05-21-2018, 04:36 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-21-2018, 04:37 PM by Mickey Mouse.)
The Alakazam lifted himself off his seat with nothing other than his mind, and hovered down to the stage. With one hand, he twirled his strange-looking mustache. With the other, he fiddled with a spoon, bending it back and forth seemingly without even touching it. The mouse couple narrowed their eyes at the curious Pokéthing. Did he have… psychic powers of some sort? That’d be just crazy.
His feet landed softly on the floor and he stepped toward Mickey Mouse, placing the spoon over one eye and leaning down to get a closer look at the diminutive intruder. The creature’s gaze bored into the king, sending a surge of discomfort rocketing up his spine. He’d never really been one to get scared of someone just like their demeanor, but this guy—and the group of intense-looking monsters scattered about the stands of the amphitheater behind him—struck some sort of fearful feeling in him. They were more… eerie than terrifying, perhaps, but Mickey still found himself wanting to get the heck out of dodge.
“Watch what you think, mouse man,” the psychic-type Poképerson scowled, standing upright again and removing the spoon from his face. Mickey grimaced, his brow furrowing and his back straightening as he tried his best to look intimidating. At probably a third of the Alakazam’s height, his attempts weren’t altogether successful; for his part, the council-creature chuckled under his breath.
“Uh—excuse me, Mr. Mouse,” Meowth turned back to his charges, sounding decidedly less assured than he had when he’d greeted the mice at the docks, “This… is… Bartram, an Alakazam, a psychic-type Pokémon and the head of the council in the absence of our leader.” The mustached cat tried his best to hide his quaking body and rattling knees, but Mickey and Minnie clocked it. What type of leader, exactly, was this… Bartram, if he inspired such fear in his subjects?
Mickey needed to know who the actual ruler of Cinnabon was, since by all accounts, that didn’t seem to be this dude. He’d been willing to go along with this charade for a while, but if he was gonna be treated with the type of suspicion that bordered on rudeness, he wanted it to be coming from someone who was actually in charge. “Where’s your real leader at?” Mickey looked to Meowth defiantly.
“Our leader does not entertain guests,” Bartram interjected, flicking a finger and psychically returning Mickey’s gaze upward at him. Mickey felt his chin jerk at the pull, but he couldn’t move his face once the Alakazam had stopped its magic. He was holding him in that position, he supposed. “At least… not ones that have nothing to offer Cinnabar Island. What, may I ask, is your purpose here, mouse?”
Mickey scoffed. “Purpose? You haven’t even asked our names, bud! Let me go!” he protested, but Bartram simply grinned with a sadistic glee as the mouse struggled in vain to get out of his psychic grip. Mickey growled, frustration seething just underneath his gentle surface. He didn’t like being treated so meanly before he’d even gotten the chance to properly introduce himself.
“What my husband means to say,” Minnie spoke up, brushing past Mickey and dropping to a knee in front of Bartram, “is that we come seeking shelter from the Empire, sir. They attacked our home, almost killed our friends, and captured another. The two that got away are currently taking refuge on the ship you sent to my distress call, and—”
“Distress call?” the Alakazam wondered, aloud. Mickey, too, found his attention caught by this—he supposed he’d never really considered how the ship full of Pokéy men had found them, but he hadn’t really expected it had been because of any direct efforts by his wife. Bartram, too, seemed puzzled by the idea of Cinnabon responding to any such distress call, and turned and looked at the rest of the council. “Fugitives. Typical. And one of you brought them here again without the express permission of the rest of the council. Who was it?”
The various Pokémon scattered about the amphitheater’s stands remained silent.
“No matter, we’ll get to the bottom of it,” Bartram shrugged. He turned back to Minnie. “Well, Ms. Mouse, I must say your husband did have a point. I don’t know who any of you are. Before we go any further, would you mind introducing yourselves?”
