For some strange, inane reason, Dom had recalled the team. And that was completely fine with Arthur, he supposed, if not for the fact that the mark – some teenage girl – was as nutty as a Squirrel before hibernating season.
"Remind me why we're doing this again?" Eames raised a languid hand, and so glad was Arthur that he was not the only doubtful one on this team that he could have run to him and kissed him.
The operative word was 'could have'. As it was, he was half out of his seat and heading in an unmistakable direction when he was caught by the various giggling of his other teammates, who were at least polite enough to keep it down. Eames was looking quite amused. "You wanted something, Arthur?"
"I agree with Eames," Arthur said instead, waving his hand in the Brit's general direction as a poor disguise. "Why are we doing this again?"
"Because it's good money," Dom growled, his face looking as constipated as ever, "and because it's good fun. We're not even going in to extract or incept anything. We're just going in there to convince her not to stare at her computer screen so much."
"When's the kick?" Ariadne asked, upon which Arthur removed his chair from the general vicinity of Eames's legs. He knew what was going to happen.
"The boss thinks that five hours inside her brain should be enough." Dom glanced around at his team grimly. Grimly was probably the right word to use, because as of this moment he was staring at a team which had Arthur running away from Eames, Yusuf falling asleep no doubt having accidentally taken his sedative, Saito stoning (that man was perpetually on drugs) and Ariadne pretty much asking herself why she had joined such a team.
Dom sighed and stuck the needle into his arm. This was going to be a long trip.
The First Person Arthur Meets In…Somewhere
The first thing that Arthur noticed was that there was a very annoying high pitched whine in the air. His first guess was Justin Bieber, but even the Biebster could not possibly achieve this sort of sound.
The second thing he noticed was –
"Is that a catat the end of a rainbow?"
Even as the team watched the giant cat emblazoned the sky with the familiar colors of the rainbow, and even as it emblazoned mini rainbows were coming out from mini cats. And all of them were saying the exact same thing:
"NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN NYAN"
"WHAT IS THIS HORROR?" Arthur screamed, jumping into the lap of the guy next to him, regretting this move a moment later, and hoping that it wasn't Eames, though of course it was. Saito took out his damned camera again. He would really have to smash the thing one day.
"Welcome," Dom said even more grimly, "to the world of teenagers."
The Second Person Arthur Meets In…Somewhere
They moved out cautiously in pairs and a bunch of threes; of course Dom would have enough sense to pair him with Ariadne. Or Saito. You know?
"Howdy, Partner. Let's get crackin'."
Apparently Dom didn't have as much sense as he thought. Eames whistled 'It's a Long Way to Tipperary' happily and Arthur shoved his hands into his pockets and grumbled all the way and fantasized about the various ways he could tape a man's mouth shut.
They trampled on the path they had been assigned for all of ten minutes, watching the cats race across the sky with determination and plenty of nyan-ing. And then it hit Arthur –
Literally. Suddenly Eames's fist was in his face and Arthur groaned. "Will you stop punching me? I swear, I was notthe one who told everybody that you use baby soap – "
"Shhhh."
"And that's your way of shutting me up? Punching me?"
"I said shut it! Can't you hear that voice? Someone's talking."
They slipped closer to the grassy knoll, making sure that their peeping would not be caught by the talking person. For it was a person – a man – talking to himself feverishly. Arthur's mouth dropped open.
"Is that – "
"I'm afraid it is," Eames said grimly. Grim was becoming a very popular word in here.
For it was Keanu Reeves, complete with absolutely shaggy hair from Bill and Ted, with a permanently WTF expression on his face. "What if the CIA invented dinosaurs to discourage time travel?" he was saying. "What if the blue I see isn't the same blue you see? What if life is a dream and death is when you wake up?"
"Talk about your conspiracy theorists," Arthur mumbled under his breath, as Keanu went through another period of 'what if air is actually poisonous and it takes eighty years to kill us'.
"What if Arthur is an idiot but he's just too dense to see it?" Eames snickered.
"What if Arthur goes and tells the rest about the songs on Eames's playlist?"
Eames shut up pretty quickly after that.
The Third Person (Well really, People) Arthur Meets In…Somewhere
They had left Keanu and walked around the place for some time when Eames suddenly stumbled. Arthur was by his side in an instant…well, not really. Arthur took his time in strolling over to where Eames was lying on the ground moaning.
