The sun beamed down on their spotless black oldsmobile as it sped down the road on a hot, sunny Florida afternoon. It wasn’t exactly the picturesque undercover automobile one would expect, but then again, the movies never got it right.
Their uniforms, too, were more fitted for a casual environment; three men were dressed in civilian clothing. Jeans, khakis, t-shirts and the like. Suits and ties would only stick out in a dump like the one they were going to.
“Anchors.” Egrene asked as he tapped the steering wheel.
“Check.”
“Guns.”
He heard a few clicks from the backseat.
“Check.”
Moments later, they pulled up an empty parking lot of a McDonalds and parked their car. The establishment had no discernible anomalous features; for all intents and purposes, it might as well have been just another bucket of lard.
“Visors.”
The three agents pulled out what looked like prescription glasses and slipped them on. Just like that, the Golden Arches of high caloric hell vanished, replaced with Ebenezer Greaze’s smiling face. Just below it was the phrase You can’t spell Greaze without EZ!
“Bingo.”
Egrene gestured to Chen, who nodded and stepped out of the car with him. Meanwhile, Richards stayed in the back seat to phone for backup.
The two men entered, with Chen staying by the entrance.
“Hello, welcome to McDonalds, how can I help you?”
This is what the uninitiated would have heard. As for what they would have seen, it would have been a pretty young woman with a flawless smile.
What Egrene actually saw was a bipedal brown cow standing behind the cash register. A name tag hung off of its torso at an angle, the pin jammed deep in its flesh. A droplet of congealed blood found a nice home in its coat just below the name tag. Written on the tag was the name, Percy.
As for what they heard, due to their rigorous courses in Memetics conditioning, they heard Percy’s human voice overlayed on top of:
“Moo Welcome to Greaze Burger, home of the Greaze—which can’t be spelled without EZ—burger, can I milk your order?” A glob of cud fell from its mouth and landed on the countertop. A visible stream of odor wafted out of its snout and ascended until it reached the ceiling, where
it spread out into a green miasma.
Egrene glanced at the menu. Every item’s name and description was written in a chaotic mixture of dead and alien languages, including Latin, Greek, and what looked like a genetic failure between Chinese, ancient Sumerian, and Webdings.
With an unchanging expression, he gestured to Chen, who slammed an Anchor into the ground. Just like that, the glasses were no longer needed.
Egrene took his glasses off just to watch the show; the dirty, chocolate milk and ketchup-stained white painted walls peeled away like paper before crumbling in midair, revealing surfaces saturated in Greazejuice. The windows went from half-heartedly cleaned with cheap glass cleaner to shattered and covered in what looked like a week’s worth of dung.
Best of all? The pretty young woman spasmed, her flesh starting to bubble.
“N-no!” She screamed. Her profile rapidly morphed from human to bovine, flesh bubbling underneath her clothing. When the transformation finished, she looked skyward, an expression of agony (as well as that could be expressed on a cow.) plastered across her face.
MOOOOOO!
Egrene lifted his shirt, exposing a holster with an electrified prodding stick. Sure, the commander at home gave him a funny look when he took it with him, but something in his gut told him he’d need it. Just like that, his instinct was right. He reached into his back pocket with his other hand and pulled out a collar that glowed with blue lettering, special ordered specifically for humanoids.
“I should have known!” She growled (well, more like mooed) and stamped a hoof on the countertop. She attempted to curl her lips back in a look of rage, however, all this accomplished was a stereotypical stupid cow smile.
Egrene smirked. He stepped around the counter and approached her.
“You get the fuck away from me!” Percy backed away until she reached the wall. From here, she bucked a big red button located at just the right height for her to reach.
Alarms blared, storm shutters closed down on all exits, and jets of steam could be heard firing close by.
Egrene broke into a sprint, collar at the ready. Just then, a ventilation port slammed fell from above and landed with a loud crash, startling him. Immediately afterwards, a figure dropped down from the ceiling.
It was a ninja, dressed head to toe in pitch black attire, with only their hands and eyes visible. They entered a fighting stance, one foot in front of the other, their eyes burning with hatred that could bring grease to a boil. This one wore a name tag on the front of their outfit.
Sammy Greaze. You can’t spell Greaze without EZ!
The ninja immediately charged Egrene with a left hand jab, which he saw coming from several ice cream swirls away. He tilted his head slightly to the left, gave the ninja a wink, then shoved the prod into their hip.