“Uh, yes, of course,” Minnie stammered, “I’m Minnie Mouse, Queen of the Disney Realms, and this is my husband, King Mickey. We’ve come to—”
“Yes, yes, I know why you’ve come,” Bartram sighed. “A King and a Queen, eh? Surprising that I’ve never heard of either of you.” The Alakazam spun around and began hovering back toward his seat. Mickey, released from the Pokemon’s magic grip, tumbled forward onto the ground.
“You’ve never heard of me?” Mickey asked, scrambling to his feet. “I’m the Mickey Mouse that fought in Dante’s Abyss.”
“I don’t watch much television,” Bartram shrugged, spinning around to face his guests and plopping back down in the seat where he’d began. He sucked in a deep, raspy breath, and then placed the spoon to his other eye, gazing at Mickey, Minnie, and their comrades for a few seconds before continuing. Off to his side, Mickey could hear Minnie mutter something like ‘I told you so’ under her breath. “It’s no matter,” the psychic continued, “Perhaps you can still be of use to us. You’ve come at an opportune moment—we’ve got a job that requires skills most mere secondaries don’t have at their disposal. It requires primes.”
Minnie stepped forward quickly. “We’re not—”
“You’re primes,” Bartram reached out, psychically clutching her with one hand and holding her in place. “I already knew that, but even if I didn’t, your husband gave it away. Only primes can fight in Dante’s Abyss.” Mickey could feel Minnie’s glare boring a hole into the back of his head. “Your lion companion? Is he a secondary? And the ones back on the ship?”
“…yes,” Mickey nodded.
“And the genie?”
“Yes, he is,” he told the Pokémon council. “Could ya release my wife? Please?”
Bartram let out a groan, and complied. Minnie fell to her knees.
“Ugh, this dress is gonna get so dirty,” she muttered under her breath, picking herself up and dusting herself off. Mickey reached back and grabbed her hand, helping her regain her balance and pulling her forward to stand next to him.
“So… what can we do for you fellas?”
Bartram sighed, again. He glanced over at the multi-armed guard that had accompanied Meowth to greet them, and gestured away. “We’re… missing something valuable,” he explained as the muscly creature stalked away, “And I’m in need of someone to retrieve it. It’s a gem, you see. A prized one, that greatly improved our master’s collection when we had it stored here with our other prizes. It’s called the Watergleam. This pirate—”
The Alakazam gestured over to another entrance of the amphitheater, where the Machamp pushed in a cage on wheels. Inside sat a ragged-looking man with dreadlocks and the baggiest clothes Mickey had ever seen. From what the mouse could tell, he’d been trapped in that cage for quite a while, and yet he still seemed decidedly damp. The pirate slumped in the corner of the small container, humming a shanty or some other seafaring tune under his breath. He held a compass in one hand, opening and closing it over and over, as he shook his dreadlocks back and forth. Altogether, he looked worse for wear, but somehow Mickey suspected that it wasn’t because he’d been through anything too terrible—maybe, he pondered, this guy just always looked rough.
“This pirate stole it,” Bartram continued, “but when we finally caught up to him, he’d gone and lost it to someone else. Someone… much more potent and dangerous, to say the least.”
Mickey stepped away from his crew, walking tentatively toward the messy-looking man in the cage. The closer he got, the more familiar the dude looked, until finally he could make out the man’s facial features and recognition washed over him.
“…Jack Sparrow?!”
“That’s Captain Jack Sparrow… your majesty,” the pirate smiled, taking a huge swig of his alcoholic beverage. Mickey’s eyes grew wide. How the heck did Captain Jack Sparrow get here? Probably the same way as Aladdin and Simba and all the rest, to be honest, but he still didn’t have a good explanation for how he or Minnie could’ve summoned so many of their subjects now lived lives as secondaries, amongst the other Omniversians. Jack Sparrow—the one who captained the Black Pearl? The most famous pirate vessel, sea ships and gummi ships included, in the whole universe?
