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Marty, Rita, and a crowd of their loyal patrons sat in the lobby of the Burgeria. It had been two long days since the catastrophe caused by Madish and his goons. Or was it three? How long had they been in this hell? At any rate, it had been almost an hour now since Penny embarked on the deepest mission any of them had gone into the saucy wastes beyond Sarge’s forts. By the group’s count, there were only four more heads unaccounted for, among them being the very man who had saved many of their lives years prior, Papa Louie.
Everyone snapped to attention when, suddenly, the portal on the wall started whirring, and a moment later, Penny stumbled out with none other than Sarge D. Fan in tow.
“Hiya, guys! Look what I found,” she said, not so subtly shoving the helmeted kid forward into the room. “I heard Rico back there too, so I’m heading back in.”
“Hey, not so fast,” said Rita as she grabbed Penny’s arm. “You’ve taken too many missions in a row. We can tell you’re getting worn down.”
“Please, you’re not seriously considering letting someone who is legally named Sarge Fan take over, are you?” Penny scoffed.
“Come on, now. At the very least take a minute to regroup. It’s not like that gun of yours has infinite ammunition.”
“No. I’m not going to sit idly while people are in danger, and I am certainly not leaving their fates up to that piece of-,”
“Hold on, I have an idea,” chimed in Marty. “Hey, Ninja Girl, get over here,” he called over to Ninjoy, who was sulking in a corner.
“What do you guys need?” grumbled Ninjoy as she walked over.
“Well, it’s not so much what we need, more so what this guy needs: a chaperone.”
Ninjoy’s brow shot up. “Why don’t you just send me in alone and kick this nerd to the streets? I’m sure I can take any mission he could, and then some.”
“Hey, hey. You’re not the one who’s abilities I’m doubting. Call me crazy, but I think we should make him part of the team. He’s clearly obsessed with these onion fellas, and that sort of knowledge could be useful. But first, we need to make sure that he isn’t going to get himself killed… or try to kill one of us.”
Ninjoy sighed. She knew Marty was right, and she knew she had to do everything in her power to get her uncle back, even if it meant playing babysitter for a man-child with the face of her sworn enemy on his shirt.
“Fine, I’ll do it.”
She turned to face Sarge Fan. “Go get your shit together, kid. You know how it is out there.”
“Sir, yes, sir!” barked Sarge Fan with a salute, before marching off to the back room to see about a weapon. Ninjoy looked over to see that Penny had already passed out, confirming Rita’s assertions.
When Sarge Fan returned, he had an ammo belt around his waist and two bandoliers across his chest, all chock full of his signature gummy onions.
“Private Fan reporting for duty, sir!” Sarge Fan announced, standing at attention.
Ninjoy just rolled her eyes before grabbing him and jumping through the portal, into the BBQ Bog.
The world faded into view as they landed on a Fizzo balloon. Or, Ninjoy did. Sarge was instead dispensed from the portal two feet to her right, flailing and screaming as he slowly sank into a saucy lake.
“Just jump,” Ninjoy said calmly.
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN JUMP? YOU CAN’T JUST JUMP ON THE INSIDE OF SAUCE THAT’S FUCKING INSANE!”
“Actually, that’s an order, Private.”
Sarge Fan steeled his nerves and did his best to imitate jumping, and, to his complete and utter shock, he jolted upward onto the surface of the sauce. From there, he hopped along toward the bank of the pool and collapsed in shock at how he almost didn’t make it ten seconds into his deployment. Ninjoy bounced over to him and grabbed his wrist to pull him back up. They had a long way yet to go.
The duo proceeded onward and upward, jumping across a series of spontaneously inflating sentient berries, the physics of which were entirely preposterous. Despite their incomparable skillsets, Sarge Fan did well to keep up with Ninjoy, with her hardly having to hold up for him. After some almost entertaining acrobatics, they encountered their first opposing force.
“Alright kid, take notes,” ordered Ninjoy as she approached a pair of kaiser onions, before proceeding to punch the first square between the eyes, her gauntlet penetrating through several layers of papery skin and fruity flesh, killing it instantly. The second, still completely fearless in its devotion to Madish, continued its march straight towards her, meeting quite a similar end after a roundhouse kick from the masked ninja.
