No Romance Chapter 25

Chapter 25, “The Fury of a Toothless Hellhound”

“Carl Sagan,” Jack said quietly to the Super Tiger. “This time, really meet us in Boxcutter Bay.”

            The god among beasts again shot into the forests. From that moment on, weary Jack really had no idea what was going to happen next.
            “Get the traitor,” Chief Treike said. Men on either side of him went out to retrieve Vanasmas. Three Seas, just a couple heads over, was still staring in surprise and disappointment at the weak, defanged form of Running Rat sprawled out across the temple steps.
            “I found our lost treasure, didn’t I?” Running Rat said as the two Johnsons grabbed him roughly by the arms and forced him up. His chest was heaving from his aroused sympathetic nervous system. “Didn’t I?? Put me down! I deserve your respect and devotion! I made more advancements for our people than—hey, put me down, you fools! I am higher than you! I am above all of you!”
            “Yes, he is,” sneered Treike. “So carry him on your hands, men! Up in the air! Let him crowd-boogie-board, or however the saying is! Herpal derpal purple!”
            The tribe carried him away amidst his shouts of protest, deep into the darkness of the jungle. Finally the cries faded out, and that was the last Jack ever heard of the villain Vanasmas.

---

            Daring Dragon Johnson was, according to himself, too young to comprehend what was going on. He was just here to help rebuild that bridge across the lagoon and carry treasure back to Johnson World. But he had seen Three Seas with Running Rat at times, speaking in their foreign tongue together, making plans, working on treehouse projects, strategizing birthday parties, that kind of thing. So he guessed that Three Seas had been a little hurt to discover Running Rat’s streak of disloyalty.
            But that was only what he, well, guessed. They were all speaking a different language, one Daring Dragon had not been trained in as a child, which he still considered himself to be. Everything they were saying was going right over his head. And, he reasoned, even if he turned around to see what had passed over, it would probably by then have zipped around the world and dinged him in the back of the skull. So he made an effort to stay out of adult affairs.
            Some might call him a coward, and Daring Dragon admitted they’d be absolutely right. Being “young” was a bit of an excuse—he was 35. But of course, he couldn’t even grow a beard; how could he be expected to participate in tribal politics and warfare if the sharpness of a razor had yet to touch his cheek? Ironically, though, he had spotted one gray hair in the mirror just the other day. Getting out of major responsibility could be stressful.
            He just wasn’t cut out for the kinds of sacrifice these others were prepared to make. He might consider fighting and trying to follow this whole convoluted situation, but what would it do? What would be gained? He just couldn’t do what those guys did, no matter how hard he tried. His place was in the background, to fill out the image of an army. He did that very well, and he was content with it. He even considered himself something of a hero, one who had the courage to be normal and accept his own bumbling mediocrity.

---

When all the hubbub had died down, Three Seas, who had recovered by getting quite angry, stepped forward.
            “Now is the time to reclaim what is ours,” he said fiercely to the whole tribe. “What has been lost for generations is found. And there is nothing in our way. Nothing to prevent us—“
            ”Except,” Jack butted in, “for the fact that this little treasure island is at the base of a deadly—“
            ”Except truth, justice, and the Cardaccian way!” interrupted a lordly-looking Djetta, entering the clearing from the west side with every male (and a few females) from his tribe behind him in the trees. With each swaggering step came the tinkling of his jewelry. That’s what made him look like a lord.

---

The Cardaccian Way indeed, Jeroh thought. The motto that had been passed down from Doug Equalbanks, their great grand whitefather: “All are created equal, except those who have the shiny.” This saying had been ingrained in every Cardaccian’s mind since they were young. It was the reason why Djetta was their leader. Like Doug Equalbanks, he had shiny, and so he need be respected as above the non-shiny. Same went for Golbez Industries and Golbez himself.

But it was also the reason they were ultimately determined to tear down the ones who possessed the shiny. They thought to put themselves above the Cardaccians? Just let them try!

