The Deranged Space Hunter bombed through space in his brother's YT-1300, the Quest of Insanity, with little or no objective in mind. Also known as Kane, he had little objective in that he wasn't sure what he'd do. His brother, the Insane Space Hunter ("Insaney"), had been killed, and it was up to Kane to bring him back. He'd actually fought against Insaney in the same battle where his brother had been killed, but, since none of that relates to where he was going, that won't be mentioned here any more than it already has.

The plan had initially been simple--they (he and Number 18, one of the Hunter's friends) would persuade Dark Lurking Guy, head of the Semi-Secret Organization for Stealing Stuff and Number 18's former employer, to get the Hunter reactivated. But, it had panned out when the pompous medal-tossing jackanape had, after ineffectively tossing medals at the brooding Kane, simply refused them. Unable to do more than glare intimidatingly at the vacant eyes of Dark Lurking Guy's ugly helmet, as causing the crimelord bodily harm would only lead to no help at all, they'd almost given up hope.

Using the regenerative capabilities of the ship's medical facilities, he had fabricated a copy of his own skin for his brother, knowing that no matter how stupid Dark Lurking Guy actually was, he probably still wouldn't believe that what looked like a robot could possibly need fixing instead of replacing.

"So, what are we going to do?" asked Kane, bringing the ship to a halt somewhere in the limbo between planets.

"Dress in drag and do the hula?" asked Number 18 hopefully, adjusting the monogrammed hat he wore on his head. Well, it wasn't so much monogrammed as designed for the express purpose of holding a luminescent gold numeral on his head, but it served the same purpose. Heaven knows it wasn't the Semi-Secret Organization for Stealing Stuff's health plan that attracted new recruits, it was the shiny numerals on the hats.

The haphazard idea of the former S.S.O.S.S. member sparked an idea in the back of Kane's cyborg brain, one that might just work...

"Yes?" asked Dark Lurking Guy of the three hula dancers walking up to him on the bridge of his ship. They'd come aboard after having docked and offered to dance for the infamous Dark Lurking Guy. Thinking that hula dancing usually involved women, the overweight, medal-throwing yahoo agreed.

"We have come to dance the hula for you, sir!" cried Number 18 in a uniquely bad approximation of a Hawaiian accent. Before the pudgy warlord could respond, Kane interjected.

"Hula... hula... hula?" he said uncertainly. Stupid stunts like this really weren't his style. He'd rather just go in and demand his brother's reconstruction at blaster-point, but this particular villain was just thickheaded enough, Number 18 had told him, that Kane would more than likely end up blasting him long before Dark Lurking Guy would submit to any sort of demands presented in said fashion. Kane and Number 18 then began some approximation of hula dancing, supporting the third hula dancer (the Hunter, actually, dressed in hawaiian shirt and shorts) between them.

"Your friend doesn't look so well." said the pompous man in black, looking at the slumped figure between them.

"Hm?" said Number 18, glancing at the Hunter's limp body wobbling between them. "Ah!" he exclaimed, dropping the Hunter on the floor. Coinciding with the metallic WHANG of the Hunter's metal head impacting on the floor, Dark Lurking Guy's jaw opened wide and Kane pantomimed a scared drunk elephant of some sort as he backpedaled from the body on the floor.

"Dear heavens, sir! Our compatriot seems to have... kicked the bucket... in mid-hula! What a travesty!"

"I'll say. Get these lousy performers and their dead friend off my ship!" bellowed Dark Lurking Guy at his helmsman, who shrugged and escorted Kane and Number 18 (who picked up ISH and solemnly headed for the docking bay) off the ship. "That's the last time we allow random passers-by to dance on the bridge, make a note of it. There weren't even any women." he said, seconds before he fainted due to having realized he'd just seen a dead person.

"Yes?" asked Dark Lurking Guy of the three tapdancers walking up to him on the bridge of his ship. They'd come aboard after having docked and offered to dance for the infamous Dark Lurking Guy. Thinking that tapdancing usually involved great feats of manual dexterity involving the feet, the overweight, medal-throwing yahoo agreed.

