DoofQuest- a Disney Villains Victorious CK2-Style Quest

Prog 2000: Lions of the Wasteland

"Face it Jonesy, we're bloody lost. And down to the last picnic basket." Roman grumbled, wiping Wasteland grime from his mask as the Lionheart trio continued their aimless trek through the biting sandstorms and scrap metal.

"It's not as bad as all that, gentlemen." The towering combat robot Q1-11 replied demurely. "First off, I find myself quite unbothered by these conditions. Second, you're not down to your last picnic basket - that basket's quite empty."

"We're - what? No food at all? Q, how's that supposed to be better?"

"Well, tea's in ready supply."

"Of all the - why you - I could -"

For once at a loss for words, Roman grabbed the empty basket and threw it, only for Jonesy to catch it.

"Careful there Roman. Gift from the Basket-Weaving Monks, wasn't it? Could still be important, eh?"

Roman sighed. "That's desperation talking, Jonesy. Those monks might have known a thing or two back when they still had the Book of Rules to hold sewing circle over. Since it changed into a basket manual they've been a bunch of basket cases, and it's only gotten worse with it gone entirely. You know that as well as anybody. Just throw the thing away."

Jonesy shrugged and tossed the basket over his shoulder.

"Whatever you say boss. But speaking of desperation… weren't you the one that let those basket cases talk us all the way out here on some wild goose hunt for another book? Or am I remembering wrong? No, maybe it was Q, or my dear Uncle Stan, saying 'Jonesy - go trek through some beknighted Yank junkyard, it'll do wonders for your skin'?"

The two thieves stood in standoff for a moment. Then, eyes downcast, Roman walked past his comrade and retrieved the basket.

They walked in silence after that.

--

"Link! Pa!"

Elmer Angel Junior burst into the Angel Gang's hovel with a loud whoop, drawing squinting glares from his mutant kinfolk. "Folk walkin' the Cursed Earth today, out by the West botheap! Heard 'em jawing about baskets!"

"Pa -"

"Shut your Drokkin' mouth, Link!" Elmer "Pa" Angel bellowed, shoving his son aside in his haste. "Junior, keep talkin'! They have anything on 'em worth stealing?"

"All shape and size of guns and ammo, pa! And one of them was a big chrome robit! Kane's cronies and the Duke'll pay good for working parts! Let's get out there, I wanna slice 'em!"

"Grud on a greenie! That's fine evenin' news! Storms gonna be a bitin' soon, they'll have to take shelter in one of those hollowed-out wrecks if they don't want to get sanded down smooth. Easy prey! You just keep quiet and trail 'em, we'll gut them good once they lay down for the night."

"Pa -"

At the interruption, Pa Angel turned and slapped Link across the head.

"Link! Consarn it! Shoulda drilled a shuddup dial inna your head back when we fixed up your brother Mean! What you got to say's so important anyways?"

"Ah, Drokk! Mean's what up, Pa. Weren't he out by the West botheap today? Because if you want our Angel Gang huntin' these rabbits quiet-like… you don't want the rabbit anyplace near the Mean Machine."

Pa mulled his words over a moment in worried silence, then turned and slapped Junior across the head.

"Consarn it Junior! Why didn't you warn me Mean was gonna make a botch of this! Shoulda drilled you a smart dial! Now grab your heat and let's get hunting!"

---

Unaware of the attention they had already drawn, the Lionhearts had finally reached the first building miles, seemingly long-abandoned but its locked door still quite intact.

"Jonesy!" Roman shouted over the noise of the fast-approaching sandstorm, finally breaking the silence. "We're gonna need to shelter up - looks like a real doozy coming our way. Can you blow the door open?"

"Rather not, Roman! Those tracks look a lot fresher than this building does! Smoke or a flash could draw attention we'd rather miss, just shoot the bloomin' lock!"

