Rebel Without a Pause Key (Part 4: No Way!co)

There's a panic inside the Homeless Shelter headquarters of that international terrorist cell, The Liberal Crime Squad. The forces of oppression are at the gates; Blue-clad fascists ready to stomp down on our freedom to watch Comedy Central, deal soft drugs and kidnap, beat up and occasionally kill mostly innocent people. The spirit of the Paris Commune is in the air. Our hour of destiny is at hand. We have no idea what happens now. Sure, some instructions spit pop up on the screen, but we're hardly going to read them.

This is the final Rebel without a Pause Key. And this is the Liberal Crime Squad.

And we're going to off the pigs. Or run away. Or both.

For the record, the character names are generally some link to their life before they became committed to the cause, or a reference to the skills they bring to the struggle, rather than gags. That said, I'm the sort of guy who played through Ocarina of Time with a character called Mr Cunt, because for a faux-intellectual, I'm mentally about four. So they probably wouldn't have been any better anyway.

Okay - we're under-siege. The idea is that rather than going INTO the building, we have to go OUT of the building, starting deep inside it. There's also some items we can pick up on the way out, marked on the map. The idea being, do you just go straight for the exit or take a detour to get stuff. Anyway, this is the layout of the map...

That's us hiding at the bottom. The exit's the bit at the top. It's a long way. We set off, and - showing signs of the capitalist system indoctrination we can't shake - decide we should go grab some stuff. Head to the one on the right with no problems... and it's 25 dollars. Cheers. Make our way to the left, only spotting some cops briefly. And it's some shirts. We try to not feel too dispirited, as the Revolution always needs shirts in case we freak out the mainstream society with the bare chests of righteousness.

So, heading to the exit, we see a cop ahead. We turn the other way, but run into a mob of five cops. We have the choice to run away, but remembering what a mess that left Alec Furious, we decide that it's time to see what pawn-shop shooters and cheap knives can do against years of cop training. Shots are exchanged, before there's a fatality...

FUCK YEAH! Take that, jackboots stomping on the human face forev...

Shit.

Following the guidance of Chairman Mao's little book, we scarper. Escaping gives people an attack of opportunity, which means that a load more of our troops get blasted. As casualties occur, I realise something - that in fact EVERY member of the LCS in the building is in the mob, with you having to move forward people huddling in the back to take the place of their fallen comrades. It takes a couple of more casualties before I realise there's a way to use this to make sure we live to fight another day.

I shuffle the remaining injured trained and armed members to the safe back lines, and move the unarmed, brownie-selling troops forward and charge for the exit. Every cop we hit, we just run away and take the blows. We're leaving a trail of ASCII-red limbs and blood behind us, and there's a lot of whimpering and asking for their mums, but we're making progress. Though there is this moment...

Which makes me wonder who he was aiming at. Was this George Buchanan jumping in the line of fire to protect another comrade? Or was it a cop trying to do a SHIELD-esque Vic Mackey and shoot one of his team-mates who was going to reveal the extent of their corruption? Or was it just an enormous fuck up? We'll never know. You don't know what it was like there, maaan.

Eventually, down to three LCS members, we reach the exit and run. We enter a different sub-game, where we're being chased down alleys by a group of six cops. We choose to run, and actually lose five of them, though another LCS-ite is blown apart. We run again, and remaining pig is still on our tail. We turn to fight, but the injured remaining two members aren't able to shoot straight for all the bleeding. And one takes a bullet wound for his troubles.

We run again. He's on us. More minor wounds. And again. And again.

And it's looking we're going to be shot down on the next try. One last run and...

You may have killed about 30 of us, but you can NEVER kill the revolution, not as long as two members still live. Just about live, anyway. The pair head to the hospital, where they'll stay until their sucking chest wounds heal. In a couple of months time.

So, with all our members incapacitated or decapitated, you may think it's over for the LCS. Not so. I actually was expecting a raid from The Man, so had moved a number of our members to another safe-house across town. There's only seven or so of those, but they've still got the funds from all the Brownie selling to...

At which point, all eight leave the organisation. You see, they had been recruited by Lady by Liberal Politics. Since Lady with Liberal politics proved that though have an unbreakable faith in the brotherhood of humankind, it was proved by a man with a shotgun that she didn't possess an unbreakable torso. Since she was gone, everyone she recruited loses touch with the organisation.

Which would leave the revolution unrevolving were it not for an odd quirk of fate.

Bonita Regan, whose kidnapping prompted the raid, wasn't actually at the homeless shelter. She'd been moved to the new safehouse along with the other members, who were continuing to indoctrinate her. And in their last day before quitting after the butchery of their friends, they'd turned Bonita - now under the nom de plume Slavegirl - into a true-green Liberal. People who are educated rather than recruited stay in the organisation of their own volition. Well, their own new and highly manufactured volition anyway, which counts.

So, after all this noble, inspiring sacrifice, the full roster of the Liberal Crime Squad is...

And with all those deaths behind her, she's has to carry on her suicidal mission proudly. You can kill us in body, fascists, but you can never delete our sneakily hidden save-game files.