Part Five
Penny, Sarah, and Masami walked out of their afternoon
sessions with Mr. Small, feeling less consoled and more disturbed from their
school counselor’s “counseling.”
“That…was…weird,”
Penny said of the experience.
“He’s like a different person today,” Sarah reflected.
“Not once did he ask me what I’ve been going through at school or home. He just
rambled on about how our universe was like a bad fever dream.”
“And what was with all that burping?” Masami inquired.
“It was totally gross.”
“Why, hello there, children!”
The girls heard Mr. Small talking to them, but his voice
wasn’t coming out of his office where they left him; it was coming across the
hallway. When they saw Mr. Small approach them as if he was just arriving for
work, the girls’ sense of reality flew right out the window; their mouths
gaping wide open.
Mr. Small chuckled at their reactions. “Why do you look
so shocked to see me?”
Penny, Sarah, and Masami were too paralyzed with
bewilderment to give him a direct response. The answer only came just as the other Mr. Small (the one who traumatized
Masami, Penny, and Sarah) stepped out of his office with some type of beeping
controller in hand.
This “Mr. Small” looked up from the beeping device to see
the real Mr. Small standing in front
of him. He pointed a finger right at his face and angrily said, “Your world’s
got some serious problems, man! You
can *buurrrrp*
keep this freaky dimension, ‘cause as soon as I find that signal, I’m peacein’
outta here!”
The foul-mouthed, ill-mannered evil
twin Mr. Small never knew that he had wandered off after his tirade, leaving
the school counselor frozen in his own state of perplexity with Sarah, Masami,
and Penny.
---------------
His cover now completely
blown, Rick dropped his “Mr. Small” disguise and swapped it with another Elmore
Junior High faculty member: Lucy Simian – a centuries-old monkey with dark grey
fur and a homely primate face, wearing a pale brownish-buff polka-dotted dress.
It was a less-than-ideal replacement disguise for Rick, but he made due with
what he could work with on short notice.
As Miss Simian, he proceeded with finding the Overtakers’
emitter without any interruptions from the other teachers or students (Simian
wasn’t exactly a “people person,” which fit right in with Rick’s core
personality). He followed the detector, which led him up to the rooftop of the
school.
There, he found a satellite dish.
It was much like the one that the Overtakers used before
in their prime dimension.
“No originality whatsoever,” Rick criticized in Simian’s
screeching voice, which made his criticism sound even more condescending.
Following this discovery, he set out to find Cara and the
boys.
He used Simian’s connections around the school to determine
their exact whereabouts. He learned that Gumball and Morty were cleaning the
cafeteria after starting a food fight with Cara and Darwin, who were sent to
Interim Principal Thompson’s office as punishment.
Rick rushed into the lunchroom, which still brandished
the aftermath of the food fight, locating Gumball and Morty there. “W-What did
you guys do?!” he asked them. “It looks like Oscar the Grouch threw up in
here!”
Morty reacted in confusion to the old monkey that had
just walked in. “Rick? I-Is that you?”
“Dude, he made a pop culture reference that even I didn’t get,” Gumball told Morty. “Of
course it’s him.”
“I just heard that Cara and Darwin got sent to the
principal’s office,” Rick said. “Please tell me it was some elaborate plan to
find out if Holly Thompson is exactly who I said
she was.”
His spot-on deduction amazed Gumball. “That’s…That’s actually what we did.”
“Well, that was stupid!”
Rick raged. “Holly’s the Overtakers’ human collaborator!”
“What?!” Gumball and Morty gasped.
“Dude, why didn’t you tell us that earlier?!” Gumball chided.
“Yeah, seriously, Rick,” Morty reprimanded. “That
information would’ve been useful a few hours ago!”
“Well, Morty, I only realized it after enduring stories about
anthropomorphic ice cream cones who treat life like it’s fan fiction and a
talking cloud-thing that’s experiencing ‘that time of the month’! L-Let’s *uuurrp*
just go find them a-and hope Holly hasn’t killed them yet!”
------------------
Holly was fortunate that it
was between class periods. That meant hardly any teachers or students were in
the hallways, providing her with the perfect opportunity of escorting Cara and
Darwin to the boiler room at gunpoint. The entire way there, they had to endure
Holly’s monologue about why the Overtakers were what every world needed.
“I was able to bring them across the multiverse with the
interdimensional tech Rick carelessly left behind in the other world,” she exposed.
“Such a fool, that man.”
“You know, it’d be cliché to tell you that you won’t get
away with this,” Cara said, “so I’m just gonna stand here and smile at the
thought of this whole thing blowing up in your face.”
“You’re so certain of that, are you?” Holly contested.
“Oh, I am,”
Cara snootily remarked. “Because, like all other worlds I’ve been to, this
one’s protected…by me.”
“And just who are
you? A ridiculous idiot in an equally ridiculous disguise?”
“She’s the Gladiator of Gallifrey,” Darwin defiantly told
her.
“Is she now?” From her sarcastic tone, Holly didn’t sound
all too impressed by the title. “Well, I will take immense pleasure in being the last person she’ll ever see in this
world or any other.”