"Alright, alright… one silenced slug, just what Doctor Rexus ordered…"

Roman drew one of his numerous firearms and pulled the trigger. A moment later, an enormous shark head burst from the ground, tearing the door and much of the wall apart with an ear-splitting roar before submerging. Jonesy and Roman hurled themselves to safety, while Q nonchalantly refilled his teacup from his hip spigot and took a sip.

"Perhaps the gun labels could use revisiting? Land shark ammo's not so cheap these days, you know I keep track..."

"Very droll, Q. Door's open, let's get inside."

"WHO MAKES NOISE?"

"What's that now, Jones-"

Roman paused. It hadn't been Jonesy's voice. Turning cautiously around, he beheld an imposing, downright mean-looking cyborg. Oversized mechanical arm on one side, shoulder stump on the other. If there was one feature that drew the eye, though, it had to be the four-setting dial on his metal-plated forehead.

"Oh, er. Greetings! We are the Lionhearts!" Jonesy cautiously declared.

"Loin arts? Sounds lewd! In fact it's getting me downright angry!" Mean "Machine" Angel bellowed back. The Lionhearts, backed up against the wall, drew their firearms in readiness.

"Look, crock pot. We don't want any fighting here, yeah? Just tucking in for the night - been saving our last pint, it's yours if you'll leave us alone. Anybody round here know how to be properly nice to travelers?"

"Nice? NICE? You see this dial on my head? At one, I ain't very nice at all! At a two, I get downright mean! It's why they call me the Mean Machine!" To demonstrate, he cranked the dial to 2, his teeth grinding into a snarl and veins popping on his neck.

Jonesy rolled his eyes. "Bloody hell, you listen to this nutcase! Imagine growing up in this junkyard, it must turn men into mad brutes!"

"Oh, I'm from Texas 'riginally." Mean interjected. The Lionhearts nodded in understanding. At least that made sense.

Then they opened fire.

Raising his mechanical arm as a shield, Mean effortlessly deflected Jonesy's shotgun blast, then swung its bladed fingers savagely through Q1-11's hip as the large robot attempted to grapple him. Tea began spraying from the wound and pooling on the hard-packed ground.

"MY TEA! I'm leaking, I'm leaking ambrosia - AAAH! The cherry rooibos! It's mixed with the mint!" Q cried, kneeling and trying to salvage tea in his cupped metal fingers, the battle momentarily forgotten. He forgot a lot more moments later when a savage headbutt from Mean sent him crashing into the wall with a dented head.

"Bollocks - Q! Get up, can you stop this beast?" Roman demanded.

"I can… plant a hedgerow. With some myrtle, and maybe a row of geraniums…" The dazed robot replied.

"ALRIGHT YOUSE GUYS ASKED FOR IT! TIME TO GET BRUTAL!" Mean bellowed, turning his forehead dial up to 3 and charging.

"Well Q, you can complain about the expense when you're back in one piece… take this, you tin-plated ingrate!"

Switching weapons, Roman fired again. A rapidly-growing embryonic land shark disappeared into the ground beneath him, a huge shark fin ripping out of the soil moments later and tearing towards Mean. With an explosion of scrap metal, the colossal beast burst from the wasteland, jaws wide for a meal of cyborg.

Mean headbutted it.

Roman and Jonesy paused a moment to watch the shark sail gracefully over the top of the bot heap, disappearing into the distance.

Then they turned and ran.

---

"Alright, Pa, right around here's where they gotta be holin' up. I saw 'em, I get first slice."

"We all get a piece, Junior. Now just wait quiet-like. I don't see hide nor tail of Mean, so maybe we can still make a proper ambush of this."

"Wait, Pa!" Link interjected, testing the blade of his hatchet. "I reckon I hear some-"

Link was cut off when a stunned land shark landed on him, knocking him senseless and rather startling his kinfolk.

"Drokk! Junior, get your - wait, what's that consarned sound?"

"aaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

The sound was Jonesy and Roman screaming as they ran through the wasteland towards the waiting Angel Gang, Mean Angel hot on their heels.

