Final Pokémon Solid

Section 3

Scene 21:

Setting: A UFO of unspeakable evil...adrift in the timeless tides...for the sea knows no sorrow.

Time: 1:35 PM

Agent Axer scribbled inside the small journal eagerly.

‘Captain's Log, Seadate 121494. We've been stranded in the middle of the sea for a long, long time now. We're surviving on a strange orange juice-like fluid the ship is supplying us and a large box of Twinkies. I don't know how long we'll be able to survive without real food, and I think the Twinkies are getting to everyone's head.'

"Stop scribbling in that log! We've only been stranded for ten minutes! And CAM, quit eating all our Twinkies!" Agent Artemis said, and she snatched the Twinkie box away.

"Aww, man!" Agent CAM complained. "I was eating those!"

"Don't you know that these things can rot your brain? I doubt there's anything close to organic in here," said Agent Artemis, who was squinting in her attempt to read the microscopic Twinkie ingredients. Agent the Captain peeked at the log over Axer's shoulder. He thwacked him on the head.

"You fool! I'm the Captain here!" Agent Axer laughed nervously. Solid Ekans looked at him accusingly.

"It's all your fault! If you hadn't smashed that control panel, we would have horribly crashed at Rocket Town and died a fiery death! Now we're stranded out here and we're going to die a slow death in the middle of nowhere!"

"I pity th' foo' that makes Mr. T die a slow death in the middle of nowhere," Mr. T mumbled.

"Hey!" Agent Axer yelled. "It wasn't my fault, it was this stupid Magikarp!" He kicked the Magikarp and it flopped into the sea.

"Karp karp karp," it exclaimed.

"Hmmph, good riddance," Axer said. Suddenly there was a bright flash of light, and a creature cloaked in black, wearing a mask, appeared over the Pokémon.

"I am Grahf, seeker of power. Doth thou desire the power?"

"Karp karp karp." Grahf nodded and raised his hand, which began to glow with an eerie red light.

"My fist is the divine breath!" He made a sweeping hand motion which looked pretty cool with all the glowing special effects. "Arise, O fallen seed, and grant upon thee the powers of the great and glorious Mother of Destruction!" He blasted the fish Pokémon with dark energy.

"Karp.?" Suddenly the tiny fish mutated into a massive, hulking, bizarre Pokémon the likes of which none of the Agents had seen. Agent Axer screamed like a little girl.

"Aaaaaaah! That's not a Gyarados!" He aimed Dexter the Pokédex at the beast.

"Dexter, analyze!" The Pokédex beeped.

"Analyzing Pokémon species...creating random name...creating log...completed. Evildos, a new form of Pokémon that is evolved from Magikarp by the power of darkness. No further information is available," Dexter announced.

"Gah! That's what you call a name?" Agent Axer asked the little contraption incredulously. A face with its tongue sticking out appeared on Dexter's screen.

"Hey," it said, "if you wanna analyze Pokémon, be my guest, chump." Agent

Solid Ekans swallowed.

"Um, a nice video game ref would come in handy right about now…."

Scene 22:

Setting: The grassy knoll

Time: 1:35 PM

Agent Benit watched the UFO disappear off towards the direction of the ocean. She listened to the the device in her ear and received nothing but static.

"Oh, how lucky! The damned transmission died, and here I am unscathed on the grassy knoll!" She yawned. "Oh well, this ain’t my problem now. I have the recipe, so now it’s time to get the tea I so richly deserve!" She ran like mad towards Rocket Town, tossing her PSG1 into a bush.

Scene 23:

Setting: Back on the ocean

Time: 1:36 PM

Evildos loomed over the floating UFO. Agent Gray Fox shrugged and began to write sutras on himself. Agent CAM whimpered.

"We’re all gonna die!"

"Yeah, we know. You’ve been telling us that for an hour," Agent Artemis said, and went back to concentrating on her own impending doom. Evildos smelled the UFO carefully, deliberated for a split second, and swallowed it whole.

"Spoony it aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllll!!!" Agent Solid Ekans cried as the Agents descended into the pit of the mutant Pokémon’s stomach.

Scene 24:

Setting: The stomach of a large, unhappy Pokémon

Time: 1:38 PM

"Dammit," Mr. T said miserably, "I pity th’ foo’ what ate us." The Agents sat huddled in a semicircle around the UFO, which had come to rest in a corner. The crash had jarred loose an internal mechanism, and the UFO has reactivated its self-destruct sequence. The overly-pleasant female voice counted down.

