Disclaimer: I do not own Love Hina, Max Payne, Saint's Row and wacky pulp magazines involving awesome Zeppelins and terrible, gruesome gorillas – as well as Cobra Starship's theme song for Snakes on a Plane and other songs.

Looper Mayhem!

49.

Aboard the Amallan Kaollan. Over the Capital of Molmol...

"Any more bright ideas?" observed Undercover Cop Naru acidly while reloading both her empty pistols and delivered a neck-snapping roundhouse kick at the one charging over the prone, bullet-ridden bodies of his comrades.

"Beats me," shrugged Cop Keitaro, readjusting his square-framed prescription sunglasses, and introduced the butt of his shotgun into the face of one of Kaolla Su's black-suited goons from Molmol and a few seconds later made a messy work out of another with a well-placed buckshot shell.

"Maybe you shouldn't have delivered those lines from Thor Vol. 3 # 3 where the god of thunder talks down Iron Man when she tried putting those rectangular-shaped glasses on you and you backhanded her real good." She continued arguing.

"She deserved it for cryin' out loud! She hunted all of us down, tries to imprison us – Is this how she defines friendship!" And emptied his two remaining shells, as he finished the sentence, into more of their would-be Molmolian captors.

They had escaped the reception area, fleeing through internal chambers and large gangways of their floating prison, leaving the other girls behind to ease their flight – or actually keep them out of the line of fire of their roaring rampage of revenge.

When Kaolla Su decided to take those who considered her a friend by force to the Pacific island nation of Molmol, like she did in many loops, how little did she expect that some of her captives were dangerous time loopers to cross, veterans of countless battles who didn't take kindly to any form of betrayal. The royal princess' trusted retainers and bodyguards were no strangers to violence, but the sheer savagery and desperation of the escapees had kept them off-balance enough to give the furious fugitives advantage against their sheer numbers, even if their princess had given the green light for lethal force if they had to. But the easiest thing would have been to frisk the girl for the small arsenal she carried in the first place in order to avoid this bloodshed.

The young woman with a worn black leather jacket over her ragged street clothes and the young man with sunglasses, shorts and a black Clan Malkavian t-shirt still continued on their murderous path to freedom as they entered yet another corridor... and narrowly avoided a brutal ambush as a barrage of energy blasts with a shootdodge tackle that sent her and her fellow time looper out the entryway and into cover.

"Damn it to hell!" Naru swore viciously. "Not those goddamn Anti-Naru Lasers and Proton Packs again!"

"Welcome to Su-chan's 'Dirigible of Doom'," sarcastically remarked Keitaro, who lay sprawled under her, still gripping the shotgun with both hands. "And please don't go Naru-punching me to next Tuesday yet, we'll have plenty of time after we've escaped."

Naru swore some more as she helped him on his feet again and produced an assault rifle out of her jacket. "Sure, later!"

Entering bullet time mode, time seemed to slow down to all but her as she charged into the gangway again, dodging laser blasts and proton pack blasts alike with ease as her more conventional weapon cut down her adversaries. When her blurry and hazy vision dissipated and time returned to normal – her foes lay still on the metal ground.

"Are you still sore about Su-chan letting her flying gas bags open fire on us while in Seta's plane in the original timeline? Or are you mad that she took you along for the ride this time" Keitaro inquired.

"Gee, whatever gave you that idea?" she replied acidly and ejected the spent magazine, replacing it with a fresh one from her jacket.

"Well, you seem more vicious and bloodthirsty than 'him'." Cop Keitaro shuddered as he mentioned "that person".

"Let's not talk about 'him'! Bad luck happens when you talk about 'him'!" Undercover Cop Naru interjected briskly with a shudder of her own.

"Okay, okay!" Keitaro answered. "But still this isn't as bad as the timeline when she built a hidden missile silo under the Hinata-sou and launched all of her missiles at China, Russia and the United States at the same time by accident!"

"And by the way," Naru added with a sarcastic grin, "You shouldn't accuse me of being 'vicious and bloodthirsty', when you're clearly as guilty as me."

"Touché!"

