Categories > Cartoons > Avatar: The Last Airbender > Shippers: Rise of the Sues
Chapter Five: House of the Sues
0 reviewsBooter offers our heroes a tour of the resistance base before unveiling her ultimate plot to end the shipper menace once and for all.
0Unrated
Shippers: Rise of the Sues
Chapter Five: House of the Sues
“…And this is research and development,” Booter motioned her hand out toward what had previously been a reading room, now occupied by the top scientists of the survivors.
They had attained the accolade by running slightly faster than their predecessors.
“Here the leading technology in anti-shipper weaponry is developed.” An underlying pride filled her words as she nodded her head toward the fruit of their labors.
“…This is an encyclopedia and a lighter,” Conor noted flatly, peering toward one of their earliest designs.
“Why does it smell like gasoline?” Kimchi leaned forward as she sniffed, her head drawing back in disgust.
“It’s soaked in it,” Booter explained gleefully, Susie stepping to her side.
“We’ve even found a way to recycle some of our supplies into tools to use against the shippers,” the lieutenant explained as she approached a long table, two of the movement scientists stepping back.
Recognizing that which lay before them, Kimchi’s eyes lit up with eager fascination beneath her dark sunglasses. Stepping forward she lifted a hand, barely whispering the words.
“…This is…”
“Yes,” Susie nodded with a smile, looking toward the artist.
There on the table beneath the halogen ceiling lights, surrounded by printed word and works of Sue-destruction lay an armor, shield and sword constructed entirely of pocky boxes.
“It’s…It’s beautiful…” Kimchi’s fingers lifted gently, the tips tracing along its cardboard majesty.
“…Are you kidding me with this?” Conor’s eyebrow rose, unable to comprehend the purpose of the construct.
“We needed to create a device that would distract the shippers long enough that we could get by them,” Susie turned to the writer, explaining. “After awhile we figured out that most Avatar fans are attracted to other anime series. And most anime fans are obsessed with pocky.”
“But they got through the pocky boxes way too fast,” one of the scientists chimed in.
“So we tried wrapping one in duct tape and throwing it,” another noted.
“I’m sorry; you wrapped it in duct tape?” Conor stared.
“…It was a lot of duct tape,” the second reassured. “And it turned out that they won’t go for it unless they can see or smell it; something to let them know it’s pocky.”
“So we wrote “pocky” on the giant wad of duct tape and tried again. They bought into it, but it still didn’t last as long as we wanted it to.”
“So your solution to the question of distracting shippers without sacrificing manpower is to wrap someone up in a suit made of stuff you know they’ll go after?” The swordsman watched as Kimchi hurried to equip the helmet.
“Well, whoever’ll be in the suit’ll be fast. Really fast,” the first folded his arms.
“Or a chimp,” the second raised a finger. “We’re really hoping that Hanna and Fia’ll pull through and bring us a chimp one of these days.”
“Forget that,” Booter interrupted the discussion, catching Conor’s attention. “I want to show you something.” Turning, she pressed her palm against a door as she opened it to the hallway.
“Alright,” he nodded, following while glancing toward Kimchi.
The artist was far too occupied strapping on the armor to notice his departure.
“There’s something I want to confirm,” the leader explained as she opened another door. They entered the librarian’s office, a large map of the country tacked to the wall with post-it notes scattered over its face. The office had become hers since the survivors first found sanctuary in the building.
“So you three started from…Here,” Booter set her finger against the location where he had met the two artists.
“Yeah.”
“Alright…I need you to confirm something for me. What shippers did you bump into on the way?”
“Well, right here we bumped into some Kataangers. Then here,” he lifted his finger, setting it down a short distance away. “Here, Zukkas. And some more here; I figure they might have followed after us. Then here…I think these might have been Azulaangs.”
“Right; there are a lot of those along here. Good,” Booter noted while squinting, studying the map. Peering toward post it notes she touched the tip of a different marker to each of the areas he had indicated, noting that which he had mentioned.
“Why’d you need to know?”
“I’ve been gathering whatever information I can; it’s hard to come by the longer the uprising goes on. Each color represents a different shipping group. I asked you about what you saw to confirm if I was right or not.”
“They’re in giant clusters,” he narrowed his eyes as he tried to decipher the meaning behind it. Each shipping group occupied certain areas, no shippers of differing preference recorded within the territory of another.