“The one and the same, to hear his thoughts and memories tell it,” Bartram intervened, reading Mickey’s thought’s once again. The mouse scowled up at the Alakazam, once again not pleased about the intrusion. Nevertheless, Sparrow’s presence here on the Isle of Cinnabons intrigued him. And like it or not, they needed shelter from these weird Pokédudes, so he supposed figuring out what the heck was going on was the only option available here.
Minnie slid up behind him, peering into Sparrow’s face and also registering it as familiar. Together, they carefully approached the cage until they stood just a few feet away, close enough to confirm that this was, indeed, the famous pirate from Port Royal back in their kingdom. Jack’s eyes flitted over to Minnie, leering weirdly, as Mickey knew he was prone to do. “To what do I owe the pleasure, my queen?” He sat his bottle of rum on the ground and reached through the bars to grab Minnie’s hand, probably in some futile attempt to kiss it. The lady mouse jerked her hand out of the pirate’s grasp and wiped it on her dress.
“Gross,” Minnie muttered, stepping behind her husband. “Just because we know who you are doesn’t mean you’re getting any special treatment, Jack.” The pirate opened his mouth to correct her once again about leaving off his titles, but his mouse shut forcibly. Mickey and Minnie looked up to see the Alakazam holding his lips closed from afar. What a strange crew of people.
“So,” Mickey whispered to Minnie, “I’m thinking you be good cop and I’ll be bad cop.” He glanced over to his wife with a grin. Though she could be irritating at times, he truly adored adventuring with her.
“First: we’re not doing good cop, bad cop,” Minnie rolled her eyes, “We’re just going to ask him who has the gem thingy and then go get it. Secondly, you’d be a terrible bad cop.” And with that, she shook off her discomfort at Jack’s general presence and brushed past her husband. “So, Jack—”
“Captain Jack,” the pirate repeated, again, freshly released from Bartram’s psychic clutches, “and what type of treatment do the two of you little buggers have in mind, anyhow? Gonna draw and quarter a little secondary you yourselves probably inadvertently summoned?” Mickey and Minnie remained silent at this suggestion. “Gotta be one o’ you too, anyhow,” Sparrow continued, “ain’t nobody else—no other primes, anyways—in this whole Omniverse knew good ol’ Captain Jack Sparrow, as famous as I was in the old lands. Just you two. Hurts me feelings a bit to know you didn’t do it on purpose.”
“We wouldn’t dare bring anymore lowlifes and criminals to this place,” Mickey snarled, “it’s already infested enough with evildoers as it is.”
“Evildoers?” Sparrow stumbled back, “Offends me a little bit, milord. I’m one o’ the more sensible men you got in Port Royal. You been out there recently? Guess not, since you’ve been clowning around here, eh? Well, Mr. King Mouse, perhaps you should be going and inspecting your worlds a little bit more, huh? A bit out of touch, aren’t we, Mousey?”
Mickey huffed, but before he could snap back, Minnie stepped between them. “Sparrow—er, Captain Sparrow,” she said, holding a hand to her husband’s chest in an attempt to calm him, “we’re here to talk about a gem you stole from Cinnabar Island some time ago.”
“Oh, that ole thing?” Jack Sparrow snickered, “That was years back, miss. I don’t know what happened to that—all’s I know is I had it, and then those little monsters got me, and then I didn’t have it.”
“Little monsters?” Mickey asked, glancing up at the council. Did he mean the Pokéy thingys that inhabited Cinnabon Island? Because if so—well, that’d be a weird bait and switch, for Bartram to tell them they had to retrieve this gem only to find out Bartram had it the whole time. So… logically… there must be another group of these things roaming out there somewhere, right?
“Oh, yeah,” Sparrow continued, “Violent little buggers. And their leader took an interest in that gem, took it right out of my coat pocket, he did. Very scary little fellow, and quite vulgar, too. You probably wouldn’t like ‘im, Mr. Mouse. The war turtle, they call ‘im. Runs around with some of the craziest weapons I’ve ever seen, ‘e does.” As Jack’s description of the turtle passed through Mickey’s big ears, he suddenly found memories flashing through his brain.
