Initiative

Sputtering, Ross woke up. Once again, that homicidal devil cat had curled up on his face. He flailed at the pudgy tortoiseshell thing until it leaped onto the coffee table, then behind the TV. Ross could feel his eyes swelling already as he swiped the fur from his face, his vision blurred from sleep and dander.

“Mhnn.”

Eventually, he realized the fuzzed-out form next to the window was Geoff, his roommate. Detail gradually resolved, and he saw that Geoff was wearing a suit, and pulling back the curtain to look out. Ross yawned until his jaw popped.

“Ow! Sonuva…”

Geoff looked up from the window, smirking copiously. “Ah, you’re up. Good. I see you didn’t make it to bed. Again.”

“Yeah, it happens.” Ross scratched at the all-over itch he always got from sleeping in his clothes, and Geoff turned back to the window. “Something outside?”

“Mmm-hmm,” Geoff said, nodding slowly. “Oh, yeah.”

“Huh.” Breakfast would be good. “We got any bagels?”

Geoff didn’t respond. He only peered out the window, chuckling to himself. His shoes, Ross noticed, were freshly polished.

“Dude, what are you looking at?”

His eyes didn’t leave whatever-it-was outside. Ross could just now hear a helicopter overhead.

“Well,” Geoff said, reaching up to straighten his tie, “you know how we’re always talking about taking over the world?”

Ross ruffled his own hair, flakes of dried hair gel floating down to collect on the coffee table. “Uh, yeah. Like, buy up all the toilet paper factories and hold the world hostage?” He chuckled. “That one might work.”

Geoff nodded generously. “Sure, it might’ve.”

Huh?

“Huh?”

“Well, I wasn’t doing anything yesterday, so…” Geoff shrugged. “I did it.”

The cat jumped on top of the TV and mewed, seemingly at Ross. Ross glared at it for a moment, then… he gave his roommate a high eyebrow. “The toilet paper thing?”

“No, no. The one plan with the manifesto and all the pies. It worked.”

That one was Geoff’s idea. “…wait, it what?”

“Yeah!” Geoff let the curtain go and scratched the cat’s head. It closed its eyes and leaned into his fingers. “I set up the website last night, it got like a billion hits, and the revolution was on! It was over by dawn. We win.”

It was Ross’ idea to use the Internet. He rose from the couch, which groaned. Ross looked back at it. Like sitting on an old man. “So…” He pulled back the curtain.

Outside stood a squad of fully armed soldiers, all wearing orange berets and holding M-16s. An Apache circled overhead, bristling with Sidewinder missiles and rocket pods. Geoff smoothed his slicked-back hair, grinning in approval.

Ross allowed himself to stare for about thirty seconds. “Um… who are they?”

“Those, my friend, are our elite bodyguards. The Order of Phoebe.”

Ross choked on himself, clapping a hand over his own mouth to avoid laughing aloud at the highly trained warriors at the apartment’s front door. “Oh, my… you didn’t tell them-“

“Psh! No! You kidding?” The cat mewed again, this time at Geoff. He waved one hand at her. “Hush, Phoebe.”

“Dude.”

“Indeed.”

The two stared out at their troops for a few minutes.

Geoff sniffed the air, then looked Ross up and down, unapprovingly. “You should get a shower. We’ve got a speech in like, an hour.”

Ross nodded grudgingly and started down the hall. He paused next to the bathroom door. “So, we don’t have any bagels?”

The Apache came around for another pass. “No,” Geoff said over the sound of the rotors. “But I’ll get someone on that.”