Usually whenever a Greeed possessed a human the desire of the victim started spiraling out of control instantly. But Mezuru's Yummies required a long incubation period, and so the extent of the damage she had caused by unleashing her latest batch of Yummies was not entirely known for a day or so.
So Sunday passed by without any incident. Ankh was on edge all day, however, as he could not tune out the sound of desire being accumulated because of his innate ability to detect his fellow brethren if they were in the surrounding area, and he became very irritable as a result. Due to Mezuru's clutch being invisible up until the moment they hatched, plotting to destroy them before they could cause physical damage was impossible, and he was not too happy about not being able to launch a preemptive attack at the aquarium.
On Monday, however, the news media finally managed to get out a story about the aquarium's recent acquisitions via the morning news. However, the breaking news came too early, as we girls were still asleep when it aired, and Ankh had to break into our room to reiterate the reporter's story. Unfortunately, since both Kristy and I were still in bed, we were only scantily clad under the blankets, so when he yelled at us to get up at once we naturally both shrieked in terror at the top of our lungs.
"Good god, Ankh, you didn't have to do that!" I cried out after seeing that he had thrown the blanket previously covering my bare legs off to the side, leaving me exposed for all to see. Kristy was still covered, because Ankh had no intentions of bothering her, but like me, she was only wearing a bra and a pair of underwear, so it was only natural for her to feel embarrassed in front of Daniel Piers, even if she was, or rather, had been, his girlfriend. "Does the word 'dignity' mean anything to you?"
"Meet me in the car in five minutes." Was the curt reply. "We're going to take down those Yummies."
"Oh man. Well, I have to start heading back to school in about an hour and a half, so we might as well hurry and beat the stuffing out of those Yummies as fast as we can. But geez, you didn't have to go for the 'breaking and entering' approach just to tell me that."
"Well, how else was I going to wake you up?" Ankh answered. "I tried knocking, but you girls were sleeping like logs, so you didn't hear me. Anyway, I tell you the details once we're en route to the aquarium. You had better hurry though. There's chaos over there at the moment, and what you're going to see there will not be pretty."
According to Ankh, the news reporter had just reported that the aquarium director had discovered that his financial officer had gone ahead and approved the purchase of more than twenty marine animals from various zoos and aquariums nationwide without his permission. Then someone butted in on screen to tell the reporter that people were running out of the aquarium, screaming for their lives. Some of them had been bitten and others had already died from the numerous wounds they had received. A cameraman live at the scene had then broadcasted a clip of some people screaming as newly hatched Eel Yummies with needle sharp teeth and claw-tipped fins wrapped their bodies around their victims' necks and started biting big chunks of flesh off. His live report was then cut short when one of the Eels slammed right into his camera, and another leaped onto him, judging by the loud shriek and a crash as the camera fell out of his hands and onto the concrete below.
"They're like those piranhas I saw in a nature documentary once." Ankh said, as he flicked on the turn signal and turned the steering wheel to the right. "These things will go crazy the moment they smell blood."
"Well, at least the Eel Yummies don't seem to be the electric kind." I pointed out, and took another voracious bite out of my energy bar. I had wanted to take a bagel into the car, but Ankh had threatened to leave us behind if we stopped even briefly to have a proper breakfast. "That means they'll be pretty vulnerable to Unagi."
"In this instance the Yummies will be best brought down with Gatakiriba, but we don't have the Combo anymore, so I guess we'll have to go with your plan." Ankh answered, and grumbled as his stomach protested his decision to skip breakfast. He then accepted Kristy's offer of half of a granola bar to keep his host from dying of hunger and let her shove the entire thing into his mouth so he could quickly return his attention to the road and use both hands to steer. "Just don't lose the Unagi Core though. It's, as you say, the trump card in this fight."
"Right. Now could you please speed up a tad? I thought we were in a hurry."