He’d only really sort of come into contact with him in the Abyss, but…
“Wartortle,” Bartram called, “Nasty blood traitor. You’ve heard of him?”
Mickey perked up. “Oh, yeah,” he nodded, “I know that guy.”
His feet landed softly on the floor and he stepped toward Mickey Mouse, placing the spoon over one eye and leaning down to get a closer look at the diminutive intruder. The creature’s gaze bored into the king, sending a surge of discomfort rocketing up his spine. He’d never really been one to get scared of someone just like their demeanor, but this guy—and the group of intense-looking monsters scattered about the stands of the amphitheater behind him—struck some sort of fearful feeling in him. They were more… eerie than terrifying, perhaps, but Mickey still found himself wanting to get the heck out of dodge.
“Watch what you think, mouse man,” the psychic-type Poképerson scowled, standing upright again and removing the spoon from his face. Mickey grimaced, his brow furrowing and his back straightening as he tried his best to look intimidating. At probably a third of the Alakazam’s height, his attempts weren’t altogether successful; for his part, the council-creature chuckled under his breath.
“Uh—excuse me, Mr. Mouse,” Meowth turned back to his charges, sounding decidedly less assured than he had when he’d greeted the mice at the docks, “This… is… Bartram, an Alakazam, a psychic-type Pokémon and the head of the council in the absence of our leader.” The mustached cat tried his best to hide his quaking body and rattling knees, but Mickey and Minnie clocked it. What type of leader, exactly, was this… Bartram, if he inspired such fear in his subjects?
Mickey needed to know who the actual ruler of Cinnabon was, since by all accounts, that didn’t seem to be this dude. He’d been willing to go along with this charade for a while, but if he was gonna be treated with the type of suspicion that bordered on rudeness, he wanted it to be coming from someone who was actually in charge. “Where’s your real leader at?” Mickey looked to Meowth defiantly.
“Our leader does not entertain guests,” Bartram interjected, flicking a finger and psychically returning Mickey’s gaze upward at him. Mickey felt his chin jerk at the pull, but he couldn’t move his face once the Alakazam had stopped its magic. He was holding him in that position, he supposed. “At least… not ones that have nothing to offer Cinnabar Island. What, may I ask, is your purpose here, mouse?”
Mickey scoffed. “Purpose? You haven’t even asked our names, bud! Let me go!” he protested, but Bartram simply grinned with a sadistic glee as the mouse struggled in vain to get out of his psychic grip. Mickey growled, frustration seething just underneath his gentle surface. He didn’t like being treated so meanly before he’d even gotten the chance to properly introduce himself.
“What my husband means to say,” Minnie spoke up, brushing past Mickey and dropping to a knee in front of Bartram, “is that we come seeking shelter from the Empire, sir. They attacked our home, almost killed our friends, and captured another. The two that got away are currently taking refuge on the ship you sent to my distress call, and—”
“Distress call?” the Alakazam wondered, aloud. Mickey, too, found his attention caught by this—he supposed he’d never really considered how the ship full of Pokéy men had found them, but he hadn’t really expected it had been because of any direct efforts by his wife. Bartram, too, seemed puzzled by the idea of Cinnabon responding to any such distress call, and turned and looked at the rest of the council. “Fugitives. Typical. And one of you brought them here again without the express permission of the rest of the council. Who was it?”
The various Pokémon scattered about the amphitheater’s stands remained silent.
“No matter, we’ll get to the bottom of it,” Bartram shrugged. He turned back to Minnie. “Well, Ms. Mouse, I must say your husband did have a point. I don’t know who any of you are. Before we go any further, would you mind introducing yourselves?”
“Uh, yes, of course,” Minnie stammered, “I’m Minnie Mouse, Queen of the Disney Realms, and this is my husband, King Mickey. We’ve come to—”
“Yes, yes, I know why you’ve come,” Bartram sighed. “A King and a Queen, eh? Surprising that I’ve never heard of either of you.” The Alakazam spun around and began hovering back toward his seat. Mickey, released from the Pokemon’s magic grip, tumbled forward onto the ground.