            Jeroh, who was a descendant of Doug Equalbanks and a cousin to Djetta, saw not the contradictory nature in that philosophy. Especially now, in this crucial moment, when the shiny was, for all intents and purposes, found, for whoever survived this imminent battle would truly be king of Rainswept Isle.

However, Jeroh noted that the Cardaccians had yet to see the shiny piles for themselves. This struck him as odd---what was the use of fighting to the death if the claim for the treasure’s proximity turned out to be false?

            Jeroh hatched a little plan for when the fools stopped talking and the battle started raging. To be honest, it wasn’t really all that clever. But it was a plan.
            But for now it seemed the white guy on the temple stairs wanted Djetta and Jeroh to come forth.

---

“Okay,” said Jack. “I think we need to huddle. Chief Treike, Three Seas. Come. And you, Djetta, and whoever your right-hand man is.”

            “My right-hand man is Vice Chief—” Treik started.
            “But he can’t speak English,” Jack said, motioning them over. “Just take Three Seas and get over here. We need to talk.”
            They approached, and they gathered.

“Djetta, you’ve gotten much bolder since we last talked,” Treike said in the more intimate circle. “Hupp kupp.”

            “You have insulted and mocked our common heritage,” said Djetta with narrowed eyes and, indeed, much more boldness of speech. “It sharpens my personhood.”
            “Okay, yeah, I need someone to explain that whole thing,” Jack said. “With the purple seed and the incitement of war and all that.”
            “It was mockery!” said Djetta, hands flying up in the air. “It was---!”
            “Tell me the story, somebody please,” said Jack, pressing his fingers to his temples. “My headache’s coming back, damb it.”
            “Many dozen years ago,” said Three Seas, eyes thinned, “the Cardaccians stole a cantaloupe from our sacred vine. We took it back, and in its place offered them a seed.”
            “A single purple seed!” Djetta proclaimed, some sarcasm in his voice. “A seed to feed our starving peoples.”
            “Isn’t this jungle full of stuff that can be hunted and gathered?” Jack said, hand stroking chin.
            “Oh, sure, the white outsider understands how to live in a place like this. He knows how to hunt and gather!” said Djetta.
            “It was a symbol!” Three Seas cried. “You could use it to begin your investment in agriculture!”
            “We wanted food, not the means to make it!” said Djetta, a little wild. “Those with so many seeds are superior and arrogant, and the cantaloupe should be taken from them.”
            “I understand the gesture, Three Seas,” Jack said reasonably. “But a single seed is pretty stingy.”
            “It was from our sacred vine!” said Three Seas, eyes still as thin as Jack felt, having not eaten in far too long a time. “It wasn’t meant to be planted at all. They should count themselves lucky they got anything”
            “It was a symbol, you’re right,” said Djetta, nodding. “A symbol of the contempt and indifference you have for the plight of our people!”
            “That’s probably true,” Jack said, putting out each of his hands to Djetta and Three Seas to try to calm them down. “You probably hate each other, so no matter what semi-kind thing you might do for one another, the point isn’t the kindness. But what the hell am I doing in the middle of the jungle at the base of a volcano that’s about to blow trying to prevent two rival tribes from destroying each other and talking about kindness? Here it is: Djetta, don’t be an idiot. Free money, or a free cantaloupe, is not as important as knowing how to make cantaloupes or money for yourself. Treike, Three Seas---don’t be so anxious to punish their idiocy. Sometimes people are just unlucky, and you should try to help them more. And remember, they have just as much right to the treasure as you do.
            “And now I have some words for all of you. Go back to your stupid sides.”

---

Renner smirked to himself. He was so excited for his first firefight that he led the march through the jungle to Mt. Diabolo, even though he wasn’t an actual leader. He itched to be able to finally pull that trigger, aiming it and holding steady through the kickbacks of his recoiling automatic rifle. Maybe he’d duck behind some crates, fire over the top without looking, dodge roll out of the path of enemy fire. He had fantasized about this day for far too long. It was why he joined a smuggling ring in the first place. A firefight. A real life firefight. He hoped he’d be able to participate in many of these for a long time to come.

