Dianetics Another Day: Chapter 8
Dianetics Another Day
Chapter 8: Kind of Cool
Even in their secret base, in their brightly-colored pseudo-spandex, the most that the municipal defenders could do was watch the news. Kabapu paced back and forth with clear agitation, barking an endless stream of orders at Momochi.
"We have to stop the transmission?"
"Which transmission, sir?"
"All of them!"
"It's on the radio, too," pointed out Misaki.
And the internet, Sumiyoshi added.
"Then cut the electricity! I want a total blackout!"
"That wouldn't be so hard for the city," said Momochi, "and it would only take a little longer to arrange it with the rest of the country, but this is worldwide..."
"Damn that Il Palazzo! Does he think he can just fly off to America to escape my wrath?"
"It would take us awhile to get out there," said Misaki. "Unless you have one of those fancy golden airplanes, too."
Kabapu ignored her sense-making and continued on his tirade undaunted. "He can't win like this... even if he managed to open the ruin, we can't just let him win like this!"
"Doctor," said Momochi, still perfectly calm. "What about that girl?"
"I shouldn't have let her go. I thought it was okay because the tracker stopped in a local residential district, but what was I thinking, just letting her leave? Even after seeing the way he'd brainwashed her... I've just sent our best hope into enemy hands!"
"But according to the tracker, she's still in Japan... or the Thetanator is, anyhow."
Kabapu brightened for the first time all morning. "She acted like I was giving her the lovely eyepatch, but I don't think she'd get rid of it. Where is it? She may have left it with Il Palazzo!"
"I have the address, but there's something oddly familiar about it..."
Kabapu was considerably impressed. "You already have an address?"
"I inputted the coordinates into Google."
"Google, eh? Days like this, I'm glad I gave Al Gore the blueprints for the internet... so? Where is it?"
"It's here in Fukuoka, but... well, maybe you can tell me what's strange about the address." She turned her laptop so Kabapu could see the screen.
Kabapu groaned. "Get me Shiouji on the phone again."
In a rare instance, Shiouji actually picked up. "Honestly, Doctor, I'm on my way."
"What!? Turn around, right this instant!"
"What are you talking about? I'm almost there."
"She's at your house. She... there's no time to explain who she is. She's a... a blond woman, green eyes―"
"Excel? She was out back with Mother."
"WHAT!?"
"Doctor, please. You don't have to shout into the phone."
"Go back! GO BACK! You have to keep her there!"
Momochi cut into the conversation. "The coordinates are moving."
The ends of Kabapu's mustache looked as though they might combust. "All right, Shiouji, you may as well come after all."
"I'm already here!" Shiouji announce as he burst through the window (considerably more difficult in an underground facility).
Since Kabapu could not punish him for punctuality, he moved to another topic. "We're going to need to pursue. So, when it comes to Mr. Iwata―"
"I overnighted the parts. They should be arriving today."
"And Ropponmatsu―"
"Disappeared from the face of the earth."
These were not factors for which he could directly punish, either, so Kabapu moved onto the day's briefing. "We've all seen the news report this morning. ACROSS has established themselves overseas. It's only a matter of time before America succumbs to their demands, and-" Misaki raised a hand. "Yes, Ms. Matsuya?"
"Do we have any American allies?"
"I had thought so, previously," he grumbled. "Ms. Momochi, has the church of Scientology deigned to answer any of our calls?"
"No sir," she replied, "and it seems as though quite a few of them have disappeared overnight, if the internet is to be believed."
"For crying out loud... I hope for their sake they're just avoiding me. So to answer your question, no, we don't have any American allies." Misaki raised her hand. "Yes?"
"So, Il Palazzo is currently out of our range, and in possession of overtechnology that can - and I quite - 'Destroy the world.'"
"That's correct." Misaki raised her hand. "Yes?"
"Since you've clearly known about his capabilities for some time now, why don't we have any American allies?"
Kabapu couldn't tell her that it simply wasn't supposed to be like this. Il Palazzo had cheated by moving his operation, plain and simple. Fukuoka was supposed to be the center stage. It was supposed to be the center of the world.
"If we could limit ourselves to productive questions, please..."