The Third Mobile Fleet of the Royal Air Force of Molmol were in quite a disarray as various desperate transmissions erupted from the much larger flagship they were escorting. Reports of gunfire aboard the Amallan Kaollan and the permission to use advanced weaponry to recapture the escaped prisoners, while reports of dead and wounded were rising as the clashes continued.

Even the public staring up at the fleet were starting to worry, their cheer fading quickly.

Too bad the worst was yet to come...

Having discarded her assault rifle, Naru now wielded a submachine gun, while her partner-in-crime now carried a Desert Eagle. Both also carried stolen parachutes on their backs. Their previous owners needed other things in particular... like an epitaph.

"Keitaro, please stop humming Welcome to the Jungle by Guns N' Roses again!" Naru snapped in irritation while staring at the looted small map of the gargantuan airship. "I think we should take this turn. We ascend a few ladders, exit the gondola to the inspection shafts or the ridge, cut ourselves through the outer skin of this blimp and jump."

"Only when you stop humming Midlife Crisis by Faith No More, darlin'." Keitaro remarked mockingly. "But I think that turn leads us to promenade deck we can jump through. And wasn't the outer skin made of metal last time I looked?"

Naru sighed. "Great! Just Great! We're on the run and we still have time trash-talking!"

Keitaro shrugged. "At least you're not feeling any remorse over sending many of Su-chan's goon squads screaming to hell. Getting kidnapped brings out the worst in me, considering all the PTSDs I've accumulated over all those loops dealing with 'him'...and 'her'..." He finished that last word with a shudder of revulsion and horror.

"Yeah, I wouldn't want to meet 'her' in a dark alley," she concurred with a similar felling of inhuman fear bordering on madness.

But unfortunately as they rounded yet another corner of the labyrinthine airship and kicked in a wooden door – they came face-to-face with the royal princess Kaolla Su with a large entourage of her best guards. Mitsune "Kitsune" Konno, Motoko Aoyama with her hair cut short, Kanako Urashima and Shinobu Maehara followed by the pets Shippu and Kuro stood in the background behind the armed host, looking more shocked over what the escapees had been doing. And behind these they beheld windows that led to freedom at long last.

"You didn't think I had another Keitaro radar on me!" Kaolla Su proclaimed triumphantly while waving around her faux Dragon Radar replica, sporting a bruise on her right chin, as her henchmen pointed their pistols at them, waiting for the order to open fire.

"Glad to see you're not holding it against me, Su-chan," Cop Keitaro said, while training his powerful automatic at her. For some reason the two blips on that accursed stalking device was giving him a foreboding of worse things to come.

"Y'know, you've been very, very naughty Keitaro. Hitting one of your bride-to-bes and plugging so many of my loyal subjects!" Her happy amoral smile felt to him like a cat who had finally cornered the prey it would play with and strike at in the end.

"Funny, I was about to say the same thing about you and your band of well-dressed hoodlums." He retorted with a savage smile of his own."And for your information: I really, really hate it when someone I considered a friend abducts me and my friends and tries to impose the gilded cage solution on the whole lot of us."

"I really have a bad feeling about this," Naru quipped as she stood beside him, her weapons aimed at the guards.

"Now, please throw down your weapons and remove those dorky sunglasses and put on those proper glasses," Kaolla Su practically ordered and held up another pair of rectangular glasses.

The roar of a handgun erupted, the glasses in the royal princess hand torn in half by the bullet, leaving her with half of it.

"No." Cop Keitaro simply uttered between gritted teeth.

A firefight would have erupted over the audacity to yet defy the will and whims of the royal princess, but a sudden series of explosions shook the gondola, throwing the occupants of the room here and there with flailing arms trying to reach handholds or shield from hard impact.

(No! No! No! I hope it's not him! I hope it's not him!) Cop Keitaro chanted mentally to himself as lay there, trying to raise himself up again as loud footsteps were heard heading towards them. But the Keitaro Radar which had skidded right in front of his nose said otherwise with one blip closing in on the other.

And in skipped Postal Keitaro, leaping over the two other loopers, a remote detonator in one hand, and a small remote control in another. Cop Keitaro shuddered where he lay, knowing from the look of his other looper self that he was in postal mode.

"Not you again - you psychotic maniac!" Cop Keitaro shouted furiously at his alternate looper self.

