PART XVIII: …AND WORLD THREE HAS ENDED TOO

NETTO'S HOME, THE END OF SCHOOL LUNCH HOUR…

"Netto-kun…" Rockman murmured anxiously as he waited for hours for Netto to escape the security of his bedsheets. "Come on now. I'm sure everyone's forgotten about this by now."

Unfortunately, at that moment, Rockman's eyes wandered to the window…and transfixed themselves on a tremendous blimp with an advertisement spread across its balloon. Imprinted on it was the very picture Netto had feared the entire day: unloading in the bathtub, complete with his father's comments about having such difficulty cleaning it up. People were gazing at it, looking at the Hikari household, and laughing. And written below was an ominous advertisement:

"SNUGGLES PATENTED WATERPROOF, BATHROOM-BREAK-PROOF BABY DIAPERS. WEAR THEM HERE, THERE, OR ANYWHERE. BECAUSE LORD KNOWS WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF YOU DON'T. This ad sponsored by Adver Man and Happy the Metool."

"Er…Netto…you may want to hang around in bed a little longer."

"Mmmmrrrffmmmrf armmffff!" cried Netto, his voice muffled by his pillow.

"Netto…get out of bed for a second."

"Waaahhhh! Abba adda abbabaaa dabba!" cried Netto, his voice barely audible through his intense sobs.

"Netto…stop crying."

At that moment, a brilliant white flash signaled the arrival of Slur, who stared quizzically at Netto sobbing, then back at Rockman. Then she did her ordinary response to situations incapable of comprehension by tilting her head to her right.

"I have come to deliver…umm…what exactly are you two doing?"

"Shhh!" Rockman hissed. "What are you trying to deliver?"

"A JPEG picture file I suddenly received. I have not yet seen it, but it may be the missing link we need to defeat Happy…but why do you have to keep this a secret from your operator?"

Rockman giggled slightly as he whispered to Slur to open the file. As she did, she took a moment to stare at it in a deadpan manner.

"………"

"So? What do you think?" Rockman asked anxiously.

"Indeed…this is the work of Happy the Metool," Slur replied in her standard deadpan tone. "But we have absolutely no clues as to where he is hiding from looking at this picture alone. All I see is your operator in his younger days, making a mistake that ordinary children will."

"How do you know younger children do this?"

"I see it all the time when I grant evil to people who wish they had the power to stop changing their babies' diapers. So many that I could write a book about it. Getting back to the point, I will take this picture and decipher what clues I can from it. In the meantime, you two should start looking wherever you can. Happy is bound to turn up somewhere."

"Fine…what a boring woman. Netto…I'm plugging out of the home network. I'll plug back into the PET and put myself to Sleep Mode."

"ABBABBAAAABADABADAADAAA!" Netto sobbed hysterically at the top of his lungs. With that, Netto buried himself back into the security of his sheets, and Rockman disappeared from Netto's house network. Slur, however, continued to remain.

She looked to her left and right.

She looked behind and in front of her.

Finally, she looked above and below her.

And when she was sure no one was looking, she opened the JPEG file and laughed harder than she ever had in her life.

NEO WORLD THREE HEADQUARTERS, MAGNETS INC…

It was another boring day in the realm of evil. Sunayama was pondering his filming of a new documentary, mostly thinking about the cash he could milk out of it. Rei was looking in a vanity mirror, admiring how cool he looked while Flashman helped power the lights so he could apply his eye makeup at just the right shade. Takeo was teaching Monosuke to jump through fire rings, which would have been productive if that lion didn't get burned every time. Narcy Hide was busy helping Sunayama, mainly by suggesting that his documentary be an in-depth coverage film of the lives of little pink bunnies in Japan.

And finally, there was Tesla Magnets. Disgruntled and bored at her complete lack of a romantic companion, she sat deeply perturbed at the breakfast table, wearing a "I Love New York" T-shirt with a bowl of now hardened oatmeal staring up at her. Her father, Gauss Magnets, ate his oatmeal like an absolute pig. Of course, Tesla didn't care.

"No, nonono-ohohoho!" cried Narcy as Sunayama attempted to film a pink stuffed bunny. Making a ballerina-style pose, he continued, "You must film a real pink bunny! I will settle for nothing less than authenticity! I must realize…(twinkle twinkle)…my creative vision!"

"Zzzzzzzz…" Sunayama snored, obviously too busy having delirious dreams about his future Oscar-winning pink bunny cash cow.

"WILL YOU TWO SHUT UP!" shouted Takeo. "CAN'T YOU SEE YOUR CONSTANT FIGHTING IS TEARING US ALL APPAAAARRRRT!"

Everyone who heard him, which was pretty much everyone, turned to Takeo, then looked down sheepishly. All except Rei, who turned to Takeo and said, "I remember that episode. Your favorite soap…episode seven, where Brad finally breaks up with Susan?"

"Ohohoho! How did you know?" Takeo replied joyfully with a wave of his wrist.

"You know…" Tesla Magnets murmured, "just once I would like to meet a nice man…one who really cares about me."