Not even a flinch or a grunt of pain; they grabbed the prod by the electrified metal itself, grabbed his wrist, then tackled him, knocking him off balance.
He lost his grip on the prod and staggered backwards, which gave the assailant enough time to ready the weapon and swing it towards his face.
It was either lose an eye or break an arm, of which Egrene chose the latter. With a loud whack, Searing heat burrowed deeply into his arm and burned his flesh.
Thankfully, it wasn’t a taser, so his nervous system didn’t seize from electrical overload. Regardless, his punching arm was now out of commission.
Without even skipping a beat, the ninja added insult to injury; they grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and yanked him forward, using his own momentum to face plant him into the ground.
Egrene promptly ate a mouthful of cow shit.
“Fuck!”
Meanwhile, near the entrance to this disgusting little establishment, Chen was busy getting juggled by four ninjas.
Literally.
Back to Egrene, Sammy Greaze regained their balance,
grabbed the facially defiled agent by the ankles, and dragged him across the floor towards the back of the restaurant.
“Nice one, Sammy.” Percy said. She then turned her attention to the ninjas handling Chen. “You lot. Churn him. Make sure Mel doesn’t go hungry tonight.”
This order was met with screams of protest from Chen as they forcefully brought him to the restrooms.
“As for us,” she addressed the other agent, “why don’t we moo-sey on over to the grill?”
One of the ninjas wrenched the Anchor off the wall and broke it over their knee. As Percy walked, her quadrupedal bovine form erupted into a ball of light, which morphed into a human, as though invisible hands were shaping clay. From head to toe, he light dissipated, leaving her in human form again.
“Ah, yes.” She took the time to flex her fingers and admire the way in which they curved. “Now where were we?”
Sammy dragged Egrene into the cooler in the back room and tossed him in. From there, he got back to his feet, only for ten more ninjas to appear in a circle around him, with spears pointed at him. Instead of blades, however, the ‘spears’ were tipped with ketchup bottles.
Percy stepped inside, her eyes dripping with hate. She balled her hands into fists and glared daggers at Egrene.
Sammy slid open a control panel behind Percy, revealing another big red button.
“Any last words, Foundation scum?”
“Your days are numbered, you bovine bitch. We’ll make medium rare T-bone steak out of your ass.”
Percy chuckled.
“I don’t think you realize just how much beef I have with you and your entire lot. I have a lot at stake here, dammit. And I will NOT let you take that away from me!”
She snapped her fingers at Sammy.
“Do it!”
Click.
A trapdoor opened up underneath Percy, as well as the rest of the ninjas, plunging them all into the depths of the establishment. Their screams slowly trailed off before cutting off.
“Ugh. What a cow,” came a deep voice from underneath Sammy’s cowl. They yanked the headpiece off, revealing the face of another Greaze clone. Obviously. Except for the fact that this one seemed to have a few more scratches on their face than the average Greaze.
“Horacio Greaze, at your service.” They bowed.
Egrene stared at them and blinked.
Horacio continued.
“Apologies for plunging your face into some deep shit earlier. If you want a cure for the psychic advertisements, it’s, ah…” They stood up straight and sheepishly scratched the back of their head, blushing. “…down in the depths below, where you’ll have to fight your way past a bunch of ninjas, all of which are in significantly better shape than I am, as well as more skilled at fighting.” They sighed.
A lone burger drifted out of the corner of Egrene’s vision, to the left, and ducked out of sight behind a cabinet.
“Admittedly, the whole ‘betrayal and aiding the ones who were once my enemies to get back at my own technically-family’ thing was never my strong suit, but—”
“This was your idea of being a helpful turncoat? Nearly breaking my arm and infecting me with a cognitohazard?” Egrene’s good arm had the hand balled into a fist. “I ought to help these dumbfucks turn you into another Greaze statistic.”
Horacio held up both hands defensively. “Hey, I had to put on a convincing performance! Come on, you gotta understand!”
Egrene pinched the bridge of his nose. His perception slowly filled with the chaotic cacophony of large, yellow cartoon lettering alongside narrations of low prices and delicious hand-me-down half-eaten fast food and high-calorie Greaze juice-infused gunk.
In the middle of all of this, the thought occurred to him:
“I’ll kick your ass later. First, let’s get Chen.”
“Oh, that Asian chap? Undoubtedly churned to butter by
now.”
Dear old Horacio was not helping in the slightest, nor were they making things any less confusing.
