HELLO EVERYONE! Sorry for the MASSIVE delay in updates. BUT, here is the next chapter you were all craving! Also, this story JUST hit 110 reviews. I can't even explain how pumped I am about that! HELL YEAH!

And now, without further ado, WELCOME BACK TO MY STORY!

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Chapter 17: Welcome to the U.S.A!

The flight had been a long one, particularly for 2D, since the girls had insisted on leaning against him, grabbing onto his arms, and hugging them tightly against their chests. It was sort of... nice for him. But While they got quite comfortable and were soon able to shut their eyes to get some snooze time, 2D had remained wide awake, straining himself to remain as still as a statue in order to avoid awakening them... or making them emit suggestive sounds from their soft lips. He had already tried to move once, which had caused him to accidentally rub his arm against Cyborg's breasts, and this had made the slumbering Cyborg emit a small, soft moan that had affected him far more than he cared to admit.

As a result he knew he knew that he would have to spent about 8 hours doing his best to move as little as a possible. As if that wasn't bad enough, one hour into the flight 2D developed an itch on his nose.

This officially the toughest flight 2D had ever been in.

Mean time, Murdoc would glance over at 2D occasional and chuckle to himself with mischief, as the singer wiggle his nose and contort his face to try to get rid of the itch. Funny how he knew about the itch, right?

Satisfied with his mischief for the time being, Murdoc decided a good trick merited a reward, and alcohol was always a much appreciated reward. Reaching down to open a small box that was tied to the side of his seat, Murdoc began to extract what seemed to be a large bottle of some sort of alcoholic beverage. Unfortunately for him though, as soon as Murdoc pulled his tequila bottle out to take a swig of it, Russle slapped his hand, and the drummer did this none too gently.

"AW hell no!" Russle growled a he pinned the bass player with a one eyed glare, his face only partially turned towards Murdoc. "What are you, stupid? If you can't drink and drive in a car what makes you think it's a bloody good idea to drink and drive in a plane, you green ass crackhead?"

Murdoc grumbled, and shot Russle a glare of his own, "Listen here you-"

"Oh, no." Russle cut him off sharply as he dropped his voice to a loud whisper. "YOU listen to me. This flight is more important than any we've had before. We are going to our new house, man! With Noodle and Cyborg too! We can't afford to mess it up this early on. So suck it up. It's not even a whole half a day length in terms of time, you can stick it out for that long without booze."

Murdoc glared at the drummer one last time, but finally nodded at him and refocused on the flight. "Fine."

Satisfied, Russle relaxed back into his chair and focused on helping pilot the aircraft, convinced that this flight would now be nice and smooth. The girls were slumbering soundly, 2D was keeping them company, there was no putrid and disgusting stench of a rotting pile of trash, Murdoc wasn't going to be an alcoholic dickhead for once... It was almost too good to be true. It was as if everything had fallen into place for once.

And as it turns out, Russle was right. It was too good to be true. Without their knowledge, a phantom plane from World War 2 with a Nazi swastika painted on its side had been tailing them for the last hour from a distance. The pilot of this phantom aircraft seemed to have greenish-grey skin colour, though his body had an eerie translucent look to it.

Within the next thirty minutes, two more old planes with roughly the same state of decay as the first plane, dropped from the clouds above the first phantom plane, flanking him before falling behind it into a "V" formation.

A raspy yet dark voice spoke in a loud whisper through the radio of the phantom aircrafts in a convoluted and archaic language, the voice feeling almost toxic, as if the words corroded away at the joy of things. It was a voice that Murdoc would have recognized anywhere, and one he wouldn't ever forget, even if he tried to.

The voice barked an order to the Pirate Jets' pilots, who in turn groaned an affirmative, nodding their heads in a zombie-like motion after the corrosive voice ceased to speak. They had their orders. Now they had to execute them. The engines of the phantom planes roared with renewed strength a moment later, their ghostly pilots demanding more speed from them in order to catch up with the aircraft piloted with the Gorillaz.

