NOTE: Christian content.
Chapter 9: It's THEM!
Brock waved to Paildramon as he came in. "Hey!"
"Whasssaaap?"
"We moved!" Brock yelled. "There was a fight here earlier today, and we moved the boxcar!"
"Where did they go?"
Brock climbed onto Paildramon's back. "I think they went that way," Brock answered. It wasn't long before they had reunited with the others.
"Where were you while we were fighting those gorillouts?" June angrily asked Davis, hands on hips.
"We were stashing the meat and the fruit, like you wanted us to!" Davis answered.
"That wasn't my idea! I am very disappointed in you, little brother!" June grumbled. She pressed a button on her mini-umbrella, and the umbrella shot forward on its shaft and hit Davis in the nose. Then it opened and knocked Davis to the floor.
"Hey!" Davis yelled. "This was Tina's idea, not mine!"
"Oh." June walked up to Tina and gave her a nuggie. "Smart thinking, putting those boxcars where they'll be naturally refrigerated!"
"Thanks. It was one of my better ideas."
"June, will you shut that umbrella already??! You know that opening an umbrella indoors is bad luck!"
Tina rolled her eyes. "Davis, there's no such thing as luck!"
"Then why are you leaving the room?"
"Because there's a different room calling my name!"
June hoisted the umbrella onto her shoulder and began walking like a supermodel on a stage ramp, as if to say, "Look at me, Davis! I'm tempting fate!"
Davis ran out of the room screaming.
June shook her head and couldn't help but smile in amusement. Little did she know that there had been a cockroach, Mrs. Pippycrawler, gnawing away at the wax in the emergency sprinkler above her. There was only a little bit of wax left, and June was just beneath the sprinkler. A single drop fell on her umbrella.
Hearing the noise, she asked, "What on earth was that?" She shut her umbrella with another push of the button, and looked up.
Mrs. Pippycrawler saw that June was looking, and she kicked the last little bit of wax out from the sprinkler. A scream rose up from that building, and Mrs. Pippycrawler whistled with delight as she rode around and around on the rotating sprinkler…
******
"Huh?" Misty felt something pattering against her rain jacket. She looked, and there were little grains of something falling from under the manhole. "What is that? Scizor, stop cutting a minute." She caught a small handful of the stuff and looked. "Tracy, what do you think this stuff is?"
Tracy looked at it and tasted some. "Tastes like…wheat!"
"Wheat?! …But…how on earth would wheat get up there?"
"I don't know. Scizor, keep cutting, but cut carefully. Maybe there's a bag of grain at the top that somebody somehow left."
"Or maybe Cody's prayers are answered!" Misty thought aloud. "You know how much he's been praying?"
"No. I haven't been paying that much attention to things around here; I'm more concerned with those catalogues that Cleaver and I made. If only we could get them back, I could---"
Tracy was interrupted as he heard a low cracking noise. "Uh-oh," he thought aloud. "I think we'd better---"
WHOOSH! An avalanche of wheat fell from the hole, and Scizor, Misty, and Tracy held on for a minute before they were sucked into the stream of falling grain. They landed more softly than one would think at the bottom, as a pile of grain broke their falls.
Seeing the pile of wheat fall out of the shaft, Cody's mouth dropped open. "What…is this?"
Misty's head stuck up from the pile. "Wheat," she groaned.
"Wheat…???!!!" Cody's mouth dropped open, and then he fell on his knees. "Thank you God!"(1) he shouted, motioning for T.K. to get a fire started to start cooking. "But…how exactly did this happen?"
"Beats me," Tracy answered. "…In a literal sense!" he added, shaking wheat out of his clothes.
"Let us have a feast!" Cody shouted.
******
"Say, Ken, did you hear something?"
"No…why?"
"I thought I heard something out there."
"In the boxcar? You mean somebody might've stolen our food?" Ken gave the idea some thought. "We have a lot in there. If it's only one person who's stealing from us, they can't steal all that much. Besides, it's for people who need it that we brought the grain."
"…If you say so." Davis yawned. "I don't know about you, but I could use some serious shuteye." He balled his jacket into a pillow, lay down on it, and slept.
"Dad!" Tina shouted.
"Honey, you'll wake up Davis!"
"And that's a bad thing?" Tina asked. The look on her dad's face told her it was. "Sorry… But Youngdramon is recovering from that hit she took, and Veemon and Wormmon could use some grub, too…should I go get some grain so we can make bread?"