"We have come to tapdance for you, sir!" cried Number 18 in a uniquely bad approximation of a Southern accent. Before the pudgy warlord could respond, Kane interjected.

"Tap... tap... tap?" he said uncertainly. Stupid stunts like this REMAINED the antithesis of his style. He'd rather just go in and demand his brother's reconstruction at blaster-point, but that wouldn't work in much the same way that their hula dancing stunt had failed. Dark Lurking Guy would probably just faint again. Kane and Number 18 then began some approximation of tapdancing, supporting the third tapdancer (the Hunter,once again, dressed in a tuxedo and top hat) between them.

"Your friend looks pale." said the pompous man in black, completely missing the similarities between this situation and the odd happenings of the day before.

"Er?" said Number 18, glancing at the Hunter's limp body wobbling between them. "Eee!" he exclaimed, dropping the Hunter on the floor. Coinciding with the metallic WHANG of the Hunter's metal head impacting on the already-dented floor, Dark Lurking Guy's jaw opened wide and Kane backpedaled, looking like he was trying to swat away a phantom swarm of bees as he stumbled in reverse.

"Good gracious, sir! Our friend seems to have... bought the farm... in mid-tap! What a tragedy!"

"I'll say. Get these lousy performers and their dead friend off my ship!" yelled Dark Lurking Guy at his communications officer, who watched as Dark Lurking Guy pitched forward in faint for the second time in two days. His helmet was somewhat banged up at this point, and the fresh impact didn't help. Ignoring his superior, the officer simply escorted the two tap dancers and their deceased friend off the ship once more.

"Yes?" asked Dark Lurking Guy of the three breakdancers walking up to him on the bridge of his ship. They'd come aboard after having docked and offered to dance for the infamous Dark Lurking Guy. Thinking that breakdancing usually involved amazing shows of physical fitness and head-spinning, the overweight, medal-throwing yahoo agreed.

"We have come to breakdance for you, sir!" cried Number 18 in a uniquely bad approximation of a Brooklyn accent. Before the pudgy warlord could respond, Kane interrupted.

"Spin... spin... spin?" he said in an unsure voice, as he'd done previously. Stupid stunts like this were, at this point, ever more so the direct opposite of the way he'd do things. He'd rather just go in and demand his brother's reconstruction at blaster-point, and he was about ready to do so (as this was the third time they'd pulled this ruse). Dark Lurking Guy would probably just faint again, though, if they tried either one. Kane and Number 18 then began some approximation of breakdancing, spinning the third dancer (the Hunter,once again, dressed in a tanktop and faded blue jeans) between them.

"Your friend looks pale." said the pompous man in black, completely missing the similarities between this situation and the odd happenings of the day before... and also those of the day before that.

"Huh?" said Number 18, glancing at the Hunter's limp body wobbling between them. "Ack!" he exclaimed, dropping the Hunter on the floor. Coinciding with the metallic WHANG of the Hunter's metal head impacting on the now-pitted floor, Dark Lurking Guy's jaw opened wide and Kane simply stood there, doing a much better job of acting like he was in shock than he had previously.

"Good gracious, sir! Our man seems to have... breakdanced to broken... in mid-spin! What a bummer!!"

"I'll say. Get these stupid... ehrrr..." cried Dark Lurking Guy at his navigator, who dodged the falling lumpy figure as the black helmet rebounded once more off the deck plates. Between his helmet and the Hunter's head, the floor now looked more akin to a shallow prairie dog town than the floor of a starship.

So, once again, Kane and Number 18, carrying between them the Hunter, exited.

"I'm going nuts here, 18. What in blazes are we supposed to do to bring Insaney back?" asked Kane angrily.

"Perhaps we could dress up as swing dancers, then fling him across the..." started Number 18.

"Haven't you caught on yet?! The dancing idea won't work! We've tried and failed three times, now!" screamed Kane.