Inside the plane being piloted by the Gorillaz, they were all blissfully oblivious to the danger that was perusing them. Unaware.

"Hmm?" Russle commented idly, frowning slightly, "man, this engine is whacked Murdoc. When was the last time you checked it?"

"What are yah on about, Russ?" Murdoc replied, sounding almost offended. "There is nothin' wrong with this baby! I even modified her."

"Well are you sure you modified her correctly? 'Cause it's sounding a little clunky."

"What are you talking about, lards? It's perfectly fine!"

"Oh yeah?" Russle asked as he quirked his eyebrow at Murdoc, "then what's that sound, eh? Listen, it's getting louder."

"What have you been smoking, you-?" Murdoc began to reply when he heard it too, a whirring sound, as if a small chorus of echoes from other engines was whirring around. "The hell...?"

"See what I mean?" Russle replied, as the noise slowly became louder. "That ain't right man."

Russle was right. But that couldn't be right, Murdoc was sure of it! He had modified the plane several times to make it perfect! He needed it to be perfect, considering that the King of the Bass guitar (which is what he thought himself as), deserved the best. Something was bothering him now about that sound. His engine couldn't be the problem... Then he noticed something about the sound. It WASN'T coming from his engine. This baffled him for a second, for how could that be? In the middle of the open ocean? How in the world was that phantom echo...

Murdoc paled as it hit him. All at once he understood were the sound was and what it meant. He whipped his head around and looked through the side mirror that he had placed on the plane his mouth hanging open aghast for a second as he saw three dots, obviously small planes growing in size as they drew closer.

"Oh shit..." Murdoc mumbled, causing Russle to frown and look at his own mirror too, gazing at it just like Murdoc was doing.

"The hell...?" Russle asked himself, while Murdoc shut his hanging mouth and turned back to gaze straight ahead again.

"Buckle up Russle. We got visitors."

Without hesitation, Murdoc pulled his sailor hat tighter over his head and hit the gas on the aircraft, forcing it to speed up quite quickly as he tried to pull away from the Pirate Jets. The sudden jolt of the plane pulling away forced everyone to be pressed against the backrest of their seats, startling 2D and making the girls squirm slightly in their sleep.

"Uh... Guys?" 2D asked questioningly, "Why are we speeding up?"

"Shut yer' face, face-ache!" Murdoc growled back at him, his eye still fixed on the open sky ahead of him. "If you want to know, just look behind us. We got us some nasty visitors."

2D was taking aback by the reply, flinching at Murdoc's words. By the tone of the Bass player's voice, he could tell something was very wrong. He twisted his head around, and glanced over his shoulder, catching sight of the pursuing planes through the small back window at the rear of the plane. His eye widen, and his head jerked back slightly as he instinctively recoiled from the sight of the pirate jets. He knew them all too well, considering that they had aided the boogieman attack them previously too. Those nasty flying bastards were viscous with a capital V.

"Oh snap..." 2D uttered out, looking at the approaching pirate jets with disbelief. "Mudz, Ruz? You might want to step on it. They are aiming some kind of metallic pipe at us, and I'm pretty sure that's a sort of gun. I don't think those guns shoot cotton candy either."

Murdoc cursed under his breath and looked at Russle before nodding with hard eyes. "Machine guns I bet. Buckle up everyone, this is going to be a bumpy ride. Wake up the girls 2D."

2D nodded and proceeded to shake the girls awake with haste, his head constantly turning to look towards the approaching pirate jets, whose old and half-rusted gun muzzles had began to take aim at them. 2D's heart sped up now, beating hard as he shook the girls awake less gently than he would have done under normal circumstances.

"Girls! Wake up, quick!" He said loudly, refraining from shouting but just barely. "We got trouble!"

The girls drowsily opened their eyes, just in time for hearing Murdoc shout. "Hold on now!"

