What's with the fireballs?

We honed that zeppelin in on the space base, but we did so gently and slowly, lest we get hurt, like a dentist giving a root canal to an alligator. Course, we didn't have any anesthetic with us to put the fire asleep before operatin, so the metaphor don't hold completely, but it works about half way, which is all you can ask out of most metaphors. We got closer and closer, spiralin inwards towards the fireballs, our hearts in our throats, just waitin to be demolished by one of em. It never did happen, though. I can't say I was disappointed at not bein killed in a fiery hell of death and destruction with the zeppelin crashin to the ground with all of us screamin inside, oh the humanity!

After the long crawl towards the base, what I saw was fairly dissapointin. Dontchya just hate when it seems like somethin excitin's gonna happen, and you're anticipatin it and you're thinkin to yourself "What's with the fireballs?" And then there's this long, drawn out wait that seems like it's a week and as you get closer and closer to finding out what the fireballs are, it seems like you're intentionally being blocked from knowing and it's frustrating you more and more until your ready to punch someone right in their furry little face.

I'm sorry, I been ramblin again. I know you wouldn't know nothin about all that. So I'll just get on with it then, shall I?

As we swooped in towards the moon base, we saw all the activity going on down below as normal, just like there wasn't fireballs shootin into the air and comin down again. We figured if them others wasn't scared, it couldn't hurt to have ourselves a little look-see. So we maneuvered the Deus Ex Machina to the back of the compound to see a whole mess of Magma Giants back there and they was playin volleyball with one another, usin a ball of fire as a volleyball.

"Well," said Alistair as he shrugged, "that explains that."

I nodded. "Cept for the part about why there's magma giants here. They wasn't here when I left. Maybe we should ask someone what that was about."

And we did just that right after we landed, got some lunch, visited the bathroom, changed clothes, had a cup of coffee, did a sudoku puzzle, read the paper, got into a fight over who was the man with the longest fingernails in the known universe, did some maintenance work on the Deus Ex Machina and found someone who wasn't too busy to talk to us, which was mighty difficult as they were plannin to assault the planet in two days time and we showed up right before the Pat-and-Douggy-and-Squimonk army was ready to write us outta their plans. But almost as soon as we was done with that, we asked someone.

Turns out that Magma Giants really have it in for the ninjas. They don't care much about the ninjas selling meth or trying to take over the universe. No, their grudge is much more personal. According to the Alistair with which we talked about it, when ninjas land on a new planet and they try to be secret, yet still pretty awesome, they often make themselves an unassailable volcano base. But these ninjas, being practical and knowing how to plan for invasion, have all of their volcano bases prefabricated and transported in by, in his words, "The Ikea of Ninja Bases". Well, all that pre-fab stuff's got it's own specifications about how much it can hold and what temperatures it can be at and whatnot. So them ninjas gotta drain all the magma outta each volcano, strain it, test it and then run it through some filters and chemical doohickeys to make it the right temperature and viscosity for their stuff.

I guess if you're a ninja, this way of doin things makes sense. Me, I'd just go on down to the local Home Despot, load up on 2x4s and steel tubin and do it all myself. Course, if you're tryin to take over the universe by turnin everyone into a junkie zombie, I spose you ain't none to pleased about havin to do physical labor. Buncha babies, these ninjas.

The long and short of this process, vis a vis the Magma Giants, is that, if you happen to be a Magma Giant and a bunch of ninjas come in, drain your volcano and run all your magma through their whatzahoozits just to make it a couple degrees colder, you're gonna come out a little worse for the wear. Most likely, you'll just end up dead. The physically stronger ones that aren't killed by all this end up as thoughtless pillars of fire that the ninjas sometimes use to guard the volcano bases. Either way, it's a pretty sad change of life for these noble creatures that don't want to do nothin but read and wrassle. In fact, until they're 15 years old, the only things they study is geometry and wrasslin, thinkin it gives them all the skills they need to learn other stuff. I don't know whether all that's true, but I do know that I wouldn't like it none too much if them ninjas screwed up my home and my family in order to put a tacky Ikea base in.

The Squimonk army got whiff of this hatred the Magma Giants had for the ninjas and recruited them into the cause. I was wonderin why they wasn't there when I was on the moon base the day before, and they explained to me that space travel has some complications in it that sometimes makes time slip a little bit. They ain't exactly sure why, something about travelling at the speed of light and passing through black holes, which can make time slow down. He then told me that we don't get sucked into them black holes because we don't have no mass. I ain't sure any of this is relevant, but it makes me sound a little smarter to tell you this stuff even though, if I was bein honest with you here, most of it went right over my head.

After we got our answer, it was time for us to learn our place in the assault on planet meth. And let me tell you, they had a doozy of a plan.