Hearing this the Greeed let out a irritated growl as he waved his hand at the car in front of us. "I'm trying, okay? I could pass that stupid old lady driving five miles below the speed limit, but in case you haven't noticed, this is a one lane road, and there are a lot of cars coming from the opposite direction at the moment, so I can't exactly pass this idiotic woman safely." But a few moments later the opposite lane was clear, and Ankh immediately turned on the turn signal so he could prepare to pass the white car we were currently tailgating, such was our haste to get to where we needed to go at the moment. However, just before he could change lanes the dashed and solid lines dividing our lane from the lane intended for cars coming from the opposite direction changed into two solid ones, signaling a transition from a passing to a no passing zone. "Damn! It looks like we're going to be stuck behind this old coot for the next two miles. Well, so much for your desire to save both time and people."
"Well, it's only two miles. How bad could things get?"
In retrospect, perhaps I shouldn't have said that. Things looked very bad when Ankh finally got us into the parking lot of the now mostly deserted aquarium. Those who could get away had left, and those who could not now littered the sidewalks, the lot, and even inside the building like trash thrown willy-nilly all over the place. The smell of blood was nauseating.
"Oh gods." Kristy could not help but say as we stepped over a man lying face down over some rocks that used to form the barrier around the turtle tank. "This is horrible."
"The Yummy's this way." Ankh announced, not at all fazed by what he was seeing around him. "Let's go."
"You can't help but feel sorry for those folks." I said while sidestepping a small puddle of blood on the tiled floor of the Children's Underwater Theater, which we were now entering. "I mean, they didn't deserve this."
"Yeah." Kristy agreed. "They came here to have fun, after all."
"Yes, they did." Another voice said, causing Ankh to whirl around and point an accusing finger at her.
"You! It was your desire that created this mess, was it not?"
"My desire?" The woman who stood at the entrance to the Children's Theater looked puzzled at first, but then she seemed to understand and broke down sobbing. "It's all my fault! I don't know…I don't know what came over me. I just had this feeling that…that it was going to be all right to make so many deals with other institutions all at once. I mean, I wanted this aquarium to be the best known attraction in New Jersey. Better than the ones in Camden and Massachusetts."
"Well, I understand that many people desire to become famous, but now the Yummies are on the loose, and we have to take them down before they spread out all over the town." I said. "Do you know where they might be?"
The woman continued to sob as I asked this, but eventually she managed to point a finger toward the theater doors. "Go back out and make your way to the generator downstairs. I saw them all come together to form one giant eel before going down there after they had gotten everyone here. I wonder why though."
"This is bad." Kristy was the first to put two and two together after hearing this. "If the Eel Yummies are after the generator, they could short it out and leave us in the dark. We can't attack what we can't see."
"The situation would be even worse if they somehow absorbed the electricity and turned themselves into Electric Eel Yummies." Ankh added, and I shot him a look of alarm when I heard this. "And if they can absorb electricity, then the Unagi Core would be useless, since the only weapons it equips you with as OOO is a pair of electric whips."
"That's not good." I said.
"That's really not good." Kristy agreed.
"Way to state the obvious, girls. Anyway, useless or not, we can't do anything about the generator now, because it's probably already there, and if it does short out the circuits in here we will be sitting ducks. Best to go outside so that we don't cause collateral damage to this building."
"Since when did you begin to care about collateral damage?" I asked, since up to that point I had been sure that Ankh wasn't too worried about the possible loss of human lives and property damages during my fights as OOO.
"Never mind that! Let's go. It would be bad if we were trapped in here if the automatic doors stopped working within the next couple of minutes."
"Ooh, never thought of that." I then turned back to the still sniffling woman and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Come, ma'am. Let's get you out of here before those nasty Eel Yummies come back."
With Mrs. White in tow, we carefully began retracing our steps back to the entrance. As Ankh had predicted, the power indeed went out just before we could go through the last door. Emergency lights then came on to help us see, but with the power to the doors cut, there was no way out anymore.
"We'll just have to punch our way through then, I suppose." I told Ankh. "Hand me the Medals for Sagohzou, will you?"
