Season 1, Episode 6: It’s
a Small World
Part 9 of 9
When
Brian opened his eyes and saw his surroundings, he thought he must be
dreaming. The bright colors and
exaggerated proportions of the décor were certainly out of a dream world. And was it just the dizzy, curving lines of
the furniture, or was the whole room spinning?
Realizing
he was seeing everything sideways, Brian tried to sit upright, to get a better
look, only to realize he could only lift his head. The rest of his body, he saw with horror as
he looked down, was bound in thick ropes, his shoulders, arms, legs, and ankles
wrapped like cocoons.
So
this wasn’t just a dream. It was a
nightmare!
But
with the struggle to sit up came a throbbing pain in his head, and he realized
that this was neither dream, nor nightmare.
He’d never felt pain in his dreams.
Even his nightmares always ended before the pain was scheduled to
come. He wasn’t dreaming. He wasn’t asleep. This was real.
Moving
just his eyes, he looked around again and realized he was lying on a bed in the
center of the room. Wriggling like a
worm, he managed to roll over onto his other side, and it was then that he
spotted Emerald. She was also tied up
and had been wedged into the window seat a few feet from the bed. She was sitting up, awake, but deep in
concentration. Through bleary eyes and
occasional bouts of double vision, he watched her, and after a moment, he
realized why. Her hands were free! She was using them to work at loosening the
ropes around her ankles.
Brian
struggled against his own bindings for a few seconds; they didn’t give at all. How had she managed to free her hands? “Hey,” he whispered, unsure of where their
captors might be.
Emerald
looked over. “Hey, you’re finally up,”
she said nonchalantly, speaking at her normal volume. “You don’t have to whisper; ol’ Mickey ran
off to help the rest of them and left us here.
Not that we’ll be here when he gets back.”
The
ropes dropped limply from around her ankles.
Brian watched in amazement as she lifted one foot and flexed it, slowly
rotating the joint. “How did you untie
yourself??”
A
smug smirk played on her lips. “I’ve had
lots of experience with bondage.” He
felt his face redden, and she laughed.
“Nah, here’s the real trick. This
wouldn’t have worked for you, since you were already unconscious when they tied
you up, but I was able to pull it off. I
surrendered and let them tie me up, so they wouldn’t have to knock me out. When they went to put the ropes around me, I
tensed all of my muscles, made them bulge out as far as they go. You do that, and when you relax your muscles,
the ropes are already a little looser.
Then you can work at them until you get your arms free. Your sweat works to your advantage; it
lubricates your skin, makes it easier to slide through the ropes.” She rotated her wrists, doing jazz
hands. “Neat, huh?”
“That’s
real neat.” Brian was impressed. They could use resourceful agents like her in
the CIA, if only she weren’t so trigger-happy.
“Give
me a few, and I’ll get you loose too.”
Within
ten minutes, she’d made good on her promise, and they were both free. At Emerald’s insistence, the first thing they
did was get out of their duck costumes, since their masks were long gone. “So where exactly are we?” Brian asked, as he
draped his Donald Duck costume over the wardrobe door.
“Haven’t
you guessed by now? I thought you were
the cartoon freak,” Emerald scoffed. She
gestured inside the wardrobe, where there was a rack of identical black suit
jackets and pairs of red pants, a drawer of white gloves, and a row of yellow
shoes. “We’re in Mickey’s Country
House. Mickey and Pluto must have shut
it down to tourists, ‘cause no one’s been through it since they left us here.”
“Ah.” Brian nodded.
He could see that they were beyond the roped off path through the house
designed for park guests taking a tour.
He and Emerald climbed over the ropes and followed the path through the
house.
“Look
around for our guns,” Emerald advised, her green eyes sharp. “They took everything.”
Brian
nodded again. He couldn’t help but look
around as they poked through the ingeniously decorated kitchen and living
room. He hadn’t been to Disney World
since old cousin Kevin was working there.
Emerald began tearing through any potential hiding place, tossing items
haphazardly aside, but Brian was careful, not wanting to disrupt the work that
had gone into decorating the little cottage.
Of
course, Emerald’s methods were much more efficient, and she found the weapons,
along with their communication devices, in Mickey’s garage while Brian was
still pouring over the living room.
“Here,” she said, tossing him his handgun and pager. “Let’s go.”
Brian
stowed the gun in its holster at his waist while Emerald trotted off through
the house. Her head appeared around the
corner a moment later. He had stopped in
the middle of the living room to read the sports pennants perched on the
couch.
