better ending than that, yes but no? Choose your weapon.”
“Huh?”
“Do
not play the incense with me.” Matter-of-factly, Karnage explained, “I
am a pirate. You are my enemy. We will fight to the death. It’s the
pirate law.”
“T...to the death!” Baloo shrieked, aghast. “No way, Karnage. I don’t do death.”
“I
tell you that today you do do death. Which of these lovely instruments
of destruction do you preference?” He offered Baloo both the sword and
gun.
Baloo, who detested weapons of any kind, shied away, shaking his head. “I’m not gonna fight you.”
Don Karnage turned dangerously angry. “You dare refuse me? Me? The eighth plundering wonder of the world?”
“Baloo!” Rebecca murmured hastily, tugging on the big bear’s arm. “Fight him, or he’ll kill you.”
“Doncha mean ‘and’, Becky?” Baloo whispered over his shoulder. “Fight him, andhe’ll kill me? This is whatcha call a lose-lose-lose situation. I’ll
lose my life, an’ you an’ Kit’ll lose yours. Three strikes, an’ we’re
all out.”
Karnage retorted restlessly, “Enough talking in front of my back!”
“Okay, Karny, but before I fight ya, I wanna ask one question.”
“Yes,” Karnage snapped impatiently, tapping his foot, “what is your piteous, little, pointless question?”
“What the heck is your problem?”
That was definitely the wrong thing to ask!
Karnage’s
face grew crimson. “YOU, Bahloo! YOU are my problem!” The grown pirate
captain, who prided himself on possessing poise under pressure, hopped
up and down like a three-year-old throwing a temper tantrum. “YOU
always mess up my grandest schemes! YOU always cause damage to my
aircrafts! YOU always make me look stupid!”
“Don’t take much for that last one,” Baloo mumbled under his breath.
Karnage
forced the point of his sword under Baloo’s chin, prompting a
collective gasp from the trio of bears. “But YOU will NOT be my mucho
grande problemo for much longer. Choose your weapon, Bahloo.”
“No.” Baloo crossed his arms and set his mouth resolutely.
“Fine. I will choose for you.” Karnage forced the gun into Baloo’s hand. “Take what I give you...take, take! Ready...set...”
“Oh, wow! What’s that over there?” Kit cried, pointing to the opposite side of the hangar.
Karnage fell for the oldest trick in the book. He spun around. “What? Where? Who? And sometimes why?”
“Use the gun, Baloo!” Rebecca hissed.
Baloo
looked at the gun in his hand. He hated guns. He couldn’t shoot anyone,
not even a cheap crook like Karnage, so he smacked the pirate over the
head with its handle with a loud ‘thwack’. For the second time in ten
minutes, Karnage slumped to the floor.
Kit sprinted down the nearest corridor, shouting over his shoulder, “Pull chocks!”
Baloo grabbed Rebecca by the wrist, and they raced after the boy.
Karnage
awoke to see his arch-enemy getting away. He pushed himself up on his
elbows. “Now I am the steamed veggies!” He shot at Baloo, but was so
dizzy that he missed. The bullet hit the floor at Baloo’s feet instead.
“Stand still and fight like a man, Bahloo! Ohhhh...” He collapsed again.
Five Minutes Later
Kit,
closely followed by Baloo and Rebecca, skidded down the hall and
screeched to a halt in front of the room where Charley was located.
“In here!” Kit said.
Baloo turned the knob. “Sure this is the right room, Kit? It’s locked,” he panted, still holding tightly to Rebecca’s paw.
“Locked?” Rebecca herself tugged on the knob.
“Oops.
Forgot about that. I locked the door to keep the pirates out.” Kit
pointed to a grate in the wall over the door. “Give me a boost, Papa
Bear.”
The big bear easily lifted Kit up to the grate with an
“Upsie-daisy.” The boy disappeared inside, the grate clanking shut
behind him; and, a moment later, the door opened.
Baloo and
Rebecca quickly entered and quietly closed the door behind them. The
weather machine continued to hum, but Buzz was nowhere in sight.
“Where’s Buzz?” asked Baloo.
“He should be here, Papa Bear. I left him not ten minutes ago.”
Buzz popped up from behind the machine with a wrench in his hand. “Did someone say something?”
“Did you get Charley fixed yet?” Kit inquired, running over to the inventor.
“That’s Charley?” Rebecca cried in amazement, taking in the small invention.
“Actually, it’s the Portable Wind Velocitizer and Precipitation Producer,” Buzz clarified.
Wearily, Baloo and Kit chanted along with Buzz, “Or Charley for short.”
“Well, Buzz?”
“Well, what?” Buzz gave Baloo a blank stare.
“Charley! Is it fixed?” Baloo snapped irritably.
“Yes and no.”
“Here we go,” Baloo groaned, rolling his eyes.