"Shoot him! Shoot him Roman!"

"I'm bloody trying! He's headbutted thirteen sharks and I'm running out of ammo!"

"Who headbutts sharks?" Jonesy cried in exasperation.

"Who headbutts robots?" Roman countered.

"WHO WANTS A HEADBUTT?" Mean bellowed, charging headlong through scrapheaps and obstacles in his pursuit of the fleeing Lionhearts.

Fumbling through his pack of explosives as he ran, Jonesy gingerly pulled out fist-sized sticky bomb and tossed it to Roman.

"Here, I reckon we can slow him down if we blow the dial, yeah? You get in close and slap it on his forehead and we might have a shot!"

""Get in close? To that? Not bloody likely, Jonesy! Why don't you -" Roman began to protest, before rounding a corner and coming face-to-face with Pa and Junior. "Wait! People, regular people, we're saved!"

As the meanest, cruelest bunch of bandits for miles, Elmer and Junior Angel were used to people taking off in flight or begging for mercy at their approach. Seeing the Lionhearts running towards them thanking the stars for their luck was a new experience to say the least.

"Old timer! I'm Roman, and there's a mad cyborg on my tail! You live round here, you gotta hide us!"

The Angels drew their weapons menacingly. "These the rabbits you meant, Junior?"

"Er… if you mean Jonesy, he's a mole." Roman replied with growing concern. "Oh heck, you're just as mad as rock 'em sock 'em back there aren't you."

"Maddest, baddest family in the Cursed Earth." Elmer replied with an evil grin, picking his teeth with his knife. Jonesy gulped. "Looks like young Mean worked useful for once, drove the suckers right into our snare."

"Ok, this has been charming and all, but we're armed and dangerous and we don't have time to chat, so get out of our bloody way or we'll -"

"FOUND YOU!" Came the cry as Mean tore through the trash cube behind them, careening into the Lionhearts and Angels and sending all four flying like ragdolls. Coming to a rest at the far end of the clearing, he turned around, finally noticing his bruised family among the casualties. "Oh, sorry Pa."

The four each pulled themselves from the wreckage, getting to their feet as quickly as they could. Jonesy got up quickest, firing a shotgun blast that sent Junior ducking behind some scrap.

"Nowhere left to run, Roman, we'll 'ave to fight it! I've got the hicks covered, you get that bomb on the big fella!"

"HEADBUTT JOUST!" Yelled Mean as he lowered his head and began barrelling toward Roman.

"Er… Jonesy, I don't suppose you've got some kind of crash helmet in that pack of yours… or a spare head?" Roman asked nervously as the juggernaut approached.

"Just get it done man!"

"Oh, bollocks. I can't believe I'm doing this. Those monks better know their bloody basket weaving." He muttered under his breath, pulling the basket over his head for what little head protection it might provide, then turning to meet Mean's charge. "Alright then tin can, here's a gift from Uncle -"

The two heads met with a sound like an artillery shell, the basket exploding into loose straw as Roman was hurled senseless across the clearing.

"These kooks and their baskets ain't no match for us Angels! Nice violence, brother Mean! Now help me quiet down this mole 'ere!" Junior piped up gleefully, wrestling with Jonesy for the shotgun. Mean turned…

And headbutted Junior two feet down into the hard wasteland soil.

"Son! No 'buttin family! Turn your Drokking dial down!" Elmer commanded.

"There's straw in the dial, Pa! It's jammed on four and a half! I'm going into an UNCONTROLLABLE BUTTING FRENZY!"

"Oh, Grud." Was all Elmer managed before another headbutt sent him sailing into the sunset, to land in a pile of battered land sharks.
As Jonesy watched, Mean began to race around the clearing, ranting about baskets and headbutting everything in sight for a solid five minutes before his rampage was ended by a crushing metal fist to his forehead plate.

"Death to the salad eaters!" Grumbled the still-dazed Q1-11.