“Golbez around here?” said a face Renner recognized from the encampment toon, but did not know the name of. Young guy, looked tired, but at the same time very awake.

“In the back,” Renner grunted. “Waaaay back. On a litter.”

---

“Brethren! For you are brethren. You once lived together, fought together, suffered together, even died together. Brethren do those things, I think, which are such as that, and so I address you as...brethren.” Then Jack paused a moment, thinking. “And I just realized right now that I should be included in that too, as my grandfather was best of friends with your forebears, John Archie Leach and Doug Equalbanks. I mean, right?” He looked back and forth between the two tribes. “And so I say to you, brethren---! Aw, damb it, Golbez’s men are here.”
            They were---passing through the trees on the third and final side of the temple clearing, but staying under the cover of the canopy as trained gunmen know to do. The whole army of them, holding their guns casually (as trained gunmen know not to do, so what does that tell you) with smug, arrogant looks on their faces. In their minds, they were the superiors of the natives, the grown-ups come to put a stop to a children’s scrum. By shooting the children, no less.
            But Jack didn’t see any familiar faces. If the entire camp of guards had been walking the whole time, Golbez was surely to be in the back. Or even if someone were driving him, it wouldn’t be a clean and easy ride through the jungle, so he’d be in the back anyway.
            Jack restarted.
            “Okay, guys---we’re all guys, right? No women or children? All men?”
            He got a few nods and words of confirmation from the crowd. He couldn’t see the few women there were in the back of the Cardaccians. Thank goodness for that, because he never would have gotten out of the gate if he tried to include everybody.
            “Guys. There’s no reason to fight! Both the Johnsons and the Cardaccians are after the same thing.”
            “That’s why we’re fighting!” screamed an animalistic Djetta.
            “That is a good point. But there’s no reason to kill each other over it! There’s no reason to die for it! You need not even be divided in two, as you have been for decades! You were once the same tribe! The same people! The same family! The Indy family! And through my interactions with you, and because of my ancestor’s interactions with your ancestors, I feel like a part of that family, like a spiritual successor to Indy. I mean, the Indy people. Look at this jacket! It’s an Indy jacket, isn’t it?”
            Jack looked expectantly at the crowd, the three armies poised on self-destruction. They in turn looked at him the same way.
            “Jack, where are you going with this?” muttered Ann in a low voice that couldn’t be heard by anyone else.
            “Not sure,” he said out of the side of his mouth.
            “How about that one thing that’s about to explode and kill a whole lot of people, including us if we don’t get out of here?”
            “What, a bomb? The nukes on the train?” he said, still quietly.
            Ann sighed and suddenly Jack remembered.
            “Right! The volcano.” Then, louder---”Okay, folks. There’s a bigger problem that’s about to take place. Right now we are standing at the base of a, well, not very tall mountain, but then again, it’s not really a mountain. It’s a volcano, and it’s going to blow any minute now. So we all have to get out of here. Together. Run, far away, because if you don’t, every single one of you idiots is going to die when it erupts.”
            “I’ll tell you what’s about to erupt!” spat a venomous Three Seas. “Djetta’s HEAD!”
            “Maybe that too,” conceded Jack, “but the volcano especially.”
            “What evidence is there of that, herp derp?” said Chief Treike. “Your word? How can we trust you, when your pale skin shows that you’re just one of them!” He pointed at the guards.
            The apparent leader of the guards, a blond guy who looked like a real jerk, smirked arrogantly and said, “The guy showed you where our treasure is! He’s not our friend.”
            “He just wants all the shiny to himself!” Djetta screeched, obviously unhinged.
            Jack looked at Djetta and Treike and sighed exactly as Ann had, but didn’t even try to point out how much good he had done the Cardaccians and how he had been the one to tell them where the treasure was in the first place, etc., etc. The characters would do as the gods willed it. Nothing to be done.
            Of course, as he looked at his own interactions with the Johnsons and Cardaccians, he realized that it was actually his fault this whole war was happening.
            “Oh,” he said.
            So maybe that’s why he felt stopping this thing was his responsibility. That made sense. He’d try another plea, one that shifted the blame from him.
            “Do not murder or sacrifice yourself because of a minor dispute between three white guys decades and decades ago! For it is their legacy that continues here! But no, you’re just looking at the wrong aspect of their legacy, the one that, unfortunately, survived. Remember how all three of them saved your people collectively! They banded together, Scot, Archie, Doug, and they achieved brotherhood and victory! Don’t let their squibbles and their squabbles and their wriggles and their woggles be the legacy of theirs that lived on---guys, unite! and cease your murderous ambitions. A day may come when you divide permanently, and leave this island. Isle, I mean. But as long as you share this isle, let it not be this day. A day may come when your spirits may falter, and your civilized selves fail, and you just have to kill something---I know how that feels. But it is not this day! This day you retreat! And depart in peace! Or at the very least, combine forces and take on the soldiers from Golbez Industries together! Gentlemen, brethren, guys---what say you?”