"Self-destruct commencing in…50, 49, 48, 47…." CAM began to run around in circles again.

"We’re all gonna die!!!!" Mr. T give him a firm knock on the head, temporarily incapacitating him.

"Sucka," he said derisively. "Look, foo’s, I ain’t gonna die here! One o’ you suckas bettah have an idea of how we gonna get outta this!" There was a general shrug among the Agents. Agent Gray Fox removed a red Materia from his pocket and rolled it around the palms of his hands.

"I have a Summon Materia," he said slowly.

"Which one?" the Captain asked. Gray Fox paused.

"Good question. I found it after I got rid of Topo."

"Try it!" the quickly-recovered CAM ventured. Gray Fox shrugged, and held up the Materia. It flashed brightly, and a pillar of smoke appeared in Evildos’ stomach. A quiet chord came from inside the thick pillar, and a low voice began to speak.

"Happy New Year, first of all…hope…you have about a million, or two million more of them…ehehe…." The smoke cleared, to reveal Jimi Hendrix, holding his Stratocaster and framed by a massive stack of Marshall amplifiers. Agent Gray Fox watched with large eyes. "I’d like to dedicate this one, uh, to all the soldiers fighting in Milwaukee…Chicago…and New York. Oh yes, and all the soldiers fighting in Vietnam. Do this thing called Machine Gun." The Agents all huddled onto the ground in protective postitions, save for Gray Fox, who continued to watch with the same glazed expression. Jimi started out with a quiet machine gun on his fretboard, then launched into a full-blown screaming riff. High above, Evildos’ head vibrated. Jimi continued.

"Machine gun…there is my body on the floor…Ma-chine gun, hey, there is my body laid down on the floor…." The Pokémon’s body rumbled. Jimi started another powerful riff, and Evildos’ head blew sky-high. Jimi and the Agents look at the blue sky where its head had been. Jimi shrugged and let his Strat drop. "Thank ya." He stood by Gray Fox, who was in a state of awe.

"Now, how do we get out of here?" Agent Solid Ekans asked.

"I don’t…." Agent Artemis began, but was cut off as the UFO exploded, sending the Agents soaring through the hole above and into the wild blue yonder. Agent Axer looked at the sparkling sea far below.

"Anybody have any bright ideas, now that we’re here?"

"Ooh, I know!" Agent CAM said. "We gotta believe!"

Scene 25:

Setting: The sea. What, did you expect something else?

Time: 1:43 PM

The small rainbow-colored dinghy floated on the sea, in no particular direction. Its sole occupant stood in the helm, causing the boat to sink slightly at the front. The figure opened its mouth, and took a deep breath. The air around was silent save for the forlorn cries of a few seagulls.

"I’m SAILING AWAY, set an OPEN COURSE, FOR THE VIRGIN SEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!" The ear-piercing scream rent the afternoon, and the seagulls let out a succession of painful squwaks and dropped straight into the water, dead as doornails. Just as the figure was about to sing another bar, the Agents crashed into the tiny boat, leaving it floating barely an inch above the water. The singer blinked in surprise.

"Holy carp! What’s going on?!"

Scene 26:

Setting: Rocket Town

Time: 1:43 PM

"$%^$ it, woman!" Cid barked hotly at Shera, as the timid tea servant attempted to bandage his forehead. Team Rocket Town--Cid, Shera, Cait Sith and the Junj Brigade—had landed just outside the town from which they garnered their name after being tossed by the massive Mitochondriachu. The suddenly mobile Junon Cannon had been destroyed, and the Agents taken aboard a UFO of unspeakable disco-evil.

So here the members of aTeam Rocket Town sat, in Cid’s yard, healing their wounds and trying to figure out what to do next.

"Hey!" The bedraggled party turned to see a flustered Agent Benit running up the lawn. "Hey, guys! I was about to get out of this crazy conspiracy when I remembered that I left my other gun in Cid’s yard!" Cid boggled.

"$#%&!! So that’s what I ran over with the %^%$*&# lawnmower! You owe me a new one, sister!"

"Heh," Agent Benit managed to muster as an exaggerated anime sweatdrop appeared on her face.