"Well, it might've been my facetious suggestion that we dance, originally, but it was YOU who thought it would work." retorted Number 18, adjusting his hat. Kane, looking up at it, almost literally had a light bulb above his head this time.

"I have an idea."

"Yes?" asked Dark Lurking Guy of the three painters walking up to him on the bridge of his ship. They'd come aboard after having docked and offered to paint the bridge of the infamous Dark Lurking Guy. Thinking that the act of painting his bridge in his honor would make him envied among the other armor-wearing despots of the cosmos, the overweight, medal-throwing yahoo agreed.

"We have come to... paint...for you, sir." said Number 18 in a uniquely bad approximation of a Cajun accent. Before the pudgy officer could respond, Kane interrupted.

"Paint paint paint!" he said in an somewhat sure voice, unlike what he'd done previously. Stupid stunts like this were and would always be the 'wrong way' of doing things, to him--he'd rather just go in and demand his brother's reconstruction at blaster-point, , but that would no doubt work just as well as dancing for Dark Lurking Guy and have him faint again. Kane and Number 18 then began some approximation of painting the walls, propping the third painter (the Hunter, as usual, dressed in overalls and a paint-spattered T-shirt) up on top of a ladder..

"Your friend looks tipsy." said the pompous man in black, blindly missing again the similarities between this situation and the odd happenings of the day before... and also those of the day before that and the day previous to that.

"Wha?" said Number 18, glancing at the Hunter's limp body wobbling atop its perch. "Eep!" he exclaimed, watching the Hunter drop toward the floor. Coinciding with the metallic WHANG of the Hunter's metal head impacting on the now-horribly-mangled floor, Dark Lurking Guy's jaw opened wide and Kane watched as the would-be crimelord fainted again, placing another large dent in the floor.

Now, at this point, after three days of Dark Lurking Guy pitching forward in a faint, nobody wanted to walk across the uneven floor to help him. Not that they would have anyway. In any case, not one officer on the bridge turned to see what had caused their leader to faint, not even the two that Kane whacked in the back of the head to knock out. Not that they could have, anyway.

Quickly donning one uniform and putting the other on his brother, Kane bade Number 18 head back to the ship and dragged the Hunter to the medical bay, along with Dark Lurking Guy's limp and bulbous form.

"Yes?" asked the ship's doctor, "Skins" Kelly, of the communications officer dragging a spam integrity maintenance officer and Dark Lurking Guy behind him. He'd come in after having used the ship's internal communications array to inform the chief medical officer that a painter on the main bridge had fallen on the spam integrity maintenance officer, and that Dark Lurking Guy had promptly fainted, as was the custom at the time.

"Heal heal heal!" he said in a somewhat hurried voice. Wondering if Insaney was rubbing off on him for him to be trying this many stupid stunts instead of demanding his brother's reactivation at blaster-point, he lumped Dark Lurking Guy on a cryo-bed and put the Hunter on another.

"Your friend looks... dead." Skins said, eyeing the Hunter.

"Can you help him, Doc?" asked Kane, trying very much not to seem out-of-place, even though he'd just carried the heaviest man on the ship and another man besides into the medical bay unassisted.

"Well," said the doctor, beginning his examination, "I'd say he was killed some time ago, by an amazingly, if not infinitely sharp object that was thrown at his head." Skins was right on the money, but Kane said nothing. "He's also... a cyborg. Just like you are."

"Wha... how did you know?" asked Kane angrily.

"Simple. For one thing, the two of you are twins, down to the slightest detail." Kane nodded. "For another, watch this." continued the doctor, banging on the Hunter's skull. When his swings were met with a metallic WHANG, as usual, Kane shrugged.

"Well, you've got us. I need to get my brother, here, Insaney, back up and running. I knew that Dark Lurking Guy's organization would have the resources to do it. Which is why I'm here." Kane explained simply and impassively. "This is the fourth attempt... the other three ended in us getting ushered off the ship and lardo there fainting."