"Oh, dear. Are you in pain, Eames?"
"It feels like I took an arrow in the knee," Eames groaned. "I don't know what happened."
But never fear; for Arthur's sharp eyes spotted something a distance away that looked suspiciously like a KFC joint. "That's all right, we'll just have fried chicken. I know how you love fried chicken."
"I do not."
"Your paunch says you do."
Half stumbling, half falling, the two of them made it all the way to the shop. There were already inhabitants. All of them had strange white faces, and all of them were engaged in serious discussion.
The first one, whose rounded face looked even more constipated than Dom's, was poking a second guy. "I POKED YOU," he was saying, and Arthur could almost feel the capital letters. "Y U NO POKE BACK?"
The second guy had a brain the size of a walnut and a chin the size of Massachusetts. "Because I'm Forever A Scone," he wailed, tears streaming down his cheeks.
"Don't you mean 'forever alone'?" Arthur said despite himself, and Eames punched him again.
The third guy looked up from his fried chicken then, opened his eyes wide and for some reason completely unknown to the universe yelled "FFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU – "
And the fourth guy was staring out of the window at – was that a unicorn prancing around with the word 'CORNIFIED' emblazoned across it? – going, again and again, "ME GUSTA".
"I'm feeling much better now, no need for fried chicken," Eames mumbled, and ran out of the KFC as fast as a man can run with arrows in his knees.
The Fourth Person Arthur Meets In…Somewhere
It was back to the long and winding road; and back to the endless bickering that had come to define Arthur's relationship with the singularly most annoying man on the planet.
"Hey, Arthur, check this out – it's the Liverpool way of shuffling cards!"
"There's no such thing Eames, now put that away. Every day you're shuffling."
"Well, well. Haters going to hate."
"What do you mean 'going to'? I already hate you."
"So sue me."
"I would, but pursuant to Section 49, Sub-Section 7E, Paragraph A of the – "
"Artie, what happened to your voice? You sound like you swallowed a fish bone."
"Well, funny that you mentioned it. When I was nine years old, see – "
Punch.
"Owwww! Why can't you say shut up like a normal person?"
"Because punching you is far too fun. Now stop talking and look."
Arthur looked, and his jaw dropped for the second time that day. Wasn't that –
"It's the boss, all right."
Dom, but his face was frozen in the eternal guise of being happy. Arthur had never seen his boss smile like such an idiot before. Come to think of it, Arthur had never seen his boss smile. He was always, well, like a boss.
But this Dom was smiling. Widely. And his arms were splayed out, almost as if he was…
"Strutting?"
"This place gets weirder and weirder." Eames pulled Arthur away from strutting Dom. "C'mon, let's go check out that noise."
The Fifth Person Arthur Meets in…Somewhere
It was a low, droning noise.
Eames was still dragging Arthur when they burst into the clearing, only to find the rest of the team standing there. "Dom!" Arthur shouted with relief that his boss was back to 'perpetually-angry-face'.
"Thank God you're not strutting."
"I do not strut," Dom began, but then the droning noise got louder. It was coming from behind a copse of trees. Arthur pulled out his gun and headed into the bush, only to find someone sitting at a computer.
"This must be the girl," he muttered to the rest. "Someone convince her to get out of her computerized world."
But even as Dom moved forward he stepped on a twig, and that strange white head (Gasp! Went Arthur, The KFC Clan!) turned around to reveal a leering smile on his face.
"YOU HAVE BEEN TROLLED," the face declared, pulled out a plunger, and shot them all in the face. The last thing Arthur remembered was the constant droning noise getting louder and louder as he faded out of consciousness:
…
The First, Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Lessons
They woke up at exactly the same time. Arthur heard someone screaming "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT" and was considerably amused at the lack of self control this person displayed. It was only after about half a minute he realized that the person screaming was himself.
"Well, I guess that was one wasted trip," Dom said, shaking his head. "I'm not planning on going there again."
They picked up their bags and stared, once more, at the girl with the computer, still endlessly stuck at some page called 'tumblr'.
"What was her name again?" Arthur asked Dom as a note of randomness as the gang filed out of the doorway.
Dom shrugged. "It was a kind of a funny name…Mim, I think."