The purple dreadlocked Muppet ducked down and darted behind a wall. He held the gun in his shaking hand as a nervous bead of sweat rolled down his cheek. Out of his sunglasses he tried to peer around the corner of the wall without being seen.
Movement.
Clifford jumped out from behind the wall and pulled the trigger on his gun, narrowly missing the moving target.
His target had disappeared. He looked around carefully, his head not moving, any slight movement could give away his position and be, potentially, fatal.
The air escaped from Clifford’s lungs as an arm wrapped around his throat and another around his stomach. He felt the breath of the person on the back of his neck. He gulped and tried to hold firm to his gun.
“Get back behind the wall,” the voice whispered, almost too quiet to hear, even from the distance the voice was from Clifford’s ear. The body of the voice released its grip on Clifford.
He spun around in a whirl, sending his dreadlocks everywhere. He pointed his gun straight between the glasses of Skeeter, Scooter’s twin sister who was identical in every way except for the length of their hair. Clifford sighed audibly. “Oh good, it’s just you, Skeet, I thought it was—“ Clifford started to say, forgetting to whisper.
Skeeter darted forward and tackled Clifford to the floor. She rolled off her boyfriend, grabbing his gun out of his hand. On her side, she began firing the two guns randomly in front of her as the sounds of other gun shots hitting the wall above them filled the air.
“Behind the wall!” Skeeter shouted at Clifford, who scrambled to crawl back to his hiding place. Skeeter rolled, log style, towards the wall where Clifford was hiding; still firing the guns.
“Way to go, meat head,” she told Clifford angrily. “You gave away our position!”
Clifford stood up and pried his gun from Skeeter’s hand. “It’s your fault for sneaking up on me like that,” he muttered.
“I heard that,” Skeeter hissed, by now nearly breaking the trigger of her gun. “Let’s not start this ‘women are always in the wrong’ thing again.”
“It ended well last time,” Clifford said, now firing his gun in the direction of the sound of the other guns.
Skeeter turned around quickly, putting her gun at Clifford’s chest. If he weren’t wearing sunglasses, the shock in his eyes would’ve been more than apparent. “One shot and I can just end it once and for all,” Skeeter said irritably.
Clifford threw his arms into the air. “It’s just a game, Skeet,” he said.
“This is no game,” Skeeter said, returning her gun to firing position. “This is war!”
Clifford shook his head and pulled his laser gun around the corner, firing blindly at whatever he could hit (which wasn’t much).
Floyd Pepper fell to the ground underneath a laser flying over his head. Janice ducked around a few to come to his side. “Like, are you hit?” asked the valley girl.
Floyd shook his head, his huge orange mustache shaking with it as he laughed off his fall. “Yeah baby, I’m good,” Floyd said, grabbing Janice’s hand to be helped up. “I don’t think there’s any beatin’ Skeeter though.”
Janice nodded, her ponytail bobbing with her head. “Should we, like, just surrender?” she asked, looking around at Skeeter and Clifford firing in the totally wrong direction.
Floyd shrugged. “We could,” he said, “but Gonzo already thought the object of the game was to get hit, so we might as well give them some competition.”
Janice sighed. “Like, okay, but I’m like, totally not firing this Neanderthal-ish thing,” she said, tossing her gun behind her back.”
Meanwhile, in the already-having-been-shot room, The Great Gonzo sat watching out the two-way mirror watching the laser tag battle ensue, his protruding nose pressing up against the glass. He sighed. “Oh Camilla,” he said, “that gun shot was not nearly as painful as I expected it to be.”
Camilla the Chicken (who was, in fact, a chicken) strutted up to Gonzo and pushed her way under his arm, laying her head on his chest. “Brawk bawk baw,” she clucked serenely.
“Yeah, yeah,” he agreed, “time with you is great, but I just wish it could’ve been a more painful experience for me!”
Camilla’s eyes grew frustrated. “Brawk bawk bawk,” she clucked crossly.
“It could?” Gonzo asked, wide-eyed with excitement. “How?”
Camilla pecked viciously at Gonzo’s chest and walked off heatedly to the other side of the room.
Gonzo fell out of his chair he was laughing so hard. “I never knew being hen-pecked could be so much fun!” he cackled wildly.
Camilla turned around with her wings crossed across her chest and huffed. Gonzo sat up rubbing his head, still chuckling. “Don’t get steamed, honey,” Gonzo told Camilla. “You’ll start to smell like thirty-seven herbs and spices.”
Camilla’s face became as twisted as a chicken’s face could before letting out a long laugh. She walked over to Gonzo and nuzzled her beak against him.
Gonzo put his arm around her and stood up from the floor. He glanced out at the battlefield. “I wonder how much longer they’ll be,” he said.
“Brawk?” Camilla asked.
“I wonder how much more alone time we have,” he said, his moving eyelids speaking more than his words.
Camilla clucked helplessly, lost in the words of Gonzo’s eyelids (or something like that). Gonzo dipped the chick down and went in for the mouth to beak contact.
The door to the already-having-been-shot room burst open. Gonzo’s hands flew out from under Camilla and she fell to the floor. She jumped up, extremely angry and began clucking around, sending feathers flying. “Sorry…” Gonzo told her quietly.
Skeeter stomped into the room, not making eye contact with anyone. She threw her gun and target pad into the deposit bin and stormed out the door without a word.
Clifford, Floyd, and Janice filed in after her, Floyd’s arm wrapped tightly around Janice’s shoulder.
“It’s alright baby, it was an accident,” Floyd said, rubbing Janice’s arm.
“I—I like, totally didn’t mean to,” she said. “I was just, like, trying to hand you your gun Floyd, I didn’t know that was the trigger!”
Clifford chuckled and shook his head. “It’s just a game, Janice,” he said.
“But, like, Skeeter looked rully beat up about it,” Janice said, trying not to break down.
Clifford smiled. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “That’s how Skeet is, she’ll get over it eventually.”
“Yeah,” Gonzo said as he and Camilla walked up to the group. “If she could get over Clifford saying all women are wrong all the time, this should be a cake walk while on stilts that are slowly being melted by flaming hot honey mustard.”
Floyd blinked. “Right,” he said. “C’mon, baby, let’s go get some ice cream.”
“Yeah, we are at Eric’s Eighty-Eight Flavors of Ice Cream Plus Laser Tag Emporium,” Clifford said, “as winner you get a free scoop.”
“But, like, it’ll totally be earned in violence,” Janice said meekly.
“How else do you earn something?” Gonzo asked.
Janice squirmed beneath Floyd’s arm. “I, like, don’t think I want the cone…”
“Can I have it then?” Gonzo asked. “I’m suddenly in the mood for flaming honey mustard flavor.”
The others ignored Gonzo as they walked out of the already-having-been-shot room.
“Yeah,” Gonzo said desperately trying to be recognized, “you’ve gotta eat it really fast before it melts itself, that’s the fun of it!”
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