"Hello? Fun Time Balloon Co.?"

"Yes, do you sell in bulk?"

"Well, umm, how many do you have?"

*click* A sigh, a rattle as his fingers passed over the number pad next to the phone, he rubbed his temples and stared at the tally in front of the room as he listened to the ensign next to him...

"Hello? Happy Time Balloon Co.?

" "Yes, do you sell in bulk?"

"Well, umm, how many do you have?"

*click* A groan from this one as he enters a number and glances to the front of the room. "Nine billion? Is that /it/? I need a Jolt..."

Felton jerked his head around as his revelrie was interrupted by the doorchime. "nuq?"

The door slid open and a young beq walked in. "Sir.." He trailed off, staring out the window at the same thing the admiral had been moments before, becoming lost in the attempt to track the various shuttles and space-suited men as they flitted over the now light golden-brown behemoth.

Felton eyed the man, new enough that his eyepatch hadn't even frayed around the edges yet, and let him stare a few seconds. "Yes...?"

He shook his head briefly. "Oh, umm, er, yes, sir.. the, umm, glaze. The glaze is finished."

"I see that. And?"

The young man glanced at the pad he was carrying, wondering how he ever got assigned to this.. thing. "The, uhh, chocolate, sir. They're ready to start on the chocolate."

A mildly annoyed sigh. "Of course." He waved his hand and mumbled a dismissal. "jat." He followed a few seconds later, grumbling to himself. "A huge army called from every corner of this universe and some of several others to fight an ultimate evil and /I'm/ the only one who can draw.. a crew of yIHmey would be less bothersome."

Shortly after, had someone still been in the admiral's office, they would've been able to watch as all but one of the shuttles backed away from what could still be faintly recognized as the LDS _Hood_ and a wavy, dark brown line began to make its way around the approximate middle of the ship.

The phones are silent, the room occupied by only two lieutenants, sipping coffee and waiting for the next shift.

"When the japanese markets open?"

"Half an hour or so."

"Just what the hell does anybody need eighty-two trillion smiley balloons for anyway? I doubt there are eighty-two trillion balloons of any kind on the entire planet, let alone godawful bright yellow smiling ones."

"Don't ask me, man. If I'd known half the shit I do now about what TRES is into before I joined... hell, I'm prolly lucky I'm not drooling on myself in a padded room somewhere."

A soft snort followed by a chuckle. "I hear you there.. 'Join the Corps, travel, defend the world.' My brother, he joined the Navy. Me? No, I couldn't join the Navy, I needed /adventure/. Y'know the new GA? I heard the guy before her was a robot. The guy before him? A talking fox. And TRES is supposed to be the 'normal' JAO."

A raised eyebrow. "A talking fox and a robot?"

He shrugs, another chuckle. "Just what I hear man, and not the least of it. Alien magic trying to destroy the world, dimensional portals, space fleets, big lizards blowing everything up--"

The portable comm unit in the corner of the room interrupted him. He walked over to answer. "Yes? Oh, yes, Sir, only about ten billion. The Church of St. Dino the Avenger's bringing in how many?" He stifled a laugh as his partner pantomimed smoking motions at the mention of the other JAO, then tapped the number into the nearest keypad. "If I may ask, sir, why--" he was cut off, listend a couple minutes longer, gave a final "Yes, Sir," and hung up.

"He tell you what the balloons are for?"

"I'm sorry I asked. Well, the Church is bringing in some, and now somebody's supposed to be making 'em. I still don't see how we'll ever come up with eighty-two trillion damned balloons though."

"Somebody's making them?"

"Don't ask, I get the feeling this whole operation's a little less than all-the-way official."

"Gee, you don't say?" He smirked as the next shift filed in, sat at the phones, and began speaking rapidly in japanese. "How do you say 'I need eighty-two trillion smiley balloons' in japanese anyway?"

A slightly battered old Volkswagon bus, bright blue with a huge picture of the Flintstones' Barney and Dino on either side, winds its way through a Colorado mountain highway. One of its occupants barks loudly at a passing Lexus.

"Where is this place anyway?" The barker asked when the luxury car passed.

"Pick a hollow mountain, any hollow mountain."

"There are quite an abundance of those I hear."

"It should not be more than another twenty miles."

"How do you always know that sort of thing?"

"It /is/ twenty miles ahead."

<About twenty miles later, at the first entry checkpoint at VRDET headquarters. Music: Phish, "The Moma Dance," _The Story of the Ghost_>

"Names?"

"Consulates DragonFyre and Fireball, Church of St. Dino the Avenger."

"Hmph. And your business here is..?"

"We have a, er.. package for Professor Malaclypse. Just clear us, we're expected."

About fifteen minutes later, fully inside the mountain, on the main parking level. The consulates got out of their van, DragonFyre holding a small, plain brown package and Fireball wrapped in a cloak with his omnipresent staff in hand. Asking after Malaclypse, they were directed to an elevator, pushed the bottom button, waiting, and had just stepped off when the elevator doors slammed shut and a very thick-looking metal door fell into place in front of them.

Klaxons sounded, loud ones. Red lights started flashing.

The Second Consulate looked around. "Maybe we're the millionth customer?"

Over the klaxons, several rapid and loud bangs could be heard accompanied by several very surprised, panicked exclamations. And a singular, calmer voice.

"Shut it off. Shut it off. Close the gate. And contain... this."

Fireball whirled with a speed and fluidity of motion that would've been unnerving had anybody been watching, his staff flashing out to deflect whatever encroaching danger he'd perceived behind them. The balloon, smiling despite the whack, floated harmlessly away. As the klaxons quieted, the consulates went to investigate the shouting.