"Go for it."
Tina passed June on the way out. "Hey, thanks for making sure the water's still running!" Tina jested as she passed the still dripping wet June. June flicked water in Tina's face.
Tina climbed up to the top of the boxcar and opened the top…and there was less than half of the grain that had been in there before. Tina was shocked. Then, it occurred to her: her dad was a detective, and she had his genes in her blood. "Oh, Joey?" she asked. Joey's head popped out of Tina's pocket, and he let out an inquisitive squeak. "How're you doing?"
"Joey okay. Joey should ask Tina that."
"How come?"
"Tina fight with Rika last night. Tina win?"
"God win fight for Tina."
"'God' no is word Joey know."
"Huh…! I don't know how to say it… God made everything."
"He make everything…? He make cities, houses, stuff?"
"He make stuff that people use to make stuff."
"Oh! Tina means Hukegriitato."
"What's…Hukegriitato?"
"There three of them. They make everything. No is He. Is They." (2)
"…I see. But…!!!"
"What is Tina surprised about?"
"If you come from outer space, and you believe in God too, then…He must exist!"
"Duh!" Joey spat. (His race took it as fact that there was a Trinity God, and they always had.)
"…But do you have your…uh, non otawawo?"
"Joey have. Why?"
"Might need shoot." Tina jumped into the boxcar and waded into the middle, where there was a hole. "Oh, this again! I've seen the ol' pull-the-plug-on-the-bathtub trick before!" She climbed down the manhole, and she began hearing noises of…what sounded like a party. Partying off our food?! Tina thought to herself. Of all the nerve!
She reached the bottom, turned around, and saw forty of the refugees that they had kept in the nuke plant before. …And one of them was her friend, Natasha! Tina whispered to Joey, "Go back to bed. No need shoot, after all."
"Okay." Joey curled up in her pocket again.
Tina quietly crept up behind Natasha and covered her eyes. "Guess who?"
Natasha's jaw dropped open. "Tina?!"
"I'm BACK!!!" she shouted. The two were hugging the second after, and Joey would've been squished if his muscle structure hadn't been so dense.
"Where were you?"
"We just did the trade as planned, and then we got back, and the nuke plant was gone! So we found another one, and it was full of radiation, so we went to what we thought was just inside the 500 meter radius, but it must not have been because we got attacked by more menace machines, and then we moved here."
"Ooo! It's so great to see you back and alive!"
"You too! I was scared out of my wits when I saw you all gone. I was afraid you were dead!"
"We've had some close calls, but I'm still kickin'!" Natasha answered with a wink.
Tina giggled. "Wait until I tell the others! I'll be topside; don't go anywhere!" she said, climbing back up the top. As she entered the building, she shouted, "Doofus! Doofus! Great news! I found them!"
"Who?" Davis groaned, just waking up.
"Them!"
"Who, them?" Davis asked.
"Them, them! THEM!"
"Is any one of those 'them'-s the same 'them' that kills your dad all the time?"
"…Huh?"
"Never mind. (3) Could you give me the names of some of the people in the 'them' you found?"
"Oh, Cody, Natasha, T.K., Misty---"
"Them?!" Davis asked.
"THEM!"
They raced to tell Ken and the others.
"What's the excitement?" Ken asked.
"Great news! It's them!" Davis answered.
"Who?"
"Them! …Cody, T.K., and some others are…where are they, Tina?"
"Underground. They dug a hole beneath our boxcar and stole the grain, but that's okay because they had all these refugees down there who were starving, and---"
"Them?" Ken asked.
"Let's not start that up again!" Davis spat.
(1) "…And that, Prof. Plantinga, coupled with my assertion of the nature of humor, is my proof that there is a personal God: from this lemma, we conclude that God has a sense of humor, and that, therefore, He must be person, not force. You may critique this assertion at your leisure."
(2) This was not inserted to offend the Unitarians. If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't ask…
This is one of the harder-to-understand parts of most Christian doctrines. A lot of types of church believe that God is three in one. I might have missed the mark with this understanding, but the way I understand it is this: three equal, personal Entities share their Godhood. Since there is a single Godhood, we say there is one God. It's kind of like the Hindus with Brahman and the three gods who share in that…a spooky coincidence, huh?
(3) This joke is a bit obscure. It's about South Park.