"I don't have them." Ankh replied while glaring at me.
"We're out of Medals?"
"Baka! We still have my Cores, remember? And two others. I'm sure you can at least recall this much."
"Oh right, we lost everything but Tatoba and Tajador to that cat dude...Kazari, I think you called him. Well, considering Tajador has the claws for feet mechanism, do you mind if I use that to kick us a way out?"
"We have no choice but to do so, I suppose. But there's no way I'm giving you all my Medals again like I did last time. You can have Condor, but that's it. Remember, these Medals are my personal Cores. So don't you go abusing them." With that, he pulled out the Medal case and handed me the Taka, Tora, and Condor Medals. "But since you need them, well, how to put this…Knock yourself out."
"Gee, thanks Ankh!" For some reason I was so happy after getting the Medals that I went right over to not only grab them but at the same time give him a quick hug and a kiss. "Never thought you would so freely part with your Medals."
"Well, as long as I get them back after you're done using them, I'm okay with you taking my Medals, I suppose." Ankh answered as he tried to wipe what could have been lipstick off his cheek. There was really nothing on his face, but he apparently didn't want to get what younger boys would have called 'cooties.' "And besides, we are in a predicament at the moment, so I have to part with them for a bit. Now hurry up and transform before we run out of air. I don't think the ventilation system is working properly thanks to the power outage." Indeed, the air seemed to be growing staler with every breath we took, and Mrs. White looked ready to faint. Even Kristy started coughing.
"Oh man. In that case we had better hurry." Without further ado I hurriedly jammed the Medals into their respective sockets in the OOO Driver and had them scanned with the Scanner so we could begin our escape.
A couple of well aimed kicks with the Condor talons on my legs later, we managed to get ourselves out of the aquarium, only to be greeted by, to Ankh at least, a familiar man wearing a baseball hat and a yellow checkered T-shirt. There was a hot dog in his hand, but instead of a sausage, there was a dead mouse between the two halves of a pre-cut bun. A dead, uncooked mouse. The fur was still on the thing, and it looked like it had just been killed.
"Mm." the young man smacked his lips as he prepared to stuff the hot dog into its mouth. "Looks delicious."
"What do you want?" Ankh was not happy to see his fellow Greeed, since Kazari had double-crossed him many times before, and he was sure the cat Greeed was up to no good again.
"Hmm? Well, well, well, Mezuru did say you three would be here. What a pleasant surprise! Did you miss me?"
Hearing this, Ankh scoffed at him before giving the other Greeed a look of disdain. "Of course not. So. I see you've made friends with Mezuru. Last I checked, none of you, save for that fool Gamel, got along well with each other. It's all very suspicious of you all to suddenly cooperate, if you ask me."
"Well, considering you're getting along so well with OOO, I figured it was time to change our ways too. After all, we can't exactly have you hogging all the glory, can we?" He then snapped his fingers, prompting the wall behind us to explode. Kristy then screamed in terror as the Eel Yummies—in the form of a giant eel—snapped at her and Mrs. White as they ran for cover behind a car (which was thankfully not our car), and I watched, horrified, as the monster bit down on that car, raised it up to the sky, and made ready to slam the vehicle back down on its victims.
"Ankh, I need Cheetah!"
"If I must repeat that we no longer have all the Medals we used to have, you're not going to get the privilege of transforming for a month!" Ankh yelled back.
"Sorry, so sorry! Then quick, hand me Kujaku! Or Unagi! Anything! Kristy's in danger!"
POW!
At that moment Kazari chose to strike Ankh in his Greeed form while he was distracted, but his opponent was faster and managed to hit him first, hard. A bright yellow Core Medal sailed into the air soon afterward, and Kazari turned to leap after it, but Ankh managed to detach himself from Daniel just long enough to fly up and get it before the other Greeed could retrieve his Core.
