'Twas the night before Christmas, and all throughtout BETA
Not a widget did stir, not a tweaker crunched data
The Rangers were nestled all snug in their beds
While visions of leave time danced in their heads.
The blasters were hung in the armory with care,
In fear that the Queenie might someday come there.
And Q-Ball with his gadgets,
And I with my Tweakers
Had just settled down
For a nip from the beakers.
When up on the scanner,
There arose such a blip,
We all cried at once:
"It's Captain Kidd's ship!"
Away to the Ops room
I ran like the Flash,
Shut down the threat warnings,
And prepared for a clash.
The "snow" on the face
Of the old radar screen,
Made tracking the bogey
Like chasing a dream.
When what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a gaggle of Plagos, with Kidd's ship in the rear.
With a curse-screeching captain
That just flipped his lid
I knew in a moment
It must be the Kidd.
Like slovenly sea slugs
The entourage came
I paged all the rangers
And called them by name:
Now Gooseman! Now Niko! Now Zachary Foxx!
Now Zozo! Now Waldo! Now Rowley and Locke!
Get up here this instant! Kidd's planning to dock!
You two to the airlock! The rest in the hall!
Now blast away, blast away, blast away all!
As the Spydroids that over Tortuna do fly
When they meet with a Ranger and squawk with surprise,
So up to the mountain-top the plagos they flew,
With a ship full of pirates, and Captain Kidd too.
And then in a twinkling I heard through the Comm
A thud and a bang, like a neutron bomb.
As we pulled out our blasters, and were turning around,
Through the doorway the Kidd just appeared with a bound.
He was dressed like a goon, from his head to his foot
And his feathers were grimy with ashes and soot.
A bundle of loot he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a miner guarding his pack.
His eyes, how they sparkled with malice and greed!
His cheeks were like rubber, his beak red with Mead!
His huge, cruel mouth was drawn up in a sneer,
And the down of his chin was all stained with beer.
A bit of cigar he held tight in his beak,
And the smoke it encircled his head with its reek.
His sidekick, called Squeegee, perched up on his head
And echoed his words like a parrot misbred.
He was fat and obese, a right ugly old bird,
And I groaned when I saw him, not uttering a word.
A burp and a moan and a curse from his beak,
Told me that he'd be no threat for a week.
We spoke not a word, as he dumped out his pack,
At the bevy of buzzbots, we all scrambled back.
We yelled in dismay at this horrible sight,
And cackling with glee, he fled into the night.
We sprang on the pile, with a pounding of hammers,
And then headed to bed and changed back into jammers.
But I heard them mutter, as they shuffled to bed...
"Merry Christmas to All...And may Kidd soon drop dead!"
Bruinhilda thought it up. Fatima was the editor, and kept us to some semblance of cadance. Mauler was our Comic Relief. Cricket, LadyNiko, Chiang-Ku, and DCS all contributed lines. The overall writing credit for this therefore belongs to the Evil Writing Guild as a whole.