Well. Here is what you have all been waiting for. Part four of the story that I can barely remember. Oh, when will this agonizing work ever end? I hate this story! WHY DO YOU LIKE IT?!

Mutant Creature JouBi
Part 4

By Lord Nocato

Jingle stared out into the horizon, and saw something that startled him. It had been about two weeks, and there had been no sign of JouBi. What he saw made him wonder, made terrific poetry come into his head. But he sighed. His guitar was probably somewhere out in the world, digested, in a pile of JouBi droppings. What did he see? He saw the top of a tall building, and the tops of a few others. The water was waning. Finally. "Once this is over," he thought to himself, "I am never going near water ever again."

Panda was not a very big help, with the fact that he was a one-armed hamster. He couldn't make weapons, or anything else he might have been considered useful for. Jingle would see him, sitting on a ledge, watching the sunrise, with a face that only somebody deep-minded like Jingle could read. What Jingle read was "I wonder what will become of us," and "What is stopping me from just sliding off this ledge, into the water? I would die in less pain that way..."

But Panda and Jingle both knew they couldn't just end their own lives. They felt obligated to avenge the deaths of their ham-ham friends. Even if they couldn't succeed, they would be happy to know that they tried their best. And that was all that mattered to them.

Morning time. 3:00. Three weeks since any sight of JouBi. Panda lay, staring at a wall, half asleep. Jingle sat, asleep, propped up against that same wall. Panda could hear the sloshing of the waves against the wooden sides of the ship. He could hear an eventual creak somewhere beneath him. He could hear a soft padding noise in the hall, leading to the room where he and Jingle were sleeping. He could hear a faint purr, that of a cat...

When Jingle woke up, he thought he would see a little black-and-white hamster, asleep on the floor in front of him, but such a thing there was not. He got up, and checked the ship, every room, every nook and cranny, but found nothing. Flabbergasted, he plopped down in the middle of the deck, outside. The breeze from his flump sent some thin thing to fly in the air before him. He grabbed it, and examined it closer up. It was a gray-blue cat hair, no doubt. He pondered. A cat hair would mean that there was a cat on board, his undying wisdom told him. Or at least, there WAS a cat on board. He sighed. "Looks like I'm the last one," he said, pointing out the not-so-true obvious.

Panda was not dead. Not yet, anyways. JouBi had snatched him, and he was brought to a building afloat the Earth Sea. She put him in a room, turned human, locked the door, turned hamster, and approached him. He was terrified.
"What are you going to do to me?" he asked her. She smiled sweetly.
"Don't be scared, little panda bear," she cooed, "life will pass you by quickly, once I finish it with your one last usefulness."

Jingle's pirate ship had come upon a strangely metallic building, which was atop the water, bobbing like a buoy. It came close enough where he could jump off the deck, onto the "patio" of the steel castle. And so he did. "So long, dear ship!" he called after the boat, which was being swept away, in the salty current of Earth Sea. Jingle stepped up to the entryway, and gazed at the door. It was open a crack. He shrugged. Even if it seemed WAY too convenient, he would take the risk of a surprise attack. He figured, "As long as my wit's about me, I can confuse my enemies into letting me go." And in a sense, he was quite right.

Jingle went through halls, corridors, passageways, and tunnels. He went through holes, ducts, pipes, and drains. He came across a locked room, which since it was so, he ignored. He walked a few steps ahead, and peeked through a glass wall that showed through to a dock-type platform. There stood a cat, blue-gray in hue, who tossed into the sea a set of bloody hamster bones. Jingle watched in despair. It was obvious whose bones they were. He frowned. He really WAS the last one now. It was just him and JouBi. But something made him wonder. Why had JouBi gone through the trouble of bringing her breakfast all the way back to the building? She could have eaten Panda on the ship. Yet she didn't. And why didn't she kill him, as well? He was only inches away from Panda as they slept. He dazzled at the possibilities. His undying wisdom did not support him with one positive answer this time. He sat near the locked door, waiting passively for whatever was to happen next.

Eventually, he heard the click of the door being unlocked. He stood up, startled out of a daydream he had been having. Out walked the human-form of JouBi, tall and thin. She turned a corner, and walked daintily through dark halls, Jingle close behind. She led him to a small room that smelled of horseradish. Inside was a man with greasy, graying hair and a sneaky look. He was seated upon a cushioned chair, his legs crossed in the masculine fashion, hands folded in his lap. Thick, dark, blue-lens goggles covered his beady eyes, and his lips were thin. He smiled at JouBi as she entered. Jingle scampered behind a third chair, as JouBi sat on a second.