In the silence that followed, joining the bird cries, the insect chirps, the light rain drifting down on them, was the crackle of a radio, and through it, the voice of Hilti Holden Higgins.

            “Uh, Jack, we’ve got a bit of a problem here. I, uh, accidentally got the train going. Pressed a wrong button somewhere. So we’ll be needing that third password pretty quickly, if you can. That would be great.”
            And then after THAT came the REAL silence. It was soooo silent that you couldn’t hear any sound at all! Some, using that word, including ourselves at various times in this story, have exaggerated it for (lack of) sensory detail purposes. But not here. Here all silence had gathered and blanketed the temple clearing with the sound of an explosion...in space.
            Jack grimaced. Then he frowned, and sighed.
            “Whatever, guys. I’m too tired to care anymore. Just go at it.”
            And then the sound exploded again, but this time in the atmosphere.

---

            Renner, excited beyond description, raised his rifle up to take aim. But in the time that took, the first shot of the battle was fired---from one of the Cardaccians, no less---and Renner was struck right in the forehead.

---

It’s easy to say “chaos reigned,” so we will. That, anyway, was the first phrase that came to the mind of Daring Dragon Johnson. He witnessed from his place in the back of the group the hydraulic-propelled arrows and bolts from their front lines, the sound of gunshots from the others, the cries of war and the cries of the wounded and the cries of birds offended by all the inane violence in their peaceful little jungle.

Terrified out of his wits, Daring Dragon moved out of the main group of his people. If he could stay in the shadows, he might be able to find a safe place to hide and hole up. He had a crossbow that he had only used once, and that had been target practice (though the target they used had been a picture of Scot MacDowell’s face). Each bolt fired had hid directly in the center, four times in a row. But the confidence he gained from that scared him, and he knew they would see that he was a marksman from that and draft him into their hunting parties. So before they could see his work, he had scuttled up to the target, took out the bolts from between Scot MacDowell’s eyes, and shoved them elsewhere---one in each earlobe, then on the bare sliver of shoulder that was visible, and one in his hair. They had assigned him to be a rope lasher after that, and so he built scaffolding and towers and other things like that. Oh, like that rope bridge he had helped get strung up. Although the whole thing was almost blown when a near-majority of the Johnsons had believed the sign that was posted about the treasure not being there. Three Seas had to scream at the lot of them, including Chief Treike, for them to believe him. You’d think that would make Treike mad, but Three Seas was always angry at someone, so they were used to it, for the most part.

