Space hobbled downstairs. The indignity of it all.

Hours earlier, Matthew Perry of "Friends" fame had strolled into the Dominion Hotel, bypassing every security measure and killing most of the crew. In its heydey, the LoB had consisted of the following members:

- Space
- Dark
- Brand_S
- Jorge: refugee from the Dec-10 Boyz
- Sabre-Edge: refugee from the Dec-10 Boyz
- Kipper2222
- Slider8_
- Vance454: killed for hitting on Lolita
- Chaser9: Doo-Rag Crew double agent
- Tembi Locke
- Lolita
- Sassy
- Sophie

After the noise had died down, Space grunted and lifted himself off the floor. He thought to himself:

*Just because you hit the floor doesn't mean you're dead.*

The idea of Alan Thicke and Tony Danza floated through Space's skull while he thought back.

How did Matthew Perry get into the Dominion?

Why was security off?

Why was he asking himself this when he already knew the answer?

Lolita.

That double-crossing wench.

Space stood and stretched. He pulled open his night shirt to reveal a bulletproof vest, one slug right near his heart. Lolita had been aiming to kill. But surely she had to know he wore it with him everywhere...

"No matter," Space said to himself as he made his way down the stairs, checking pulses of bodies as he descended the stairs of the Dominion Hotel. S was dead, impaled on his French lover's horns. Sophie was dead, and thankfully so. Space had to give Matthew Perry props for that.

Kipper's and Slider8_'s mangled, mottled corpses were outside. Sabre lay on the ground, eviscerated like Drew Barrymore in "Scream."

And Dark. Dark and Tembi lay slumped against that huge stuffed yak that the LoB had stolen from the natural history museum earlier that day...

====
*flashback*
====

"Will you quit listening to that god-awful Barbra Streisand?" Dark yelled at Brand_S. "We've got a task at hand, and it not only involves my total concentration, it involves SWEET LOVIN'."

"Sorry," S said, as he turned down the stereo on the Sassmobile.

They were cruising at a respectable 85 mph towards their destination - BBoard Natural History Museum. With all of the mercenary factions vaporized except for the Legion of Booze - which incidentally held power through the scheming of Chaser9 - the LoB was free to assist Dark in getting the yak Tembi so desperately wanted to add to her litany of sexual deviancies.

It was a small strike team, and rightfully so. Brand_s drove while Dark watched that Jerry Lewis movie that was never released. A clown in a Nazi concentration camp, Dark thought to himself. How friggin' morbid can you get. Then he remembered "Life is Beautiful." Ugh.

Space rode shotgun, securing plans with Chaser9 over VidCom when he had some startling news. "What's that, Chase? Thanks, man."

"What was that?" Dark asked.

"Chaser got some information about GOCUB."

"What's GOCUB? Is that the club Executive set up to help people deal with their attraction to bears?"

"No, that's URSA."

Space and Dark reflected for a second. "Wait," Space said. "Executive isn't smart enough to know the Latin prefix for 'bear.' What's going on with that?"

Dark shuddered. "What could URSA even stand for?"

"Who cares. In any event, GOCUB was behind Deli-Buns, in association with Douglas Copeland."

Dark reiterated. "Hey, spaz-neck, for the second time, *what is GOCUB*?"

"Will you let me finish, goddammit?" Space was irritated. "It's the friggin' clique put together by Vigeant from Studios USA."

"Beautiful. You are my GOD," Dark said.

"Will you quit kissing my ass like it's made of Body Slam Malt Liquor?" Space growled.

"DAAAAAMN!"

The BBoard Natural History museum was actually stacks and stacks of old posts, meticulously archived by Blinker. In the center was a stuffed yak. It had always been there and had a plaque attached to it labelled "DON'T FUCK WITH MR. ZERO."

The three were, of course, drunk as sin. Making the theft of the yak painless, silent, professional.

"I remember one time when I was a child," Dark said, "and my father had just come back from a night on the town - which of course had turned into a week, and my mother said to him, 'Dammit John, is there anything you *won't* drink?' And he said, 'Yeah, poison! I'm saving it for you!' Me and my brother - who's now an alcoholic, too - laughed ourselves silly... good times..."

====
*end flashback*
====

That had been twelve hours ago.

Space surveyed the damage with the rest of the survivors: Sassy, Chaser9 and Jorge. Jorge looked like ass and smelled even worse. The tequila and the coffee had battled it out inside his body and thankfully, the tequila had won. But not before putting Jorge through a lot of pain... which is good.

"What did he aim at Kipper and Slider8_?" Space asked Sassy.

"Something he called The Rid™," she said, wiping tears from her eyes. Space comforted her.

"It might work on the same principles as the Creativity Disruptor™," Chaser said. "Only one way to find out."

