One fine day in Onett, Poo walked up to Ness with a big grin on his face.
"Guess what!" Poo was smiling so brightly, he made Times Square look like a candle-deprived sheet cake past its expiration date.
Ness crossed his arms and leveled an unimpressed look at him. "What?"
"Yesterday, a little bird told me—"
"Twitter, dude. It's called Twitter."
Poo waved Ness's interruption away. "Paula's going out with another guy."
Ness's crossed arms dropped to dangle in time with his jaw dropping open. "What?!"
"You'd flip out if you knew who it is." Poo waited until Ness's fingers twitched before teasing onward. "Because it's Jeff."
Ness's arms shot up to grab his cap-covered head in an appropriate show of psychic red and yellow flip-out sparks. "What?!"
"I saw the picture—it happened." Dramatic pause. "The one of Paula beating Jeff at tonsil hockey, that is."
Ness's vision was a barely-contained Rockin kaleidoscope, and lightning-fast, he grabbed Poo's neck.
Just as Poo was beginning to regret browsing social networking sites instead of training the previous day, Jeff and his bowtie came swaggering up Ness's front lawn. "Hi guys!"
Without sparing Jeff a glance, Ness replied, "Go away, I'm busy." Then came the double-take, and Ness's hands left Poo so abruptly the prince spun in place before stopping on a dime. Jeff made a sound like a stabbed rabbit and ran, Ness chasing after.
Meanwhile, Poo brushed dust off his white clothing as if his trachea hadn't just been in imminent danger of being crushed. "He wasn't hitting any pressure points at all. What an amateur." He watched the sideshow happening as the two other boys ran circles in the dirt road outside Ness's house.
"C'mon Jeff, tell me how my girlfriend's spit tastes!" Ness had his arms stretched out in front of him like a cartoon character as he ran.
Jeff's panicked yells were soon replaced by wheezing and panting as he got tired in—by Poo's count—five seconds. Ness slowed to an easy stop behind Jeff's stooped form; the jig was up. He'd worked out the desire to strangle something with that little jog, however, and started rummaging through his backpack instead.
"There's a good boy. This'll all be over in a sec, just as soon as I get my bat." He took off his backpack and swung it around in front of him to better rifle through its contents. "ATM card... Video relaxant... Suporma..." He flung clutter left and right. "Broken spray can? Thought I sold 'em all."
He tossed the broken spray can over his shoulder. It flew in a magnificent rusty arc, and clonked Poo on the head.
That's twice today, Poo thought, rubbing the sore spot. Ah well, into orbit it goes.
Facing south, Poo tossed the spray can straight up with one hand, and fired off a PSI Starstorm Omega with the other. The piece of junk zinged out of sight too quickly for it to make a sky-twinkle.
Minutes later, Ness was still looking for the Gutsy bat in his bottomless yellow knapsack. Jeff was trying to tinker together the Video relaxant and the Suporma. Poo was using Ness's ATM card to remove dirt from under his fingernails. And Paula was walking up the tree-lined road with a big cartoon band-aid on her forehead.
"Hello Paula," Poo said, flicking the ATM card into one of King's turd piles. "Isn't this your designated Yummy Pie Time?"
"It is." Paula thrust a hand forward, holding the thrice-dented spray can. "Is this yours?"
Poo's eyes flicked off to the side for an instant. "Well, what's mine is yours, and what's ours is Ness's. You know how it was back when we traveled together."
Paula compressed her lips into a thin line and cocked her spray can arm back.
Poo pointed to the two boys behind him. "They did it."
"Oh, okay." Paula dropped her arm and breezed past him.
By that point, Ness had upended his backpack and shaken out every last cookie crumb searching for his bat. His search was in vain, because King had dragged it under the porch that morning. In the meantime, Jeff was still fiddling with his Suporma and Video relaxant combination project, and had succeeded in rendering both permanently unusable.
Paula rattled the beat-up spray can like a junkyard school bell, and both boys' heads snapped up. "I'm giving you to the count of ten to tell me which one of you jokers threw this can through my dining room window and bounced it off my head. One..."
Poo vacated the premises at record speed. Ness and Jeff pointed at each other.
"Ten!" Paula hucked the can at them.
"Science-saves-the-day!" With skinny-armed reflexes, Jeff pulled the Gaia beam out of his blazer and shot the broken spray can.
"No you idi—" was all Ness got out before the spray can exploded.
"Well Ness, it looks like you got your head handed to you."
Ness reattached his head and said, "Oh, blow it."
He returned to the world of the living, leaving Jeff to watch his headless corpse run around, bonking into invisible barriers.