Daring Dragon was brought back to the situation when a bullet actually passed through his hair. He gave a little yelp and scuttled away from his fighting compatriots, back where he had come from, towards the rope bridge. He had spotted a series of tall rocky crags in the other direction, and thought they might be a good place to hide.

---

Jeroh watched, astonished, as the white guy and his girl ran through the temple clearing, through the three-way crossfire of bullets and bolts, through the core of the war itself, without a single scratch and even without a single evasive maneuver. They disappeared into the jungle somewhere between the Johnsons and the guards from Golbez Industries.

What are those two up to? he thought. They had to be hiding something. What else could it be but the treasure? He had watched them both wordlessly as they conferred with Djetta and Three Seas and Treike and kind of himself. They didn’t appear to care about the treasure very much, but he knew that was a lie. Why else would a couple of white guys who weren’t explicitly out to enslave or oppress them be here? Hunting treasures that weren’t theirs, damn them.

Jeroh briefly turned his attention back to the war at hand. Djetta did not fight, but called out orders. But given that he was no general or captain in any form or fashion, all his orders were ignored. The two sides were just fighting, firing, felling according to their will and pleasure. Both the Johnsons and the Cardaccians had taken to getting protection from the trees and various crevices and clefts in the surrounding area, but the guards were taking the offensive and firing boldly in plain view.

But strangely in all this, comparatively few were actually dying. Their numbers had hardly dwindled, and even of those Cardaccians who had fallen, Jeroh couldn’t recognize their faces. But he knew if he stopped to think about it, he could easily join them on the ground. He had to get moving. He had to find the treasure.

So he decided to follow after the hero and the girl.

---

Daring Dragon heard and saw and felt the ground start to rumble. It was a series of subtle sensations that he was able to pick up on because he was alone and divided from the chaos of the battle. He lay inclined in a corner of a crag, crossbow in his grip and several piles of gold coins all around him. The rumbling had made some of the coins shuffle and slide down from their precarious position at the top. At first he thought it was an earthquake---but then it kept going. Earthquakes didn’t go forever, did they? They lasted a few seconds, or less than a minute, or something. Was it the end of the world? Was their island home going to be submerged in the sea, crumble and sink because of their wars and contentions and general wickedness?

            He clutched his crossbow tighter to his chest and thought about getting out of there and going far, far away.

---

Jeroh had successfully made his way around the perimeter of the action and managed to steal a rifle from one dead guard’s hands in the process. However, he had also lost track of the prey he was pursuing. When he realized this, he snarled and cursed. But in doing this, his eye caught something. Something unnatural in the thick growth of trees to his right---the ancient, disintegrated, wooden remains of a ship. And his mind recalled the story of how the great treasure had been lost originally. The ship the two Indy peoples had been piloting to salvation had been picked up and thrown by a great tsunami, the instrument of the gods who wanted their treasure back. And if this was supposed to be where the treasure was, wouldn’t it make sense for the rotted ruins of the ship to be right near it?
            He approached the ship, on the fringes of the battle. Before he stepped inside, he looked back to the war. Waves of the smuggling camp guards were being wasted one by one, but new guards were joining them constantly. They seemed to have a never-ending supply. And like the fallen Cardaccians Jeroh could not identify, all these guards seemed to be nameless, faceless people who all looked the same.
            He turned back to the ship, knowing that achieving the treasure of the gods would be crucial to turning the tides of the battle and securing the freedom and superiority of his people. Let’s see how the Johnsons would do being enslaved for a season!
            As he entered the ship, he noticed the great black rock it had been smashed upon, and found a passageway twisting through that rock. He made his way through the ship, seeing no trace of the gold it presumably once carried, then into the passageway.
            The sight he met at the end made his eyes water. It was so...shiny! The statues, the chests, the jewelry, the gold that, to him, was brighter and more powerful than the sun! A palace’s worth of gold and rubies and emeralds and pearls! He had found the lost treasure of his people, the treasure taken from the gods themselves!
            He walked among it, the tall rocky crags around it insulating the sounds of the battle just a couple hundred feet away on the other side. He wanted to take it all, all for himself! Then he would not only be master of the Johnsons, but master of the island! Crush those who stood in his way, take his place as king of Rainswept Isle. Such, he reminded himself, Golbez had done.
            But as he entered the area filled with piles of gold coins, his eyes met those of a coward who had come to hide, a man who, terrified as he obviously was, had a crossbow in his hands, a crossbow pointed directly at Jeroh’s heart.

