It was very nearly the end of the game – er, the end of the mystery, in any case. Frank Hardy was progressing toward a big and very obvious yellow box. He paused to look at it, because the box mattered much more than his life.

Oh wait, the box wasn't yellow: it was only the creepy lava light that was making the old wood look yellow. Frank casually walked over to look in the box. "Holy cow. Those things are covered with tiny beetles. Man, whatever's inside those canisters, those beetles are going for it. Big time…"

Once Frank had delivered his lines he cleared his throat hard. He still couldn't figure out why his voice was higher. His younger brother Joe had suggested that maybe Frank was slowly going backwards to puberty instead of forwards to adulthood. It was a scary thought, but judging by how much his appearance had changed…then again, judging by how much his appearance had changed, he might as well have been going toward gorilla-with-a-high-pitched-voice.

"Gross!" Frank suddenly yelped as he realized he was staring at a couple of boxes covered in beetles. He danced away, hoping none of them made it onto his feet.

"Hey, kid, what the hell are you doing here? Er, I mean, Frank, what are you doing here?"

Frank turned around and gave the mountain that had just arrived – uh, the man that had just arrived – a look that clearly said isn't it obvious? I'm trying to dance away from some beetles, dude! "Your daughter sent me. Didn't she tell you? Wow, you guys must have a bad relationship." Big Island Mike, the Blue Ridge Mountain, otherwise known as the guy in the blue flowery shirt, blushed and looked angry. Frank gulped and quickly added, "What is all this?"

By 'all this' he only meant the two boxes, but apparently, that was a lot of stuff. Mike obviously didn't understand this nuance. "It's a cave, you idiot, with lava at the bottom." Frank gestured wildly at his script. Mike glanced down at his own script and said, "Whoops, I mean, a huge, terrible mistake, that's what it is. I've made Paly – Pely – parlay – whatever the name is, I've mad it mad…"

"Dud? I mean, Dad? How did you get in here?" It was time for the blonde surfer-chick that somehow always managed to look a little off to make her entrance. She was randomly standing on a set of stone stairs to the side.

"I finally found a lava tube that bypasses the main tunnel," said Mike offhandedly as Pua – what an awful name! thought Frank – walked over to stand beside him.

"Pua?" asked Frank, trying his hardest to sound surprised. The silly girl had made a ruckus attempting to follow him without being heard. She really needed to brush up on her creepy stalker skills. "You followed me?"

"I had to find another way in here. So I let you figure out that chart and then, yes, I followed you."

"Eww, this feels like reality TV." Pua gave Frank a strange look. "What? On reality TV, everybody's getting recorded by cameras that they can't even see. Don't tell me that ain't like stalking."

Mike and Pua exchanged glances. Mike got them back on track. "It's over, Pua. I'm dumping those things right now."

"Dad, no! We're in too deep! We're at least seventy feet beneath the crust of the earth! We've got to go through with it now!"

"Wait a minute," said Frank, knowing how painfully much he sounded like a dunce, "you're in this – whatever it is – together?"

At this, Mike launched into a very long explanatory speech. Frank got bored about three sentences in and looked down at his hands. He had just finished counting his fingers for the tenth time when there was an earthquake. At first Frank didn't look away from his hands and simply figured that Big Mike was doing jumping jacks or something.

Then the rock below them started to shift in a very strange way. Frank looked down. It was a real earthquake, not a Big Island Mike's exercise-induced one! How…not horrifying at all. Judging by the movement of the rock below him, Frank rather thought it was all a major setup. Like, seriously? How the hell could rocks ever get to look like that!

Suddenly there came a voice from nowhere. "Frank! Are you all right?"

Frank jumped about a foot into the air. He almost dropped his script. He looked down at his script, trying to understand what the heck was going on. "Uh…hey, Nance. Wait – why am I calling you Nance? Isn't that restricted for Ned only?"

"Guess that's for the shippers."

"The what?"

"Umm…never mind."

"Okay. Anyway…uh, yeah, I guess I'm okay. Be kinda nice to get back on solid ground, though. Any ideas?" Frank frowned. Was he supposed to be so incompetent that he couldn't figure out how to freakin' jump? Wasn't he supposed to learn this in, like, pre-school?

Nancy's voice sounded very authoritative when she spoke. It was annoying. "Jump from rock to rock and head for the stairs in front of you, the ones behind Big Island Mike. But be careful. A rock that's there one minute may not be there the next."

Okay, looked like it really was a stupid setup. Frank rolled his eyes at the stupidity of the scriptwriter. And then the strangest thing occurred – Nancy was controlling Frank's movement!

"Holy shit," hollered Frank. "I know what Pinocchio felt like! Stop it, Nancy! I want to be a real boy!"

"Shut up, Frank!"

All in all, it took practically forever and a day to reach the escape stairs. Every time Mike jumped, a miniature earthquake shook all the rocks and sent Frank flying onto another rock. It took a lot of time before Frank finally hit the other side, at which point he found himself a "real boy" again.

"Oh, man!" cried Frank, sounding like an overly happy schoolboy. "I'm a real boy! I mean, uh, I've never been so glad to see solid ground in my life! Nice work, Nance. Again with the Ned thing…"

"Tell that to them," said Nancy randomly.

"Okay," said Frank readily. "Pua! Big Mountain Mike! Er, I meant, Big Island Mike! In my script it tells me to call Nancy Nance instead of her real name, but that's usually only restricted to her loyal boyfriend that she's never actually seen, Ned! They're like penpals or something!"

Pua glared at Frank, obviously telling him to shut up. "All the time we spent on this thing, wasted. I should've just gone surfing."

"And I should've just gone with you," said Mike.

And that, of course, was the end of that. Since Mike and Pua, like a certain Japanese person that Nancy caught once before, weren't seriously real criminals, it took too long for the police to figure out what to do with them.

Sigh. Criminals these days. They just have no real criminal minds in them.

A/N: And that is what I thought of that ending. I thought it was very strange. Wasn't really very thrilling or whatever the game-makres were aiming for. No flames if you loved this game, please. Kthxbye.

Disclaimer: Me no own. Thank God!