- - -
Excel did not waste time looking for Hyatt and Elgala; after all, without her supervision, Elgala could not be trusted not to blow their money on hotel rooms and Pachinko and solid gold helicopters. And that's only if they weren't behind bars, being beaten and sexually abused... or worse yet, blowing their money on narcotics and chocolate bars and prison bitches!
No, there was no room for worrying about her coworkers. Lord Il Palazzo had to be warned, and soon. Enemies lurked on the horizon. Weird enemies who gave her strange and gaudy things (she still had it packed away in her shopping bags, though she could not name a single reason why it should be kept). Surely they could not be a threat to the lord, but he had a right to know of even the smallest inconvenience. Perhaps he'd even praise her!
Excel's spirits soared to know that she would soon be meeting with her lord. It didn't matter that she had been captured. It didn't matter that she had no real information on situation. Lord Il Palazzo had always been kind and generous in the face of her failures, and there was no reason to believe that this time would be any different.
Besides that, a little fear at the wrath of the lord was nothing in comparison to the desperation of missing him. She made a beeline for the ACROSS base. The worst sort of deja vu hit her when she arrived in the underground only to find the spare uniform closet completely empty.
(Briefly, she considered appealing to him in the bunnygirl suit, but her horse sense won out here; she was a commoner now, after all, and she would appeal to him in a commoner's dress.)
Despite everything, despite the way her life had been progressing these last couple of days, Excel was shocked to see her lord's ubiquitous throne missing from the ACROSS reception room. The carpet had gone as well, leaving the room completely bare, sans a small fire where Lord Il Palazzo should have been. As she approached it, a figure sprung from the darkness, brandishing a nine iron.
"Who's there? This shopping cart doesn't veer, rattle, or squeak... and I, Elgala, will protect it with my very life!"
"Can it, it's just me." Excel only narrowly dodged Elgala's attack. "Ack! The hell's wrong with you?"
"Come to gloat, Senior Excel? Face my Miracle Wrath!" She swung again and Excel dodged again, nearly tripping over her own feet.
"What are you yammering on about? You're the one gloating over your perfect shopping cart!"
The fight left Elgala almost immediately, and she peered at her senior with wide, blinking eyes. "Senior Excel?"
Excel took the opportunity to whack her upside the head. "What's gotten into you? I get captured for two days and I come back to find the base gone and you Hinamizawa Syndroming all over the place!"
"Captured?" Elgala echoed. (Captured?) Elgala echoed the echo.
"Cap-tured. Abducted, kidnapped, detained. Nice rescue attempt, by the way!"
Elgala stared at her blankly. "May I see your arm, Senior?"
Though she did not particularly understand or appreciate the request, Excel did not see any specific trouble in it. She offered her arm. Elgala took it in both hands, turning it over, pressing her fingers into the pulse.
"You're startin' to creep me out here, El..."
Elgala yanked so hard that Excel flew face-first into the floor. "Senior Excel!" she cried, clapping her hands. "It is you!"
"If you needed to see my fist moving at a high velocity... YOU COULD'VE JUST ASKED!"
Several minutes later, when they had finished checking for loose teeth and wiping the blood from their respective faces, Elgala asked, "Do you want to see my cart?"
"Our cart! But yes. And who cares about some stupid cart? What happened to the base?"
Elgala's expression darkened. "I, Elgala, didn't come into my full understanding of the situation until I saw you... but now it all makes sense! Senior! ACROSS has been taken over by evil robot pod people!"
"..." said Excel.
"That would explain the spaceship! And why she was a robot!" (And why I, Elgala, was fired!)
Excel gasped. "Lord Il Palazzo fired... spaceship? Robot?"
"Try to keep up, will you, Senior? There's no way the Lord Il Palazzo would treat even you so cruelly! Unless... oh, no! Maybe the real Lord Il Palazzo was seduced by that evil Senior! Noooo, that's too terrible to imagine, even if it isn't really you!"
"Hey, now..."
"Oh, but what should we do next? Elgala tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Would it be all right to stay in a hotel if we were working there? I, Elgala, am fairly confident we could find one less offensive to the coast guard."
"That reminds me! I saw Ms. Manager and Mr. Owner today. It seems like he's still alive."
"That's nice. What are they up to these days?"
