Chapter Text

Big Dave was just starting to enjoy himself when he felt the blade against his throat. He had been working security for the biggest party in town, and had finally decided to give up trying to look tough and start nodding his head to the bodacious jams he heard wafting up from the main event below. The Museum of Natural History in New York City was celebrating the acquisition of an especially rare and valuable item by hosting a hoe-down featuring all of the Museum’s most high-profile patrons, and Big Dave was supposed to be on look out on the rooftop to make sure everything went smoothly. He didn’t have time to react before the knife he felt was dragged through his flesh. He bled out gasping for air as the music below kicked into an especially killer guitar solo.



A similar fate befell the other rooftop guards. None of them had time to raise the alarm or call for help. No one saw the hooded figures moving in the shadows, creeping about as silently as fog. The guests below never had reason to suspect anything was amiss.

When the band finished playing Madame Wintergrade, the famous philanthropist who had funded the evening’s jubilation took the mic.

“Friends, honoured guests, welcome to this most auspicious event!” She proclaimed, her voice all rich and Britishy, “for tonight, we shall unveil the rarest, most fascinating, and most mysterious item this museum has ever had the privilege of obtaining!”

The crowd was stoked. Madame Wintergrade stepped towards a large velvet veil, which was covering the prized object that the museum had gone to such lengths to procure.

“I present to you...” she said, pausing for dramatic effect, “The Party Emerald!”

She threw aside the veil like a child pulls off the wrapper of a chocolate bar, eager to get at the goodies inside. There, sitting atop a podium and beneath an inch of bullet-proof glass, was a jewel roughly the size of a fist (depending on how big your hands are). It was immaculately cut, and sparkled with brilliance so intense that everyone looking on it put on shades even though they were indoors. A resounding ‘woah’ was heard permeating the room.

The Party Emerald seemed to glow with a light of its own, throbbing and pulsing in time to a rhythm of its own. It seemed like this because it was true. This was a very special rock.

All of a sudden, there was a crashing sound as the glass roof above shattered and six figures descended on ropes. Five of them were dressed in long brown robes, like monks of some sort, and brandishing long curved knives. The last to drop was wearing a different, fancier robe and was obviously the leader. You could tell he was the leader because all of the other guys had hoods on so you couldn’t see their faces, but this guy didn’t bother with that and proudly showed his face to all. His robe was a dark red, lined with gold (although it probably wasn’t real gold because that would be expensive). It had long hanging sleeves and pointy shoulder bits that made him totally look like a wizard.

“If you don’t mind,” he announced loudly, in a voice even Britisher than Madame Wintergrade’s, “I’ll be taking that emerald now.”

“I most certainly do mind!” said Madame Wintergrade. She raised her hand to slap the leader of the robed bandits, but before she could make contact one of the brown-robed lackeys stabbed her in the back. One of the party guests screamed for the security.

“Hahaha!” the leader laughed evily, “We’ve already dealt with the pathetic fools you call security! There is no one left to save you!”

“There’s still me,” a voice called out. Everyone turned to the stage to see the source of the voice. The signer of the party band stepped forward, “I’ll stop you.”

He stood upright, glaring defiantly at the rogues who had interrupted an otherwise bitchin’ party. A gruesome scowl covered his face, his eyes burning for the blood of one who could commit such a heinous act. This gnarly face was framed by even gnarlier hair, black as tar and damp with sweat. He wore a plain white t-shirt and white jeans, both of which looked as though they had been worn for weeks straight. As he stared down the leader of the bad guys the leader gasped in recognition.

“Andrew W.K!”

Andrew pounced from the stage and made for the leader, but was intercepted by two of the guys in brown robes. He dodged their knives with much agility, but it was clear that they were trained killers who would not be easy to defeat. Andrew head-butted one of the in the face and it was fucking brutal, but as he did another mook came up behind him with his knife raised. Andrew barely managed to dodge in time, and as his did delivered a backwards kick which threw the hooded hooligan backwards.

