Mission KatFL

      OPEN: KSSMO history files

      OPEN: file no. 23-543-12, file name: mission records

      OPEN: subfile no. 12, subfile name: closed missions

      OPEN: file no. 355222, mission name: KatFL, mission status: FAILED

      VIEW: read-only, mission no. 355222

      VIEW: read-only, mission no. 355222, subfile C: description of the failed mission KatFL, taken via dictation, ver batim, from those involved

      BEGIN TRANSMISSION:

      Wally Katt (Director, KatFL Mission. Species: Wocky. Colour: Blue. Gender: Male.): I still don’t exactly know why everyone elected me as director. I ran as a joke. They said I was “qualified” because I’d led a similar mission via simulation run in some stupid spacecraft outside of Kreludor that only three people knew about, and that was supposed to require some level of Brain Tree-esque genius to complete – and my team survived. Which is just dumb. The whole game was dumb, actually. It was just your typical find-this-to-go-here-and-don’t-die scenario, only with a swarm of ghostkerchiefs and werehonds clawing at your team along the way. And the graphics were horrifying. You’d think that with all that Kreludian technology they’d at least be able to come up with a simulator that didn’t look like something designed by a petpet. I don’t even know how I found that place, and… wait, this is all completely off topic… Point is, I wasn’t really “qualified,” whatever that means. Sure, I can make a pixilated Grundo in a spacesuit dance a ballet to rival Sasha the Dancer if I need to, but I don’t see how that, in any way, makes me qualified to lead a mission into some stupidly cold vampire storeroom.

      Ravi Cryy (Operative #3, KatFL Mission. Species: Pteri. Colour: Shadow. Gender: Female.): To be perfectly honest, the only reason we elected Wally Katt is because his last name was part of the mission name we settled on. Everyone was equally qualified, except the n00b, of course. Either way, it just sounded nice to have a director with a matching name – looked nice on paper, I guess. No one really cared anyway. It wasn’t supposed to be the huge deal it turned into. That surprised everyone. Heck, it surprised the mods; and they expect everything.

      Wally Katt: Either way, it started out perfectly normally and everything.

      Magda Magix (KSSMO Coordinator #211, KatFL Mission. Species: Grundo. Colour: Split. Gender: Female.): Hey, this fail of the century wasn’t my idea. I’m just s’posed to put the foundation together. The faces behind the Kreludor Space Station Mission Organization is supposed to fax me instructions and ideas, I’m supposed to filter through the operations, decide severity, then wake all the operatives up and tell them to get their lazy heads in shape for a mission. That’s all I do. I haven’t even been working in KSSMO long. I won some sort of Tombola-style raffle deal and they handed me a job. To be honest, that doesn’t surprise me, that that’s the way KSSMO handles choosing their mods… Seriously, how else would the weirdo that runs the fourth satellite have gotten a job? Seriously? Whatever. Anyway, I get a fax from the VSS, the Virtupets Space Station – you know, that in of itself is pretty odd. They don’t usually fax, they send a letter or hologram or call depending on urgency. I guess that shoulda been the first clue that this whole thing was gonna be a bust. Uh, but, again, that’s not important or anything.

      So I get this fax from one of the mods – an old mod. I think it was Travis – anyway, get the fax, and it says something about there being a storeroom up in Terror Mountain where some evil villain or another is hatching some sort of alien slorg that might cause this-or-that sort of havoc on this-or-that part of this-or-that planet or whatever. I don’t remember. I just punched it in really quick ‘cause it was the only relatively-urgent sounding thing the mods had sent me since I started working.

      So, now I’ve got to coordinate this mission. And it’s just standard stuff, really; I write up the info and I send the message out to the operatives that were pre-assigned, and if they feel like complaining, well, they can just take it somewhere else. Not my problem. If they wanna opt out, there’s a wait list of backups. Because operatives are divas these days. They pick and chose.

      Magtok Inn (Operative, perm ID #2466. Species: Ogrin. Colour: Mutant. Gender: Male.): Heck no, I didn’t want a part in this! I’ve dealt with way too many slorgs in my lifetime. I wasn’t about to go dragging myself into some freezer to squash some overgrown petpets.

      Magda Magix: So Magtok was the only one who decided to opt out, and I need to call in a n00b. Guess that was the second clue this was gonna be a bust.

      Magtok Inn: They like to stick me on slorg missions because I’ve been on them in the past and kinda got my name in that line of work, but it’s not like my whole life revolves around exploding gross petpets. They also wanted me in ‘cause I worked with Wally Katt once before and they thought we’d just be jolly good friends or something – no, not him. I hate him. I would pass on the mission of a lifetime if I had to do it with Wally Katt.

      So I say no. I say, you need to call in someone else. I’m sick of slorgs, I’m sick of this, when you get a normal Kreludite mining mission or something, I’m your guy, but I’m sick of slorgs.