"Michelle, catch!" he called out, and let the Medal fly towards me. After getting it, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was the Core I had just asked him for. "Use it, quick! Oh, and take this!" Another Medal, this one blue, also flew into my hands at this time, prompting me to begin switching out the Tora and Condor Medals so I could replace them with the Unagi and Cheetah Cores.
"Taka, Unagi, Cheetah!" The Scanner now said once swiped over the Medals, and I immediately started racing toward my friend, who was screaming in terror as the Eel Yummy threw back its head and made ready to let fly the vehicle still grasped firmly in its jaws.
"Give it back!" Kazari was furious when he saw me put these Medals into the OOO Driver, but he couldn't do anything because Ankh was now slapping him from all directions in an attempt to dissuade him from focusing his attention on me and halting the transformation process. "Ouch! Stop that!"
"Heh, catch me if you can!" Ankh answered, and proceeded to deliver another couple of blows on the cat's head while cackling evilly.
We must now return our attention to the Eel Yummy about to turn my friend into a pancake with the car it was currently biting on. Thanks to the power of speed the Cheetah Core, I was able to make it over to Kristy just in time to get her out of the way before the car came hurtling down to earth, creating a wide and somewhat deep crater where both ladies would have been had I not got them out of harm's way.
The Eel Yummy, having discovered that its prey had escaped, immediately came after me instead. Hoping that it was vulnerable to electricity, I then pulled the Unagi whips out from their sockets on my arms and started whacking its head with them as it repeatedly tried to bite me. This strategy proved to be very effective, and I winced every once in a while when an occasional Cell Medal from the Yummy bounced off the bug-like eyes on my helmet as my whips broke its "skin."
Because I was only attacking its head and not the rest of its body, the Yummy did not go down as easily as I had hoped. But while I was engaged in battle with it Ankh somehow managed to retake a few Cores from Kazari and floated over with two very familiar Cores in his hand. A third Medal, the Batta Core, was halfway out of his palm, as if he wasn't sure whether or not to give it to me along with the other two Medals he had just literally pried out of his fellow Greeed's chest.
"Is…is that the Gatakiriba Combo Medals?"
"Of course! What else could they be? Stupid girl."
"Hey! Anyway, thanks for the Cores. Toss them here!"
"Not until I get paid for this delivery service."
"Ankh! This is no time to discuss payment! Can't you see I've got my hands tied here?"
"I can see that. But I just went through all that trouble with Kazari to get you these Cores. Do you want me to give them back instead?"
"Don't you dare! Okay, okay, all right! One ice pop. That's your reward. You can help yourself after you've dropped me back at the hotel I'm staying in this year."
"Stingy with the ice candy, aren't you?"
"Fine, two then! But fork over the advance payment before I get my butt kicked, or I won't be able to buy you more popsicles when you run out. A dead person can't go to the supermarket. And don't even think about begging Kristy for the ice pops. She's just likely to chew you out for eating unhealthy foods, being a health nut and all."
While not eager to part with the spoils of his latest scuffle with Kazari, Ankh realized that the Eel Yummy was indeed winning the battle at the moment and decided it was better to act first and discuss the details of his reward with me later. And while I wasn't too eager to use Gatakiriba due to my dislike of bugs, a Yummy as big as this one required an attack plan that involved coming at it from all sides, and this meant that the ability of the Combo to create clones of itself would be needed.
Transforming into Gatakiriba was the easy part. But soon after the belt finished singing the last refrain of its henshin song, I suddenly felt a splitting headache coming on, and for the first time experienced what a person with migraines might have felt as my consciousness virtually splintered into many fragments so I could have myself cloned a dozen or so times. No, make that two dozen. When I finally got the chance to look around, I could not only see how many stunt doubles I now had, but felt them too, like multiple extensions of my body. I had only to think about doing something, and the clones responded by either imitating me, or moving around according to my wishes.
