Calabro Conversion

Episode II: Friend or Foe!

Calabro wandered the halls of what had once been PHS, now the halls were nothing more than piles of debris, thanks to the alien invasion. After making his way through the side doors leading to the back of the school by lower yellow, he realized that all the doors had been torn apart and were scattered in pieces on the floor. “Damn, these bad boys are crazy, what next?” he said aloud. Upon making his exit outside the rear entrance of the school, where the bus pickups were, he could not believe his eyes when he saw that the walls and ceilings had collapsed, blocking all the exits on that side. Suddenly and without warning, out from the darkness behind him rolled out Scott Hellriegal in a ball shape. It easily swept Calabro’s feet out from under him and took him down to the ground. Springing back to his feet, though a little shaky and dizzy, Calabro shouted, “What the hell are you doing Hellriegal?”

“Well, sir,” stated Scott, “All I was doing was running away from those creepy buggers…After I got away from that guard who grabbed me, I took him out with a nasty head-but to the stomach. I stole this thing here, the blaster thing that knocked us out before and I ran off. For some reason I felt this need to roll in a curled ball, and when I did I seemed to travel at some unimaginable speed and then I rolled right into you.” said Scott. “Hey, by the way, do you have any idea how to get out of this mess?”

Scott shrugged his shoulders and crouched before Calabro, he raised his head and slammed it hard on the concrete floor, creating a large hole in the floor. Calabro glanced into the hole and before him was the PHS sewer system. “How convenient, maybe I can get out of the school from here...” Calabro wondered aloud. He leapt into the darkened area, waited a few seconds for Scott, but then saw him mysteriously escape from his sight above him. “Oh well, his loss.” Following the walkway toward the darkest part of this abyss, Calabro decided to lighten things up, literally. He switched on his Glasses and saw the catacombs illuminated in night vision mode. “Don’t leave home without them,” He smirked. As he continued this unending walkway, his lights picked up a large metallic door. He quickly ran to the door and listened in on to see if anything was around this door. Calabro at that moment heard voices coming through the door, like an alien commander and a guard exchanging conversation by the familiar growls and grunts and the acknowledgment from the guard. The door began to shake, and then it slowly opened upwards, “Ohh boy.” thought Calabro, which described his impression of the vast enormous door. He watched as it opened its wide mouth of metals, not of this world.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out an eight-sided dice, and effortlessly plopped it into the shoe of the oncoming guard from below. Calabro rolled over and mere seconds later, a large explosion and the slight sensation of heat was lightly tickling our hero. He got up to see the guard with discombobulated pieces and 3rd degree burns, “Hehe, toasty!” exclaimed the ever-mighty Calabro. He ventured though the door and was welcomed by three more guards, which he made quick work of thanks to his sword. His slashes were cool and methodical; his forward slashes, spin around slices, and uppercut-like slashes made his attack look like a well choreographed dance. He entered a large room where decapitated guards lay, there was a ramp that snaked around the circumference of the room to a nearby door, which was positioned diagonally to our hero, one floor up. He wandered up the ramp but stopped about half way through, when loud mechanical noises filled the room and two medium-sized holes were revealed along with twin laser cannons. They both began randomly firing around the room, attempting to blast our hero to bits. With a quick dive and a roll, Calabro managed to avoid all the bolts that were shot out. He side stepped out of his hiding spot and heaved his sword straight at the turret like a missile. He moved his hand in a small way, which commanded the sword to spin wildly and slash the mechanical sentry. He moved his hand to the right and it spun around and slashed at the 2^nd sentry turret.

The turrets began to uncontrollably spin and fire randomly everywhere, and after several seconds of this, they exploded and revealed a secret door behind where they had been mounted. He passed through and Calabro was amazed to see a light coming from an entry to the outside. He walked out of the sewer system via small doorway. He walked out and realized he was outside in the middle of the side field of the school. He looked up and saw twenty feet above him that there was a large alien spacecraft. A little ways in front of Calabro was a large metallic floor panel, which to his knowledge of typical sci-fi genre films was a station that was probably used for teleporting between Earth and ship. As Calabro examined the floor, he saw two shadowy figures leap from hill to hill toward him. They landed with a thud and stopped approximately ten feet from him. The two figures were clones as far as he could tell. One was Joe Zukoski, and surprisingly the other was also Joe as well.

Both clones stood ready for battle, the only difference were that one was clad in blood colored splashed armor, more of a battle suit type with a jetpack and various gadgets around his wrists. The other was dressed in a loose one-piece, purple karate suit (gi), with a long, heavy white cape that ended at his ankles and his it wrapped around his chest area where it was fastened. Around his head was a turban in matching white, which too was tightly wrapped and heavy on him. Joe the Strong (Joe with armor) unsheathed a long sword, spun it a few times, and readied for a fight, as Joe the powerful (Joe with cape and turban) removed the heavyset cape and turban, and cracked his neck and knuckles and threw out his fists in ready position.

Calabro felt a little nervous, and drew his sword just in case. At that moment a mysterious figure flipped out on to the scene, the figure, was none other than...Joe Zukoski, the real one. He was dressed in typical street clothes with an orange tech-vest opened, and a white t-shirt underneath and tan baggy cargo pants. “Well, Calabro looks like you can use a hand here. Two Joe clones versus the real thing and an English teacher, how fun.” stated Zuk (Joe’s nickname as appointed by the master of English himself). Zuk slapped his hands together twice roughly, waited a second then jumped forward and flew to his opponent, Joe the Powerful. He rushed his fist toward Joe the powerful, which blocked the shot and Zuk took another shot, which was once again blocked.

Zuk and his clone performed a series of teleportation, which left an after-image that was transparent and then a few seconds later appeared twenty feet in the air, still locked in combat, giving furies of punches to one another. Zuk then overhead slammed his clone and knocked him half way to the ground. The clone then became angered, and pointed his pointer and middle fingers out, which began to glow with lightning around them. He then withdrew them into a fist, where a small energy field surrounded his hand. He pointed his fist at Zuk, opened it and fired a large energy beam. As quickly as possible Joe crossed his arms together in front of his eyes and screamed really loud. As the beam hit Zuk, it began to disperse into ten smaller beams and flew away from him. Then Joe the powerful teleported again and then they were locked in a fistfight once more. As Calabro watched in awe over this match of pure strength, he didn’t see Joe the Mighty charge and was caught off guard when he struck Calabro’s left heel. Calabro was knocked off his feet, and his face landed flat in the dirt. Quickly he got up, and in another rage, he picked his sword up and began to fight wildly with the armored Joe.

After a serious of blocks it was clear Calabro’s blade was no use, he couldn’t land a single hit on him. The clone seemed to have a vivid knowledge of Calabro’s fighting style. Then a quick thrust and a poke to the gut caused Calabro to hit the ground again, however this time he couldn’t get up! At that same moment, a beat-up Zuk made a hard hit to the ground and it was clear he wasn’t going to get up anytime soon. His clothes were torn and he was bruised and burnt from some pretty heavy energy attacks. Both clones stood before the fallen heroes and laughed, while Joe the powerful prepared to fire a final energy beam at Zuk, it would no doubt kill the scholar...

Join us next time for the next installation of the Calabro Conversion. Here we view the rest of the battle of the Joe twins, a revived Joe battling much different than before, much stronger and faster with the aid of friend, Joe Philibert.