“The way I see it, the shippers aren’t staging an uprising; they’re staging a war.” Booter folded her arms, her eyes searching through the sections she had marked.
“A war?”
“Against each other. The only reason they’re infecting regular people is to get more numbers on their side. They’re really looking to fight it out and see which shipping comes out on top.”
“How does me telling you who we bumped into on the way here help?”
“I had already figured out the Azulaangers and the Kataangers; what you told me just confirms it and gives me a better idea of where the Zukkas are.”
“But that’s not enough to support that they’re at war,” he noted, seeing holes in her theory.
“Right; but in every shot and report I’ve seen on the infected, there’s never been more than one pairing. Just like it was on your way here. This tells us that they’re most likely territorial.”
“Alright, but that doesn’t imply hostility. If they were at war with each other, don’t you think there would’ve been some adjustment to their borders?” Conor lifted his hand to the map, tracing the edge of the Kataanger’s section.
“Please,” she snorted as her eyebrow rose, surprised he would even ask. “When have you ever known a shipper to do anything beyond surrounding themselves with people who agree with them and dubbing those who don’t as inferior?”
“…Touche,” the writer noted, her point demonstrated.
“Alright; let’s go. Now that we’ve got this figured out, we’ve got a meeting to get to.” She grinned as she made her way back to the door, the swordsman following after.
There was no rush to their pace, taking their time as they entered a small auditorium.
Toward the front sat Rufftoon and Isaia, the two discussing the adventures they had encountered since the uprising began. Beside them sat Kimchi, proudly donning the pocky armor.
The other survivors lined the rows of chairs, Susie smiling as she spoke with them. Fia sat at the end of the first row in all white, Hanna seated beside her in black. The two switched the color schemes of their attire frequently, amused by the confusion it caused others.
Conor took his seat beside the crossbow wielder, watching as Booter made her way to the center of the stage.
“Alright,” she smiled as she fired up the projector, a square of light forming behind her. “Glad to see everyone’s here. You’ve all had some time to meet the new faces and I’ve had some time to think. Now that they’re here, we have the opportunity to make our stand against the shippers.” Her hand grasped the nearby computer mouse, tracing it slowly over the wood of the podium as she selected the file she wanted.
The words “Final Stand Against the Shippers, by Booter” appeared at the center of the screen, a marble background behind it.
“…She made a PowerPoint presentation of her master plan?” Conor whispered to Kimchi.
“One of the tech guys did,” the survivor behind him corrected.
“I like it,” Kimchi shrugged.
“Thanks to a variety of news reports and information, I’ve been able to figure out the general areas occupied by each of the infected groups.” Her finger pressed down upon the mouse, the slide switching to a picture of the map she had shown Conor just minutes earlier. “Because of the earliest reports, the ones that we all saw on the news at the very beginning of the uprising, I’ve been able to guess at which groups caused this whole mess.”
The slide altered quickly to screenshots from local news coverage of the two large ships that had reached the American coastline just prior to the nightmare.
“No one’s going to be really shocked by this; it’s the Kataangers and the Zutarians.”
“What makes you think that?” a voice called out from the audience.
“One of the national news organizations was producing incredibly detailed coverage on the ships the original infected came from. I guess it was a slow news week. Anyway; they noted that the ships marked “Zutara” and “Kataang” were the first to drop radio contact. The others came days later, and most of them had been sent to inspect the other two.”
“How do you get Azulaang and Katoph shippers from Zutarians and Kataangers…?” Isaia looked curiously from her seat, watching the slides.
“We have three theories on that,” Booter noted. “Mine is that the Kataangers and Zutarians had conquered the other groups and were keeping them prisoner on the ships. Confusing them for victims, the rescue crew members from the later ships must have been infected. Now increased in numbers, they probably escaped and made their way to the shore before infecting others. Susie has a different theory,” she nodded toward her lieutenant.
“I figure that the viruses aren’t exclusive of one another,” she started. “That a Zukong biting you doesn’t guarantee you’ll become a Zukong; it depends on what pairing you’re exposed to first. There could’ve been some wretched fanfiction writer aboard the two ships for all we know. And then there’s Hanna’s theory,” she noted.