"We don’t have time for this!" another voice called. The party turned again, this time to behold Agent Aya and Agent Castor moving towards them. "We have to stop the illegal tea operation that started all of this," Aya said in a steady tone, despite the fact that she had died several times before. Agent Castor nodded slowly, his cheeks oddly puffed-up.

"What’s with you?" Agent Benit asked. Agent Castor waved his arms emphatically.

"I think Yuffie or Eve must have done something with his voice," Aya said. "Because there’s something wrong with him." At this, Castor waved his arms again, and blinked rapidly, his mouth still tightly closed.

"Oh, wait!" Shera cried. "I’ll be right back!" She disappeared into the Cid’s house, and came back a few seconds later with a large teapot. She positioned it under Castor’s chin. "Here." Agent Castor formed his mouth into a tight circle, and a light tan liquid shot out into the pot. Having emptied his cargo, he sighed in relief. "That was the last of my tea, wasn’t it?" Shera asked guardedly. Castor nodded.

"Yeah," he said, "Cap told me to save it all!"

"I’m gonna be sick," Benit huffed. Cait looked around, having been surprisingly quiet as of late.

"Hey, what now?" Cid scratched his stubble and looked skywards. He paused for a moment, then raised his arm.

"To my ship!"

"Why?" Master Junj asked, disrupting the dramatic moment.

"To Wutai, so we can destroy the evil tea shipment, of course!" Cid said, somewhat miffed.

"Right!" the group said in odd unison, and ran towards the Highwind.

Scene 27:

Setting: The sea. Hey, I’m tired of it too.

Time: 1:45

The dinghy dipped dangerously close to the surface of the sea, which was not surprising since it contained a respectable number of Agents, the toughest known man in the world and a guitar god. The Agents had been introduced and in turn introduced themselves to the pilot of the boat, one Agent Neener. Said Agent chose this time to resume her miserable attempts at singing.

"There’s a HOLE in the bottom of the SEA! There’s a HOLE in the bottom of the SEA! There’s a HOLE, there’s a HOLE, there’s a HOLE…." Agent Axer tried desperately to tune her out as he surveyed the situation. CAM was currently occupied with eating their meager supply of Twinkies, Agent Artemis still scanned the ingredient labels, Mr. T was mumbling something about pitying a fool, Agent Neener was singing the second verse of her song, Jimi was playing his guitar and the Captain was busily getting seasick. Which left only Gray Fox and Solid Ekans to listen to what Axer had to say. He cleared his throat.

"You guys have any idea what to do now?"

"I think you should try calling Cid to see if he can get us out of here on your PHS," Gray Fox said. Agent Axer blinked.

"Oh yeah, that’s a good idea. Wonder why I didn’t think of that." He removed the PHS from his pocket and dialed Cid’s number. He received three musical tones when he put it to his ear, and a pre-recorded voice began to speak.

"We’re sorry, the location from which you are dialing from cannot be accessed, as you have been ejected from the Eve Corporation. Please choose a different service provider, you traitorous beast." With that, the phone went dead.

"It’s no good," Agent Axer said glumly. "Ever already disconnected my service."

"What about the CODEC?" Solid Ekans asked. Axer nodded.

"I’ll try, but the only person I can contact is Agent Aya," he said as he began to enter the frequency.

"There’s a BUMP on the LOG on the HOLE in the BOTTOM of the SEA," Agent Neener fairly screamed. Agent Axer groaned.

"Hey, keep it down! I’m trying to make a call!" Neener was undaunted.

"THERE’S A HOLE, THERE’S A HOLE, THERE’S A HOLE IN THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA!!!!!!!!!" The singing was so off pitch that Axer crumpled to the ground, as his CODEC made sparked and made a pitiful sizzling sound. His ears began to bleed slightly.

"Ooh," Solid Ekans said, "scratch that idea."

‘What the? Look! Over there!’ Agent 1469 fervently signed. Because of this, nobody took notice of him until he hit Agent Axer over the head. Axer uncurled himself from the fetal position.

"Ow! What?!" Agent 1469 pointed. Axer followed his finger and was surprised to sea a rather large frigate approaching them from the starboard side. The Agents gasped, save for CAM, who was still busy with the Twinkies.

"It’s the pirates of the Carribean!" Gray Fox exclaimed. A group of men gathered on the deck of the ship. One threw down a rope.

