Meanwhile, Sally, Tristen and Rowena were currently in the central island of the Secret Island Network, in the process of downloading the crucial parts of the Blueprint, but… it was taking time.
15%… 16%… 17%…
Oh.
Why was it taking so long?!
___
"Shameless!!!"
"H-he's doing it again!!!"
The esteemed readers in the audience raised their "Shameless" placards even as they quickly figured out what Author was up to.
It was especially after that high-stakes scene where he had literally raised the steaks, it was only then that they had… fully realised the true depths of his depravity…
Would he resort to using this download bar as yet another cliché way to increase the hype and drama?!
___
Back to Clive, who didn't care a whole lot about the download bar. Instead, he was more thinking about ice cream bars, since he now almost frozen so cold that his teeth were chattering and he was shivering…
He could see one of the Dark Rizzards - possibly his name was Hugo, was it?! - look at him with a strange look of both sympathy and... relief (?!) even as he mentally noted that *everything* was going limp…
___
That said, Clive was still one of the ARSES, an adult, and an elite performer…
He wouldn't allow himself to 'go down' so easily.
It was time. He turned to a locked closet with shaking hands… yes, it was indeed the very one that he had sworn to never unlock unless there was no other option… and… unlocked it!!!
The Dark Rizzards gasped as they were mesmerized by both the turn of events as well as the key that was girth-ily rotating in the lock…
Pushing his shivering hands past the dusty skeleton which fell out, Clive withdrew a sleek black case, and took out… the custom made gun.
Everyone held their breath. To be fair, like in every movie scene, they probably could have easily stopped Clive from unlocking the closet if they had been bothered, but they knew better than to interrupt the plot.
Clive exhaled as he adopted an expression of grim determination, which was offset by the fact that the gun he pulled out looked like a brightly coloured water pistol for kids - even if it did come equipped with a large double-sac-like tank and a very long, thick and well-nurtured nozzle.
This was no ordinary gun.
That's right. It was Clive's ultimate weapon:
The Flu-Shot-Gun.
___
The Flu-Shot-Gun was in fact technically just like any other water pistol, except that instead of water, it had been specially modified to fire flu-shot - a special kind that could penetrate deeply into his victims rendering them powerless as their bodies struggled to assimilate the viral fragments.
Clive knew he didn't have long before his system shut down from the cold. It was now or never.
Trudging forward, he shook everything up, and let loose, spraying out torrents upon torrents of his finishing fluid and drenching the hapless Dark Rizzards in buckets of DNA and RNA.
"Aaagggghhhhhh!!!!!" The Dark Rizzards reeled back, many unable to handle the squirting, streaming spray of spraying streams…
Clive stepped forward with ruthless precision, splurging out his stores, even giving a few hops at the end to eke out the very last drops, and then smearing the tip of his long, spent gun against a downed Dark Rizzard's puffer jacket, wiping and cleaning the traces, but he knew that after this burst of glory… that this was as far as he could go.
It was too bad. He had aimed for the Dark Rizzard Leaders, but they had ruthlessly held several of the DRSABCDs in front of them, forcing them to take the streams amidst their screams…
Clive's tanks in every sense were now empty. He slumped down, teeth chattering, immobilized by the cold.
Several of the Dark Rizzards mercilessly tossed their drenched and unresponsive minions aside, rolled the shivering Clive - who was now curled into a ball from the cold temperature - over and grabbed the curled up Blueprint from where it had been tucked into his briefs…
"$&@^%#…"
"Never did I think that I would be forced to pull a long important object out of a man's briefs…"
("W-Why are they swearing?! And why is that part of Clive pixelated?!" Ino Sainté asked curiously and wide-eyed).
In the end, although Clive had won the moral victory,
The Dark Rizzards had now obtained the second piece of the EVP Blueprint…
___
That said, Despite their success, The Dark Rizzards had not escaped unscathed.
Thanks to both Jon and Clive's heroics, Their numbers were now approximately down by 30%, either wiped out by Jon's Air Palms or permanently shutdown by Clive's flu-shot-gun.
First, Jon. Now, Clive.
Clive had lasted for as long as he could, but would it be enough?
___