"They joined a cult."
"Can we join?"
"I think I already did... but who cares about some stupid cult? We don't have time to find religion! We have to get to the bottom of this! Go back to the beginning and explain to me - coherently - about these evil robot pod people..."
- - -
"Here we go again," muttered Misaki as she descended the ladder into the sewer. "Do you ever wonder what would've happened if we'd had a confrontation the last time we were down here?"
We're probably about to find out, Sumiyoshi complained.
"If we'd fought them back then, then Miss Ayasugi and I... all this time... we could've..." Squealing in high pitch, he ran ahead.
"Watanabe-kun! We should probably at least try to stick together!" Misaki protested.
It's hopeless, said Sumiyoshi. Unless we pitched in and bought him a new game...
"I don't think that's the solution..."
They didn't have far to go. Watanabe led the charge into a the former throne room, where the ACROSS girls huddled around a small flame at the opposite end.
"It's so dark in here," noted Misaki.
Shiouji's voice filtered through the intercoms: "You can come and see me in the dark, if you use night vision."
"How do we--" Misaki began, but Shiouji flicked it on with no further provocation. All three sentai cringed at their now mutual blindness, but as soon as they got past the merry little campfire that now blazed like the sun, the marshmallow-roasting ACROSS girls were now easily visible. Also easily visible was their shopping cart full of grocery sacks.
Hobos, said Sumiyoshi.
"Hobos," agreed Watanabe (after visually confirming that Miss Ayasugi was not among the group). "This is our enemy, the evil organization that can destroy the world... hobos?"
He'd not been quiet about this announcement, and the girls' attention had been caught. They began peering around in the dark. "Who's there?"
"The nerve of you, following us all the way here! You're not getting this shopping cart!" A golf club swung into the darkness.
"We don't want your cart!" Misaki called. "Actually, we came to find your base, but I hope for your sake that this isn't it."
Excel whipped out the Thetanator. "Go rub rock salt in someone else's wounds, will you?"
"We'd love to, but we're under orders to capture your friend."
"Oh, we're not friends," Elgala clarified. Excel kicked her.
"You'd better watch out! This thing is dangerous like a monkey with a hand grenade!" The trapdoors all opened when she swung her wand into the ground, and Excel laughed like Dr. Hojo on nitrous oxide as the intruders splashed down into the pit below. "How delicious is this small taste of how Lord Il Palazzo must feel!"
"That's so blasphem..." Elgala began, but she trailed off upon seeing Excel's expression. (My senior is a demon!)
"Would you rather I not save your worthless keister?" Excel, her grin still gleaming manically in the darkness, shoved the cart at Elgala. "Come on, let's blow this joint before they finish off the grenade monkeys!"
They scrambled past the pit trap where Misaki was already helping Watanabe ans Sumiyoshi to the top.
"Who's up for calling it a day?" she asked, raising her own hand.
Aye, Sumiyoshi concurred.
"No way," said Watanabe.
They stared at him in disbelief. Miss Ayasugi isn't even here.
"And we're a little short on personnel right now," Misaki pointed out.
"This isn't about Miss Ayasugi!"
Incredulous stares.
"Okay, it is. But we can't save her from Il Palazzo if we can't even capture his hobo flunkies! Do what you want, but I'm going after them!" He took chase.
That was almost kind of cool, said Sumiyoahi.
"Almost," Misaki agreed. "We'd better go after him before he hurts himself."
- - -
"Senior, it's stuck!"
Excel whirled around to see Elgala struggling to dig their cart out of a ditch. She dashed back to help. "What is wrong with you? Steer it better!"
"Can't we just leave it behind while we run for our lives? How are we going to get it up to the surface, anyway?"
"How'd you get it down here in the first place? And do you really think I'd leave behind a perfect shopping cart full of generously donated supplies and provisions? AN OTTER POP'S CHANCE IN HELL!"
As they were righting their cart, their enemies caught up with them. Excel threw herself in front of the goods, Thetanator at the ready.
"Don't you zentai freaks ever give up?"
Zentai? Sumiyoshi echoed, insofar as Sumiyoshi could echo anything.
The lead freak drew his gun. "I'll never give up on Miss Ayasugi!"