“Will
you come on?” she snapped impatiently.
“They’ll be back any minute, and they’re not gonna be too happy when
they find out we’re gone. But we better be gone.”
“Sorry,
sorry; I’m comin’,” Brian assured her.
But as he took one final, sweeping look around the room, something else
caught his eye. “Hey, hang on a minute…”
“We
don’t have a minute!”
“No,
Summer, wait. Look over there.” He pointed to the fireplace. “You see those cords hangin’ out of the
chimney?”
“Yeah,
so?”
“So
with as much attention to detail as they gave in every nook and cranny of this
house, don’t you find it a little strange that they would wire the electricity
through the chimney and leave cords hangin’ there for everybody to see?”
“A
big fat F in Decorating 101, for sure,” Emerald replied impatiently, tossing
her wild, dark hair over her shoulder.
“But who cares? Let’s scram!”
“Go
on if you want. I wanna see what those
cords go to. Somehow, I don’t think they
belong to the Disney people.”
Emerald
sighed, but she followed him as he approached the fireplace and knelt down,
looking up into the chimney. There was a
shadow overhead, something wedged into the cramped space, but it was too dark
to see what. He fished around in his
pockets. He had a small pocket knife
that he’d had since he was a boy scout; it contained a small flashlight. His colleagues at the CIA ripped on him for
carrying around a boy scout pocket knife, but it came in handy at times like
these. The flashlight wasn’t powerful,
but it brightened the chimney enough for him to see where exactly the object
was stowed.
“Hold
this,” he said, handing the flashlight to Emerald, and before she could
protest, he started to climb up the chimney, pushing his arms and legs against
the brick sides, using the indents of the grout lines for footholds. It was a tough climb, but thankfully, he
didn’t have far to go. He got a hold of
the object plugging up the chimney, some sort of mechanical, metal box, and yanked. It took a couple of tries, but the object
suddenly came loose, and Brian with it, both of them tumbling into the
fireplace.
“Ugh,”
Brian moaned as the metal box crushed his chest. The pressure was quickly relieved by Emerald,
who picked it up.
“What
is this thing?” she asked, turning it over in her hands. “Some kind of machine…”
Brian
climbed painfully to his feet. “It’s
gotta be the weather machine.”
Emerald
wrinkled her nose, studying the metal box.
“You think? It’s so small… how
could a little, metal box cover Disney World in snow?”
“Hey
now… size isn’t everything. Small guys –
I mean, things – can pack a lot of power.”
He threw her an impish grin.
Emerald
looked over at him and suddenly grinned back.
“Gotta hand it to you, CIA – you did good.” She tossed the weather machine up and caught
in neatly in two hands. “Come on… let’s
unplug this thing and take it to
Brian
followed her eyes downward and saw that there was a small drift of snow forming
at their feet. Chuckling, he followed
the cord to an outlet in the wall and pulled.
The weather machine shut off with a low hum, and almost instantly, they
watched the fluffy pile of snow cave in, as it began to melt. Soon it would only be a puddle on Mickey’s
hardwood floor.
They
stepped over the snow on their way out of the house, but before they’d reached
the threshold, Brian’s pager crackled to life.
“Rok, this is
Blue met green as Brian looked into Emerald’s wide
eyes. For once, he could see that she
was shaken. He knew neither of them had
time to dwell on the last of
Big
“C’mon,” it was his turn to tell Emerald. “You heard her – Kev and Nick need us. Let’s go.”
Emerald, who had been the one urging him to leave
all this time, didn’t hesitate. She was
right on his heels, still clutching the disabled weather machine, as they
hurried from the cottage.
± ± ±
The entire set-up had failed within moments.
He had thought he’d had Dr. Rough cornered; he
thought he had helped K. What Nick
hadn't expected was more minions coming up like cockroaches feasting on rotten
food. And they’d slowed him down a bit.
He’d then figured the climb up
Wrong. For
the third time… wrong.
"Game over, Dr. Rough!" he had said, so
confident.
"Yo, you be wrong again, Carter." Only one person spoke like that.
He turned as Dr. Rough moved confidently towards
his agent. Nick backed his way closer to
Kevin, at one of the upper ledges of the mountain roller coaster. He was suddenly thankful beyond belief that
he’d decided to page
"You may have tried to stop this plan, but I
WILL rule the world!" the short, Latino man cried triumphantly at the
victory evident by the surprising turnaround.