"You thought keeping me hogtied in the bedroom and dressing me up in that Molmolian monkey suit and switching my glasses would stop me, Su-chan?" Postal Keitaro ignored his other self completely and laughed madly as he threw away the useless remote detonator nonchalantly.

"Speak of the devil! Looks like 'him' was locked up here in the first place," Undercover Cop Naru joked and trained her submachine gun on the bloodthirsty postal looper instead.

"By all that's holy – two Urashimas!" Motoko Aoyama exclaimed in shock while holding Shippu, who she earlier had protected with her body. Seeing two Keitaros in one timeline with differing personalities and mental states tended to unnerve most people.

"That or the spoiled princess here cloned him – since it's sure as hell not me standing there masked as my brother!" Kanako Urashima commented to the young swordswoman while Kuro stood beside her, trying to conceal her own brand of nervousness and confusion.

Kitsune just looked puzzled, plastered as she was with a bottle of scotch in one hand.

"Auuuuuuu!" Shinobu Maehara starting crying out in fear, panic and utter confusion over a gunslinging Keitaro and a really scary and crazy looking Keitaro with blatant murder in his eyes.

Postal Keitaro pressed his other remote. All the speakers on the massive, armed airship started simultaneously to erupt with music.

"So this is your great master plan? Playing Snakes on a Plane by Cobra Starship? You're nuttier than the last time we fought in Steelport." Naru had a puzzled look on her face and lowered her weapon.

"Oh, I assure you that the music is just the signal for attack that I've taught my new, lovely pets, whom I smuggled into the airships cargo hold some time ago before I was caught" Postal Keitaro smirked and pressed another button on the remote.

For seconds nothing was heard through the speakers, but soon a grisly drama was unfurling all around the royal airship.

Inhuman shrieks and howls emitted from throats not human sounded suddenly and increased to an bestial crescendo intermingled with the screams of pain and horror of the crew of the Amallan Kaollan and the occasional sound of the desperate discharge of weapons in utter panic and the grisly sound of people being rent limb from limb in various ways and the sound of devourment followed by growls of satisfaction.

"Considering the eternities you spend through various time loops, you tend to pick up the knack for working a few superscience gizmos like this remote thingie." Postal Keitaro remarked off-handedly as if waiting for something.

And soon something gigantic, dripping blood in its trail, was seen propelling itself with four limbs with ghoulish eagerness from the outer corridor towards the room.

One of the bodyguards glimpsing the creature emitted a terrified scream of revulsion and horror, dropping her pistol to the ground.

It was the stuff of nightmares. It had the shape of a gorilla - yet it wasn't. Taloned nails and tusks stained with newly spilt blood of its recent prey made seem like a demoniac, primordial horror from ages past. And more terrifying was that more of them were following their leader to the delicious feast awaiting them.

"Not to mention how to genetically alter beings like all those gorillas I weaned on human flesh and blood, not to mention shin-bones and marrow." Postal Keitaro grinned demoniacally. "And did I mention how I smuggled more of them into the rest of the Third Mobile Fleet?"

The look of horror on Kaolla Su's face made even Cop Keitaro pity her... a little.

At least the other bodyguard apart from the panicked one reacted properly and opened fire on the sinister simians in order not to end up on the menu.

It was Undercover Cop Naru who took the initiative. "Abandon ship!"

"Way ahead of you!" shouted Postal Keitaro as he charged and crashed through the closest window without a parachute. Being invulnerable, he didn't need one.

"I really hate that guy!" Cop Keitaro snarled.

"Is someone in the need of extra parachutes?" Kanako interupted smugly. "Sure Kuro and Shippu can fly, but I'm sure as hell that we can't." Pointing at an hidden compartment in the room that had been dislodged, spilling out packed parachutes.

"Thanks, sis!" Cop Keitaro shouted, taking his chance to escape again without having to worry about the others as he dove out the shattered window.

"This time I have a parachute!" Naru declared with an accusing forefinger pointed at Kanako before leaping out of the besieged dirigible as well.

Kanako Urashima had a puzzled look on her, wondering if her main rival to her stepbrother's affections had completely lost it more than she already had. And suddenly she realized that she could have faux-accidentally pushed her out of the ship after sabotaging or removing that parachute she was carrying. She smacked her forehead in transparent frustration over the lost opportunity.