While this was happening, the leader pulled a device about the size of a torch out of his robes. It was a laser specifically designed to cut through the glass protecting the Party Emerald. He got to work freeing his prize while the remaining four henchmen forced the party guests back with their knives and just by generally being menacing, which is easy to do when you have a monkish hooded robe and a big-ass knife. The crowd responded by screaming and running for the clearly labelled exits, leaving the museum mostly empty pretty quickly.

Andrew, having shaken his first two attackers, began running for the leader again. Since it was clear that the party attendants were all escaping, the remaining four goons attacked Andrew at once. One threw his knife directly and Andrew’s face, but Andrew jumped over it and did a mid-air somersault (the somersault didn’t help it just looked cool). When he landed, two more mooks pounced on Andrew, knives at the ready. Andrew did a somersault (which this time did help) and ended up behind them. He grabbed their heads, one in each hand, and banged them together hard. Even through the hoods it would have really hurt.

“Party tip: two heads aren’t always better than one!” said Andrew.

The robed rouge who had thrown his knife now approached Andrew.

“What are you going to do? You’re unarmed!” Andrew laughed. The bad guy responded by pulling a pair of nunchaku from inside his robe and twirling them around in a show-offy manner.

“Oh, so that’s how you wanna play?” Andrew responded, and then puked into his hands. Only it wasn’t vomit that came out, it was two bananas connected by a short chain. Andrew spun the bananachaku around to show he meant business.

The hooded henchman circled Andrew, and the two men never took their eyes off each other, nor did they stop twirling their nunchaku around and just looking so badass. They were locked in a battle of minds (as well as a battle of nunchaku), and the first one to break mentally would surely be the one to break physically.

Of course, there was still one more henchman who came up behind Andrew with a knife. This trick clearly didn’t work, and this guy was swiftly bananachakued in the face and again in the groin. This, however, broke Andrew’s focus and the other man attacked. Andrew was faster, and dodged the attack, but as he attempted to strike back the last henchman jumped over his head and he somersaulted, as if to say “I can do it too, it’s not even that hard”.

Andrew spun on the spot expecting to continue the fight, but instead saw the henchman and the leader running for the exit. They had already taken the Party Emerald! Andrew was about to give chase, but remembered poor sweet Madame Wintergrade bleeding on the floor. He rushed to see if he could help her.

She was unconscious, but still clinging to life. Andrew’s electrifying touch woke her, and she coughed blood all over Andrew’s shirt.

“Hang in there, Madam, I’ll get you some help. I can still save you!” Andrew said, but Madam Wintergrade would have nothing of it.

“Forget me, Andrew. You must retrieve The Party Emerald!” she said, struggling with every word.

“But, Madam, it’s just a rock. A rad rock, sure, but no material object can be as valuable as a human life.”

“You don’t understand! The Party Emerald is too powerful to fall into the wrong hands!”

“What do you mean? What’s so special about this Emerald?”

“Andrew! They’re getting away!”

And sure enough, they were. Andrew got up and ran after them. If the Party Emerald was that important to Madame Wintergrade, then he had to assume it really was something special.

As soon as he got out of the front door he saw the leader and his one remaining henchmen getting on hoverbikes which they had left out front for a speedy getaway.

“You’re too late, Mr Wilkes-Krier, it’s impossible to stop us now!” The leader called out, his voice laden with arrogance.

“Party tip: ‘impossible’ is just a challenge. Anything is possible if you believe in yourself.” Andrew relied. He ran after the two villains, and after a short distance jumped in the air. A trail of mozzarella cheese formed in mid-air beneath his feet, and he began surfing this like a stringy, melted wave in the sky. He was in hot pursuit.

The bad guys also took to the air, and tried to escape Andrew by weaving in-between the city’s many sky-scrapers and alleyways, dipping and ducking under billboards and bridges, doing their best to lose their persistent pursuer. But Andrew stayed close behind them. The hover bikes they were using were very advanced, but no vehicle known to man can out-maneuverer mozzarella.

