Episode 6: It’s a Small World
Part 5
Nick and K made their way around Adventureland. The park was huge; Nick didn’t remember it being so big before. Although they were supposed to be focused on this mission, he couldn’t help but feel excited to be there. K was still quiet and pensive, which was really bothering him because here he was, walking around in an Abu costume, and his “Aladdin” was barely paying attention to him.
“K, you alright, man? You’re not acting very Aladdin-like, ya know. Your partner in crime would like a little attention.”
K rolled his eyes. “I’m fine, Nick — I mean, Abu.” He smirked.
Nick cleared his throat. “You’re not acting fine.”
“Hey, you shouldn’t be talking — Abu doesn’t talk; he squeaks. I’m not answering unless you squeak from now on.”
“You’re a jerk.”
“Yoo-hoo!!! Nicky!!!”
“Oh god,” Nick groaned as his secretary, Mr. Lancybassy, pranced over, wearing a lime green tutu, matching ballet flats, and fairy wings. “What are you doing here??”
“I thought I saw you! Then again, I don’t know how I could miss you in such a tight… tight costume. Ya know, Nick, that costume is very becoming on you.” Lancy winked.
Nick looked down at himself. “You think so?”
“Oh, definitely! I could just eat you up!”
Nick stared at him, his eyes widening in horror. “Uhh, okay. What about you? What are you doing here? And why the hell are you in some fairy outfit?”
“Tinker Bell is not a fairy! She’s a pixie! Do you like the wings?” Lancy turned, wiggling a bit, making the gossamer wings on his back flutter.
“Oh… uh, yeah, they’re really… neat.”
“Maybe if you’re lucky, I’ll sprinkle you with some of my special… ‘pixie dust.’”
When K suddenly busted out laughing, Nick glared. Wasn’t the head honcho even pissed that Lancybassy had somehow snuck his way on board the mission? He wasn’t even an agent!
“Shut up, K!”
“What? What was that? I didn’t hear anything; was someone talking?”
Nick had been so busy messing around with Lancy, he didn’t even notice the people in weird costumes coming toward him and K. He recognized several of the seven dwarves, two of the three little pigs, and a pair of green army men from Toy Story. What were they doing walking around together? In Adventureland? They needed to keep an eye out for strange Disney characters, and these ones fit the description. They almost reminded him of the enemy FANS agents in Antarctica who panicked and ran around aimlessly instead of trying to escape or attack him. Of course those same FANS agents would be stupid enough to break character when they were undercover. He thought back to the photo of the ridiculous winking man with the ferret. He seemed like the type of guy to lack K’s attention to detail and call his employees “minions” like some kind of wannabe supervillain.
The bumbling characters slowly made their way forward until Nick stopped and looked at them. Then, suddenly, they started running.
“Move, Nick! Hurry!!” K yelled.
Nick hurried after him, giving Lancy a small shove. “Move!”
“Ohh my, I don’t know if I can run in these slippers!! They weren’t made for running; they were made for floating, for gliding along gracefully! This isn’t graceful!”
They all ran. The minions seemed to keep coming from out of nowhere. Suddenly, a song popped into Nick’s head; he was surprised K hadn’t thought of it — technically, it was his song.
“Gotta keep… one jump ahead of the breadline… one swing ahead of the sword. I steal only what I can’t afford… that’s everything!”
K turned his head to look at him in shock.
They turned a corner, the minions hot on their heels. K pointed to a building labeled Enchanted Tiki Room, and they made their way in. Somewhere along the way, they’d lost Lancy; with a final cry of something about “not ruining a perfectly good pair of shoes,” he’d fallen behind.
“One jump ahead of the lawmen… that’s all, and that’s no joke. These guys don’t appreciate I’m broke,” Nick continued, skidding to a stop as a group of minions appeared in front of them.
“Shit,” K muttered.
