2D first realized he'd been on Plastic Beach far too long when he found himself discussing the elemental structure of bananas with a pelican.
"So dey're a good source o' potassium, roight? But potassium's a metal. Metals are awl 'ard an' clunky loik, so 'ow comes ye dun't feel crunchy bits when ye eat a banana? An' 'ow's a banana juss suck bloody metal roight outta da ground? Loik… loik some sorta tasty yellow magnet?"
The pelican shook his head slowly, digesting the blue-haired singer's words. "It seems the magnetic powers of the banana will forever remain a mystery."
It wasn't necessarily the fact that he was talking to a pelican that perturbed 2D, it was that talking to said pelican seemed perfectly normal at this point. Not only that, but the pelican seemed to understand him better than just about any human he had ever talked to.
"So back t' mah main point, yes we need certain metals in our diets. But Ah dun't fink issa good idea fer ye t' be eatin' metal fings ye juss foind on da ground. Else dey woulda told us t' eat da can our veggies came in. Juss seems t' be too much, ye know?"
With that, the pelican let out a gagging cough before launching a garden trowel, a set of keys, and part of a seatbelt buckle out of his mouth and into the air.
"Oh dear, pardon me! How embarrassing," he blurted between coughing fits.
2D shuddered at the slime-covered metallic morsels, but one of the objects caught his eye. Dangling from the set of keys was a familiar keychain in the shape of a tiny disco ball. "Oi, where'd ye foind dose keys?" he asked as he gingerly picked up the gooey mess.
"Oh, found those lying on a table on the deck, I did. I thought the shiny ball might have been some sort of fruit, but it was too hard to chew," the pelican drawled with his nasally accent.
The bluenette flipped through the ring of keys, too excited to mind the mucus now covering his fingers. "Ye moind if Ah take dese?" he questioned.
"Oh yes, I have no need for them. Seems my stomach can't handle them anyway." The pelican suddenly found himself wrapped in an odd attempt at a human/avian bro hug. "Congratulations, blud. Yew are officialy me best mate." 2D patted him on his back as the baffled bird tried to reciprocate by flapping his wings awkwardly. Satisfied with his unorthodox expression of gratitude, the lanky singer pocketed the keys and nearly skipped back into his Tracy Island home.
2D had recognized the gaudy keychain as the one previously dangling from Murdoc's belt loop. As of late, it had gone missing, and was replaced by a spare set, sans Saturday night fever. Scurrying off to the bathroom, he rinsed as much of the pelican's saliva as he could from the keys and examined them. There were at least a dozen of them hanging from the little disco ball, and he was sure one of them would open his bedroom door. 2D was allowed out of his room occasionally to roam the island, get some food, and be used as target practice by the Cyborg, but for most of the day he was confined to the basement, guarded by the massive whale outside his porthole.
That whale…
That whale was going to be an issue when it came time to use those keys. Even if he could open the door, the whale would alert Murdoc, who would send the Cyborg to pummel him into a lovely blue mush once again. No, this plan was going to require some extra thought, a department 2D was not necessarily keen in. However, he was startled out of his cloudy thoughts by a sudden pounding on the door.
"OI DULLARD! Quit wankin' off in there, Ah gotta go!"
"Err, 'old up a tic! Ah'm pissin'!" 2D hastily opened the door and was instantly slammed against the wall by a gnarled green hand.
"Bullshit yer pissin'," Murdoc belched into his face, so drunk that even his breath had to be at least 50-proof. "Ah di'int 'ear ye flush. Wot're ye up to in there, dipshit?"
2D winced under Murdoc's dichromatic glare, not daring to look him in the eye. The Beelzebub-worshiping bassist got very ugly, both figuratively and literally, when he had too much to drink. "Foine, ye got me. Ah really wos wankin' off." 2D wiggled his fingers in front of Murdoc's scowling face. "An' Ah di'int wash me 'ands either!" This earned the bluenette a rocketing left hook to the jaw, leaving him dazed and spitting blood on the floor. However, the remark served its purpose in distracting Murdoc from his previous suspicion.
"Touch me again ye li'l faggot an' Ah'll rip out yer OTHER kidney." The drunken green bassist spat as he slammed the bathroom door. 2D wiped the blood from his lips as he shakily lifted himself off the ground, trudging back to his room. He had a feeling he didn't want to run into Murdoc for the rest of the day, and found it best to retire to the basement to clean his quickly bruising jaw and begin formulating his new escape plan.
The cetaphobic singer immediately closed his curtains, popped in his newly rented copy of Left 4 Head, and put his damaged brain to work. Grabbing a crayon and a sheet of paper, he started laying out the blueprints for his great escape. The first step to the plan would be to distract the whale long enough to unlock the door and get outside. Even though his curtains were usually closed, the whale had some sort of 6th sense telling if 2D was actually in his room. Perhaps it had something to do with echolocation. 2D figured the damn evil thing just had x-ray vision.
Next, he'd have to make sure he didn't run into Murdoc or the Cyborg on his way out. Even after living on Plastic Beach for several months, the dripping cavernous corridors still seemed like something Jareth had concocted a la Labyrinth, and took quite a while to navigate in the dark. Thankfully, Murdoc was usually sozzled into oblivion on the couch by the end of the night, and the Cyborg was recharging in her closet. As long as he was quiet and didn't trip any of the alarms, he should be fine.
The last problem would be getting off the island itself. There were several boats anchored on the shores of Plastic Beach, but 2D had learned the hard way (several times) that they could easily be shot down by Murdoc in his hang glider. Even the banana-mobile wasn't fast enough to outrun the wicked green demon raining death from above. There was only one thing on the island swifter than the banana-mobile, and that was the shark sub. Not only was it quicker, but it was nearly impossible for Murdoc to shoot it underwater. 2D had reservations about driving the shark sub, but he had studied Murdoc's piloting skills and was pretty sure he knew what to do at this point. Checking the ring of keys he had hidden in his back pocket, he noticed one of them was topped with a rubbery shark's head. If that key didn't belong to the shark sub, he didn't want to know what it belonged to. Scribbling down the last bits of his plan furiously, he held out the paper to revel in his handiwork. His "handiwork" turned out to be a doodle of himself firing missiles at the whale with the shark sub while Murdoc crashed his hang glider into a palm tree, but he was proud of it nevertheless. Changing into his pajamas, 2D decided to get to bed early in order to have a full night's rest. Tomorrow was going to be long, and he wanted to enjoy his last day on Plastic Beach.