“Shooting in a school,” Cara said. “Way to start off your
educational career.”
“Oh, I’m not going to kill you – the Overtakers will
handle that,” Holly assured. “But you will
be here long enough to see how easy it has been for us to take over this world
and all the mindless oddballs that inhabit it.” She nodded towards Darwin.
“Like this one.”
Cara balled her fists so hard that her knuckles popped,
not appreciating Holly making Darwin the target of her ridicule.
“I’m not a mindless oddball,” Darwin defended himself. “I’m
special.”
Holly scoffed at his innocence. “Consider this a reality
check, darling: you are greatest
abomination of your entire world. There are many things in this dimension I’ve
seen that at least are part of a kind. You, however, have no kind. And that, my
dear, is what makes you an abomination.”
Cara, having kept her fiery gaze on Holly, heard Darwin
sniffling beside her.
Holly’s words crushed his spirit and, in doing so,
infuriated Cara.
“Wow,” she uttered. “No one – no one – has ever ticked me off more than you have just now. I swear you’re gonna see just how unwise it is
to tick me off, Miss Thompson.”
“We’ll see if you live that long, Gladiator,” Holly countered.
The school bell rang for the end of the sixth period.
Holly took it as her cue to leave the boiler room, locking Cara and Darwin
inside.
As soon as she left, Cara went to work in searching for a
way out.
“C’mon, Darwin,” she urged her companion. “There’s gotta
be something in here we can use to…” She stopped once she saw that the little
fish-boy hadn’t budged an inch, his eyes drowning in tears. Her hearts ached
for him. “Oh, sweetheart. Don’t let what that cold-hearted witch said get to
you.”
“She’s right,” Darwin lamented. “There isn’t anyone else like me. I never
really thought of it, but I don’t even know where I came from. I was just a
goldfish in a bowl when Mr. Dad bought me at the Awesome Store for Gumball, and
that was before he accidentally flushed me down the toilet! I was lost for days
until I fought my way back to the only family I ever had, growing a new heart,
lungs to breathe, and legs to walk on land – all because of Gumball’s love and
belief in me.”
His story touched Cara, making the Time Lady tear up a
little. “That’s beautiful.”
“I thought so, too…until today.”
Cara hated seeing him this way. His general happiness and
positivity was such a strong character trait of his; it helped even her
sometimes during the bleakest of times. Now was her chance to return the favor.
“Darwin, let me tell ya something that I’ve never told anyone. When I was a little girl,
growing up on a farm out in the middle of nowhere, I had a goldfish just like
you. The only thing I wish in the world was for him to talk, so I could have someone
other than my Mom and Pop to talk to every day. That lil’ guy was the only
friend I ever had growing up, and I was devastated the day he died.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, sweetie. ‘Cause the day I met you, I saw that
little goldfish I once had, and my childhood dream came true. Out of everything
I’ve seen across the infinite D.C., you’re the most amazing miracle of them
all.” She wiped a tear off his blubbery face with her thumb. “You feelin’ any
better?”
His spirits lifted again, the misty-eyed Darwin smiled
and answered, “Yeah, I am. Thanks, Cara.”
“Awesome. So how ‘bout we get our butts outta here?”
Before they could begin, Carrie Krueger’s ghostly body
suddenly passed through the locked boiler room door. As she spotted Cara and
Darwin, she alerted to someone on the other side, “They’re in here.”
“Thanks, Carrie,” said a muffled voice beyond the door,
which they knew to be Gumball’s. “We’ll take it from here!” A loud thud
reverberated from the locked door, in correspondence with a slight jolt. It was
a painful attempt (by Gumball, of course) at breaking it down. This was
confirmed when Cara, Darwin, and Carrie could hear him yelp, “OUCH!”
An alternative came once the green, gelatinous portal
generated from Rick’s fully-recharged portal gun opened within the boiler room,
permitting Gumball, Morty, and an old monkey in a dress to enter.
Seeing the portal gun in the old monkey’s hands, Cara inferred,
“You had to go with another disguise when the real Mr. Small showed up, didn’t you?”
“Hold up,” Carrie addressed. “Why couldn’t you guys have
just used that portal thingy this whole time?”
“It got you out of class, didn’t it?” Rick asked her.
Carrie shrugged. “Can’t argue with
that.” She teleported away after the fact.
-------------------
While the reunited team made
their way up to the school’s rooftop via the portal gun, Rick brought Cara and
Darwin up to speed. Needless to say, Cara wasn’t all too surprised (or pleased)
when Rick got to the part about Holly Thompson being the Overtakers’ human
collaborator.
“No kiddin’!” Her response was. “You could’ve told us
that before we started a food fight, got held up at gunpoint, and locked in the
boiler room!”
“Hey, we don’t got time to play the blame game,” Rick
sidelined.
As soon as they were all through the portal, Cara and the
boys took an eyeful of the satellite dish Rick uncovered earlier.
“Meh, I expected something fancier than this,” an
underwhelmed Gumball said.
“It’s more advanced than your simple minds can
comprehend.”
The husky, smooth voice of Holly Thompson spoke from
behind, and they turned to see her, once again implementing her authority on
them with a gun.