“I say it’s magic,” she folded her arms confidently.
“Regardless,” the leader continued, “the Kataangers and the Zutarians are the two largest groups. And if my theory holds true, then attacking them might bring an end to the uprising.”
“How? There are probably thousands of them by now, maybe millions!” A voice yelled out worriedly.
“Which is why the next slide is the most important,” Booter noted as she pressed on the mouse again, a picture and a few lines of text appearing. “About a week ago, we managed to get a very brief internet signal. A film major from New York filmed his college after the uprising as a plea for help, uploading it to any video website that was in service. Comparing this to other reports, we can tell easily that the volume of shippers at the University at Albany is at least three times higher than anywhere else within the Kataanger’s territory.”
Conor clenched his teeth slightly. He had been a student at Albany and disliked it long before it was occupied by the infected. Being the first of the group to hate it offered little comfort.
“We know that they’re swarming there. During that brief period of internet service, we found similar reports for an address in California. The Zutarian population seems to spiral from there. If we know where they are, we know where to hit them. And thanks to some incredibly lucky scavenging, we know what to hit them with.” She motioned her hand to the side as Susie stepped onto the stage pushing a cart. Atop it was two large metallic devices, each decorated with a biohazard symbol.
“Are those nukes?” Conor’s eyes went wide, watching as Susie stopped at the center of the stage.
Booter glanced toward the devices, turning quickly before scribbling something above the biohazard sticker.
“Of course not,” she answered calmly as she looked back out to the audience, the word “not” sprawled above each of the nuclear markers.
“Those are nukes!” he exclaimed, pointing toward them.
“Excuse me, but they’re very clearly marked otherwise,” one of the survivors whispered into his ear, leaning forward.
“You want us to blow them up!?”
“Relax; you’ll be long gone before the charges go off. We’re going to duct tape pocky boxes to both to make sure the shippers hold onto them,” one of the scientists explained.
The writer’s eyebrow rose, curious as to whether the research and development department was based entirely in the various uses of duct tape and candy boxes.
“He’s right; we’re making sure that neither of the two devices will go off until you’re well out of harm’s way. We don’t know exactly what or who the source of the infection is, so we have to obliterate as much as we can to try and destroy it.” Booter’s explanation was calm, her finger pressing down once more on the mouse. “Now, all we need to do is divide up the teams.”
The listing of eligible candidates appeared on the projection behind her, drawing out a sheet of paper to record the rosters.
“We’re going to need a team to infiltrate Albany and another to hit California. We’re going to try to execute both strikes at the same time so that one side doesn’t fall before the other and enable the remaining to change positions.”
“Put me on the California team,” Susie noted coldly, stepping forward.
The audience stared, surprised by the sudden harshness in her words.
“The Zutarians are there. Prey of the Demons will be there, too. I’m going to settle this once and for all.” Her eyes were focused, her vendetta known to those who had followed the fanfiction community.
“Put me on the Albany team,” Conor stood, his arms folded. “I was a student there before the uprising; I know it inside and out.”
Booter nodded quietly, her hand moving swiftly to each column as she marked the volunteers.
“Put me in with the dork,” Kimchi rose, smirking. Their travels had brought her to be familiar with him, accustomed enough that they would be far more effective together than separated.
“…Me too,” Isaia stood up, somewhat nervous. It was the first time they had knowingly headed into a dangerous situation, rather than traveling with caution.
“I mean…On the team with Conor. Not that he’s, y’know, a dork,” she corrected, hoping she hadn’t insulted him.
The writer smiled gently, glancing toward her.
“We’ll go with Susie,” Fia raised her hand, volunteering the two.
“Rufftoon, you’ll stay here as the center of communication,” Booter explained.
“Got it,” the veteran artist smiled.
“I’ll stay here to keep everyone connected and issue commands,” she went on, motioning her hand toward guards as she assigned them to the teams. The writing stopped, nodding as she reviewed it.
“Alright then,” Booter looked out over the survivors. “We’ll take the next two days to rest up and get supplies ready. Get ready people.” Her voice took a sudden firmness, the gravity of the task before them gripping the room. “This is it; the final battle.”
The room exploded with determined energy, all those within it hurrying to prepare for what lay on the horizon.