The plane swerved tightly, slicing across the sky as it tuned sharply in the sky, the sound of gunfire starting up behind them a second later. The girls squeaked with surprise (which 2D would have thought was cute if he wasn't currently concerned with staying alive) when the plane turned like that, jolting them wide awake while 2D wrapped his arms around their shoulder to keep them from smacking their heads against something.

"What's is going on?!" Noodle shouted out with surprise, looking around wildly as the sound of gunfire rang out around the plane.

"What does it look like is going on?!" Murdoc snapped back at her while taking a bit of a nose dive only to pull up again, avoiding a volley of lead from one of the rusted machine-guns on the planes that chased them. "We are getting fired at!"

"Shut your trap and fly Mudz!" Russel shouted, "These pirate jets are persistent bastards!"

It was pretty obvious everyone of the members of Gorillaz that they were in a quite messy problem. They didn't even have an appropriate way to fight back... Or didn't they? Resourceful as ever, Cyborg's eyes lit up as she recalled a certain modification that had been done to the plane. Back when Murdoc had just began his Plastic Beach campaign, he had been hunted by many a hit-men. As a precaution, he had gone to certain lengths to ensure his safety. Creating Cyborg was one of them. Adding hidden weaponry to the aircraft they were currently using was another.

Fuelled by adrenaline, Cyborg unclipped her seatbelt and leaped over the back of her seat in a flash, reaching the luggage section of the plane. The Gorillaz's aircraft swerved once more, turning tightly to the side as Murdoc and Russle piloted the plane into an other evasive maneuver which also sent Cyborg sprawling sideways against the wall.

"Cy!" 2D shouted out urgently as he tried to look back at her, Noodle trying to do the same. "What are you doing?!"

"To get the guns!" Se shouted back over the noise of the plane's engine, scrambling back up to grab on to the seats. She managed to grab on to Noodle's head rest just before a sharp dive which was leveled off again in less than a handful of seconds.

"Guns? What guns?!" 2D and Noodle shouted in synchronization, startled by the words of the purple haired girl.

Noodle didn't respond immediately, instead she let go of the head rest and crawled onto the very back of the plane, and laid on her belly as she pulled some sort of trap door. The little door popped off easily, and from it raised automatically a small TV screen, maybe 14 inches wide and 10 high. Along with the TV, a couple of instruments (curiously similar to the Joysticks used for videogames) raised with it. The TV came online at touch of a button, and Cyborg right away grabbed both joysticks.

"Defense System Online." An electronic voice said out loud when the TV screen came on. "Activating defensive measures."

These words were followed by an odd whirring sound bellow cyborg as hidden gears within the plane began to work. The TV screen began to blink the word "loading" for a few seconds, before the display revealed the image of the sky behind the plane. Evidently there was some sort of camera attached to the back of the plane. Then another whirring noise was heard from the back of the plane, and the screen revealed the tips of two machineguns facing away from the screen, aimed towards the approaching pirate jets.

"Hey that kinda looks like a gamming platform." 2D pointed out, momentarily distracted from their current life-or-death situation. "Its got even the aiming circle thingy that shows you where each gun is pointed at."

"Defensive Measure are Online." The mechanical voice spoke out again, and Cyborg focused in on the device.

Soon she clicked on the triggers of the joysticks, and the sky became a shoot out fight between the three Pirate jets and the modified Gorillaz plane. Guns blazed, smoke and bullets sailed through the air as Russle and Murdoc piloted the aircraft through maneuvers that were challenging but necessary in order to avoid the rusty Pirate jets. An as the two pilots of the Gorillaz aircraft dodged and tried to give Cyborg a clear shot in the process too, cyborg did her best to shoot the flying bastards out of the skies. 2D an Noodle, on the other hand, tried to give updates to Russle and Murdoc on the movements of the planes behind them, since the pirate jets sometimes would move into blind spots were Murdoc and Russle could not see them.