"Evenin' mistress," said the man in a toady voice. JouBi stared emotionlessly at him.
"It does happen to be that time of day, yes," she answered, a bit of sarcasm in her tone. He looked at the ceiling briefly, and then back at her.
"So what be your plan now, mistress?" he asked. She sighed.
"Well, now. Let me see. I have finished off all but one of the hamsters now... I must eat that last, with the Mohawk. I am impregnated, so I am weaker, but the dumb rat doesn't know that, so I doubt he will be of much hassle. He's probably still sitting in that ship, hoping I won't bug him for another few weeks."
The man nodded. "Yes, mistress. Them rodents never think too far into the future."

"Rodents," she thought aloud, "Yes, yes. Hamsters are disgusting little vermin, like mice, who should be annihilated."
The man smiled thinly. "Vermin," he agreed. JouBi looked doubtfully at the man.
"Speaking of which, Mister Voronna, do you smell... a rat?"
Mr. Voronna shrugged. "I don't smell anything," he said. JouBi held up her hand to silence him, and looked around. Jingle quickly dashed from under the empty chair, over to Mr. Voronna's. JouBi waved her hand about, and the empty chair lifted off the ground, and was tossed. Impact with the wall of the room caused it to break into tons of little bits. Mr. Voronna gawked at the destroyed chair. JouBi glared at the ground where it had been. Then, her eyes jumped to Mr. Voronna's chair.

"Brace yourself," she commanded, and he grabbed the arms of the chair, confused. Jingle hopped up, grabbed the bottom of the seat, and held on for dear life, just as the chair, Mr. Voronna, and Jingle himself, went up, levitating several feet above the ground. Mr. Voronna shivered as JouBi slowly lowered the chair. She rolled her eyes. "Don't be such a coward," she said. Mr. Voronna shuddered. He couldn't figure out why he was still associating himself with this monster he had created, not all so long ago…

Once JouBi and the old guy left the room, Jingle released his grip on the chair, plummeting to the ground with a soft "thump!" He looked at the door. It was metal, thick, and locked. He sighed. "I'm going to rot here…" he thought. "This sucks. I'm doomed. The world is like, over, and I'm just a little hamster. What could I possibly—" Then he remembered. JouBi said she was "impregnated". "What does that mean?" he wondered. Impregnated… She had a kid? How? And why? If there was another JouBi, that would mean bad things. "Oh, boy," Jingle said. All of a sudden, a high-pitched voice-activated security alarm went off. Jingle jumped. "Eek!" he said.

The door busted open with a bang. But when Jingle looked, startled, he saw absolutely nothing. Just empty hall space. He tiptoed over to the door and peeked around. He walked out in the hall and looked both ways. Still nothing. He shrugged. "Maybe the alarm opens the door," he thought. Continuing his previous self-conversation, he thought, "JouBi said that she was weaker from being pregnant. Maybe I can beat her if I use that to my advantage…" He pondered for a while. And pondered some more. And pondered, and pondered, and pondered…… But Jingle's undying wisdom stopped working, because with nobody around to confuse, he no longer understood himself.

Suddenly, Mr. Voronna appeared in the hall. His goggles flashed as he spotted the hamster. "You," he growled. Jingle hopped up and started scurrying. He ran off, Mr. Voronna close behind. He scrambled aimlessly through the branching hallways, this way and that way and this way and… BANG! He ran smack into the fair-skinned leg of human JouBi. She frowned. Mr. Voronna tripped and fell down, picking himself up quickly, embarrassed. "Mistress—" he started, but JouBi suddenly held up her hand to silence him.
"You can't even catch a hamster, Lance?" She shook her head, and looked down at Jingle. All of a sudden, bars came up from the steel ground and made a cage around him. "I'll deal with you later." She said. She looked back at Mr. Lance Voronna and pointed at his forehead. He stood silent for a moment, but soon his face screwed up and he cried out in pain. A hole was beginning to burn into his head.
"Stop! Make it stop! Mistress!" he moaned.
JouBi's pupils suddenly became slits. "Die!" she yelled, in a demonic voice. The hole made its way to Mr. Voronna's brain, and he fell to the ground with a thud. Jingle became very, extremely scared. The bars melted back into the ground, and he flew up, unwillingly. JouBi waved her hand towards herself, and Jingle glided smoothly to right in front of her face. She smiled. "Guess what. This is… the end… of the world." Then, she swallowed him whole.

Okay, people. This is the end. Or is it? Hee-hee. Guess you'll have to wait and see if I wanna write a happy ending!