"Ahoy! A pirate’s life for me!"

Scene 28:

Setting: A large-ish frigate

Time: 1:54 PM

The Agents, plus Jimi and Mr. T, were soon hoisted aboard the rustic-looking ship and greeted by its bandana-clad crew. One of the pirates called toward the helm.

"Ahoy, Cap’n Cook, thar be a boatload of some type of secret agents we just been bringin’ aboard!" he said. A voice called back.

"Ma ma mia! Hold on, I shall be right there!" A portly man with a bushy black mustache and a droopy white baker’s hat walked toward the Agents. He smiled largely. "Ahoy, mateys! Welcome to my ship! I’m Captain Cook, but I’m sure you’ve all heard of me, right?" The Agents exchanged subtle glances and shrugs. Agent CAM spoke up.

"Oh, Captain COOK!" he said, crossing his fingers. The other Agents followed suit.

"Ma ma mia!" Captain Cook boomed, "I am also known as Chef Boyardee™ and I make the best-a spaghetti in the world!" One of the pirates leaned over to whisper in Agent Axer’s ear.

"Captain Cook here is the only Italian pirate in existance. The action and pillaging is a little light, since this is a trade ship, but he pays us well and feeds us well too!"

"A trade ship?" Axer asked. "What’s your usual cargo?"

"Usually just Chef Boyardee™ products," the pirate said. "I can’t say them here, ‘cause we might get sued." He leaned in a little closer and lowered his voice. "I heard the Cap’n saying something about a tea shipment from Wutai on board now, though." He tapped his nose. Agent Axer raised his eyebrows. If the tea shipment was here, then the Eve Corporation should be closing in soon. He resolved to tell his fellow Agents as soon as they were free from prying ears and eyes. Captain Cook spread his arms.

"Come, my friends! Let us retire to the dining hall, and eat! And eat, and eat, and eat, and eat! And don’t forget to eat! You are guests on my ship, so I will treat you well!" There was a rumble of agreement among the Agents, and they followed a crewman to the dining hall. Captain Cook watched them go, with the same overbearing smile pasted on his face. He leaned toward the pirate that had told Agent Axer about the tea, and said in a cool, feminine voice, "Did you slip him the information?"

"Yeah, I did," the pirate said in an oddly girlish, squeaky voice. Captain Cook smiled.

"Excellent." He moved down the hallway after the Agents.

The Agents looked around the dining room.

"You know, it’s awfully dark in here," Agent Gray Fox said.

"Yeah, I can’t see a darned thing," Solid Ekans said. As the rather large party attempted to see their surroundings, Agent Neener made a observation directed at the Agents.

"This place gives me the creeps."

"That’s probably just hunger pangs," Agent Artemis reassured her. Just then, Captain Cook walked in. He touched a spot on the wall, and the lights flickered on. Instead of a dining room, the room was an oddly-shaped chamber with a lot of cushy chairs arranged in a semi-circle facing a movie theater-sized screen.

"What the spoony is this?" Solid Ekans asked.

"Hah! You all fell into my trap!" Captain Cook said, in a female voice again.

"Whaddya mean? What’s going on here, Captain Cook?" Gray Fox asked.

"Imbeciles! I am not Captain Cook, I am…." Captain Cook tore off his mask to reveal the face of the Agents’ most dreaded nemesis.

"EVE!" they all cried at once. Eve smirked.

"Kyahahahaha, that’s right! Now I have you right where I want you, fools."

"It’s a trap!" Agent Axer said, catching on. "Everyone run!" The Agents dashed for the door, but were stopped by a laser-guided Conformer.

"I don’t think so!" the pirate said, and ripped off his mask to reveal another dreaded foe. The Conformer whizzed behind the crowd, narrowly avoiding slicing everyone to ribbons.

"No!" Solid Ekans gasped. "I thought you died!"

"Like, guess again, and stuff!"

"…Revolver Kisaragi," Ekans stated flatly.

"That’s, like, right and stuff!" Yuffie giggled.

"Urrgh! That name!" Agent Axer cried as her sank to the floor, ears spouting blood again. Eve didn’t waste any time. She snapped her fingers, and the Agents were drawn by a strong force into the cushy chairs, where shackles closed over their ankles, wrists and necks.