In the back of his head, 2D could only be thankful that it was the corpses of the pilots that were flying those things, rather then the real thing. The movements of the planes were not as smooth or as controlled as they would have been if they were fully alive and aware of their surroundings. After all, bones on their own are not precisely ideal for fine motor movement.

Soon, the first pirate jet fell, after half of its rusty left wing crumbled with a few bullets from Cyborg's guns. The bullets the machine gun punched through the un-kept shell of the pirate jet plane's wing were widened and torn asunder by the pressure of the wind. Rust and rot apparently had eaten away at its prior sturdiness to the point that only a few bullet holes were enough to tear away an entire wing. The plane's wing combusted into fire as it fell, turning it into a blazing chunk of metal as it fell towards the depths of the open ocean, hundreds of miles away from any land.

"One down boys!" Noodle shouted at the Russle and Murdoc over the roar of the machineguns, "Keep it up, Cyborg will get the other two!"

With one plane gone, Russle and Murdoc had a little more freedom of movement for evasive tactics. They made full use of this in every way they could, swerving tightly, diving, spiking upwards, twisting through the air however they could as they tried to evade and yet keep their course.

"God damn those Pirate jets!" Murdoc growled as he gritted his teeth and cursed a continuous string of hateful words towards the boogieman and his lackeys. "We can't keep this up for much longer. Those guys are slowly driving us into a corner with their tactics. Shoot them down already Cyborg!"

"I'm trying!" Cyborg shouted back as she clicked on the triggers again, missing the pirate jets by the width of hair's thickness. "Damn it all…"

2D, who had steadily become more and more silent as he observed the screen, suddenly said loudly, "I got an idea!"

"Well that's a first!" Murdoc snapped back at him, hardly in the mood for any nonsense.

"Shut your gob Mudz." Russle replied cripplingly, "We got nothing right now, might as well hear him out."

Murdoc grumbled and gnashed his teeth without a reply, but a moment later bullets started to actually hit the plane. It was at this point that he relented.

"Okay fine, fuck it all!" Murdoc shouted out with frustration, "We are gonna be dead in minutes at this rate anyways. What's this idea of yours face-ache?"

Though his words were begrudgingly spoken, Murdoc, for once, sounded legitimately interested in what idea 2D had in his head.

"Follow my instructions. I need you to pull up sharply so that we are flying almost straight up."

For once, Murdoc didn't argue, he simply did as he was told. Their plane jerked upwards roughly, throwing everyone into their seats. Cybrog, who was just laying on the floor, almost stumbled face first into the TV screen, had it not being for Noodles amazing reflexes, which allowed Noodle to turn around in time to grab hold of Cyborgs ankles to keep her from sliding to the back of the plane.

As expected, the pirate jets lagged behind their response time due to their lack of movement, giving the Gorillaz a precious few seconds of advantage over the Pirate jets. Up and up the planes climbed, until they were traveling almost perfectly vertically. Cyborg kept shooting at the jets, slowing them down slightly, keeping them from being able to aim at their plane properly.

"Steady… Steady…" 2D mumbled out, looking back at the screen which showed the Pirate jets gaining on them, coming closer together in the process until there was only a small gap between both planes, just enough to allow an other small plane through.

"DIVE STRAIGHT DOWN NOW!" 2D shouted out so loudly it was almost a roar, surprising Russle and Murdoc so badly that their hands jerked forwards. This caused the plane to dive down, dropping like a boulder falling out of the sky. The plane barely made it between the two Pirate jets, and the irate jets tried to follow. The only problem for them was that they were too close together, and the pirate jets crashed their wings together, making the pilots loose control as their wings came apart.

"Shoot them up Cy!" 2D ordered, and Cyborg followed his command perfectly, unleashing a hail of bullets on both planes so eeviciently, that the shell of the pirate jets looked like it had been eaten by an army of massive metal eating moths. However, this only lasted a second before ta bullet was punched through their gas tanks, turning both planes into a blazing balls of fire.

2D and Noodle let out a big whoop of victory, and Murdoc and Russle cheered along with Cyborg as they swerved away from the trajectory of the dropping mass of burning metal that used to be the two remaining pirate jets.

