The plan

I ain't sayin y'all are ever gonna do this, but if you was ever plannin on invadin a planet where everyone's hopped up on free meth that's bein handed out like it was whacky candy from giant robot ninjas piloted by, I assume, smaller, non-robotic ninjas inside, then you could do worse than have a bajilllion copies of yourself and your friends.

"But wait," you may be sayin, "even if I did have all them copies, how would I be able to defeat giant robot ninjas? I am, after all, just one, small, fragile being in this giant universe and I think my whole role in fighting a giant ninja robot would be to end up as goo between the toe slit in the robot's ninja shoe."

At least, you'd be sayin that if you was me. Of course, if you was me, then you would know all about what I'm fixin to say here, and it would ruin all the fun of readin this in the first place. Also, you would be have really bad heartburn most of the time and you would think that you should go see the doctor about it and, well, you would if this whole ninja fightin job came with insurance, but it don't and you really ain't got the time to head down to the free clinic because, again, the whole fightin ninjas thing. So, let's just go ahead and say you ain't me for the sake of argument and I'll go ahead and explain you a thing or two about the invasion of planet meth.

First of all, you was right before. If a human was to fight a giant robot ninja, it prolly wouldn't go too well for that human. To remedy this situation, you might need you an exoskeleton or three. Or maybe you need one for each Pat in the army.

"But, hold on a minute," you're sayin now, "if you was to be trapped in a robot exoskeleton, how would you be able to use your teleportation thing you been harpin on all this time. And, while we're on the subject, can you teleport anymore after drinkin that green skull drink those ninjas fed you in Maui. Also, why the heck didn't they just poison you? I mean, they are ninjas, after all, it ain't like they're known for bein nice."

And my response is, first, don't get your panties all wadded into a bunch. That ain't got a lot to do with ninjas, but I find it's usually good advice for the prevention of discomfort, both now, when you gotta be sittin there and readin, and later, when you're doin your laundry. Second, calm down. We'll take these questions in order. The exoskeletons have been carefully and painstakingly crafted by the Squimonk out of moon spider webbing that is kept rigid by running a little bit of current through it. That current also has the benefit of giving us a super charged punch. Next, the Squimonk were nice enough to give me an anti-anti-teleporting-serum serum. And last, I don't have a clue why they didn't just poison me and I don't much appreciate you bringing up my potential imminent demise and reminding me that death is a shadowy figure constantly looming over our shoulders and driving us near to madness in the deep of the night when we got nothin but our regrets to keep us company until the birds start singin again in the dawn, Mister or Missus Macabre.

Now, at this point, you may be thinkin that your ol' pal Pat's got himself enough to just blip on down to the planet, plant his exoskeletal fist in a couple ninja faces, dust off his hands and call it a day. But you would be wrong. We ain't just tryin to defeat the ninjas, we're tryin to wipe them off the planet so our fleet of drug counselors can swoop down and start the rehabilitation process. And them ninjas have had themselves a goodly number of years to dig into their positions and so we gotta plan for the unexpected. So we also need us a whole mess of them Magma Giants to hit the planet with us and sling fire wherever they're needed. We especially need them to hit up all the volcanoes on the planet to take out any bases that might have been place there. We want, according to the Magma Giants, all their base to are belong to us, whatever the heck that's supposed to mean.

Finally, we gotta remember the most important thing about fightin Clan Platypus. They're friggin ninjas! They've had themselves all sortsa trainin in jumpin around and punchin and throwin things and whackin people and things with sticks. Me, I got into a fight once in eighth grade and fought some robot ninjas that Lindbergh sent after me earlier this year. I ain't sayin I can't handle it or nothin, I'm just sayin it's gotta be accounted for. And the best way to make up for a lack of martial arts training, in my opinion, is overwhelming firepower. In this case, it is provided by a donut rail gun mounted over each shoulder of the exoskeleton.

This fine piece of equipment had been adapted by the Squimonk from the ten different worlds on which we Pats had to recover the slugs from the 99 cent store. They took the original donut gun model and modernized it, addin all sortsa doohickies and geegaws and sciency stuff to it. Then, they made themselves a whole mess of donuts that they made superhard by keepin them out in the cold, lonely darkness of space for a couple months. When fired from the donut rail gin, which uses some sorta magnet technology, they can be fired at three times the speed of sound and can tear right through a robot ninja like a stick of butter bein hit by a speeding sun.

All of this was bein explained to me in a bit of a hurry, so forgive me if I've forgotten anything here. The long and short is, I found myself strapped into a suit of body armor and sweatin like a fat man at the summer cake giveaway as I was showed a map of where exactly I was supposed to land and punch a ninja right in his roboty face before he knew what was happenin. It was right amazing how coordinated it all was, but I didn't have much time to consider it because, right as I was thinkin about it, the countdown hit the bottom.

3...2...1...I jumped.