Que Passa!!!!

Sorry for the time it took to write this: I was mostly spending all my writing energy writing essays for classes. BTW: Unknown Rabbit is correct about Zoonik- but two things he left out are his clothes (pinkish-purple sunglasses with green overalls) and his odd-looking tail. (It looks kind of like a fox's tail, or a cat's tail.)

Chapter 8:
House Creeping

"Lets see here." Jazz said, looking over the holographic image on the Holomap-Buddy. The five of them had just come to an intersection in the castle halls. "That way leads to a room with a robotic horse, that way has a bottle of poison labeled 'Drink me', and that way leads to a foggy room full of giant snakes."
"What about that way?" Spaz asked, pointing to the one doorway Jazz had failed to point out.
Jazz sighed "That would be the way we came in through..." "Oh, yeah... NOW I remember..." Spaz chuckled, turning a slightly deeper shade of red.
"Weren't we already in a room with a robotic horse?" Lori asked. "You know: the one right before that room with the little fuzzy guys with knives." "Yeah- I guess Devan ran out of ideas and desided to double-up a little..."
"Well, the room with the poison sounds easiest to me." Said the queen. "I mean- who would be crazy enough to just drink something that says 'Drink Me'?"
All four gave Spaz a sideways glance... "Oh, come on- even I'M not THAT crazy..."

"Where IS he?" Devan was starting to get nervous. Zoonik had yet to show up, and Jazz was passing through his traps faster then he had anticipated. It was almost as if he had someone warning him about all the traps ahead of time. Nah, it HAD to be some cheap plot trick written in by Batty.
"Computer: set up the communication link to my scouts." A soft beep noise responded, and a large communicator screen appeared in front of him. The screen flickered before revealing Devan's right-hand lizard and a swartzenguard wearing military helmets. Looking at the cameras, the lizard responded first:
"Hey Boss! Look- I'm on TV!" said the lizard happily. He then started to sing badly:
"Susie had a steamboat. Steamboat had a bell. Susie pulled the wrong cord, and blew us all to OOOF!!!" His song ended abruptly when the swartzenguard casually backhanded him in the snout.
"Thanks. How are things looking?" Devan asked.
"Not too good, boss." Said the guard. "Jazz was able to take out one half of your monsters all by himself. Whatshername... Lori won't stand still long enough to get a bead on her, Eva's stronger then she looks, and our weapons only seem to make the Queen angry."
'Oh cripes' Devan thought to himself. 'It's happening all over again...'
His lizard henchman interrupted his line of thought "Um... Boss, remember that hoard of 50,000 six-legged blood-sucking doom monkeys you sent after them?"
"Yeah..." Devan paused for a second, and then finally asked "What happened?"
The swarzenguard's face turned a deeper shade of green and he ran off camera to find relief. The lizard seemed unfazed, however, and continued reporting what he just saw. "Well, your going to find this hard to believe, but that red ugly guy just ATE them!"
"... excuse me?"
"He just opened up, and they disappeared down his gullet. It was pretty..."
The evil turtle stared angrily at the remains of his communicator- now with a large battleaxe buried in the middle. After taking a couple of deep breaths, he took a small tape recorder and held it up to his mouth. "Note to self: Research better anger-management techniques."
"Sounds like you're in pretty deep, there, boss-man." Devan turned towards the sound of the voice and saw...
"Zoonik?!?... Um, how long have you been standing there?"
"Long enough to overhear just what I'm up against." The strange creature's voice rang out, despite his lack of a mouth or any other possible place for his voice to come from. "What I have yet to hear is what this big 'foolproof' plan of yours is..."
"Yeah, well check THIS out, pal." Devan fumbled around the pockets of his shell before producing a bunch of blueprint and handing it to the... whatever he is... Zoonik read over the first page of the plan for a few seconds before saying "That's IT? A big robot? Look, Dev, I know you're supposed to be a scientific genius, but this seems a little... Lacking..."
"Oh really..." said Devan smugly. "Look at the REST of the schematics..."
Zoonik flipped through the rest of the plans and starred at his boss again. "Ok... I'll give it a chance... How long is it going to take to build this thing?" "Oh, don't worry about THAT." Said Devan proudly. "It's already built and ready to go in the next room. I've been working on it ever since I called you."
'Geeze' Zoonik thought to himself. 'This guy really has no life! Ah well, another day, another dollar...'

"WOW!!! Spaz- THAT was AMAZING!!!" said Jazz in awe. Judging by the disgusted looks on the three females, they didn't share Jazz's opinions on Spaz's wondrous digestive track. Spaz himself didn't look as perky as he had a second ago. "Anyone got an antacid?" he asked shakily. "Walk it off, solder, we're almost there. Just two more rooms- and it looks like this next one just has one of Devan's stupid robots in it." Jazz said, looking at the Holomap-Buddy. Sure enough, there was a large robot figure in the room adjacent to them. "Huh? What's THAT?" Eva asked, pointing at the image. There was a small flashing exclamation point over the figures head.
"Oh, that's just a 'detail' icon. . Jazz pushed a button on the side of the machine that was supposed to activate the icon and bring more information on the robot when...
"WARNING: The current program has preformed an illegal operation and must be restarted." The Holomap-Buddy's hologram turned into a blue image with the hateful words printed in space.
"Ah, man..." Jazz muttered. "Blue hologram of Death." He flipped the device upside down and looked at a small hole in the bottom labeled 'reset'. "I don't suppose anyone has a paperclip on them to push the 'reset' button..." Everyone groaned. "Ah well- we're almost done anyway. Let's go already!" said the queen. "The sooner that reptile is out of the castle the better." With that she opened the door and they all filed into the next room.
"Hey- I thought you said there was going to be some kind of robot in here." Lori said.
True to her words, the room appeared to be completely empty. There were a few nasty-looking wires lining the wall that, knowing Devan, were probably electrically charged, and a checkerboard floor, but other then that, the room was very nondescript.
"Maybe Devan decided to give up." "Yeah- and maybe Spaz decided to go on a diet." Eva joked. Spaz, meanwhile had taken out a checklist. On it were the names of various deadly beasts: The ravonous bugbladder beast of Traal, dopefish, vampire pig, Network CEO, along with the words "Frequant Eaters club". Spaz pulled out a pencil and checked off "Six-legged blood-sucking doom monkey."
"There." he said. "Now all I gotta do is eat a GRUE, and I win a free toaster..."
Just then there was a sudden flashing light that appeared right in front of them. Instinctively, they all covered their eyes to keep from being blinded.
When they uncovered them, there was a gigantic battle-droid in front of them.
A gigantic battle-droid manned by a familiar-looking figure wearing a set of sunglasses and a pair of overalls.
"Hiya, bunnyboy..."

What powers does Zoonik's new toy have? Will Spaz ever win that toaster for his "Frequant Eaters club"?

To be continued in chapter 9:
Zoonikulee Zoonikula

(PS, if you recognize the descriptions of the rooms in the castle as rooms in ANOTHER game, congrads.)