"And my first step will be killing two of the greatest HimTak
has! Then…"
Nick tried so hard not to snicker as he saw the
man's eye twitch excitedly, and failed miserably. He felt like he could step on the short,
twitchy, dorky, evil genius before him.
The laughs came, and suddenly, they couldn't stop. He wasn't sure if it was because he knew he
was going to die or what, but the blonde agent just couldn't help himself.
"Yo, somethin' funny? You's bout ta have a cap in yo’ ass!"
K stared at Nick in utter amazement. How could the boy laugh at a time like
this? Literally, in the face of
death! What had he been thinking before,
about being surprised at Nick's depth?
What the hell had happened to that
Nick? That Nick was who he needed
now. And yet, Nick kept laughing.
Dr. Rough's veins almost popped out of his
forehead to explode in rage. "WHAT
THE HELL IS SO FUNNY, 00CARTER!?"
Nick paused laughing for only a moment. "Ha, K!
Even the bad guys call me 00Carter now!" He began snickering again. "Even ones who..."
"WHO WHAT!?" the evil leader of FANS
bellowed.
"Who are short..." He choked on more laughter. "and all twitchy... and…"
K shook his head.
"Nick, it's not smart to mock the man about to kill us."
He kept laughing.
His face was almost red at that point.
K felt like strangling the boy, that or laughing right along with
him. Was insanity contagious when it
came from Nick?
"With this villain..." That was when he began to sing. "It's a small world... after all!"
Justin only smirked. "Bad move, yo."
The trigger was pressed swiftly, as a furiously
intense, falsetto voice shrieked at them, "I AM NOT SMALL!!"
Then, time seemed to slow for them both. Kevin saw the bullet first. It was a dead-on shot for Nick's heart. His own heart almost stopped at the thought. No. Not
again. He would not let him die. Quickly, he shoved Nick towards the ground as
the bullet angrily tore through his own arm.
Nick's humorous outlook on the situation
immediately vanished, and a look of amazement replaced the joyful expression.
"K!" a familiar, female voice cried as
footsteps could be heard swiftly approaching them.
Drums was the first to recognize the voice. Emerald. She had one of the best shots in HimTak, and
there was no doubt that CIA agent was right behind her. How had they escaped Mickey's house so fast? He took a good look around; his mechanical eye
analyzed everything around him and then sent the data to his brain. The storm clouds; they were dissipating,
revealing clear, blue skies over the park.
The snow; it was finally melting in the ninety-degree heat. That meant they had the weather machine. He listened to the noises around him and made
a decision.
"Dr. Rough, yo, we gots ta bounce; they got
da machine." Shots were being fired
at them, missing by mere inches. Nick
now had his gun aimed at the enemy, his composure regained. His mentor gripped his own arm tightly,
showing no signs of pain.
"We'll meet again, Carter!" Drums smirked as he grabbed his own mentor,
and the two jumped into what looked to be a suicide leap. The coaster cart sped out under them in just
the precise moment for them to land within it. The landing was rough, having been from a good
distance, but they were safe, and escaping.
"SHIT!" Emerald yelled as she saw their
escape. "Damnit, Brian, if you had
just let me shoot, I could have gotten them!"
"Summer, now, ya could've hit someone! You can't predict coasters, and you could've
caused one to go off course."
Nick rolled his eyes, not happy to see either of
them, especially since they had come too late. And where was JC? Damn, he had asked for one thing... He shook his head. Maybe he’d gotten held up somewhere. Nick helped K up and began the slow climb down
the mountain he had come to loathe. He
let the duck duo go ahead of them, wanting a moment to speak with K.
"Why did you do that?"
K raised one of the infamous bushy brows (which
most agents loved to mock) at him. "What
do you mean?"
"Why did you put yourself in the line of fire? You could've gotten yourself killed, K. I ticked him off; it was my fault..."
"Believe it or not, Nick-" Nick turned his head at not being called a
number for once. "I really do care.
Far more than you think. I do care about whether you live or
die."
"K-"
"Now let’s go find
"But-"
"008, let's go." He smiled then. It was only for a moment, but his superior
agent gave him a genuine smile.
"Right." And he followed the older man down.
± ± ±
She felt so alone, tucked in a small room that
only granted access to employees, away from prying eyes around Cinderella's
castle. She had originally planned on
just hiding out inside, before realizing people were going to follow. So now she was in that small room, waiting
for answers, alone with a corpse. A
corpse that, only a short time ago, had been a living ally. He had already grown cold, and the fact that
his eyes remained open unsettled her deeply.
