Chapter 12

Sonyk sat down on his leather-chair and looked around his office, like he did every morning. It was usually a room chock-full of dilapidated drawers, mountains of half-read readme files and several folders crammed with blueprints for the spaceship-yard were lying on the floor. Work had been slow at first. Plans kept disappearing, odd men in black kept prowling around the site, sabotaging the workers’ lunchboxes and, once, an Orbitus SilverSnake fell down from the sky, killing 20 (1 died as a result of being uncomfortably crushed, 3 were eaten and the rest panicked and kept smashing into each other).
Sonyk’s office was now empty. He was packing up all of his stuff because of he was fired. An investigation team found out that it was he who had set up the delay of XLM’s spaceship-yards because he was particularly angry at XLM’s easy escape after the Gingerbread Campaign. Sonyk had decided to blow up the whole planet and cripple XLM financially forever as a means of revenge. He had just set off his bomb, but it turned out that it was on the wrong planet and had instead blown up the newly found planet of Cheesius and all of the planet’s colonists. The chances of him getting shot at, even just a little bit, were quite high. The chances of him returning to Carrotus where so low that not even a mythical Improbability Drive could save him. Sonyk knew that his death was near because XLM would not treat ex-employees nicely, especially not those that had tried to blow up vital company property. Fortunately, he had a trump card. Sonyk took out a shrunk cage. He pressed a button, which enlarged it. It was jammed with purple and silver Beholders, and not just any Beholder, but the elder Beholders of the old days. The Beholders Jazz Jackrabbit had to deal with, the Beholders that would cause the rest of the beholding population to rise up against the intrusive galactic rabbits and destroy them utterly. But that could wait, he thought, and tried to take a nap before letting the carnage proceed.
The door flung open and whiffs of cheese scents flew in. Sonyk opened his eyes and looked up. Standing before him was a dark shadow, surrounded by a thin, yellow mist. If Sonyk had been even a little bit familiar with cheese mongering, he would’ve been amazed that the unknown rabbit in his ex-office wore a black coat smelling of Europan blue cheese, a fresh, bodily odour of French Neufchâtel and was shielded by bad-smelling Deserto Gruyere. The unknown rabbit walked out the shadows and became violet. Sonyk just turned a generic cheese-yellow.
The unknown rabbit did not spare Sonyk his breath.
‘You will not escape us this time,’ he muttered but then Sonyk passed out from the smell and the violet rabbit was unable to respond to this because he simply wasn’t prepared for it. He just stood there, the cheese mist wafting around the room. Oh great, he thought.
‘2 years hitchhiking around in space with that useless J2LC Guide and now that I’ve finally found him he passes away?’ he said to himself. ‘No, this won’t do. They wouldn’t let me back unless I brought proof of at least a bit of torturing.’ He then realized that he was in a room with a cage full of angry Beholders and was taken aback by that. He inspected the cage and its contents.
‘What’s this then? Seems as if I caught you in the middle of destroying another planet.’ The unknown rabbit took out his taser, which he bought from a seemingly very tired, very depressed FOO android.
By the time Sonyk woke up, he found every single muscle in his body aching from contraction. He also found that he was upside down with a painfully swelling head.
‘We are not very happy with your behaviour, Sonyk,’ a voice said. Sonyk tried to spin around but he only managed to wiggle slightly, much like a caterpillar when it spins its cocoon.
‘I…’ choked Sonyk, ‘…thought you were all dead? I mean, come on! It was an accident and I’m sorry, but it’s really no good apologizing to the dead.’
‘We didn’t all die!’ bellowed the unknown rabbit. He walked into view now and held his taser menacingly. ‘We don’t care about whether you intended to blow up Orbitus, Cheesius or any other planet for that matter. We don’t really care that we all live on top of a plateau on Muckamok either. What we do want, more than anything else,’ he continued quietly, ‘is to make sure that every single little bone in your pathetic, fat body gets turned into flesh-eating worms and devours you from the inside out!’ he finished in a roaring crescendo.
Sonyk whimpered. ‘Listen, this, er, this (-)(-)(-)-for-tat vengeance business…isn’t it a bit, you know, childish?’