"Hey! Come back!" Kaolla Su demanded shrilly, having somewhat regained her royal composure while her trusted henchmen attempted holding the pack of savage man-eaters at bay, who apparently were very resistant to most firearms...

The Third Mobile Fleet of the Royal Air Force of Molmol found themselves in an abysmal nightmare manifesting itself into flesh as the mighty airship fleet found itself besieged from within by hordes of swarming, howling, carnivorous apes bent on acquiring the human flesh for which they lusted so completely. The screams of dead and dying humans mounting along with the death shrieks of each abomination slain.

The crews fought valiantly enough against these horrors with all the weapons they could manage to muster, but forgetting in their frenzied panic that using explosive devices in the magazine storages and where the artillery was stationed was not the wisest of decisions – things started to to go badly.

Not to mention that the Postal Keitaro had activated various hidden time bombs planted in fuel tanks and magazines that also went off.

And still many of those speakers still played Snakes on Plane as if to maliciously mock them all as death approached, while others transmitted orders from the royal princess to jump out and catch her fleeing captives.

"For some reason this looks like one hell of a nightmarish, heavy metal tribute to Led Zeppelin album covers." Cop Keitaro observed as burning airships came crashing down on the beautiful capital of Molmol while free-falling alongside Undercover Cop Naru.

"Shut up!" she snapped, feeling sorry for all those poor bastards who were down there screaming in fear and panic as tons of debris rained down on them, and winced as one of the burning war dirigibles crashed into one of the largest fleeing mobs and exploded.

More burning missiles descended like burning comets.

"I'm so going to kill Postal again and again for this!" she hissed furiously.

"Looper team-up?" The more stable Keitaro beside her suggested.

"Sure."

"I pocketed the 'Me Radar' Su-chan made before we abandoned ship for tracking the other me," he added bluntly.

"Good idea, but right now I'm more worried about the guys following us." Naru advised, pointing behind with her thumb.

Multitudes of gun-carrying, loyal henchmen of the royal princess were in hot pursuit behind them, diving out of the doomed airships with parachutes strapped to their backs. Some opted for unleashing bullets at the free-falling fugitives, while others simply dove for grappling.

Unfortunately they should also have paid more attention to the furry, ever-hungry, living missiles diving eagerly after them, resulting in the forceful impact of dozens of writhing bodies in mid-air and the subsequent tearing and consumption accompanied by shrieks, howls and screams.

"I sure hope the next time we loop, we turn up in Steelport again." Cop Keitaro said and pulled out two automatics and twisted, firing wildly at the Molmolians and man-eaters coming after them.

Naru herself pulled out two submachine guns and started firing as well, utilizing bullet-time mode for all that it was worth.

For some reason both of them imagined No Easy Way Out by Robert Tepper being played in their heads as they fought for their freedom as well as their lives.

They didn't even have time to watch as the proud Amallan Kaollan was engulfed by fire when the artillery guns exploded , sending it hurtling down like a tremendous fireball...

Fic writers notes: After seeing the old pulp magazine cover of Zeppelin Stories for the short story Gorilla of the Gasbags and the few modern tribute art, not to mention having read pulp stories about airships (not to mention having watched Snakes on a Plane years ago), I was kind of tempted to write something really stupid and shocking, and discovered that writing a looper snippet using the manga scenario where Keitaro was shanghaied (or two of them) to Molmol in a giant airship armed to the teeth, could be madly amusing and drawing inspiration from the second mission from the game Saints Row: The Third.

If there's one thin Kaolla Su should learn it's:

a) Never kidnap Postal Keitaro when there's a risk of him going postal and doing all kinds of nasty stuff and is in a Led Zeppelin phase.

b) Try putting rectangular glasses on an unwilling Cop Keitaro who has issues against them.

c) Shooting Undercover Cop Naru repeatedly with Anti-Naru lasers and proton packs through many loops as well as kidnapping her and her close ones will make her carry a serious grudge.

Funny how many of the accusations Thor levelled at Tony Stark in Thor Vol. 3 # 3 fits Kaolla Su as well, especially during the Shanghai to Molmol arc in the manga.