"That was, like, really swift, Eve!" Yuffie bubbled. "Not only did you, like, catch all of them in this trap, but you were, like, able to steal the ship from the real Captain Cook, and, like, get the secret tea shipment and stuff!"

"Ugh! You dim-witted brat!" Eve yelled. "They’re not supposed to know that until a lot later!"

"Hey, like, I’m not a brat!" Yuffie protested.

"Hmph. In any case, you’re the former." Eve turned to face her prisoners. "Anyways, Agents, what you see here is the single largest TV screen in existance. Do you know what I plan to use it for?"

"There’s a FLEA on a FLY on a BUMP on a LOG on a HOLE in the BOTTOM of the SEA!!!!!" Agent Neener sang on.

"Eve, you mind tightening the neck thing on her chair?" Gray Fox asked. Eve shook her head.

"Not at all." She pressed a button, and the neck shackle nearly prevented Neener from breathing, let alone singing.

"I pity th’ foo’," Mr. T stated. "I pity th’ foo’." Agent Artemis was still trying to read the Twinkie ingredient label, even though she couldn’t read it very well because of her bonds.

"What’s that it says? There’s hydrochloric acid in Twinkies?"

"Acid?" CAM asked. "Ooohh, the walls are melting and I’m seeing funny colors…."

"Not that kind of acid," Artemis said matter-of-factly. Jimi concealed a faint smile at this.

"Actually, the hydrochloric stuff is probably worse for CAM," Gray Fox reflected.

"Guh…the name…can’t stand…the name…." Agent Axer said, twitching in his seat. Realizing her question had gone unanswered, Eve picked up a megaphone and raised it to her mouth.

"PAY ATTENTION!!!!!" The Agents instantly silenced. Eve smiled primly. "Very good. Now that I have your attention, let me introduce you to…." She swept her hand dramatically at this. "…Our very own Mr. Generic Announcer!" Canned clapping sounds cycled through the speakers as Mr. Generic Announcer appeared on the stage in front of the massive TV screen. He gave a low bow.

"Thank you, Eve, for that wonderful introduction!" He turned to face the bound Agents. "Ladies and gentlemen, I am here to show you an amazing, stupendous and absolutely wonderful product that is G-U-A-R-A-N-T-E-E-D to change your lives forever!"

"What in the name of Bahamut are you doing?!" Agent Solid Ekans yelled, panic-stricken.

"Well," Eve said, "I was going to show you nude pictures of Yuffie, but that proved to be too quick and easy a death. Thus, I decided to go with another approach." She paused for effect. "Death by INFOMERCIAL!!" Agent Neener made a choked sound along the lines of, "Uh-oh." Eve smirked.

"We’ll be leaving now. I’ll be back in a few hours to throw your lifeless corpses overboard. Have fun." She floated out of the room.

"Like, what’re you saying?" Yuffie whined as she tagged along behind her. "My nude pictures aren’t, like, that bad!" Eve rolled her eyes slightly.

"Kid, you got a lot to learn." The steel doors hissed shut behind them, leaving the Agents at the mercy of Mr. Generic Announcer. Not surprisingly, he had none. He launched earnestly into his ‘exciting,’ ‘stupefying’ and ‘fantabulous’ presentation.

"Aaaah…no…it…it can’t be!" Agent CAM cried, struggling with his bonds violently.

"Poor soul…," Artemis said, "…Looks like he’s lost it."

"No I haven’t! But they’re selling large sets of Twinkies for only ten bucks!" CAM drooled at the monitor.

"Yup, he’s lost it," Artemis confirmed.

"How can we get out of this one?" Solid Ekans asked, fidgeting.

"I don’t know. I really don’t," Gray Fox said flatly. Agent Neener tried to choke out the fifth verse of her song.

"I pity th’ foo’," Mr. T mumbled again. There was a sudden quiet shuffle of footsteps. Agent Axer listened as best as he could, and heard it again.

"Pikachu-chu!" Pikachu-chu appeared from around a corner, Twinkie in hand.

"Pikachu-chu!" Agent Axer exclaimed. "How did you get out of your Pokéball?" Pikachu-chu shrugged and chittered. She bit the end off of the Twinkie and spit it onto the floor, where it burned a large hole. She then used the end of the treat to burn through the Agents’ bonds, while the announcer still gabbed about the virtues of using the Teflon Meld XP562715428 to improve your drive by a complete inch. The newly freed Agents sprang up, relishing their freedom. Pikachu-chu gestured excitedly at the door.

