Chapter 24: The Young and Old
Author's Note: Hello, everyone! What's this? Gabe back already with the next chapter of Kind At Heart? Yup, it's true, but before we get to the main action, let me respond to your reviews. :)
BlackIce K1lls, I'm so glad you enjoyed the last chapter! However, I didn't quite catch the unintentional Jojo reference I made. What was it? Anyways, even though I had to look up what a pod fic is, that'd certainly be interesting to see this story in an audio form. I'm also glad that you liked the references I included, as well as the self-awareness with Mr. Wonka and Charlie. As for the second elimination, here it is! Enjoy! XD
Softkitty55, I'm glad you liked the hotel and Wonka Land. Speaking of 1971 references, did you notice that "Hotel Wonkatania" was a reference to the boat in the 1971 film? I, too, learned much when researching for the last chapter, and I'm glad you did as well.
Matt, I'm so happy that you liked the last chapter! I also have a few interests that take root in Japan, and I'm glad that you think I nailed my research well. As for the next chapter, it's finally here! Enjoy!
Guest #1, as soon as I saw your review, I compared the word count and started laughing. XD It's really crazy to think that two eliminations are longer than an entire story.
emeraldphan, I'm glad that you liked Hotel Wonkatania! The chariot was indeed supposed to be a callback to the Wonkatania ride from the 1971 film, as well as the pink sugar boat, but with a brand-new spin put onto it. It makes me wonder how often Wonka and Charlie visited Tokyo in order to build a life-size replica of it.
Gage the Hedgehog, well, you'll find out if you're correct in this chapter!
Guest #2, what an interesting guess...
MrWonkyWonka, Charlie's outfit in this version is actually the exact outfit that Wilder Wonka wore in the 1971 film, which only makes your point about Charlie being like the 1971 Wonka even more valid. Glad you pointed it out!
Guest #3, A Chris and Tyler fight? Oh, you'll definitely see more fights...
Now, on with the story, everyone!
As the group entered the house, they noticed a single machine in the center of it. It was large and bulky, and consisted of multiple bells, whistles, and bulb horns. On the top of it, there was a large red lightbulb covered by a translucent plastic the same color as the bulb. Just a couple feet from the machine, there was something that looked like a bird bath. A small pipe jutted out of the left side of the machine, and it ended in this birdbath. Coming up from the center of this bird bath-like device was something that looked like a smaller version of the bird bath, but inside it. On the left end of the room, against the wall, there were a couple brown benches, and a couple Oompa-Loompas were sitting on them. Benches were also positioned to the left and right to the entrance of this room, and Oompa-Loompas were sitting here as well.
"This," Charlie announced proudly, "is where we make Wonka-Vite and Vita-Wonk!"
"Is that just some stupid cold medicine with the Wonka name slapped onto it?" Daniel asked dryly.
"Far from it, my little mumbler!" Mr. Wonka smiled, letting out childlike, high-pitched laughter. "Wonka-Vite is the great rejuvenator! This may sound like a hard pill to swallow, but Wonka-Vite is so amazing that it'll improve the lives of seniors all over the world by making them nice and young again! Isn't that neat?"
Yuna's eyes brightened upon hearing Mr. Wonka's words.
"It's impossible," Daniel frowned.
"How do you know, Mr. Smarty Pants?" Mr. Wonka responded. "I'll have you know that one day, I was in my Inventing Room at four o' clock, and I put together a bunch of random ingredients while I fiddled around and the result was an extraordinary pill. It shook ever so slightly, and changed color from lemon-yellow to blue, then back to yellow again. I called it Wonka-Vite, and handed it to the Oompa-Loompa volunteer that was on duty at the moment. By gulping down two measly pills of this super substantial substance, he became thirty years old in the blink of an eye!"
"Prove it," Daniel said with a neutral expression on his face.
Mr. Wonka smiled at him and made a trilling noise with his tongue. Immediately, an Oompa-Loompa appeared beside him.
"I was there when it happened!" Charlie smiled. "Two weeks ago, this particular Oompa-Loompa here was seventy years old and in a wheelchair. Just look at him now!"