"You're the one who caused him to faint these last three days?" asked the doctor. "Why, that's wonderful! Morale has never been so high!"

Seeing Kane's eyebrow pop up at that last bit, the doctor went on. "When Dark Lurking Guy faints, he's often out for the rest of the day. Strange medical condition caused by his inherent laziness. Evidently, his body has been trained to sleep for ten hours without interruption every time he slips into unconsciousness."

"...And..."

"And, with him out like a light, this ship can finally be run efficiently and correctly. Which makes everyone happy. So, because of your efforts these last few days, I'd like to thank you, on behalf of the crew, by reactivating your twin here."

"Er... all right." said Kane, never expecting the events that had just transpired would actually transpire.

"I may need to borrow and replicate some of your parts to replace those in the damaged cyborg, so I'll need to put you under, as well." Kane upsettedly consented to the operation, as he was dedicated to getting his brother put back together... even if it put him in danger. More than flying around in the rickety old freighter with his brother's hapless friend and doing dance routines for three days, anyway.

When Kane awakened, he instantly sat up and looked at his surroundings. To his left was the doctor, fiddling with a synth-skin patch on his head. Once the patch was firmly in place, he looked to his right and saw a mirror. Reaching up and touching the synth-skin patch, he squinted at the image.

"Doc, where is my brother?" he asked angrily, instantly realizing that something was wrong when he didn't see the doctor's reflection in the mirror. Looking back at the mirror, the doctor simply pointed behind Kane. "What?"

Looking back at the mirror, he realized that his reflection didn't mirror him. The synth-patch was on the left side of his reflection's head, even though his own patch was on the left side of his head. If it was a mirror, the patch would appear on the right side of the image.

"...Insaney?"

"...Bobby?"

"Bobby?!"

"No, I'm Insaney." replied the duplicate Kane in the other bed.

"Ah! The procedure was a success, I see!" said the doctor.

"What did you do, exactly?" asked Kane, eyeing... himself. He'd not quite realized how strange it was to have a duplicate of himself about. He hadn't noticed it when all Insaney did was lay there quietly or fall down with a bang, but now it was foremost in his mind. It's not like they were all that different in the first place; the Hunter had longer hair than he, and was far more likely than his brother to sport facial hair than Kane was, but it was almost unnerving to have an exact duplicate of himself on the other side of the room. "Like one of me wasn't too many in the first place," he thought with a smirk.

"Pretty much, I took parts out of you and put them in him. Then, I jump-started him from your power plant. I'm afraid your self-destruct device was shorted out in the process, though." Not feeling any particular loss in no longer being able to blow himself to kingdom come, Kane nodded.

"So, parts of me are in him."

"Right. Because of that, the instability of his vocal processor has been mostly corrected, though his brain is the direct opposite of yours. As if it were... upside-down."

"Makes sense, Doc." said Insaney, laughing. "But does that mean that Kane won't quite be the same, since some of his parts are in my head?"

"No, I put some of your parts in his head, too."

"So, just like in all the stories, neither of us is as powerful as we were, but we're both alive again?" asked Kane of their benefactor.

"Oh, goodness, no. That would be stupid and wasteful. I simply swapped some brand-new pieces from our spare cyborg parts bin. You're both at least twice as capable of doing what you do than you were previously."

"Now that's a switch." said Insaney, looking Kane in the eye. "Though I don't remember my hair being this short when last I looked at it."

"I don't remember there being twins on my ship." said Dark Lurking Guy before Kane could explain about the hair, eyeing the two cyborgs from the bed across the room, which he'd just awakened on.

"Uh oh..."

"How did you get here?!" barked Dark Lurking Guy. Kane, wondering about what options he really had at this point, opted to tell him. He began at the beginning, of all places, about the ship and the fact that they were (obviously) twin brothers.

He got to about the part where they came in as tapdancers when Dark Lurking Guy called for his guards. By the time the Hunter was spinning on his head in Kane's story, seven guards had come and grabbed both of them.