---

Jack and Ann, after making it through the blazing hot crossfire and away from all the discharging weapons, sneaked behind a new infusion of troops aiding the cause of Golbez Industries, and down the black stairs to the level of the turquoise lagoon.
            “We have to see if there’s anything this damb keypad can do anything to stop the volcano. That’s all I can think to do.”
            “I know,” said Ann. “Why are you telling me that?”
            “Because I wasn’t sure if everyone else knew,” he replied. “I just wanted to make it clear.”
            After the stairs they went under the overhanging ceiling of rock (remember the Christmas tree analogy?) and checked the “Eruption Sequence” dial.
            It was just a smidgen away from zero.
            Ann was checking the keypad next to it.
            “It looks like it needs a nine-digit code to access it.”
            Jack growled, and it turned into a roar as he walked into the water, out from underneath the stone ceiling, took out his gun, and fired two shots at a slight angle into the air.
            “Damb it, Golbez! I hope those fall onto you! Onto your HEAD!”

---

As it turned out, they did fall onto a head. Two heads, actually. But neither one belonged to Golbez.

Jeroh Cardaccian dropped at the same instant Daring Dragon fired his crossbow. The bolt soared over the shoulder of the falling body. A millisecond later, Daring Dragon Johnson’s hands let go of the crossbow. He died too.

What was the point of that, you may ask? Well, we’ll ask a similar question. What’s the point of any of this? And we’ll answer in the spirit of Tevye: we don’t know.

---

“Here we are, marching to our doom,” Golbez said sadly to Mortimer, who had eventually reached him. “And maybe it’s because we deserve it.”

            Mortimer had found Golbez towards the back of the long trailing line of guards. All of them, it turned out, walked at different paces. Especially the four carrying Golbez on a “throne platter,” as Golbez called it.

“I sent my own son to the gallows, for Bast’s sake!” he said. “And now I’m fully comprehending the gravity of my guilt,” as his guards comprehended the gravity of his bulbousness.

“I repent of my wrongdoing! I repent of oppressing innocents and corrupting innocence! I repent of enslaving fellow souls!” he cried to the heavens, standing up in the litter and pressing down on the poor men’s backs. ”I repent of...of everything! Take my body, my possessions, my wealth, my soul, and do with it what you will! Take my guards and my workers! My enemies and the legacy of my fathers! Take it all back to the spiritual realm. Yes...ahh...that feels better. I feel the weight taken off of me! You know, maybe we don’t need to do this volcano thing right away...You know, Friendly Face, I think this is going to be the most spiritual day of my life. What’s your name, anyway?”

Mortimer opened his mouth to answer, but that was then they started hearing the sounds of battle.

“Listen! Haste to the battlefield, young Friendly Face! And you four, worthless workers! Carry me forth to the place of warfare! I wish to watch as all that I am, all that I have built up, is consumed by the fires of Diabolo! In the which I shall be purged and purified!”

---

“We need to get out of here,” said Ann.
            “What we need,” Jack said, “is Paula’s password for Guillotine Bay. If we don’t get that within something like fifteen minutes, the entire isle is going to be nuked.”

“I know!” Ann said again. “Why do you keep telling me things I already know?”

“Listen,” said Jack, ignoring her. “You need to ask yourself a question. That answer could prevent thousands of people from perishing. So---”

But that was when Jack looked at the water he was standing in. The normally smooth surface of the lagoon was filled with little ripples, little tiny waves crashing and refracting on each other all over.