That night, atop the roof of the library Rufftoon and Isaia would sit. Temporarily they would cast aside the weight of worry, resigning instead to the joy and comfort of familiar conversation as they drew merrily upon their sketchbooks.
Chapter Five: House of the Sues
“…And this is research and development,” Booter motioned her hand out toward what had previously been a reading room, now occupied by the top scientists of the survivors.
They had attained the accolade by running slightly faster than their predecessors.
“Here the leading technology in anti-shipper weaponry is developed.” An underlying pride filled her words as she nodded her head toward the fruit of their labors.
“…This is an encyclopedia and a lighter,” Conor noted flatly, peering toward one of their earliest designs.
“Why does it smell like gasoline?” Kimchi leaned forward as she sniffed, her head drawing back in disgust.
“It’s soaked in it,” Booter explained gleefully, Susie stepping to her side.
“We’ve even found a way to recycle some of our supplies into tools to use against the shippers,” the lieutenant explained as she approached a long table, two of the movement scientists stepping back.
Recognizing that which lay before them, Kimchi’s eyes lit up with eager fascination beneath her dark sunglasses. Stepping forward she lifted a hand, barely whispering the words.
“…This is…”
“Yes,” Susie nodded with a smile, looking toward the artist.
There on the table beneath the halogen ceiling lights, surrounded by printed word and works of Sue-destruction lay an armor, shield and sword constructed entirely of pocky boxes.
“It’s…It’s beautiful…” Kimchi’s fingers lifted gently, the tips tracing along its cardboard majesty.
“…Are you kidding me with this?” Conor’s eyebrow rose, unable to comprehend the purpose of the construct.
“We needed to create a device that would distract the shippers long enough that we could get by them,” Susie turned to the writer, explaining. “After awhile we figured out that most Avatar fans are attracted to other anime series. And most anime fans are obsessed with pocky.”
“But they got through the pocky boxes way too fast,” one of the scientists chimed in.
“So we tried wrapping one in duct tape and throwing it,” another noted.
“I’m sorry; you wrapped it in duct tape?” Conor stared.
“…It was a lot of duct tape,” the second reassured. “And it turned out that they won’t go for it unless they can see or smell it; something to let them know it’s pocky.”
“So we wrote “pocky” on the giant wad of duct tape and tried again. They bought into it, but it still didn’t last as long as we wanted it to.”
“So your solution to the question of distracting shippers without sacrificing manpower is to wrap someone up in a suit made of stuff you know they’ll go after?” The swordsman watched as Kimchi hurried to equip the helmet.
“Well, whoever’ll be in the suit’ll be fast. Really fast,” the first folded his arms.
“Or a chimp,” the second raised a finger. “We’re really hoping that Hanna and Fia’ll pull through and bring us a chimp one of these days.”
“Forget that,” Booter interrupted the discussion, catching Conor’s attention. “I want to show you something.” Turning, she pressed her palm against a door as she opened it to the hallway.
“Alright,” he nodded, following while glancing toward Kimchi.
The artist was far too occupied strapping on the armor to notice his departure.
“There’s something I want to confirm,” the leader explained as she opened another door. They entered the librarian’s office, a large map of the country tacked to the wall with post-it notes scattered over its face. The office had become hers since the survivors first found sanctuary in the building.
“So you three started from…Here,” Booter set her finger against the location where he had met the two artists.
“Yeah.”
“Alright…I need you to confirm something for me. What shippers did you bump into on the way?”
“Well, right here we bumped into some Kataangers. Then here,” he lifted his finger, setting it down a short distance away. “Here, Zukkas. And some more here; I figure they might have followed after us. Then here…I think these might have been Azulaangs.”
“Right; there are a lot of those along here. Good,” Booter noted while squinting, studying the map. Peering toward post it notes she touched the tip of a different marker to each of the areas he had indicated, noting that which he had mentioned.
“Why’d you need to know?”
“I’ve been gathering whatever information I can; it’s hard to come by the longer the uprising goes on. Each color represents a different shipping group. I asked you about what you saw to confirm if I was right or not.”
“They’re in giant clusters,” he narrowed his eyes as he tried to decipher the meaning behind it. Each shipping group occupied certain areas, no shippers of differing preference recorded within the territory of another.