“One jump ahead of the slowpokes… one skip ahead of my doom… next time, gonna use a nom de plume. One jump ahead of the hit men… one hit ahead of the flock… I think I’ll take a stroll around the block…”
“Nick! Will you shut the hell up?! This is no time for singing.”
“Ohh, you can’t hear me, right? So you can’t hear my singing, and you can’t tell me to stop!” Nick announced triumphantly.
K winced, stepping out of the way when one of the minions jumped at him. Somehow, they managed to back him into a corner, but he countered with swift dodges and punches. Nick continued to sing beside him, moving chaotically in a flurry of blows and kicks; K couldn’t figure out how he could sing and fight simultaneously. Sometimes, that kid amazed him.
“One jump ahead of the hoof beats…”
“Vandal!”
“One hop ahead of the hump…”
“Street rat!”
“One trick ahead of disaster…”
“Scoundrel!”
K blinked. Were their assailants filling in the crowd parts as they fought?
“They’re quick, but I’m much faster…”
“Take that!”
He shook his head. They were. It wasn’t even the right character singing the song, but they didn’t seem to care. The power this place held baffled him; even the bad guys could break out into song and have perfect pitch besides.
“Here goes, better throw my hand in, wish me happy landin’, all I gotta do is juuuuuump!” At the word, Nick leaped into the air, kicking a minion square in the jaw and knocking him to the ground.
Nick blinked in surprise, realizing that he somehow knew most of the song. The minions lay in a crumpled heap at their feet. Nick glanced between K and the defeated horde, then a huge grin crossed his face from ear to ear. So that’s why music always played during fight scenes on TV and in movies; it made defeating the bad guys ten times easier!
“Uh, don’t let your guard down just yet, Nick,” K muttered, pointing up.
Nick looked up. Hanging on perches over his head were hundreds of hugs, brightly colored birds. But these weren’t the cute, flitty songbirds that were in the movies. No, these appeared to be obnoxious, animatronic parrots.
“In the tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki room… in the tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki room…” the birds sang in a blend of bad accents. “All the birds sing words, and the flowers croon in the tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki room.”
Nick shuddered in horror. “Dear god…”
***
Meanwhile, Lancy was living out either his worst nightmare or his wildest fantasy — he couldn’t decide which. Some of the minions had managed to catch him after he’d stopped chasing his colleagues, and Nick’s overly-faithful secretary now found himself imprisoned in a dimly-lit room, tied to a chair and surrounded by tough-looking men in costumes. The only reason Lancy knew he wasn’t dreaming was that a shirtless Nick was nowhere to be seen.
“I’m not gonna ask you again,” one of the minions said menacingly. Lancy had dubbed him “Lead Green Army Man” because of both his Green Army Man costume from Toy Story and the fact that he had done most of the talking since Lancy’s capture. “What do you know about the plans?”
Lancy shrugged and once again tried to turn his head around enough to check on the state of his pixie wings. Who cared about some stupid plans when fabulous costumes were being damaged right then? It was bad enough that he’d almost ruined his slippers, but this torture was too much. “I don’t know anything about any plans; I told you!” Lancy pouted. “If the stupid airport didn’t have CNN on 24/7, I totally wouldn’t have even known about the stupid blizzards and stuff. They totally killed my cute outfit plans for my vacay.”
Lead Green Army Man sighed. “Cut out the ‘vacation’ crap, Tinker Bell. We know who those guys are that you were talking to, and we know what you’re all here trying to do. So just tell us what you’ve found out and what your orders are.”
“Seriously, boys, I have no idea what you’re talking about! The only orders I know about are the ones I’m gonna make at the bar tonight,” Lancy told them. Oh, what he would do for a decent Cosmopolitan right then — the drink and the magazine.
One of the other minions pulled Lead Green Army Man aside. “Maybe we should just let him go. We’ve tried everything, and he still keeps saying he’s on vacation.”
The third minion had now joined them and chimed in agreement. “This guy is not only clueless, he’s a weirdo, too.” All three minions shuddered as Lancy stared at them and winked when they looked up at him. “Can we please get him out of here?”