‘Oh, so wanting to detonate a whole planet of innocent beings just ruin a company’s business, a company which only accidentally spilled a truckload of radioactive spam all over the JCF, isn’t childish? JCF has more spam anyway than the Amazon River could possibly handle!’
‘What river?’ asked Sonyk hesitantly. He needed more time. If he could only reach that cage button all would be over.
The unknown rabbit didn’t bother mentioning the fact that the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the JJ2 Galaxy had taken him to very strange places, including the previously unknown galactic sector of ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha. Instead, he just took out the jar of flesh-eating worms and an old, rusty ML Event-Replacer knife.
‘Er… I thought that when you said my bones were going to be replaced by flesh-eating worms, you were only trying to frighten me?’
‘Of course I was. And it worked. But now I’m going to do it for real,’ the unknown rabbit said. The 4 years wandering around in the galaxy would finally pay off. The unknown rabbit cut loose the rope and began to activate the Event-Replacer. His plan would eventually work, but not in the way he expected because at that moment, a pair of XLM medium interceptor ships flew past the windows, dived sharply, and hugged the ground in what was considered as that week’s most outrageous act of joy flying. The violet rabbit was distracted and looked out. Sonyk seized his chance and tackled his captor, smashing him to the ground and watched as the Event-Replacer rolled safely away. He quickly went to the cage and pressed the button. The elder Beholders, according to their ancient JJ1 scripts, attacked the closest target. Sonyk tried to flee but was sent flying straight onto the floor. In his confusion, or, more accurately, because of his fatness, he rolled over the jar and crushed it, releasing the worms and got eaten from the outside in.
The unknown rabbit made the perfectly sensible decision of not panicking. He tried to shout for help but he was far too high up. He threw a pencil case down, in the hope that it would hit someone. The crosswinds blew it away. He looked behind him. The elder Beholders were starting to encircle him. Only one solution left, he thought. If this doesn’t work, I’ll curse the Guide for the rest of eternity. The unknown rabbit grabbed a towel, wrapped it around another pencil case and swung the towel like a sling. It worked. The pencil case caused a serious head concussion on the rabbit it hit, but the rest looked up and saw all those Beholders. Help would come soon, but whether it would come after his death or before, the violet rabbit didn’t know. He swung his coat around, in the hope that the cheese smell would distract the Beholders, dodge the streak of silver, and made a dash for the door. 3 Beholders immediately blocked it off.
The purple ones beheld their fellow Beholders outside, called out, realized that they were too high up, took a second towel, wrapped a pencil case, and sent it out the window.
‘That’s the last time you guys ever get to learn anything from me,’ said the unknown rabbit and took out a gun. Outside, chaos erupted and the Beholders started to attack. The pair of interceptors was still flying too low, rapidly melted away under the unforgiving army of Beholders and became giant balls of fire.
A column of Devour-astor main battle tanks rolled up the main road and opened fire on anything that had less than two legs. Some office buildings promptly dematerialised into dust and excessively loud noise. Behind the tank column marched in the finest XLM had to offer: the BWHippie-Chippers assault force.
The unknown rabbit aimed at the Beholder and, because he was afraid he was going to miss, missed. The bullet hit a drawer, ignited the inflammable turtsandwich sauce, which exploded and sent rabbit and Beholders out the window. Fortunately, the unknown rabbit managed to get hold on a third towel before he fell out and used it to hold on to a descending Beholder. A division of interceptors flew above the skies and played 70’s Grove on their Gra-Mod-Phones.
The unknown rabbit hit the ground running and headed for the only place he knew on Orbitus: back to Nietzsche’s Shoe where he bought the taser. He looked behind him and, to his horror, the Beholders who survived the fall were still on his tail. He zigzagged through tanks and rubble and jumped behind some assault troops who blasted the pursuing Beholders to smithereens. The violet rabbit gave a quick ‘thanks’ and ran as far as he could to the star port. It was too late. The ship was already heading up to the stratosphere. All hope seemed to be lost. All hope, except the Guide.

[EDIT: looks like JCF censored a word, which wasn't really fair ]