Yuna gasped in eagerness upon looking down on the Oompa-Loompa that was standing in front of Mr. Wonka.
"This sounds like that thing Mr. Slugworth was talking about last night when he offered us all that money," Chris and Jenna whispered to their respective parents.
"It sure sounds like it," Mr. Adams nodded back. Meanwhile, Mr. Wonka was explaining more about the Wonka-Vite.
"The Oompa-Loompas love to use Wonka-Vite for therapeutic purposes," Mr. Wonka explained. "Our studies are showing that if you use one Wonka-Vite pill, then a bit of Vita-Wonk to go back to your normal age, you'll have less leg and back pain than before you took it. It's a medical breakthrough!"
"But what does Vita-Wonk do?" Yuna asked curiously, pointing to the bird bath-like contraption connected to the main machine. She noticed that in the center of the device, small pills were bouncing around inside it like grasshoppers. They were changing into various colors extremely rapidly, then jumping back into the black liquid they were contained in.
"It does the exact opposite of Wonka-Vite," Charlie explained. "Instead of making you younger, it makes you older. Unlike Wonka-Vite, it comes both in a pill and liquid form. Mrs. Sayuki, are you with us?"
Charlie had noticed that Mrs. Sayuki was daydreaming while he was talking, and him calling her name had snapped her out of her thoughts.
"Oh yeah," she said quickly, shaking herself out of her thoughts. "Yup, Wonka-Vite makes you younger, all that, yup heard it all."
"Good," Charlie answered. "It's to be noted that for testing purposes, at the moment we have a special Wonka-Vite pill that decreases your age by eight years instead of twenty, like the one Mr. Wonka just mentioned."
"Can we see this pill for ourselves?" Yuna asked.
"Certainly!" Mr. Wonka giggled, pulling down a lever on the Wonka-Vite machine. Immediately after he did this, the siren on the top of it began to blare, causing the room to be bathed in a bright red light. Everyone in the group instinctively backed away from the machine, and they watched as more of the black liquid, the Vita Wonk, flowed through the pipe in the machine and landed in the nearby bird bath-like machine, along with more of the bouncing pills. A few seconds later, a yellow pill was ejected from the machine, and it landed in a plastic container with a small door on it. Everyone looked inside it, and the object was vibrating so fast that none of them could see its shape, only its color, and every few seconds, it turned from lemon-yellow to blue, then back to yellow again, just like what Mr. Wonka described.
"That's all?" Daniel asked, disappointed with the rather anticlimactic result.
"That's all," Mr. Wonka smiled, opening the door to the container and clutching the pill between his thumb and index fingers.
"It's wiggling," Mindy Bell pointed out. "Who would want to swallow something that wiggles?"
"Jumping beans exist, you know," Chris remarked.
"Be quiet, Goody Two Shoes," Mindy murmured under her breath.
"Mr. Wonka," Yuna asked, "can I take a look at it?"
"Sure you can," Mr. Wonka answered, giving the pill to Yuna. She twirled it between her fingers as the vibration shook them, creating a tingling sensation against her skin.
"Don't you dare swallow that pill!" Mrs. Sayuki yelled, and Charlie sighed in relief. "I deserve to stay young and beautiful forever, not you!"
The next sigh that Charlie emitted was a sigh of disappointment.
Mrs. Sayuki stomped up to her daughter in anger, but Yuna began to run around the area that they were in, as if they were playing a game of tag.
"Come back here!" Mrs. Sayuki yelled, lunging at her daughter. This running continued for several minutes, until finally, Mrs. Sayuki cornered her against a wall. "You are an idiot! You are a disgraceful, stupid girl!"
Suddenly, Yuna threw the pill under her mother's legs, causing it to roll back by the group. After this, Yuna darted under her legs, grabbing the Wonka-Vite pill. Mrs. Sayuki saw this, and she darted after it as well. However, she was too late. Yuna had already grabbed it, and she abruptly noticed the Vita Wonk pills hopping around, and grabbed three of them.
"No!" Charlie exclaimed. "One of those pills was enough to turn a twenty-year-old Oompa-Loompa into seventy-five, so who knows what three will do to you!"