Sarge Fan couldn’t bear to put down those he had held in such high regard with the same brutal means as Ninjoy. Yet, he couldn’t bring himself to spare them entirely either, instead opting to fling preposterous amounts of gummy onions at them, which seemed to do the trick. His petitioning had well and truly paid off now.
After mowing through a few waves of onions and cheese cubes and dill wheels, the two walked together in silence for a while. It seemed Madish’s defenses had eased up in this area. Rolling hills of some kind of meaty substance stretched out as far as the eye could see, dotted with coleslaw trees and ponds of sauces. The BBQ Bog was a beautiful, if bizarre, landscape. Or, it would be beautiful if it didn’t reek of rotten flesh, with the smell emanating from the very ground they walked on. The views on this mild sunny day were truly breathtaking, in an all too literal sense.
“You don’t carry weapons?” asked Sarge Fan, finally breaking the silence.
“Huh? Oh, only in serious scenarios.”
“This isn’t a serious scenario?”
“Not yet, besides, why would I have honed by body and mind for the past three years just to take a shortcut?”
“Well, I dunno, why did you hone your body and mind for three years in the first place?”
“To free the world from dangerous people.”
“Like Sarge and Radley Madish?”
“Well, I honestly didn’t think I’d get the chance to give these two a piece of my mind so soon. Until recent notice, the Dynamoe has been my main concern.”
“Oh yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask, who even is that Dynamoe guy?”
“Have you not watched NowTime News in the past month?”
“The news? This guy is really that famous?”
“The Dynamoe is a self-proclaimed ‘supervillain’ who seems to enjoy terrorizing the city of Tastyville as some sort of twisted hobby.”
“Who’s stronger? Him, or you?”
“If he had his cherry bombs on him, he might give me a little trouble.”
“But would he beat you?”
“Nah, I’d win.”
Sarge Fan couldn’t help but smile under his helmet at the sheer confidence of this woman, that she would take on interdimensional and domestic terrorists unflinchingly. For all his obsession with Sarge, he was secretly grateful that his own encounter with the ringleader had been so brief. The true horror of being confronted with an angry hulking sentient onion monster is far less pronounced in a video game.
“Woah, get down,” whispered Ninjoy, taking cover behind a cracker block. “There’s a party sub convoy up ahead, think you can take them out before they see us?”
“You got it, Corporal,” Fan saluted. One volley of gelatinous artificial vegetables later, the cohort of sandwiches had been completely dismantled.
It was such a curious thing, that Sarge Fan’s candies were just as effective at dealing death unto these creatures as Ninjoy’s fists. Was it something to do with the biology of the Onion Ring and their associates, that mere contact with foods not native to Munchmore caused a ‘short circuit’ of sorts? Neither of the scouts were particularly interested in sticking around long enough to find out.
Not much further ahead, they finally came to a dead end in their path inside a small cavern. The only route remaining was up, with a ledge just visible, much higher than either of them could reach. Sarge Fan ran up to the wall and sprung off it, before hitting the opposing wall and kicking off from there to finally land onto the ridge. He peered back down to find Ninjoy still planted firmly on solid ground, with quite a surprised look on her face.
“Are you ok, Sir?” he called down.
“W- When did you learn to do that?”
Before Sarge Fan could answer, a voice called out from behind him. “Uh, hey! Any day now would be nice!”
Ninjoy followed in Sarge Fan’s path up the walls, rejoining him before running up to Rico’s cage and grabbing the chain to free the imprisoned customer. Not a second later, a portal appeared out of thin air, returning them to their native dimension.
To the customers waiting in the wings, the returning trio was quite an interesting sight. Ninjoy’s gauntlets and boots were soaked in the delicious blood of her enemies, Sarge Fan looked like he’d been dipped in sauce like a human chicken nugget, and of course Rico also looked rather disheveled too… but that was probably from before he was captured.
“Well?” asked Rita, “How’d it go?”
Ninjoy looked down at Sarge Fan and smiled. “The kid’s alright.”