(Senior Hyatt's stalker is rather pathetic), Elgala mused. (I, Elgala, almost feel pity for him.)
Excel sighed. "Look, pal, I'm not disparaging your choice in women. Ha-chan's grade A! Grade A that has been left in the sun for awhile. A long while. But nonetheless, too good for the likes of you!"
"Yeah, yeah!" Elgala agreed. "She's got better things to do than wasting her time on some necrophiliac! You're worth less to her than dog meat!"
"Watch what you're saying, El. Dog meat is a valuable commodity."
"Ouch," commented Misaki.
Aye, there's little worse than being dumped by a girl's friends.
"Could the peanut gallery maybe shut up for five minutes?" Watanabe barked.
A sudden bravado stirred in Excel's cowardly lion heart, then. Whether because of their foes' obvious disorganization, her shiny new toy, or perhaps just her will to protect ACROSS provisions at all costs, she did something then that she would never have done before - she played hero.
"Elgala," she said, uncharacteristically calm. "I'll hold these bozos off. You take the cart and get out of here."
"Yes, Senior!" (She looks almost cool. I, Elgala, resent her deeply even as I leave her to her death!) She was gone like an otter pop out of hell.
"You could've pretended you weren't going to run out on me," Excel grumbled. "But at least the cart is safe."
"I said we don't want the cart," pointed out Misaki with an exasperated sigh. Turning to Watanabe, she asked, "Seriously, can we go home now?"
"Go if you want," he said, "but I'm getting to the bottom of this."
"The bottom of what?" Excel demanded.
"Miss Ayasugi and I... we were going to get married! She wouldn't have just run off like that - no way!"
"Are you kidding? She doesn't have a ring. She's never even mentioned you. What makes you think that she was going to marry you?" Clearly, this poor man was a raving, delusional stalker, but unlike Elgala, Excel really did pity him. After all, who was she to...
That was when it happened. The Thetanator glowed and sparked like a Roman candle in a Skittles commercial.
Excel scratched the side of her head. "This thing is going to give me cancer, isn't it?"
She thrust the Thetanator into the air.
"SOLARIA PRISM MAKE-UP!"
Chapter 8: Kind of Cool
Even in their secret base, in their brightly-colored pseudo-spandex, the most that the municipal defenders could do was watch the news. Kabapu paced back and forth with clear agitation, barking an endless stream of orders at Momochi.
"We have to stop the transmission?"
"Which transmission, sir?"
"All of them!"
"It's on the radio, too," pointed out Misaki.
And the internet, Sumiyoshi added.
"Then cut the electricity! I want a total blackout!"
"That wouldn't be so hard for the city," said Momochi, "and it would only take a little longer to arrange it with the rest of the country, but this is worldwide..."
"Damn that Il Palazzo! Does he think he can just fly off to America to escape my wrath?"
"It would take us awhile to get out there," said Misaki. "Unless you have one of those fancy golden airplanes, too."
Kabapu ignored her sense-making and continued on his tirade undaunted. "He can't win like this... even if he managed to open the ruin, we can't just let him win like this!"
"Doctor," said Momochi, still perfectly calm. "What about that girl?"
"I shouldn't have let her go. I thought it was okay because the tracker stopped in a local residential district, but what was I thinking, just letting her leave? Even after seeing the way he'd brainwashed her... I've just sent our best hope into enemy hands!"
"But according to the tracker, she's still in Japan... or the Thetanator is, anyhow."
Kabapu brightened for the first time all morning. "She acted like I was giving her the lovely eyepatch, but I don't think she'd get rid of it. Where is it? She may have left it with Il Palazzo!"
"I have the address, but there's something oddly familiar about it..."
Kabapu was considerably impressed. "You already have an address?"
"I inputted the coordinates into Google."
"Google, eh? Days like this, I'm glad I gave Al Gore the blueprints for the internet... so? Where is it?"
"It's here in Fukuoka, but... well, maybe you can tell me what's strange about the address." She turned her laptop so Kabapu could see the screen.
Kabapu groaned. "Get me Shiouji on the phone again."
In a rare instance, Shiouji actually picked up. "Honestly, Doctor, I'm on my way."
"What!? Turn around, right this instant!"