Egrene rushed out of the fridge and over to the restroom where the earlier gank squad had dragged Chen. Upon kicking the door open, all he saw was sticks of butter covering the walls along with more open trap doors.
“Shit.”
“Told ya so.”
They headed over to the front entrance.
“Okay. Here’s the game plan.” Egrene could barely see past the imaginary burgers, employees, and green screen effects all currently assaulting is vision, however, he could still put on his game face. “I got back-up coming soon. You seem to have some inside control on the sitch, so I’m gonna need some help getting outside and relaying this information to my team when they get here.”
“No worries. After all is said and done, what say you keep me out of your cells and hire me?” They flashed him a warm grin.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
Horacio sighed. “Fine.” They pulled out a remote control from their pocket.
“When will your crew be here?” Horacio flipped a panel on the frontside, revealing a button.
Seriously, what was with all the big red buttons?
“Now, hopefully.”
“Okay. I’ll stay behind and fetch you the antidote for those ads. Good luck, soldier.” They pushed the button.
A bright flash of light appeared, wind knocking Horacio off their feet and onto their ass. Where Egrene once stood, there was now a large black mark burned into the ground.
After rubbing the dark spots out of their eyes, they took a second look at the remote. There were, in fact, two buttons.
A big red one labeled, ‘TELEPORT THE CLOSEST ASSHOLE TO THE DEPTHS’.
Underneath that was a tiny black button labeled, ‘FRONT DOOR.’
“You can’t be fucking serious.”
Egrene hung upside down on a rope, his ankles tied to a steel beam. The area around him appeared to be under construction, with steel girders moving hither and thither, the whir of machinery drilling into his ears.
Large cylindrical containers lined the walls on both sides, constructed out of translucent green glass. Inside these containers were humanoid statues constructed out of what looked like butter.
There was one that looked like Chen. Poor bastard.
Extending out of these containers were long rubber tubes that trailed along the frames of the girders and fell upon a smooth metal platform.
On the back of this platform, pressed up against a wall, a massive satellite dish beamed perception altering memetics in every direction.
So, this was how they got away with their dirty work.
Directly in front of the metal dish, Percy stood over a crib, with many of the tubes coiled around it in a haphazard circular pattern. Framed photos stood on a table nearby. There was one in particular that stood out.
It was a picture of two test tubes, each one with a clump of flesh inside. There was some writing underneath them, but Egrene couldn’t quite make out what it they said.
Many thoughts swirled through Egrene’s mind. Many of them consisting of variations of, ‘if I get out of here, I’m kicking the shit out of Horacio,’ as well as, ‘considering the average IQ level of these fuckwits, this was probably an accident.’
Either way, he wasn’t very happy with where he was. The only silver lining was that Percy didn’t seem to notice his presence.
“Don’t worry. I won’t let them touch you.” She whispered, hunched over in a way where she obscured Egrene’s vision.
“LIFE IS A RED ROOM, I AM THE VICTIM, AND YOU ARE THE TORTURER, YET THERE IS NO AUDIENCE. WHY DO YOU KEEP ME ALIVE?!”
Egrene shoved an index finger in each of his ears and grit his teeth. To call that abominable voice an ear-fucking screech would be like calling a red-hot poker in the left asscheek only a slight sting.
“You’re all I have left. I love you, little sis.” Percy leaned over to a control panel and flipped a switch. One of the statues started bubbling; the melted butter flowed through the tube and entered the shrieking banshee—apparently its name was Mel—through a lengthy syringe.
Even from this distance, Egrene could see that it was thoroughly corroded.
“GOD IS A FARCE THAT EXHALES CARBON MONOXIDE INTO THE LUNGS OF INNOCENT BABES LULLING THEM INTO A SEEMINGLY INNOCENT SLUMBER AS THEY END UP AS ANOTHER STATISTIC OF SUDDEN INFANT DEATH SYNDROME AND YET MY PLEAS FOR HIS SWEET SUCCULENT BREATH FALLS UPON DEAF EARS!”
“One day, we’ll be happy. We’ll get away from these greazeheads, as far away as we can. We’ll live the life we knew we would.” Percy leaned over and kissed the shriveled pink, vaguely bovine thing on the head, eliciting more shrieks of agony.
Whatever that thing was, Egrene promised to kill it. Even he didn’t have the heart to contain something like that, regardless of what his superiors would undoubtedly ask for.