And now she was crying, and she hated it. She hadn’t even liked JC Chasez! He’d pissed
her off to no end; he’d hated her just as fiercely, and the two had never been
able to get along together. And now she
was crying for him. She was crying for
him, crying for the fact that he’d died by a friend's hands, crying because she
felt like she’d sent him to his death.
But was she really crying for him? Or the fact that Justin killed him? She’d never thought she'd see the day, even
after witnessing Global Idol and the
"Pearly?" came Nick's voice. "You okay?" Well, she’d thought she sounded composed. Perhaps not?
"Yeah, Blondie, I'm good. I'm at Cinderella's castle... in a large
storage room... the body is with me, too."
"So JC is..." He didn't say it, and didn't have to.
"Yeah. Drums..." She'd never call him Justin again. "He shoved him off the top of
Cinderella's castle. I had just come up,
and he..." She didn't finish.
"We'll be there in a few."
± ± ±
Nick saw her when they came up to the room. She stood outside of it silently. The body of JC was inside, and she’d wanted
away from it once she knew they would be there. He hugged her, and she smiled weakly before
shrugging him off in a gentle manner. "I'm okay."
She saw the others. Emerald and Brian went into the storage room,
while K watched her with careful eyes. Her
own gaze shifted to his wound. "K,
what happened!? You alright?"
He smirked, but with no humor in his eyes. "Just a scratch. What about you?"
She nodded. "I'm fine, just..." She looked around the place that was supposed
to be so happy, a place that was twisted and perverted by the people from whom
they’d fought to save the world. The
young scientist took a deep breath before releasing it slowly. "Just no more missions for awhile. I want my lab, my work. Technology doesn't fall to its death before my
eyes."
K nodded somberly. "Understood."
"You sure you're okay, Kit?"
"Yeah, promise… So what happened up there?"
The others walked out from the storage room, as
Nick proceeded to fill
"Trekkie girl." She tossed
"No competition for you, though,
right?" Nick teased, trying to get her to smile.
"Actually, he might be..."
"Wow, Brainiac may have met her match,"
Emerald remarked, a bit surprised herself after seeing the man face to face. Who knew such a mess of a man could be such a
problem?
"Brian, I take it you'll have your men
explain this mess..."
"Yes, cuz, I'll make sure no one knows of
this. My superior is going to have a
field day as it is, with how public this has gotten."
The others continued to converse as K chose to
step away from them for a moment. He
walked out to the pathway leading up to the doorway of the castle, pensive
about the mission. He guessed many would
deem it a success. The world was saved
yet again, ignorant, overall, to the truth of what had really gone on around it.
Yet Drums had escaped once again, along
with his new leader, Dr. Rough. More
importantly, he – and HimTak – had lost a great agent and a good man. It hurt more than he wanted to admit.
Nick approached him slowly, almost cautiously.
And yet he had saved one agent...
"K, we're going to go below and get back in
our street clothes – is that alright? We
figured we'd rent a room here tonight before going back tomorrow. Brian says the clean-up will take a day or so;
then we can have JC sent back to us..."
K simply nodded. "I'll find you all later when it's time
to leave."
Nick watched him slowly stroll away and disappear
within the crowds. K was really hurting,
and, this time, not from the past, but from the present. Was all that hardness just an act to get by? K had saved him earlier, had been afraid of
letting him die. He smiled to
himself. He guessed everyone had another
side to them. And Nick couldn't wait
till he finally got to see the full view of K, the man behind the shell.
He felt bad for being a bit happy, after all that
had happened that day. Happy, even
though JC had died. But he knew that he
would avenge JC's death. He would make
things right. Somehow, some way, because
he was responsible. One day, Drums would
have to face all he had done. So would
Nick.
"Hey, monkey ass, are you coming or
not?!" he heard Emerald call out, which shook him from his more somber
thoughts.
"Oh, come on, Em, he doesn't look THAT bad
as Abu..." he heard
He chuckled to himself as he walked back to his
fellow agents. Well, fellow agents plus
Brian, the country government agent who was just downright annoying. "No, you're right – the monkey look is
an improvement."
"Just for that..." He smirked as he approached them. "I'm going to sing, just for you
guys!"
"Oh, just shoot me now."
Nick snickered as he began to loudly sing to
them. "It's a world of laughter, a world of tears… it's a world of hopes, it's a world of fears.
There's so much that we share, that it's
time we're aware... it's a small world after all!"
"Shut up, Nick!" they all shouted at
him. But instead of getting mad, he
simply laughed.
± ± ±