"Pika! Chu pika pika pika chu pikachu pika!"

"What?" Solid Ekans asked. "Marlene fell down a well and is being attacked by rabid chu-chus hired by an evil Gebler…."

"I pity th’ foo’ who make Mr. T watch infomercials!" Mr. T said fiercely, and he promptly threw the TV, with announcer, through the ceiling and into the sky.

The Highwind flew leisurely through the skies high above, when a massive TV broke through the cloud bank below them and soared past the airship, narrowly missing the cockpit.

"%^$#! What the &^%$ was that?!" Cid yelled. Benit, Castor, Aya and the others shrugged generally. Cid took the Highwind lower, to find the cause of the appliance-related threat.

A brisk rain was now falling from a darker sky, and water sloshed in through the newly-formed hole in the ceiling. Agent Axer stepped on the liberating Twinkie, in defiance of Eve’s evil acts.

"Now," he said stoically, "to get out of here!" CAM giggled strangely.

"Silly Agent. You can’t hurt a Twinkie." Agent Artemis peered at the securely locked door.

"Hey," she said, "anybody have a lockpick or something?"

"I have this," Solid Ekans said. He attached a Magikarp-shaped device to the door.

"What the karp is that?" Agent Gray Fox asked.

"Sea floor explosive," Ekans explained. "Now, to quote Hart: Get back before I blow the carp!" The Agents moved back, and the door exploded in a brilliant flash of light. The Agents fled up the corridor, already slick with water spilled from the TV room. Suddenly a speaker boomed.

"Ha…ha…ha….." Eve’s sinister voice echoed through the ship. "I figured you would escape, as your types always do. So I took the liberty of preparing a playmate for all of you."

"Eevee!" cried a small voice from the far end of the wet hall.

"Eve’s attacking us with an…Eevee…." Agent Axer burst out laughing. A section of the floor opened, and a glowing stone rose out of it on an elegant marble pedestal.

"I’ve never seen something like that in the game or the anime. Oh, it looks like a bug elemental stone," Solid Ekans said cooly.

"How can you tell?" Gray Fox asked.

"I can’t, it’s a plot contrivance. But it had to be done, or this next scene coming up won’t make much sense."

"Okay…," Gray Fox said, slightly dubiously. The radiation of the stone overtook the small, furry Pokémon, and it did indeed appear to take on a more bug-like form. It also sprouted a mushroom on its back.

"Oh my Pidgey!" Solid Ekans exclaimed. "It’s death by awful puns! It’s Parasect Eevee!"

"I know!" CAM said excitedly. "We’ll beat the crap out of it!" He reached down to his whip holster. "Oh yeah. Eve took our weapons." Artemis sighed.

"Now what?"

The Highwind broke through the rain clouds and caught sight of the frigate afloat in the choppy seas. Cid flipped the protective cover off of a large, inviting red switch.

"No third world trading vessel fires on the Highwind and gets away with it!" He pressed the button gleefully, and a large salvo of missles shot from the Highwind’s launch bay.

The frigate rocked violently as the missles impacted, and water began to pour in from yet more holes. The vessel began to sink.

"This really bites," Gray Fox said morosely.

"The ship is sinking, we’re being attacked by some weird Poké-pun, and we have no weapons!" Agent Axer complained.

‘$%^&*)(*&%$#!#%^**((( &^%%$#!$%&*())*(&^*(^^^&&^%$%^$#!$$% ^&(*&^%%%##!$#$%&*()) (*T%%^%^%$!$$&*&^$%# $%*!(*&!%**(*^*%$&*((^&^^% %%$##%*^*((!!!!!!!!!!!!’ Agent 1469 signed.

"Whoa, Agent 1469 just pulled a Cid," Agent Neener said.

"I don’t think that’s possible with sign language," Agent Artemis mused. Parasect Eevee circled the Agents menacingly, clacking its jaws together. Agent CAM gulped in fear.

"We’re all gonna…."

"We KNOW!!!" the Agents yelled. Suddenly a thin engine sound drifted into the ship, carried by the wind.

"What’s that?" Gray Fox asked. A grappling hook launched through one of the holes, and Agent Benit swung in.