Minutes later, after everyone had regained their breaths, and they were once more on a steady course towards the U.S.A, Russle turned around to look at 2D (who was being hugged tightly by two very affectionate girls).

"Man, how the hell did you come up with that shit?" Russle asked bluntly.

"Well…" 2D said sheepishly.

"Yeah, common tell us man." Murdoc said as he looked back at him too, putting the plane in automatic for a moment. "I didn't think possible for you to come up with anything like that. It's a god damn miracle."

Murdock's words earned the green-sknied man a dirty look from Russle, but 2D didn't mind it too much. That was as close to a compliment as he had gotten from Murdoc in a long time.

"It was um…" 2D began, "It was from a game…" He mumbled out.

"Say what!?" Murdoc asked with bafflement.

"Run that by me again?" Russle asked with a stunned look to his face.

"It was from a video game." 2D said louder this time.

"You mean to tell me," Murdoc replied with an stupefied voice, "That all that we just did was just some stunt that you pulled out from your arse, because you used it in a video game before?"

"Pretty much." 2D said as his lips twitched up into an awkward smile.

"Bloody hell…" Murdoc mumbled out, "Saved by Face-ache, because of a videogame e played too. What are the fucking odds of that eh?"

"No kidding." Russle replied bluntly, his voice as stunned as Murdoc's. "But that still that doesn't explain it though. How did you remember that in the middle of all that chaos?"

"Um… Because I was watching Cy." 2D replied, "You know, it looked like a videogame and all… And I used to play a zombie game a lot, and there was a part in which you had to take down those buggers as they chased your plane with their own… so the situation in the game was pretty much the same as what we had going just a few minutes ago, so it seemed like the perfect tactic to use…"

"Well I'll be damned." Murdoc spoke out. "Who knew your damn zombie games would save our skins one day?"

"That was pretty cool though." Noodle spoke out with a grin.

"Yeah. You totally save us 2D." Cyborg added in, smiling brightly.

"You earned this." Noodle said with a coy smile to Cyborg.

"Earned what?" 2D asked with curiously.

"This." Cyborg piped up.

A moment later both Cyborg and Noodle leaned up and each kissed one cheek of his face, making him blush bright red, and causing Murdoc and Russle to laugh at him heartily.

It seemed that things were back to normal, at least for now.

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Stone, Nami, and Gwen had chosen to head over to San Francisco first, since it was closer to them than Los Angeles. It was, of course, a gamble to simply guess this was where the Gorillaz would be, but given the circumstances, there was no other choice. Even if they could split up, gathering information with just one person was a lot harder than gathering information with a group of people, especially in cities as big as San Francisco and Los Angeles. As a result, the team had decided to simply choose one of the cities to begin their search and hope for the best. Of course, they did contact a few people that owed them favors in Los Angeles jus in case, to help them keep an eye out for any suspicious planes or people that matched the description of the Gorillaz. However, they had determined to focus the bulk of their efforts to locate the Gorillaz in San Francisco

This was the reason why they had settled in San Fransico for the moment. The first thing they had done upon their arrival to the city was to start hacking into all the security cameras of any airports and docking places for ships, searching for anything that struck them as weird. At the same time, they had contacted a few friends in the area, asking them to keep an eye out too. They even bribed a few airport security officers, and asked them to contact them if anyone matching with Murdoc's description was found.

Thus they began to set a trap for the Gorillaz, placing eyes and ears wherever they could, hoping to get something.

And they would get something. In time.

If only the Gorillaz knew what was laying in wait for them.

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AAAAAAAAAND CUT! There we go me mates. How did you like that? It was actually surprisingly difficult to come up with the plane-chase scene. Well, at least wording it was difficult. But! I think it came out alright.

Anyways, thank you all for reading! Review the story and let me know what you think! If you have any ideas, send them my way too. Who knows? I might use them!

Freedragon, Logging out!