The History of a Runner/14

Chapter 14: The Epic Ending, Part 2
"STOP!"

At the sound of that scream, everybody stopped fighting and turned to whoever had screamed it. That person turned out to be...

"Jamey?" Matt questioned.

"What are you doing here, H?" Agent G asked. "I thought you had decided to stay at AISS."

H? AISS? Mike thought. What are these guys talking about?

Jamey looked at the confused faces of his friends. "I guess I have some explaining to do..." He told the whole story &mdash; about the experiment with Egon sciuntid, how the dumb animal characters came to be, how they were trying to track everyone down. He explained what AISS was and what they wanted, and how he was so confused, and he was to blame for this whole situation. "I'm sorry for all this mess. What can I do to get us out of it?"

"What you can do is help us get the participants back to AISS," G said, not phased by what his colleague had said.

"No way!" Homestar cried. "I'd wathew die than &mdash;" he was whacked on the head before he could finish. "Ow!"

Matt sighed. "Please, Jamey," he pleaded, "don't take them back. They're not causing any harm, and..." He trailed off.

Jamey looked around. He wasn't sure what to do. He loved AISS, and he was committed to do whatever he could to help...but his friends looked like they knew best, and he couldn't bear to tell them they didn't. It was so stressful, everybody telling him to go on his side, he grabbed the first thing he could find &mdash; a pillow &mdash; and throwing it as hard as he could to tell everyone to back off.

And it hit G square in the head.

Which gave his friends time to start attacking again.

The chaos continued &mdash; science against passion, friend pitted against friend, babies havin' babies &mdash; when the ex-participants managed to push the AISS out the door, so surprisingly they didn't know they were doing it. Thinking quickly, Jackie locked the door. She yelled a quick "and STAY out!" for good measure.

They watched for a minute. G seemed to still want to continue, but from what they could make out most, if not all, of the other scientists wanted nothing more to do with it, and to just quit. Eventually G gave in, they got into their cars, and left.

It was over. They were free.

"So...what now?" Craig asked.

Mike turned to him. "Did we ever finish that book we were writing?"

"Hm...come to think of it, no."

"A book?" Homestar asked. "What book?"

"Oh, it's a book you gave me an idea for when we met," Mike explained. "The Homestar Runner Enters the Strongest Man in the World Contest."

"Ooh! Ooh!  Tell me mohe!"

Glad that everything stressful was over, Mike, Matt, Craig, Missy, Jackie, and the ex-participants sat down in Jackie's house as Mike and Craig started to explain their book. While everybody was listening, making suggestions here and there, Matt sat back and thought, ''You know what? This may just work. One giant, quirky, dysfunctional family. This is gonna be fine.''

THE END