            “What is that?” Jack said to Ann, motioning with his gun.
            “Probably just the rain,” she said.
            “But the rain let up a minute ago.”
            “Then it’s probably---”
            She looked at Jack, and Jack looked at her. Together they heard and felt the rumbling of the ground beneath them. Something geological was happening.
            “Yeah, okay, we’re getting out of here,” Jack said. “There should be a boat on the other side of the lagoon, at the head of the underground river. We’re taking that. We’ll do the interrogation once we’re in there.”
            “And how do we get across the lagoon?”
            “Are you kidding me? Jump in the water and swim.”

---

The Golbez procession met a player we haven’t seen in a while near the back lines of the battle: Amon Dem came forward when he saw Golbez.
            “Golbez, sir,” he said.
            “Do I know you?” Golbez said with an inquiring eye. “I feel like I do.”
            “Not well, but that’s not the point right now. You should know that the one calling himself Jack McDowell is still alive. He was here just minutes ago. I request permission to pursue him and destroy him.”
            “It’s coming to me, but very slowly,” Golbez said, peering deeply at Amon Dem’s face. “I almost know who you are. But I just can’t...”
            “I’ll remind you who I am after I capture and kill the Jack McDowell that’s running away. But I need to know where he is, where he’s headed.”
            “Friendly Face, what do you advise?” Golbez said, turning to Mortimer.
            “I...I think he’s headed to Boxcutter Bay,” Mortimer said apprehensively. “But I don’t think---”
            “We don’t pay you to don’t think, Friendly Face. We pay you to think.” Golbez turned to Amon Dem. “So that’s your information, Admiral. Is that your name? Admiral?”
            “Close enough,” said Amon Dem. “He will never get to Girafa Península. We will catch him and bring him back to you for the final decision.” He gave a short little bow, and walked away to join his team.
            “Wait!” said Golbez, after Amon Dem had disappeared into the jungle. “My son! My son is alive!”
            But he was too late. They were already gone.
            And the ground began rumbling so much that everyone, those fighting in the temple clearing, those on the outside catching their breath, and even those running away, could feel it.
            “It’s too late, then,” said Golbez softly. “Put me down, fools, and go fight for our treasure.”
            The four porters were all too happy to do exactly that. But as they grabbed guns from the supply boxes other guards had carried with them, and as they made to join in the fight, they found that the fighting had ceased. Bodies littered the ground in the temple clearing, yet somehow none of the sides had diminished, and none seemed to know the identities of their dead. But this was something people noticed after the fact. For at that time, all were staring up at the rumbling mountain right next to them.
            And they were remembering Jack McDowell’s words.

---

As we did in the very beginning of this story (although such beginnings are never the true beginning of stories like these) we will use our omniscient abilities to pull away from any particular character and take the lens of this story elsewhere.