He unsheathed his boot knife and immediately got to work on the rope. This wasn’t his best idea, as he would land directly on the big red circle below him, (why the fuck was it even there in the first place?) however, his only other choices were to either wait until someone noticed him and attempted to kill him, or shoot Percy in the back of the head while she wasn’t looking, which would go against protocol.
Well, time to go thunk on the big red circle.
The boot knife ate through the rope like a four year old eating through a grown man’s patience, and before he knew it, the hand of gravity took him and started pulling him down.
Thinking quickly, he tilted his shoulder downwards, caught himself on his own downward momentum, and tucked and rolled as best he could behind a work desk for some cover.
“Hm?”
Egrene held his breath, grip tight on the wooden handle of his boot knife.
“Must have been last week’s dinner.”
His mind’s eye was well equipped enough to know what that entailed. As though on a dare, he chanced a glanced around the table to get better visual on Percy. She was right back over that whatever it was, making cooing noises.
Another big red button caught his eye to the side.
‘These greasy weirdos and their damn fetish with big red buttons, I swear to god.’ Egrene thought.
He knelt back down behind the table and removed his pistol from his holster. His finger slid the safety off with a soft click.
Something moved in the corner of his eye.
“Order now! Our new and improved GREAZE SODA!
Now with all your favorite ingreazeients packed into liquid form!” The Greaze hallucination’s nose practically touched Egrene’s face.
The agent reflexively recoiled and fired a shot at the false employee, quickly realizing what happened when the smiling figure disappeared in a fine mist.
“Shit.”
Percy turned her neck around on a one-eighty degree angle and met Egrene’s eyes with a boiling death glare. She took deep breaths, with smoke and flames jettisoning from her nostrils on each exhale. She clapped her hands together, which prompted portholes to open around Egrene.
Ninjas leapt out of the holes in the ground and quickly surrounded him, each one holding half-rotten burgers between two fingers like shurikens.
“I don’t know how you got in or how you humiliated me right in front of my ninjas.” She turned the rest of her torso around, her neck cracking loudly enough to drown out the sound of construction and machinery. “But I don’t care. I’m gonna buck my foot so far up your ass, it’ll come out of your mouth and you’ll choke on it!”
“Ah! A cow is a cow even in a human!.” Horacio called from above.
They waved to him from atop one of the steel girders. “Sorry about teleporting you down here, buddy. I pushed the wrong button.”
“Could have fooled me.” Egrene shook his head. Though he would never admit it, he was glad that Horacio was here.
The ex-Greaze leapt off their perch and plummeted to his side, gaining a lot of momentum in a short amount of time. They landed directly on their head with a hard, loud thunk and an even louder snap!
Scratch that. Egrene was no longer glad that little dipshit was here. In fact, if the fucker was even still conscious, he hoped they were in immense pain.
Everyone in the room just stared for what felt like an eternity before they did a collective head shake and focused their attention back on the lone agent.
Percy slowly approached him.
Egrene's wristwatch vibrated. Foundation reinforcements would storm the establishment at any moment. Regardless of what happened now, Egrene’s job was done.
Satisfied and with a smile, he stood up and lowered his stance, fists held up, chin tightly tucked in tightly. It had been a while since he last had a 1v30, but he had a feeling he’d be able to take on all these ninjas at once.
…who the fuck was he kidding? He was just distracting them, buying time so that his teammates could bust through unimpeded.
Time was of the essence, so Egrene whipped out his best come-at-me-bro one liner he could think of.
“You gonna hoof it over here and buck me in the face or what, Wicked Dickie?” Egrene growled.
“…What?” Percy frowned.
“You prepared for your utter defeat or what, you milk-spillin’ black and white movie?” Egrene beckoned her forward and winked.
Percy stared in silence.
“Hey, if I kick you hard enough, will chocolate milk come out? I fuckin’ love chocolate milk.”
Something then snapped within Egrene. With a sinking feeling overwhelmed by sheer euphoria, the hallucinatory advertisements peaked.
Out of the corners of the the massive satellite dish, chocolate milk began trickling out and leaking onto the floor.
From behind the big bowl part of the device, a few tufts of messy hair emerged, followed by wild dark eyes, finally followed by a wildly grinning face.
It was the face of Martin Greaze.
“COMING SOON TO YOUR NEAREST GREAZEBURGERS! THE NEW AND IMPROVED CHOCOLATE MILK FOUNTAIN!”
A tidal wave of low fat chocolatey, milky goodness washed over Egrene, threw all the ninjas in the abyss of construction below, and cleansed away all of his worries.