"C’mon, c’mon! Let’s go!" she yelled. Solid Ekans grinned.

"Let’s mosey." Another sound came down via the wind.

"$%&^!!! Don’t say it so pansy-like!!!!" Solid Ekans blinked.

"Alright. Move out!" The Agents climbed up the rope toward the Highwind hovering high above.

Cid reclined on the airship’s bridge, smoking one of his ever-present cigarettes. He grinned.

"You’re a bunch of sad, wet #$^*s, you know that?" The dripping, exhausted Agents nodded vaguely. Cid swiveled in the chair to look out of the cockpit. "Alright, get your @$$es in some new clothes, because we’re off to Wutai!" Far below, Eve’s ship spontaneously exploded.

"Just like an action movie…." Agent CAM said, and he and the rest of the Agents disappeared into their own cabins.

Eve and Yuffie floated away from the remains of the frigate on a small, poorly-built raft. Yuffie sighed and dangled her feet in the water.

"This is, like, sooo unfair! Why is everyone so jealous of my beauty?!" Eve paddled futilely.

"Oh boy."

One of the burning pieces of the ship held a lone figure. She gazed after the rapidly accelerating Highwind, until the heavy rain obscured her view. She thought for a moment, and then spoke.

"He must be crazy to pilot an airship in this kind of weather." And, as a bolt of lightning flashed through the skies, she disappeared.

Scene 29:

Setting: A rainbow-colored dinghy

Time: 11:45 PM

The small dinghy drifted aimlessly through the ocean, a bank of storm clouds far, far behind it. Its sole occupant looked around, and once again found nothing but dark seas and dark blue skies all around. The sole occupant of the little boat sighed forlornly.

"Uh…guys?"

Agent the Captain floated miserably through the waves in the boat the Agents and Captain Cook had forgotten him in. Since the pirate ship had sailed off almost half a day ago, the voyager wondered if this odyssey would be his last. The Captain sighed again, and amassed 10 hours of thought surrounded by the watery abyss into two words.

"This…sucks."

Scene 30:

Setting: Back at the dinghy

Time: Two days later, 10:35 AM

The Captain awoke as the harsh sun invaded his fitful sleep. His face and clothes were coated in dried salt from the fine ocean spray, and he had two days worth of beard too. He noticed several things, in quick succession. First, he was very thirsty. Second, he was very hungry. And third, he had washed ashore on some remote tropical island. Although the first two did demand a certain division of his attention, the third fact indeed interested him, and rightly so. He also heard the sounds of drums. With much exertion, he dragged himself to his feet and through the thick foliage up ahead, towards the drums. After about an hour of painful, foot-dragging walking, he reached a clearing in the rainforest. A large group of natives were involved in some sort of complex ceremony. They worshipped a stone idol. The Captain’s eyes followed a large granite pillar from its base to the top above the trees. And on the top, there stood a sight to strike fear into the hearts of any true man: a stone effigy of a small white glove with two black circles for eyes. The Captain collapsed to his knees in shock, and emitted a hoarse yell.

"NOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOO OOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" He took a deep breath, and recommenced. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOO…." Before he could continue his bestial screaming, several natives appeared, jabbing spears at the air in front of his face.

"Hey, take it easy!" The natives grumbled moodily and backed away from the Captain. A well-dressed yuppie emerged from the brush. He shook the weary traveller’s hand enthusiastically. "I’m Jonathan J. Norton, from Velocity Boy Theme Travels." He helped the Captain to his feet and gave him a hearty pound on the back. "Welcome to Big Jim’s Tropical Spa and Laundromat," the yuppie said as he led the Agent down a path through the trees. "I see you’ve enjoyed our soulless heathen theme attraction." Norton parted the leaves to reveal a group of classy men and astoundingly beautiful woman milling around a huge BBQ pit. "Now that you’re here…woukd you like to have some hot wings? Or to sample our fine foreign teas? Or have a massage from one of our beautiful masseurs?" The Captain’s mind turned a somersault, then decided it would shoot for the whole aerobic workout. A goofy grin suddenly appeared his face.

"$$%$^$%^##**^&*&^^%$$ yeah!"

And so, surrounded by such tropical paradise and fine food, the Captain bid a fond farewell to the matters of the other Agents and their tea half a world away, as peaceful tropical music cued up and the ridiculously large sun set.

For now.

Go on to Section 4