      So I tell Magda and she changes the roster and calls in some n00b and that was the last I heard of it until it got all over the Times.

      Magda Magix: The first name on my backup list, it’s this new kid, this Maxios Something – a younger, sort of snorkle-looking kid. So I send him a neomail, all cheesy-like, Congrats man! Your first mission, and you get to ‘splode slorgs with virtublasters! It’s a dream come true! Try not to get blow’d up. And he’s all psyched, and then the rest is history.

      Cobra Ficks (Operative #2, KatFL Mission. Species: Hissi. Colour: Desert. Gender: Male.): I get a message from Maggs about a new mission I’m supposed to be on with some old friends and some n00b and some somewhat-legendary guy from some strange Kreludian simulation, and I don’t think much of it. Just need to get up early to make it to some sector in the back of some base I’ve never been to and start a plan and get briefed by a mod. Easy peasy, right?

      Tricky Beans (Operative #5, KatFL Mission. Species: Xweetok. Colour: Darigan. Gender: Female.): Oh Fyora, it couldn’t have been more stupidly saccharine. The letter, I mean. It was trying to make this horrible mission seem like the best thing ever, like, You have been assigned to this wonderfulamazing ohmygoodness yay mission where you get to drown in slorg slime and get some sort of petpetpet disease that’ll turn your turn your brain to mush! Many yayses! Get up at four o’ clock AM on Wednesday and go to Frostbite Center on the Agh-It’s-Cold base and try to get some n00b to understand the mechanics of Why-Is-This-So-Stupidly-Advanced technology, then go get clocked in the head by a mob of ninja vampires for twelve hours because of said n00b. It’ll be loads of fun fun fun! This is Magda Somethingorother bringing you this awesometastic news!

      Ugh. Just feed me to the Esophagor.

      But a mission’s a mission, so I show up with a smile plastered on my face and a change of shoes. Besides, my friends Cobra and Jay were on the roster. I love those guys. I couldn’t just not take the chance to blow some slime-things up with them. I have fond high school memories of such things.

      Ah, sigh. Nostalgia.

      Jay Jorgen (Operative #6, KatFL Mission. Species: Draik. Colour: Pink. Gender: Male.): Eh. Mission’s a mission. I didn’t care too much. I’m used to the cold anyway. I didn’t think the ice slorgs would be such a big deal. Wasn’t the first time I’ve ever been so horribly wrong.

      Tricky Beans: I get to the base, and Rav’s already there, and Jay, and the n00b, Maxios. And this n00b, trippy kid, young-looking Skeith, something was wrong with this guy. I mean, for real. I mean, Sloth minion weird. Boy couldn’t even hold a squirt gun straight if he tried! But whatever, I have faith, I keep smiling, I say, “Heyyy,” say, “I’m Beans,” say, “I’ll be fifty percent of this mission’s womanity,” and tell him he better keep his head on straight.

      Ravi Cryy: Oh Fyora, Beans and the Maxios kid did not get along. At all.

      Cobra Ficks: It was that kind of tension so thick you couldn’t even cut it with a Werelupe claw. Like, the-Darkest-Faerie-has-returned-again thick. As in, somebody’s going to get punched in the face.

      Rabbs Cole (Sister, Tricky Beans. Species: Cybunny. Colour: Hallowe'en. Gender: Female.): Yeah, Beans doesn’t get along well with a lot of people. She’s the kind to start snapping her fingers really fast and rolling her neck if someone even looks at her wrong. And she has this sixth sense with n00bs on missions. Like, she can smell them a mile away and gets all antsy at the scent.

      Anyway, I always look over her missions. They brief me, too, on her stuff, I guess because I’m the sort of parental figure in Beansie’s life. So I see she’s on a mission with a n00b, and that’s strike one. See she’s supposed to do a slorg mission, and that’s strike two – Beansie hates slorgs with a sort of poisonous Darigan vengeance.

      Then I see she’s on a mission with Wally Katt.

      Wally Katt: I didn’t read over the mission list. I had no idea Beans was on the mission.

      Rabbs Cole: And that’s strike three.

      Might as well have called the mission a failure right then and there.

      Tricky Beans: And then who walks in but Mister Ain’t Never Learned How To Treat A Lady himself. Wally Katt. And I almost yelled, “Oh, n to the o, no.”

      Wally Katt: I don’t know what I ever did to Beans, but she stabbed me with a straw once at Grundo’s Café.

      Tricky Beans: But, no, I’m cool, I stayed cool, I sat quietly in a chair and I crossed my legs and I folded my hands and I just waited for everyone else. I didn’t even bother to look at him. So I take my seat and we all wait for the briefing. Katt sits down away from me, and the n00b is a jittery mess to my left, and everyone else is sitting across from Maxios just in case he starts having a seizure or something – I mean this kid was just a mess of nerves on edge.

      Jay Jorgen: Yeah, I just tried to ignore the Maxios kid as much as possible. I swear he must have been eating nothing but Sugarbunny Surprise the night before or something.