Lead Green Army Man sighed and pushed past the other two minions as he stood in front of Lancy again. “Fine. We’re letting you go. But if we catch you with those guys again, or any of the others like them, we’re not taking ‘vacation’ as an answer. Got it?”
“Yes, sir!” Lancy said, saluting Lead Green Army Man as the other minions grabbed him by the arms and led him out of the room. They exchanged glances as Lead Green Army Man opened the door, and the two minions shoved Lancy out into the secluded alleyway that led into one of the maintenance areas. Lancy huffed as he adjusted his pixie wings before he quickly scurried around the corner of the building when the door opened once again. He leaned as close as he could to the side of the building so he could overhear the minions as they discussed their new orders.
“I guess now that all of these agents are running around, the Doc wants us to go stand guard at Space Mountain and make sure no one messes with the bomb,” one of the minions reported. Lancy recognized the voice as Lead Green Army Man’s.
“We better hurry over there so he doesn’t get mad about us kidnapping that weirdo!” another minion exclaimed. They all hurried off, leaving Lancy alone once again to watch people running off somewhere without him.
“Who are they calling a ‘weirdo’? They’re the ones in plastic olive drab…” Lancy muttered to himself as he made his way back out into the park. Realizing he’d just overheard an important piece of information, he pulled out his cell phone. He immediately knew who he needed to spill the news to.
“Pearl, darling, I have MAJOR news for u! Call me ASAP!” Lancy typed furiously on the keypad of his phone.
Pearl replied two minutes later. “Lancy, I’m on a mission. Can’t this wait?”
Lancy sighed, his gaze fixed on his cell phone — he didn’t even care that people were staring at him as he walked past them in his fabulous costume. Finally, he was able to help out on a mission by doing what he did best: texting and gossiping! “Noooo, Pearlllll! This is ABOUT your mission!”
No more than thirty seconds after his message was sent, Lancy’s phone rang. Pearl was on the other end of the line. “What is it, Lancy? What did you hear?” Pearl asked. Lancy could hear Shazam in the background, yelling and complaining at her about something — probably the phone call itself.
“Only THE most fabulous bit of news that I could EVER have heard! Oh, you are so going to love me forever once I tell you-“
“Lancy! The news…” Pearl urged.
“Okay, okay, O-M-G, you are grumpy today!” Lancy huffed. “Anyway, I heard some guys around here talking about guarding some…” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “…bomb, and–”
“Bomb?! What bomb?! I’m looking for a weather machine!” There was a pause, and then… “Forget it — you know where the bomb is?” Pearl pursued before another realization seemed to hit her. “Wait, you’re here in Florida?! At DISNEY?!”
“Yes, yes, and YES!” Lancy replied, still wandering aimlessly around the park. The only complaint Lancy had about the Magic Kingdom at the moment was its lack of bars since he really felt like having a good drink while he dished his big news. “Do you want me to tell you where this bomb thingy is hiding or not?”
“Yes, tell me already!” Pearl insisted before Lancy heard her snap at Shazam to be quiet so she could pay close attention to what Lancy was about to tell her.
“It’s at Space Mountain! The guys said they were going to Space Mountain to make sure no one messes with it.”
“Thank you, Lancy!” Pearl shouted.
“Welcome as always, darling!” Lancy responded before he heard Pearl hang up. Sighing with satisfaction at a job well done, Lancy hardly noticed that he was about to cross paths with a very handsome Peter Pan. Luckily, he did finally see the cute guy headed his way and quickly adjusted his outfit and fixed his hair before putting on his flirtiest smile and rushing over to catch up with Peter Pan as he started walking the other way. “Oh Peter, I hope you’re thinking happy thoughts — because you and I have a date in Neverland tonight!”
***
Pearl stood on the float with her forced smile, waving at all the people who had amassed on the sides of the street to watch the parade go by. The guests were waiting excitedly for their favorite characters… who, unfortunately, happened to be them.