"What's it to you, you old goat?" Mrs. Sayuki snapped. "I'll become young and beautiful, the most famous model on the planet once I have your precious Wonka-Vite!"
Mr. Wonka was trying his best to hide a smile as Charlie continued begging with Mrs. Sayuki.
"That's not Wonka-Vite!" he cried. "That's Vita-Wonk!"
"There's no difference!" Mrs. Sayuki screamed. "Once I swallow these three pills, I'll become the greatest model who ever lived! My daughter is nothing but a money-maker, and once I swallow these things, I'll be able to make her do whatever I want!"
"You're only thirty-three, you evil witch!" a voice shouted. Everyone in the group looked to where it was coming from, and they saw Yuna Sayuki. Her face was red with anger, and she was running at her mother. "You may think you're beautiful, but you're ugly in every sense of the word! I'll be the one that becomes eternally young, while you melt away in a hospital bed with Father!"
"No!" Charlie cried. "Both of you, please don't swallow any of those pills!"
Unfortunately, Yuna was so caught up in her argument with her mother that she completely blocked out the sound of Charlie's voice.
"I'm sick and tired of you!" Yuna screamed, punching her mother's arm. The force of the impact caused the Vita-Wonk pills to fly out of her hand and straight up in the air, right towards Mrs. Sayuki's mouth.
"This is it!" said Yuna happily, swallowing the Wonka-Vite pill as soon as the Vita Wonk pills reached her mother's mouth.
"Young and beautiful, that's what I shall be!" grinned Mrs. Sayuki. Less than a second later, however, she got far from what she wanted. Her body was frail and wrinkled, and her mouth was sunken deep within her skin. Her hair was also a snow-white color, and she croaked as she talked. To make things even worse, Yuna could be seen shrinking visibly and rapidly, and her kimono, which did not shrink with her, fell to the ground in a heap. A few seconds later, Yuna, who was now less than three feet tall, crawled out from under it and stared at the group, then began to cry, causing Charlie to pick her up in his arms. However, this wasn't what worried Mrs. Sayuki.
"My skin!" Mrs. Sayuki croaked in surprise. "My beautiful skin! What happened to me?!"
"My dear lady," Mr. Wonka said calmly, "you took Vita-Wonk, not Wonka-Vite. Vita-Wonk causes the user to become older, not younger."
"You monster!" Mrs. Sayuki croaked as loud as she possibly could. "I'll...I'll break you for this!"
She began to wobble on her feet, and Mr. Wonka once again made a trilling sound with his tongue. Immediately, a group of Oompa-Loompas appeared with a stretcher, and the thirty-year-old Oompa-Loompa joined them. Mrs. Sayuki landed on the stretcher, and Charlie gently placed Yuna on top of her as they were carried out of the house.
"Let's just be glad that Yuna didn't take the full-strength Wonka-Vite pill," Charlie remarked. "If she did, she would've been minus ten years old, and ended up in Minusland, which is hundreds of miles below us, even deeper than the Rock Candy Mine. Minusland is extremely dangerous. It's inhabited by Gnoolies, invisible creatures who try to turn humans like us and the Oompa-Loompas into one of them. Fortunately, they haven't succeeded." Chris shivered at the thought.
"Where are they taking them, Mr. Wonka?" Jenna asked.
"Why, to their opposing antidotes, of course!" Mr. Wonka giggled as they walked out of the brown house. Suddenly, the sound of pianos, clapping, synth, and more were heard as a group of female Oompa-Loompas wearing kimonos, with a male one leading it all, began to march through the archway where the group had previously entered through. They jumped onto the stage, and while most of them began to dance around in an elegant formation, one of the female ones, along with the male one, who just so happened to be the clerk that the Bells and Sparkmans met, began to sing a Japanese pop-style song. Mr. Wonka was happily dancing to the music. As they were singing, pink cherry blossom petals kept falling down nonstop from the ceiling.
Go chūmoku kudasai! Go chūmoku kudasai!
Aete hanashi o shinaide kudasai! Kushami o shinaide!
Inemuri ya kūsō o shinaide kudasai. Okite iru!