“You’ve never heard of me?” Mickey asked, scrambling to his feet. “I’m the Mickey Mouse that fought in Dante’s Abyss.”
“I don’t watch much television,” Bartram shrugged, spinning around to face his guests and plopping back down in the seat where he’d began. He sucked in a deep, raspy breath, and then placed the spoon to his other eye, gazing at Mickey, Minnie, and their comrades for a few seconds before continuing. Off to his side, Mickey could hear Minnie mutter something like ‘I told you so’ under her breath. “It’s no matter,” the psychic continued, “Perhaps you can still be of use to us. You’ve come at an opportune moment—we’ve got a job that requires skills most mere secondaries don’t have at their disposal. It requires primes.”
Minnie stepped forward quickly. “We’re not—”
“You’re primes,” Bartram reached out, psychically clutching her with one hand and holding her in place. “I already knew that, but even if I didn’t, your husband gave it away. Only primes can fight in Dante’s Abyss.” Mickey could feel Minnie’s glare boring a hole into the back of his head. “Your lion companion? Is he a secondary? And the ones back on the ship?”
“…yes,” Mickey nodded.
“And the genie?”
“Yes, he is,” he told the Pokémon council. “Could ya release my wife? Please?”
Bartram let out a groan, and complied. Minnie fell to her knees.
“Ugh, this dress is gonna get so dirty,” she muttered under her breath, picking herself up and dusting herself off. Mickey reached back and grabbed her hand, helping her regain her balance and pulling her forward to stand next to him.
“So… what can we do for you fellas?”
Bartram sighed, again. He glanced over at the multi-armed guard that had accompanied Meowth to greet them, and gestured away. “We’re… missing something valuable,” he explained as the muscly creature stalked away, “And I’m in need of someone to retrieve it. It’s a gem, you see. A prized one, that greatly improved our master’s collection when we had it stored here with our other prizes. It’s called the Watergleam. This pirate—”
The Alakazam gestured over to another entrance of the amphitheater, where the Machamp pushed in a cage on wheels. Inside sat a ragged-looking man with dreadlocks and the baggiest clothes Mickey had ever seen. From what the mouse could tell, he’d been trapped in that cage for quite a while, and yet he still seemed decidedly damp. The pirate slumped in the corner of the small container, humming a shanty or some other seafaring tune under his breath. He held a compass in one hand, opening and closing it over and over, as he shook his dreadlocks back and forth. Altogether, he looked worse for wear, but somehow Mickey suspected that it wasn’t because he’d been through anything too terrible—maybe, he pondered, this guy just always looked rough.
“This pirate stole it,” Bartram continued, “but when we finally caught up to him, he’d gone and lost it to someone else. Someone… much more potent and dangerous, to say the least.”
Mickey stepped away from his crew, walking tentatively toward the messy-looking man in the cage. The closer he got, the more familiar the dude looked, until finally he could make out the man’s facial features and recognition washed over him.
“…Jack Sparrow?!”
“That’s Captain Jack Sparrow… your majesty,” the pirate smiled, taking a huge swig of his alcoholic beverage. Mickey’s eyes grew wide. How the heck did Captain Jack Sparrow get here? Probably the same way as Aladdin and Simba and all the rest, to be honest, but he still didn’t have a good explanation for how he or Minnie could’ve summoned so many of their subjects now lived lives as secondaries, amongst the other Omniversians. Jack Sparrow—the one who captained the Black Pearl? The most famous pirate vessel, sea ships and gummi ships included, in the whole universe?
“The one and the same, to hear his thoughts and memories tell it,” Bartram intervened, reading Mickey’s thought’s once again. The mouse scowled up at the Alakazam, once again not pleased about the intrusion. Nevertheless, Sparrow’s presence here on the Isle of Cinnabons intrigued him. And like it or not, they needed shelter from these weird Pokédudes, so he supposed figuring out what the heck was going on was the only option available here.