No more Foundation.
No more anomalies.
Just chocolate milk.
He opened his mouth wide and lapped it all up like a college student in a frat party with a funnel in his mouth.
“Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug!”
Somehow, even far below, the ninjas and Percy all cheered as he had mouthful after mouthful of chocolate milk.
Truly, the chocolate gods smiled upon him today.
Percy didn’t know what to say. Egrene lay there on the ground, frothing at the mouth as his pupils dilated. Endlessly, he gurgled nonsense all pertaining to chocolate milk and chocolate people crawling out of vending machines, as well as alliterations and diabetes.
Little did Percy know that her feces was actually a prime source of psilocybin mushrooms, some of which Egrene had accidentally eaten when he face planted into her shit a mere twelve minutes ago.
But hey, cows didn’t really know science now, did they?
“What in the unholy fuck—“
Egrene’s distraction game may have been a little hamfisted, however, it was more than sufficient for Horatio’s next plan of attack:
They trudged over to the back of the massive satellite machine and tore off a panel from its back. Important-looking wires decorated the inside like ribbons, crisscrossing in every direction.
They decided to do what they did best: fuck everything up.
Fistfuls after fistfuls of torn wiring lead to flying sparks, which quickly ignited flames within the device.
The memetics wore off, with Percy once more reverting back to her cow form.
Dazed, she staggered around and saw Horacio knelt over, one arm in the wiring of the satellite.
They smiled and waved.
“Think fast!”
They chucked a glowing ring at Percy, who now lacked hands for catching flying objects.
It was the rune-covered collar from earlier, which Horacio had nabbed after they accidentally threw Egrene headfirst into enemy territory. It enclosed around her neck, the runes spilling from it and encircling her body like glowing tattoos.
And there she stood, immobile from advanced Foundation thaumaturgy.
Moments later, loud footsteps sounded through the walls, letting them know that backup had arrived.
A large pair of metal double doors flew open, with MTF troops pouring in, firearms and blast shields in hand.
The ninjas turned their attention to them and hurled their burgers at the troops, which bounced harmlessly off their shields and landed on the ground in little gooey heaps.
With that, the Foundation troops promptly handed the ninjas their asses.
In the midst of the fray, Horacio shakily rose to their feet, still greatly unbalanced after landing on their head. They stomped over to Egrene, whose sclera and irises had been replaced entirely with pupils, mumbled some half-hearted apologies, then quickly hoisted him to his feet and sling an arm over their shoulder.
“What is my underwear? True or false?” Egrene whispered.
“Uuuhhh.” Was all Horacio could blurt out.
“Baby chocolate cow drink.” He giggled to himself, a glob of drool staining his shirt.
An inhuman shriek sounded through the air. Horacio covered one ear and looked towards the sound.
They then dropped Egrene on the ground. One more thing needed to be done before they could make their great escape. Horacio ran over to the crib and eyed the creature inside.
Up close, it was even worse. It was like an aborted cow fetus if it went through a blender, got seasoned with bloodied chives, chocolate, and black olives, got re-assembled back into a vague resemblance of the original form, and leaked butter from every pore possible.
The eyes were all pink and leaking butter, the appendages ended in little bloodied, oily stumps, and the entire thing lacked any skin whatsoever.
They then got a glance at the objects on the table nearby.
There was a syringe labeled, ‘cow DNA. use on new greaze restaurant managers.’
They then saw a picture of clumps of flesh in two different test tubes. Written underneath them was, ‘Percy and Mel. Sisters and BFFs 4 lyf.’
Well, that explained a lot.
“PLEASE KILL ME!”
Horacio didn’t think twice; they grabbed a pillow and shoved it over the pour thing’s face.
“THERE ARE TWELVE MILLION GUNS HERE WHY THE FUCK AREN’T YOU USING ONE OF THOSE-“
In mere moments, it stopped breathing.
Good.
--
In less than a half hour, the MTF had subdued the ninjas, dismantled the entirety of the restaurant, and placed Percy within proper containment.
Horacio had joined Egrene and Richards on the drive home.
“How much longer is he gonna be like that?” Richards gestures to Egrene, who suckled on an empty gasoline canister, graciously supplied to him by the driver.
Horacio shrugged.
“How long will it take for you guys to make an antidote?”
Richards shrugged back. “Dunno. Why didn’t grab it when you were down there?”
“Forgot.”