Buzz informed them, “It’s fixed in the sense that it’s fixed to implode.”
“Implode?” echoed Baloo and Rebecca, sharing a look.
“Explode backwards,” Kit explained.
Buzz
tapped the pressure indicator on the Frigid-Air tank. The needle was
precariously close to zero. “From the amount of steam that’s left, I
calculate that we have approximately five minutes before it implodes.
Maybe more like three-and-a-half.”
Grasping Rebecca’s hand again, Baloo cried, “Oh, baby! We gotta vamoose outta here!”
Kit
turned on his heel and ran. Baloo and Rebecca did likewise, leaving
Buzz standing there. The inventor whipped out a notepad and scribbled
furiously. “Nose warmers!” he exclaimed, extremely pleased with
himself. “I’ve done it again!”
A disgruntled Baloo snatched up Buzz by the arm and carried him off.
Our gallant heroes raced through the Iron Vulture, sprinting up countless flights of stairs. Finally, they reached the trapdoor that exited to the landing strip where the Sea Duckwas stationed. Baloo, who was the only one tall enough to reach it,
pushed up on the door, but the metal flap wouldn’t budge. “Another
locked door!”
“There aren’t any locks on the trapdoors; at least,
there didn’t used to be,” Kit informed them. “Someone’s probably
standing on it.”
“Well, then we’ll just wait until they move,” suggested practical Rebecca.
Mingled
voices and heavy footsteps pounding on the stairs below warned them
that the pirates knew that their prisoners were escaping.
“We got
no time to wait!” Baloo gave an extra hard shove on the door, sending
the pirate standing on it tumbling off with a loud thump.
“Now you’ve done it, Baloo!” Rebecca whispered sharply.
“Me? What’d I do?”the big bear whispered back.
Poking
her finger at his chest with every syllable, she snapped, “Only alerted
every pirate up there that we’re down here, that’s what!”
“Wait a doggone minute, Becky!” Baloo spat in a rather loud voice. “I...”
“Guys,
keep it down!” Kit hissed, peering down at the dimly-lit staircase. The
pirate voices and clanking footfalls were growing closer. Luckily for
them, stealth was not in the air pirate repertoire. “Escape now. Fight
later.”
Baloo studied the trapdoor. Suddenly, his face lit up.
Snapping his fingers, he said, “Crew, I got a plan. Buzz, gimmee that
apple-picker.”
“What does picking apples have to do with escaping?” Buzz asked, bewildered.
“Watch.” Baloo lifted Kit to his shoulders.
Kit opened the door a crack and peeked out. The Sea Duckwas only a short way away. There was no one to impede their hasty exit.
Just as soon as Kit was about to call out, “All clear,” he was looking
down the barrel of a rifle.
“Hey, hold it right there!” On the
other end of the rifle was a small black canine wearing a tartan tam
and sunglasses. Kit wasn’t fooled by the dog’s size; he knew that
Jacques - more commonly known as Scottie - hid a dangerous deadly
streak underneath that cool manner.
“Okay, I’ll hold yer gun for
ya if ya insist, pal,” Baloo said. With a push of a button, the
white-gloved hand shot out and grabbed the barrel of the gun and pulled
it down into the Iron Vulture.
“Give that back!”
Baloo
winked at Kit, and Kit winked back. They knew exactly what the other
was thinking. With a second push of a button, Baloo released the gun
from the apple-picker’s hand into Kit’s paw. The boy pointed the gun at
Jacques, saying, “Sorry, but you didn’t say ‘Simon says’.”
When
Jacques was playing tug-of-war with Kit over the gun, he failed to
notice the trapdoor swinging up towards his jaw until it was too late.
The force sent Jacques sailing across the landing strip.
Kit hoisted himself out of the Iron Vultureand then gave Rebecca and Buzz a hand up as Baloo lifted them to the
surface. Kit and Rebecca assisted Baloo through the opening. They all
ran towards the Sea Duck.
Higher for Hire
“Eep!” Molly, lying flat on her stomach, slouched further under the desk when one huge
yellow eye appeared at the window. The dark pupil looked up and down, right and left, taking in the entire room.
“Molly!” yelled Wildcat. “Yoo-hoo! Mollycat!”
“Wildcat?” Molly answered back, greatly relieved to hear her friend’s familiar voice. “Where are you?”
“Here. Open the door.”
Tentatively,
Molly crept across the office, turned the doorknob, and opened the
door. Upon seeing the huge sea monster, she recoiled behind the door.
Gathering up all of her courage, the seven-year-old peeked around the
door, murmuring questioningly, “Wildcat?”
Wildcat peeked around Teela’s head. “Hi! That storm blew in a real, live dinosaur! Pretty neat, huh?”
19163 visits
Report this fanfic 