“The way I see it, the shippers aren’t staging an uprising; they’re staging a war.” Booter folded her arms, her eyes searching through the sections she had marked.
“A war?”
“Against each other. The only reason they’re infecting regular people is to get more numbers on their side. They’re really looking to fight it out and see which shipping comes out on top.”
“How does me telling you who we bumped into on the way here help?”
“I had already figured out the Azulaangers and the Kataangers; what you told me just confirms it and gives me a better idea of where the Zukkas are.”
“But that’s not enough to support that they’re at war,” he noted, seeing holes in her theory.
“Right; but in every shot and report I’ve seen on the infected, there’s never been more than one pairing. Just like it was on your way here. This tells us that they’re most likely territorial.”
“Alright, but that doesn’t imply hostility. If they were at war with each other, don’t you think there would’ve been some adjustment to their borders?” Conor lifted his hand to the map, tracing the edge of the Kataanger’s section.
“Please,” she snorted as her eyebrow rose, surprised he would even ask. “When have you ever known a shipper to do anything beyond surrounding themselves with people who agree with them and dubbing those who don’t as inferior?”
“…Touche,” the writer noted, her point demonstrated.
“Alright; let’s go. Now that we’ve got this figured out, we’ve got a meeting to get to.” She grinned as she made her way back to the door, the swordsman following after.
There was no rush to their pace, taking their time as they entered a small auditorium.
Toward the front sat Rufftoon and Isaia, the two discussing the adventures they had encountered since the uprising began. Beside them sat Kimchi, proudly donning the pocky armor.
The other survivors lined the rows of chairs, Susie smiling as she spoke with them. Fia sat at the end of the first row in all white, Hanna seated beside her in black. The two switched the color schemes of their attire frequently, amused by the confusion it caused others.
Conor took his seat beside the crossbow wielder, watching as Booter made her way to the center of the stage.
“Alright,” she smiled as she fired up the projector, a square of light forming behind her. “Glad to see everyone’s here. You’ve all had some time to meet the new faces and I’ve had some time to think. Now that they’re here, we have the opportunity to make our stand against the shippers.” Her hand grasped the nearby computer mouse, tracing it slowly over the wood of the podium as she selected the file she wanted.
The words “Final Stand Against the Shippers, by Booter” appeared at the center of the screen, a marble background behind it.
“…She made a PowerPoint presentation of her master plan?” Conor whispered to Kimchi.
“One of the tech guys did,” the survivor behind him corrected.
“I like it,” Kimchi shrugged.
“Thanks to a variety of news reports and information, I’ve been able to figure out the general areas occupied by each of the infected groups.” Her finger pressed down upon the mouse, the slide switching to a picture of the map she had shown Conor just minutes earlier. “Because of the earliest reports, the ones that we all saw on the news at the very beginning of the uprising, I’ve been able to guess at which groups caused this whole mess.”
The slide altered quickly to screenshots from local news coverage of the two large ships that had reached the American coastline just prior to the nightmare.
“No one’s going to be really shocked by this; it’s the Kataangers and the Zutarians.”
“What makes you think that?” a voice called out from the audience.
“One of the national news organizations was producing incredibly detailed coverage on the ships the original infected came from. I guess it was a slow news week. Anyway; they noted that the ships marked “Zutara” and “Kataang” were the first to drop radio contact. The others came days later, and most of them had been sent to inspect the other two.”
“How do you get Azulaang and Katoph shippers from Zutarians and Kataangers…?” Isaia looked curiously from her seat, watching the slides.
“We have three theories on that,” Booter noted. “Mine is that the Kataangers and Zutarians had conquered the other groups and were keeping them prisoner on the ships. Confusing them for victims, the rescue crew members from the later ships must have been infected. Now increased in numbers, they probably escaped and made their way to the shore before infecting others. Susie has a different theory,” she nodded toward her lieutenant.
“I figure that the viruses aren’t exclusive of one another,” she started. “That a Zukong biting you doesn’t guarantee you’ll become a Zukong; it depends on what pairing you’re exposed to first. There could’ve been some wretched fanfiction writer aboard the two ships for all we know. And then there’s Hanna’s theory,” she noted.
“I say it’s magic,” she folded her arms confidently.
“Regardless,” the leader continued, “the Kataangers and the Zutarians are the two largest groups. And if my theory holds true, then attacking them might bring an end to the uprising.”
