long, everybody was in on it.
Several microseconds later, an exhausted group of Sprites lounged around Bob’s now-pillow-strewn apartment. In strange turn of events, Hack and Slash had been the clear winners; being made of metal, they barely felt their opponents’ hits. Ray, now draped across an armchair, stretched his arms over his head and yawned. “Well, that was an entertaining couple of weeks.”
AndrAIa nodded. “So what do we do for excitement now?”
Mouse smiled; she then turned to Dot and asked the question that is practically a requirement for any comedic fanfiction: “Dot -- truth or dare?”
The End