The henchman had dropped his nunchaku and was now wielding a gun, shooting behind him at Andrew. Andrew, while still surfing a wicked wave of cheese through the air, held out his right hand to the heavens. A bolt of lightning struck his outstretched fingers, creating a blinding flash of light. There, in his hand, a guitar had instantly materialized. It was shaped like a slice of pizza, and was enchanted so that even when not plugged in all could hear the luscious licks and rocking riffs playing on it.

Andrew played some sweet party tunes, and every bullet that the baddies sent his way was evaporated by the sheer intensity of the music. In this way Andrew kept chase of the dastardly duo, sweeping through the city only a couple of meters behind. The hooded henchman grew frustrated and even threw a grenade at Andrew, but this two was rendered inert by the jams emanating from Andrew’s axe. Instead of deadly shrapnel, the grenade burst into streamers and glitter, harmlessly drifting down to the good citizens below.

“That’s the power of positive partying!” called Andrew W.K., taunting his felonious foes.

The two baddies gave each other a look, and then nodded. Then they split up. Even Andrew can’t go in two places at once, but he didn’t know which one had the Emerald. Betting that the leader wouldn’t delegate such an honour to a henchman (this Emerald had proven to be worth more than Madame Wintergrade’s life, you’ll remember), Andrew chose to follow him. The leader was unarmed, so Andrew no longer needed to keep playing to stop bullets, but he did anyway, as people in the streets below and through the windows of buildings he passed were clearly getting their party on as he passed, and even a passing party is a party worth having.

The red robed rogue was starting to falter. He couldn’t concentrate on his escape, as even he was starting to get down to Andrew’s tunes. He could feel his foot tapping of its own accord. He knew from experience that head-bopping would follow. After that, who knows. It was clear that he would have to end this, as he could no longer keep running.

Andrew strummed an especially powerful power chord, which created a shockwave that sent the bad guy lurching forwards into a nearby abandoned warehouse. The vile villain crashed through the window, rolling off his hover bike as he did so. Andrew followed, and once he entered the warehouse he dismounted his mozzarella and left his guitar in its cheesy folds.

The bike slammed into the far wall and exploded. After that brief flash of light, all was dark. “He’ll never be able to see me in this darkness,” thought the bad guy, “whereas I have been trained for years in the shadowy arts. The darkness is my home, and I see as clearly here as in broad daylight”.

What he didn’t realise, however, was that Andrew had some training of his own. Andrew W.K. also lived for the night, and often showered with sunglasses on, both of which had honed his eyesight to see perfectly in near-total darkness. So, when the guy in the red robe thought he was sneaking up behind a blinded victim, he was actually falling into a trap.

The bad guy, well trained in the art of unarmed assassination, reached his hands out to strangle our hero. Feigning ignorance until the last second, Andrew waited until his could feel the warmth of the fingers of his atrocious adversary before spinning around with a powerful roar and karate chop.

“Party tip: bad guys never win. Now hand over The Party Emerald.” Andrew said to his fallen foe. But where Andrew was expecting a cowering and defeated man he was met with only laughter.

“You fool! I don’t have it! I never had it! And now you’ll never stop us!”

“What? You let one of your pawns hold something that valuable?”

“You don’t get it, do you? We’re all pawns! This is way bigger than you could possibly imagine!”

“We? Who are you people? And what do you want with The Party Emerald?” Andrew demanded, shaking the man he once thought a leader. (Although to be fair, I thought he was the leader too. He fooled everyone!)

“Hahahaha! As if I would ever tell you that!”

“I have ways of making you talk.” and Andrew reached into his pocket and pulled out an extra sharp corn chip, covered in even sharper cheese.

“Alright, alright! Just don’t cut me! I’m not good with blood!”

“Then talk!”

“I belong to an organisation called-“ but before the bad guy could finish his confession he was struck by a shuriken and instantly died.