"What are you talking about? I'm almost there."
"She's at your house. She... there's no time to explain who she is. She's a... a blond woman, green eyes―"
"Excel? She was out back with Mother."
"WHAT!?"
"Doctor, please. You don't have to shout into the phone."
"Go back! GO BACK! You have to keep her there!"
Momochi cut into the conversation. "The coordinates are moving."
The ends of Kabapu's mustache looked as though they might combust. "All right, Shiouji, you may as well come after all."
"I'm already here!" Shiouji announce as he burst through the window (considerably more difficult in an underground facility).
Since Kabapu could not punish him for punctuality, he moved to another topic. "We're going to need to pursue. So, when it comes to Mr. Iwata―"
"I overnighted the parts. They should be arriving today."
"And Ropponmatsu―"
"Disappeared from the face of the earth."
These were not factors for which he could directly punish, either, so Kabapu moved onto the day's briefing. "We've all seen the news report this morning. ACROSS has established themselves overseas. It's only a matter of time before America succumbs to their demands, and-" Misaki raised a hand. "Yes, Ms. Matsuya?"
"Do we have any American allies?"
"I had thought so, previously," he grumbled. "Ms. Momochi, has the church of Scientology deigned to answer any of our calls?"
"No sir," she replied, "and it seems as though quite a few of them have disappeared overnight, if the internet is to be believed."
"For crying out loud... I hope for their sake they're just avoiding me. So to answer your question, no, we don't have any American allies." Misaki raised her hand. "Yes?"
"So, Il Palazzo is currently out of our range, and in possession of overtechnology that can - and I quite - 'Destroy the world.'"
"That's correct." Misaki raised her hand. "Yes?"
"Since you've clearly known about his capabilities for some time now, why don't we have any American allies?"
Kabapu couldn't tell her that it simply wasn't supposed to be like this. Il Palazzo had cheated by moving his operation, plain and simple. Fukuoka was supposed to be the center stage. It was supposed to be the center of the world.
"If we could limit ourselves to productive questions, please..."
- - -
Excel did not waste time looking for Hyatt and Elgala; after all, without her supervision, Elgala could not be trusted not to blow their money on hotel rooms and Pachinko and solid gold helicopters. And that's only if they weren't behind bars, being beaten and sexually abused... or worse yet, blowing their money on narcotics and chocolate bars and prison bitches!
No, there was no room for worrying about her coworkers. Lord Il Palazzo had to be warned, and soon. Enemies lurked on the horizon. Weird enemies who gave her strange and gaudy things (she still had it packed away in her shopping bags, though she could not name a single reason why it should be kept). Surely they could not be a threat to the lord, but he had a right to know of even the smallest inconvenience. Perhaps he'd even praise her!
Excel's spirits soared to know that she would soon be meeting with her lord. It didn't matter that she had been captured. It didn't matter that she had no real information on situation. Lord Il Palazzo had always been kind and generous in the face of her failures, and there was no reason to believe that this time would be any different.
Besides that, a little fear at the wrath of the lord was nothing in comparison to the desperation of missing him. She made a beeline for the ACROSS base. The worst sort of deja vu hit her when she arrived in the underground only to find the spare uniform closet completely empty.
(Briefly, she considered appealing to him in the bunnygirl suit, but her horse sense won out here; she was a commoner now, after all, and she would appeal to him in a commoner's dress.)
Despite everything, despite the way her life had been progressing these last couple of days, Excel was shocked to see her lord's ubiquitous throne missing from the ACROSS reception room. The carpet had gone as well, leaving the room completely bare, sans a small fire where Lord Il Palazzo should have been. As she approached it, a figure sprung from the darkness, brandishing a nine iron.
"Who's there? This shopping cart doesn't veer, rattle, or squeak... and I, Elgala, will protect it with my very life!"
"Can it, it's just me." Excel only narrowly dodged Elgala's attack. "Ack! The hell's wrong with you?"
"Come to gloat, Senior Excel? Face my Miracle Wrath!" She swung again and Excel dodged again, nearly tripping over her own feet.
"What are you yammering on about? You're the one gloating over your perfect shopping cart!"
The fight left Elgala almost immediately, and she peered at her senior with wide, blinking eyes. "Senior Excel?"
