12
Worst Case Scenario Realized... One-Armed Blues On the Beach... The Observatory In the Morning
And the worst thing was that H. G. Peckerham's pecker was still scalded. When he and his fleet of Charizard bombers returned to base and removed their helmets and climbed down and got to patting one another on the back for a job well done, he was astounded to find that destroying Melemele may not have fixed the problem at all. His brow furrowed in horror and disbelief. The first impression—as he shifted his weight around and paid careful attention to the sensations emanating from his groin—was that the penis still hurt.
He dashed inside and retired to his quarters, having decided to take the next round of pictures of the affected skin right away. It hadn't been quite an hour since his last batch, but he was curious to see if his plan had worked.
"Redness!" H. G. Peckerham exclaimed, holding his unzipped zipper in one hand and his camera in the other. "This cannot be!"
"Men," he announced fifteen minutes later in the briefing room, "the worst case scenario has come to pass." He paused to hand a stack of Polaroids depicting his lightly scaled penis and thigh area to the bombardiers seated in the front row. Many of them were still wearing their flak jackets, and a few men had the beefy intercom headphones they used to stay in communication slung casually around their necks. As the men began to pass the photos around and stare in awe at the scaled penis, H. G. Peckerham stood proudly at the front of the room with his hands clasped behind his back and his chin thrust forward. They were good men. Not a single one of them was able to behold the penis without the same look of shock and revulsion crossing his features that had crossed H. G. Peckerham's fifteen minutes ago when he had first discovered that his penis was still scalded.
"Sir, what went wrong?" cried one of the bombardiers. "Did we fail to destroy part of the island? I don't understand!"
"I'll be damned if I know, either, soldier," H. G. Peckerham replied paternally. "As far as I could tell, Melemele was utterly demolished. The bomb pattern was nice and tight. I saw no targets left standing. The Pokémon Center was so much ash and rubble. Same with the Poké Mart. I'm as perplexed as you boys."
"Should we do Akala next?" the bombardier asked. A few of the men seated near him made sounds of eager approval, and someone clapped him heartily on the shoulder. The bombardier turned to the man with a smile and clapped his friend's arm right back.
"We clearly have no choice," Peckerham agreed. "Not only is the topical reddening still apparent, despite the double application of Vaseline, but there appears to be a blister developing on the thigh. Do you see?"
"Plain as day, sir."
H. G. Peckerham strode back and forth across the front of the room, stabbing his index finger at the men to emphasize his point. "Then you must see why we cannot rest. We're all that stands between my penis and annihilation, boys. Write your letters and call your wives. Tomorrow we head for Akala."
Raucous cheers shook the small briefing room. H. G. Peckerham had to suppress a smile. He had never been prouder to belong to the Alolan Air Force, and he had never been more proud of his men.
Meanwhile, Youngster Joey and Officer Jenny's evacuation boat was pulling into the Heahea harbor. They navigated the ramp along with the other evacuees and then went directly across the harbor to board a different boat that was going to Ula'ula, where Moon Child was waiting for their assistance. Mina escaped from Peckerham, too. She Charizarded up, took to the sky, and was a hundred miles away when the explosions on Akala started. Even Dwayne survived; the only sections of the island which were not bombed were the rocky beach where Moon Child had put Dwayne's wooden arms and the Wela Volcano Park, to which Nurse Joy's family had been exiled. Dwayne happened to be down on the beach hunting for arms when the first bomb blasts cut through the day.
"What the hell?" Dwayne screamed, clutching the wooden hand of one of his wooden arms in his organic hand. He stared in amazement as nightmare dragons swooped over and through one another and rained bombs down. Charizards filled the sky.
"This island sucks, dawg," Dwayne said, clutching the arm to his chest. He scurried into a nearby beach cave to wait out the destruction. "I don't deserve this. Don't deserve none of this shit. I should be in Po Town right now, drinking a tall glass of milk with Spinda! Bump this, yo! Bump all this!"
"Friend, I think I muzzzzt caution you not to catch any more guardian deities!" Rotom told Moon Child the next day as they came in for a landing at the observatory on Mount Hokulani.
"Wat!" said Moon Child. "You must be crazy, Rotom. Catching these is hilarious."
Rotom buzzed angrily and changed the cracked screen displaying the picture of his face smiling to one of his face frowning. "It izzzzn't hilarious at all, buddy! I'm reading the headlines and it says here a lot of bad things have happened to Melemele and Akala since you took their deities and put them in your PC. Things that you caused!"
Moon Child considered this for a moment and scratched the back of her head. "What kinds of things?" she asked.
"It says a man witnesses identified as Lt. Surge stole a golf cart in Heahea, and that there was a screaming epidemic."
Moon Child laughed.
"It's not funny!" Rotom insisted. "This Pokémon adventure you're on is starting to get really serious!"
Moon Child looked around. It didn't feel serious at all. The observatory was awash in morning sunlight, and the sky above the island was a hazy blue-pink dream. From this altitude she could see for miles in every direction, could see the very curve of the Earth. She wasn't hungry or thirsty or tired or lonely. She was having a blast, and it seemed perfectly reasonable to assume that Tapu Koko and Tapu Lele were having similar blasts inside her PC with all the other friends she had collected over the last several months. Who cared if her fun adventure made some stupid grownups scream?
"Get back in the bag, Rotom!" Moon Child yelled.