She smirked at the white-gloved “pageant wave” Shazam had perfected as Prince Charming when the phone buzzed against her chest. The one place she was able to stash a phone in this damned costume was in her bra. She almost felt like Diamond. Slipping behind Shazam, she reached for it discreetly and checked the caller ID. Lancy.
“You’re already wearing that ridiculous watch under your costume!” Shazam hissed through gritted teeth. “We’re undercover! Don’t break character! Put the phone away!”
Pearl knew she shouldn’t be answering Lancy’s texts, but something told her to, and she did, ignoring Shazam’s protests.
Pearl knew she couldn’t be seen doing it and attempted to hide herself in the awkward pumpkin coach float. She knelt down, trying to disguise the fact she was using a cell phone from the public. No thoughts went to how she looked to the public, however. Horrified parents witnessed “Cinderella” bending down near “Prince Charming’s” crotch area with no regard for the children.
“Mommy, what are they doing?” The mother turned her daughter’s head away, swearing to herself she’d never go to anything Disney-related again.
“What is it, Lancy?” Pearl almost growled into the phone, feeling extremely uncomfortable squatting down in heels. Her annoyance gave way to interest when she heard what he had to tell her. “Bomb?! What bomb?! I’m looking for a weather machine!” She shook her head; a bomb sounded more dangerous than a weather machine, and Lancy actually seemed to know where it was, somehow. “Forget it — you know where the bomb is?” Pearl pursued before another realization hit her. “Wait, you’re here in Florida?! At DISNEY?!”
“Pearl! What are you doing?!” Shazam hissed from his seat, but she quickly shushed him.
“Shh, quiet! I’m trying to hear a tip from Lancy!”
She dipped her head lower and clutched the phone to her ear, listening carefully. Finally, she rose up with a small grin and turned off her phone, stowing it back down the front of her dress. The scientist stood once more and looked over at Shazam. “We have a new problem. Forget the weather machine for now.” She glanced around at the horrified and angry crowd. “What’s with them? They look peeved.”
Shazam gave her an exasperated look; his face was slightly red. Despite being curious, she didn’t bother to press him. There was a bomb in Tomorrowland. They had to get off. Now.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a clear alleyway. Bending over quickly and clutching her stomach, she moved towards the edge of the float nearest the alley. “Follow me,” she mumbled to Shazam as she passed him. She jumped off the float and flew into the alleyway, where she pretended to be sick.
Shazam looked around anxiously, alone on the float. Everyone looked at him with wondering eyes. He laughed nervously. “It looks like Cinderella had some bad pumpkin juice,” he quickly said. “I will go check on her, being the charming prince that I am.” With that, he quickly turned and jumped off the float, following Pearl.
“Do you mind telling me what that was all about?” Shazam grabbed Pearl’s arm and dragged her further down the alley.
“Shut up,” Pearl quickly snapped at Shazam, shaking her arm free of his grip.
“Look, Mommy, Cinderella is talking to Prince Charming like you talk with Daddy,” a little girl pointed out to her mother before the prince and princess disappeared from their view.
Ducking behind a building, Pearl pulled her phone back out of her dress. “Lancy is here, and he overheard minions talking about a bomb at Space Mountain. Let’s move!” She grabbed Shazam by his arm and pulled him off in the direction of the ride.
***
“In the tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki room… in the tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki room…”
Weren’t those damn birds annoying enough? Did Nick really have to sing along with them, even when that damn Iago bird came down to interrupt and sing his own even more annoying song? K wondered if maybe he should have brought Diamond instead like Shazam wanted originally. Or even a lower-ranking agent. After their first month of intense, nonstop basic training, the newer agents usually shadowed veteran agents on missions to gain practical experience. Their assignments depended on K’s or Grasshopper’s evaluations of them. Sometimes he wondered if those damn evaluations were inaccurate. They had said…
“Nick!”
“The birds sing words, and–”
…That Nick was actually sane, for example.