Excel took the opportunity to whack her upside the head. "What's gotten into you? I get captured for two days and I come back to find the base gone and you Hinamizawa Syndroming all over the place!"
"Captured?" Elgala echoed. (Captured?) Elgala echoed the echo.
"Cap-tured. Abducted, kidnapped, detained. Nice rescue attempt, by the way!"
Elgala stared at her blankly. "May I see your arm, Senior?"
Though she did not particularly understand or appreciate the request, Excel did not see any specific trouble in it. She offered her arm. Elgala took it in both hands, turning it over, pressing her fingers into the pulse.
"You're startin' to creep me out here, El..."
Elgala yanked so hard that Excel flew face-first into the floor. "Senior Excel!" she cried, clapping her hands. "It is you!"
"If you needed to see my fist moving at a high velocity... YOU COULD'VE JUST ASKED!"
Several minutes later, when they had finished checking for loose teeth and wiping the blood from their respective faces, Elgala asked, "Do you want to see my cart?"
"Our cart! But yes. And who cares about some stupid cart? What happened to the base?"
Elgala's expression darkened. "I, Elgala, didn't come into my full understanding of the situation until I saw you... but now it all makes sense! Senior! ACROSS has been taken over by evil robot pod people!"
"..." said Excel.
"That would explain the spaceship! And why she was a robot!" (And why I, Elgala, was fired!)
Excel gasped. "Lord Il Palazzo fired... spaceship? Robot?"
"Try to keep up, will you, Senior? There's no way the Lord Il Palazzo would treat even you so cruelly! Unless... oh, no! Maybe the real Lord Il Palazzo was seduced by that evil Senior! Noooo, that's too terrible to imagine, even if it isn't really you!"
"Hey, now..."
"Oh, but what should we do next? Elgala tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Would it be all right to stay in a hotel if we were working there? I, Elgala, am fairly confident we could find one less offensive to the coast guard."
"That reminds me! I saw Ms. Manager and Mr. Owner today. It seems like he's still alive."
"That's nice. What are they up to these days?"
"They joined a cult."
"Can we join?"
"I think I already did... but who cares about some stupid cult? We don't have time to find religion! We have to get to the bottom of this! Go back to the beginning and explain to me - coherently - about these evil robot pod people..."
- - -
"Here we go again," muttered Misaki as she descended the ladder into the sewer. "Do you ever wonder what would've happened if we'd had a confrontation the last time we were down here?"
We're probably about to find out, Sumiyoshi complained.
"If we'd fought them back then, then Miss Ayasugi and I... all this time... we could've..." Squealing in high pitch, he ran ahead.
"Watanabe-kun! We should probably at least try to stick together!" Misaki protested.
It's hopeless, said Sumiyoshi. Unless we pitched in and bought him a new game...
"I don't think that's the solution..."
They didn't have far to go. Watanabe led the charge into a the former throne room, where the ACROSS girls huddled around a small flame at the opposite end.
"It's so dark in here," noted Misaki.
Shiouji's voice filtered through the intercoms: "You can come and see me in the dark, if you use night vision."
"How do we--" Misaki began, but Shiouji flicked it on with no further provocation. All three sentai cringed at their now mutual blindness, but as soon as they got past the merry little campfire that now blazed like the sun, the marshmallow-roasting ACROSS girls were now easily visible. Also easily visible was their shopping cart full of grocery sacks.
Hobos, said Sumiyoshi.
"Hobos," agreed Watanabe (after visually confirming that Miss Ayasugi was not among the group). "This is our enemy, the evil organization that can destroy the world... hobos?"
He'd not been quiet about this announcement, and the girls' attention had been caught. They began peering around in the dark. "Who's there?"
"The nerve of you, following us all the way here! You're not getting this shopping cart!" A golf club swung into the darkness.
"We don't want your cart!" Misaki called. "Actually, we came to find your base, but I hope for your sake that this isn't it."
Excel whipped out the Thetanator. "Go rub rock salt in someone else's wounds, will you?"
"We'd love to, but we're under orders to capture your friend."
"Oh, we're not friends," Elgala clarified. Excel kicked her.
