Arby stopped suddenly, a wistful look on his face. "We're going about this all wrong." He looked at the faces of the other -ites. "Don't you see, we're going about this like a bunch of sad old men, with jobs and responsibilities and something that passes for having lives?"

"Exactly my point," Jeff mused. "We used to be pilots and engineers and the like, back in the old days. We can't save the NES without that childlike sense of whimsy."

"Yeah," Dylan added, "and something doesn't feel right about just walking in there. I think…" He paused for a minute, and added without a hint of irony (or a trace of an Admiral Akbar impersonation), "it's a trap."

"OK, then, here's an idea," Four suggested. "Dylan and Arby will head towards the Cantina and see if we can get a trace on what caused the explosion. Jeff and I will head towards the hangar to get the ship ready. We'll meet back here in an hour, and then we'll figure out how best to assault those domes."

"Ship?" Dylan asked quizzically. "We have a ship?"

"What do we do with Fuzz?" Arby added, completely ignoring the flow-killing tangent that that last poorly-written line of dialog would create.

"We'll take him and keep him on the ship for the time being," Jeff said. "We can't keep dragging him around like this."

"I'm not sure there's a point to dragging him around anyway. He did die within the first post. That means he'll end up reappearing later, probably when we least expect, through some odd and vaguely defined mechanic introduced only to explain the fact that he's not dead," Dylan meta-mused.

"Try to act surprised when it happens," Arby groaned.

————————————————————————–

With a rusty creak, Four and Jeff slid the hangar door aside. Cobwebs and dust coated most of the equipment. An eerie air hung over this place–a sense of emptiness, and a memory of better days.

Four walked over to a large, irregular shape covered by a sheet in one of the docking bays.

"This is it," he announced, grasping the sheet and preparing for the big reveal. With a flourish, Four gave the sheet a yank; it rippled, sending dust everywhere. And then it settled on the floor.

Before the two (and the mortal remains of Fuzz) stood an odd but familiar spaceship. Its components were blocky and angular. The pixellated surface that passed for its hull was mottled brown-and-gray, but without the hint of the metallic sheen it should have had.

"The… the Moldy Crow?" Jeff stammered.

"Yup," Four answered proudly.

"Well, now we have a ship, but… is that thing really going to fly?" Jeff asked. "I mean, look at it. It's so old and poorly rendered by today's standards."

"OK, so it's not perfect," Four said. "Yes, it shows its age. When this thing was built, real-time anti-aliasing didn't exist, at least not in our dimension. Perhaps if we'd quantum phase shifted…"

He paused waiting for knowing recognition, but Jeff didn't bite.

"Anyway, we have a ship. Now let's get this thing running. We have a lot to do and not much time before we have to rendezvous with Arby and Dylan."

————————————————————————–

The evil mastermind smirked as he watched this new plot twist.

"They are rediscovering, rebuilding, returning. Good. Good."

"This is most troubling. Cylons? Gorram? The NES writers seem to be rebooting us with competing influences. Hell, they haven't even mentioned where we are…Bespin, Drazen, those…um….other places we went after whose names escape me? Are we even still in the Star Wars universe??" Arby waved his arm excitedly. "I mean jesus look at this place!"

The small group paused to take in their surroundings. The rubble of the cantina and the road infront of them was painfully clear in it's extensive destruction, but the buildings surrounding them seemed lost in a haze. Vague detailless shadows loomed over them.

"Frak." Jeff said, not knowing why.

"I think Fuzz is the tool…um…key" said Fourwood. "He was supposed to be in charge of rebooting the NES, but now he's dead and we've been attacked. Whatever plan he had for us obviously displeased someone and they've sabotaged it! Until we find out who is behind this I fear we may be at the mercy of our various movie/tv/book influences. We cannot allow this…we all know themed NESes never work out."

Dylan tapped some ash out of his pipe in agreement. "Yes dear fro, clearly the game is afoot."

"Stop that!" barked Arby.

Jeff finished stroking his increasingly itchy gorram stubble. "That's it!" he exclaimed and pointed after Drake. "The artist can help us! His creative talents can help us shape a new NES that is more than just a collection of our frakking influences! If you don't believe me just look at where he went!"

Unlike the rest of the vague and unformed city around them, the buildings near where Drake disappeared where now crystal clear – large domed structures of steel and glass.

"This is a bit too Charlie Kaufman…" muttered Arby.

"Time to follow the yellow brick road" said Dylan with a smile that began to fade slightly. "I guess we should go easy on the quotes…"

"No time to waste" said Jeff as he grabbed hold of one of Fuzz's feet and began walking up the street, dragging the battered ite corpse behind him. "We have a NES to save."