Minnie slid up behind him, peering into Sparrow’s face and also registering it as familiar. Together, they carefully approached the cage until they stood just a few feet away, close enough to confirm that this was, indeed, the famous pirate from Port Royal back in their kingdom. Jack’s eyes flitted over to Minnie, leering weirdly, as Mickey knew he was prone to do. “To what do I owe the pleasure, my queen?” He sat his bottle of rum on the ground and reached through the bars to grab Minnie’s hand, probably in some futile attempt to kiss it. The lady mouse jerked her hand out of the pirate’s grasp and wiped it on her dress.
“Gross,” Minnie muttered, stepping behind her husband. “Just because we know who you are doesn’t mean you’re getting any special treatment, Jack.” The pirate opened his mouth to correct her once again about leaving off his titles, but his mouse shut forcibly. Mickey and Minnie looked up to see the Alakazam holding his lips closed from afar. What a strange crew of people.
“So,” Mickey whispered to Minnie, “I’m thinking you be good cop and I’ll be bad cop.” He glanced over to his wife with a grin. Though she could be irritating at times, he truly adored adventuring with her.
“First: we’re not doing good cop, bad cop,” Minnie rolled her eyes, “We’re just going to ask him who has the gem thingy and then go get it. Secondly, you’d be a terrible bad cop.” And with that, she shook off her discomfort at Jack’s general presence and brushed past her husband. “So, Jack—”
“Captain Jack,” the pirate repeated, again, freshly released from Bartram’s psychic clutches, “and what type of treatment do the two of you little buggers have in mind, anyhow? Gonna draw and quarter a little secondary you yourselves probably inadvertently summoned?” Mickey and Minnie remained silent at this suggestion. “Gotta be one o’ you too, anyhow,” Sparrow continued, “ain’t nobody else—no other primes, anyways—in this whole Omniverse knew good ol’ Captain Jack Sparrow, as famous as I was in the old lands. Just you two. Hurts me feelings a bit to know you didn’t do it on purpose.”
“We wouldn’t dare bring anymore lowlifes and criminals to this place,” Mickey snarled, “it’s already infested enough with evildoers as it is.”
“Evildoers?” Sparrow stumbled back, “Offends me a little bit, milord. I’m one o’ the more sensible men you got in Port Royal. You been out there recently? Guess not, since you’ve been clowning around here, eh? Well, Mr. King Mouse, perhaps you should be going and inspecting your worlds a little bit more, huh? A bit out of touch, aren’t we, Mousey?”
Mickey huffed, but before he could snap back, Minnie stepped between them. “Sparrow—er, Captain Sparrow,” she said, holding a hand to her husband’s chest in an attempt to calm him, “we’re here to talk about a gem you stole from Cinnabar Island some time ago.”
“Oh, that ole thing?” Jack Sparrow snickered, “That was years back, miss. I don’t know what happened to that—all’s I know is I had it, and then those little monsters got me, and then I didn’t have it.”
“Little monsters?” Mickey asked, glancing up at the council. Did he mean the Pokéy thingys that inhabited Cinnabon Island? Because if so—well, that’d be a weird bait and switch, for Bartram to tell them they had to retrieve this gem only to find out Bartram had it the whole time. So… logically… there must be another group of these things roaming out there somewhere, right?
“Oh, yeah,” Sparrow continued, “Violent little buggers. And their leader took an interest in that gem, took it right out of my coat pocket, he did. Very scary little fellow, and quite vulgar, too. You probably wouldn’t like ‘im, Mr. Mouse. The war turtle, they call ‘im. Runs around with some of the craziest weapons I’ve ever seen, ‘e does.” As Jack’s description of the turtle passed through Mickey’s big ears, he suddenly found memories flashing through his brain.
He’d only really sort of come into contact with him in the Abyss, but…
“Wartortle,” Bartram called, “Nasty blood traitor. You’ve heard of him?”
Mickey perked up. “Oh, yeah,” he nodded, “I know that guy.”
Quote:QUEST: "A Little Peace and Quiet"
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