“How? There are probably thousands of them by now, maybe millions!” A voice yelled out worriedly.
“Which is why the next slide is the most important,” Booter noted as she pressed on the mouse again, a picture and a few lines of text appearing. “About a week ago, we managed to get a very brief internet signal. A film major from New York filmed his college after the uprising as a plea for help, uploading it to any video website that was in service. Comparing this to other reports, we can tell easily that the volume of shippers at the University at Albany is at least three times higher than anywhere else within the Kataanger’s territory.”
Conor clenched his teeth slightly. He had been a student at Albany and disliked it long before it was occupied by the infected. Being the first of the group to hate it offered little comfort.
“We know that they’re swarming there. During that brief period of internet service, we found similar reports for an address in California. The Zutarian population seems to spiral from there. If we know where they are, we know where to hit them. And thanks to some incredibly lucky scavenging, we know what to hit them with.” She motioned her hand to the side as Susie stepped onto the stage pushing a cart. Atop it was two large metallic devices, each decorated with a biohazard symbol.
“Are those nukes?” Conor’s eyes went wide, watching as Susie stopped at the center of the stage.
Booter glanced toward the devices, turning quickly before scribbling something above the biohazard sticker.
“Of course not,” she answered calmly as she looked back out to the audience, the word “not” sprawled above each of the nuclear markers.
“Those are nukes!” he exclaimed, pointing toward them.
“Excuse me, but they’re very clearly marked otherwise,” one of the survivors whispered into his ear, leaning forward.
“You want us to blow them up!?”
“Relax; you’ll be long gone before the charges go off. We’re going to duct tape pocky boxes to both to make sure the shippers hold onto them,” one of the scientists explained.
The writer’s eyebrow rose, curious as to whether the research and development department was based entirely in the various uses of duct tape and candy boxes.
“He’s right; we’re making sure that neither of the two devices will go off until you’re well out of harm’s way. We don’t know exactly what or who the source of the infection is, so we have to obliterate as much as we can to try and destroy it.” Booter’s explanation was calm, her finger pressing down once more on the mouse. “Now, all we need to do is divide up the teams.”
The listing of eligible candidates appeared on the projection behind her, drawing out a sheet of paper to record the rosters.
“We’re going to need a team to infiltrate Albany and another to hit California. We’re going to try to execute both strikes at the same time so that one side doesn’t fall before the other and enable the remaining to change positions.”
“Put me on the California team,” Susie noted coldly, stepping forward.
The audience stared, surprised by the sudden harshness in her words.
“The Zutarians are there. Prey of the Demons will be there, too. I’m going to settle this once and for all.” Her eyes were focused, her vendetta known to those who had followed the fanfiction community.
“Put me on the Albany team,” Conor stood, his arms folded. “I was a student there before the uprising; I know it inside and out.”
Booter nodded quietly, her hand moving swiftly to each column as she marked the volunteers.
“Put me in with the dork,” Kimchi rose, smirking. Their travels had brought her to be familiar with him, accustomed enough that they would be far more effective together than separated.
“…Me too,” Isaia stood up, somewhat nervous. It was the first time they had knowingly headed into a dangerous situation, rather than traveling with caution.
“I mean…On the team with Conor. Not that he’s, y’know, a dork,” she corrected, hoping she hadn’t insulted him.
The writer smiled gently, glancing toward her.
“We’ll go with Susie,” Fia raised her hand, volunteering the two.
“Rufftoon, you’ll stay here as the center of communication,” Booter explained.
“Got it,” the veteran artist smiled.
“I’ll stay here to keep everyone connected and issue commands,” she went on, motioning her hand toward guards as she assigned them to the teams. The writing stopped, nodding as she reviewed it.
“Alright then,” Booter looked out over the survivors. “We’ll take the next two days to rest up and get supplies ready. Get ready people.” Her voice took a sudden firmness, the gravity of the task before them gripping the room. “This is it; the final battle.”
The room exploded with determined energy, all those within it hurrying to prepare for what lay on the horizon.
That night, atop the roof of the library Rufftoon and Isaia would sit. Temporarily they would cast aside the weight of worry, resigning instead to the joy and comfort of familiar conversation as they drew merrily upon their sketchbooks.
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