"All right, fine, have it your way." said Kane, and, with an almost imperceptible nod from Insaney, they turned toward each other, a guard still holding onto one arm of each cyborg. "Attack pattern zeta!" said Kane, bringing to the forefront of his mind a strategy he'd learned in one of his countless combat training sessions long ago.

"What does that mean?" asked the Hunter as the two cyborgs, each pinwheeling around the arm gripped by the guard, planted their left feet against one another and flipping entirely over. Exactly in unison, they each knocked out two of the guards on opposite sides of the room and landed perfectly, now each holding a guard by an arm.

Ducking and snapping the men like whips, they flipped their one-time captors against one another. Meeting in midair, the two guards lost all forward momentum and dropped like stones directly on the top of their heads.

"Perhaps you will regret that!" said Dark Lurking Guy, pulling several somewhat pointy-looking medals from a pouch on his belt.

"Perhaps you.. where do you get these lines?" asked Kane, never having fought such inept guards nor such an inane leader before this point. The Hunter had done so several times previously, including yellow-armor-clad blast troopers that inexplicably pitched forward off cliffs, overweight officers that waddled around all day spouting bad poetry, and, of course, the ever-inept Semi-Secret Organization for Stealing Stuff, Dark Lurking Guy's organization of unsuccessful criminals.

Still in perfect unison, even though Insaney had no idea what Kane's "attack pattern zeta" was, the twin cyborgs threw the seventh and last guard into Dark Lurking Guy, who stumbled backward, out of the medical bay, and into a high-speed lift on the other side of the hallway. Quickly thanking Dr. Kelly, the two cyborgs clambered up the side of Dark Lurking Guy (who at this point looked akin to a black-clad gothic walrus marooned in a holding tank two sizes too small, stuffed in the lift as he was). Since Dark Lurking Guy was unfortunately obstructing the lift's controls, the Hunter vaulted off his fallen form and shot straight through the access hatch atop the lift compartment. Landing on top of the lift, he sprang up the emergency ladder running up and down the lift shaft with Kane close on his heels.

"Insaney?" said Kane after they'd passed the first floor up.

"Yeah?"

"Um... the ship is... down. Not up."

"Oh."

With that word, the duo switched from rapidly climbing to an even more rapid descent, gripping the outer rails of the ladder like vertical train tracks as they shot down the ladder toward the bottom of the shaft. With no warning at all, Kane shot off the ladder at a perpendicular angle and through a closed lift door. When the Hunter did the same (sans the breaking of the door), he found Kane standing over two blast troopers that had been hit by the door. Having grabbed both blaster rifles, Kane tossed Insaney the men's pistols. Then, their weapons spouting technicolor energy bolts, they blasted their way through the docking bay.

There are only really two ways to duplicate the carnage that followed. One is to take a rabid, starving wolverine and toss him into a rabbit hutch, where you prod him until he goes insane and attacks everything in sight, rending it in a million pieces--'everything,' of course, pertaining to the bits of straw strewn about the floor of the rabbit hutch.

The other way is to put two rampant war-borgs into a docking bay, each wielding two blast weapons, and conveniently forget to put anyone in there. At all. The only person in the docking bay that wasn't either Kane or the Hunter was Number 18, who watched from his vantage point in front of the Quest of Insanity the entire process as Kane and Insaney put blaster burns over half the docking bay before realizing that there was nobody there but him.

"Aren't there usually hundreds of blast troopers waiting in these things for no apparently good reason?" asked Kane, dumbfoundedly looking in the pointless deep chasms and shafts occupying much of the docking bay's usable floor space.

"Last I checked, yeah."

"This is the assault bay, where they keep the attack craft and dropships. There's no reason to have soldiers here, I suppose." said Number 18, who was familiar with Dark Lurking Guy's personal warship because of his time in the S.S.O.S.S..

The twins looked at each other, then shrugged.