      Wally Katt: Trippy kid aside, nothing was amiss. Even Beans was calm, surprisingly. Everyone showed up, took their seats, and then some faceless mod dials in and tells us what we’re supposed to do. So we name the mission, get dressed for the ice, get everything together, and we shove off. No biggie, really.

      Ravi Cryy: So the sector we’re in is this tundra of sorts, high in Terror Mountain. We’re wearing these clunky insulation suits that are just far too hot, and we’re trudging along with these newish ray guns that are supposed to make the slorgs basically evaporate. It was supposed to be a simple mission. They had sent a mod bot in before us to check the inside of this storeroom, and the video taken from within was basically black. The infrared picked up nothing much other than a bunch of slorg eggs just kinda pulsing there. See, the mod bots don’t detect anything below a certain temperature, and it was set low because of the tundra, of course. They forgot, though, that vampires are cold blooded, to below the tundra temperature.

      Either way, the mission was supposed to be an in-and-out type deal. Thirty minutes or less, especially with seven operatives, including a skilled director. And Wally Katt is a lot more skilled with these sorts of planning deals than a lot of people give him credit for. He had everything covered top and bottom. Of course, you never really plan for vampires.

      Wally Katt: We’re covering this tundra for miles until we get to this little storeroom. One of those places that looks a lot smaller than it feels when you get in it. So we circle up and I start going over the plan again. See, we were going to storm in at the same time to take the slorgs by some sort of surprise; two to the left, two to the right, two straight to the back, and one for anything on the ceiling. I was assigning sections, dividing the teams, and then I say, “Okay…”

      …And then everything kind of blurs.

      Pretty sure the sentence I was about to say was, “Okay, let’s go over this one more time,” but the Maxios kid jumped the gun. Not surprising.

      Tricky Beans: This kid thought the word “okay” meant “charge on in, screaming like a screal…”

      Cobra Ficks: He charges in – I mean, he didn’t even go in the direction he was originally assigned! That level of ridiculous. And none of us really knew what to do, so we all turn to Wally Katt. Lucky for us, he’s got some sort of plan. He tells us to wait – to listen.

      Ravi Cryy: Oh great Fyora, it was horrifying. We literally sat there and listened to this kid get pushed around and dunked in slime by these vampires for what seemed like hours.

      Wally Katt: But then we knew there were vampires in the warehouse. And, well, there’s not much that anyone outside of the Defenders of Neopia can really do with vampires, especially the icy kind. We were kind of at a loss. All I really knew was the fact that they were obviously capable of using the slorg slime as some sort of gross torture bath, and we couldn’t lose another operative to that goo; especially not a skilled operative with experience like the rest of the guys and girls on the mission. So we just… lit the thing on fire…

      Travis Knight (KSSMO mod #004. Species: Lupe. Colour: Grey. Gender: Male.): The objective of the mission was to clear the storehouse of the slorgs without damaging the storeroom itself. However, the coordinator did not receive the memo that detailed that particular facet of the situation, or didn’t receive it at all. The fax was corrupt, unfortunately, which is why we try to use other means of communicating with our coordinators. So the operatives weren’t wrong to set the storeroom on fire, seeing as it was the only logical thing to do in the case of vampires. But they should have been warned about the storehouse’s other contents.

      Tricky Beans: Man, I don’t know if this place was full of fireworks or some sort of galactic fire goop, but the place completely went. Up. In. Flame. Like, it was nobody’s business. I mean, exploding like a miniature Lunar Festival. Straight into the air, mushroom cloud status. I really don’t know how I’m alive right now.

      Travis Knight: Luckily, such a situation was seen through by the other mods, so the operatives were equipped with both insulated and flame retardant clothing. The injuries were few to none, aside from the one operative that the vampires took back to the Haunted Woods. No one really knows what happened to that agent, though I have been hearing rumours of a new, clumsy vampire Skeith being seen around the carnival...

      Wally Katt: So we get the heck outta there, and the next thing we know, the whole situation is all over the Times. Everyone seems to know that we blew this major storeroom operation and an operative went missing in what was supposed to be a simple mission. The whole thing is ridiculous. Nobody bothers to look into the details. They just see that someone’s disappeared and then that’s all they need to know. It’s ridiculous.

      Jay Jorgen: I hate to be known as a part of the whole thing. Although, I’m glad it did go down the way it did, to be honest. If the n00b kid hadn’t have gone in like that, we wouldn’t have known about the vampires and we would have all been kidnapped. Probably. Maybe not. Actually, we probably would have been perfectly fine.

      Whatever, I’m trying to stay positive.

      Cobra Ficks: Either way, the vampires are gone back to the Haunted Woods, and the slorgs are no more. That’s all that matters, right?

      Tricky Beans: Honestly? I’m just glad I’ll never have to work with that n00b again.

      END TRANSMISSION