And immediately looked as puzzled as anybody else in the room which was filled to about knee level with bright yellow smiley balloons in various states of inflation.

Malaclypse, his black attire standing out more than usual in the present surroundings, glanced at the two consulates, nodding acknowledgement and making his way over through the balloons when DragonFyre waved the package at him.

He waved his hand back at the room before accepting the package. "The perils of interdimensional travel. Thanks, few people've been waiting for this."

"No problem," DragonFyre replied, "I guess when they say anything that can happen will they mean it huh?"

A chuckle. "You have no idea. You're headed to TRES, aren't you? Tell Lieutenant Harmon I may have a solution to his, er, aquisitions problem."

Lt. Harmon (who for informational purposes is the Lt. whose brother joined the Navy), his partner, and the two consulates watched the van being unloaded.

Harmon failed to contain his bewilderment.. "That actually happened? Y'know, I actually believe it too. Hell, I shoulda expected it.. one finds a really damned weird way to use a shitload of balloons, the other has to find an even weirder way to get them. Just as well, we're only up to about thirty billion even with the ones we're making." This time he ignored his partner's smoking pantomime as he sipped his coffee pensively. "Say, can either of you handle an air compressor?"

Fireball finishes blowing into a final balloon, ties it off, and tosses it into a large cargo container. Harmon sets down his coffee to seal the container and key in the pressurization sequence.

He retrieves his mug, listening to the hum as the container is pressurized for spaceflight. "Well, that's the last load, you two going up in the final shuttle to see what this is all about? There's no way I'm missing it, not after all this."

<An indeterminate number of hours and coffee cups later, aboard the newly-christened Explain Star..>

Harmon looked around the observation deck, then out the windows set into the rubber duckie-shaped ship's giant headband, across the huge, joint-shaped main gun clamped in its bill, and at the nine mile long ship that had been painted like a chocolate donut with sprinkles, filled with eighty-one and a half trillion of the eighty two trillion smiley balloons he'd helped procure, and was soon to be launched into the sun; he made a deliberate, concerted effort not to wonder. In fact, a nice chocolate donut with sprinkles was starting to sound pretty good.

The ship, officially known as the LDS _Hood_ but now mostly referred to as "My god that's a huge fuckin' donut" became smaller and harder to see as it hurtled toward the sun and the occupants of the Explain Star's observation deck relied more and more on the monitors situated around the room for a view of the huge ship as it proudly flew to its doom.

<Music cue: "Good Morning Starshine">

Music played from unseen speakers as the donut was only minutes away from its destruction inside the sun's gigantic nuclear furnace. Some of those present sang along happily, others raised mugs and shouted something that sounded like "kah-plah!" Harmon didn't recognize the language.

A crewmember with a red hankerchief tied over his hair and an eyepatch with a hole cut in it over his left eye, obviously a little less sober than he was, slapped Harmon vigorously on the back.

"Arrrrr! 'Tis glorious, is it not?" He grinned.

"Yes, umm, quite." He briefly wondered what his brother was doing at the moment. Then his attention finally turned back to the nearest monitor. It looked like one of the main airlocks had come open, and bright yellow smiley balloons, which amazingly weren't popping right away, were spewing out en masse. Harmon knew all too well that there could easily be a few hundred million balloons waiting to escape in any of the outer chambers, they'd likely be coming out until the ship was destroyed. He stifled a laugh suddenly, the image of a nine mile long chocolate-covered donut with multicolored sprinkles on top, spewing bright yellow smileyface balloons like some sort of freakish radioactive custard filling from three airlocks now as it hurtled toward the sun in a suicide dive becoming too much. It was quite close now, and Harmon realized that somebody had managed to time the song so that the giant ship would enter the sun and be destroyed just as the final notes were struck. "What kind of mind comes up with this sort of thing?" he wondered, "Whoever it is, I hope it's the same one that came up with this ship, I don't wanna think about two of 'em running around loose in the universe. For that matter, what third grader did they get to design those airlocks?" At that moment, a fourth started spewing balloons.

The overly cheery song began to wind its way to a close. The balloons, either gone or vaporized, stopped their exodus from the giant space pastry; even the painted sprinkles were beginning to melt and blur. A moment later, the song finally ended and the donut fully entered the sun, exploding rather spectacularly as it did. Harmon chuckled at the raucus, exuberant cheers and looked to the windows. He could see nothing yet, but knew there were likely the beginnings of probably a very large solar flare where the former flagship of the Legion of Doom had met its end, and wondered what the various earthbound astronomers would think of it when it became detectable by solar monitoring stations. He turned away and laughed aloud, finally joining the chorus of cheers as he saw what somebody had brought out to finish the celebration: several boxes of donuts, all partially covered in chocolate and topped with sprinkles.

<About a week later, in the Grand Admiral's office at TRES hq.>

GA Davies glanced over the last batch of reports for the day. These had just come in, it was late, and she wanted to get out of the office. She scanned over the last one...

"Wha?!" She actually said it out loud, then slapped the activation button on her intercom, hoping her aide was still there. "This last report, is this real? There's confirmation? Those zeros aren't a typo?"

A few keyclicks. "The storage requisition? Everything looks okay, Admiral Felton authorized it."

The Grand Admiral's voice lowered, her tone made the aide glad it was the end of the day and he was leaving soon. "Find him." She said slowly. "And when you do, ask him exactly what am I supposed to do with four hundred eighty billion smiley balloons and why there are four hundred eighty billion smiley balloons sitting in Corps storage for me to wonder about."

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