---

An hour later, both groups were sheltered in the abandoned building as the storm blew through, the Angel Gang tightly bound and stacked in front of the mangled door to keep the sand out.

"Hold still if you want your tea spigot fixed, Q, I can't make this mess of parts out one from the other…" Jonesy grumbled, doing his best to mend his robot companion.

"Jonesy old chap, I am glad you got my head fixed at least, even if I still can't stop thinking about gardening. It'll be a bitter trek with my tea tank empty though, and we're no closer to finding that Book of Rules for the monks."

"Say, if you nice fellas are just looking for a book of rules, I've got one." Mean offered sweetly.

"Ah, thanks a million cha - BOLLOCKS!" Roman blurted, jumping back in surprise. "You're awake already? Hell, I sedated the rocks off you doorstops. And what's with this friendly talk, you think I'm that dim?"

"No, not at all, friends, just trying to help a traveler in need." The cyborg replied with a smile. "Oh, I hope I wasn't too rough with you before! Pa said I was too soft for the Cursed Earth, dialed me up to make me tough, he did. Best years of my life. Though I wish he'd let me keep the arm."

"I mean, the old man does seem sick enough for it… but what the hell's an illiterate soup can doing with our book?"

"Made a little fightin' pit. Figured I'd wait until somebody came looking for it, and then shoot 'em with rockets from me arm."

"Your machine arm shoots rockets?" Roman asked, arching one eyebrow.

"No."

"Couple of holes in that plot of yours then, isn't there?"

"Yeah, but the soundtrack was pretty good."

After looking at each other in bewilderment a moment, the Lionhearts took a quick huddle to confer.

"Alright, this Yank's a few drops short of a blood pudding. But do you think metalhead's whacked family story's the truth? We gonna trust him now the dial's gone?"

"Well, we don't have any other leads to follow, unless you count a trail of stunned sharks. Might as well pick through the brute's colouring books. I do wonder what he meant by Cursed Earth, of course."

"Probably just their local name for the Midwest Scotland."

"That's 'Exclusion Zone', you wanker…"

"M'wife Sadie exclusionzoned me." Mean added. "Thought we was special."

The Lionhearts looked at him a moment in continued bewilderment before Roman reached a decision.

"Alright, pie plate, s'better than you deserve, but we'll bite. Storm's about over, so tell me where your stash is, and your house and any food you got, and we'll leave you and your mates to untie yourselves when the sedatives wear off."

---

"Well, roger me lewdly. That Mean Machine was on the level." Roman declared in mild surprise, chewing on a roast rat in the Angel Family hovel and flipping through their prize. "Book of the Law… well, close enough to a Book of Rules, eh? Should kick those monks off their basket habit!"

"Worth celebrating, isn't it chaps?" Q1-11 asked. "Should have just a dribble left at the bottom of the tea tank. Bottoms up, eh?"

Q twisted the handle on his hip all the way, but not a drop came out of the spigot.

"Ah, sorry Q." Jonesy offered. "Spigot still broken? Musta used the wrong parts… you alright?"

"TIME TO GET BRUTAL." replied Q, headbutting Jonesy.

---

"Link! Drokk it, can't you get Mean fixed any faster?" Elmer Angel yelled, rubbing his wrists where the bindings had bit.

"I'm tryin' Pa, it's just a mess of loose parts on this floor - there! He's fixed!"

"Alright Angels, we're hunting those bastards that rustled us, and we're skinning the lot! Crank 'im up to four!"

Link obliged, cranking the dial on Mean's head to four. Mean continued to sit and smile sweetly.

"You botch the job, spugwit? He's not looking any - Grud on a greenie, what's that pouring outta his nose?"

"Want some tea, Pa?"


-END


A/N Did you know Disney did the 1995 Stallone Judge Dredd movie? And for no properly explained reason at all, Mean Machine drops the Book of the Law in the SNES game? Who'd a thunk?