“Nick…”
“–the flowers croon!”
Moments like these definitely proved differently.
“Nick…”
“In the tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki room!”
“Nick! Could you stop with the damn singing of Disney songs?!”
“You’re too uptight, K. How often do you get a cool mission at the happiest place on Earth? I mean, jeez, enjoy it while you can. Live life to the fullest, for the future is scarce and all that.”
I sometimes wonder if you know how scarce it is, K mused silently. “Seems like you’ve had your fair share of the more unique missions lately.”
Nick grinned as they wandered further through the animatronic bird room of torture. “I’m a one-of-a-kind agent, so it fits. Extraordinary missions for an extraordinary agent, right?”
K sighed. He’d never admit it to anyone, but Nick reminded him of someone dear he had lost. A reminder of what could have been. Potential for greatness that had been painfully snuffed out before it could fully manifest. He knew this was where his protectiveness stemmed from. He never wished to admit this, but it was true.
“In the tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki room…”
Nick’s obnoxious voice interrupted his thoughts once more. Must that blasted kid always sing?! He treated this more like a musical than a mission.
“You know, 008…”
“00Carter! The birds sing words-”
“008. You need to take your mission far more seriously. You’re a talented agent, Carter, better than most want to say. That’s why you made 00-rank so young, you and Diamond both. But if you don’t take your job seriously-”
“I take it seriously.”
“Your actions say differently.”
“K, listen. I. DO. TAKE. IT. SERIOUSLY,” Nick stated, all singing, jokes, and lighthearted attitude aside.
“So singing and goofing off is taking it all seriously. I’d like to see you brushing it off lightly then.”
Nick rolled his eyes and roughly poked one of the robot birds that suddenly seemed to mock him now. When it tipped off its perch, falling and shattering upon the floor, he walked back towards K with a slight innocent whistle.
“That’s how I deal. How else can I without going insane? I’m the reason why we lost an agent. I’m why that same agent is now working with our enemy. I keep letting that same agent get away, and he’s here. I know he is. And if he kills anyone before I do finally catch him, the blood will be on my hands. My fault. I take all my missions to heart, K. I really do. I just joke, sing, and all so I can keep my sanity and maybe help everyone else keep theirs.”
K was stunned. His organization’s “goofball” agent had more depth than he had ever given him credit for.
Nick looked at his mentor. For the first time in his five years at Himitsu Takana, he caught a glimpse of the great pain hidden behind K’s green eyes. Nick released a breath, easily able to recognize that angst, for he was used to hiding his own.
“So, when did you lose them?”
K stared at Nick sharply. “What the hell do you mean?”
“Whoever it is, the one or ones causing you so much pain, man. That’s why you’re so cold, right? Why you don’t really care about me, about us, only the mission?”
With a huff, K stalked out of the Tiki Room, for once not caring if the enemy spotted him or Nick. In his mood, he’d almost challenge them to try it.
Nick thought he didn’t care?
Had he really become so cold?
He sighed despondently. Kristin wouldn’t recognize him now, nor would she want to. K gazed around at all the happy people, who were blissfully ignorant to what he dealt with daily to keep them safe. Was it worth it? Sometimes he wondered. K questioned it enough as he thought of the sacrifices he’d made.
His lost wife, Kristin. They had met here. Fallen in love here. She had been his better half, the loving, lighthearted side he didn’t possess. She had always supported him in his choices, even calling him “the hero” when he first joined HimTak.
His blond, blue-eyed son, Nathaniel. He had looked like Kristin. He’d possessed her energy and spirit, along with Kevin’s own determination and logic-loving intelligence. From the moment Nick had first entered HimTak, he’d reminded K of Nathaniel and of what he could have been, had he been allowed to grow older than the tender age of ten.
He had never forgotten his family and the beautiful life they had lived together. They plagued his thoughts daily, despite the passage of time.
What would they think of him now? He knew the answer.
They would be greatly disappointed.
***