Anata no kenkō, anata no jinsei sono mo 。
Ho ho, anata ga iu, kare-ra wa watakushi o imi suru koto wa dekimasen 。
Haha, watakushi-tachi wa kotaete, matte, mite 。
Then, with a happy whooping sound, the girl began a solo in English.
And so begins the exit of Yuna Sayuki,
Who Charlie did beg, cry, and plea.
She was caught up in her beauty,
Which didn't end well, as you can see.
It is really a sad, sad fate
To be ten years, and subtract eight.
Of course, this means that poor, poor Yu
Is just a tot who's only two.
This is what happens when you're extremely vain,
So from that, we'd suggest to abstain.
She'll be the talk of the town,
And on her, people will frown.
But this is the price that she must pay
For wanting to stay young, and young to stay.
With a smile, the female Oompa-Loompa spun around on her feet, causing the microphone to spin as well, and the male Oompa-Loompa caught it and began to sing as well. At the moment, the stretcher containing Mrs. Sayuki and Yuna was now in the middle of the room, the Oompa-Loompas carrying them. One female Oompa-Loompa now danced towards them, holding a portrait of Mr. Sayuki as an instrumental break continued to play, and she placed it on the stretcher with the two of them, and a bunch of the Oompa-Loompas began to form a circle and dance around the duo. Then, the male Oompa-Loompa began to sing.
But even though to them we now say ciao,
You know she's not the only reason now.
Her happiness was ruined, and this is sad
By two toxic cows- MOM and DAD.
They were so greedy and revolting,
So disgusting they'd send us bolting.
They treated her daughter like a tool,
And now Mrs. looks like a fool.
All wrinkled from the Vita-Wonk,
And landing on the floor with a plonk.
Her vile attitude could only extend so far,
Which led her entire family ajar.
Mommy wanted herself to be the main attraction,
And treated her daughter like a huge transaction.
She wouldn't stop exploiting, which led to a mess.
Yuna's a new one cause now she can use pacis and a dress.
We hope that this will change them for the better,
And leave the Wonka family as their debtor.
As the extravagant song began to die down, the circle surrounding Yuna and Mrs. Sayuki began to disperse, allowing them to exit the Wonka-Vite and Vita-Wonk room, followed by the rest of the Oompa-Loompas.
"Yoku yatta!" Mr. Wonka clapped and whistled with two fingers as the Oompa-Loompas continued to disperse. "Yoku yatta!"
Charlie was clapping as well, and a few minutes later, he turned towards the group and cleared his throat.
"Come on, everyone!" Charlie said as he and Mr. Wonka walked towards a door hidden behind bushes that led out of the room. "Off we go!"
Author's Note: Wow, what a crazy chapter! It certainly was something, wasn't it? Like the last chapter, I'm sure you have a couple questions, so I'll answer them now.
First, the biggest thing you may notice is that unlike the original, Mrs. Sayuki went with her daughter this time around. In the original, I thought it was disappointing that none of the parents went with their children, which is why I added this.
Second, another big thing you may notice is that Vita-Wonk comes both in a pill and liquid form here. This is a reference to CatGGE, where the liquid form appeared when Mr. Wonka sprayed Grandma Georgina in Minusland, and the pill form appeared when Mr. Wonka was explaining the invention of it. They were described as changing color constantly, and bouncing around like grasshoppers.
Third, the Japanese dialogue in the Oompa-Loompa song actually translates as follows:
"Attention please! Attention please!
Don't dare to talk! Don't dare to sneeze!
Don't doze or daydream! Stay awake!
Your health, your very life's at stake!
Ho-ho, you say, they can't mean me.
Ha-ha, we answer, wait and see."
That's right! It's the beginning of the "Goldie Pinklesweet" song in Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator!
Finally, "Yoku Yatta" means "Good job" or "Well done" in Japanese, which I thought would be fitting, considering the military reference after Antonio's song.
Overall, what did you think of this chapter? Was Yuna's demise fitting, and which version did you like better? Feel free to review and leave your thoughts, and stay tuned for the next chapter, everyone!
Until then,
Gabe S. :)