"Ahahaha!" Gauss replied while doing that Magnets Family standard stupid laugh, what with the index finger next to his mouth and the high-pitched voice and whatnot. "Why would you need to hunt for a suitor…when the answer's right in front of you? Just look at these men…they would die to be your husband."

Tesla looked at Sunayama dreaming about his pink bunny documentary, which would have been perfectly attractive if he wasn't snoring and drooling. She looked at Takeo patting Monosuke and picking his own nose as though digging for lost gold. She completely passed over Narcy Hide. Finally, she decided Rei was much too self-important to even care about her.

"Don't you understand? I want a NICE boy! Someone who comes to me for a change. And about what you said earlier…maybe it WOULD be better if they died. That way, at least none of them would be my husband."

"Don't you say such things about the Neo World Three!" Gauss cried, reciting what was in retrospect a rather hypocritical statement. "It is up to you to uphold the honor of the Magnets Family! You, the one and only…"

"…TESLA MAGNETS!" squealed a high-pitched voice that could only belong to an Adver Metool.

"It's HIM!" Gauss shouted.

"Happy the Adver Metool!" Tesla cried, making that pose like in the painting Scream.

"…Talking in her sleep!" Happy continued. With that said, he opened a recorded MP3 file of Tesla sleep-talking, and sat down cutely to listen to it.

"Tesla…you had better not spill any of my company's secrets…" Gauss muttered between clenched teeth.

"What harmful things could I possibly think, speak, or dream of in my sleep?" Tesla shrugged. Unfortunately, Happy's recording would prove that the only moments that matter were the controversial ones.

"Oh, Net Savior Meijin Eguchi!" cried Tesla's recorded voice. "I love everything about you…the curves of your body…your hip yet awkward attitude…the shiny gleams of your sunglasses…and most of all, I love the POWER you have as a Net Savior! But most of all…"

Tesla shuddered as she waited in nervous anticipation for what she knew would be said next:

"…I love YOU!"

By this point, every member of the Neo World Three, as well as the top shareholders in Magnets Inc., were listening in as the recording continued. Adding to the chaos was that every television monitor and PET in the world was displaying and playing her recording at full blast, much in the way Netto's photo was distributed. The sounds of Tesla Magnets ruffling around wildly in bed could be heard as her recorded self cried out, getting angrier by the second:

"But that (blank) Manabe! That (blank) will ruin everything…and that bloated baldie (blanking) Commander Kifune…who ate WAY too much sushi, hehe, he's so FAT! Why must they get in our way, darling Meijin? Kiss me now! Kiss me deeply! San wa iranai! San wa iranai! SAN WA IRANAI, YOU (BLANK)!"

Everyone looked back at Tesla, who by now was sobbing uncontrollably with her face buried in her oatmeal, making a nasty mess on her makeup, but at least hiding her facial beauty mole. Gauss simply shook his head and grinned, wondering how he would arrange the marriage, until suddenly Tesla's recording blurted out his company's secret:

"And one more thing! The great trade secret of the Magnets Corporation is…"

"No! Please golly cheese whiz, NO!" cried Gauss dramatically as he dropped to the floor.

"Our secret is…TO BUILD GOOD MAGNETS!"

"NNNNOOOOOOOOOO!" cried Gauss as he joined Tesla in sobbing. And once again, the tragedy did not end there.

DENSAN CITY CENTRAL MEDIA CENTER…

"And so," Kero asked Wall Street's top analyst, "now that Gauss' daughter has given away her trade secret, what do you think of this recent development and its effects on the stock market?"

The analyst scratched his chin like a cocky genius before responding, "Indeed, it is a troubling effect. Stocks will crumble for Magnets Corporation, but the abundance of magnets that are actually GOOD for lower prices due to competition will raise the Dow Jones Industrial Average and NASDAQ up by three thousand percent…Kero, are you listening?"

"Zzzzz…wha-wha-WHA?" Kero replied, bringing herself back among the living, "Oh yes. And do you have any other additional comments?"

"Indeed. From everyone here at Wall Street: Best of luck, Tesla and Meijin."

NET SAVIOR CONTROL CENTER…

Meijin locked himself away in the men's bathroom, and for the next several hours, he set up a barricade of wooden planks in his stall and refused to come out. Not even for brownies. Kifune and Manabe were already on their way to Magnets Corporation to give Tesla a serious whooping, flaming trails and popped anime-style veins in their wake.

AND DEEP IN SPACE…

"Slur? How did you get back here so quickly?" Duo asked, raising his brow.

"I emailed myself back here," Slur replied, very matter-of-factly. "Duo…it has already begun."

"Indeed it has," Duo replied. "It is not Kenishiro's dream to simply destroy Netto. He will go beyond the best. And to do so…"

"…he will not stop until he humiliates EVERYONE ON EARTH!" Slur replied, again very matter-of-factly. "We must stop him! But first…"

Slur again opened Netto's photo, and she and Duo burst into hysterical laughter. For the moment, it appeared Happy's fate would have to be postponed.

END PART XVIII