————————————————————————–

Elsewhere in the hither to unnamed city an evil mastermind who someone else can flesh out later sat and watched on an overly elaborate set of monitors as the four ites left the rubble of the cantina behind. Light streamed down on his and/or her face from the large glass dome roof above.

The evil genius blinked in annoyance.

"Fucking domes, really?"

————————————————————————–

As one of the four standing by the ruins uttered that last line, the group looked up in the distance and noted a bumbling fellow barrelling his way towards them. He tripped and fell on his way toward them, but quickly got back up on his feet, continuing on his way to greet them.

"H- hey, guys, what the hell happened? I heard a loud boom then just ran out to the streets because- holy crap… Are explosions covered by your insurance?"

"Nope," replied Jeff.

"Well, that sucks. I finally show up and the cantina is gone. Story of my li-"

"Can we help you?" Arby spoke, with a slight annoyance in his voice.

"Oh yeah, I'm Drake, I'm a local artist."

Eyebrows were raised. Dylan spoke up. "Wait, you're a local?"

"How come we've never heard of you?" Fourwood continued questioning.

"Because I'm so damn indie you've ne- Ah, you've probably heard that joke too many times. Nah, I've been around here, you guys were usually just too drunk to notice me. Except for clean boy over there," he said pointing to Dylan. "But usually he was too busy playing with his Battlestar toys to notice."

The group let out a collective "Oh…"

"… well, yeah it's a bit of a mess at the moment," Jeff said, "But we've been through this before."

"Really?" Drake looked around, and then noticed the lifeless corpse. "Oh, jeez. Is he dead?"

"He's kind of a corpse, so yes, you can assume he's dead," Arby remarked. "It's alright, though, that's just Fuzz."

"Fuzz?"

"Yeah, usually came in and complained about something, belittled you for liking it, and later changed his mind after trying and liking it. Got drunk constantly and cried himself to sleep on the tables. That kind of guy."

"Ah," Drake said, still staring at the corpse. He began to feel a little uneasy, tasting a bit of vomit in his mouth, and it wasn't because there was a corpse in front of him.

Fourwood took note of this. "Yeah, that was our reaction to him when he first showed up, alive."

Drake pulled out a sketchpad and began to sketch some of the rubble, along with Fuzz's body. He seemed uncomfortable and slightly nervous while he scribbled some things down.

"Any ideas who did this?"

The group eyed each other before looking back at Drake suspiciously. "No, not at the moment. We actually weren't sure if it was an accident or not," Dylan explained,

"But this is some sort of *gorram* story, so someone IS responsible."

Drake just blinked. "…Alright, well, I guess I'll be going." He put his sketchpad away and took a step back. "Well, if you guys ever need some art done in bad taste with terrible composition, I'm your guy. Nah, I kid, I'm alright. Here," he said, handing them a card, "That's my card. I guess I'll… I'll be going. Seriously, if you guys ever need anything done, come by. Please. Could always use a customer…" Things at this point were too damn awkward, so without saying another word, he just ran off.

"…Did anyone think he was almost as vexatious as Fuzz?" Arby said, confused by the man's appearance.

"Only you would use that word, Arby," quipped Fourwood.

Dylan looked back at the rubble and began to look for anything that could be salvaged, with Arby and Fourwood soon joining him to look for some drinks from bottles that weren't destroyed. Unfortunately for them, there weren't any.

Jeff, however, stood there, eyeing the path Drake took suspiciously…

As the dust cleared, Arby, Fourwood, Jeff, and Dylan stood starting at the smoking wreckage of the Cantina. And Fuzz's lifeless corpse. And each other. And then back at the Cantina.

"So, yeah."

"Yeah.

"That... that was... well, that was... something, wasn't it?"

"That was a hell of a thing."

"Yup."

"So, the Cantina exploded."

"It would look that way."

"And Fuzz alone was killed, and no one else was hurt."

"Yup."

"So someone blew up a bar that has no patrons."

"Well, we don't know someone blew it up. It could have been spontaneous combustion."

"Or faulty wiring. We haven't really been within code for... well, ever. It's a wonder it lasted this long."

"That may be true, but we're in the middle of a proto-NES, aren't we?"

The rest of the guys looked up at the previous posts in the thread.

"Seems that way."

"Then someone blew it up. Because mere accidents don't happen in stories. That's not exciting."

"True."

"So basically what you're saying is, we've got ourselves an inciting incident here."

"Seems that way."

"And it's going to force us to get up and travel the galaxy and probably die, and then probably come back from the brink of death with questionable plot mechanics."

"Yup."

"Gorrammit. Well then, let's get on with this dog and pony show."

The dust from the explosion mixed with the street dust on the dry air that wafted in through the large hole near where the door used to be.

"I fucking hate Battlestar."

And then he realized it: he was a cylon.