"You'd better watch out! This thing is dangerous like a monkey with a hand grenade!" The trapdoors all opened when she swung her wand into the ground, and Excel laughed like Dr. Hojo on nitrous oxide as the intruders splashed down into the pit below. "How delicious is this small taste of how Lord Il Palazzo must feel!"
"That's so blasphem..." Elgala began, but she trailed off upon seeing Excel's expression. (My senior is a demon!)
"Would you rather I not save your worthless keister?" Excel, her grin still gleaming manically in the darkness, shoved the cart at Elgala. "Come on, let's blow this joint before they finish off the grenade monkeys!"
They scrambled past the pit trap where Misaki was already helping Watanabe ans Sumiyoshi to the top.
"Who's up for calling it a day?" she asked, raising her own hand.
Aye, Sumiyoshi concurred.
"No way," said Watanabe.
They stared at him in disbelief. Miss Ayasugi isn't even here.
"And we're a little short on personnel right now," Misaki pointed out.
"This isn't about Miss Ayasugi!"
Incredulous stares.
"Okay, it is. But we can't save her from Il Palazzo if we can't even capture his hobo flunkies! Do what you want, but I'm going after them!" He took chase.
That was almost kind of cool, said Sumiyoahi.
"Almost," Misaki agreed. "We'd better go after him before he hurts himself."
- - -
"Senior, it's stuck!"
Excel whirled around to see Elgala struggling to dig their cart out of a ditch. She dashed back to help. "What is wrong with you? Steer it better!"
"Can't we just leave it behind while we run for our lives? How are we going to get it up to the surface, anyway?"
"How'd you get it down here in the first place? And do you really think I'd leave behind a perfect shopping cart full of generously donated supplies and provisions? AN OTTER POP'S CHANCE IN HELL!"
As they were righting their cart, their enemies caught up with them. Excel threw herself in front of the goods, Thetanator at the ready.
"Don't you zentai freaks ever give up?"
Zentai? Sumiyoshi echoed, insofar as Sumiyoshi could echo anything.
The lead freak drew his gun. "I'll never give up on Miss Ayasugi!"
(Senior Hyatt's stalker is rather pathetic), Elgala mused. (I, Elgala, almost feel pity for him.)
Excel sighed. "Look, pal, I'm not disparaging your choice in women. Ha-chan's grade A! Grade A that has been left in the sun for awhile. A long while. But nonetheless, too good for the likes of you!"
"Yeah, yeah!" Elgala agreed. "She's got better things to do than wasting her time on some necrophiliac! You're worth less to her than dog meat!"
"Watch what you're saying, El. Dog meat is a valuable commodity."
"Ouch," commented Misaki.
Aye, there's little worse than being dumped by a girl's friends.
"Could the peanut gallery maybe shut up for five minutes?" Watanabe barked.
A sudden bravado stirred in Excel's cowardly lion heart, then. Whether because of their foes' obvious disorganization, her shiny new toy, or perhaps just her will to protect ACROSS provisions at all costs, she did something then that she would never have done before - she played hero.
"Elgala," she said, uncharacteristically calm. "I'll hold these bozos off. You take the cart and get out of here."
"Yes, Senior!" (She looks almost cool. I, Elgala, resent her deeply even as I leave her to her death!) She was gone like an otter pop out of hell.
"You could've pretended you weren't going to run out on me," Excel grumbled. "But at least the cart is safe."
"I said we don't want the cart," pointed out Misaki with an exasperated sigh. Turning to Watanabe, she asked, "Seriously, can we go home now?"
"Go if you want," he said, "but I'm getting to the bottom of this."
"The bottom of what?" Excel demanded.
"Miss Ayasugi and I... we were going to get married! She wouldn't have just run off like that - no way!"
"Are you kidding? She doesn't have a ring. She's never even mentioned you. What makes you think that she was going to marry you?" Clearly, this poor man was a raving, delusional stalker, but unlike Elgala, Excel really did pity him. After all, who was she to...
That was when it happened. The Thetanator glowed and sparked like a Roman candle in a Skittles commercial.
Excel scratched the side of her head. "This thing is going to give me cancer, isn't it?"
She thrust the Thetanator into the air.
"SOLARIA PRISM MAKE-UP!"