            By “elsewhere” we mean to the top of Mt. Diabolo, where the dusty bald patch that is Windswept Peak is opening. You’ll recall that this mountain is green up until that very top, where the sign is located. That’s because the top was very heavily artificial. So when we say it’s “opening,” we mean the two halves of the dirt-covered metal roof of the volcano are sliding open, and now the overlayed dirt and sand are pouring into the mouth of the volcano itself, into the rapidly rising lava beneath. The lava bubbled and spurted as it flowed upwards, up into the patchy gray clouds where it exploded, throwing fiery orange streaks through the sky and down onto the green canopy that covered the ground below.
            But no massive plume invaded the sky, no black smoke was coughed up. The lava simply gushed out, sending rivers of fire down the mountainside, becoming tributaries and deltas as it came down to the temple clearing at its base.
            The people---for no longer did they think of themselves as Johnsons or Cardaccians or gunmen or guards; they were just “people”---the people screamed, but had nowhere to run, for such was the speed of the “lava” that it overtook them, causing them to slip and slide and fall into its depths.
            “Oh, woe is all of us!” cried Golbez as the lava approached him. “We are all in ruins! But be calm, my people! Let us find satisfaction in the rivers of death that take us under! Let us find a warm, loving embrace in the red glow of hellfire!”
            Golbez closed his eyes and stretched out his arms as if to give it a hug. He still needed one.
            And he got it. The “lava” swept him off his feet.
            And that’s when he realized the awful, terrible, mind-blowing, mind-bending, thoroughly shocking, utterly surprising, truly inspiring, awe-inducing, tear-evoking, cool, foul-smelling, stench-spreading, eye-catching, bowel-turning, brain-dazzling, beautiful twist to it all.
            Some of the lava got into his mouth. He smacked his lips and said, “Mm! I wondered why Dr. Aperture had ordered seven-hundred-thousand gallons of vinegar and twenty-two-thousand cartons of baking soda all those years ago!”
            The same realization was spreading through all three sides of the battlefield. Sounds of confusion and discovery replaced the sounds of fear and dread that filled the air just seconds before. They realized that their doom was now their day.
            “The day is ours!” shouted one of the soldiers.
            “This is so silly and ridiculous!” said another.
            “Kind of makes you think of how silly and ridiculous this war is,” said Djetta in a shamed, dejected way.
            “Yeah,” said one of the Johnsons. “I don’t understand why we were fighting anyway. Aren’t we all family, really?”
            “There doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to it all, does it?” said one of the guards.
            “It’s just so destructive when it doesn’t need to be!”
            “Let us be as Mt. Diabolo,” said a repentant Three Seas. “Let us turn away from this wretched and ridiculous violence and be harmless to one another. Harmless as butterflies!”
            “Butterflies!” echoed a guard.
            “Butter-flies! Butter-flies! Butter-flies!” chanted the group at large.
            “PEACE!” proclaimed one of the deep-voiced guards, and everybody clapped and cheered and laughed and whooped.

Golbez had tears in his eyes. He turned around to find someone to hug...but there was no one. Except...a face, mustached and eyebrowed, rising from behind a giant rock. The face had death in it. Murder. Vengeance.

Golbez stared Norrigan North in the eyebrow. He could almost make out the eye beneath.

            North raised his Trustwerthy. Golbez didn’t try to escape. He knew he had cheated all those years ago.

North fired.

            “NOOO!!!” screamed a voice, and Mortimer the Mystery Solver dove into the bullet’s path. He dropped in a heap, and did not move again.
            “Friendly Face!” Golbez cried. He fell to his knees and wept. “I didn’t even know his real name! All this death and bloodshed! And it’s all my fault! All my fault...”
            North’s cold and frozen face thawed, and tears started flowing down from his shrouded eyes, soaking his bushy mustache. He stumbled over to Golbez, moaning inarticulately his sorrow and regret.
            The two embraced and wept in each other’s arms as the guards and Johnsons and Cardaccians---the people---did the same on the former battlefield, covered in orange-dyed baking soda and vinegar.
            Several minutes later, after Golbez and North had moved on from the spot of sacrifice, Mortimer realized he had not died.
            “Aw, dang it!” he said.

---

            “Those poor souls,” Jack said, shaking his head as he looked on the volcano, knowing the fate of those fighting beneath the shroud of the jungle.

“Maybe the rain can stop volcano,” Ann said.

They were sitting in the boat, the Ex Nihilo, as it once more floated at the head of the underground river, tied to a rock.

“Yeah, that’s possible,” said Jack.

“Hey, a lot of what’s happened over the past few days isn’t possible, and especially today.”

“True. Well, that’s enough mourning. Let’s get this motorboat and interrogation on the road. River.”

---

Dr. Aperture lay on the ground a long time, moaning. But soon he mastered the pain, and was able to think clearly again. As he did, he thought about the “volcano” he built that had tricked all of them---allies and enemies alike.

“They took that seriously? Good heavens, even Science can’t build a real volcano.”