The LoB approached the author and presented him with a daunting task: resurrecting Dark. The author sat and thought for a few minutes and began to type hurriedly. He wove a beautiful story about the ontology of society and how we as people fit into it. Dark was the protagonist, a man brought back to life after a century of drifting in space. The story detailed the ramifications of mankind's innate insistence to grow, enhance themselves.

"You aren't Arthur C. Clarke, are you?" Chaser asked the author. He shook his head in disagreement. "Will you just type something like, 'Fortunately, the LoB lived in the same world as *Last Action Hero,* where 30 bullet wounds amount to little more than a flesh wound.'?"

Fortunately, the LoB lived in the same world as "Last Action Hero," where 30 bullet wounds amount to little more than a flesh wound.

"Did it work?" Chaser asked as Space knelt over to feel the pulse on his fallen comrade.

"Sassy, hand me the Hubert Humphrey mask," Space said. He took it and put it on Dark's twisted face. "Negatory, Chase. The Rid™ works the same as the Creativity Disruptor™."

"Who wasn't killed by a gun fired by Matthew Perry?" Chase asked.

"Sabre. He was sliced by Matthew Perry's katana."

"Well, can't we save him then?"

Space weighed the options. On one hand, Sabre would be alive. On the other, the plot would move faster if he stayed dead.

"No. He's gone. Let's hatch the final plan."

====
Command Center
====

"I was hoping it wouldn't come to this," Space said grimly, "but the fact remains that if a popular television actor can masquerade as a lone assassin in our war, then it's time to pull out the stops."

"What about Lolita?" Jorge gurgled. Hangover. NOT PRETTY.

"What about me?" The others turned to see Lolita, decked out in nothing but a bikini and carrying five steins of Jack and Cokes. She sat down at the table and passed the booze around. Everyone chugged happily... even though half the crew was gone, the spirit of the LoB lived on.

"You dispatch Matthew Perry?" Space asked Lolita as she moved into his lap and started kissing his neck.

"Oh, yeah."

Turns out that Matthew Perry was working for Mychand of the BFA. Fortunately, Lolita knew this from her reconaissance of the BFA in http://www.scifi.com/bboard/browse.cgi/1/5/545/19561 ("The Legion recuperates") and took advantage of the situation.

Drunk, the five outlined the Final Phase: Total Annihilation. And it meant nothing less than nuclear warheads dropped on the BFA and ABL headquarters. Of course, the warheads were armed with Creativity Disruptors™, too.

At 12:52 PM PDT the Legion of Booze launched nuclear death on the BFA and ABL. *ALL* members of both factions were in their buildings, thinking of ways to put berets on or take them off while unholy death rained around them.

The Beret War. What a joke. The only thing funnier was Executive's repeated denial of his love for sheep.

The fact remained that this was less a Beret War than a Merc War. And the Mercs were not only better looking, more sexually active and heavier drinkers, they also had a better sense of style. And while the last Beret War ended with a bunch of silly girls gluing berets to guy's heads during the Super Bowl, this one ends with complete and total nuclear annihilation of both warring factions.

Ironically, the Beret War saw little battle from the warring factions, and they felt a little miffed they were systematically destroyed by side groups that cropped up to help them.

A hundred years from now, after the destruction had settled and the half dozen survivors of the Merc War returned to the surface and built a fantastic, space-faring civilization revolving around the ideology of drinking and promiscuity, they found a body floating in space and revived him. And that man, DarkSlider, ushered in an era of even greater prosperity and a retard-free BBoard.

But now, in the present, the warheads hit. And EVERYONE died. Everyone but Slider_Sarah, whose Anti-Nuclear Sign Beret absorbed the radiation and left her standing long enough to fling off her beret and the rest of her clothes and head over to the Dominion.

So Space, Lolita, Jorge, Chase, Sarah and Sassy lived happily ever after.

THE END

DieselMickeyDolenz

Brand_S, in a drunken stupor stumbled through the LoB party. "Iii'lllll check on the bawdies we left laying around, see if *hic* they are rottin' and *hic* stiff yet", he slurrs a yell to ST. He pokes the bodies in turn with his glow in the dark plastic lightsaber as he stumbles from body to body.

He sees a pool of blood trailing to the door, smeared as if a body was dragged outside. "Um...*hic*...did anyone take SE's body outside to bury it or something. Shouts of "No!" and "I thought you were going to do it!" filled the LoB HQ, from different rooms where drinking and other "activity" were occuring.

S stumbles to the door to look outside. He sees a series of hand prints and bloody drag marks over an area of grass, ending abruptly as it comes to the edge of the sidewalk. "I'll suck a Monkey's nipple if he was still alive to crawl that far," S promises...

Is you get to live!

Now hand me some Guinness, I'm starting to feel a bit sober <shudders at the thought>.

--Chaser9

And have something worth living for by the sounds of it!

Sarah.

Original URL http://www.scifi.com/bboard/browse.cgi/1/5/545/20023