But the Eel Yummy, like all monsters, was too impatient to get its hands, or rather jaws, on me, and I didn't have much time to organize my "army" before it slammed its head down in an attempt to bite down on one of the numerous clones still standing behind and around me. It had been disoriented at first by the appearance of so many enemies, but it was no longer confused now, so great was its lust to eliminate all obstacles.
"Finish it!" I heard Ankh say when my clones had finished rolling out of its way two or three times. "Don't just dodge the thing, kill it already! The parking lot's getting blown to bits. I'm going to go drive the car out of the way before you blow it up."
"Good thinking. You do that." I said, and unclipped the Scanner from my belt, prompting all my clones to copy my movements and pick up their Scanners too. A few moments later a very loud chorus of "Scanning Charge" was heard, and I used the power of the Batta Medal to leap up toward the Eel Yummy's head as it tried to attack a clone standing just below its head.
All the clones now leaped up into the air too, and I couldn't help but grin when I saw the aforementioned clone jump up as well to punch the Eel's lower jaw, causing it to snap its jaws shut in surprise so hard, two of its fangs fell out and disintegrated into Cell Medals as they fell towards the ground. "Ooh, right in the kisser! Sweet."
"Ouch." Said Kristy at this time, but I didn't hear her as all the Gatakiriba clones, including me, did a Rider Kick on the Eel Yummy from all sides, creating a big explosion that for a moment blinded her and caused her to avert her eyes from the bright flash of light that immediately followed the monster's demise.
Mrs. White was very grateful that we had saved her, but sighed sadly when she announced that the aquarium would have to be closed for renovations due to the monster attack. However, she promised to let the director know that it was we who had come to rescue her and take care of the situation, and even told us that she would never divulge our real names to the media if they should contact her about what had happened this morning.
"I'll just say the Power Rangers showed up to save the day." She said with a chuckle. When I groaned upon hearing that, she looked surprised. "Why, is this not a good excuse?"
"Well, you see, Michelle's been mistaken for a Power Ranger a lot lately, so I don't think she'll appreciate you using that excuse—" Kristy tried to explain, but was interrupted when her phone beeped, signaling the arrival of yet another text message. "Hang on, let me read this. Eiji again? How nice! I—NOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Kristy's smile now turned into one of pure horror and she almost dropped her phone when she got to the bottom of Eiji's latest text message. Out of concern, I asked if there was some crisis back in Japan, and if I should call him to ask if the guy was all right, but Kristy shook her head.
"Well, if you're sure, then I suppose I won't bother." I said. "But may I see what he wrote?"
"Okay, but you're not going to like it."
The phone was then handed to me, and I laughed when I saw what was on the screen. "What do we have here, a twitter-pated youth? My, my, things are certainly getting interesting!"
"Twitter-pated?" Ankh asked, since he was unfamiliar with the term, and I quickly explained that Eiji had reported how he had fallen in love with a girl who had shown up to eat at Cous Coussier the night before, and that he wanted to know if we had any dating advice to give him before he took her out on a tour of the city (as she was a foreigner just visiting the area and was unfamiliar with the place). "Ugh. I knew it was a bad idea to hang out with you folks. You people are too emotional for my liking." Then, after noticing Kristy had suddenly burst into tears, he let out an irritated growl before jerking his head in her direction. "Tell me this is just a temporary thing."
"I think Kristy's jealous because she's always believed up to now that Eiji loved her because he said she was cute." I said. "Considering how girls can become very possessive over guys they like, I think we're going to be stuck with a heartbroken, resentful soul for a long, long time. She might never forgive Eiji for this."
"So it's possible that the two of us won't be getting a good night's sleep for a while. That's just great." Ankh replied sarcastically.
Knowing how Kristy tended to cry all night when severely distressed, as she was now, and had to endure about four days without a good night's rest once when she broke up with her first boyfriend, I could only nod and give the Greeed a grim look. "Looks like it. Speaking of staying up all night, you're gonna need a lot of caffeine. Oh, and I mention at least 3 or 4 tissue boxes? That girl could literally cry you a river."
"Oh joy."